Commentary on Spock v. Thanatos

[l33telboi]

Then the rounds really do lose half the energy to the sabot (and possibly something else?). Wow.

That's... really quite unexpected.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Then the rounds really do lose half the energy to the sabot (and possibly something else?). Wow.

That's... really quite unexpected.

It's usually under half. The Soviet counterpart to the M829A1 had a projectile that was 69% penetrator by weight, meaning it lost less than a third of its raw muzzle energy to the discarded sabot.

They may have that basic level of inefficiency straight out of the barrel, but in terms of armor penetration per joule from the barrel out, there's nothing else that can match them IRL that I'm aware of.

[l33telboi]

They may have that basic level of inefficiency straight out of the barrel, but in terms of armor penetration per joule from the barrel out, there's nothing else that can match them IRL that I'm aware of.

Oh yes, I know this. Low volume, high density slugs that affect a tiny surface area are generally the way to go when it comes to armor penetration. Especially stuff made out of depleted uranium due to the self-sharpening nature of such rounds.

It's just that when I first heard about APFSDS rounds, I immediately thought "Why is this good? Not nearly all the energy is transferred to the actual projectile." Since then I gradually accepted that it does happen somehow, I just didn't know how. But it turns out my first guess was right after all.

[Jedi Master Spock]

I have sent Thanatos my fifth (closing) statement of our little private debate. His arrived about twenty hours ago, making this my slowest response time yet. Busy day for me; I also wanted to drum a few things home heavily in my closing statement and make sure it was tidy, so I spent a little more than my customary two hours of work on it.

This means the debate is 90% complete.

I am encouraged by the fact that Thanatos made several legitimate arguments in his fourth statement, although they had very limited impact on my thesis. I am disappointed, however, that his last two statements have contained more ad hominem attacks. As pressed for time as he appears to be to compose his arguments, I would much rather he didn't waste his scant writing time calling me names.

[Mike DiCenso]

I am aware of pivot steering, you seem to be utterly forgetting what I did for a living. Of course, I know that low end torque and acceleration are what matters, not road speed.

I'am sorry, I hope I'am not intruding on anything by asking, but what did you do?
-Mike

[l33telboi]

Strongest point in Thanatos's post is probably the whole wall thing. Shooting holes in buildings that people can run through does not equal man-sized holes. That's pretty simplistic logic. Not much use in disputing it.

Weakest point would be the failing to realize that force times length is the very definition of energy. Following up with a remark that's supposed to belittle the intelligence of the other debater just makes the failing that much worse.

All in all, the debate seems to be spiraling downward into one-liners and insults. Oh, and didn't I suggest you settle how to quantify the source material before you start? Anyone who's tried quantifying game mechanics at one point or another realizes that it's futile to use it as anything concrete. There will be contradictions, straight out illogical stuff and whatnot resulting from such an attempt. Even if it would work 9 times out of 10, that 1 single non-working time would invalidate everything else.

Game-mechanics is as indicative of real world behaviour as chess is to mediaval combat.

[Mr. Oragahn]

So where are we on the averages?
I'm totally lost, and I cannot afford reading all the SDN threads to see what's wrong or correct.

For example, I noticed the lascannon firepower argument, MS saying it's just superior to some 2 gigajoules at best or so?

I noticed the off topic bit about the bad orbital accuracy, precisely used to make sense of ground battles where troops could be easily shot down from space.
This is problematic regarding what I've heard about capital ships often seen rushing towards targets in space at high fractions of c, unleashing a hell of firepower in the target's direction while decelerating. If accuracy was already poor at orbital ranges, there's no way such a blunt rush tactic would work, there would just be way too many misses.

[Jedi Master Spock]

So where are we on the averages?
I'm totally lost, and I cannot afford reading all the SDN threads to see what's wrong or correct.

For example, I noticed the lascannon firepower argument, MS saying it's just superior to some 2 gigajoules at best or so?

My closing statement does have a long statement on the lascannon. I have been saying for the entire debate that the lascannon's typical shot has a yield of no more than 2 gigajoules.

IMO, no supplementary reading is really required to understand the debate. There was a brief discussion of the Tau battlesuit example, and in my closing statement I refer to several lascannon estimates by Connor after presenting my full [eight] lines of evidence in favor of my lascannon estimate, but you can really do without trying to dig them up.

Also IMO, it's not really worth the time to go and read through the SDN threads on the topic, and you really shouldn't be relying on them to judge accuracy.

I noticed the off topic bit about the bad orbital accuracy, precisely used to make sense of ground battles where troops could be easily shot down from space.
This is problematic regarding what I've heard about capital ships often seen rushing towards targets in space at high fractions of c, unleashing a hell of firepower in the target's direction while decelerating. If accuracy was already poor at orbital ranges, there's no way such a blunt rush tactic would work, there would just be way too many misses.

It would indeed. This is a serious consistency problem in the WH40kverse. I would suggest that a small part of it is that they really aren't accelerating/decelerating by significant fractions of c in combat, as some would suggest, but there's a lot of compromise of the existing fluff necessary to make any sense of it.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Oh, and didn't I suggest you settle how to quantify the source material before you start? Anyone who's tried quantifying game mechanics at one point or another realizes that it's futile to use it as anything concrete. There will be contradictions, straight out illogical stuff and whatnot resulting from such an attempt. Even if it would work 9 times out of 10, that 1 single non-working time would invalidate everything else.

