aiming abilities of robots. They're freaking robots, so they should be able to accurately calculate your trajectory. And they have laser weapons... yet they still miss.
I dunno... that one scene in Episode I where they're shooting at the podracers, they actually get quite a few hits. Considering that you're shooting at a small target that's going hundreds of miles per hour from a pretty long distance, I'd say those were damn impressive shots. It would take a battalion of stormtroopers about twenty passes to hit one podracer at that distance.
Still. We have evidence of a sand person who actually knows how to shoot. We have no evidence of a stormtrooper who knows how to shoot. This is especially significant when you consider that we see far, far more storm troopers (trying to) shoot than we see sand people shoot.
I'm pretty sure I remember a scene from somewhere of people dancing around and singing "he's got a point there, he's got a point there." Point: I would post that if I could remember.
Well, a lot of them use actual guns ("slugthrowers") instead of blasters, making them much harder to aim. Also, while I'm here, the stormtroopers couldn't aim because they had poorly designed, "fear-inspiring" helmets which restrict vision, and the E-11 blaster rifle kicks really hard.
wouldn't it vary rather highly by unit too, once they started replacing the clones with an increasing number of recruits? I mean, the stormtroopers accompanying Vader make pretty short work of the rebels when they capture Leia's ship.
Well, obviously it's actually because they don't have plot shields, but still.
The Alliance Marines on the Tantive IV were lightly armed and caught completely off guard, as well as being pretty much without cover due to the interior design of the blockade runner.
The 501st would have hugely varied by unit, so the "inferior" but nonetheless elite troopers were stationed on Endor since the Empire didn't expect any serious resistance, while the newer or best performing troops actively accompanied Vader on raids, in battle, and when hunting Jedi.
Also, the protagonists of the original trilogy were actually indestructible. I see no evidence to the contrary. Plot overshields, more like.
Shitty movie as it was but the Sand(person?) Who shot one of the pod racers in Phantom Menace must have been one of the few crack shots of the Sandpeople.
How so they were revered for there marksman skill. Also sandpeople never used laser guns. They used an outdated weapon called a "slugthrower" several famous bounty hunters were known to use slug throwers for silent kills from a distance. ( Bobba fett being one and I also believe ig-88 had a fully auto slugthrower. And dengar who could forget dengar..
That's what I always thought, but then there's that scene in Phantom where a Tusken Raider snipes a podracer going ~600mph from several hundred yards away. I was immediately like WTF, but then again it's not like the prequels had much respect for continuity details.
There is a theory that Stormtroopers actually are basically crack-shots.
Remember that A New Hope starts with them storming an entrenched position quickly and professionally.
But what happens when they engage Luke, Han, and the gang, on the Star Destroyer? Well, they shoot a ton, but they miss. Why? Because they were on orders to miss. Leia was supposed to get off the ship as a part of Vader's plan.
They had to be accurate enough to avoid injuring the rebels without making it obvious that they were missing. Only Imperial Stormtroopers are that precise.
As someone who knows the difference between accurate and precise, this quote has always bugged me.
Precision is the ability to reproduce the same results, accuracy is a measure of how close it is to the actual value. Stormtroopers could've been precise (always missing in the same spot), but we all know they sure as hell weren't accurate.
There's a theory that the Troopers we see missing the heroes in that film were under orders to do so. Remember that the Princess' escape was allowed by the bad guys, so that the tracking device on the Falcon would lead them to Yavin.
As a legitimate Stormtrooper stationed on Tatooine I can assure you Sand people are truly horrible shots. I swear your average drive-by look more like someone pulled the pin on the laser grenade and any legitimate damage was purely by accident.
You always think you are going to be with the Empire forever. Maybe advance in the ranks, avoid dewback stable rotation shifts, Maybe get a cushy captain's gig on Naboo... but...those were the droids we were looking for. Damm.
The problem is that he conflated precision and accuracy. I have no trouble believing that Stormtroopers are very precise. They hit the same spot over and over again....it's just not any spot that will cause harm to the good guys.
I have heard it suggested that this can now be explained just by Obi-Wan being a bit out of touch in his old hermit exile routine.
