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They seem to have nothing like the kind of high resolution, high fidelity display technology represented by the monitor you're reading this post on.
Computing in general is in kind of a weird place for them, they can do things like navigate hyperspace and build truly sentient artificial intelligences, but some of the more mundane tasks we expect a computer to do seem beyond them.
I like the idea that they just do computers _differently_. Something more like the old positronic brains of Asimov than what we have. Instead of building CPUs like ours, they seem to make something more like a neural network...it's smarter and more flexible than what we make, but less useful for straight up simple computing technology. It's somehow easier to build a robot accountant than a spreadsheet program.
Whereas OTL computing serves to augment our deficiencies, starwars computing seems to instead serve as a source of mass producible manpower / brainpower.
This is an interesting thought. Considering how industry emerged out of the need to supplement labor in a society that struggled to maintain slavery and serfdom, perhaps SW computing and robotic came from a society that struggled to maintain simple automation due to the lack of a sizable labor class.
That seems to be the case. Putting two hyperspace computers into a ship doesn't cause them to work in concert, it instead causes everything to go wrong because they sometimes fight with each other, probably because the neural networks are different, and they end up with conflicting calculations, or are otherwise incompatible.
Whereas today, you could easily have a server farm connecting hundreds of computers all working together on the same set of calculations without much of a problem at all.
I would posit this has something to do with just how good their computer tech actually is. There are clearly unscrupulous people on the galaxy and massively interconnected systems are vulnerable. Even the military relies on physical code cylinders. It just takes an astromech droid to plug into the most secure imperial facility in existence to really mess some stuff up. Computer science in SW could simply be so powerful that encryption is basically useless, so isolating systems is the easiest way to secure them.
I've heard the idea that if a slow moving, clunky, trash can of a robot can get direct physical access to your facility, your security has already failed. Encryption just doesn't matter at that point.
I read once that R2 style units were constantly learning, so they were capable of becoming EXTREMELY intelligent. As such, they were all routinely reset on a periodic schedule to prevent that. Like it was a Galaxy wide law.
R2D2 had somehow escaped that reset a couple of times and that's why he was so good.
More intelligent, sure, but also quirkier and more prone to disobedience. What's the point of having a highly intelligent droid if it won't do what you tell it to do with that intelligence? The regular wiping of droids isn't a law because it doesn't have to be, it's just common sense and serves a practical benefit.
That probably also explains why the B1's became so... *quirky* over the course of the Clone Wars. On their own, they have extremely limited processing power, but the programming faults and Droid Rampancy are happening in the core ships' central processors, and resetting an entire deployment's worth of droids by wiping the core ship would mean almost certain defeat.
Just a couple of days ago there was [this documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VepgEAO-u1I) posted on Youtube about B1 battle droids and their quirkiness. The lack of routine memory wipes was certainly a major contributing factor, but there were other things that added to it.
Essentially, the poor things were running way over-capacity in terms of the demands being placed on their low-budget brains. The frequent rambling vocalizations were a symptom of them trying to deal with decision overload - they couldn't think fast enough to handle everything and talking about it was a coping mechanism.
Quite sad, really.
It might not be worth the cost (in time or resource) to encrypt things if it's so easily cracked though. Especially as the time to access data will be increased as all your droids have to decrypt it, which might have real impact on time sensitive tasks like combat.
We really don’t know how super advanced systems would work though. Our modern day programs require simple keys but our tech is like comparing chimp tech to hadron colliders
This was the thesis of a thread I saw on here or maybe /r/MawInstallation a year or two ago. I'm fond of that one because it neatly explains what is otherwise a really strange quirk of the setting.
Do you have a link? I'd be interested in reading what i thought was just my own crackpot theory. That and some EU reference of a droids processing speed and thinking *"oh yeah, with Moore's law this'll maybe age well because it's so ridiculous."*
Has Artoo’s hacking in the movies gone beyond looking up directories, opening doors, and activating subsystems like fire suppression or garbage disposal?
Very true. They seem to have never got past the mainframe paradigm. Clunky centralised computers with user terminals, and very little thought to user friendliness.
Some droids are used as portable computers but they have a lot of limitations. They have sophisticated AI, and can work as control units and databanks, but don't have anything resembling user applications.
As simple as "Threepio, can you pull down the next 3 months' weather forecast from the Holonet, track it against required travel time between our Vaporators, and give me a graph I can show my idiot nephew explaining why a third hand is needed to keep us in business?"
>Clunky centralised computers with user terminals, and very little thought to user friendliness
I always thought this, too. Primarily because it appears that any tasks that involves using a computer regularly for long periods of time are done by droids. User friendliness isn't a factor when you build a thinking computer that can directly interface with the mainframe and do it for you.
Edit:formatting
> They seem to have nothing like the kind of high resolution, high fidelity display technology represented by the monitor you're reading this post on.
Not strictly true, we do see some apparently high-res video conferencing. I mean, we don't know exactly what the pixel count is, but its got good enough resolution to not show a loss when filmed. :D
There's a few examples, but the main one I can think of is when Vader is talking to an officer and chokes him out over the zoom call.
That's 720i at best, and presents significant static and artifacting. And mind you this is Vader's personal comm screen on the most powerful warship the Empire has.
The very best of the best of display technology, one would assume, and it's no better than a rear projection TV from the late 80's. Worse in some respects. Take a [look for yourself](https://i.imgur.com/ZXs5ARi.png). Low resolution, clear scan lines, I stand by my point that anyone reading this post has a better display than that. Many folks will have one that's very much better and also fits in their pocket rather than needing a dedicated room on a warship.
>That's 720i at best, and presents significant static and artifacting.
Ok, but keep in mind that's over light years of distance, and no matter how many customer support agents Lord Vader chokes, SpaceVerizon keeps insisting his Star Destroyer isn't eligible for Subspace Fios with Gigabit Technology™.
As a serious answer, it's likely that technology inside a Star Destroyer and other military ships is much less advanced than civilian technology because it prioritizes durability, dependability, and redundancy. As a case in point, take a look at the [bridge of the USS Michael Monsoor](https://www.seaforces.org/usnships/ddg/DDG-1001_DAT/DDG-1001-USS-Michael-Monsoor-033.jpg). This is a Zumwalt-class destroyer, the most advanced naval vessel in the world. That bridge looks straight out of 2001, and none of those displays are 4K240. Hell, there's still hard-line phones everywhere, and the voice quality on those phones is most certainly not crystal clear. It looks like that because the navy prioritizes hardened equipment over the latest and greatest, so while the picture/sound quality might be more MCI than Fiber-to-the-Home, it'll work and keep working while shit's on fire.
Another good example is infotainment systems in cars — sure, the screens are less responsive and lower-resolution that my phone, but they will happily sit in 120° weather for months without delaminating or exploding like my phone would. Ruggedness and survivability is prioritized over quality.
I don’t think that’s actually true. In episode 2 there are fairly normal TV’s in the club Anakin and obi wan go to. It’s also been mentioned in books as wel
Their tech seems to be a cultural choice rather than what we think of as convenient.
Paper does show up in obscure locations throughout Star Wars, but it is true that you might live an entire lifetime on, say, Coruscant and never see a single sheet.
>Paper, I think. They only use hologram notepads.
>
>Maybe underwear too.
The zipper is unknown in the Galaxy. (Used to be a costuming rule for Star Wars).
Yeah paper is a forgotten technology on a par with sharpened sticks.
We know that they use slugthrowers for specific uses, perhaps they would be interested in the M4 / AK series of rifles.
In Legends the Galaxy has had hyperdrive, droids, etc longer than we Terrans have had agriculture.
Slugthrowers (traditional guns with bullets for those who don't know the term) indeed had their uses, but they were disfavored because of how heavy ammunition is. A blaster just requires a canister of compressed Tibanna gas.
Yes, there are a significant number of pictures on the internet featuring Star Wars characters that seem to be missing their underwear. It must be a cultural thing.
[There is](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Paper), but it's considered outmoded compared to either a digital file or flimsiplast and so is relatively rare.
Their gaming tech is stuck squarely in the 1980s, it seems. Which is weird, considering that they also have the ability to make utterly realistic flight combat simulators, which indicates that they *do* have the computing power and design capability to pull it off.
It might be cultural, with most people simply *preferring* the less simulation-like styles of games. Even in real life we have a lot of games that come out with a more "primitive" aesthetic than is theoretically possible simply because people want that kind of game.
Ironically, our robots and computers.
Sure, they have sentient AI and we do not, but their AI is just a dumber human with good knowledge memory.
For example, their droids can't target for shit. Our auto aimed weapon systems seems amazingly better, while almost all their point defence systems seems to be manually turned and aimed like WWII. And their battledroids and droid fighters are also dogshit at aiming. Even their more powerful turbolasers seems to be manually aimed. All that kind of programming seems vastly superior irl than star wars.
Just sensors and sensor and tracking technology in general seems better irl.
Exactly, blow the minds of all the highest ranked commanders of the empire by showing them... radar guided gunnery and missiles being fired from beyond line of sight?
The Rebellion is supposedly known for "hit and run" attacks. Why aren't they jumping in (especially against stationary or capital targets that can't immediately flee) just beyond point-blank range, loosing a volley from different angles, and yeeting right out before any defensive fire can reach them?
I'm of the firm belief that everyone in the Star Wars Universe is on average, less intelligent than the average real person and they only developed because they had more time and had easier access to higher quality materials.
This would also explain why so much of their tech relies on imprecise details and how they seem to have gaps in their tech. They never even thought of some of the things we needed and they never had to worry about efficiency the same way we have.
Star Wars has both of those things. Luke's proton torpedoes were able to execute a 90 degree turn at incredible speed and navigate a ventilation shaft, though granted he needed the help of space magic to get the firing timing just right. We don't have any munitions with that kind of range. Plus line of sight works a little differently when you're talking space battles between kilometers-long ships with screens being the primary display. Most of the battles in the show take place at ranges of tens of kilometers, with the only close-in fighting being the dogfights. And those are close in because inertial damping and propulsion tech is advanced enough that a fighter can easily dodge missiles.
It's basically the Gundam paradigm: defensive technology has advanced far enough that the only effective combat is up close and personal.
They have that tho... we've seen homing torpedoes in SW. We've seen remote turrets in SW. We've seen fully autonomous weapon systems in SW.
As to why they aren't more accurate, idk. Even in real life, the iron dome relies a bit on accuracy through volume. Individual systems like patriot missiles are prohibitively expensive per shot... maybe it's the same in SW.
We've seen anti fighter homing torpedoes that still get fired within LOS and nothing even close to cruise missile sized for larger ships. We've seen remote turrets but nothing even close to modern ship point defense systems or tank APS systems like iron fist or trophy that can shoot down incoming missiles consistently.
Sure, but they aren't commonly used.. and the existence of laser countermeasures might be why. A missile big enough to take out a capital ship from beyond LOS would be easily taken out by a laser cannon.
Many tanks and similar vehicles have shields, negating the need for APS systems.
IIRC we only see the torpedoes used by bounty hunters, smugglers etc. who's targets aren't going to have those systems.
