Futuristic/Alien Hardware Using Old Weapon Technology - Why?
Xenomorphine
Posts: 2,421
It always feels weird to find depictions of hyper-futuristic technology shown in the store, which have nothing more advanced than the sort of miniguns and rocket pods you'd expect to find on military vehicles from decades ago. Often without any way to remove them from the vehicle (or, at least, create seperate material zones, so that they could be made completely invisible) and replace them with alternative props you might personally have.
It would be like modelling a stealth fighter of today with flintlock muskets bolted to it. 
It gets even stranger when it's meant to be something representative of a completely alien technology.
Why do so many content creators do this? Why not look at real proposed weapon developments for the future or at least try to make them look more futuristic/alien in functionality?
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Got any examples?
I think some of it probably comes down to what looks like sci-fi to many people. Retro tech has a recognizable aesthetic, but modern stuff is harder to detach from reality; ex. a concept like iPads was futuristic in the 90s but totally pedestrian now. Uniquely alien stuff is harder to get reference for, and any strongly developed design for a premade asset will be less flexible than something that's basically a rocket launcher with a bunch of greebles on it.
Also, realistically rocketpods and miniguns are likely to be around for a long time, there are good reasons for that you can find in plenty of gun and science fiction discussion boards that don't need to be rehashed here.
well a particle accelerator needs destruction physics in D|S which lacks the technology, a bullet hole easier to do, for incendiary devices D|S is far too retro unless you import something done in say Houdini
Dforce explosions while spectacular don't quite cut it!
Futuristic and Alien are different; sure, alien technology can be futuristic to us, but it can also be a regression or primitive.
Alien technology we 'recognise' can't (IMO) be futuristic by any great degree.
The alien tripod model, which came out, today. That was what spurred me to create this post. Why would alien technology have human miniguns and rocket pods? The inclusion of those was what lost it a sale from me.
I'd argue against that, personally. PKWS 2 has reinvigorated old rocket pods, by allowing previously unguided ordnance to be given laser guidance, but we're now literally entering the era of lasers, railguns/coilguns, high-powered microwave weapons and even sonic weapons starting to come into production. Even the Iranian drone which was recently taken down, wasn't shot out of the sky, but was electronically jammed by a wheeled vehicle aboard the ship. The first warship-mounted laser was aboard the USS Ponce (ironically helmed by Captain Kirk) and newer varieties will soon be coming out as anti-missile and anti-drone defences. China's CCP naval ships have also recently been observed putting railguns to sea on practical trials. The F-35 is scheduled to be upgraded with laser weapon turrets in just a few years. The UK's next generation warplane, the Tempest, is presently be designed for direct energy weapons.
Kinetic weapons might still exist in the future, but they're not going to be nearly as commonplace as they have been in the past. Especially with directed energy weapons being far cheaper per shot than a multi-million dollar missile, which helps budgets to be diverted to more critical needs.
So, if you're trying to depict futuristic military technology, kinetic weapons are going to be less and less visible. More likely, if they exist, they will augment energy weaopns.
And for ET technology? Definitely nothing resembling human weapons from yesteryear!
Can be, but that would be the exception to the rule. And, even in cases where it is, why would it be an exact copy of Earth's old technology?
The reason it is done is of course because that is what people are familiar with creating, or buying, or seeing. You see one of these, you immediately know what it is, even if you don't know the exact tech it uses, and one can immagine any futuristic beam weapon might still use a barrel for whatever tech reason. And potentially futuristic replacements would be hard to identify or visually boring. One could come up with tons of weaponized versions of transporter technology, or use information warfare, none of which will look good if you're creating a vehicle that they are mounted inside where it can't be seen bolted to the hull. A futuristic warrior brandishing a 1cm-long Triangle Of Annihilation just doesn't make for an exciting render. (well, probably. Now I want to make that work. :-)
That said, I'd love to see something new that hasn't been thought of yet if you can make it work. If there are any new exciting effects, I might purchase just to use the effect regardless of the actual item in question if the effect can be separated from the object that creates it.
