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 determined by who has the deadlier but cheaply produced weapon? If not, where can an avid sci fi enthusiast find a series where the wars fought are complex, but aren’t fought between primitive space-faring societies.
Power armor is goofy. In a real world military you don't want to invest that much expensive tech into an individual soldier. For a whole tank crew (and accompanying footsoldiers) it's conditionally worth it (but usually not these days). With higher tech weapons and armor, the trend has been towards being more long range and remote. Elite soldiers wearing bulky power armor is pretty fundamentally at odds with how modern militaries work; it's basically just trying to modernize the (mythical) knight in shining armor.
>>36498>I think the only technology with any real-world practicality that’s also popular in science fiction is power armourThe thing with power armour is that if you have the technology for it, you might as well just build a robot or proper cyborg instead since you're removing the weak point.
I'm not really sure about the point you're trying to make with the rest of the post. Like yes having better weapons and more weapons would help you a lot to win a war. You'd only use useful weapons as well. But in real life (and lots of fiction like Gundam, Star Wars etc. because they need to sell models) there are tons of variations of every single weapon. Real life militaries have a trillion versions of everything each specialised for a single task. Think about how many different kinds of missiles there are for similar purposes. It's only due to budget limitations in sci-fi TV shows that they all use the same spaceship and weapons.
>>36526Yeah, the modification potential of superior technologies make them the most likely weapons to become overused in science fiction and in real life. That aspect of any good technology doesn’t suddenly make other technologies stand out. Instead, that aspect does the opposite. What I want to find is a sci fi game or franchise that can utilize all kinds of combat technology in a practical matter. Currently, it’s reasonable to question if such an IP even can exist.