Game-mechanics is as indicative of real world behaviour as chess is to mediaval combat.

I felt it was a point worth having a little bit of public debate on, to air the matter. I think I managed to eliminate the contradictions in my very scrupulous take on game mechanical evidence, but you're welcome to disagree.

I was outright discarding well over 90% of the material that could be derived naively from the WH40k system (which is, structurally, very messy), most of the material that could be derived naively from the BT system, and placing the small amount of material remaining on an inferior canon rung.

Still, the game mechanics very often informs the fluff for "game" universes, and I think it's worth looking at, even if it's of limited use.

Strongest point in Thanatos's post is probably the whole wall thing. Shooting holes in buildings that people can run through does not equal man-sized holes. That's pretty simplistic logic. Not much use in disputing it.

Weakest point would be the failing to realize that force times length is the very definition of energy. Following up with a remark that's supposed to belittle the intelligence of the other debater just makes the failing that much worse.

You may well have the right of it regarding his third statement.

[Thanatos]

I'am sorry, I hope I'am not intruding on anything by asking, but what did you do?
-Mike

Tank Crewman in the Marine Corps.

Code: Select all

Weakest point would be the failing to realize that force times length is the very definition of energy.[quote]
No, work is force times displacement (aka change in position). The gun itself only moves the total of its recoil path not its entire length. 

Besides which, its utterly incorrect to use it  even if it wasn't done wrong.

edit: But this is for the debate in question, so I'll drop it in the commentary lest it becomes a mini debate and break the space-time continuum.

[Roondar]

edit: But this is for the debate in question, so I'll drop it in the commentary lest it becomes a mini debate and break the space-time continuum.

Sounds painful. Let's try to avoid it.

Lest we get something like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv56D6Le2So
(specifically, the bit at 1:38 and later, be sure to watch it all though ;) )

[Jedi Master Spock]

edit: But this is for the debate in question, so I'll drop it in the commentary lest it becomes a mini debate and break the space-time continuum.

You do still have your final reply to make.

In the mean time, I will say that I think most of that particular thread of discussion within that debate suffered from some misunderstandings between the two of us. I've also added an index to the front of the thread here so folks can go straight to each post rather than scroll through many screens.

[Thanatos]

Going to be a bit late in replying. A combination of getting sued for some old accident and the fact that I have to go load a truck for my parents as they decided to make a move a day early.

[Thanatos]

OK, its all done, just waiting for Spock to put in his fourth reply so I can directly put my fifth reply in.

I have to admit that I didn't do even remotely as well as I should have. I kept getting hit by unexpected events and just didn't have any time to do any research. Often, I just didn't have to time to even respond to everything.

I was also hamstrung by personal honor: Unlike Spock, I would not use the commentary threads to plumb for evidence. I didn't use Painracks post that pointed out that Spock was distorting evidence (well, about Battletech. It was clear he was being dishonest on a lot of 40K stuff) and using non canon sources for example. Being the better person puts you at a disadvantage.

But even at my absolute worst (and this is near it), I have to say that I still did fairly well against someone like Spock.

[Jedi Master Spock]

OK, its all done, just waiting for Spock to put in his fourth reply so I can directly put my fifth reply in.

If you'd sent it directly to me, I would've noticed earlier. Publicized.

I have to admit that I didn't do even remotely as well as I should have. I kept getting hit by unexpected events and just didn't have any time to do any research. Often, I just didn't have to time to even respond to everything.

I checked a few of the wordcounts (excluding quotes and BBCode) and compared with the response times just now. The average elapsed WPM was the most striking gap. I was returning replies at rates of 1-10 eWPM, while you generally stayed under 0.2 eWPM.

I think you would have done much better if you had adequate time to respond. I strongly suspect that I not only was able to begin writing my reply more quickly, I also wrote much more quickly, exacerbating the verbiage gap.

Particularly weak points? You didn't cite a single BT source until your fourth reply; that displayed a striking lack of familiarity with BattleTech analysis and sources.

You also failed to challenge explicitly my preliminary assertions regarding the relationship between modern tech and future techs, and only attacked it implicitly when I later made use of those previously unchallenged principles. To me, that showed some weakness on your part as a debater.

I was also hamstrung by personal honor: Unlike Spock, I would not use the commentary threads to plumb for evidence. I didn't use Painracks post that pointed out that Spock was distorting evidence (well, about Battletech. It was clear he was being dishonest on a lot of 40K stuff) and using non canon sources for example. Being the better person puts you at a disadvantage.

Everything PainRack said I would have been quite happy to address. (For example, he complained that the Dragon is, being a heavy BattleMech, not all that common; neither is the Leman Russ. Sentinels and Chimera variants together make up greater numbers in most of the armies I saw numbers for. Most importantly, the two are of similar mass and similar "basic" levels relative to other armored units.)

It is not within me to willfully ignore evidence, regardless of the source. As I commented earlier, the Inferno spread was very much simply an additional (and fairly minor) confirming line of evidence on top of the arguments I already had waiting. By my standards, it would have been dishonest of me not to mention it, as I was aware of it and it was relevant, if not the best evidence on the table.

But even at my absolute worst (and this is near it), I have to say that I still did fairly well against someone like Spock.

I don't feel that you did well in refuting the claims I laid out in my initial post; of course, we both are expected to declare victory. I will justify this claim, mind, but I'll let others take over and kibbitz for now.