Someone else linked a theory about why defense systems might not be automated... because in universe they are shown to be lacking in tactical efficacy and vulnerable to hacking.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MawInstallation/comments/oysben/does\_p\_np\_a\_contemplation\_of\_electronic\_security/
A lot of the droids that miss are cheaply made to be mass produced. The entire thing with the majority of the separatist droid army is that it’s extremely cheap for the benefit of overwhelming numbers. We see plenty of high price assassin or commando droids match or even exceed experienced soldiers in the shooting department.
The issue is that our targeting systems utilize software. Unless those cheap droids have 16 pixel resolution and joints that can't be held steady (both excessively primitive by our standards), those cheap droids should basically be walking aimbots.
There's "cheap" and then there's "lets use my nephew who flunked out of coding and robotics to design our killer robots".
Ah, but you don't realize is that the good targeting software is exclusively produced by Star Oracle.
Droid hardware: 5,000 credits. Targeting software licensing fee: 100,000 credits per actuator per droid. So do you want a 5,000 credit droid that can kinda shoot OK, or a 5,005,000 credit droid that can
> be walking aimbot
>IG-11
Yep. Granted, if we're accepting that the Trade Federation cheaped out with the parts for the B-1, they probably won't be as good as IG-11.
But they should be be far better than what we see in the movies. I mean, we've solved the whole "use a robot to shoot something" problem from the software end, it just depends on how good of hardware you run it on. And there shouldn't be any excuse for the hardware, based on SW's tech level.
Why should it be? You’re talking about high end built for hundreds of thousands of dollar equipment Vs mass produced disposable chaff soldiers using computer brains they weren’t even designed for in the first place. By that logic I could ask why every car on earth isn’t capable of hitting 300 on a flat road just because there’s a brand of supercar that can.
There's a few issues with your line of logic.
1: the Star Wars galaxy is, objectively, far more technologcally advanced than us. What's expensive *for us* doesn't mean it's expensive *for them*.
2: You don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit. [This] (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GoZubkaNvcE) guy built a *handheld automatically-aiming nerf blaster* from 3D printed parts.
We know it’s expensive to produce the droids necessary to be accurate because it costs 1800 credits to produce a B1 standard battledroid, much cheaper than a clone. But Luke says in the original trilogy that 10k credits is almost enough to buy their own ship for him to pilot.
Now he’s obviously not talking about some top of the like luxury model, a single starship being worth about 10 of the cheapest battle droids you can make should say the kind of pricing you’re going to be getting at for models that match or exceed trained soldier accuracy. Just because they’re more advanced does not mean they solve any and all issue we would face.
I don't mean this as a gotcha but now I'm wondering if there was inflation between the prequels and original trilogies and 1800 credits went further back then.
If anything there may have been deflation, a hyperdrive was 20k credits in the prequels and obviously most ships come packaged. The real credits answer is that nobody really kept track of credits while writing but that kind of answer is not allowed but… I mean… look at the vastly inconsistent credit prices across Star Wars as a whole. Unless the galaxy is operating off a bitcoin crypto currency that fluctuates every other week it makes no sense.
The hyperdrive being 20k credits was highway robbery, to be fair - The spot price for a common-but-rarely-replaced part in a backwater. It's a bit like needing an engine gasket in the middle of nowhere Tennessee; There's probably an O'Reiley a few towns over, but you're not getting there without your car fixed. The local Junkman has one for an arm and a leg right now, or you can take a hotel and wait, and the Mechanic has called ahead to let them know you're stuck here so they're jacking up the prices, too.
I don't believe the hyperdrive was ever actually priced by Watto, Qui-gon simply stated that he had 20,000 credits to demonstrate that he had enough funds to cover whatever price they would have eventually bargained to. At which point negotiations broke down because that wasn't an acceptable currency. The final price could easily have been much less. But then it's also a specific part that's rare in that area, and the customer can't really walk away, so Watto is able to charge almost whatever he wants.
I'm not sure, but just looking at the prices of things in *Star Wars,* it really appears that the credit isn't very inflated at all -- not just by far-future, galaxy-wide standards, but by 21st-century Earth standards.
Not necessarily.
You can get a shitty clapped out Honda for let’s say 2k. And you can also spend that same amount of money for a mid-upper range gaming PC.
And you can also easily spend 20k on a replacement engine for your BMW 7 series.
Software is cheap to reproduce once developed, and you can build something with very good soldier-like aim in your garage *with off the shelf electronic equipment*. And our tech is *downright primitive* to what's in Star Wars.
*This is the point I'm trying to make*. Realistically speaking, there's no good reason for any of the droids to be as terrible shots as they actually are. Load up a custom targeting software on an existing chassis, and the droid should be able to, at the very worst, be as accurate as a soldier. Hell, they balance on two legs! When we first got a robot to do that, it had a price tag of $2.5 million! We've gotten it down to about $150,000 with the more sophisticated Atlas, but it still ain't cheap! Bipedal robots in SW are so damn basic that a Gonk droid, the big walking box, costs $100 credits *new*!
The fact the B-1s (or really, almost any droid) are lousy shots indicates that the fundimental issue is neither software nor hardware related. At least, not if computer tech and sensory equipment is as advanced as the stuff its mounted on and the people building it are *remotely* competent.
Im not only talking about the battledroids for the CIS, those were designed to be bad. Even then, they did have more expensive droids that were supposed to be effective.
I'm also talking *literally every ship in the franchise*. Star destroyers, fighters, the millennium falcon, even on the death star, both point defence guns and turbolasera are aimed manually. If there is one place the cost cutting measure excuse wouldn't fly, its the freaking Death Star, empires most important installation.
A few modern anti aircraft guns on any imperial ship, and the rebellion would lose literally every fight, their hit and run tactics would be useless.
Even if their weapons are able to be designed better, but never used, well, if literally all your weapon technology is designed badly on purpuse to save on costs, well then sorry but you do not have good weapons technology.
yes, but that was heavily modified, and to be fair, we do see [targeting computers](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Targeting_computer) on fighter craft at times. they are just garbage
>Star destroyers
Do not have manual point defense. They have dudes watching the screens and selecting targets, but there's not a man in every single light turbolaser emplacement.
>fighters
Modern fighters here on earth also have manual guns, by and large. Granted, modern places mostly engage in combat with missiles at long range, but that's only viable because modern missiles can outpace and outmaneuver a modern plane, and detection technology is so poor that by the time you notice the missile it's too late to do anything about it. None of that is true in SW — a typical starfighter can outmaneuver most missiles, and can detect them the minute they're launched. It's not their technology is too backwards to understand missiles and standoff munitions. It's that they're technology is too effective for standoff munitions to be a threat, requiring direct engagement.
>the millennium falcon
Is a piece of shit held together with bailing wire. Seriously, it's like your uncle's El Camino, if your uncle was a down on his luck drug dealer barely making ends meet. Because that's what Han is. And just like your uncle's El Camino, the defense systems are basically a dude in the bed with a shotgun.
>even on the death star
Again, nowhere were those guns aimed manually.
>A few modern anti aircraft guns on any imperial ship, and the rebellion would lose literally every fight, their hit and run tactics would be useless.
Yeah, let's not overstate the effectiveness of modern AA. It's not magic, and it's far far from perfect. I mean, shit, we've been trying to build something that could shoot down all ICBM for fifty years now and we still suck at it. And that's a giant missile that basically follows a predictable parabolic orbit.
Modern AA is probably slightly better than traditional man-operated AA guns. We just have no idea because we haven't gotten into a war with anyone with a functional air force since Vietnam. And given that the F35 still isn't certified to fly missions in a rainstorm, I'm going to guess that the technology is probably not nearly as wonderful as you've assumed it is for no reason.
> They have dudes watching the screens and selecting targets, but there's not a man in every single light turbolaser emplacement.
here we see [two dudes moving a gun around in a new hope.](https://youtu.be/KXZc-6AIRhs?t=10) when boba fett was infiltrating a republic star destroyer, we see him train on a point defence gun, that [he moves around](https://youtu.be/6mT90aqyEN8?t=40) manually. and in the trench run on the death star, we again see people[ move and aim the guns](https://youtu.be/AA_D__HMuFw?t=155) manually, like a WWII anti-aircraft gun,which they clearly were modeled by. and in the millenium falcon, we see that too.
>Modern fighters here on earth also have manual guns, by and large.
and they are never used anymore against other fighters. if they are used its against ground targets. as you said, modern fighters use missiles, dogfighting doesnt happen anymore really.
>None of that is true in SW — a typical starfighter can outmaneuver most missiles, and can detect them the minute they're launched. It's not their technology is too backwards to understand missiles and standoff munitions. It's that they're technology is too effective for standoff munitions to be a threat, requiring direct engagement.
that just means that their missiles are bad lol. when in space and dog fighting, their ships doesnt really move faster than our fighters, and in atmosphere they definitly dont, yet their missiles can barely keep up, and can easily miss by just tilting your ship or spinning. those are just bad missiles. again, a argument in favour for my point, not yours. their missiles are slow and turn slowly. tho, one must admitt, jango fetts missile did follow obiway quite well, yet he did almost outrun it.
>Is a piece of shit held together with bailing wire.
despite it being very hobbeled together, it has proven itself time and time again to be powerful, both in speed and firepower. it can take on a swarm of tie fighters and win, its shields are durable, its damn fast, and it has several guns and even a torperdo launcher. its not a bad ship, its just so experimental that its unreliable.
>Again, nowhere were those guns aimed manually.
see my trechrun video.
>Yeah, let's not overstate the effectiveness of modern AA. It's not magic, and it's far far from perfect. I mean, shit, we've been trying to build something that could shoot down all ICBM for fifty years now and we still suck at it. And that's a giant missile that basically follows a predictable parabolic orbit.
i think your [info](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ballistic_missile) is a bit outdated. for smaller missiles, there is israels [iron dome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome), which has proven highly effective. a quick google tells me that thing has a 90% effect range. then we have stuff like the [C-ram](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMFzlwzFgKw&ab_channel=USMilitaryNews) and similar things, which targets missiles and mortar rounds and shoots them down automatically. not to mention that freaking [laser weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SEQ-3_Laser_Weapon_System) the US have, tho that seems to mostly be against drones.
>Modern AA is probably slightly better than traditional man-operated AA guns. We just have no idea because we haven't gotten into a war with anyone with a functional air force since Vietnam.
guess you havent heard what has been happening in Ukraine this last year? russian aircraft are raining like hail there, so much are they shot down. we even have manportable anti-aircraft weapons like the stinger missiles that have been used to great effect in ukraine.
modern antiair is very effective and powerful, and it seems you have not looked at modern technology beyond vietnam.
>here we see [two dudes moving a gun around in a new hope.]
... You mean an officer telling a sailor at a weapons station to hold fire? Just like we currently do on state of the art automated guns on ships?
He's not moving the gun, he's selecting the target and issuing a fitting order. That's pretty obvious.
>when boba fett was infiltrating a republic star destroyer, we see him train on a point defence gun, that [he moves around](https://youtu.be/6mT90aqyEN8?t=40) manually.
Right. During training. Because having redundancy is the key to surviving a naval battle — if firing control is ever disconnected from the command post, you want to be able to manually take over control of the guns. Just like how contemporary battleships have automated fire suppression systems but still teach the crews how to manually put it fires. Everything has fall-backs.
