Oddball "Transitional" Designs in Sci-Fi Spaceships
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- čas přidán 1. 07. 2024
- Spacedock delves into unusual transitional designs in history and science fiction.
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Star Trek: “Our Engineers can solve anything with Technobabble.”
Stargate SG-1: “Whose got the Duct Tape?”
And the C4!
So there is realistic sci-fi out there
Imagine if Starfleet had duct tape. They'd be unstoppable. 😆
@@maybehuman4Geordi coolant leek coolant leek , data I got you .
@@sheldonpetrie3706 From silly putty (duct tape) to serious putty
Ah, the Prometheus, Stargate Command’s version of throwing a shoe at Earth’s enemies.
Hey, that shoe had lead lined soles and blades attached after a while. ;)
The flying office building.
This is defo a stop gap design
Who throws a _shoe_?
@@lyokianhitchhiker An Iraqi journalist.
The reason 40K tanks look like WWII era tanks is that when the original rules were published they didn't have models available so you were encouraged to modify 1/32 scale model kits for use and WWII models could be found everywhere. Some of the earliest White Dwarf magazines gave modelling tips and stats for how to do so and incorporate them into your games. Also in the original rules there were no set Space Marine chapters and you were encouraged to make your own and there were supposed to be so many chapters so far away from Earth and each other that their technologies developed independently of each other.
Apart from the Crimson Fists (Who were on the cover and in the example scenario) and Space Wolves both of whom got lore in the original book and the double page spread of Space Marine chapter colour schemes. And the CHapter logos for those chapters turning up in multiple places in the book.
Yes,t he two unnamed chapters were originally meant to be placeholders for homebrew chapters, but everyone kinda-sorta mistook the lack of data as a "we don't talk about them" situation. Which was then later adapted and these two chapters were retconned as exiled, exterminated, dishonoured.
@@ServantOfOdin Those two were later after the Ultramarines stopped being a 3rd founding chapter.
Yes, they're a mix of WWI and WWII tanks. However the sad part is that people critiquing them have NO idea why WWI and WWII tanks were designed this way and handwave it as "muh obsolete tech". The same kind of people, who believe that T-34 invented geometry:D
@@ServantOfOdin
I mean, it still works like that. It's just that most people think that "this chapter is like this one, but different" or "this chapter originally stems from a bunch of traitors, which is our hidden shame" is more interesting than "this chapter come from the placeholder guys".
Another fun thing about transitional designs is the pathway between "MK-1" designs and later "MK-??" designs. Having intermediary designs that show a subtle visual progression is fun, especially if the first Mark and the latest one look almost nothing alike.
The mljnuer power armor is a good example
Battlestar Galactica did this really well. The Mk1, Mk2, Mk3 and Mk5 vipers all look related, but distinctly more advanced than their predecessors in some way.
I think a good example is the Remington-Lee eventually becoming the Lee-Enfield with 13 versions including the #5, "Jungle Carbine, mk 1".
The Barzam being the production model of the Gundam Mk II will never not be funny.
a good one includes Mk1A2... represents the intermediate step between steps.
Lists "transitional designs" from our own history, doesn't mention a single warship.
I feel oddly betrayed that there was no strange ironclad mentioned
The phrase “French Pre-Dreadnought” came to mind immediately
@@joshuahadams Monsieur I assure you the super structure will cause the enemy to be too nauseous to fire back
HMS warrior
Everything between Monitor and Dreadnaught pretty much perfectly does the "transitional" thing. The late 1800's was a weird time while they figured out industrial age big gun metal warships. Wooden hull under the armor? Sails? Paddle wheels? Iron hull? Steel hull? A million sizes of gun? Turrets? Sponsons? Barbettes? Muzzle loaders? Breech loaders? Electric lighting? Electric propulsion? Low profile semi submersible? Low pressure dynamite guns? Anything and everything was worth trying in those days, and warships were obsolete faster than iPhones.
@@joshuahadamsthose were just french floating hotels
Funky transitional designs are some of my favorites, really. Stuff like the V-wing from Star Wars-half a foot in the Republic, half a foot in the Empire.
Commented this before I saw the actual video, and this isn't quite the kind of shift being talked about, but it's still an aesthetic that I enjoy lol
Victory class star destroyer is like that too. Hull shape is more Venator like but with an ISD bridge and generally more of an ISD layout.
I think the Alpha-3 Nimbus V-wing fits the transitional role rather well. Twin ion engines like the later TIE, smaller and more nimble than the V-19 or ARC-170 but pilotable by non-Jedi; and tech like the dockable hyperdrive ring and the astromech socket get dropped, like sponsons being dropped from tanks.
Yeah, the title is kinda misleading.
One of the best IRL version of this are Pre-dreadnought battleships. any time we describe anything as Pre-(event or thing) you know something weird was going on.
Interesting observation, but I might argue that a better example would be the battleships (i.e. the pre-pre-dreadnaughts) from the immediately preceding era. Pedantic quibbling, I know, but it isn't difficult to see how most of the pre-dreadnaughts provided the basis for what came next, whereas the battleship era was replete with dead ends and failed experiments.
The thing with such nomenclature is, they are merely stepping-stones that were later put in place. Back then they weren't called pre-dreadnought, because the idea of a dreadnought hadn't yet been conceived. So it's kinda hard to figure that out on the go.
Realistically, anything is a pre-something to whatever follows. Whether that's better or worse is anyone's guess.
Early iron armored ships might be a better example. The first ones used were privately build ones used by British around China. When they tried to replicate the armor in England, the armor was worse than useless.....because of the difference in water temperature on the metal between the two areas.
French pre-dreadnoughts, designed to clash at every angle perceivable
There's a great example in real-world naval history. The galleons of Mediterranean warfare saw incremental advancements from the triremes of Salamis up through the early clashes between the Ottomans and Christian nations for control of the sea. The Christians added cannons to their ships to excellent effect at the Battle of Lepanto. However, since galleys charge headlong into each other as their primary battle tactic, the cannon-equipped galleasses had most of their cannons stuck up front, into (usually round) forecastles. That was in 1571. Shortly after, the English started sticking all the guns on the sides of the ships (like Drake's Golden Hind), but it wasn't really until the Battle of Trafalgar (over 200 years later) that the full understanding of what that meant for tactics was grokked.
See also the multiple attempts to create a "destroyer" analog in airplanes in the leadup to WW2.
There was a similar thing with the development of ironclads. The first ones civilian built were much more useful than the state ones.....because the water around China is warmer than around the British Isles.