An interesting point, but the alien tripod seems an odd example, as that screams "retro" to me.
As for what will be viable technologies in the future, I'm not versed in what the current thinking is. In my ignorant opinion, I can see the triad of energy/railgun/missile type weapons, particularly for ground combat, with the corresponding defensive triad of energy-absorbing/armored plating/ECM types, on the assumption that destructive payload of a feasible beam weapon in atmosphere over distance will be limited compared to a projectile weapon. But again, my knowledge of state-of-the-art weapons technology is twenty years old.
And when playing space games, I always lean toward energy weapons, but I'm not big on special-purpose combat vessels.
Nothing's stopping the creator from including visual effects, if they want to make it clear to the viewer what effects it has.
And, yeah, one can say a tube could be likely for a number of weaopns, but, again, why make the entire weapon look exactly the same as a 1960s era chunky minigun? Make them unusual shapes and/or add some sensors and designators alongside them. This makes them visually interesting. Especially for non-human vehicles.
Like this design: https://c4.wallpaperflare.com/wallpaper/759/250/501/sci-fi-vehicle-futuristic-military-wallpaper-preview.jpg
It's clear to the viewer that it's obviously a weapon, but it looks convincingly futuristic. It's not recognisable as anything which exists. It feels plausible as something futuristic. It's not even a tube, it's square, which helps to sell the viewer that it's not a conventional weapon, as we presently know it.
Or how about this: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OcFUrNWIavY/TovARY7BBbI/AAAAAAAABbs/jwcXfv01ZLk/s1600/diogo+valle+bittar+hovertank+futuristic+future+battle+tank+concept+art+design+railgun+rail+gun+EMP+blaster+cannon+war+dsng+marvel+sci+fi+suv+video+game.jpg
Something else which is clearly not a conventional weapon which fires physical rounds, but immediately tells the viewer it is a weapon and msut somehow focuses a beam of energy.
Or let's have a look at real weapons and coutnermeasure devices already out there.
This is the LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) - a real sonic weapon, used for riot control and broadcasting verbal messages at very long distances: https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/660x/assets/images/142272-gadgets-feature-futuristic-weapons-and-military-hardware-image60-61mntct5l3-jpg.webp?v1
It's a dish mounted on a turret. It's seen a lot of use out around Somalia, to defeat incoming speedboat swarms of local pirates, as a non-lethal deterrent aboard commercial ships. But even without being told anything, it doesn't make you assume it's for traditional purposes. It's black and flat, not curved. It's also chunky, therefore, must be using a lot of energy for something. People tend to assume thin dishes are for communications, but thick ones make us think something else could be the purpose (which, here, it is).
This is a real Polish tank concept: https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/660x/assets/images/142272-gadgets-feature-futuristic-weapons-and-military-hardware-image54-a6edbz0wl8-jpg.webp?v1
It's still a barrel, but the way it's shaped makes it immediately interesting. It isn't a conventional rounded tube, but starts out as a tilted oblong, then changes to a more rounded tube shape. This goes to show the impact of combining more than one shape into a weapon for immediate visual appeal (the real purpose being to help provide a degree of stealth, but we're talking about hypothetical visual concepts).
Say hello to the hypersonic X-51 Waverider: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/X-51A_Waverider.jpg
Doesn't look anything like the kind of rockets and guided missiles presently in the store, does it? But that's the future. Imagine a stealth bomber fitted out with a number of these in an internal bay, which opens out as it gets near the target to deploy a whole flight of them. In days gone by, you would probably associate that with a cartoon, but it's where the US Air Force will be in the very near future.
Active Denial System:
https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/660x/assets/images/142272-gadgets-feature-futuristic-weapons-and-military-hardware-image31-d9lytmvcg7-jpg.webp?v1
https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2009/12/sci_fi_weapons_3a.jpg
This is literally an energy weapon created about a decade ago and already fielded to deal with armed riots. If you want to imagine what a microwave weapon would really look like, this is it. Again, demonstrates the visual impact of a dark dish placed on a turret. Why don't we see some futuristic vehicle models in the store kitted out with smaller versions of things like this they could slew around?