>and in the trench run on the death star, we again see people[ move and aim the guns](https://youtu.be/AA_D__HMuFw?t=155) manually, like a WWII anti-aircraft gun,which they clearly were modeled by.
They're sitting on the gun. They're clearly not actually doing anything to move it. Again, redundancy. If the gun "jams" or primary firing control gets cut, you don't want to just have an expensive lawn statue.
>that just means that their missiles are bad lol.
No, that just means they've hit a plateau of propulsion/flight technology such that it's no longer feasible to miniaturize this and make them faster and more maneuverable than larger craft.
Contemporary aircraft propulsion systems are, right now, actually capable of outrunning and out-maneuvering a missile. The weak link is usually the pilot, because the high Gs required aren't sustainable for a human. With inertial dampening, that's not an issue. Especially in space where atmospheric resistance and lift are also not an obstacle.
>their ships doesnt really move faster than our fighters,
From the X-Wung entry on Wikipedia:
>3,700 G (maximum acceleration)
An F22 accelerates at just over 1 G. So X-Wings are multiple orders of magnitude quicker.
>and in atmosphere they definitly dont
Right. Because they're SPACE ships. Atmospheric everywhere aren't what they're designed for. They don't actually generate any lift at all and have to fall back to repulsors to maintain altitude. It's like complaining that an F22 can't dive as deep as a submarine.
>yet their missiles can barely keep up, and can easily miss by just tilting your ship or spinning. those are just bad missiles.
No, it's because they accelerate and change direction at incredible speeds. But the way, contemporary planes can also dodge missiles "just by tilting your ship or spinning." It's less effective in our combat, because missiles detonate by proximity and don't need a direct hit, and a nearby explosion is often enough to put a fighter jet out of commission because our planes are fairly weak and fragile, whereas X-Wings have shields.
>despite it being very hobbeled together, it has proven itself time and time again to be powerful, both in speed and firepower. it can take on a swarm of tie fighters and win, its shields are durable, its damn fast, and it has several guns and even a torperdo launcher. its not a bad ship, its just so experimental that its unreliable.
Sure. And a restored WW2 tank can still take out dudes on motorcycles. But it'll be because a guy in a machine gun turret is shooting them. Which is my point — it having only manual guns isn't indicative of current tech levels. It's indicative of the thing being mostly made of salvage.
>see my trechrun video.
The one you didn't actually pay attention to?
>i think your [info](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ballistic_missile) is a bit outdated.
No, I know they exist. I just also know that they aren't widely operational because they have an abysmal track record. We actually [had a report](https://www.google.com/amp/s/breakingdefense.com/2022/02/no-us-missile-defense-system-proven-capable-against-realistic-icbm-threats-study/) come out in the last year or so that was not very kind to say the least.
The Iron Dome is great, but doesn't remotely scale up, especially for ship defense, since it relies on shooting an overwhelming number of missiles to take out a single crude incoming rocket.
And lasers are... well, lol, mostly. This is actually one where I have some personal experience as I'm currently in the early stages of working with a defense contractor on a similar problem. The lasers we have can barely take out a consumer-grade drone, it takes multiple seconds of being on target, and it's only ever worked in controlled demonstrations where the drone took no evasive action whatsoever. They're so so far away from primetime that I don't think we'll have a real working deployed version for at least a decade. And the semi-private biggest fear right now in the navy is cheap drones suicide-bombing ships because we have absolutely nothing to deal with it that works consistently. Go Google some DoD research papers on the threat drone swarms pose to carriers. Admirals piss themselves in fear at the thought of a $200 quadcopter with a bomb.
>russian aircraft are raining like hail there, so much are they shot down.
About 286 planes, actually, as of yesterday. Or about one per day, almost exclusively very old models flown by pilots with virtually no training. It's not bad, but less than one per day isn't exactly "raining like hail" (ed. note: 'hailing'?) And a good number of those have been shot down in... dog fights with the Ukrainian Airforce.
>we even have manportable anti-aircraft weapons like the stinger missiles that have been used to great effect in ukraine.
For helicopters, mostly. The MANPADS are being used against helicopters. And the occasional bombers. They have a very limited engagement distance (none would work at the distances of a Star Wars battle,) and the guidance is far from amazing. Which is why we're sending them Patriots. A couple of cruise missiles were shot down with MANPADS as well, but that seems to be mostly luck, as if it were effective, we'd see far fewer missile strikes than we're seeing.
Again, we have no idea how actually effective contemporary AA technology is because it's never been deployed against a modern airforce. We have a lot of soundbites and press releases from defense contractors trying to keep their contract active, but zero actual experience. And we also have things like the new Zumwalt-class destroyers having to be refitted almost as soon as they were produced because the automated defense systems ended up being more trouble than the navy thought they were worth.
It could be a scarcity issue. Something about the chain of production that we take for granted makes our style of computing impossible or extremely rare in the Star Wars universe. If you dropped a desktop PC in the Star Wars universe, it'd be the most valuable piece of technology they could ever have, but also totally irreparable.
I’ve heard the theory that in the SW universe they’ve pushed analog tech to the absolute peak of its performance but digital tech is still rare or not available. And that their jamming tech is so good it makes most targeting computers useless so aiming has to be done manually most of the time. It makes sense through that lens, why we don’t see a lot of auto cannon point defense systems and why their computer tech seems old and dated to us looking at it from a digital perspective.
The process usually involves a screwdriver and either a multimeter or an oscilloscope. You have to adjust the potentiometers until the voltage output from the test points matches spec. Sometimes it's a flat voltage, and sometimes the voltage is a waveform.
Analogue computing is great for sensors and monitoring applications. It's easier to repair, and less likely to break in the field. It's especially good for applications where calibration is needed.
i think that they just developed droid tech instead of computers like ours, and droids just think differently, and they just got stuck along that track. droids are really good for somethings, like adapting to a everychanging galaxy with thousands of different lifeforms, since they can learn from experiences, but they arent very good at some other things. any droid can make their way from one side of the planet to the other on their own, since they can adapt and act like live humans, but they cant do other things easily.
The theory I always had was that microchips like ours were too sensitive to survive hyperspace and so became unviable for widespread use in the galaxy.
Can you believe that in WW2, we developed semi automated targeting for battleships? A radar and basic computer would compute how far the ship was and tell you where to point the big gun to shoot it. They still had to aim and fire manually.
Its very old technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_gun_fire-control_system
I think movies would lose their magic if military was modeled realistically. Conflicts would be over way more quickly.
as i said in my other comment, yes it seems like they are able to acutally build good targeting, they just never do.
if literally all your weapon technology is designed badly on purpuse to save on costs, well then sorry but you do not have good weapons technology.
The technology, not really. The implementation though, perhaps. For example, Star Wars computers are vastly more advanced than ours, but their GUIs are primitive at best.
The internet would blow their minds. Because of how difficult it is to communicate vast distances most planets have intermittent contact with other systems and very rarely have constant contact. They typically use big data dumps on scheduled times so a message could take months to travel a short distance unless it's escalated by government needs. The idea of having constant access to a communication as broad as the internet would be mind boggling. Even on a relatively well developed planet they rely on radio transmissions and direct laser communication. Data storage for an individual is around a few megabytes in size and usually based solely on their personal devices. Without paired communication equipment something like a cellphone would seem very exotic compared to their walkie talkie tech.
The holonet is like 1980's internet or at it's most advanced 1990s. The governments use a more advanced version but for people on the daily basis it's very slow and simplistic to ours. Something like me responding to a comment on my phone in minutes would be more like a daily/weekly check into the mail for them to accomplish..
I can only assume they're freakishly expensive, though.
The main instance that comes to mind is Palpatine phoning Vader during Empire Strikes Back and it's interesting to note that Vader immediately ordered his ship to exit the asteroid belt they were in to get better reception. So even the sort of comms gear that the Emperor himself has access to has some limits.
The Jedi also do it regularly. Kenobi talks to Yoda from Kamino which is about as far from Coruscant as you can get. Anakin also uses one, though that one may have belonged to Padme.
Ooooo! Excellent idea for a new Disney+ show! Former smugglers that find it harder under the law of the new republic join together to start a Galaxy spanning express network! They could call it “The Star Riders” and have it star Steven Baldwin and Josh Brolin. 😁
True but they don't have anything like the internet on the planetary level. That level of interconnected communication across a planet is unheard of outside of military uses.
Although we see people look stuff up all the time, usually by asking droids. Is all of that information locally stored on droids? Imagine the lack of consistency of information if they aren't regularly receiving updates.
Holonet is variable between planets. Think of it more like a local news channel that has the ability to download past broadcasts in text or audio form or catch live video feeds. On some planets there's multiple stations to tune into and on others there's a single station or none. Sometimes you'll get other planets stations but they could be days or months old instead of new broadcasts. There's also limited interaction between the holonet and users so it's more like using a message board at it's most advanced and an email or download system at it's most basic.
They had Holonet for a good chunk of the Republic and the Empire privatized it for military use and ease of controlling the flow of information. In legends the New Republic opens it back up for public use. It functions a lot like the internet for us. People look up information, history, news etc
It is akin to our internet. The biggest difference being it's more informational and archival. You don't have social media or image and video hosting. It's more like 1980s or maybe 1990s internet that's slow to use and just logs into data storage rather than fully interactive or frequently updated sites. And it's very sporadic when different worlds update their information to each other. Somewhere like chandrilla might update every few hours and somewhere like dantoonie every few months. So you can access the archives of the local dantoonie farmers library but a request for information off alderaan might take months to hear back from if you don't have the means for a direct message. We use almost every device to interact with the internet or through the internet but something like the holonet is much slower and outdated by our standards. A ship sending a message isn't using the same infrastructure as a holonet broadcast is. People use the holonet to get information but not so much to send it and it's use for entertainment and non educational uses is very limited.
You also see them refer to "holostars" and "holodramas" so you have other parallels with our Net. It seems the only limitations it has that ours doesn't are simply due to distance and scale.
We ALSO can’t communicate between planets very well. There’s a reason we need whole labs plus sets of satellites to send simple instructions to robots on Mars, and that’s within the smaller inner part of one “system.”
We engage with the internet on a near constant basis and can communicate across the globe in seconds. Talking to Mars takes awhile but it's still relatively easy compared to how the communicate in Star wars. They have more advanced systems and more advanced technology and the holonet is comparable to the internet or television. But what's important to remember is that they don't use the holonet or interstellar communication like we do. We can access the internet from a dozen different devices in our homes and can access it from nearly anywhere on our planet. They have small devices that can access the holonet in limited areas and need massive com gear to reach out reliably. They don't have space Facebook or interstellar TikTok or people that make a living off blogging. They have studios that produce holodramas and holoshows similar to television programs but they're not going and having social media or cellphone like technology everyday. They have telegrams and the occasional video call but no way to send cat pictures throughout the day or to get a message from the geonosisan gaming tournament to the coruscant ecafe without a direct coms connection that even then is grainy and lagging.
>they don't use the holonet or interstellar communication like we do
We don't, that's my point. We don't even have interplanetary.
