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Chronocidal

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  1. Chronocidal
    Fair, I've done a decent amount of that myself with Trek in general for a while now... actually most franchises I enjoy have gone through the picker over the past few years. I suppose my point is more that I'm sick of trying to cherry-pick, when all we seem to get is a continuous stream of grapefruits. I want there to be something worth cherry picking again, and I don't care how insistent the production teams are that grapefruits are better than cherries, because there is no way I'm going to attempt to bake myself a grapefruit pie. This is really where we're at, and it hearkens back to a rather scathing critique of the gaming industry I read not too long ago.. and the target wasn't the industry at all, it was consumers. The bottom line was, if you want people to stop making terrible content, you have to stop rewarding them by purchasing it. As long as money is flowing, they're going to stay the course. If people keep rewarding "adequate", that's the new bar they're going to shoot for, and they'll have no incentive to strive for anything better than that.
  2. Chronocidal
    Oh, good to know, I was thinking they would be more embedded in the mechanism. I'll have to do that for my interceptor too this weekend.
  3. Chronocidal
    Yeah, unfortunately I forgot that those are the itty-bitty versions, so they share more than usual, I think.
  4. Chronocidal
    They do have two distinct models, but they're all painted black, with gray solar panels, the opposite of the OT design, and even the lower-end models had extra greeblies added.
  5. Chronocidal
    But it wasn't a First Order Tie, and I know because that set off enough alarm bells in my head that I stared at it intensely on my viewing. It was genuine 100% OT paint-scheme, with no extra gobbledegook antennas, turrets, or tractor tires. Besides, do you honestly think JJ was going to sacrifice that opportunity to throw in another OT nostalgia zinger by not having a vintage Tie to park next to Luke's vintage X-Wing? Is it possible he found some fancy officer model with a hyperdrive? I guess? But at the same time, that still does nothing to explain how he got there without the wayfinder.
  6. Chronocidal
    Luke: "They followed us!" Obi-Wan: "No, it's a short-range fighter." Kylo Ren: "Screw the design limitations of your outdated technology, I have places to go!" Seriously. If we're stretching things far enough to permit there to be functional craft in the wreckage, he could at least pick a ship capable of making the trip. Like... I don't know.. a shuttle.. Between things like this, and the way hyperspace is treated in general, apparently the OT and PT are now regarded as apocryphal writing.
  7. Chronocidal
    Either way, Arcadia seem to be jumping on the weathered-PF bandwagon, which is where I'm personally jumping off.
  8. Chronocidal
    Nope, but that's not stopping Disney from threatening legal action against people making hand-crafted dolls. The x-wing arriving there via hyperdrive wasn't the main issue for me (though, how Rey pulled it off without an astromech to do the calclulations is a good question to ask.. does the navigation macguffin also function as a hyperspace nav computer?). I'm more curious how Luke preserved that x-wing in working condition underwater for so long.
  9. Chronocidal
    Really, it would take ripping apart the main hull, and removing the spring. After that you could probably replace the "launcher" portion of the wing strut with a long plastic or wooden shaft that extended deeper into the hull, and just secure it with a screw or something. As irritating as the springs are, having the wings remain removable is still a huge benefit for storage and transport.
  10. Chronocidal
    It pains me how accurate that sounds. As an odd side note.. I discovered something rather sad (and yet amusing) yesterday. I had to go by my local Wal-Mart for some household stuff, and dropped by the toy section out of curiosity. Outside of the usual LEGO assortment? There was no Star Wars section. Complete lack of anything. No vehicles, no figures, no lightsabers, no dolls, not even any of the themed HotWheels cars.
  11. Chronocidal
    The other problem with this situation is that it's getting close to a form of Stockholm syndrome. How many mental gymnastics do we have to perform, and how much of the story do we have to internally re-write before the show reaches a point that it fits into the universe it's intended to be a continuation of? Headcanons are fun, and good for filling in the blanks of an otherwise coherent universe. They should not be what the entire story depends on to function. How desperate for content does someone need to be to ignore all of the glaring inconsistencies in tone and theme, and just agree to pick up the burden of storytelling that the show's writers were incapable of lifting?