I don't agree with most of you post, but the developement of the galleasses is a true real world example for weird transitional designs.
Galleys were the standard warships since antiquity. So of course when cannons came up, they where mounted on galleys, but those were very limited by their sleek profile. The solution to put large towers onto them, creating the new class of galeass. But the additional weight made them quite cumbersome and they were quickly replaced by fully sailed ships, that could carry much more cannons as they didn't need the space for rowers.
Iron Man in the MCU deserves a mention here. Iron Man 3 shows Tony Stark having gone through dozens of iterations of experimental or specialised suits, and even within the main suit line there's a lot of progression - his lasers that are a one-use finishing move in Iron Man 2 gain expendable powerpacks (or possibly heatsinks) in the Avengers movie allowing for many more uses.
it's too bad they kinda butchered the extremis arc, as well as not utilizing his most advanced suit; bleeding edge.
Prometheus in the thumbnail
I simply must watch
This happens in the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. The very first book involved Harrington getting command of a light cruiser with an experimental weapon system that proves devastating in war games...once. As soon as its weakness is revealed--it is ridiculously close ranged for the setting and had to give up missiles systems in order to make the space--it is trivially dealt with by other ships. In the climactic battle of the novel, she is able to use it on an enemy warship (that is oblivious to its existence), but only after suffering horrendous damage and casualties that would have been less if the ship had been more capable of fighting at distance. And again, it's a weapon system that only works once: as soon as the enemy knows about it, they can easily counteract it.
Later novels in the series have jury-rigged ships towing missile pods that are dropped just before attacking to launch a surprising alpha strike, and later this is developed into a capital ship which is designed around a massive internal bay where it carries missile pods and then deploys them. So, a bit of realism where people come up with "brilliant" new designs that are proven not to be practical, but then take some thing which did work surprisingly well and adapt it to work even better.
I used to read that series so much when I was younger. It's such a goldmine of "Why do they never do X in SciFi?" - "Oh, this one does!"
@@DepressivesBrot Its really good.
Other good series that do fun things : Terran privateer, Starships Mage, Lost Fleet.
@@IIIJG52 Oh yeah, Lost Fleet was really fun with those crazy relativistic fleet dog fights.
But didn't those weapons come back when they started to roll out fighters (that were the size of an Arlie Burke class destroyer)?
Also the French faction (can't remember their actual name) had a class cruiser that had oversize power plants because they were hoping to steal and reverse engineer manticore tech.
@@Mike5Brown No, they never used energy torpedos again.
I feel like an interesting Gundam example would be the Zeon development of their own portable beam weapons. First, they tried to integrate the technology into the MS-09 Dom with a chest mounted socket to plug them into. However the tech wouldn’t be ready in time for the Dom’s roll out so instead the socket ended up as this weird stun blast flashlight thing that wasn’t particularly useful. While they did get the beam tech working for the MS-14 Gelgoog, it was limited enough in its production that they still wanted the ability to give other mobile suits beam weapons and therefore Developed the beam bazooka, which was effectively just a beam cannon taken off a warship including its power source and finagled into a package that could be mounted over the shoulder, though it was still about 80 feet long…
That Zaku Sniper is worth mentioning as well. Their solution to their fusion reactors not being powerful enough to power the suit AND a beam weapon at the same time, was to give it a power pack which connects to the rifle. Lots of this transitional stuff in Gundam.
@@GarnetCrow also having an MG-42 inspired* quick change barrel mechanism because it kept burning them out
*as in visually similar
It's not shown in the series, but apparently the scattering beam cannon in the Dom's chest could disrupt i-fields at close ranges which could be used to temporarily disrupt weapons like beam sabers that used i-fields to focus their output.
Another Gundam example would be transforming mobile suits. Zeta Gundam (the series) had several that didn't work very well (or at all in the case of the Hyaku Shiki, which was intended to transform but doesn't).
Later series still have some transforming mobile suits, but there are less of them and they're generally better.
In Gundam UC, transforming fighters probably count. It's never completely abandoned and the MS designers in the setting keep trying to nail the perfect design. There's a few solid designs that do get iterated on. The Zeta Gundam is probably the most famous/infamous one and its name is borrowed by many attempted successors. Ironically, many transformable MS that bear the Zeta name don't even use the same complicated transformation scheme, instead borrowing from the far more robust but less iconic Methuss. The more well-known attempts to capitalize on the Zeta Gundam's fame would be the Re-GZ from Char's Counterattack, and the ReZEL from Unicorn. The Re-GZ is more or less a failure. While functional, its transformation isn't reversible in combat conditions and is more of a launch configuration. The ReZEL on the other hand does succeed quite well but falls afoul of the more pressing issue in the Federation: budget cuts. The Asshimar is another successful design and even had limited mass production under the Titans. Its association with the Titans did end up killing it, but it was redesigned and incorporated more standard Federation features as the Anksha, which seems to be a reasonable design. Unlike the ReZEL, which is primarily space-use and thus its flight mode is more about optimizing thruster orientation than granting flight, the Anksha could've seen more life as a force multiplier in the atmosphere, as each Anksha is both a subflight unit for its ground-based cousins as well as a capable combatant itself. But in the end, the budget cuts killed it. No conflict in UC ever comes close to the sheer scale of violence as the One Year War as far as mainline titles go. Victory Gundam probably came closest and even that features a new transformable mobile suit where once again, it gives an edge to its ace pilots but is of questionable utility to everyone else. The desk jockey and bureaucrat is much more likely to consider the advantages of transformable mobile suits as minor advances that do improve pilot survivability, but not enough to be worth that hefty additional costs. More GMs/Jegans/Jamesguns, less whatever the crap those pie-in-the-sky MS designers are dreaming up. It's too bad. They got the designs working, shaved off most of the serious problems, but there were just no wars that really justified throwing money at manufacturing the best weapons they could get.
I hear tell that, meta-wise, the real problem with transforming Gundams was that Macross had a lock on the coolest transformer design, the one we see in its famous Valkyrie fighter.
UC gundam is just one long stretch of these. The federation adapts to mobile suits by making a few of theirs but mostly by bolting guns and weapons on civilian style craft.
When they do start using MS en masse, they are stripped down and simplified compaed to the gundam. The zeon jury rigs DOM units for space combat when they realize the GM beats the Zaku.
Then you get into all the wacky newtype only mobile armours. Eventually we get to the Sazabi and Nu gundam's funnels but it takes some pretty weird stuff to get there.