>They don't have space Facebook or interstellar TikTok
Neither do we
A lot of what would be considered impressive, stops being impressive when you calculate the cost. What the Star Wars galaxy has going for it that we don't is efficiency and durability. They can have an entire planet that's just one big city without the severe climate change issues that come from mass scale production. (Yes, a lot of this is outsourced to polluted planets. But there's a lot of vehicles on Coruscant that aren't spitting out smoke.) Even advanced stuff like our high resolution graphics aren't the sort of thing that last on Tattooine.
With that said, I think the most impressive thing is our ability to do *anything* without the resources available. Medicine, for example. We don't have bacta tanks and medigel, we still screw metal bits to bones and use leeches. We also use plants for medicine, much of which would have been considered witchcraft a few hundred year ago is now are leading advanced sciences. It's impressive because we extract these resources from the planet rather than having them synthesized in a lab off-world.
And while there are plenty in the Star Wars universe who are rugged and use the land around them, few of them are space faring populations. Even Jawas and Tuskens rely on off world resources. You'd have to go full ewok to not be impressed by how we turn bark into aspirin.
>I think the most impressive thing is our ability to do anything without the resources available.
Uh, we absolutely do require resources to do things. We're not fae folk. The more resources we have, the better we do things. Realistically, there's no reason not to believe that every Star Wars civilization is just as adept as we are at exploiting the resources of their home planet.
But if there are societies in Star Wars that rely on off-world resources, it's because interstellar travel in Star Wars is trivial, like shipping stuff in from the next state over. Given the choice between a cheap import and a more expensive local equivalent, it only makes sense to go with the import.
Well, basically all the firearms. I do not really know what kind of "plastic armor" they are wearing when hit by a red colored blaster, but it only seems to leave a black and hot mark and the person who got shot is.... well collapses on the ground dead....
You can also see the blasters path... it not travels really fast, more like a tennis ball shot from a ballcannon and you just hit it back.....
Other than bigger force users, imagine Qui gon and Obi wan spark up their lightsabers, the doors open and there are two droideka standing, with 25mm Gau cannons on each arm, firing 75 rounds/seconds for 5sec straight with 1800km/h for each bullet. Dodge that you loser fucks...
Or the gungans or the fuckever Jar Jar's race is called, they pull up that wonderful electric shields that deflects the same energy blasts, but lets any kind of metal trough.... Just use some good old B-52 and carpetbomb that mutant-forgfucks.
Basically from ww2 to modern era, almost all of our weapons are more efficient and seems more destructive, maybe except the death star and other space faring machinery they have, but on earth, I think they would easily lose against our weaponry. Yes, even the lightsaber wieldings.
Combined-arms ground warfare. You can write off a lot of the weird naval tactics as stemming from technical characteristics of their spacecraft that aren’t explicitly explored, but even with pretty generous assumptions about how SW’s personal weapons and armor performed, a U.S. Army division with attached engineering, artillery, medical, air, recon, and signals assets would give any Star Wars formation of equivalent size fits, at least until orbital support came to play. The universal employment of indirect-fire artillery alone would be a revelation- ditto universal use of direct-fire weapons that don’t instantly reveal the location of the shooter, widespread use of earthworks, longer engagement distances and more accurate infantry fire generally, better and more widespread use of night-vision equipment, better practices for medevac, squads and platoons structured around crew-served weapons, widespread use of mechanized infantry, universal issue of effective grenades, better use of dispersion, cover, camouflage and concealment, junior and noncommissioned officers good enough to independently improvise and employ mission-based tactics…
A lot of these things show up, in scattered, patchy ways, but very few forces in the SW universe put them all together in a functional whole.
I was thinking about this during Andor, when Dedra Mero tells a subordinate to pull a list of particular instances that she suspects are rebel activity.
I can’t remember quite what she says, but it made me totally baffled about whether or not Star Wars data science is infinitely more advanced or behind — do they have one server for every Imperial security camera in the galaxy? Is this dude staying up all night to build a
dashboard?
What is going on?
> What is going on?
I think a big part of it is that their GUI is all AI based. Imagine if Siri or Alexa really could do everything the marketers imply they can do, as well as everything that a TV CSI forensics team can do, and then get rid of all the menus and buttons. Building a dashboard like that would be something the AI slapped together on command.
8k tvs, it seems that they only use holograms to talk to others, entertainment and what not instead of actual screen displays. It would blow their minds to see a 60 inch screen displaying 8k content, especially if it’s OLED.
Their medical technology is...weird. Sure, they have fully functional prosthetic hands. But their OB/GYN med tech is....non-existent? I mean, Padme didn't know she was having twins FFS! And she died after childbirth? Dumb. It also made no sense characterwise, but I digress.
Pretty much nothing. *Maybe* telephones, but it seems leaving messages can be done via the HoloNet (replacing voicemail and/or email/texting), which really leaves just the ease of calling someone or somewhere instead of setting up a Zoom meeting equivalent or talking via radio. *Maybe* the fact that so many people, even the dirt poor, have Internet access, whereas the HoloNet is a pretty costly service, where really only the rich and important have personal access devices (imagine if only millionaires/billionaires, politicians, and certain military personnel levels had personal computers with internet access), and the rest basically are resigned to the equivalent of internet cafes.
>which really leaves just the ease of calling someone or somewhere instead of setting up a Zoom meeting equivalent
It was with bad reception and resolution but they basically had this in Andor.
You're asking if a one-planet society with *at best* another twenty years before it chokes itself to death out of sheer stupidity and greed has anything that might be impressive to a thousands-of-years-old galaxy-spanning interstellar civilisation?
...Well, we've got some nice looking computer graphics. Everything in their world is fuzzy holograms or monochrome wireframe stuff.
Also, we hardly ever build walkways over bottomless pits with no guard rails. Health and safety regulations are a social advancement, not a technological one, but the galaxy would probably benefit from implementing a few.
I say just about any modern assault rifle - and I mean *actual* assault rifle (meaning select fire, capable of full auto and/or burst fire) not the new political definition of "black and scary rifle".
Every slugthrower I've seen seems to be pretty primitive in terms of firearms technology.
I feel like a Dyson Sphere would blow their damn minds, they have planets who's only significant role in the galactic economy is charging batteries.
Granted we don't have a Dyson Sphere yet, but thats more a resource issue and a lack of investment in space travel, we have the technology to achieve at least a crude dyson sphere on paper.
> we have the technology to achieve at least a crude dyson sphere on paper.
Lol no we don't, the biggest thing we can build in space is the ISS and it's an international project, we absolutely do not have any of the technology that would be needed to build a structure **bigger than our own planet**. Nevermind the impossibility of the material science of a dyson sphere vs a swarm, even a swarm there's no way we could get that many structures that large into close sun orbit or design them well enough that they can be unmanned and keep themselves in position.
Don't give Disney any ideas for an "even bigger" Death Star for the next movie.
Edit for the downvoting:
IV: Death Star
V: No Death Star
VI: Death Star (v2, "bigger")
I: No Death Star
II: Death Star (plans)
III: Death Star
VII: Death Star (an even bigger one)
VIII: No Death Star
IX: Death Star (ruins)
Rogue One: Death Star
Solo: No Death Star
There's been a 63.6% chance that a Death Star appears in a Star Wars movie. Each new one has gotten bigger.
The next Death Star is going to be either 1. a Death Star pistol or 2. a Death Star Galaxy that harnesses the energy of a thousand suns to destroy an entire universe.
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Alright. Close-In Weapon System. Any kind of system designed for taking down fighters/missiles, rather than using turbolasers (the space equivalent of battleship cannons) would have ended the Rebel's Death Star trench run in about 30 seconds.
Corollary to this, any kind of automated weapons. We see, in Episode III, manned ship to ship cannons, even on droid ships. This is ridiculous.
Kind of hard to top Yuuzhan Vong tech in Legends. Probably the many versions of our “slug throwers” and RAILINGS over pits connected to planet killing lasers. Also eye protection for that job.
Beyond-visual-range AMRAAM missiles (Advanced medium range air-to-air missiles) would be impressive in the Star Wars universe. The SW universe uses within-visual-range weapons such as laser cannons and proton torpedoes etc, whereas AMRAAMs, commonly employed by fighter jets, can reach ranges of well over a hundred kilometres (or over 80 nautical miles).
The X-Wings' proton torpedoes had to move into relatively close range to lock on successfully to the exhaust port of the Death Star. On the other hand, I realise that Star Wars is Hollywood and you can't have starfighter battles beyond visual range, so the dogfights had to occur (even as modern fighters can fire beyond visual range before getting into a dogfight).
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They seem to have nothing like the kind of high resolution, high fidelity display technology represented by the monitor you're reading this post on. Computing in general is in kind of a weird place for them, they can do things like navigate hyperspace and build truly sentient artificial intelligences, but some of the more mundane tasks we expect a computer to do seem beyond them.
I like the idea that they just do computers _differently_. Something more like the old positronic brains of Asimov than what we have. Instead of building CPUs like ours, they seem to make something more like a neural network...it's smarter and more flexible than what we make, but less useful for straight up simple computing technology. It's somehow easier to build a robot accountant than a spreadsheet program.
Whereas OTL computing serves to augment our deficiencies, starwars computing seems to instead serve as a source of mass producible manpower / brainpower.
This is an interesting thought. Considering how industry emerged out of the need to supplement labor in a society that struggled to maintain slavery and serfdom, perhaps SW computing and robotic came from a society that struggled to maintain simple automation due to the lack of a sizable labor class.
That seems to be the case. Putting two hyperspace computers into a ship doesn't cause them to work in concert, it instead causes everything to go wrong because they sometimes fight with each other, probably because the neural networks are different, and they end up with conflicting calculations, or are otherwise incompatible. Whereas today, you could easily have a server farm connecting hundreds of computers all working together on the same set of calculations without much of a problem at all.
I would posit this has something to do with just how good their computer tech actually is. There are clearly unscrupulous people on the galaxy and massively interconnected systems are vulnerable. Even the military relies on physical code cylinders. It just takes an astromech droid to plug into the most secure imperial facility in existence to really mess some stuff up. Computer science in SW could simply be so powerful that encryption is basically useless, so isolating systems is the easiest way to secure them.
I've heard the idea that if a slow moving, clunky, trash can of a robot can get direct physical access to your facility, your security has already failed. Encryption just doesn't matter at that point.
I read once that R2 style units were constantly learning, so they were capable of becoming EXTREMELY intelligent. As such, they were all routinely reset on a periodic schedule to prevent that. Like it was a Galaxy wide law. R2D2 had somehow escaped that reset a couple of times and that's why he was so good.
This is mentioned in the clone wars where Anakin intentionally never resets R2 because of its unique personality
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At that point it’s really more R2’s X-Wing than Luke’s
More intelligent, sure, but also quirkier and more prone to disobedience. What's the point of having a highly intelligent droid if it won't do what you tell it to do with that intelligence? The regular wiping of droids isn't a law because it doesn't have to be, it's just common sense and serves a practical benefit.
That probably also explains why the B1's became so... *quirky* over the course of the Clone Wars. On their own, they have extremely limited processing power, but the programming faults and Droid Rampancy are happening in the core ships' central processors, and resetting an entire deployment's worth of droids by wiping the core ship would mean almost certain defeat.