  12. Chronocidal
    These are precisely the sorts of questions they specifically do not want anyone to ask, because the only available answer is "Screw the rules, I have plot." None of the "navigation" sideplot in this movie made a lick of freaking sense. First they show Kylo having to dodge and weave through a nebulous mass of whatever that was on the way there, implying it's a very difficult route to take. Then they show him arriving toward Exegol, from within a distant nebula... that only occupies a tiny portion of an otherwise completely clear starfield, meaning the approach should have been clear from literally any other direction. Then after Rey recovers the navigational macguffin from his burning ship (how lucky for her that it wasn't damaged when she landed it on Ach-To, and set it on fire1), she flies a vintage x-wing that's been submerged in water for over a decade through the same course. And then we see the itty-bitty Resistance squad navigating the churning mass of space blood that Kylo's ship barely fit through.. with a sub-compact version of the Tantive IV?2 Then.. Kylo flies a vintage hyperdrive-less OT Tie Fighter out of the wreckage of the second Death Star.. on the same route, without the nav macguffin? Okayyyy... As a final middle finger to anyone paying attention. the movie ends with every ship in the known galaxy somehow making that same journey, and arriving at Exegol. Did they just happen to figure out that you could approach the planet from a direction not riddled with a nebulous mass of cloudy red plot cancer? ---- 1. Someone needs to explain how the nav macguffin happened to survive Rey lopping one wing off of Kylo's tie on Pasana... that was his fancy Tie fighter, right? So the macguffin he later crushes with his bare hand survived him totaling his ship in the desert.. or did he just not have it with him for the crash? How was he going to get back to report that Rey was dead once he killed her? Did he leave it in his spare fighter back on his destroyer? Did it also work like a tracking device to find the second macguffin in the wreckage on Endor, since he didn't have the knife? Or did he just ping her on Force Skype with a "Where you at?" gps locator? 2. Yes, the Corellian Corvette/CR-90/Blockade Runner model they used was like a soap-box derby cut-scale replica. They pulled a reverse JJ-Prise on it, and forgot that ship is like three times the length of the Falcon.
  13. Chronocidal
    Except I'm talking about individual instances within this trilogy, using a single ship. How many times did the Falcon bounce off of the landscape in TFA and come out without a scratch? And then it catches fire from over-using the hyperdrive (not from colliding with all the thousands of atmospheric obstacles they somehow managed not to hyperdrive directly into, after somehow missing all of the empty space between all of those planets that must have had astronomically microscopic distances between each other), but then the landing gear and hover capability break during landing after a perfectly functional takeoff? I get that they're playing fast and loose with physics like all science fiction does (yay structural intregrity fields), but if you're going to have the ship bouncing off of planets repeatedly with no damage, you have to give some reason when the ship suddenly doesn't work after a smooth flight.
  14. Chronocidal
    See, the "long time ago" bit doesn't work when you're dealing with a galactic civilization that has existed for thousands of years at a level of technology -far- beyond our reality. Safety codes, and all that are another issue, and those have always been laughably ignored by most of the movies to set up convenient ways for characters to fall to their doom, but I also tend to think that in a universe that has artificial gravity and tractor beams, you can easily make the case that there would be safety systems in place to catch people who fell accidentally. I'm not going to argue that that's not a tissue-paper thin excuse, but it's at least remotely plausible. When I think of all the characters and stormtroopers who died falling from things, I think the vast majority of them were already dead from being shot anyway. The issue I have with the Falcon breaking in this case is different though, in that there's no reason for the random crap happening to it. Yes, it's a fickle ship, but that botched landing came directly after successfully stealing it back from a First Order hangar where it was landed completely safely, had no apparent damage, and was not pursued. When did it break? Why can't it just hover like it did to rescue Rey? If you're saying the Falcon can't hover, it would have smashed into the planet like a flaming brick and killed everyone aboard, because the only way that ship flies in atmosphere in the first place is hovering.
  15. Chronocidal
    Yeah, that's the main one that comes to mind. The "landing gear" were broken. Which.. ok, great.. they weren't broken when they took off.. and they hadn't been in any combat since the time they escaped the star destroyer.. when did they break? And yes, the "landing gear" being broken should have absolutely zero effect on the ability of the ship to hover.. so... why did they slam into the countryside of that (not the same) moon of Endor? On top of this, if the landing gear are having trouble extending, real aircraft have a manual hydraulic handpump to address that exact problem. Are you telling me that technology in this universe is so blasted reliable (except when it isn't) that no one has ever had this problem and needed an emergency backup system to address it? Even if you can hover, functionl landing gear are kind of important. Unless we're in this odd universe where a ship can just collide and bounce off the landscape willy-nilly and have no ill effects... except when they do, because of reasons.
