The first subway cars were designed without windows. The logic was 'what are people going to see anyways'. Humans instinctively want to see motion when they are traveling, even if it's nothing useful.

And the even more boring answer: because something like this (a spaceplane, not a missile btw)

just looks weird without windows

Short answer? Failure of art direction. The guy in charge of the design shop should have redlined the design and said "Put some windows in front" or "Take out the windows on the side, make it an armored cockpit." Or simply sent it back to the drawing board.

So you get this thing, which has big dumb windows on the side and top and none in front. It also looks like a giant birdie head. I'm waiting for someone to paint theirs up like Toucan Sam.

Now try this. Take yours and fly it nose pointing straight down with the engine/wing/things turned 90 degrees back. Sort of like a boxy B-wing/Firespray hybrid. Better?

This ship obviously shares a starship engineer with the E-wing.

You know, they guy who said "We can fit the cannon right here, over the cockpit!"

The goggles idea could have merit, as I see TIE fighter pilots /Vaders helmet having a similar system.

The ship doesn't make much sense, but how much do you really expect from starwars? Dot get me wrong, I love me some starwars and love logic as well, but they don't always mesh well. For example, why does Vader make his robot hand look like it can use the force when choking people? For that matter, why do his arms look like they have muscles? Sure we could say he wants to be thought and seen as human, but if that is the case why the helmet when the universe has the tech to make Luke's robohand look like flesh and blood. Heck, after he got burned he could have had his old look back in a mater of months if not sooner. Starwars is a fairy tale in space with a bit of Jesus thrown in to piss us all off, don't read too much into it. If you want really deep sci fi read Dougless lol.

This ship obviously shares a starship engineer with the E-wing.

You know, they guy who said "We can fit the cannon right here, over the cockpit!"

You shut your mouth! The hwk-290 is a beautiful lady.. the e-wing, not so much.

The goggles idea could have merit, as I see TIE fighter pilots /Vaders helmet having a similar system.

It's less merit, more fact.

HWK runs on Windows 98, which is why it has such a poor maneuver dial.

Nerd answer: they're not windows, they're transparisteel, so it isn't a design weakness. Everybody else covered the visibility aspect.

Expanded Universe. 'Nuff said.

No. No, no no. The death of the Executor has always ranked, and will always rank (in my book), as one of the biggest letdowns of the original trilogy. If you weren't quite sure Lucas had lost it when he let a bunch of Stone Age teddy bears wipe out a stormtrooper legion, you knew it for certain when he took out the Executor like that. I mean, seriously. The Executor would have been more than a handful for the rebel fleet all on her own ("concentrate all firepower on that Super Star Destroyer" - right, sure, fishman, would you like me to wrestle a rhino at the same time?), and should have all sorts of secondary command centres specifically designed to kick in and take control in the event of a direct hit to the bridge.

Lucas could have fixed this a a later point. In stead, he gave us Binks, not-funny C3P0/R2D2 'comic relief' and made Greedo shoot first.

Speaking of the ISD..... or moreso the super star destroyer...... the super vulnerable bridge has got to be the dumbest design flaw ever. I mean, a massive massive ship taken out by a screaming A-wing pilot just because it crashed into a room full of the ship's operators...... it's almost as bad as designing a planet killing space station with a millennium falcon sized hole that leads directly to the core.

If you look at the cut away picture of the interior of the Star Destroyer things just get worse. At the very center deep inside of a ISD you have a big water tank and hangers. Good thing those are super protected by dozens of meters of hull. On the outside you have less important things like where all the people live and work. There is even a huge reactor thing that is sticks out of the hull a little bit on the bottom.

Star Wars is silly. Everything looks cool because it was designed to look cool, they came up with most of the "how this works stuff" afterwords.

On a related point it is significant to point out that Ackbar had ordered the entire rebel fleet to concentrate all their fire on the super star destroyer. We do see a couple of A-wings do a missile run against that big ball thing on top of the bridge. Immediately after we are told that they just lost their bridge deflector shield. Then we see the A-wing crash into the bridge. It is conceivable that the super star destroyer took a lot more of a pounding than just a couple of A-Wings.

Who cares? Do you care?

The HWK has windows to help people from becoming too claustrophobic after sitting in it for a length of time. It may lack a forward view screen because it was decided that a virtual forward view would be more efficient, perhaps that space holds essential equipment that couldn't go some place else, and maybe there's no forward "window" because adding extra shielding needed to withstand direct flight would have been too much. With it's design the HWK probably doesn't need to worry about a "bird strike" flying into the cockpit so easily.

As for the capital ships and their exposed bridges you can blame WWII ships for that. I was just reading the other day about one battleship design where they decided they could skimp on tower armor simply because command staff actually wanted to see what was going on and thus were on an exposed bridge. You could even argue that having actual visuals serve as a backup and check should something to wrong with instruments and view screens.

"Why is that planet getting bigger when we should be moving away from it?"

