Aim and the Imperial Stormtrooper trope

Bring it on, Stormies, you can't hit me, nyah nyah!

Combat staging in the original Star Wars trilogy, particularly A New Hope and Empire, is actually surprisingly grounded. 

I understand we have assistant director Brian Johnston to thank for that.

In Rogue One, Jyn and Cassian just has to point their blaster in a direction and a dozen stormtroopers will drop dead. 

And I’m only slightly exaggerating. 

Not so in the original trilogy. Obviously, the stormtroopers can’t hit, because the only targets are the main cast. Always good to have a few expendables along for the narrative ride. But what many people ignore is that the heroes fire plenty of shots that don’t hit either.

This is true to actual combat: most shots don’t hit anyone, contrary to what playground battles would have you believe. Typically, an average of 60 shots are needed to take out an enemy combatant.

In other words, the people complaining are simply ignorant playground fantasists. 

Further, the bad guys (and heroes) use cover, and will duck in and out to fire. Again, quite realistic. You see this on the Tantive IV at the beginning, on the Death Star, and in Cloud City. 

As the Star Wars franchise has gone on, however, combat staging has become increasingly infantile. 

Jedi and Sith back flips, hundred foot leaps, whirling twirling and parrying blaster bolts by the dozen are the order of the day. 

I get that, they’re magical space wizards, but the grunts?

Clone troopers just walk around, standing straight up, across open terrain, making no effort to protect themselves or minimize likelihood of getting hit. They don’t drop prone, they don’t cluster behind vehicles or obstacles, they just walk in the open. Sane people don’t do that, unless egged on by sergeants or NKVD units threatening to shoot them if they don’t.

I get these sort of silly suicidal tactics for robots; droids can be programmed to have no self-preservation instinct. 

But for humans? Or clones who are supposed to be the best of the best, battle trained and genetically engineered from the galaxy’s greatest bounty-hunter warrior? 

Pft.

Perhaps this is meant to be evocative of the American Civil War, from which the clone GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) gets its name. In those days, troops were armed with largely inaccurate weapons that required massed firepower to be effective. The Civil War saw the introduction of repeater rifles and more accurate weapons with rifled (hence the name) barrels. These helical grooves on the interior barrel surface greatly increased accuracy. This was more expensive, so these weren’t distributed to the majority of troops, and were used primarily by snipers and cavalry. By the time of the Franco-Prussian War, however, they were more common, and the shift began towards taking cover and the German storm troop infiltration tactics of WWI (from which we get the name ‘stormtroopers’). 

But it doesn’t make sense here, because these weapons are no different than the ones used later, or thousands of years earlier at the advent of the Galactic Republic. Technology canonically hasn’t evolved substantially for thousands of years in Star Wars, so there’s no way they don’t understand basic infantry tactics, and there’s no reason why it has to be staged with such grandiose, blatant incompetence.

Combat staging in Andor, on the other hand, is generally good, particularly in season one. The action sequences with the corporate cops trying to stop Andor are entirely believable.

True, the stormtroopers on Ghorman in season two stand in the open, sans cover, which doesn’t make as much sense… except here the Empire wanted to take casualties.

But in Andor? The troopers don’t bother. Every shot the heroes fire hits. Why? Because audiences expect heroes to hit with every shot, because that’s how they think combat actually works. They’re wrong.

On Jeda, Imperials pop on stage and fall like ten pins, with stunning narrative convenience. 

None of it feels remotely believable, even for space opera.

Given the amount of effort Gareth Edwards went to to create a believable, grounded setting, including 360 degree sets, incredible costume and set design, and fabulous cinematography, it’s sad it’s all undermined by combat staging designed by a six year old.

Incredibly, The Mandalorian is even worse: it undermines the villains deliberately, making them canonically incompetent, armed with weapons that don’t shoot straight: these boobs can’t even hit a stationary object a few feet away. 

What menace can they muster? Not much. What's the value of victory over the inept and incompetent? Small wonder the Empire collapsed.

