And yet, they don’t have computer-aimed turrets. They still rely on people getting into turrets and aiming at their targets using some kind of low-fi 1970s era CRT to assist them. They may have plateaued ages ago, but it seems like their plateau was pretty low. They never developed transporters, they never developed replicators, AFAIK they don’t have cloaking devices. They have robots, but the robots seem pretty primitive in a number of ways – certainly they don’t have any robots that are advanced enough to be mistaken for humans / humanoids.
It’s also hard to estimate the power of “laser” cannons based on what you see on screen.
On one hand, a specialty space station was created that was powerful enough to blow up an entire planet in the matter of seconds. Even if the weapons they use for ship-to-ship fire are 1000x less powerful, 1/1000th of the power needed to destroy a planet is absurdly huge. Maybe the weapons are incredibly powerful, but we don’t know because the shields are also incredibly powerful.
Meanwhile, the Star Trek world only got warp drive recently, so recently that the individual who created it is still in living memory. But, just because it’s recent doesn’t mean they’re not even more technologically advanced. Everything we see in Star Trek suggests that they blew past the plateau that Star Wars hit, and kept going. Transporter beams, replicators, holodecks, limited time travel, androids with positronic brains that can pass for humans, artificial intelligence both at an individual scale (robots and sentient robotic aliens) but also at larger scales, like the ship’s computers.
Maybe in Star Wars world, there are no really advanced aliens, so all the alien races got brought into the same empire. Since there’s no outside influence creating pressure to come up with new technologies, there’s technological stagnation. In Star Trek’s universe, they keep finding new aliens, many of whom are so advanced they’re godlike. That has to keep inspiring inventors. In addition, instead of one giant empire, there are multiple empires, many of whom are hostile to one-another. One thing that tends to result in technological development is arms races against aggressive neighbors.
I tend to ignore what they say at places like stardestroyer.net because the more you look into these Sci Fi universes (and probably the George Lucasverse more than most) the more contradictions and paradoxes you see. I find I can enjoy them more if I just let my imagination fill in the details, based on what I see on-screen.
I know this is an old post, but just wanted to share. There’s a good argument (and I wish I could remember the source) that in the Star Wars universe, they’ve solved the PvNP problem. That effectively makes the idea of a secure network/computer impossible, since all systems can be hacked trivially. This is backed up by how every system can be easily hacked in minutes, if not seconds, and how security is mostly physical (the only way into this database is at this location, instead of a global network).
That means a much higher reliance on people than you’d expect, since getting hacked is a real threat and easy for your enemy to pull off.
Also, how commonplace sentient droids are, paired with how droids are universally discriminated against means there could have been a replicator/rougue AI incident in the past.
Not trying to say Star Wars is better than Star Trek here, just wanted to share some of the lore!
That makes some sense, but it seems like a backward explanation for the bad worldbuilding.
Like, the lack of computer-aimed turrets. You might not want a completely AI powered ship, but this is more the difference between “cruise control” and manually controlling the vehicle. Not using computer-assist is basically risking your life. As we see in the movies, humans are pretty shit at using the turrets. Computer-assisted aim would mean the ship is much more likely to survive. And, if someone did manage to hack your turret, you could turn off the computer-assist like you’d turn off a malfunctioning cruise-control.
Also, if computer systems are hacked trivially by droids, why do they have hackable ports all over the star destroyer? Wouldn’t they only put them next to human-guarded posts?
In addition, airgapped systems are a simple way to deal with this sort of thing. Like, your refrigerator or dishwasher probably has microprocessors, but they’re not on the network, nor do they have a port you can plug into. Maybe there is one buried under a panel somewhere, but you don’t have to worry about them being hacked.
And yes, droids are treated like slaves in some ways, but in other ways they’re trusted to be bounty hunters, military troops, etc. If you trust / allow a droid to pilot a ship, why wouldn’t you trust a turret to be equipped with computer-assisted aiming?
All that’s fair! IMHO it does get a little closer to the nitpicky level of scrutiny that Star Trek doesn’t really hold up to either, you know?
I do think droids are the airgapped system, it’s why the droid army in the prequels had physical droids sit in the seats and operate ships instead of having a main computer run everything.
Ok, but droids have those manipulator arms that go out that let them hack other systems. So, it doesn’t help much if your air-gapped system interacts with other networks.
But yeah, nothing really holds up to scrutiny if you dig too deep. Having said that, I think Star Trek (at least the modern version) does a bit better at it than Star Wars. Star Wars suffers from it being a 1977 movie where George Lucas just went with the “rule of cool” instead of worldbuilding. Star Trek (at least the modern version) seemed to think at least a bit beyond what they showed on screen.
Yeah for sure! At least we have both (well, kinda, Star Wars after The Last Jedi just doesn’t do it for me anymore haha). I think the pre-Disney EU had more effort into fleshing out the world, now it’s even more “rule of cool” than when Lucas was running the show
I’m not too interested in most of the new Star Wars stuff, but it’s still good special effects so I watch it while doing other things. But, I did really like Andor. It was a real departure from the typical Star Wars fare which is low on plot but loaded in special effects. For most of the new Star Wars stuff, you can tune it out and only pay attention when there’s a battle or something. But, Andor actually had a real plot with some actual twists… and good special effects.