What about real laser weapons?
https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/660x/assets/images/142272-gadgets-feature-futuristic-weapons-and-military-hardware-image27-l2onuqimkm-jpg.webp?v1
https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/660x/assets/images/142272-gadgets-feature-futuristic-weapons-and-military-hardware-image17-nyihgtawbb-jpg.webp?v1
Or the smaller version: https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/660x/assets/images/142272-gadgets-feature-futuristic-weapons-and-military-hardware-image18-swxakxmguu-jpg.webp?v1
These are being used to shoot down missiles, drones and even individual mortars in flight.
The smaller version also shows the value of making weapons look interesting by clustering small boxes of missile tubes, sensors and designators around them, in a single turret which can elevate and slew around. Imagine a futuristic gunship with one or more turrets looking like those. That's where we're heading.
Like here: https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/660x/assets/images/142272-gadgets-feature-mile-maker-precision-guided-firearms-image14-bn0zvgeylj-jpg.webp?v1
And here: https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/660x/assets/images/142272-gadgets-feature-futuristic-weapons-and-military-hardware-image11-dvkbyispcl-jpg.webp?v1
And this unmanned robot, here: https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/660x/assets/images/142272-gadgets-feature-futuristic-weapons-and-military-hardware-image8-xw2ahlcpx7-jpg.webp?v1
These are the sort of aesthetics which make a product look interesting and which would make them feel plausible. Not copy-and-paste stuff from Vietnam times.
...ah, the D3D Mk 4-14 Clothing and Hair Disruptor™.
I'm not spending pages and pages discussing this because most people are not interested but here are the basics.
Lasers or any other sort of directed energy weapon can never be as efficient at deliverying energy on target as a gun or missile. That's just physics. Using a laser to shoot down a missile or drone is based on not needing to deliver a lot of energy on target but just needing to "blind" the guidance systems. The advantage isn't in amount of energy delivered but in speed at which it is delivered.
Railguns are simply ballistic weapons with a different propellant. Ultimately a not very energy efficient one but one with some possible advantages, I personally doubt it will ever see wide adoption. Considering the size of the battery and rail systems required it would probably be more efficient to simply install VLS cells or more tubes of conventional naval artillery.
No, directed energy weapons will not become common because they are so easy to defeat. Polarized shields over optics means the weapon needs an order of magnitude more power to disable the sensor and that is sinmply not viable. That's whay dazzle lasers against manned combat aircraft never became a thing. It was trivially easy to put a two different colors into the canopy and the pilot visors and that made the power requirement for a dazzle laser prohibitive. It's still possible against drones and missiles because despite your claim hundred thousand dollar missiles and drones are cheap and just not worth the effort to shield at this time.
Form follows function.
Where's the fun in that?
There are some good ideas in the example image links above.
You could also kit-bash some existing items to modify them to your satisfaction, although of course that would be extra work, but it's another option for now.
a weapon exists purely to attack an enemy
what sort depends on the outcome wanted
total anihilation, disable, conquer
the latter would likely be some mind control or integration like The Borg
there is really quite a scope for what a weapon could be as exists now with chemical and biological weapons
a popular trope is indeed the DNA based ones that change the target
It's this kind of thinking that leads to axes the size of car doors
...or simply embarrass your opponent when their hair and clothing explode. Could be really bad news in the vacuum of space.
Just imagine if they weaponized dForce.
..I have,
Now I have to design what the weapons look like and model them . dForcing may actually be more effective than vaporising your target. Imagine what a ship or battle star based version would do. Why blow a planet to bits when you can twist it into looking as if came out of a Salvador Dali painting?
The ability to blow up a planet is insignificant when compared to the power of the dForce.
Well, I state Alien technology we recognise, becuase if we don't recognise it, then we're just guessing and forming opinions based on the patterns and/or shapes we think we recognise.