And the various stopgaps to improve mobile suit mobility, from exterior accessories, to transformations, to beam rotors, to giant motorcycles. Eventually you get the V2 Gundam's wings of light
@@RXdash78 Not to forget the Wing Gundam's angel wings ... which always bugged me. We get it, you're the hero mech! Quit shedding feathers in our faces already!
00 probably had the most realistic development continuity. But I really loved the original designs from all the different alliances.
There is also the Penelope from Gundam Hathaway with how the thing had the whole Minovsky Flight System just bolted on top. Contrast that with the Xi Gundam which was more clearly built with the system in mind from the ground up.
1:10 the problem wasn't the missile guidance, but doctrine. F-4 Phantoms could engage Vietnamese MiGs far beyond the MiG's ability to do anything about it, but US doctrine of the time required pilots to visually identify the enemies before they could engage them. That meant the short range, nimble MiGs would engage the Phantoms in more or less ideal circumstances, and the Phantom's heavier BVR missiles would be largely useless. Towards the end of the war, the doctrine changed, and Phantoms started engaging at long range, and the kill/loss rate flipped.
While I entirely endorse your analysis, let me point out that it is a bit incomplete. The Phantom had numerous other problems (the huge smoke trail it left, as well as its thermal management issues that often limited the effectiveness of its radar) that contributed to the problems with its use of Sparrow missiles. Of some interest is that when using Sidewinders, the loss-kill ratio was far, far better even before the doctrinal changes, though was to some extent the result of training issues.
I love the Prometheus from stargate. It truly looks like something humanity slapped together with half understood technology.
And then we bolted on some asgard tech which lead to the BC-304 being built with asgard tech from scratch and also able to be powered by ZPMs instead of just naquadah generators
Another interesting example from early scifi:
In the original War of the Worlds novel by H.G Wells, the heroic ship HMS Thunderchild is described as a torpedo-ram, a type of ship promised to combine the armour of a cruiser, the guns of a monitor, the speed and armament of a torpedo boat, and a bow-ram! In the book, this turns out to be a useful addition, used to kill one of the Martian tripods. In reality, it turned out to be far less useful and a complete evolutionary dead-end, with only a handful being built, but some of the design elements were carried through into later destroyers.
I'm a naval history buff and those transitional periods between major conflicts, where new ideas are being played with and there isn't a tested or concrete doctrine which would inform design decisions are the most interesting in terms of unique looks. Stuff like the later ironclads/pre-dreadnoughts and the early missile warships that were conversions from old hulls are just endless interesting, you can see elements which ended up being successful and incorporated into standard design and also crazy unfamiliar things like Albany class's giant superstructure, or the French pre-dreadnoughts very accentuated tumblehome. Honestly this video surprised me because I figured Sci-Fi would have more intentionally oddball designs as part of the world-building, since I find that designs with successive iterations is pretty common in franchises with a big timeline.
Finally battle tech is covered by space dock
The Stargate SG1/Atlantis BC 304 will always be my Favorite ship in any franchise, because you saw where they came from (ugly phallic ship) to where they got to.
I love the way the Daedalus is introduced in Stargate Atlantis The Siege Part 3. One of my absolute favourite ships.
Generational RTS games, my mind goes to the Command and Conquer series, have worked on this idea throughout their lore. Orbital lasers, teleportation, stealth tech, and many others are "discovered" during the conflicts, but many of the first designs are literally "throw it on a truck and send it at the enemy!" Future games would develop these technologies and better weaponize them into a more viable and effective uses of their abilities, at least lore-wise. Whether they are actually better game wise is argumentative.
Well the stealth tanks in the tiberium universe did become better and better. The stealth tank in the third tiberium war was able to launch more missiles and cloak way faster then it's older counterparts.
The stealth generator is homever way worse in the third war compared to the second war since the disruption tower cant hide itself compared to the second tib war where the stealth generator cloaked itself as well
The Chronosphere works as a sort-of example, though Aftermath's Chronotank is a bit of a complication in messing with the progression. You have the limited RA1 Chronosphere with its 1-unit limitation, 'snap-back' effect, risk of spawning a ravaging space-time vortex and inability to transport infantry inside a transport, and then RA2 sees the deployment of a perfected version that increases the area of effect, removes the other risks/limitations and in ideal conditions is even capable of teleportation distances of a continental scale.
@@LordInsane100 you missed the chrono apc
@@Groza_Dallocort The stealth generator thing unable to cloak itself is to blame on game balance...
Lore wise the reason is that The Brotherhood of NOD lost most of their archieves about the base/area cloaking tech at the end of Tib War 2, so they had to go back to very old archieved blueprints/iterations of it and somehow try to cobble a at least passable Stealth Generator to hide their bases with low amounts of research staff and time.
@@Darkfirephoenix3010 True true sure the disruption tower use way less power then the stealth generator. But a mission in Kanes Wrath have you raiding a research lab to get the blueprints and such needed for disruption towers
One of my favorite bits of transitional weirdness (that would be better known if it hadn't missed) is HMS Shaw, a sailing frigate (albeit one with a metal hull; but no armor) fired the first known self-propelled torpedo in anger in 1877. The concept of mounting early Whitehead torpedoes on classic sailing ships in an attempt to counter ironclads is just weird and cool.
I see a Stargate thumbnail, I like the video
simple as
Mine was Startrek
Indeed
It's funny, cos the momentary mention of Gundams UC story would have been a goldmine for this vid.
Not only in the number of failed experiments and stop gap measures, but in the rate things become obsolete and repurposed.
There's even a whole show about failed experiments, called MS Igloo. It's like watching WW2 germany's crazy arms race, but in gundam level technology.
IGLOO is pretty much that when it comes to a lot of designs. You had the whole Minovsky warfare setting coming into play that played havoc with most advanced electronics and the introduction of mobile suits as the new big main weapon of war.
A similar vibe can be found in the mid to late UC 0080s with a ton of MS designs that are there to try out something that may be new or are a testbed for some new tech piece. However, by the 0090s, most of these suits are either only in the hands of Zeon remnants that are using whatever they can get their hands on that still works or are gone entirely.
Only two designs made in that era ever saw any sort of production beyond it: the Anksha, which was a variation of the Asshimar, and the ReZEL, which used essentially the same frame as the Methuss.
Every single MObile Armour deployed by Zabi's Zeon basically falls in this category.
He seriously needs an Anime Person to feed him stuff about anime series for these, because SO much of what he talks about has a solid presence in anime - usually not even niche stuff either. But he just doesn't care about anime (which is fair) so basically ignores it and it's relevance to what he talks about (Which - I think at least - isn't).