"Sir, I don't know what you are talking about because my sensors show we ARE moving away from the planet."

"Well ensign, then you'd better check your sensors quickly because my eyes are showing the planet getting larger instead of smaller."

"OH ****! IT SEEMS WE'VE BEEN HACKED!"

This is why you'd still want a view from your capital ship bridge.

The HWK has windows to help people from becoming too claustrophobic after sitting in it for a length of time. It may lack a forward view screen because it was decided that a virtual forward view would be more efficient, perhaps that space holds essential equipment that couldn't go some place else, and maybe there's no forward "window" because adding extra shielding needed to withstand direct flight would have been too much. With it's design the HWK probably doesn't need to worry about a "bird strike" flying into the cockpit so easily.

As for the capital ships and their exposed bridges you can blame WWII ships for that. I was just reading the other day about one battleship design where they decided they could skimp on tower armor simply because command staff actually wanted to see what was going on and thus were on an exposed bridge. You could even argue that having actual visuals serve as a backup and check should something to wrong with instruments and view screens.

"Why is that planet getting bigger when we should be moving away from it?"

"Sir, I don't know what you are talking about because my sensors show we ARE moving away from the planet."

"Well ensign, then you'd better check your sensors quickly because my eyes are showing the planet getting larger instead of smaller."

"OH ****! IT SEEMS WE'VE BEEN HACKED!"

This is why you'd still want a view from your capital ship bridge.

Modern warships have a command centre deep inside, where you will find the captain most of the time, leaving the bridge to the officer of the watch or even the yeoman.

The meta question here everyone needs to face is the following:

Who cares?

Evidently you. After all, you did make it to the bottom of page 2 of this thread.

I think the most obvious reason why the HWK has windows is it's not a Geth ship.

Modern warships have a command centre deep inside, where you will find the captain most of the time, leaving the bridge to the officer of the watch or even the yeoman.

But Star Wars is not based on "modern" fighting styles but rather WWII type engagements.

If you want to model a nice "safe" place to run a ship from it probably should be in the heart of the ship but that isn't always visually appealing. I will say that some franchises have altered how their ships were put together to fit better with "modern" style. Unless I'm badly mistaken the old Battlestar Galactica had a nice big viewport looking forward although it seems to me they closed a blast shield for combat while the new BSG had things run from CNC which was somewhere within the ship. Maybe the new StarWars movies will model that change.

I'm pretty sure Rumar will tell you that WW2 warships are included in his category of 'modern' warships. WW2 ships had command centres below deck, and they were generally some of the safest places to be in battle.

Modern warships have a command centre deep inside, where you will find the captain most of the time, leaving the bridge to the officer of the watch or even the yeoman.

But Star Wars is not based on "modern" fighting styles but rather WWII type engagements.

If you want to model a nice "safe" place to run a ship from it probably should be in the heart of the ship but that isn't always visually appealing. I will say that some franchises have altered how their ships were put together to fit better with "modern" style. Unless I'm badly mistaken the old Battlestar Galactica had a nice big viewport looking forward although it seems to me they closed a blast shield for combat while the new BSG had things run from CNC which was somewhere within the ship. Maybe the new StarWars movies will model that change.

That's my point. Star Wars is all about visually appealing which it does admirably. The story is just incredibly silly, which is part of the fun. Trouble is, for a functioning game and a table top game at that, you need a bit of logic, which Star Wars simply does not provide and so you sometimes have to turn your back on "canon", which FFG does quite well, I think.

Have you seen space? Its pretty! I'd want windows too!

It has to have windows, how else would they show how they are turning if the turn signals go down ? Come on people, think safety.

Looking at the schematic image, how is this a light freighter? There is no place to put the freight. ANd where is the bathroom. Flying across space and they still have to look for a rest stop?

Looking at the schematic image, how is this a light freighter? There is no place to put the freight. ANd where is the bathroom. Flying across space and they still have to look for a rest stop?

There isn't one. The guys who called it a light freighter were the ones who wrote the Dark Forces II book.

As in, F*cking idiots who said it was 90 feet long.

Well why do planes have windows? Many pilots learn to fly without using them.

For those who have gotten (or attempted to get) a pilots license the first licensee you get is VFR or Visual Flight Regulations. VFR is very restrictive and you can only fly up to a certain elevation and only in clear weather. The moment you spot a cloud you need to make way to the landing strip.

For commercial pilots they need to get IFR or Instrument Flight Rules. These pilots are trained to navigate and fly using only instrumentation and radio calls from the tower. IFR is usually learned after VFR using blocked off windows so the pilot in training cannot see outside the plane.

I think the most obvious reason why the HWK has windows is it's not a Geth ship.

Geth run on Linux. Because there's about one group in the galaxy that actually understands them.

Looking at the schematic image, how is this a light freighter? There is no place to put the freight. ANd where is the bathroom. Flying across space and they still have to look for a rest stop?

Clearly you've never seen the short-lived series, Star Wars: Catheters.