And when the Impies gather to assault a bar, they don’t bother with cover, they stand in a big crowd out in the open, waiting to be shot. Have you ever seen a SWAT team do that? No, because they take cover behind whatever is available… because people don’t like getting shot.

If you want to have a believable fantasy world, you need to have the inhabitants behave in believable ways, or the bubble of disbelief pops like a Death Star shot up the thermal exhaust pipe. 

Making the villains a joke turns the franchise into playground pantomime, operating at the level of the children for whom it’s made. 

They're now canonically incompetent; it just adds to their intimidating mystique!

Why I prefer the Death Star having an unintended design flaw

Here's looking at you, kid! The Ultimate White Elephant Project

Have you ever worked at a megacorporation? 

Or better yet, for government? 

If you have, and you’ve worked on a huge project, you know how often things can go wrong, how much course correction there is, how much compromise is involved, and how easy it is for something to be overlooked.

Take the recent Zumwalt destroyers: a multi-billion dollar fiasco for the United States Navy. Or the HE177, the LaGG-3, the A7V, or the Lockheed XFV-1 Salmon. 

All costly failures.

The Panama Canal project, designed by Ferdinand de Lesseps (the same man who built the Suez Canal), ended in failure, bankruptcy and mass death from disease. Some 800,000 French citizens lost their savings when the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique de Panama folded. It almost brought down the French government. The canal itself wasn't completed until years later when the United States took over the project. Lesseps original idea of building the canal, without locks, was never going to work.

How's that for a mega-project gone wrong?

Not to be outdone, the USSR's White Sea-Baltic Canal resulted in the deaths of some 25,000 workers, about 5,000 more than in Panama.

Big projects going wrong, particularly those of vainglorious totalitarian dictatorships, are far more common than is generally acknowledged, or remembered.

How about the Bataan nuclear power plant, built for 2.3 billion (and never completed, thankfully) in an earthquake-prone zone, near a volcano? 

How about Chernobyl? 

History is littered with weapons and vehicles that perform badly, and are an even greater danger to their operators than the enemy. Ships so top heavy they immediately capsize, tanks so heavy they sink into the ground and can’t cross a bridge or use a road, sonic weapons that require targets to remain stationary for several minutes, ammo magazines placed below the ship’s chimney (the HMS Hood, possibly an inspiration for the Death Star flaw, which also blew up real good), constantly jamming magazines, and much worse have all been inflicted upon unfortunate servicemen.

Building a space station the size of a small moon... now that is a project of such mammoth complexity it's practically inevitable that something crucial would be overlooked. 

Such a flaw being inadvertent and inevitable appeals to both my sense of humour and my understanding of the limits of human engineering capability when combined with large scale bureaucracy and central planning. 

Honestly, it's amazing the Death Star worked at all.

Best of all, it’s funny in a believable way, at least to me, rather than the slapstick silly way that undermines action and adventure.

The only down side: the Rebellion managed to analyze the flaw a little too easily, and the Imperials confirmed it as a risk during the Rebel attack. If it was that easy to discover the flaw, the Imperials would already know. Unless hubris and overconfidence prevented them for looking for that kind of flaw at all… which is actually... also kind of plausible.

The canonical change to the Death Star flaw being deliberately planted, inserted by the disgruntled anti-Imperial designer, is so much less fun it’s not funny.

Recommended: Andor season two

Ooo, a character collage, it must be good!

Andor season 2 is as excellent as the avalanche of reviews claim.

The first six episodes are on the slow side, even for Andor standards, but the slow build pays off big time in the second half. 

Hands down, the best Star Wars material since The Empire Strikes Back.

On top of that, it’s smart and politically relevant.

Some people are really, really going to hate it. 

I loved it.

Go watch. 

Maps! Fabulous video showing rise of sea level over time

The map shows rising sea levels from current to 5000+ plus. The Himalayas are the last thing to go.

Perfect for your post-apocalypse world building scenarios...

