Critique of scifights.net Federation vs. Empire: Conclusions
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 6:58 pm
Conclusions – scifights.net: Federation vs. Empire
This is a bit more of a random smattering compared to my previous critiques as I try not to cover things in this conclusion which are covered else ware. In fact I wasn't planning on making a critique of the conclusion, but as soon as I bumped into the item at 5:30 I felt there was easily sufficient reason for something.
5:30:
"You know, one side has to have more firepower. And when you get right down to it. Let's just forget the numbers. We saw the Borg ships fire twenty times on armored Voyager, and didn't leave a scratch. And heavy turboalsers, when they hit similar things they blow a hole the size of a baseball field and you have to kind of realize that these weapons are the more powerful ones."
I'm sorry, but this is just an awful comparison by any measure. In order to draw this conclusion one must assume that, for no reason or evidence of any kind (what so ever), that the one-off super armor seen in VOY: "Endgame" is equal to that used on Imperial ships. That is a stupid assumption. Especially when one considers that an analysis of their performance place the hulls about on par in most cases, if not slightly in favor of the duranium hull.
An analogy would be to compare the penetrative powers of a bullet fired from a pistol vs a pencil in someone's hand poking things. The pencil stabs through a block of Armor_A with ease, yet the bullet fails to penetrate a block of Armor_B in the slightest. So does this test clearly demonstrate the pencil is better than a gun in combat? Well maybe, but what are the materials? Let's say Armor_A is 10 cm of styrofoam and Armor_B is 10 cm of hardened steel. Now are we surprised by the results? Of course not!
Using these two scenes as evidence that Imperial weapons are better is like saying the pencil is better in the analogy. To do that you must first assume the two materials are of equal strength, which they aren't. Not all "advanced armor" is created equally.
14:24:
Here Brian compares starship combat to chess, mobility of pieces determining the strength of the piece in chess. He then applies this to starship combat, in so far as the only thing that matters is mobility.
Again this is a horrid analogy as it leaves out so many factors. Such as what happens if your fleet arrives to invade planet 'xyz-642' but your entire fleet is destroyed by the fleet defending planet xyz-624 with the defenders taking minimal losses? Obviously your superior speed isn't too useful if you can't do anything meaningful when you arrive. This is why starship combat is important not for when random individual ships meet in space, but when one side must break through another's blockade, repel an invasion force, and other such stuff that we see in The Clone Wars all the time.
This is where Star Trek and Star Wars combat styles depart in the greatest of ways. In Star Wars the purpose of ships is to break through to a planet to land troops or to defend a planet from having troops landed, space combat is secondary to ground combat. In Star Trek ship combat is used to gain space superiority and therefor control over a region, and ground combat is secondary being used for finishing off the enemy and securing your hold on an area, not as the primary fight as it is in Star Wars.
Now I'm not saying mobility isn't an important factor, because it is. But on the other hand it is not the only factor as the chess analogy implies.
16:15:
This bit just bothered me a bit, not much here of technical merit. The use of the farm "fanatics" being used to describe anyone who thinks Federation ships are vastly superior seems somewhat unfair.
Do I think a Federation ship could "curb-stomp" a Stardestroyer in straight up combat? Well I wouldn't use those words exactly, but essentially yes (although not to the extreme to which Brian and others argue a Stardestroyer would curb-stomp a Federation ship (this is not to criticize them, just a comparison of scale (10-to-1 vs 10,000,000,000-to-1 kind of thing))).
Does this automatically make me a fanatic? No.
And do I have reasons? Yes.
Am I emotionally clinging to what I want the outcome to be? No.
Am I too emotionally engaged in this silly subject? Perhaps, but much less than many sports fans are to their sporting teams. So on the scale of things, no.
Circling back to the use of the word "fanatics", it was completely un-nessicary and did nothing to support his argument. All it did was serve to, likely inadvertently, attack the people who hold a different viewpoint (ad hominem).
17:15:
Here the video covers the quick landing of Imperial troops showing a clip of the invasion of Utapau by the clone army.
Now the clones did appear suddenly, but that's because they finished setting up their attack and they attacked. We have no idea how long it took to put all those men into position (and there wasn't all that many of them) plus more were still in the process of landing, hence all the gunships. For a more in-depth landing, see TCW: "Landing at Point Rain". All the clones there were deployed via gunships which suffered immense losses before even touching the ground. And the whole landing procedure took at least 2.5 minutes and was cut short by everyone being forced to land prematurely. This is all after the assault ships are already hanging out in the atmosphere.
To read more about specific Logistics bits go: here.
18:30:
Here Brian scratches another element off his list favoring the Federation because it would be nullified by a higher element. Well isn't that why the other element is higher? Because it is more important? Having better advantages does not remove your opponent's own advantages.
So this critique was short and contained far less information regarding actual technical comparisons. This is to be expected as it is about a conclusion. Which is why I didn't want to write one in the first place, I greatly prefer finding and analyzing direct evidence. But watching the video I saw several huge methodology flaws which I felt needed addressing.
