I think the only technology with any real-world practicality that’s also popular in science fiction is power armour; more specifically, the exodus they are built on top of. The necessity of those suits in warfare would likely be for transporting riflemen around hard-to-navigate terrain. Even then, it’s likely that such a technology would be used sparingly for small patrol missions than in actual combat. Why am I bringing up exo suits in a thread with such a specific quote? Because it’s often overlooked by writers how unbelievably broken some of their in game weapons are.
If Xeelee Sequence, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, EVE Online and Gothic Fleet Armada got anything correct about sci fi, it’s that the best tactic in any war of attrition is to spam your opponent with only the most broken weapons available to you in your kit. There’s absolutely no reason to use any other technology, if any faction can just blast someone else with endless space lasers, auto cannons, and large bombs until they inevitably win a battle. Especially if the technologies available are cheap to make and mass produce. If this wasn’t true, NATO wouldn’t still be relying on shitty and possibly rusty m4 carbines, Leopard 1s, and Apache-64s to fight in every fucking battle they’ll ever participate in regardless of context. Similarly, there wouldn’t be so many countries using Ak-74us, and armoured single-machine-gunned trucks to supply their armies.
In fiction this brainless approach to mechanized combat is even more apparent in the galactic empire’s (the Star Wars one to prevent confusion) over usage of the death star and their star destroyers whenever they start losing basically any fight, the interim coalition’s tendency to favour its space navy during its alien-genocide campaigns, or the Necron’s haha funny star- and planet- destroying super weapons. Literally the only time a cool sci fi faction decides to use a technology that isn’t brain dead simple and cheap is if that faction is complete shit. Examples of this relationship between technologies usage and a faction is apparent in the Terran federation, the UNSC, the Imperium of man, Gundam’s Earth federation, Supreme Commander’s Earth federation, every house in Dune, and more—no I don’t care that all of those factions consist exclusively of humans.
Looking back at all of this, any sci fi fan has to wonder. Are all fictional—and by extent real—wars doomed to always fall into being series of brief battles det
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