B5 - after all, it was that powerful?

[Mr. Oragahn]

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads ... th.345731/

This is from the B5 RPG.

Should a race go through the difficult cultural transition into a Fourth Age race, it finds itself deeply, deeply changed. It hasintegrated the technological revolution of the Third Age. In some regards, there are no more worlds to conquer, as a Fourth Agerace has the capacity to reshape the galaxy according to its will. If the people of that race wished, they could wrap Dyson spheresaround every star, travel through time, create new species as playthings, open rifts to other dimensions… they are as gods.The only thing that can oppose a Fourth Age race is another Fourth Age race… and itself. If the cultural change is not strong
enough, if the race’s transformation at the end of its Third Age is not deep-seated and complete enough, then it will simply begin to fade. When a race can fulfil all the dreams it had when it was young, when it has perfect technology, perfect government, perfect life, perfect everything… and nothing left to exist for, then it just dies off. At best, it degenerates, becoming a race of alien monsters who use lesser races for their pleasure, becoming cultural and emotional voyeurs. The Centauri are likely destined for this fate; they may be able to enter their own Third Age but they were a dying people even in Humanity’s Second Age, so are unlikely to be able to navigate into their Fourth.

During a Fourth Age, a race is one of the elder races who manipulates the lesser races, deliberately or by the sheer force of their existence. In the absence of full-fl edged Fourth Age races, then Third Age races fi ll the gap.

Not all races enter a Fifth Age. In our galaxy, only three races have ever done so – the Speakers were on the verge of it, while the Vorlons and Shadows existed in it for millions of years. During the Fifth Age, a race takes on the burden of being guardians of the galaxy, shepherding the lesser races through their Second Ages and guiding them out to the stars.

And if there is a Sixth Age for a race, it lies out there, beyond the Rim.

The Shadows and Vorlons were beyond even 4th age species.

It looked like the B5 EU authors for that RPG really were pushing hard to compensate for something.
Nothing like that ever transpired in the show. Never the Shadows or Vorlons were ever presented as really holding back some supposedly true power of billions of warships.
They were dead serious with their fights and used powerful weapons of mass destruction, which in light of the EU, were nothing more than glorified toys, if only by comparing how large what a mere fleet could be!
Again, the Vorlons had amassed some couple billions ships, while the Shadows on the other hand managed to build a fleet for some fierce battle in the core of the galaxy that almost literally ate the material resources of 12 star systems.

It's really odd. I'm not feeling like watching more of B5 right now, but that really seems disconnected from the overall strong feeling that emanated from the show.

Anyway, if you want more information, the people of SB started a thread some time ago, listing big stuff from B5 extra written sources:

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads ... gy.344199/

[Mr. Oragahn]

It's curious too. One guy from the vs thread said that it's quite a thing that the Lanteans, as smart as they were, lost against the Wraith.

Yet the EU-Shadows are wanked because they could build ships that way:

The Shadow technology of Seeding is the key to their tactic of burying their ships. While the Shadows do bury fullgrown ships to hide them from the Vorlons, they can also bury organic seedlings that slowly grow into full-sized vessels or structures. The cost of the technology being acquired is halved but it takes centuries to grow to full size.

Centuries.
One episode in SGA had a Wraith parasite/seed thing grow from one person and infect an entire tower in Atlantis, and it was largely suspected to be related to how the Wraith built their ships.
Iirc, it happened within the span of a few days tops, perhaps less.
It started by tapping electricity. Then it started having access to the main power streams tied to the ZPM and it was an oh sh-- moment, so Sheppard had to ram a gateship into the creature/tower, wound it and shock it from that event, gain access to the infected chick, in order to thwart the infection from within with some kind of serum gotten from god knows where (but it's Atlantis, so it's quite a given that Beckett had access to the Lanteans' databank and whatever they could decrypt out of it).

It is said twice, in Before I Sleep and Rising, that the Wraith were spamming the Lanteans.
The Lanteans considered using Replicators to counter the Wraith. Replicators.

When the Wraith grabbed a ZPM and plugged it into the power grid of a war-era nursery, they were able to grow thousands upon thousands of soldier drones at a super speed.
The only reason why energy from a ZPM would make such a difference, in comparison to a Wraith power core (akin to that of a ship but grounded, the base was big), would be that energy was turned into matter to a large extent.

