Comment by vitiral | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vitiral | Hacker News Reader

Possible spoilers below (but probably not if you've seen the first movie or read any of the books)

I enjoyed the first movie, but they fucked with things they shouldn't have. Dune's technology was cleverly laid out to create a kind of scifi fantasy world of swords and wizards. The 100% effective shields could ONLY be penetrated by a skilled knife wielder, creating a scifi world of knights. The bene Gesserit served the role of mystic and wizard, which the Kwisatz Haderach could finally unify.

It offers a very in your face style combat, which sets up the Dune Fremen as the strongest force in the galaxy. However, the movie effectively stripped the value of personal shields: they are penetrated by dart guns as well as conventional explosives. This effectively nullifies the whole advantage the Fremen would give. AFAICT they did so in order to have more ships and explosions.

(There's also the original shield+lasgun=nuclear-detonation, which I always found absurd since it would be trivial to have a remote controlled lasgun demolish any target. If they had nerfed anything I would have nerfed the lasgun, not the shield)

As far as I remember the explosion created by a lasgun-shield effect was indistinguishable from a nuclear explosion. Nuclear weapons were banned, their use heavily sanctioned. I think there was a hint that the use of atomics would immediately bring in the combined forces of the Landsraad Great Houses totally annihilating the perpetrator. That effectively prevented the use of the lasgun-shield effect. Though the Fremen set up some shields during the final battle for Arrakeen (in the first book) to draw Sardaukar lasgun fire, thus giving them a lesson to be a little bit more restrained on the use of lasguns.

IMO relying on laws for such restraint is silly. In a world of deception such as Dune, it would so trivial to plant a lasgun surreptitiously. Who's to know the cause of the resulting explosion that annihilates both gun and shield?

It is not law..

It is the fact that if the found out you would have the imperial Sardukars (that were basically invincible) plus all the Landsraad houses going after you and your house would be effectively gone. What stopped was the huge risk.

This did not stopped Paul from using it in the Arrakeen attack that we will see in the second movie. If Paul and the Freemen lost then house Atreides would be gone either way so he had more incentive to use it.

The Dune universe favor war of assassins that would happen with Landsraad approval. It is established that Atreides and Harkonnens had many war of assassins between then pre dune novel.

IIRC they didn't "use" it -- i.e. they didn't intentionally shoot their own shield with their own lasgun. Rather they shielded a few underground areas and the Harkonen were using lasguns, something you're not supposed to do.

I could be misremembering though.

I think they did use it intentionally because without that nuclear explosion they could not get rid of the mountains that protected Arrakeen from sand-worms.

They invaded Arrakeen riding sand-worms that would be impossible before, it is even said in the novel that Paul was riding the biggest sand-worm ever seen that day and the Freemen considered this some kind of sign they were going to win..

now i don't remember if they shoot their own shield or they knew the Sardukar would be using lasgun and took advantage of it..

EDIT:

Ok, it seen as i am misremembering things.. They did not used a lasgun\shield combo, they used actual nukes.. Either way consequences and effects are the same..

Oh I forgot about that.

I thought they were relying on a bit of a loophole: they didn't kill (m)any humans, "just" a natural barrier, which is why they could get away with it.

> since it would be trivial to have a remote controlled lasgun demolish any target

This is specifically mentioned, and carried out, in the Dune novel.

The justification for why it isn't more common is that the resulting explosion is indistinguishable from a nuclear explosion, and the Great Convention strictly forbids the use of nuclear weapons.

It’s been a while since I read it but as far as I remember, dart guns were mentioned in the book as part of a pistol + knife strategy, where you’d fire a stun round at the opponent and then close the gap with your knife. The shields are velocity dependent so slower moving dart/pellet guns were also common weapons.

I re-read the book just last year. Im pretty sure there were no dart guns.

Hunter-seeker missiles existed, but they were touted as rare or somehow difficult to operate I believe.

There were. They’re known as maula pistols in the book. They’re only mentioned in passing, so they would be easy to overlook.

They don't work with shields

https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Maula_pistol

I don't remember dart guns in the movie. Did I miss them? Only similar example I can think of is the hunter-seeker (which was in the book).

Was it a dart that disabled Duke Leto?

Yes. He failed to get his personal shield up in time

I thought it went through his personal shield.

edit: He did. [0] His shield was fully operational but the dart burrowed through the shield.

This whole scene looked cool but was really dumb tactically. A single saboteur with a pistol was able to breach the main compound and knock out all guards. Those are some crappy guards.

[0] https://youtu.be/X6tOpAwO9u4

That's the movie. In the book there are no such devices besides rare hunter seekers.

Oh right. The upthread comment was about how the book changed shields to nerf them a bit.

And I don’t think hunter seekers in the book go through shields, just that people wouldn’t have shields activated so hunter seekers would be effective.

