Why I prefer the Death Star design flaw

Why, it's a moon-sized White Elephant!

Have you ever worked at a megacorporation? 

Or better yet, for government? 

If you’ve worked on a megaproject, you know how often things go wrong, how much compromise is involved, and how easy it is for something to be overlooked. 

Because something always is.

Take America's Zumwalt class destroyers: a multi-billion dollar fiasco for the United States Navy that fired $800,000 a pop shells. 

The HE177, the LaGG-3, the A7V, and the Lockheed XFV-1 Salmon? 

Failures every one.

History is littered with weapons and vehicles that perform badly, posing an even greater danger to their operators than the enemy. Ships so top heavy they immediately capsize (lookin' at you, Vasa), 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), constantly jamming gun magazines, and much worse have all been inflicted upon unfortunate servicemen.

The original Panama Canal project, designed by Ferdinand de Lesseps (the same man who built the Suez Canal), ended in fiasco, bankruptcy and mass death from disease. Some 800,000 French citizens lost their savings when the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique de Panama folded, almost bringing down the French government. 

The bottom line? Lesseps original idea of building the canal, without locks, was wrong headed and never going to work.

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

Even worse, the USSR's White Sea-Baltic Canal was so badly managed it resulted in the deaths of 25,000+ workers.

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

How about Chernobyl? 

And it's not just in the realm of hardware: software absurdities abound. Max Tegmark's Life 3.0 has some delicious examples:

"On June 4, 1996, scientists hoping to research Earth's magnetosphere cheered jubilantly as Ariane 5 rocket from the European Space Agency soared into the sky with scientific instruments they had built. Thirty-seven seconds later, their smiles vanished as the rocket exploded in a fireworks display costing hundreds of millions of dollars. 

The cause was found to be buggy software manipulating a number that was too large to fit into the 16 bits allocated for it. 

Two years later, NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter accidentally entered the Red Planet's atmosphere and disintegrated because two different parts of the software used different units for force, causing a 445% error in the rocket-engine thrust control.... their Mariner 1 mission to Venus exploded after launch from Cape Canaveral on July 22, 192, after the flight-control software was foiled by an incorrect punctuation mark."

Even better, a missing hyphen caused the Russian Phobos 1 probe to issue an 'end-of-mission' command while en route to Mars, resulting in it shutting down. 

You read that right: a missing hyphen took out a multi-million dollar interplanetary probe designed by some of the smartest people on the planet.

It happens.

Tiny oversights can lead to catastrophic consequences.

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. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. 

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

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. 

If the Empire had HACMS (high-assurance cyber military systems), they'd have spotted major flaws, whether deliberately placed or accidental. As Star Wars droids don't seem to be especially bright, I doubt this was a thing. 

Making the Death Star flaw an act of deliberate sabotage by a disgruntled anti-Imperial designer is just so much less fun it’s not funny.

I like my doomsday devices big and dumb.

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

Andor Season 2 is coming

 The best Star Wars since Empire, Andor's second season is coming this April. 

The music works well for an ad, but I'm hoping they don't put contemporary music actually in the show. 

I'm expecting something politically well informed, with even more action. It's cramming four years into one season this time, after all, so it's bound to be a rabble rousing, rebellious good time.

I'm stoked.