Christopher Bretz's realistic 'post-apocalypse' maps

Okay, they're not really post-apocalypse, more post-climate change. These are far more realistic and 'grounded' (heh) than the Gordon-Michael Scallion flights of fancy into glorious cranktown. 

According to an Anthropocene Magazine article, he created these when he grew concerned about global warming, and redrew the world map with coastlines 80 meters higher than they are currently. 

The most striking change? Florida is gone. Absolutely, totally... gone. 

Check out the Anthropocene site for more, including the map of Europe. 

Chris Bretz's map of post-climate change North America

Future maps of Gordon Michael Scallion

Post-apocalypse North America

These are a mix of fact and pseudo-science-sorcery, but they're still fun. 

Gordon-Michael Scallion put out two map sets, one in the nineties and a second set in the early aughts. Great background for a post-apocalypse sci-fi adventure like... Magnum Thrax!

Check out more over on the awesome Geographicus site.

The ruins of the world

Repainting old Wizard of the Coast Star Wars miniatures

Little tiny people ("Robots are peeeeople!") from a miniature galaxy far, far away

Years ago, in The Before Time, in The Long Long Ago, I played Star Wars: The Role Playing Game from West End Games (WEG). It was popularly known as D6 Star Wars, and it was a blast to play. Admittedly, it did require totalling up large numbers of dice, especially as players became more skilled. My math challenged brain actually rather preferred Traveller's even more simple system, which had fewer problems with scaling. At least from my experience.

I also had Star Wars Minatures Battles, also from WEG, which had a system more like Traveller: just roll 1D and add bonuses. It, too, was a blast to play, although I never had enough little metal miniatures to really do much, being perennially cash strapped.

Years later, Wizards of the Coast came out with a line of Star Wars miniatures. These were relatively cheap, if you bought them second hand, with resellers at the time letting the less popular miniatures go for as little as 25 cents. And since I was buying them for the old WEG miniatures game, I didn't care about how good the miniatures were for the Wizard game, which meant I could pick up excellent, cheap sculpts because they weren't the best performers in the Wizard system. Booyah!

So I picked up a small pile of them. 

They're made of bendy plastic, which has pros and cons. 

On the con side, they don't hold as much detail as harder plastic minis. They also came pre-painted, which was a big plus for me, as I'd become more time strapped than cash strapped, BUT the paint jobs weren't... amazing. 

On the pro side, they are tough and resilient, and don't break easily. Bends can be fixed by putting them in hot water, tweaking the pose, then running them under cold water. Boom! Good as new. The pre-paints mean you don't need to spend a huge amount of time painting them. They also printed a long line of figures, with a lot of variety. And as it was also made for the Wizard incarnation of the role playing game, you get figures that aren't always focused on combat. That's great for the RPG side. 

There's a new line of figures under the Legion banner, but these are only for a miniature combat game. Those figures are more detailed, come unpainted, break easily, and are hella expensive. 

Meh.

So pick your poison. 

I recently dug out some of my old figures, having gotten back into RPGs over COIVD, and wondered if I could improve them with a little speed painting, washes, and dry brushing. 

And you know what? 

It works, and it doesn't take a lot of effort.

I used a pack of speed paints from Army Painter, plus some old acrylics for flats... although those are a little thick for such tiny figs, even when thinned. The set above were a dramatic improvement on the pre-paints; the photos don't really do them justice.

This is what the Acquilash (Acqualish?) technician looked like before the repaint:

The conservative Acquilash

No colour difference between the kneepads, rope, equipment, hair, jacket, etcetera. So I added silver to his tech gear and had fun filling in details and an eye catching red jacket.

The Bothan (which never appeared in the movies) was painted with flat, glossy colours that looked garish and plastic. Yes, I know the mini IS plastic, but I don't want it to LOOK like plastic. Dry brush on the head, washes over the arms and boots, and voila! See above. Not so plastic.

The glossy Bothan

The Kel-Dor bounty hunter (honestly I don't remember this species in the movies at all) was kind of flat. Some speed paint to add depth really spiced things up (IMHO). 

The flat Kel-Dor