9th February 2004, 12:00 AM
Quote:Never once saw a shield in Wars until I played KOTOR, so I guess they lost that technology over time or something.
Star Wars has shields. Always has... well in the shielded ships. Go watch ANH now. They talk about shields in all SW movies and they're in every SW game where there are ships. The TIEs don't have shields, but just about everything else (including rebel fighters) has them.
Light speed is of course impossible but it's equally impossible in Trek and Wars. Each Sci-Fi thing has its own lightspeed and made-up reason it works... Wars has hyperspace which is special and very very fast. Trek has warp speed and it also has very very fast Transwarp...
As for blasters, it depends on who or what you ask for if they're laser beams, 'coherent light beams', or whatever, and how fast they go. I don't know if there's a consistent answer...
Quote:Wars has been around for thousands of years longer in space than Trek, but they stopped developing ANY advancements in technology after the first hundred or so and are, completely against human nature, completely and utterly stagnent in the technology department.
It's a space opera... techno-fantasy if you will. And what's a staple of the fantasy genre? Yup, a complete lack of technological progression!
As for Trek Science, I don't know all those details, but I've read parts of a book on it... they make attempts but frequently break and contradict their rules. Star Wars just makes up its own rules and is not consistent at all in the movies... the books try to frame it better in the real laws of the universe (for instance, saying that there isn't actually sound in space, the ships all have sound generators in them that make the noises), but there are still numerous contradictions as the treatises on such subjects at TheForce.net prove. :)
As for fighters, SW has them because it's based on WW2... the 'fighters and carriers' form of naval warfare. Same reason it has dogfights, ships that last so long (as opposed to nowdays with homing missiles that kill in one hit, shooting from miles as opposed to close-range dogfights like SW, etc). Trek just ignores fighter combat for the big ships... which makes sense since they aren't really doing much warfare and mostly have exploration and stuff by themselves where bigger ships work better. Wars is all settled so carrier-fighter (with, however, carriers that work very well as battleships and fight at close range with heavy firepower all the time) model with fleets -- you don't have to explore the galaxy was mapped a long time ago... and you can warp quickly so you don't spend months getting from place to place...