Yeah, I didn't get the chariot angle of the podracers until recently, and it lessens them. Why not just have the engines connected by something less dangerous than an energy beam that will immediately fail when the power is cut and cause them to rocket off in all directions?

Looking at the Naboo starfighter, it ALMOST makes sense to have the astromech installed sideways, so that the legs don't add bulk to the ship. But for that to work without the telescoping head weirdness it would need to sit somewhat lower in the socket.

Agreed that the Droidekas were an excellent design, as well as most of the Phantom Menace machines, simply because they didn't look horribly CGed.

One of the weirdest ships from a design standpoint was Dooku's solar sailer. How exactly is that supposed to work? It seems to use conventional methods to exit a planet's atmosphere, but then it deploys a solar sail and....what? Goes to Hyperspace? Accelerates by the use of solar energy to FASTER than the speed of light? To make the trip from the outer rim to the core of the galaxy, I'd expect that it would need to make use of hyperspace, so the sails are rather useless in that regard. Eh, at that point in AOTC I simply didn't care what was onscreen as my eyes were already bleeding from seeing Yoda bounce around like a cartoon.