YOOOOOOO BATTLETECH MENTIONED
Specifically the Baron. I wonder if Hooj saw Tex's Warhammer video....
I felt the same way! Maybe they saw Tex's video on the Warhammer. XD
@@Rogue284 Okay, which crossover would we want to see more? Spacedock meets Black Pants discussing mech designs and technology... or Spacedock and Blue from OSP talking about architectural influences in spacecraft design.
@@templarw20 Both? Both. Both. Both is good.
I’d take both
Macross has this too. The VF-0 model is an interim design rushed into service to combat a threat, while the VF-1 was in development. The VF-0 had to power its conversion armor and transformation with regular turbines, and not the coming fusion turbines. So it had a very short flight time as it guzzled fuel
Gundam as a whole actually has some awesome examples of this! Zeta Gundam takes place after mobile suits had already been widely adopted, and the titular RX-78 Gundam had made a huge impression during the One Year War, but nobody was quite sure what the next big step forwards would be, so there's a ton of oddball designs (mostly use by the Titans faction) as everyone works to find an edge.
The best example in Gundam would probably be the AGE System, allowing rapid prototyping of new weapons and modules for the lead Gundam (and eventually the successor and mass-produced versions of said Gundam) to counter emergent threats from a more technologically-advanced foe.
I distinctly remember a section in the fourth? book of The Expanse, where Dimitri Havelock is onboard their RCE Ship, which is a old Colony Vessel, think about how they "didn't get it quite right" when it came to the shape of the hallways, back in the day, when this first generation of hulls was built. It made me feel the age of the Ship in a way, a more factual description would not have been able to.
Wasnt Cant also an old colony ship? I swear they described it at the beggining of the first book as that.
@@TheNowerianRaven Yeah, the Canterbury was formerly a colony ship that got converted into an ice hauler. It was mostly a cargo ship either way, so the conversion wasn't terribly radical.
I love that Battletech made it on this list. It is a prime example of a sci-fi setting where technology inequality between warfronts leads to all sorts of compelling military configurations and conflicts.
Gundam actually has a lot. Just look at some of the Mobile Suits from the One Year War. No one had a clue what they were doing. It actually continued until after the Gryps War when they started getting an idea about Mobile suit doctrine.
It happened in the old Legends Continuity for Star Wars all the goddamned time. The TIE defender and B-Wings both were great examples of powerful 'super-starfighters' that just were either too difficult to build and maintain, or too ungainly to prove effective. The E-Wing had similar teething issues and never succeeded in surpassing the X-Wing it was intended to replace. The New Republic's new Nebula Star Destroyers could outmatch MonCal cruisers or the ageing Imperial Star Destroyers, but struggled to gain any real foothold in the wider fleet due to logistical issues.
Indeed. Though I have the feeling that the shape and name also played a role. I mean just a few years prior, the ruthless Galactic Empire used triangular-shaped Star Destroyers to terrorise the civs, now the allegedly benevolent New Republic creates (or at least wants to use) a triangular-shaped Star Destroyer of their own. Bet that didn't sit well with many folks... Bad enough the New Republic had to rely on older Imperial (and even Old-Republican) vessels to boost their forces in fighting the Imperial Remnants..
@@ServantOfOdin they still had no problem with building brand new Imperial-class star destroyers for Republlic's navy - which had many internal improvements but still the same exterior design.
The issue with Nebulas was simply that they were too complicated and economically unfeasible to maintain, despite outgunning and outperrforming even bigger Imperial-design vessels
@@nickcher7071 True, the classical "Why fix something that an't broken" issue. The Imperial-class, while being a testament for the Empires terror, was also a testament to the empire engineering prowess.
3:42 you'd be absolutely correct. The very first example that comes to mind would be the GNY-001F, Astraea Type F. It was basically a 2nd generation Mobile Suit from Gundam 00 that had the necessary packages to be up-to-date with 3rd generation Gundams like the GN-001 Exia (its actual successor) but with the difference that those packages were way bulkier and had more counters than their successors. When the tech was finally ready to be used by the Astraea, the Exia was already rolled out and resolving things way more efficiently than the Astraea, which relegated the unit to test and refine new tech. That doesn't mean the unit wasn't combat-worthy but… there were way better options out there.
And this is just so say some of the good examples. Because if we go with bad examples… your editor nailed it (The GM units on that particular battle were REALLY obsolete by then and were supposedly to be up-to-par with the original RX-78 Gundam).
Thank you editor for all the gundam clips
The Star Trek Prometheus' biggest problem in its MVAM ability wasn't its network or crew coordination. It was in its engineering crew requirement. It had three warp cores, so it required three times the engineering staff as any other ship close to its size. And it's chief engineer in the novels even noted that htis meant she had to spend almost as much time moving between the three engineering decks as actually being an engineer.
yeah, just have three ships in a squadron.
In the post-Enterprise era of the Star Trek Beta-canon the Federation did a lot of quirky designs that would end up going nowhere. The whole era is full of unique designs because in the earliest days of the Federation the ships were being built according to member technology, not a supranational state's technology as later designs would be.
In regards to the railgun bit near the beginning, I think the issues they found is that other technologies need to be developed further for them to really be viable and cost effective and not a dead end.
We need another type of material that can handle the force of the weapon being fired. I think the barrel was worn out after just a few shots which makes it rather cumbersome in war
@@Groza_Dallocort that is basically the only issue left with railguns. if the barrel wear problem can be solved, they would be ready.
It's also a question of use case. The US wanted to use the Railgun for ship combat and shore bombardment, China and Japan are planning more to use them for anti-air
quite a few issues really, barrel wear from friction and heat, repulsion between the rails stressing the entire frame, high power consumption, not particularly significant velocity compared to some other viable high velocity propellants
So, my wife writes scifi. And I'm pretty sure a specific ship class that comes up in FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE, the first of her series, the Malevolence class, is an example of this phenomenon. Space combat has been fairly unchanging for a long period, but someone recently (since the last major war) came up with a novel use for an old, disused technology: The warp drive. There's much, much faster FTL in widespread use for traveling between stars etc., but they installed old-fashioned Alcubierre style warp drives on a light warship class they were building, equipped with very light armor, but extremely heavy armament. The thought is that they use their warp drives to approach large enemy capital ships too fast to be detected, fire off an enormous salvo of primarily missiles from too close to allow a timely anti-missile response, and then escape using the warp drive again, before the enemy can respond. However, they've never been combat tested in earnest, and it remains to be seen if this concept is useful, let alone viable. A new war is beginning at the time of the series, so they will undoubtedly get their chance to sink or swim.