This is a bit more of a random smattering compared to my previous critiques as I try not to cover things in this conclusion which are covered else ware. In fact I wasn't planning on making a critique of the conclusion, but as soon as I bumped into the item at 5:30 I felt there was easily sufficient reason for something.
5:30:
"You know, one side has to have more firepower. And when you get right down to it. Let's just forget the numbers. We saw the Borg ships fire twenty times on armored Voyager, and didn't leave a scratch. And heavy turboalsers, when they hit similar things they blow a hole the size of a baseball field and you have to kind of realize that these weapons are the more powerful ones."
I'm sorry, but this is just an awful comparison by any measure. In order to draw this conclusion one must assume that, for no reason or evidence of any kind (what so ever), that the one-off super armor seen in VOY: "Endgame" is equal to that used on Imperial ships. That is a stupid assumption. Especially when one considers that an analysis of their performance place the hulls about on par in most cases, if not slightly in favor of the duranium hull.
An analogy would be to compare the penetrative powers of a bullet fired from a pistol vs a pencil in someone's hand poking things. The pencil stabs through a block of Armor_A with ease, yet the bullet fails to penetrate a block of Armor_B in the slightest. So does this test clearly demonstrate the pencil is better than a gun in combat? Well maybe, but what are the materials? Let's say Armor_A is 10 cm of styrofoam and Armor_B is 10 cm of hardened steel. Now are we surprised by the results? Of course not!
Using these two scenes as evidence that Imperial weapons are better is like saying the pencil is better in the analogy. To do that you must first assume the two materials are of equal strength, which they aren't. Not all "advanced armor" is created equally.
14:24:
Here Brian compares starship combat to chess, mobility of pieces determining the strength of the piece in chess. He then applies this to starship combat, in so far as the only thing that matters is mobility.
Again this is a horrid analogy as it leaves out so many factors. Such as what happens if your fleet arrives to invade planet 'xyz-642' but your entire fleet is destroyed by the fleet defending planet xyz-624 with the defenders taking minimal losses? Obviously your superior speed isn't too useful if you can't do anything meaningful when you arrive. This is why starship combat is important not for when random individual ships meet in space, but when one side must break through another's blockade, repel an invasion force, and other such stuff that we see in The Clone Wars all the time.
This is where Star Trek and Star Wars combat styles depart in the greatest of ways. In Star Wars the purpose of ships is to break through to a planet to land troops or to defend a planet from having troops landed, space combat is secondary to ground combat. In Star Trek ship combat is used to gain space superiority and therefor control over a region, and ground combat is secondary being used for finishing off the enemy and securing your hold on an area, not as the primary fight as it is in Star Wars.
Now I'm not saying mobility isn't an important factor, because it is. But on the other hand it is not the only factor as the chess analogy implies.
16:15:
This bit just bothered me a bit, not much here of technical merit. The use of the farm "fanatics" being used to describe anyone who thinks Federation ships are vastly superior seems somewhat unfair.
Do I think a Federation ship could "curb-stomp" a Stardestroyer in straight up combat? Well I wouldn't use those words exactly, but essentially yes (although not to the extreme to which Brian and others argue a Stardestroyer would curb-stomp a Federation ship (this is not to criticize them, just a comparison of scale (10-to-1 vs 10,000,000,000-to-1 kind of thing))).
Does this automatically make me a fanatic? No.
And do I have reasons? Yes.
Am I emotionally clinging to what I want the outcome to be? No.
Am I too emotionally engaged in this silly subject? Perhaps, but much less than many sports fans are to their sporting teams. So on the scale of things, no.
Circling back to the use of the word "fanatics", it was completely un-nessicary and did nothing to support his argument. All it did was serve to, likely inadvertently, attack the people who hold a different viewpoint (ad hominem).
17:15:
Here the video covers the quick landing of Imperial troops showing a clip of the invasion of Utapau by the clone army.
Now the clones did appear suddenly, but that's because they finished setting up their attack and they attacked. We have no idea how long it took to put all those men into position (and there wasn't all that many of them) plus more were still in the process of landing, hence all the gunships. For a more in-depth landing, see TCW: "Landing at Point Rain". All the clones there were deployed via gunships which suffered immense losses before even touching the ground. And the whole landing procedure took at least 2.5 minutes and was cut short by everyone being forced to land prematurely. This is all after the assault ships are already hanging out in the atmosphere.
To read more about specific Logistics bits go: here.
18:30:
Here Brian scratches another element off his list favoring the Federation because it would be nullified by a higher element. Well isn't that why the other element is higher? Because it is more important? Having better advantages does not remove your opponent's own advantages.
So this critique was short and contained far less information regarding actual technical comparisons. This is to be expected as it is about a conclusion. Which is why I didn't want to write one in the first place, I greatly prefer finding and analyzing direct evidence. But watching the video I saw several huge methodology flaws which I felt needed addressing.