  16. Chronocidal
    I mean, even within this movie, it's constantly broken.. in completely inexplicable ways.
  17. Chronocidal
    Pretty much. The theme of this movie seems to be that all the tech in the Star Wars universe has reliability rivaling Zentraedi tech, and ships can sit dormant in deserts, survive their hangar exploding, falling through the atmosphere, and landing in an ocean, and survive underwater for literally decades, and still function with absolutely no trouble. Heck, they don't even seem to need... fuel...
  18. Chronocidal
    Wow... I would buy a second, if they would fix the borked up stupid spring-loaded wings. No one wants their collectibles exploding.
  19. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    I mostly picked this one up to customize, and for the alternate head. The HMR VF-4's parts are pretty easy to swap in and out, so I might mix and match components with the FB2012 version.
  20. Chronocidal

    BANDAI DX YF-19!!

    Chronocidal replied to seti88's topic in Toys

    In all truth, a snapped head laser is one of the easiest out-of-the-box fixes you can wind up with. I believe there are replacements available from Shapeways (or other 3D printing services), or if you have a pin drill, a paperclip, and some glue, you can fix it to almost brand new condition (and stronger!) with a little effort. If you have larger issues with things breaking, I'd absolutely look into returns, but I don't think returning it for a broken head laser is worth the effort, especially as these get harder to find.
  21. Chronocidal
    Bottom line: Bring back the Action Fleet line. There's literally nothing between Micro Machine and derpy 1/18th-ish scale at this point (except for LEGO, which, what do you know, the only toys that actually seem to sell..). On the other hand.. Hey.. Bandai.. you know that little line of small-scale toys you have? I think they start with an "H" or something like that.. Price-wise though, while LEGO kits are great, the best bang for the buck may be the model kits at this point. The Bandai kits are amazing, and the Revell ones are basically built to be toys anyway, with just as many lights and sounds as the bigger figure-scaled ships.
  22. Chronocidal
    I would put this at slim to none. I think the best we're going to get is them including a spare skull logo piece with his 1A, since that will fit into the existing packaging.
  23. Chronocidal
    Yeah, I would definitely contact them to check on it at this point, but I suspect it's because they're still looking for copies to cover all of their orders. It might depend on how soon after the initial pre-order date you placed your order, but it's worth checking to make sure they still plan on shipping it. If so, all you can really do is wait.
  24. Chronocidal
    Fair, haven't had the time to watch that yet. Honestly.. regardless of the quality or popularity of anything, one of the first things they need to do here is hire someone competent to actually make marketable merchandise. This overlaps with storytelling to an extent, because without compelling action scenes and characters and vehicles, no one is going to want to re-enact them by zooming toy spaceships around the room. But to be entirely blunt, let me sum up my thoughts on sequel trilogy merchandise. The only things I have felt even even the smallest interest in buying were the LEGO sets, because they contained parts I could use to build better OT ships. Let me say that again: The only reason I bought any new merchandise was to kitbash it into the old designs. That's absolutely my personal take though, because I hate that instead of attempting something new, they just reworked OT designs to hell and back. On the other hand... given how the new designs in TLJ worked out, I'm not sure which is worse. To be fair to the sequels, they did at least try to make the battles in TFA and TROS compelling (not even touching TLJ here). But apparently writing good space battles is hard, so we got the largest fleet-based staring contest in cinematic history, punctuated by shots of fighters zipping around on fire, and closeups of Poe regretting his life choices. I'm going to stop myself before getting into a rant about how Endor was so much more interesting to watch because the ships actually moved. If anything, that final battle will provide a wonderful example for future generations of how to stuff so much bloat and fluff into a spectacle that it collapses under the weight. But nevermind, it's not like the giant fleet to end all fleets was there for anything except displaying just how stupidly overpowered Palpy was when he singlehandedly disabled the -entire- -freaking- -fleet- via deus ex wtfaretheysmoking.
  25. Chronocidal
    I don't think we need that by any means, because it really isn't fitting to the tone. It would be interesting to see maybe, but I feel like the closest we'll get to that level is along the lines of Rogue One.
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