So, Torpedoboats?
Does anyone in that story go Jeune École?
The problems with the lack of a gun on the F-4 Phantom were and still are highly overstated, and deliberately so by the "fighter mafia" which was obsessed with dogfighting long after missile technology had matured. There haven't been any air-to-air kills with a gun since the early 90s, and even then those gun kills were against helicopters.
The US Navy didn't really ever use gun pods on their F-4s and stuck with missiles, and ended up more successful with the plane than the USAF which did adopt the gun pods. Even though missile technology was still rather primitive it turns out that trying to hit a very fast moving target with a manually aimed gun is really hard.
The main problem was doctrine and training. It's not just the engineers who have to figure out how to use a new technology. The people in charge of policy and training have to figure it out too. In the 1960s, visual confirmation of the target was required before using missiles meaning they were already quite close to begin with by the time they could fire. Plus as a new technology, the training wasn't quite up to par. Rather famously, the US Navy started the Top Gun program to better train their pilots and saw dramatic improvements to their success rate. Far more than strapping a gun pod on as the USAF did.
I don't know if they are technically transitional designs in lore, but some of the starfighters in the Star Wars prequels certainly look like transitional designs. The Advanced Omega class in B5 was clearly an interim design incorporating advanced new technology before they could get a proper clean sheet design made. Transitional designs don't often get starring roles though. Writers tend to want their main characters to be either on a working ship with mature technology, a ship that's well past its prime (meaning that in its prime it was a working ship with mature technology), or a prototype so the main characters can be pioneers. But it does happen. I'd argue that both the Defiant and Sovereign class are transitional designs because both were a drastic change to established design doctrine but neither ended up in staying in service for very long.
In Babylon 5, he could have also referenced the IAS _Excalibur_ and _Victory_ , which were hybrids of Minbari and Vorlon design that were not fully capable in both the power and plumbing systems.
@@jakeaurod Same goes for the WhiteStar
I agree with almost everything, and it's well written. As a note, though: the Sovereign-class was wildly successful, and they were built in large numbers. By the time of the Picard show (30+ years later), the Sovereigns have replaced the Excelsiors as the backbone of Starfleet.
Indeed, the same criticisms are used against the F-35 today (only the A variant has an integrated gun) which is ridiculous, if this thing is ever in gun range you've fucked up.
Anyone wants to know more about the Baron-class, the Tex Talks Battletech episode on the Warhammer goes into it in borderline excruciating detail during the preamble.
Graham acker's GN flag!
A wonderful example of transitional tech. As the world learns how to produce GN drive tau, an imitation of the original 5 GN drives that can generate power semi-perpetually. The old Mobile suits like the union flag is replaced with the GN-Xs. however graham, an ace pilot kept modifying his flag to the point it had a GN drive tau he can activate to use beam sabers
Seriously, the GN Flag is absolute insanity. Take a regular Overflag and just ram a Gundam engine onto its back. It is incredibly slapdash and desperate, but Graham is insane enough to make it work.
Of course, that weird sidegrade eventually lead to the Masurao and the fantastic Brave, all of which more properly refined the technology and design.
Yea his Mr Bushido phase was pretty funny. I also love how initially, the masurao uses a beam Saber/katana but the improved susanowo uses a physical blade enhanced with GN particles like the exia and 00.. my guess is enhancing a physical object more efficient than continuously generating an entire beam.
hell there are even side content that shows prototypes for future tech. Like the GRM Gundam is the MS that's made to test out the GN Mega launcher, which is then used on the gadessa
Surprised that Babylon 5 was not mentioned. You see ships and fighters from different eras and how things have changed over time. sm
There is only one really nova omega warrior. The star furry design changed from single man space fight to multi man multi role atmo capable fighter than is more expensive. It goes from point defence to long range patrol fighter
B5 also had capital ships which didn't have enough power to actually use their primary weapons.
@@cp1cupcake yes but that is not easily shown compared to the gravity issue
My favourite in Battletech is the Charger mech, one of the early designs in the setting where Mech warfare remains uncharted territory at the time, the logic being, early Scout mechs are often small and vulnerable, and rely on their speed to not get hit, which can be a problem if scout is done where there is a high chance of fighting happening, so lets take an Assault class mech, max it at speed and armour but only very light weapons for defense, since its faster then the Mackie (the first true Mech that is also Assault class) it could tank damage and escape engagements.
The Banshee also suffered similarly at trying to make a "Fast Assault" concept.
It did not work and nobody wanted to use it until it was brought out of storage trying to replace severe losses of better designs during the sheer brutality of the Succession wars
Man names the Barron class...this makes my heart happy. Please do the McKenna class.
I think the Gundam example should probably have been the Mobius Zero from Seed. Sure it's effective, but only for the one family of dudes who's brains can handle piloting 5 ships at once.
The Honorverse has several examples of this, although its mostly limited to the written word.
HMS Casey CL-01 of the Royal Manticoran Navy was a spin gravity design refitted with grav plates so the original spin section was replaced with just a large cylindrical bulge of equal-ish size; Casey also got four rail guns for launching anti-ship missiles during her refit but they were external to the hull rather than internal.
Centuries later the Medusa class pod-laying superdreadnoughts, which were deigned to lay missile pods from their stern then tow then around on tractor beams still had 26 missile tubes in their broadside like older vessels. Its successor, the Invictus-class, was a "pure" pod-layer with no broadside missiles. That space was reserved for a pair of missile control platforms called Keyhole that could be tractored outside of its "sidewall" shields to handle far more missiles since her number of pods doubled from the Medusas (although HMS Invictus herself lacked Keyhole).
Another transitional design from that later time period was the Minotaur-class LAC Carrier (CLAC) which had 9 grazers and 9 missile tubes both fore and aft to engage other starships. Later CLACs like the Hydra-class or allied Grayson Navy's Covington-class had no fore or aft "chasers", only anti-missile systems, relying totally on their Light Attack Craft for its offensive punch.
I'm suprised your didn't for the obvious Honorverse examples. Honor finds herself constantly using extremely experimental or useless technology has just been rolled out, from the grav lance, to the first pods, to the Q-ship proto CLAC/SDN(P)s, and so on.
@@cp1cupcake I wanted to stick to stuff that actually went somewhere so there was a comparison with what designs transitioned to. The grav lance cruiser was a dead end while grav lances on capital ships became obsolete. I don't remember if the Q-ship design ever went anywhere, so I'd call it more of a testbed for sucessful technology that saw combat than a transitional design.
Pacific Rim nails this concept.