Yet despite those facts taken from the show, not secondary sources, the current Wraith are somehow underestimated. To say nothing of the war-era ones.

They also talk about the memetic weapons, but millions of years ago, well before Dakara and later Atlantis, some Alterans ("ancestors" of Lanteans) had built the Ark of Truth (sounds campy but well), that literally convinced you of a specific idea by shoving the equivalent of a torch light at your face. And if the people hit were unfortunate enough to be telepathic or use some kind of super duper radio, anyone close to said radio or telepathic link would get the very convincing memo too.
These Alterans said nope, too powerful, too unethical. Let's leave this galaxy instead.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I am most weary of the B5 wanking that's been attempted during the last decade.
I for one have seen the dishonesty behind the claims about Technomage skin vs nukes, the durability of a Shadow vessel against the destruction of Zha'hadum and other details about the nanomachines Technomages use (which do really have some damning limits).

Now, the following thread I link to is a what if thread which almost immediately turned into a comparison of dicks between Babylon 5 and Stargate, but it's quite informative, especially as to how B5ers are quick to omit crucial elements (the whole energy being thing) that don't shine a nice light on their side, yet completely disregard equally crucial elements on the other side.

So enjoy: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads ... rd.346091/

As a reminder, just before their wholesale destruction, the Replicators were literally sucking on the Ascended Plane's tits of knowledge (while waging an offensive at a galactic scale) and, although being overwhelmed by it, finally managed to get a grip on the on the massive flow of data.
That is, technically, the Replicators at their peak. Their last top wank moment before closing shop.

[Lucky]

It looked like the B5 EU authors for that RPG really were pushing hard to compensate for something.
Nothing like that ever transpired in the show. Never the Shadows or Vorlons were ever presented as really holding back some supposedly true power of billions of warships.
They were dead serious with their fights and used powerful weapons of mass destruction, which in light of the EU, were nothing more than glorified toys, if only by comparing how large what a mere fleet could be!
Again, the Vorlons had amassed some couple billions ships, while the Shadows on the other hand managed to build a fleet for some fierce battle in the core of the galaxy that almost literally ate the material resources of 12 star systems.

It's really odd. I'm not feeling like watching more of B5 right now, but that really seems disconnected from the overall strong feeling that emanated from the show.

Anyway, if you want more information, the people of SB started a thread some time ago, listing big stuff from B5 extra written sources:

It's a rather big disconnect between that and everything else in Babylon 5 including the rest of the extended universe.

We see the Third Space Aliens were a major threat to the Vorlons and other "First Ones", but they aren't all that powerful from a technological and military standpoint. Their only real advantage over say the Minbari are weak shields, and the ability to manipulate other psychically, but their psychic powers are rather unreliable it seems as Sheridan was able to just shrug them off it seems.

It is implied that Shadow technology and Ikarrain technology are very similar, and given the racist and xenophobic nature of the Ikarrains we can conclude the Ikarrains would not be willing to work with outsiders, and we see the scientist/engineer who designed and built the suit.

A rather nasty Vorlon struggled to control a human they had augmented to act as an encounter suit, and I seem to recall something about the Vorlons modifying the younger races like humans to be controllable.

The Shadows seem to need younger races to implant cybernetics into Battle Crab pilots which always struck me as odd. Every technology related to the Shadow seems to be nanotech and cybernetics which would imply that the Shadows are likely cyborgs themselves.

Doctor Benjamin Kyle performed surgery on Koash Naranek when the Vorlon had been poisoned by an assassin. It just doesn't make sense unless Vorlon are corporeal because there really isn't anything to gain from it.

There is also Ulkesh who treated PPG fire as a threat when he put up a shield of some kind in defense though PPG shoot plasma which is charged particles.

The interesting thing is that the Asgard can survive in an energy form, and possessed a ship this way.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The interesting thing is that the Asgard can survive in an energy form, and possessed a ship this way.

Well, that was through the use of one of Anubis' doodads. It's hard to tell what really happened too, but the episode went with the idea that an entire mind could be uploaded into a database safely. It meant the ship's computers had the capacity to host minds, but Anubis didn't expect Thor's mind to be so tough that it could break the barrier of whatever environment he was supposed to be confined to.