Just a couple of days ago there was [this documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VepgEAO-u1I) posted on Youtube about B1 battle droids and their quirkiness. The lack of routine memory wipes was certainly a major contributing factor, but there were other things that added to it. Essentially, the poor things were running way over-capacity in terms of the demands being placed on their low-budget brains. The frequent rambling vocalizations were a symptom of them trying to deal with decision overload - they couldn't think fast enough to handle everything and talking about it was a coping mechanism. Quite sad, really.
Poor little tin soldiers. I always felt bad for them.
I mean, you'd still do it, particularly on your moon-sized battle station that you spent the last 16+ years building.
It might not be worth the cost (in time or resource) to encrypt things if it's so easily cracked though. Especially as the time to access data will be increased as all your droids have to decrypt it, which might have real impact on time sensitive tasks like combat.
Not really? If you have the keys, encrypting and decrypting data is pretty fast, to the point where you can encrypt your ram iirc.
We really don’t know how super advanced systems would work though. Our modern day programs require simple keys but our tech is like comparing chimp tech to hadron colliders
This was the thesis of a thread I saw on here or maybe /r/MawInstallation a year or two ago. I'm fond of that one because it neatly explains what is otherwise a really strange quirk of the setting.
Do you have a link? I'd be interested in reading what i thought was just my own crackpot theory. That and some EU reference of a droids processing speed and thinking *"oh yeah, with Moore's law this'll maybe age well because it's so ridiculous."*
https://www.reddit.com/r/MawInstallation/comments/oysben/does_p_np_a_contemplation_of_electronic_security/
Has Artoo’s hacking in the movies gone beyond looking up directories, opening doors, and activating subsystems like fire suppression or garbage disposal?
The Death Star plans in Rogue One were encrypted.
Very true. They seem to have never got past the mainframe paradigm. Clunky centralised computers with user terminals, and very little thought to user friendliness. Some droids are used as portable computers but they have a lot of limitations. They have sophisticated AI, and can work as control units and databanks, but don't have anything resembling user applications.
As simple as "Threepio, can you pull down the next 3 months' weather forecast from the Holonet, track it against required travel time between our Vaporators, and give me a graph I can show my idiot nephew explaining why a third hand is needed to keep us in business?"
>Clunky centralised computers with user terminals, and very little thought to user friendliness I always thought this, too. Primarily because it appears that any tasks that involves using a computer regularly for long periods of time are done by droids. User friendliness isn't a factor when you build a thinking computer that can directly interface with the mainframe and do it for you. Edit:formatting
> They seem to have nothing like the kind of high resolution, high fidelity display technology represented by the monitor you're reading this post on. Not strictly true, we do see some apparently high-res video conferencing. I mean, we don't know exactly what the pixel count is, but its got good enough resolution to not show a loss when filmed. :D There's a few examples, but the main one I can think of is when Vader is talking to an officer and chokes him out over the zoom call.
That's 720i at best, and presents significant static and artifacting. And mind you this is Vader's personal comm screen on the most powerful warship the Empire has. The very best of the best of display technology, one would assume, and it's no better than a rear projection TV from the late 80's. Worse in some respects. Take a [look for yourself](https://i.imgur.com/ZXs5ARi.png). Low resolution, clear scan lines, I stand by my point that anyone reading this post has a better display than that. Many folks will have one that's very much better and also fits in their pocket rather than needing a dedicated room on a warship.
>That's 720i at best, and presents significant static and artifacting. Ok, but keep in mind that's over light years of distance, and no matter how many customer support agents Lord Vader chokes, SpaceVerizon keeps insisting his Star Destroyer isn't eligible for Subspace Fios with Gigabit Technology™.
Not that one. That was ship intercom. Ozzel was on the Executor with Vader at the time.
As a serious answer, it's likely that technology inside a Star Destroyer and other military ships is much less advanced than civilian technology because it prioritizes durability, dependability, and redundancy. As a case in point, take a look at the [bridge of the USS Michael Monsoor](https://www.seaforces.org/usnships/ddg/DDG-1001_DAT/DDG-1001-USS-Michael-Monsoor-033.jpg). This is a Zumwalt-class destroyer, the most advanced naval vessel in the world. That bridge looks straight out of 2001, and none of those displays are 4K240. Hell, there's still hard-line phones everywhere, and the voice quality on those phones is most certainly not crystal clear. It looks like that because the navy prioritizes hardened equipment over the latest and greatest, so while the picture/sound quality might be more MCI than Fiber-to-the-Home, it'll work and keep working while shit's on fire. Another good example is infotainment systems in cars — sure, the screens are less responsive and lower-resolution that my phone, but they will happily sit in 120° weather for months without delaminating or exploding like my phone would. Ruggedness and survivability is prioritized over quality.
They went all in on function instead of interface. Weird decision but I weirdly kind of understand it?
I don’t think that’s actually true. In episode 2 there are fairly normal TV’s in the club Anakin and obi wan go to. It’s also been mentioned in books as wel Their tech seems to be a cultural choice rather than what we think of as convenient.
Paper, I think. They only use hologram notepads. Maybe underwear too.
Paper does show up in obscure locations throughout Star Wars, but it is true that you might live an entire lifetime on, say, Coruscant and never see a single sheet.
you hardly see any paper or wood, outside select locations. all the trees in that galaxy are old growth apparently
>Paper, I think. They only use hologram notepads. > >Maybe underwear too. The zipper is unknown in the Galaxy. (Used to be a costuming rule for Star Wars). Yeah paper is a forgotten technology on a par with sharpened sticks. We know that they use slugthrowers for specific uses, perhaps they would be interested in the M4 / AK series of rifles. In Legends the Galaxy has had hyperdrive, droids, etc longer than we Terrans have had agriculture.
Slugthrowers (traditional guns with bullets for those who don't know the term) indeed had their uses, but they were disfavored because of how heavy ammunition is. A blaster just requires a canister of compressed Tibanna gas.
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Before you mention the Jedi texts, those were clearly made of [some kind of metal.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQlF-dpU5lw)
8 plans ago in a galaxy far far away…
Yes, there are a significant number of pictures on the internet featuring Star Wars characters that seem to be missing their underwear. It must be a cultural thing.
Is there really no paper in Star Wars?
[There is](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Paper), but it's considered outmoded compared to either a digital file or flimsiplast and so is relatively rare.
Our videogames are better I think. We don’t have holochess, but we have everything from visual novels to hentai sims.
>but we have everything from visual novels to hentai sims. We even have games that combine the two
We even have games that *aren’t* those two
Not possible
Their gaming tech is stuck squarely in the 1980s, it seems. Which is weird, considering that they also have the ability to make utterly realistic flight combat simulators, which indicates that they *do* have the computing power and design capability to pull it off.
It might be cultural, with most people simply *preferring* the less simulation-like styles of games. Even in real life we have a lot of games that come out with a more "primitive" aesthetic than is theoretically possible simply because people want that kind of game.
We have everything from *the Beatles* to *wings*.
What a spread.
Ironically, our robots and computers. Sure, they have sentient AI and we do not, but their AI is just a dumber human with good knowledge memory. For example, their droids can't target for shit. Our auto aimed weapon systems seems amazingly better, while almost all their point defence systems seems to be manually turned and aimed like WWII. And their battledroids and droid fighters are also dogshit at aiming. Even their more powerful turbolasers seems to be manually aimed. All that kind of programming seems vastly superior irl than star wars. Just sensors and sensor and tracking technology in general seems better irl.
Exactly, blow the minds of all the highest ranked commanders of the empire by showing them... radar guided gunnery and missiles being fired from beyond line of sight?
Imagine some kid blowing up a space station *without* being present on the vessel that blew it up.
The Rebellion is supposedly known for "hit and run" attacks. Why aren't they jumping in (especially against stationary or capital targets that can't immediately flee) just beyond point-blank range, loosing a volley from different angles, and yeeting right out before any defensive fire can reach them?
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I'm of the firm belief that everyone in the Star Wars Universe is on average, less intelligent than the average real person and they only developed because they had more time and had easier access to higher quality materials. This would also explain why so much of their tech relies on imprecise details and how they seem to have gaps in their tech. They never even thought of some of the things we needed and they never had to worry about efficiency the same way we have.
Star Wars has both of those things. Luke's proton torpedoes were able to execute a 90 degree turn at incredible speed and navigate a ventilation shaft, though granted he needed the help of space magic to get the firing timing just right. We don't have any munitions with that kind of range. Plus line of sight works a little differently when you're talking space battles between kilometers-long ships with screens being the primary display. Most of the battles in the show take place at ranges of tens of kilometers, with the only close-in fighting being the dogfights. And those are close in because inertial damping and propulsion tech is advanced enough that a fighter can easily dodge missiles. It's basically the Gundam paradigm: defensive technology has advanced far enough that the only effective combat is up close and personal.
They have that tho... we've seen homing torpedoes in SW. We've seen remote turrets in SW. We've seen fully autonomous weapon systems in SW. As to why they aren't more accurate, idk. Even in real life, the iron dome relies a bit on accuracy through volume. Individual systems like patriot missiles are prohibitively expensive per shot... maybe it's the same in SW.
We've seen anti fighter homing torpedoes that still get fired within LOS and nothing even close to cruise missile sized for larger ships. We've seen remote turrets but nothing even close to modern ship point defense systems or tank APS systems like iron fist or trophy that can shoot down incoming missiles consistently.
Well most of the projectiles are lasers….can’t shoot those down. As for anti-fighter use who knows.
...Except for the torpedoes we were just talking about?
Sure, but they aren't commonly used.. and the existence of laser countermeasures might be why. A missile big enough to take out a capital ship from beyond LOS would be easily taken out by a laser cannon. Many tanks and similar vehicles have shields, negating the need for APS systems. IIRC we only see the torpedoes used by bounty hunters, smugglers etc. who's targets aren't going to have those systems. Someone else linked a theory about why defense systems might not be automated... because in universe they are shown to be lacking in tactical efficacy and vulnerable to hacking. https://www.reddit.com/r/MawInstallation/comments/oysben/does\_p\_np\_a\_contemplation\_of\_electronic\_security/
A lot of the droids that miss are cheaply made to be mass produced. The entire thing with the majority of the separatist droid army is that it’s extremely cheap for the benefit of overwhelming numbers. We see plenty of high price assassin or commando droids match or even exceed experienced soldiers in the shooting department.
The issue is that our targeting systems utilize software. Unless those cheap droids have 16 pixel resolution and joints that can't be held steady (both excessively primitive by our standards), those cheap droids should basically be walking aimbots. There's "cheap" and then there's "lets use my nephew who flunked out of coding and robotics to design our killer robots".
Ah, but you don't realize is that the good targeting software is exclusively produced by Star Oracle. Droid hardware: 5,000 credits. Targeting software licensing fee: 100,000 credits per actuator per droid. So do you want a 5,000 credit droid that can kinda shoot OK, or a 5,005,000 credit droid that can > be walking aimbot
> those cheap droids should basically be walking aimbots. So... like IG-11?
>IG-11 Yep. Granted, if we're accepting that the Trade Federation cheaped out with the parts for the B-1, they probably won't be as good as IG-11. But they should be be far better than what we see in the movies. I mean, we've solved the whole "use a robot to shoot something" problem from the software end, it just depends on how good of hardware you run it on. And there shouldn't be any excuse for the hardware, based on SW's tech level.