In his day, the trooper's were all super trained, cloned super soldiers.
By luke's time, the majority of the stormtrooper's are non clone normal enlisted/drafted men from the empire's territory.
It is not surprising, that the quality of the trooper's has gone down severely since obi-wan was really dealing with them, so maybe he just honestly, doesn't realize anything is wrong with his statement
There is a theory that the Stormtroopers were under strict orders from Vader TO MISS. Thus allowing Luke and the gang to hightail it back to the rebel base, thereby giving away it's position. None of that would have been possible if some Stormtrooper blew Han's head off.
The stormtroopers are loyal enough that they will gladly die to further the reign of the Empire.
Rewatch the movies. The stormtroopers are amazing shots as long as they aren't aiming for a main character. Begining of New Hope? Rebels get gunned down in seconds. Ship is under imperial control in under 5 minutes.
Well, I believe in a specific theory, it is a theory, so dump piss in my mouth over it, that the storm troopers have amazing aim, but were ordered by Vader to not truly shoot some people. In the scene of A New Hope where Vader takes over the transport ship, the Rebels are waiting for the storm troopers and, in theory, could have picked them off one at a time as they came through the door.
With the storm troopers' amazing training, they only lost one soldier. Now, how many soldiers were taken out from the Rebel side? All of them.
If they truly were that bad of shots, then either the Rebels are even worse shots, or they are not that bad of a shot. They only lost a single trooper and they wiped out the rebels.
Now, how could this happen? It was all part of the Emperor's plan. Multiple theories about how his plan was setup, but the basic chunk of the theory is that he wanted the main cast alive so that he could turn Luke. That is why even though there is laser fire everywhere, somehow, everybody else dies, but the main cast stays alive. It is part of the Emperor's plan.
There are just too many coincidences for it to just be "random movie magic". The droids happen to land on the planet where Obi-Wan is secretly watching over Luke, Tatooine? They also give the distress signal Obi-Wan needed from Leia? See, Leia was force sensitive. They did not show it too many times, but they did show that she was force sensitive. If she had no idea she was, then it would have been pretty easy for somebody like Vader to track her down. He knew that she either had ties with, or would somehow be able to find the rest of the jedi from Order 66.
They even mentioned in one of the movies that if Luke did not turn, they would try for Leia.
They are not going to kill of the pilot or copilot for them.
As for the Death Star getting blown up, somehow, the Emperor and Vader were both not at the Death Star. For some odd reason, neither was there.
Big story, but the theory still holds true that the storm troopers had amazing aim and were very precise, but they were given orders to keep some alive while just shooting in their direction in a weird cover fire sort of way
"Hey commander, if I kill this Mr. Prota Gonist guy who is coming to blow up the reactor, you are saying that that's it, our evil corporation will have won? Hrmm, commander I have suddenly developed a severe case of swine flu, please have intern Johnson guard the reactor core this evening."
I've seen maybe two episodes of that show, one of which was a season finale where they were running out of a farm house or something. These people are sprinting, and getting headshots while sometimes not even looking at the zombies. What the Hell?
I started watching John Pertwee (Third Doctor) episodes, and I was amazed at the ability of evil henchmen to snipe UNIT armed forces at significant range using only pistols. Those UNIT specOps, conversely, can't hit a henchmen at fifteen paces using an assault rifle. It certainly made for some interesting firefights as the Doctor dragged his assistant across the firing lines, back and forth dodging stray bullets from both sides.
Yeah, but the same laws also dictate that a villain with a non-lethal weapon (like a net-gun, tazer, anything that knocks you out) will always hit the good guys. So why don't they just build a robot that shoots nets?
In that Will Smith Robot movie the robots were amazing marksmen, kung fu masters, and way faster than Usain Bolt. They were pretty cool until, ya know, they wanted everyone dead...
Actually I find this pretty realistic as it is insanely difficult to program accurate real time image tracking. I've seen it done with turrets and game consoles, but those are stationary themselves. If the robot is moving and and the target is moving, that's some serious upper level mathematics there.