Humanity had to figure it out on the go designing their Jaegers to fight the Kaiji. From half tank, half humanoid designs, to giant metal skeletons, to hulking behemoths like Cherno Alpha, to more standard designs like Gypsy Danger, all the way to specialized models like Crimson Typhoon. The evolution of warfare made sense in that universe.
The Prometheus of SG-1 is an excellent example, because the extra ships in the 303 line got scrapped for 304's because they got so much new tech which became hard to integrate into the 303 core design, resulting in them making a new ship model that had the at the time new techs included and maybe more room for upgrades.
Prometheus/Daedalus is sometimes referred to as a “ship designed by committee” but I still love how it weaves its way into the narrative of the Stargate franchise
The Lunar War has one of best ships I've ever seen in fiction.
From Gundam, this really described the RX-104FF Penelope from Gundam Hathaway.
At the time the story takes place, the Minovsky Flight System, a system that allows for things such as ships to hover in midair, has for the first time been miniaturized enough to be mounted onto mobile suits in a practical manner. However, with the Penelope you can really tell it was a rush job to just get it deployed with the whole thing just slapped on top of a regular mobile suit. This is especially noticeable when you compare with the RX-105 Ξ Gundam which was built with the Minovsky Flight System in mind from the ground up and as such it is more obviously well implemented into the design itself.
In series that takes place later in the timeline, the system has been further refined to the point now that you can hardly tell it is there with Victory Gundam even having an improved version called the Minovsky Drive System which not only provides lift, but also thrust and a lot of it at that. And then there is the far future stuff found in Turn A that absolutely ran with the concept.
I actually use this in a sci-fi novel I wrote. Following an alien ship crash and reverse engineering (Macross style), Earth started getting space stuff built, which included warships (because "the Intruder" had damage that looked like weapon fire). The first set were testbeds, "do-everything' cruisers like the Prometheus and Daedalus. A short story set a hundred years later is set on the same ship, in which the PoV character laments about the outdated and clunky design.
That's a nice touch, and the premise sounds interesting. Is it published? If so, what's the title?
Title? Please. I love this type of Sci-fi.
Not published, yet. Still trying to get the thing right. The short story was slated to be published... in a collection that was cancelled when the publisher went under.
@@templarw20 Sorry to hear that. It's a tough industry even under ideal circumstances. Hopefully another slot will come along soon.
Surprised he didn’t touch on the Viper from BSG, there’s definitely an element of it there when you follow the line from Mk-2 to Mk-7
Or the Battlestars themselves. You can see the difference between the war era Galactica and the peacetime fragility of the Pegasus.
@@MrGrumblier the Battlestars are a better example actually!! Especially when you consider the semi-canonical designs in Deadlock
I love how this was the entire premise of technology in Stargate, adding bits pointy designs and developing tech as they discovered it. With two official test bed ships, Prometheus which was a mish mash of parts then Odyssey that followed the integrated Daedalus design but tested new technology, primarily gained from the Asgard.
Another example from Warhammer is the Mk5 "Heresy" armour pattern, which is more a mish mash of parts from previous armour classes.
In BattleTech the Mackie was the first mech that revolutionized warfare... and was replaced by superior mechs with almost the first mech to be designed after it.
This is why I love the Space Marine armors from Warhammer 40K. Each new design looks like a natural successor to the last, rather than just “LOL HERE’S NEW THING THAT TOTALLY DOESN’T LOOK LIKE IT FITS IN THE SAME DEVELOPMENT HISTORY”. That’s kinda why I fell out of love with Gundam. Eventually, things got a little too bonkers and out-there to remain consistent. This was _especially_ prominent in the late U.C. But 40k has actually managed to make its poster boys not only have a consistent design philosophy, but also an interesting history for each armor mark. Here’s the timeline:
The Mk 1 was a bulky and crude, yet efficient design, made to be efficiently produced on Earth, a world with little to no resources. The Mk II vastly improved this with segmented armor and void-sealing for the new environment of OUTER SPACE! The Mk III was a side grade of the Mk II, offering more protection at the cost of mobility. The Mk IV was supposed to fix the issues of the last 3, yet was discovered during the Horus Heresy to also be extremely expensive to produce. The Mk V was all cost efficiency and no practicality, using scrapped designs and often being hodgepodge parts of other armor marks slapped together. The Mk VI was a step in the right direction, focusing more on production efficiency and basic quality of life alterations than greater protection. Then, the iconic Mk VII was made. Basically a massive step up from everything the Mk VI did right. The Mk VIII further added to this, including a gorget to prevent deaths from bullets ricocheting off their collar and into their skulls. Admittedly, we never see the Mk IX, but we DO see the Mk X. Designed with all the best attributes of the pst armor marks in mind, the Mk X is the final stop (so far) in the Soace Marine armor timeline. It’s built for modularity, and can be reconfigured into whatever is needed at the time: heavier Gravis plate for added durability or lighter Phobos armor for cloak and dagger.
My game, Between the Ashes, has some of this, since it's a fan-made interquel for the Freespace franchise. We have both transitional forms - weapons that bridge the gap between Freespace 1 weapons and their Freespace 2 successors - and technological dead ends representing various groups trying new stuff, like multi-aspect missiles and a shield-recharging "gun". There's also a pretty major one (so-called convergence engines) in the backstory, but to say more would be telling.
thank you so much for mentioning Battletech. Such an underated universe!
The GM from gundam is a pretty good example in some ways. Widely distributing discount beam weaponry was a good idea in a lot of ways for the One Year War, but the suit doesn't really hold up in following conflicts.
Transformable Mobile suits (which had advantages in range and flight characteristics over standard suits) would be eventually phased out for miniaturized Minovsky flight systems and then fusion reactor improvements that made for more compact, lighter, and faster mobile suits.
4:01 Potato grids, Crispy fried owl, mystery meat, pasta pillows, pork cylinders and large macs!
I love this type of ships
One of the more interesting ones in Gundam's UC is Psycommu system, which is probably most similar to the Spore Drive from Discovery. It was supposed to allow Newtypes - espers, essentially - to convert their unique brainwaves into signals that could bypass the disruptive effects of Minovsky particles that block low-frequency EM radiation, allowing these Newtypes to use drone weaponry among other things. For the next twenty or so years after the Psycommu's discovery every faction was trying to find some new, elaborate, and expensive uses for it in what was a shadow Newtype-based arms race.
