tangoprime said:
IIRC, the Star Wars universe just seems to have a serious technology stagnation going on.
Anyway, this looks fun. I seem to be one of the few people who actually liked the space combat bits in TOR, though they admittedly got old eventually. It just felt like a shiny StarFox to me, and I liked StarFox. This looks like more fun though, and the customization looks kinda cool.
Also, while I'm still a TOR subscriber (yes, despite reports of the contrary, there are actually still quite a few of us, on quite a few very full and active servers), it'll still eventually be Free to Play, so why not give it a shot?
I also play TOR, I dig a lot of the ways they cleaned it up over time, even though I dropped it like a hot potato a while after launch. For the moment I'm even a subscriber, though I confess to some burn out and slowly moving on to other games.
Star Fighter seems pretty "meh" to me because I'm not a huge PVP player (though I do it) and it seems like it will be a nightmare for anyone without a spot on game connection. Not to mention that as I said in response to the whole "tunnel shooter" mini-game that passes for TOR space combat, I don't think this kind of almost 100% "twitch reflex" based component has any real business being a part of what is otherwise pretty much a stat/gear based RPG, even in PVP. But that's an argument for another time and place since it will hardly be resolved here. Despite everything I'll probably give Starfighter a try when it launches.
As far as technological stagnation in Star Wars, yes and no. A lot of people hate the point about Star Wars being a world of predestination and so on, but that's pretty much what it is, The Force more or less keeps the universe moving in cycles where good and evil each get a few thousand years to dominate with a brief period of balance between each transition. The entire "Star Wars" saga is pretty much all about the fulfillment of a prophecy, in Star Wars prohpecies are not something that just represents a possible future, it's pretty much a metaphysical entity saying "this is what's happening, because this is what I'm deciding will happen". Nobody even really makes any true decisions, they simply think they do, free will being a sort of illusion (but an illusion to the point where for all intents and purposes it doesn't matter, especially seeing as few people, if anyone realizes this). In Star Wars the whole thing is pretty much "Anakin will bring balance to the force" the Jedi think this means he will defeat the Sith, which is stupid because good rules an otherwise peaceful galaxy, the only place for good to go is "down" to be balanced. The Sith (Papaltine) thinks this means Anakin will bring about an era of the dark side, but that's not the case either, the key word is "balance'. As a result Anakin pretty much decimates the Jedi, and then kills Papaltine, leaving his empire a shambles and the remnants of The Republic and Empire loosely balanced against each other.
I've given longer and more detailed speeches on the subject which some people have made clear they don't like (despite this being pretty much canon), especially EU fans, but that's not really the point here, just a brief explanation before I get to the point of technological "stagnation".
Consider that at the time of the Star Wars movies, nobody even really knows what a Sith is, despite them having ruled a huge empire at one time. Indeed they have actually ruled large empires numerous times as you find out from some of George Lucas' notes which lead to other stories and the like. The thing is that when the cycle changes and a period of balance ends the side losing power pretty much gets eradicated entirely, or so it seems. The resulting wars are also such that you pretty much see galaxy wide decimation. The Jedi literally walked around and committed multiple acts of genocide in bringing The Sith empire down, wiped out all their records, scorched all of their temples and planets, and pretty much killed even the most harmless seeming kid who had any kind of Sith training or bloodline. As a result even when they wanted to know the great and the wise, the guys with all the secrets, could only refer to "The Mystery Of The Sith" despite the war that was fought against them.
In the context of technology understand that during the reign of good, things were so peaceful and enlightened civilization continued without any kind of standing military forces, The Jedi themselves were little more than investigators and diplomats, compared to previous ages where almost every planet would probably have had a temple or shrine somewhere. A big deal is made out of building "A great army of The Republic". In short nobody was building militaries, weapons, or other assorted things. Karmically speaking it was pretty much the age of peace and understanding, what hippies believed might happen during "The Age Of Aquarius", albeit at the time we're seeing things the cycle is ending, The Sith are just appearing, but before that there were cracks with the private sector building up militaries and the like... which was apparently a problem the government was not used to dealing with, it had to actually build a military to deal with things like The Trade Federation who up until that point had never been an issue.
The point here being that if at the end of an age of evil the warmongers get eliminated and all traces of their technology destroyed, and the good guys don't have any need to build militaries during a reign of good, your pretty much seeing a situation where things are going to remain fairly consistant on the military front. Indeed it could be argued that The Force itself, which is pretty much the invisible puppet master of the entire thing ensures it happens this way.
You can actually go well beyond the whole 3500 year difference between "The Old Republic" and "The Main Series" and look back to the golden age of the Sith Empire when the species was still alive before it was genocidally wiped out except for a few weak bloodlines come the ToR era. The tech of that time wasn't that much more impressive either, and pretty much the same thing happened... the cycle changed, the good guys wrecked everything.
The Force seems to like it's melodrama though and ensures the survival of a few things on the fringes to bring up again for it's later cycle changing scripts. It seems pretty much acknowleged that every era seems to leave behind a few kernals for the next cycle change, and a few super weapons to be brought up later.
KoToR2 probably goes into the most detail on how it works, apparently having been based heavily on George Lucas' notes. The entire plot being that a Sith named Kreia figures out that The Force is pretty much a galactic puppetmaster and has subverted free will, and makes everyone dance through cycles. This slots her off, so she sets out to pretty much kill The Force itself. Not having been finished properly we never find out how she intended to kill a metaphysical concept, only that her first step was to pretty much eradicate the major force users. The story pretty much wraps up with her being "captured" and then you killing her, only to have her start spouting prophecy and leaving open the question if what she wanted was even possible, and if she was simply a tool for The Force to do what it wanted anyway, as you see that her actions pretty much lead to the confrontation between The Republic and Empire, which we know (as fanboys who saw the six main movies) inevitably leads to the total destruction of The Empire, a destruction so complete even the Jedi elders of the future aren't sure exactly what a "Sith" is.
Or to wrap it up, you can't think of Star Wars the way you think of the real world as we don't have a nearly omnipotent puppetmaster guiding the world through cycles for Lulz, and presumably do have free will. To us, it's easy to say "well look at how Aeronautics improved over 30 years!" at the same time though we haven't wound up spent time in a Utopia where the very concept of having an army is an anathema to what we believe society stands for, especially seeing as there is literally no threat. Honestly, I'd imagine within the context of Star Wars that most of the problem with gangsters, etc... were pretty recent in the overall scheme of The Republic, growing as the cycle change grew, which is why everyone was so woefully unprepared for a bunch of merchants with cheezy droids to start blockading planets. Chances are even the Hutts were pretty much nice guys for a long while... after all, again, no armies, minimal police forces, they obviously were viewed as posing little or no threat (and I admit, thinking a century or so before the movie Jabba's parents might have been frolicking along covered in garlands of flowers, no idea their grandson was going to be a gangster, does amuse me to no end... especially if one assumes the complete destruction of history also rendered them ignorant of the role the Hutts assumed during the Old Republic timeline).
Like most works of science fantasy it doesn't work perfectly when analyzed in detail, but there ARE some answers here, just ones that don't quite mesh with the view a lot of people want to have of the movies or it's universe. Given that we're focusing on Star *WARS*, we never get to see the Utopia in full bloom, just as we never get to see a full fledged Sith empire in operation where every day is probably like a SAW movie.