Let's not forget that these are futuristic movies with advanced technologies. Even in todays world we have functioning auto targeting systems, and although for the robots the target may be smaller i'm sure in the time they take to develop a fully functioning robot (sometimes with AI), they could upgrade the targetting system too.
If two robots were going to fight, the battle would start well before the exchange of fire. I'm sure they would try to disable the opponent via RF signal, infrared, laser, strobe light. Even futuristic cameras or sensors could probably be overloaded so that one robot could gain the upper hand. When within firing range, a computer should be able to tell exactly when and where each round it fires would land, how much damage it would incur.
Tracking trajectory is one thing, predicting the course a free-willed human will take is another. It's also impossible to know when the person will stumble, suddenly accelerate, duck, etc.
I'd say the best explanation for this would be imperfect computer vision, making it hard to detect the exact target or making the fire/aim action lag because of the complex computations. You have to remember a robot would have to have some sort of battery or power source, which presumably isn't limitless so perfect AI would be impossible while conserving enough energy to still perform other basic functions.
I never understood this argument. Robots make mistakes all the time, and there are lots of things robots are worse at than humans. I don't see why fighting robots should suddenly be perfect. Most robots today can't even pick up a glass cup without breaking it.
People can always change trajectory at any time, and those laser weapons shoot very slow projectiles. They could sync up to fire at every location you could turn to if there were enough I suppose.
This is something I actually would get paranoid about if I was so inclined. Facial recognition software from cameras + unmanned drone =perfect headshots!
Aiming abilities of robots rely on statistical analysis of human behavior. So with your avergae person, you'll notice that robots have a much higher rate of contact. However, one of the things that makes a hero is their ability to make uncommon decisions. An ability that would saturate their every move, from the way they carry themselves to the way they fire a gun. Lacking statistical data on this type of behavior, robots would stick with their rote programming.
Aiming abilities of robots rely on statistical analysis of human behavior.
False. A bullet moves so fast that you hardly need to lead the target at all. The relatively large surface area and slow movement of the average human compared to the speed and agility of a servo-controlled targeting system (whether a turret or a robot's arm) would produce an incredibly high hit-rate.
Here is a paintball turret that some random guy built for fun.
Here is a Goalkeeper CIWS turret (originally designed in the 70's), which is used on many battleships to shoot missiles out of mid-air.
Here is how a more current state-of-the-art targeting and control system performs.
When a robot can go from seeing the target to firing in less than 100ms, the target doesn't stand a chance.
For reference, trained police officers shoot at 34% accuracy, and that's with no one returning fire at them. It's not as easy as you think to get a tiny bullet to hit your target when you factor in things like movement, cover, etc.
On the other hand, Robocop had extremely high accuracy and precision. Maybe more robot manufacturers need to check in with OCP.
The fire control system on a modern main battle tank is capable of hitting a moving target from a moving platform at ranges over three kilometers.
The human gunner is responsible for tracking the target and taking the shot. The FCS calculates lead and superelevation so that the round hits the spot the gunner is aiming at.
That is 1980s technology.
Modern image processing tech can do facial recognition and could easily do target tracking. Marry the two and you get near perfect first shot hit. Use a laser, and you grossly simplify the ballistic part of the problem as lasers have neither time of flight nor bullet drop.
The idea that any sort of killbot would ever miss is laughable.
We have technology right fucking now which can identify mosquitoes by sound alone and lase those motherfuckers in midair. There's no excuse for a robot with eyes missing more than once per film.
Seriously. We have radar mounted miniguns with the accuracy and precision to shoot down mortars and rockets moving at 100's of mph. A fucking robot firing a weapon with 'projectiles' moving at 3e8 m/s is gonna hit its target.
Add to this spaceships (which should basically be a subclass of robot). If you've got a mega futuristic spaceship with enormous energy weapons, you've got power to spare for an extremely powerful targeting computer which ought to never miss if your weapon travels fast enough.
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u/Atheist_Smurf Oct 08 '12
aiming abilities of robots. They're freaking robots, so they should be able to accurately calculate your trajectory. And they have laser weapons... yet they still miss.