And yet, they don’t have computer-aimed turrets. They still rely on people getting into turrets and aiming at their targets using some kind of low-fi 1970s era CRT to assist them. They may have plateaued ages ago, but it seems like their plateau was pretty low. They never developed transporters, they never developed replicators, AFAIK they don’t have cloaking devices. They have robots, but the robots seem pretty primitive in a number of ways – certainly they don’t have any robots that are advanced enough to be mistaken for humans / humanoids.
It’s also hard to estimate the power of “laser” cannons based on what you see on screen.
On one hand, a specialty space station was created that was powerful enough to blow up an entire planet in the matter of seconds. Even if the weapons they use for ship-to-ship fire are 1000x less powerful, 1/1000th of the power needed to destroy a planet is absurdly huge. Maybe the weapons are incredibly powerful, but we don’t know because the shields are also incredibly powerful.
Meanwhile, the Star Trek world only got warp drive recently, so recently that the individual who created it is still in living memory. But, just because it’s recent doesn’t mean they’re not even more technologically advanced. Everything we see in Star Trek suggests that they blew past the plateau that Star Wars hit, and kept going. Transporter beams, replicators, holodecks, limited time travel, androids with positronic brains that can pass for humans, artificial intelligence both at an individual scale (robots and sentient robotic aliens) but also at larger scales, like the ship’s computers.
Maybe in Star Wars world, there are no really advanced aliens, so all the alien races got brought into the same empire. Since there’s no outside influence creating pressure to come up with new technologies, there’s technological stagnation. In Star Trek’s universe, they keep finding new aliens, many of whom are so advanced they’re godlike. That has to keep inspiring inventors. In addition, instead of one giant empire, there are multiple empires, many of whom are hostile to one-another. One thing that tends to result in technological development is arms races against aggressive neighbors.
I tend to ignore what they say at places like stardestroyer.net because the more you look into these Sci Fi universes (and probably the George Lucasverse more than most) the more contradictions and paradoxes you see. I find I can enjoy them more if I just let my imagination fill in the details, based on what I see on-screen.
I know this is an old post, but just wanted to share. There’s a good argument (and I wish I could remember the source) that in the Star Wars universe, they’ve solved the PvNP problem. That effectively makes the idea of a secure network/computer impossible, since all systems can be hacked trivially. This is backed up by how every system can be easily hacked in minutes, if not seconds, and how security is mostly physical (the only way into this database is at this location, instead of a global network).
That means a much higher reliance on people than you’d expect, since getting hacked is a real threat and easy for your enemy to pull off.
Also, how commonplace sentient droids are, paired with how droids are universally discriminated against means there could have been a replicator/rougue AI incident in the past.
Not trying to say Star Wars is better than Star Trek here, just wanted to share some of the lore!
That makes some sense, but it seems like a backward explanation for the bad worldbuilding.
Like, the lack of computer-aimed turrets. You might not want a completely AI powered ship, but this is more the difference between “cruise control” and manually controlling the vehicle. Not using computer-assist is basically risking your life. As we see in the movies, humans are pretty shit at using the turrets. Computer-assisted aim would mean the ship is much more likely to survive. And, if someone did manage to hack your turret, you could turn off the computer-assist like you’d turn off a malfunctioning cruise-control.
Also, if computer systems are hacked trivially by droids, why do they have hackable ports all over the star destroyer? Wouldn’t they only put them next to human-guarded posts?
In addition, airgapped systems are a simple way to deal with this sort of thing. Like, your refrigerator or dishwasher probably has microprocessors, but they’re not on the network, nor do they have a port you can plug into. Maybe there is one buried under a panel somewhere, but you don’t have to worry about them being hacked.
And yes, droids are treated like slaves in some ways, but in other ways they’re trusted to be bounty hunters, military troops, etc. If you trust / allow a droid to pilot a ship, why wouldn’t you trust a turret to be equipped with computer-assisted aiming?
All that’s fair! IMHO it does get a little closer to the nitpicky level of scrutiny that Star Trek doesn’t really hold up to either, you know?
I do think droids are the airgapped system, it’s why the droid army in the prequels had physical droids sit in the seats and operate ships instead of having a main computer run everything.
Ok, but droids have those manipulator arms that go out that let them hack other systems. So, it doesn’t help much if your air-gapped system interacts with other networks.
But yeah, nothing really holds up to scrutiny if you dig too deep. Having said that, I think Star Trek (at least the modern version) does a bit better at it than Star Wars. Star Wars suffers from it being a 1977 movie where George Lucas just went with the “rule of cool” instead of worldbuilding. Star Trek (at least the modern version) seemed to think at least a bit beyond what they showed on screen.
Yeah for sure! At least we have both (well, kinda, Star Wars after The Last Jedi just doesn’t do it for me anymore haha). I think the pre-Disney EU had more effort into fleshing out the world, now it’s even more “rule of cool” than when Lucas was running the show
I’m not too interested in most of the new Star Wars stuff, but it’s still good special effects so I watch it while doing other things. But, I did really like Andor. It was a real departure from the typical Star Wars fare which is low on plot but loaded in special effects. For most of the new Star Wars stuff, you can tune it out and only pay attention when there’s a battle or something. But, Andor actually had a real plot with some actual twists… and good special effects.