StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Yeah, but Force Push, and the resultant domino-effect on the B1s, would be a good non-lethal crowd control technique.

Having him be on Naboo works really well. Maybe a 16-17 year old kid, full of fight, does his pod racing or working at a shop with hotrod ships or hoppers... basically one of those grease-monkey types that hangs with the "wrong" crowd (for Naboo) and like every kid his age has a crush on t...

I don't like the Prequels because on one hand they don't do justice to the Original Trilogy in continuity, characterization (Darth Vader was a whiny child-killing selfish prat?), and tone. I also don't them because as films in themselves they fail in delivering an effective and engaging story for a...

I recognize a lot of flaws in the prequels, and would have liked seeing things done differently, but the idea that the heroes in TPM got distracted by Sidious's plan isn't one of the complaints... I think the problem is just that this happens before we get to the climatic battle. I think storytelli...

Looking back, yeah, the original series wasn't so bad, and it was EU Jedi that got more out of control.

The fact that I'm inherently iffy on any supernatural/magic/uber-psi powers in science fiction also biases my perceptions, no doubt.

I always wondered if having the Droidekas deploy on a tripod formation, with a low center of gravity (most of their mass is closer to the floor than the humanoid models) might have had something to do with it... as well as the high volume of fire.

Ronindave, bear in mind that the prequels were, from the start, intended to be a different perspective on the SW setting overall. I remember even before TPM came out that George Lucas said there would not be as much focus on characters beyond Anakin and his fall to becoming Vader. It was going to be...

One thing about the Yuuzhan Vong is that it is not as much they who "jumped the shark", but rather are a mirror to the real problem at the core of the Star Wars stories from the beginning-- the Vong were tough because even their footsoldier mooks were invincible to Jedi. And therein lies t...

McClaine's pretty good at dealing with improvised situations, while Indy is good at besting traps designed to intentionally kill people. McClaine has faced terrorists and paramilitary criminal types, whereas Indy has faced pretty much the gamut of the Third Reich (Ground troops, Luftwaffe and Navy a...

Probably the biggest problem with all that is the notion of "one-type-fits-all" industrial processes. In other words, nano-construction will be the future because nano-construction is "so cool". Or that bio-construction will be the future because bio-construction is "so cool...

Putting passengers to sleep is a commercial decision, I think, so they don't have to provide amenities, and jam people in. I actually figured that the tech potential of T5E put Earth at somewhere in the ballpark of the KoTOR era, although they seemed to have spent more of their development on commer...

The Babylon 5 episode was pretty good; many species were immune (I think the Minbari and humans were able to interact freely with even the worst cases). Disease in science fiction isn't touched on much, beyond the "tic the box" episode-- rarely a recurring theme. Some diseases are actually...

Hmm. Coyote has a point which tends to undermine what I say below; my only response to that is that I'm not entirely clear on which 'reasons already stated' make power armor unlikely to be issued to the average rifleman. Well, bear in mind that armor worn by PA troops will most likely not be as tou...

Some other things about powered armor use in the field... the biggest advantage it will offer won't be the "armor" so much as the "powered". The PA suits would likely go to specialized soldiers who need to concentrate on carrying & lifting things while under fire-- so, pretty...

The Russians made extensive use of women on the frontlines in WWII... I'm guessing they pulled women back from that sort of thing after the war, maybe because they wanted to protect women or maybe because men didn't want them taking all the glory billets. I always guessed that, after absorbing 30 m...

They come to Boise every year in the fall to do their Christmas carol type stuff; I didn't realize they came here at all. Am I really that oblivious? Did they come this year? Yeah, they were here in ...I think October or so. Sometime around Halloween, before or after, but definitely well before Tha...

The Star Wars EU jumped the shark when they brought in centaurs and vampires, IMO. The "superweapon-of-the-month-club" and Samurai Cavemen were just some of the larger coffin nails.

I wouldn't have put it quite that strongly, but personally I see more direct similarities with DS9. Except that DS9 made the combination of a fairly grim and gritty depiction of warfare (well, for the setting, anyway) with a bunch of increasingly weird mystical stuff work extremely well, where as t...

They come to Boise every year in the fall to do their Christmas carol type stuff; I never go. I didn't know they were a dedicated "Christian Rock" band and thought they were just a quirky band that liked to mix heavy metal stuff with classical or folk type tunes as their gimmick, and assum...

A lot of the South African stuff would be good to look at, since not only is it built to near-similar specifications but it is also nearly analogous to the political situation you describe. South Africa was very much a regional power and might have been considered "2nd World" so you have a...

Everyone has to be somewhat selfish, at least to an extent, or we die.

If you run across Vonda McIntyre's The Crystal Star , do not read it, ever, if you want to maintain your love for Star Wars. In fact, destroy any copies you might find. Seriously. The Zahn books are good; I read them and liked them, but they are also a source for a lot of "minimalism" appr...

So far (thank the Force/God/FSM/whatever) Lucas has not felt obliged to follow the EU books. We can see how the Clone Wars animated series uses Traviss's books as toilet paper. So if he uses the EU books for anything, it'll be to mine a few gems of useful coolness while discarding the rest. And ther...

Huh, I didn't know the T-55 was still good for up to 122's. Cool. But the thing is, older MBTs are at best useful to upgrade for non-MBT functions. The Israelis modified old Centurions into Engineer vehicles by removing the turrets, putting up some armor, and making them open-air transports. Now the...

It means they want to excuse bad actions on the outside by giving credit for the good intentions inside: "he didn't hate the people in the Concentration Camps, he just wanted to do his job and get his paycheck to feed his family. He was basically a good person inside!" I think intentions m...