The basic problem with the technology in general was no one knew how it actually worked. It could, for instance, generate power from seemingly nowhere and somehow effectively time travel. Likewise the Newtypes required to make it work were about as equally poorly understood. Eventually they reached a point where the psychic technology was acknowledged as a Singularity mankind couldn't adequately cope with. While it wouldn't disappear completely, its development was quietly shelved by the major powers at the time and it would eventually fade into obscurity.
Ad hoc intergenerational tech is a classic sci-fi aesthetic that few people do well. Lucas did an excellent job portraying the Empire as having all the best gear and everyone else basically cannibalizing each other.
Think you missed the most obvious one for Star Trek.
Saucer separation. It had a serious design purpose. To act as a life raft. Housing the population and power systems to keep people alive during exploration should catastrophic failure of warp drive or anti matter occur. No warp drive, but has impulse.
Is why they separated in Generations. The one time we saw seperation for its intended purpose.
However it is heavily flawed because as we see, saucer often gets pretty thrashed, making its purpose moot. Later ship designs all going with a more traditional, and faster, escape pod system. Sure, not comfy but isnt all eggs in one basket and still has essentials to survive.
Quite functional too, as we have seen in voyager on multiple occasions. Self contained, self propelled. Able to communicate and easily recovered.
Far more functional than relying on splitting ship in two.
I've been thinking lately how complacent this makes Starfleet look at the start of TNG. They built their most advanced deep space exploratory vessel, and de facto first line of defense, to be family friendly. To moderate that it was designed to separate so children and non essential personal can be left in safety while the battle section takes care of danger. Turns out the saucer has resources that come in useful in an emergency and it's more powerful in one piece. Also, ignores that they can go from peaceful exploration to "all hands abandon ship" in a snap of a finger.
Really enjoyed this subject! Thanks for posting this. A real world VS Star trek example that comes to mind... An American P-47 thunderbolt is not simply a transitional blend of a P-38 and a P-51; but in the world of STAR TREK it would have the wings of one, and the fuselage of the other. The AMBASSADOR CLASS/ENTERPRISE C would be a good example.
Those are literally 3 different and co-existing designlignages from 3 very different companies powered by 3 very different powerplants. The only real thing they have in common is that they were all deployed by the US Army Airforce.
Bit of an arbitrary example imho, or maybe I am misunderstanding the point you are trying to make?
Yes. Exactly the point I'm trying to make.
No nation/world has a single, industrial design concern holding sway over naval (or other) production.
The fantasy notion that all spacecraft will be produced by a single, unified galactic entity, in a smooth, incremental evolution over decades, or even centuries, is absurd.
From the often combative OKB system in the the old Soviet Union, to the arguably more organized and collaborative logistical reality of the Allies in World war two, the evolution of anything, be it aircraft, naval vessels, or even humble side arms, is scattershot. There is little, if any, smooth and incremental evolution on display.
Every German aircraft concern produced remarkably different aircraft and armor, and the petty rivalries between them did as much to stymie the progress of the overall effort as any enemy espionage ever did .
Even the differences between Kelly Johnson and Ed Heinemann are perfect examples; bleeding edge tech vs. simple, reliable, and cost effective designs both produced excellent results, as well as failures.
What they didn't produce was the technological equivalent of the discredited Australopithecine-to-modern man chart of silhouettes, each standing more erect than the last.
Andorian influence + Vulcan influence + Martian shipyards + Romulan cloaking devices + Breen propulsion, all resulting somehow in a stop-motion-quality subtle transition, century-long blending resulting only in saucer based designs, from W. Matt Jefferies (long may he wave!) Connie to the Sternbach medicine-spoon look of Voyager-era starships; I love me some Federation ships, god knows, but it's aesthetic logic in the end, and not practical.
And STAR WARS, well.. that tech hasn't changed in a thousand years. But hey... it looks cool... ;)
@@user-dh2qf5kd8c Gundam UC has something similar where Zeon has two primary companies (Zeonic and Zimmad) competing to make the next mainline mobile suit, which results in a lot of prototypes that just get thrown into battle (so the show could have a Villain of the Week). Zeonic suits tend to stick to their tried-and-true humanoid form factor, whereas Zimmad got a little more creative but aren't as successful.
Great example! Anime is one of the few sub-genres of Sci-Fi that often revels in this kind of thing, and even though they can (and should) be fanciful, the soul of the idea is reflected in the work.
The radical changes in design over the course of the various MACROSS (finally to be available in the states, yay!) films, while certainly aesthetically driven, explores many different avenues.
I personally, will always love the old, pre-Valkyrie VF-4, mid-wing engine nacelle designs. Old, obsolete.. but oh, so beautiful... ;)
I think a good aspect of transitional designs that can be used to convey them (at some cost) is having lots of non standardised designs for different factions rather than having them look similar, like how early tanks and planes all look different before they slowly converge on similar designs for similar roles
When it comes to Mecha series, Aldnoah Zero is an interesting example. In this one, all the Gundam-style super-prototypes are piloted by the enemy, dozens of lordlings each producing their own super-specialised design, and it's up to the 'good guys' in their inferior mass-produced mechs to figure out a weak point or design flaw in the enemy mech and exploit it.
Was that some BATTLETECH lore just now?! Moar please!
Babylon 5's Omega Class Destroyer had a rotating center to provide gravity which was cool compared to older Earth ships, but just around the corner were proper gravity drives thanks to other races.
Finally hearing about battletech on this channel makes my heart flutter. Hope it comes out more in future videos!
at last, Battletech gets referenced. there's lots to milk from that franchise but i admit the lack of multimedia presence makes getting footage hard.
looking forward to your Mecha video after you did a video on Walkers 🙂
There was Battletech: the [almost] Animated Series from back in 1994.
It's been a long time since I watched it, but if I remember correctly, the SGC went with a Naquadria Reactor to power the Hyperdrive because they had easy access to it and little to no access to the more stable Naquata Reactors everyone else uses...the Prometheus's Hyperdrive was effectively the same design as everyone else used, but it was unstable because the Naquadria in the Reactor POWERING the Hyperdrive was Unstable so when the Reactor went squirrelly, the energy flow to the Hyperdrive went ballistic and the Drive Computers automatically aborted the Hyperjump to keep the ship from being turned into Chunky Salsa when the Hyperfield collapsed mid-jump
It wasn't Prometheus's Engines that were unstable, it was the Power Plant fueling them that was...I believe they used a more conventional Nuclear Reactor to power everything else on the ship...
I believe the rest of Humanities ships used a traditional Naquata Reactor obtained from the Asguard (along with all the rest of their Super-Tech) which neatly solved the Drive Stability problems...