There's lots of scenes of people shooting these projectiles that wiggle at the shield. You have a small amount of time to react still, but still different.

Then there were missiles. There were no missiles in the Book, for obvious reasons.

The Harkonnens and Sardaukar did use artillery in the book. Hawat discusses this with some Fremen who captured one, and who seem familiar with the existence of projectile weaponry (which makes sense, as Fremen do not use shields, and the Harkonnens know this). (EDIT: Not to mention Fremen use rocket launchers in the battle to retake Arrakis.)

I don't think the book mentions missiles per se, but I don't see why those wouldn't have been useful in warfare? Not every building can be covered by a shield, and shields require power sources. (This is a plot point later in the book.)

Yes they used them. IIRC it was specially mentioned how _unusual_ it was to even HAVE artillery in the age of shields, much less use them. It worked on Dune because of how shields affect sandworms and are difficult to maintain in sandstorms.

Using them in the Harkonen invasion against the shielded Atreides army flies against everything in the books. Those missiles would kill nobody and could never destroy a shielded ship.

* SPOILERS AHEAD *

the problem with lasgun and shield is that the center of the explosion could be either the shield, the lasgun or anywhere in between, no way to control it.

Some people are saying it is indistinguishable from a nuke.. that is because it is a nuke, i recall some later novel describing the reaction and basically it cause atom in the air to fuse and eventually blow-up. The effect would happen all around the shield and laser and the explosion could start any place.

But this phenomenon will be used by the Freemen in their attack to Arrakeen to destroy the rock mountains that protect the city from the sand-worms. I think this is show in the trailer, the scene where you see the imperial Sardukars in the ground and then a massive sand worm come out of a sandstorm carrying Freemens, the book even say it is the biggest sand-worm ever seen.

The shield tech in dune block fast moving things, so it not only require a skilled knife fighter, but a fighter that can control their speed, move fast when attacking and then slow down then it is time to pass trough the shield for the final blow, after all it is easy to block a slow moving blow and impossible to hit trough a shield with a fast one. This is supposed be be show when Paul is training with Gurney at the start of the movie\novel but it is hard to portray.

The shield will not block the shock wave from a explosion or the heat because that is just the air moving and the shield does not block air. As for darts, as long as they are slow enough they will work, they are even the weapon of choice for assassins and Dune universe has "war of assassins" in the landsraad so it is preety much a thing.

As for the freemen, they are the best warriors in the universe because they were raised in the most inhospitable environment that is Arrakis, it has nothing to do with shields, this is made very clear in the novels, and i dont think they even use shields in the desert. They are good fighters because they are raised fighting for very limited resources, so only the best of the best would reach adulthood. One of the things that Paul has to do is unify the Freemen and he has to use the prophecies left by the bene gesserit to do it, this will cause a lot of problems later on.

The second best fighting force in the dune universe at this time (and considered the best pre-dune novel) were the imperial sardukars that were raised in the also inhospitable prison world of salusa secundus. It is made clear in the novel that no one in the landsraad can fight on par with the sardukars, but they are defeated by freemen kids at one point, this is to show how much the Freemen are better then the Sardukars.

Actually, the only reason the Harkonnens were only able to win against the Atreides in the first movie was because the emperor borrowed some Sardukars to then. The only person confirmed in the house Atreides that could win against a imperial Sardukar were Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck, but they alone could not win the fight and Gurney was even away at the time.

This is why after Paul became the emperor he moved the house of Corino back to salusa secundus as and geo-enginered the planet into nice world so they could no longer make new Sardukars.

just to expand this a bit on why it was not the shields that made the Freemen great..

The freemen became the most skilled fighter only after Paul trained then in the "modern" ways of fighting.. He even taught stuff he learned from his mother that only the bene gesserit knew at the time, so things that were not even available to the Sardukars.

Remember, the freemen before Paul were not able to drive the Harkoneen away from Arrakis, let alone beat the Sardukars.. Only after Paul taught then those techniques that they became the best fighters in the universe.

So what made Freemen the best was the harsh environment, growing up fighting for extremely limited resources that made so only the best of the best survived and then all the training that Paul gave then..

No, the Fremen were killing Sardukars before Paul, getting good ratios to boot. Paul made them better though, no doubt about that.

yeah some freemen could kill some Sardukars.. Some Atreides could too, Duncan and Gurney for example are know to be capable of doing it..

But neither the fremen nor the Atreides alone could win an all out war against the imperial forces..

It took the freemen that already were great warriors plus Paul training and special techniques to make then into the fighting force that allowed Paul take over the imperium..

I would say the Freemen pre-paul were in average almost at Sardukar level with some surpassing then, but the Sardukar had more resources available that gave then the edge over the Freemen. But Paul teaching then took then to the next level and closed the gap and then unifying the Freemen turned then into an superior army compared to the Sardukars.

I'd say this sounds about right

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