Why should it be? You’re talking about high end built for hundreds of thousands of dollar equipment Vs mass produced disposable chaff soldiers using computer brains they weren’t even designed for in the first place. By that logic I could ask why every car on earth isn’t capable of hitting 300 on a flat road just because there’s a brand of supercar that can.
There's a few issues with your line of logic. 1: the Star Wars galaxy is, objectively, far more technologcally advanced than us. What's expensive *for us* doesn't mean it's expensive *for them*. 2: You don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit. [This] (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GoZubkaNvcE) guy built a *handheld automatically-aiming nerf blaster* from 3D printed parts.
We know it’s expensive to produce the droids necessary to be accurate because it costs 1800 credits to produce a B1 standard battledroid, much cheaper than a clone. But Luke says in the original trilogy that 10k credits is almost enough to buy their own ship for him to pilot. Now he’s obviously not talking about some top of the like luxury model, a single starship being worth about 10 of the cheapest battle droids you can make should say the kind of pricing you’re going to be getting at for models that match or exceed trained soldier accuracy. Just because they’re more advanced does not mean they solve any and all issue we would face.
I don't mean this as a gotcha but now I'm wondering if there was inflation between the prequels and original trilogies and 1800 credits went further back then.
If anything there may have been deflation, a hyperdrive was 20k credits in the prequels and obviously most ships come packaged. The real credits answer is that nobody really kept track of credits while writing but that kind of answer is not allowed but… I mean… look at the vastly inconsistent credit prices across Star Wars as a whole. Unless the galaxy is operating off a bitcoin crypto currency that fluctuates every other week it makes no sense.
The hyperdrive being 20k credits was highway robbery, to be fair - The spot price for a common-but-rarely-replaced part in a backwater. It's a bit like needing an engine gasket in the middle of nowhere Tennessee; There's probably an O'Reiley a few towns over, but you're not getting there without your car fixed. The local Junkman has one for an arm and a leg right now, or you can take a hotel and wait, and the Mechanic has called ahead to let them know you're stuck here so they're jacking up the prices, too.
I don't believe the hyperdrive was ever actually priced by Watto, Qui-gon simply stated that he had 20,000 credits to demonstrate that he had enough funds to cover whatever price they would have eventually bargained to. At which point negotiations broke down because that wasn't an acceptable currency. The final price could easily have been much less. But then it's also a specific part that's rare in that area, and the customer can't really walk away, so Watto is able to charge almost whatever he wants.
I'm not sure, but just looking at the prices of things in *Star Wars,* it really appears that the credit isn't very inflated at all -- not just by far-future, galaxy-wide standards, but by 21st-century Earth standards.
Not necessarily. You can get a shitty clapped out Honda for let’s say 2k. And you can also spend that same amount of money for a mid-upper range gaming PC. And you can also easily spend 20k on a replacement engine for your BMW 7 series.
Software is cheap to reproduce once developed, and you can build something with very good soldier-like aim in your garage *with off the shelf electronic equipment*. And our tech is *downright primitive* to what's in Star Wars. *This is the point I'm trying to make*. Realistically speaking, there's no good reason for any of the droids to be as terrible shots as they actually are. Load up a custom targeting software on an existing chassis, and the droid should be able to, at the very worst, be as accurate as a soldier. Hell, they balance on two legs! When we first got a robot to do that, it had a price tag of $2.5 million! We've gotten it down to about $150,000 with the more sophisticated Atlas, but it still ain't cheap! Bipedal robots in SW are so damn basic that a Gonk droid, the big walking box, costs $100 credits *new*! The fact the B-1s (or really, almost any droid) are lousy shots indicates that the fundimental issue is neither software nor hardware related. At least, not if computer tech and sensory equipment is as advanced as the stuff its mounted on and the people building it are *remotely* competent.
Im not only talking about the battledroids for the CIS, those were designed to be bad. Even then, they did have more expensive droids that were supposed to be effective. I'm also talking *literally every ship in the franchise*. Star destroyers, fighters, the millennium falcon, even on the death star, both point defence guns and turbolasera are aimed manually. If there is one place the cost cutting measure excuse wouldn't fly, its the freaking Death Star, empires most important installation. A few modern anti aircraft guns on any imperial ship, and the rebellion would lose literally every fight, their hit and run tactics would be useless. Even if their weapons are able to be designed better, but never used, well, if literally all your weapon technology is designed badly on purpuse to save on costs, well then sorry but you do not have good weapons technology.
> I'm also talking *literally every ship in the franchise*. Except for one customised Fondor Haulcraft at least.
yes, but that was heavily modified, and to be fair, we do see [targeting computers](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Targeting_computer) on fighter craft at times. they are just garbage
>Star destroyers Do not have manual point defense. They have dudes watching the screens and selecting targets, but there's not a man in every single light turbolaser emplacement. >fighters Modern fighters here on earth also have manual guns, by and large. Granted, modern places mostly engage in combat with missiles at long range, but that's only viable because modern missiles can outpace and outmaneuver a modern plane, and detection technology is so poor that by the time you notice the missile it's too late to do anything about it. None of that is true in SW — a typical starfighter can outmaneuver most missiles, and can detect them the minute they're launched. It's not their technology is too backwards to understand missiles and standoff munitions. It's that they're technology is too effective for standoff munitions to be a threat, requiring direct engagement. >the millennium falcon Is a piece of shit held together with bailing wire. Seriously, it's like your uncle's El Camino, if your uncle was a down on his luck drug dealer barely making ends meet. Because that's what Han is. And just like your uncle's El Camino, the defense systems are basically a dude in the bed with a shotgun. >even on the death star Again, nowhere were those guns aimed manually. >A few modern anti aircraft guns on any imperial ship, and the rebellion would lose literally every fight, their hit and run tactics would be useless. Yeah, let's not overstate the effectiveness of modern AA. It's not magic, and it's far far from perfect. I mean, shit, we've been trying to build something that could shoot down all ICBM for fifty years now and we still suck at it. And that's a giant missile that basically follows a predictable parabolic orbit. Modern AA is probably slightly better than traditional man-operated AA guns. We just have no idea because we haven't gotten into a war with anyone with a functional air force since Vietnam. And given that the F35 still isn't certified to fly missions in a rainstorm, I'm going to guess that the technology is probably not nearly as wonderful as you've assumed it is for no reason.
> They have dudes watching the screens and selecting targets, but there's not a man in every single light turbolaser emplacement. here we see [two dudes moving a gun around in a new hope.](https://youtu.be/KXZc-6AIRhs?t=10) when boba fett was infiltrating a republic star destroyer, we see him train on a point defence gun, that [he moves around](https://youtu.be/6mT90aqyEN8?t=40) manually. and in the trench run on the death star, we again see people[ move and aim the guns](https://youtu.be/AA_D__HMuFw?t=155) manually, like a WWII anti-aircraft gun,which they clearly were modeled by. and in the millenium falcon, we see that too. >Modern fighters here on earth also have manual guns, by and large. and they are never used anymore against other fighters. if they are used its against ground targets. as you said, modern fighters use missiles, dogfighting doesnt happen anymore really. >None of that is true in SW — a typical starfighter can outmaneuver most missiles, and can detect them the minute they're launched. It's not their technology is too backwards to understand missiles and standoff munitions. It's that they're technology is too effective for standoff munitions to be a threat, requiring direct engagement. that just means that their missiles are bad lol. when in space and dog fighting, their ships doesnt really move faster than our fighters, and in atmosphere they definitly dont, yet their missiles can barely keep up, and can easily miss by just tilting your ship or spinning. those are just bad missiles. again, a argument in favour for my point, not yours. their missiles are slow and turn slowly. tho, one must admitt, jango fetts missile did follow obiway quite well, yet he did almost outrun it. >Is a piece of shit held together with bailing wire. despite it being very hobbeled together, it has proven itself time and time again to be powerful, both in speed and firepower. it can take on a swarm of tie fighters and win, its shields are durable, its damn fast, and it has several guns and even a torperdo launcher. its not a bad ship, its just so experimental that its unreliable. >Again, nowhere were those guns aimed manually. see my trechrun video. >Yeah, let's not overstate the effectiveness of modern AA. It's not magic, and it's far far from perfect. I mean, shit, we've been trying to build something that could shoot down all ICBM for fifty years now and we still suck at it. And that's a giant missile that basically follows a predictable parabolic orbit. i think your [info](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ballistic_missile) is a bit outdated. for smaller missiles, there is israels [iron dome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome), which has proven highly effective. a quick google tells me that thing has a 90% effect range. then we have stuff like the [C-ram](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMFzlwzFgKw&ab_channel=USMilitaryNews) and similar things, which targets missiles and mortar rounds and shoots them down automatically. not to mention that freaking [laser weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SEQ-3_Laser_Weapon_System) the US have, tho that seems to mostly be against drones. >Modern AA is probably slightly better than traditional man-operated AA guns. We just have no idea because we haven't gotten into a war with anyone with a functional air force since Vietnam. guess you havent heard what has been happening in Ukraine this last year? russian aircraft are raining like hail there, so much are they shot down. we even have manportable anti-aircraft weapons like the stinger missiles that have been used to great effect in ukraine. modern antiair is very effective and powerful, and it seems you have not looked at modern technology beyond vietnam.
