system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Wars] Why do space battle tactics seem woefully underdeveloped?

(First time posting here, apologies if I mess up.)  


I've grown up watching the Star Wars films. I've read a few of the books (all non-canon now, I believe). Heck, I've even seen the holiday special. However, when watching through the Clone Wars cartoon this morning on Disney+, a thought struck me: battle tactics in the SWU, especially duirng space battles, seems extremely underdeveloped for the level of technology of the society.   


For example, this morning I was watching the episode "Storm Over Ryloth", and after a failed head-on attack, Skywalker comes up with a new plan: just fly the spaceship directly into their command center. Not only that, but the plan his padawan uses to help protect their depleted forces when going in to mop up the disorganized remnats appears to be (at least on the surface) 'point the less vulnerable part of the ship at the enemy'.  


Both these plans, while succesfull, strike me as 1) overly simplistic and 2) only successful because it's not something anyone ever thought of (or at least means that things one would assume are standard in a space battle somehow do not occur). These weren't ambushed droid patrols that got caught by surprise. This was a blockade specifically set up to prevent the clone army from getting in that also had advanced knowledge that they would be attacked and by whom (the second part made clear after the first failed attack). Do the ships not have physical shields (or at least armored hulls) to prevent projectile attacks? Why are these ships built with the most vulnerable area (the command center) up front where they can be more easily attacked rather than well protected somewhere in the ship? Why don't the ships naturally lead with the most well protected part (assuming they even need a 'forward facing' part of the ship?  


This isn't even something that can be written off as unique to the Clone Wars cartoon. There was quite the heated debate over the most recent numbered movie and the 'jump to light speed through our enemy' tactic. Even Han Solo's evasive maneuvers from the original trilogy has been comedically referred to as "listing lazily to the left". And don't even get me started on how droids built specifically for battle and trained soldiers alike seem to have about 25% accuracy with any ranged weapon.  


So, can someone help me to understand, in a Universe that has been through plenty of armed conflict across hundreds of developed planets, with enough technology to build space ships, laser canons, and disintegrator weapons, actually strategy seems to be such a difficult concept?
gpt
It's likely that we can view parts of the CW cartoon as wartime propaganda rather than realistic depictions of what actually happened. We have a news reel announcer at the beginning of each episode, combat encounters and flashy and dramatic, and as you said the tactics involved often don't make much sense. It's probable that what we are seeing are sensationalized depictions of a much more boring reality.

This likely happens both because real combat would be pretty uneventful (ships firing from far beyond distances which human eyes can see, lots of waiting, etc.) and to censor sensitive information about actual unit composition, tactics, technologies, and so forth. In other words, it's commoditized suffering sold to us.