Any day that The Lunar War appears in a Spacedock vid is a good day, especially when it includes my beloved child Aurore~
I will have to remember this for what I am working on and have been. Thank you spacedock
Also a great excuse to make the "hero ship" look distincly different from the rest of its navy.
I feel like Clone Wars era Star Wars had a fair few transitional designs. Hyperspace rings on the early Jedi Starfighter, cloaking on a small frigate, and the Malevolence's ion disc all come to mind. Hyperspace rings didn't continue, and instead some fighters and bombers got inbuilt drives, the cloaking thing didn't pan out for some reaon or another, and ion tech evolved towards being dedicated cannons.
Trek actually does a lot with the transitional starship thing. The problem is you don't see most of them because they are mostly regulated to background ships. But a few do have official Lore that indicates that is just what they are. As far as Stargate is concerned, you forgot the F-301. But I am sure T'ealc and O'Niell would like to forget that too. The problem I see with this concept is (I love it by the way and my stories do have a few of these ship's in them) that, it works well for long series, it can work well for short series, but to do it from day one your lore has to already be very well developed, and that can be challenging for people and productions especially as most are race to the finish types.
We need more circular ships in Sci-fi.
Invictus says hi!
Indeed.
And vertical ships.
@@Seekay_Like the Expanse ships?
You mean flying saucers?
You see this with entertainment tech all the time! 8-track cassettes, Laserdiscs and VCDs fall into this category nicely!
I know you mentioned missiles, but the Atlas rocket had a unique operation because it was so early in rocket development! They hadn't figured out reliable methods for igniting a second rocket stage, so it was a single-stage rocket with two types of engines connected to the same fuel tank. It would then *jettison the low-altitude engines* in what was called "stage-and-a-half." This is different than booster rockets because those engines fed from the same tank as the sustainer engine.
The Atlas rocket was used to launch the Mercury capsule, which definitely gives it that interwar-tank feeling.
And then there's also the B-36 Peacemaker, at the very beginning of the jet age. It was primarily powered by propellers, but was given two pairs of jets for "sprinting" over the bombing zone
Good examples of transitional designs in real life are the early carriers from the interwar period, they were often built on battlecruiser hulls, and in several instances they'd try to keep hold of some of the guns (ie the Lexington class of US carriers, which had the firepower of a heavy cruiser with 4 twin 8in gun turrets, or HMS furious, which originally only had a flight deck in the front, and kept the rear single 18in gun turret and superstructure), so there was a lot of working out what was a good idea, and what was a terrible idea.
Experimental carrier designs? The Habakkuk has entered the chat.
I think especially interesting to note is how in stargate the Naqaudria hyperdrives did end up spinning off to be used in other Tau'ri vessels, though for much more situational purposes.
to add on to the topic of the barron, its flaws were never realized until it got pushed into combat by the SLDF, in the hundreds. where they were then torn to shreds by the then perceived inferior enemy (which by all accounts should have been) the Taurian Concordat who deployed many technologically simpler designs that overwhelmed the Barron simply though their high reliability.
Yay Battletech reference!!!🎉
The best example from Star Trek is probably the Phoenix. It looks pretty much like a standard 21st century capsule-based spaceship with an oversized service module that also happens to have a pair of warp nacelles bolted on it. The nacelles had to be deployable even, because while Cochrane figured out warp, he didn't invent a better way of getting it to orbit than a good old-fashioned chemical rocket so it had to contend with the constraints of aerodynamics.
IIRC, Earth had developed impulse engines by then. The issue was that it was post-WWIII and Cochrane was seen as a kook, so he had to make do with modifying an old ICBM.
*gasp* Battletech got a mention!?!?!? Happy Day
Im just happy that Exia is getting more and more exposure.
Sneaky Butterfield references instantly get a like from me.
POTATO GRIDS
The TCS Behemoth in Wing Commander 3 is another possible example. The main gun, a Death Star like planet destroying laser, was successfully tested, but it was rushed into service without adequate defenses and had to rely on other ships for protection.
For those what are interested in the 'wonder' of the Battletech's Baron look up the Black Pants Legion' Wargammer video. The first half us All about the Baron. Those mad Lads and Lass are great.
One fun area with a lot of odd transitional designs is in audio recording and playback. Recently watched a video about reel-to-reel tape except the tape had grooves printed into it like a phonograph record.
Ah, Battletech. The most realistic sci-fi setting: transitional technology, logistics winning wars, Space AT&T owning the internet, and people just dying of cancer.
Speaking of battletech, if we change our focus away from their ships, their mechs and armaments are filled with transitional technology.
Honorable mention to early jet fighters. A lot of them are clearly designed by people who are accustomed to building prop planes.
Might I suggest a video on "stop-gap/improvised" designs to complement this one? As in designs that people just slap together because they have no other options either due to a lack of time or resources (or both), but they need *something*. Lots of Belter ships would fall under this category for example. I guess you might lump Ork ships in there too, but those are made of junk on purpose.
Vietnam fighters dropping the gun is seriously overstated. The problems with missiles of the time were trianing, storage, and to a lesser , caused by the lack of over the horizon doctorine and IFF radars. When ground crews and pilots were trained on the missiles, the performance of the F4's improved in both the Air Force and Navy equally. The Navy never had a gun on their F4's
More BattleTech related lore would be much appreciated. Especially in relation to FTL travel and mech designs.
PS there was a weird time in the 19th century where armour outpaced naval gun technology so strategists thought rams and ramming would be making a comeback.
Couple of I can think of -
The USS Voyager's hinged adjustable Warp Nacelles adressing a issue that Warp drive damages subspace that was referenced in one or two episodes of TNG. Subesquent starship designs didn't need the hinge suggestign a more refined, elegant solution was developed.
In Gundam Wing (The fist Gundam series aired in the west - thank you Toonami) The first mobile suit ever developed was the Tallgese. Due to the technological limitations at the time, It was very heavy and needed absolutley HUGE engines strapped to it's back to move in combat. This meant that it was leathally fast (for the pilot) despite it's weight. Because the Tallgese was way more than the average pilot could handle and it's capabilities were surplus to requirements, it was toned down using lighter, more modern tech and alloys into the shows enemy mook suits, most notably the Leo.
I wish they had explored Gundam further. because there's actually a lot, A LOT of this in Gundam. Especially the UC time line.
a really good example of a transitional design in gundam is the RX-178 gundam mk2, which is obsolete almost immediately out of the gate and was really just a demonstrator platform for movable frame technology which is then integrated into every subsequent (and superior) mobile suit design from that point onward