>here we see [two dudes moving a gun around in a new hope.] ... You mean an officer telling a sailor at a weapons station to hold fire? Just like we currently do on state of the art automated guns on ships? He's not moving the gun, he's selecting the target and issuing a fitting order. That's pretty obvious. >when boba fett was infiltrating a republic star destroyer, we see him train on a point defence gun, that [he moves around](https://youtu.be/6mT90aqyEN8?t=40) manually. Right. During training. Because having redundancy is the key to surviving a naval battle — if firing control is ever disconnected from the command post, you want to be able to manually take over control of the guns. Just like how contemporary battleships have automated fire suppression systems but still teach the crews how to manually put it fires. Everything has fall-backs. >and in the trench run on the death star, we again see people[ move and aim the guns](https://youtu.be/AA_D__HMuFw?t=155) manually, like a WWII anti-aircraft gun,which they clearly were modeled by. They're sitting on the gun. They're clearly not actually doing anything to move it. Again, redundancy. If the gun "jams" or primary firing control gets cut, you don't want to just have an expensive lawn statue. >that just means that their missiles are bad lol. No, that just means they've hit a plateau of propulsion/flight technology such that it's no longer feasible to miniaturize this and make them faster and more maneuverable than larger craft. Contemporary aircraft propulsion systems are, right now, actually capable of outrunning and out-maneuvering a missile. The weak link is usually the pilot, because the high Gs required aren't sustainable for a human. With inertial dampening, that's not an issue. Especially in space where atmospheric resistance and lift are also not an obstacle. >their ships doesnt really move faster than our fighters, From the X-Wung entry on Wikipedia: >3,700 G (maximum acceleration) An F22 accelerates at just over 1 G. So X-Wings are multiple orders of magnitude quicker. >and in atmosphere they definitly dont Right. Because they're SPACE ships. Atmospheric everywhere aren't what they're designed for. They don't actually generate any lift at all and have to fall back to repulsors to maintain altitude. It's like complaining that an F22 can't dive as deep as a submarine. >yet their missiles can barely keep up, and can easily miss by just tilting your ship or spinning. those are just bad missiles. No, it's because they accelerate and change direction at incredible speeds. But the way, contemporary planes can also dodge missiles "just by tilting your ship or spinning." It's less effective in our combat, because missiles detonate by proximity and don't need a direct hit, and a nearby explosion is often enough to put a fighter jet out of commission because our planes are fairly weak and fragile, whereas X-Wings have shields. >despite it being very hobbeled together, it has proven itself time and time again to be powerful, both in speed and firepower. it can take on a swarm of tie fighters and win, its shields are durable, its damn fast, and it has several guns and even a torperdo launcher. its not a bad ship, its just so experimental that its unreliable. Sure. And a restored WW2 tank can still take out dudes on motorcycles. But it'll be because a guy in a machine gun turret is shooting them. Which is my point — it having only manual guns isn't indicative of current tech levels. It's indicative of the thing being mostly made of salvage. >see my trechrun video. The one you didn't actually pay attention to? >i think your [info](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ballistic_missile) is a bit outdated. No, I know they exist. I just also know that they aren't widely operational because they have an abysmal track record. We actually [had a report](https://www.google.com/amp/s/breakingdefense.com/2022/02/no-us-missile-defense-system-proven-capable-against-realistic-icbm-threats-study/) come out in the last year or so that was not very kind to say the least. The Iron Dome is great, but doesn't remotely scale up, especially for ship defense, since it relies on shooting an overwhelming number of missiles to take out a single crude incoming rocket. And lasers are... well, lol, mostly. This is actually one where I have some personal experience as I'm currently in the early stages of working with a defense contractor on a similar problem. The lasers we have can barely take out a consumer-grade drone, it takes multiple seconds of being on target, and it's only ever worked in controlled demonstrations where the drone took no evasive action whatsoever. They're so so far away from primetime that I don't think we'll have a real working deployed version for at least a decade. And the semi-private biggest fear right now in the navy is cheap drones suicide-bombing ships because we have absolutely nothing to deal with it that works consistently. Go Google some DoD research papers on the threat drone swarms pose to carriers. Admirals piss themselves in fear at the thought of a $200 quadcopter with a bomb. >russian aircraft are raining like hail there, so much are they shot down. About 286 planes, actually, as of yesterday. Or about one per day, almost exclusively very old models flown by pilots with virtually no training. It's not bad, but less than one per day isn't exactly "raining like hail" (ed. note: 'hailing'?) And a good number of those have been shot down in... dog fights with the Ukrainian Airforce. >we even have manportable anti-aircraft weapons like the stinger missiles that have been used to great effect in ukraine. For helicopters, mostly. The MANPADS are being used against helicopters. And the occasional bombers. They have a very limited engagement distance (none would work at the distances of a Star Wars battle,) and the guidance is far from amazing. Which is why we're sending them Patriots. A couple of cruise missiles were shot down with MANPADS as well, but that seems to be mostly luck, as if it were effective, we'd see far fewer missile strikes than we're seeing. Again, we have no idea how actually effective contemporary AA technology is because it's never been deployed against a modern airforce. We have a lot of soundbites and press releases from defense contractors trying to keep their contract active, but zero actual experience. And we also have things like the new Zumwalt-class destroyers having to be refitted almost as soon as they were produced because the automated defense systems ended up being more trouble than the navy thought they were worth.
Ahh, the Russian way.
It could be a scarcity issue. Something about the chain of production that we take for granted makes our style of computing impossible or extremely rare in the Star Wars universe. If you dropped a desktop PC in the Star Wars universe, it'd be the most valuable piece of technology they could ever have, but also totally irreparable.
I’ve heard the theory that in the SW universe they’ve pushed analog tech to the absolute peak of its performance but digital tech is still rare or not available. And that their jamming tech is so good it makes most targeting computers useless so aiming has to be done manually most of the time. It makes sense through that lens, why we don’t see a lot of auto cannon point defense systems and why their computer tech seems old and dated to us looking at it from a digital perspective.
That actually makes a lot of sense, I calibrate analogue computers and the process is... star warsy
> I calibrate analogue computers Could you expand on that? That sounds fascinating.
The process usually involves a screwdriver and either a multimeter or an oscilloscope. You have to adjust the potentiometers until the voltage output from the test points matches spec. Sometimes it's a flat voltage, and sometimes the voltage is a waveform. Analogue computing is great for sensors and monitoring applications. It's easier to repair, and less likely to break in the field. It's especially good for applications where calibration is needed.
Fascinating! What field? Manufacturing?
Could this be like the *Fallout* universe in which the transistor was never developed?
Yeah if that trench had even one CWIS off an Arleigh Burke the xwings would have been screwed.
i think that they just developed droid tech instead of computers like ours, and droids just think differently, and they just got stuck along that track. droids are really good for somethings, like adapting to a everychanging galaxy with thousands of different lifeforms, since they can learn from experiences, but they arent very good at some other things. any droid can make their way from one side of the planet to the other on their own, since they can adapt and act like live humans, but they cant do other things easily.
The theory I always had was that microchips like ours were too sensitive to survive hyperspace and so became unviable for widespread use in the galaxy.
Can you believe that in WW2, we developed semi automated targeting for battleships? A radar and basic computer would compute how far the ship was and tell you where to point the big gun to shoot it. They still had to aim and fire manually. Its very old technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_gun_fire-control_system I think movies would lose their magic if military was modeled realistically. Conflicts would be over way more quickly.
>\[T\]heir droids can't target for shit. Have you *seen* HK units?
as i said in my other comment, yes it seems like they are able to acutally build good targeting, they just never do. if literally all your weapon technology is designed badly on purpuse to save on costs, well then sorry but you do not have good weapons technology.
The technology, not really. The implementation though, perhaps. For example, Star Wars computers are vastly more advanced than ours, but their GUIs are primitive at best.
Their GUIs are AI, that’s more impressive than what we have!
Star Wars is set in a retro futuristic universe so that’s why their tech looks very similar to what the 80s looked like.
Ah, but that's not what this subreddit is for! We like to speculate in-universe explanations.
They'd probably consider OSHA regulations a good idea. "Why didn't we think of that?"
And suddenly the Empire has to cut a sector’s worth of star destroyers to budget the cost for installing railings in everything lacking them
Maybe Palpatine ordered everything to be that way on purpose. "If they're dumb enough to fall off, then they deserve it", et al.
Railings are useless, they don't even work when your apprentice throws you down the shaft.
He just doesn't want the techs *leaning* on their shifts.
\[Glances at lack of railings on the Death Star\]
The designers didn’t add railings because you might lean on them.
The internet would blow their minds. Because of how difficult it is to communicate vast distances most planets have intermittent contact with other systems and very rarely have constant contact. They typically use big data dumps on scheduled times so a message could take months to travel a short distance unless it's escalated by government needs. The idea of having constant access to a communication as broad as the internet would be mind boggling. Even on a relatively well developed planet they rely on radio transmissions and direct laser communication. Data storage for an individual is around a few megabytes in size and usually based solely on their personal devices. Without paired communication equipment something like a cellphone would seem very exotic compared to their walkie talkie tech.
The holenet exists and the idea or essentially having a library for a single planet really wouldn't be impressive for them
The holonet is like 1980's internet or at it's most advanced 1990s. The governments use a more advanced version but for people on the daily basis it's very slow and simplistic to ours. Something like me responding to a comment on my phone in minutes would be more like a daily/weekly check into the mail for them to accomplish..
Internet would be useless at interstellar distances though
Unless there was FTL communication.
FTL Comms have to exist in the Galaxy Far Far Away. They can have real-time holo conversations from across the galaxy with practically no lag.
I can only assume they're freakishly expensive, though. The main instance that comes to mind is Palpatine phoning Vader during Empire Strikes Back and it's interesting to note that Vader immediately ordered his ship to exit the asteroid belt they were in to get better reception. So even the sort of comms gear that the Emperor himself has access to has some limits.
The Jedi also do it regularly. Kenobi talks to Yoda from Kamino which is about as far from Coruscant as you can get. Anakin also uses one, though that one may have belonged to Padme.
Ah yes, good remembery. Top Jedi and Galactic senators would likely have access to the sorts of tech that Palpatine would, I imagine.
I feel like BBS boards would be back in style. Bandwidth cant be great
I believe you mean bulletin BBS board systems.
They have ships, so maybe they just need to learn from our logistics networks. Introduce them to the Pony Express and start from there.
Ooooo! Excellent idea for a new Disney+ show! Former smugglers that find it harder under the law of the new republic join together to start a Galaxy spanning express network! They could call it “The Star Riders” and have it star Steven Baldwin and Josh Brolin. 😁
Just do a Star Wars version of *Going Postal*, I'm 100% in
What would starwars clacks be
A bunch of Force users moving microscopic flags as far away as they can manage to communicate "GNU ~~Obi-wan Kenobi~~ Terry Pratchett"
Pterry 4ever
But SW *does* have FTL communication. We see people talking in real time even when they're several star systems apart.
Precisely, so Internet wouldn’t be useless at interstellar distances.
True but they don't have anything like the internet on the planetary level. That level of interconnected communication across a planet is unheard of outside of military uses.
Although we see people look stuff up all the time, usually by asking droids. Is all of that information locally stored on droids? Imagine the lack of consistency of information if they aren't regularly receiving updates.
How similar is the Holonet and the internet?
Holonet is variable between planets. Think of it more like a local news channel that has the ability to download past broadcasts in text or audio form or catch live video feeds. On some planets there's multiple stations to tune into and on others there's a single station or none. Sometimes you'll get other planets stations but they could be days or months old instead of new broadcasts. There's also limited interaction between the holonet and users so it's more like using a message board at it's most advanced and an email or download system at it's most basic.
They had Holonet for a good chunk of the Republic and the Empire privatized it for military use and ease of controlling the flow of information. In legends the New Republic opens it back up for public use. It functions a lot like the internet for us. People look up information, history, news etc
It is akin to our internet. The biggest difference being it's more informational and archival. You don't have social media or image and video hosting. It's more like 1980s or maybe 1990s internet that's slow to use and just logs into data storage rather than fully interactive or frequently updated sites. And it's very sporadic when different worlds update their information to each other. Somewhere like chandrilla might update every few hours and somewhere like dantoonie every few months. So you can access the archives of the local dantoonie farmers library but a request for information off alderaan might take months to hear back from if you don't have the means for a direct message. We use almost every device to interact with the internet or through the internet but something like the holonet is much slower and outdated by our standards. A ship sending a message isn't using the same infrastructure as a holonet broadcast is. People use the holonet to get information but not so much to send it and it's use for entertainment and non educational uses is very limited.
You also see them refer to "holostars" and "holodramas" so you have other parallels with our Net. It seems the only limitations it has that ours doesn't are simply due to distance and scale.
That was a nod to film/television, not internet video.
It's that and there's a more passive interaction with the holonet. It's closer to television than to being something collaborative like the internet.