I didn't say it would be like earth technology - never mind exact. If we recognise it then it could be similar and even very similar; that doesn't, however, mean we're correct in our estimation of what it is.
Given what I've said, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
Agreed... and even among stealth vehicles, what was gee-whiz in the 80s and 90s is obsolete in 2020.
(as someone who once worked on the now-obsolete F-117 A, your analogy strikes a very strong chord. It also makes me feel old as f!$#@%.)
So, to your original question... I think too many people have hewn to the Aliens vibe (if you've seen the movie, you know what's up). To fix that, have you tried kit-bashing bigger stuff to cover/obscure/obfuscate those obvious bits?
Personally, I'm not beyond popping open Wings, dragging the underlying/exported .obj file into it, and ripping out the bits myself. Yeah, you'll have to re-do the textures/shaders, etc etc, but that's not too hard to do, is a lot of copypasta at most if you arrange the UV maps properly, and although time-consuming, you'll only have to do it once.
IIRC there's a lot of greeble/scifi kitbashing packages out there which can let you cobble-up spacecraft in fairly short order.
Well, if they function, then that's the form they should have.
As far as it goes, there's a certain point beyond which a design becomes too distant from what a viewer expects for them to immediately process what it is, so making it look like something that they already understand is a quick way of explaining what it is without having to actually stop the story to explain things. There's a very classic story from the first season of the original Star Trek series. In the episode "Mantrap", there is a creature that lives on salt and can mimic the appearance of a human being, which briefly gives itself away when it watches another character putting salt on some vegetables. The Star Trek prop department outdid themseves and came up with some really unsual and futuristic looking salt dispensers for the sequence... but when the time came to shoot the scene, everyone realized that they looked so unlike a normal salt shaker that it really wouldn't be clear what was going on unless someone actually held one up and said "This is a salt shaker." So, at the last second someone ran to the studio commisary and grabbed a couple of normal, 1960s salt shakers and that's what ended up on film. And what became of those odd futuristic salt shakers? Well, they ended up getting a much bigger and more prominent position in the series as they were used as something else instead... Dr. McCoy's medical instruments!
On the other hand, sometimes you WANT the function of an object to not be obvious, with by far the best example I can think of being the Monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. At one point in development they were actually planning on projecting images onto it's surface to show that it was teaching things to the dawn apes in the daen of Man sequence, but ultimately Kubrik decided that that was far too literal and blatant, and went with the featureless black rectangle and the more abstract "first tool" sequence that forces the audience to think things through for themselves.
the three shells
I like the Martian ships from War of The Worlds (1953) - They're recognizable and strange all at once. Also, they're still awesome!
They don't really let loose 'til 2:36 .
....In the opening of the Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 version) Klaatu holds out an item which is mistaken for a weapon and gets shot in the arm, the item is destroyed. He mentions afterwards that the item was a gift for the President with which, "he could study life on the other planets".
That film is so amazing in every way, and it's even more impressive if you're ever lucky enough to get the chance to see it on a full size movie screen. That said, the original idea they had for the propulsion system was even cooler. Since the martians in the original book rode in giant tripod-like vehicles, the original concept for the feature film was to update the idea by making the ships moving on legs made of pure energy. To acheive this effect, the original text footage used "legs" made of super-thin lengths of wire through which a high current was run while massive fans were used to cause them to throw off arcing sparks as they were puppeteered. Ultimately, though, it was deemed that the risk of killing someone was far too high with as many people who had to be on the set for the miniature scenes, so they went with the transparent beams added in post instead.
Another great one. So much better in almost every way than the 2008 remake (although the cast of Keanu Reeves was a pretty good choice to follow Michael Rennie). That said, both films did fudge a bit at the end by leaving out the final big plot twist from the original short story Farewell To The Master.
Especially since both Bullock and Stallone have since "revealed" the secret of the shells as it was told to them by the writer... and they're completely different. :) Bullocks version makes a lot more practical sense, though.
Dang, that was a far better movie than it had any right to be.