Stupid Alien Designs + Worthless Concepts

[clearspira]

Oh, and the famous green women from Star Wars with the heads shaped like octopuses.

[GreyICE]

The Klingon Bat'leth is probably second only to the chainsword for dumbest possible weapon that an alien species has used. It seems designed to simultaneously overburden and kill the wielder.

The blade design is terrible for one handed use, since you would always be swinging a large bladed portion that was pointed at you. Any time it's in line with the plane of your opponent, you're also threatening to kill yourself with your own weapon. In addition it's terrible to bring into line because it's completely imbalanced.

Used two handed it's even worse. The grip is too wide for good staff combat, and it's designed for close-in fighting. Close-in fighting is suicide. Anyone with a sword would cut you to ribbons a dozen times over before you closed. Assuming the Klingons had armor heavy enough to stop that, a warhammer would still be a much more practical weapon. Wide, swinging strokes are just invitations to get stabbed. Repeatedly. It's like a red carpet. You have this whole long swing, and a diagram that says "stab here".

Some of the Klingon weapons weren't bad, but the Bat'leth is strong evidence that the Klingons were originally quite a peaceful species until high technological development - they'd never have hit on a hand-to-hand weapon that looked like that for combat, unless it was deliberately designed for aesthetics over efficiency.

I also have to assume Klingons can regrow fingers, since that weapon seems great for getting all of yours cut off.

[McAvoy]

Yeah the Bat'leth is pretty bad. I think it's just an unfortunate design to make it look alien. Problem is that since Klingons are shaped like humans which means what works for humans will work for Klingons. And since we have warred for so long we pretty much perfected blade design.

Then again you could improve upon it like the Minbari staff weapon. Even the Jaffa staff isn't that bad if you consider there was some sort of electrical charge on the opposite end at least in the movie.

Though piss poor rate of fire and design in modern warfare made it bad versus guns.

Speaking of which SG-1 serpent heads were bad. Well the whole design of it looked bad. Looked very cheap. But those serpent heads had to make them very top heavy.

[Riedquat]

The bat'leth would be OK if it had become a ceremonial weapon ever since the Klingons had invented effective enough guns to make it obsolete and had since evolved in to its current form as just a ceromonial weapon (and knowing the Klingons some form of formal combat, detached from actual war, where making it more difficult to use even if less practical would be seen as something only a skilled warrior could handle, without the downside of being wiped out by less skilled ones with more effective weapons), but they keep trying to use them in battle.

[McAvoy]

Tbh, Klingons gotta be among the dumbest aliens in sci fi. Like the board DS9 in the Way of the Warrior and they just rush the defending security officers with blade weapons where they can be cut down by phaser fire. Yeah yeah they have an over emphasis on personal combat but no way in hell can they be a invading force that takes over planets of that is how they take over something like DS9.

[GreyICE]

Tbh, Klingons gotta be among the dumbest aliens in sci fi. Like the board DS9 in the Way of the Warrior and they just rush the defending security officers with blade weapons where they can be cut down by phaser fire. Yeah yeah they have an over emphasis on personal combat but no way in hell can they be a invading force that takes over planets of that is how they take over something like DS9.

Star Trek was so weird with combat. It's like they turned Gene Rodenberry's idea of hating combat into "have lots of combat, but be really, really bad at it." Like have you noticed how none of the weapons does more than superficial damage to the scenery, yet people never seem to take any cover behind the invincible scenery?

[Madner Kami]

Just Sci-Fi-writers not really thinking things through properly... What a shocker, I guess?

As for using close combat weaponry during ship-boarding. That actually is a good idea, as long as you are not using CQC-weaponry when fighting on the promenade of DS9, but corridors and ship-bridges, plus, the forces can actually be beamed right next to a target, creating ambush-possibilities that are hard to counter.
As for invading planets, we don't really see Klingon invasion forces ever, only boarding parties. Granted, having a simple hand-disruptor as a side-arm would still be a good idea regardless. As a side-note, I find it highly interesting that planetary invasion would be kind of a non-thing in Star Trek. Ground-based shields can lock off entire areas and would need ships in orbit (and thus air superiority) to get things done and once that shield is down... Well, no need for combating ground-forces, just drop a photon or quantum torpedo on their head. Even a simple phaser array can drill holes into the crust of a planet after all, so... yeah. Fucked. Royally. Outside of commando-actions, I really have a hard time exploring ground-combat in the Star Trek universe, like, at all and the ground forces (AR-559) not using portable shield generators really is only the tip of the ice-berg.

[CharlesPhipps]

I admit I'm a believer that too many people too much faith in the forward motion of evolution. Ironically, despite being religious in RL, I strongly reject that every evolutionary mutation successfully passed on is going to be a beneficent one. All that any kind of weird mutation or adjustment of a race is that they have successfully mated.

If the environment doesn't cull them then that mutation will successfully propagate. Humans have all sorts of shitty evolutionary traits that serve no purpose and impede us from being more awesome but are there because we have their holders able to get busy and raise a child to do the same.

So yes, if the knee testes people people keep their ball sacks there and they somehow have mated fine then they will be fine.

[CharlesPhipps]

Tbh, Klingons gotta be among the dumbest aliens in sci fi. Like the board DS9 in the Way of the Warrior and they just rush the defending security officers with blade weapons where they can be cut down by phaser fire. Yeah yeah they have an over emphasis on personal combat but no way in hell can they be a invading force that takes over planets of that is how they take over something like DS9.

In Dune they justify all the knife fighting with the fact shields don't work against blades and lasers can result in atomic explosions.

[Riedquat]

Tbh, Klingons gotta be among the dumbest aliens in sci fi. Like the board DS9 in the Way of the Warrior and they just rush the defending security officers with blade weapons where they can be cut down by phaser fire. Yeah yeah they have an over emphasis on personal combat but no way in hell can they be a invading force that takes over planets of that is how they take over something like DS9.

In Dune they justify all the knife fighting with the fact shields don't work against blades and lasers can result in atomic explosions.

That's a sign of an author who's tried to think it through rather than going with "well this looks cool, no more thought needed!" An interesting example of thinking things through is the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where all sorts of absurd extrapolations and considerations are given to things, in a manner that wouldn't work in a non-comic work but are what elevates it to brilliance.