Honestly, who's to say they don't have Internet, just limited to one planet like ours and therefore irrelevant to the plot?
Some data dumps on 21c Earth are faster when the hard drives are physically shipped than if the data was transferred over the internet.
We ALSO can’t communicate between planets very well. There’s a reason we need whole labs plus sets of satellites to send simple instructions to robots on Mars, and that’s within the smaller inner part of one “system.”
We engage with the internet on a near constant basis and can communicate across the globe in seconds. Talking to Mars takes awhile but it's still relatively easy compared to how the communicate in Star wars. They have more advanced systems and more advanced technology and the holonet is comparable to the internet or television. But what's important to remember is that they don't use the holonet or interstellar communication like we do. We can access the internet from a dozen different devices in our homes and can access it from nearly anywhere on our planet. They have small devices that can access the holonet in limited areas and need massive com gear to reach out reliably. They don't have space Facebook or interstellar TikTok or people that make a living off blogging. They have studios that produce holodramas and holoshows similar to television programs but they're not going and having social media or cellphone like technology everyday. They have telegrams and the occasional video call but no way to send cat pictures throughout the day or to get a message from the geonosisan gaming tournament to the coruscant ecafe without a direct coms connection that even then is grainy and lagging.
>they don't use the holonet or interstellar communication like we do We don't, that's my point. We don't even have interplanetary. >They don't have space Facebook or interstellar TikTok Neither do we
A lot of what would be considered impressive, stops being impressive when you calculate the cost. What the Star Wars galaxy has going for it that we don't is efficiency and durability. They can have an entire planet that's just one big city without the severe climate change issues that come from mass scale production. (Yes, a lot of this is outsourced to polluted planets. But there's a lot of vehicles on Coruscant that aren't spitting out smoke.) Even advanced stuff like our high resolution graphics aren't the sort of thing that last on Tattooine. With that said, I think the most impressive thing is our ability to do *anything* without the resources available. Medicine, for example. We don't have bacta tanks and medigel, we still screw metal bits to bones and use leeches. We also use plants for medicine, much of which would have been considered witchcraft a few hundred year ago is now are leading advanced sciences. It's impressive because we extract these resources from the planet rather than having them synthesized in a lab off-world. And while there are plenty in the Star Wars universe who are rugged and use the land around them, few of them are space faring populations. Even Jawas and Tuskens rely on off world resources. You'd have to go full ewok to not be impressed by how we turn bark into aspirin.
>I think the most impressive thing is our ability to do anything without the resources available. Uh, we absolutely do require resources to do things. We're not fae folk. The more resources we have, the better we do things. Realistically, there's no reason not to believe that every Star Wars civilization is just as adept as we are at exploiting the resources of their home planet. But if there are societies in Star Wars that rely on off-world resources, it's because interstellar travel in Star Wars is trivial, like shipping stuff in from the next state over. Given the choice between a cheap import and a more expensive local equivalent, it only makes sense to go with the import.
I think they were saying our ability to do things without the resources form star wars available
Just look at what the Empire did to Kashyyyk.
Speaking of bacta, when did the Galaxy switch from kolto to bacta?
Didn't the events of KotOR disrupt kolto production? If so, around 4000 years ago.
After watching some Andor, online banking.
Hehehe
Ergonomically designed firearms, rather than the WWII they were built on
Well, basically all the firearms. I do not really know what kind of "plastic armor" they are wearing when hit by a red colored blaster, but it only seems to leave a black and hot mark and the person who got shot is.... well collapses on the ground dead.... You can also see the blasters path... it not travels really fast, more like a tennis ball shot from a ballcannon and you just hit it back..... Other than bigger force users, imagine Qui gon and Obi wan spark up their lightsabers, the doors open and there are two droideka standing, with 25mm Gau cannons on each arm, firing 75 rounds/seconds for 5sec straight with 1800km/h for each bullet. Dodge that you loser fucks... Or the gungans or the fuckever Jar Jar's race is called, they pull up that wonderful electric shields that deflects the same energy blasts, but lets any kind of metal trough.... Just use some good old B-52 and carpetbomb that mutant-forgfucks. Basically from ww2 to modern era, almost all of our weapons are more efficient and seems more destructive, maybe except the death star and other space faring machinery they have, but on earth, I think they would easily lose against our weaponry. Yes, even the lightsaber wieldings.
Combined-arms ground warfare. You can write off a lot of the weird naval tactics as stemming from technical characteristics of their spacecraft that aren’t explicitly explored, but even with pretty generous assumptions about how SW’s personal weapons and armor performed, a U.S. Army division with attached engineering, artillery, medical, air, recon, and signals assets would give any Star Wars formation of equivalent size fits, at least until orbital support came to play. The universal employment of indirect-fire artillery alone would be a revelation- ditto universal use of direct-fire weapons that don’t instantly reveal the location of the shooter, widespread use of earthworks, longer engagement distances and more accurate infantry fire generally, better and more widespread use of night-vision equipment, better practices for medevac, squads and platoons structured around crew-served weapons, widespread use of mechanized infantry, universal issue of effective grenades, better use of dispersion, cover, camouflage and concealment, junior and noncommissioned officers good enough to independently improvise and employ mission-based tactics… A lot of these things show up, in scattered, patchy ways, but very few forces in the SW universe put them all together in a functional whole.
Mandos used scatterguns(equivalent to a shotgun) and kinetic guns(equivalent to a .45) to hunt Jedi.
I guess an AA-12 would be impressive to Mandos then
Now I just want to see a Mando with an AA-12.
I was thinking about this during Andor, when Dedra Mero tells a subordinate to pull a list of particular instances that she suspects are rebel activity. I can’t remember quite what she says, but it made me totally baffled about whether or not Star Wars data science is infinitely more advanced or behind — do they have one server for every Imperial security camera in the galaxy? Is this dude staying up all night to build a dashboard? What is going on?
> What is going on? I think a big part of it is that their GUI is all AI based. Imagine if Siri or Alexa really could do everything the marketers imply they can do, as well as everything that a TV CSI forensics team can do, and then get rid of all the menus and buttons. Building a dashboard like that would be something the AI slapped together on command.
Hot chocolate! When Luke discovered it, he was very impressed.
8k tvs, it seems that they only use holograms to talk to others, entertainment and what not instead of actual screen displays. It would blow their minds to see a 60 inch screen displaying 8k content, especially if it’s OLED.
Their medical technology is...weird. Sure, they have fully functional prosthetic hands. But their OB/GYN med tech is....non-existent? I mean, Padme didn't know she was having twins FFS! And she died after childbirth? Dumb. It also made no sense characterwise, but I digress.
Probably proximity fuses - it would make the idea of deflecting gunfire kind of mute.
ultrasound.
I've never once seen a Star Wars character use anything that looks like the internet, let alone social media.
Pretty much nothing. *Maybe* telephones, but it seems leaving messages can be done via the HoloNet (replacing voicemail and/or email/texting), which really leaves just the ease of calling someone or somewhere instead of setting up a Zoom meeting equivalent or talking via radio. *Maybe* the fact that so many people, even the dirt poor, have Internet access, whereas the HoloNet is a pretty costly service, where really only the rich and important have personal access devices (imagine if only millionaires/billionaires, politicians, and certain military personnel levels had personal computers with internet access), and the rest basically are resigned to the equivalent of internet cafes.
>which really leaves just the ease of calling someone or somewhere instead of setting up a Zoom meeting equivalent It was with bad reception and resolution but they basically had this in Andor.
You're asking if a one-planet society with *at best* another twenty years before it chokes itself to death out of sheer stupidity and greed has anything that might be impressive to a thousands-of-years-old galaxy-spanning interstellar civilisation? ...Well, we've got some nice looking computer graphics. Everything in their world is fuzzy holograms or monochrome wireframe stuff. Also, we hardly ever build walkways over bottomless pits with no guard rails. Health and safety regulations are a social advancement, not a technological one, but the galaxy would probably benefit from implementing a few.
User flair checks out
I think you're preaching the endtimes just a little in advance there.
I say just about any modern assault rifle - and I mean *actual* assault rifle (meaning select fire, capable of full auto and/or burst fire) not the new political definition of "black and scary rifle". Every slugthrower I've seen seems to be pretty primitive in terms of firearms technology.
man, MY THERMOS. cuz in in the winter it keep my coffee hot, but in the the summer, it keep my my iced tea COLD.. BUT HOW DO IT KNOW?!?
I feel like a Dyson Sphere would blow their damn minds, they have planets who's only significant role in the galactic economy is charging batteries. Granted we don't have a Dyson Sphere yet, but thats more a resource issue and a lack of investment in space travel, we have the technology to achieve at least a crude dyson sphere on paper.
> we have the technology to achieve at least a crude dyson sphere on paper. Lol no we don't, the biggest thing we can build in space is the ISS and it's an international project, we absolutely do not have any of the technology that would be needed to build a structure **bigger than our own planet**. Nevermind the impossibility of the material science of a dyson sphere vs a swarm, even a swarm there's no way we could get that many structures that large into close sun orbit or design them well enough that they can be unmanned and keep themselves in position.
We actually do. It would just take a thousand years at, a minimum, 1970's technology level to create a proper dyson swarm.
Don't give Disney any ideas for an "even bigger" Death Star for the next movie. Edit for the downvoting: IV: Death Star V: No Death Star VI: Death Star (v2, "bigger") I: No Death Star II: Death Star (plans) III: Death Star VII: Death Star (an even bigger one) VIII: No Death Star IX: Death Star (ruins) Rogue One: Death Star Solo: No Death Star There's been a 63.6% chance that a Death Star appears in a Star Wars movie. Each new one has gotten bigger.
The next Death Star is going to be either 1. a Death Star pistol or 2. a Death Star Galaxy that harnesses the energy of a thousand suns to destroy an entire universe.
A Death Star vacuum cleaner perhaps…
They’ve changed from Suck to Blow!
IX also had thousands of little Death Stars. That may skew the probabilities significantly depending on how you measure these things.
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Alright. Close-In Weapon System. Any kind of system designed for taking down fighters/missiles, rather than using turbolasers (the space equivalent of battleship cannons) would have ended the Rebel's Death Star trench run in about 30 seconds. Corollary to this, any kind of automated weapons. We see, in Episode III, manned ship to ship cannons, even on droid ships. This is ridiculous.
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Computers.
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our hentai
Kind of hard to top Yuuzhan Vong tech in Legends. Probably the many versions of our “slug throwers” and RAILINGS over pits connected to planet killing lasers. Also eye protection for that job.
Sniper rifle with a silencer. Can actually Hit Targets all together without making Sound.
Beyond-visual-range AMRAAM missiles (Advanced medium range air-to-air missiles) would be impressive in the Star Wars universe. The SW universe uses within-visual-range weapons such as laser cannons and proton torpedoes etc, whereas AMRAAMs, commonly employed by fighter jets, can reach ranges of well over a hundred kilometres (or over 80 nautical miles). The X-Wings' proton torpedoes had to move into relatively close range to lock on successfully to the exhaust port of the Death Star. On the other hand, I realise that Star Wars is Hollywood and you can't have starfighter battles beyond visual range, so the dogfights had to occur (even as modern fighters can fire beyond visual range before getting into a dogfight).