Are the ICS books accurate?

[Jedi Master Spock]

Prompted by discussion in another thread, I find it fitting to pose to the forum as a whole:

May the ICS be considered an accurate portrayal of Star Wars? If so, in what ways? Is it "true" to the rest of the EU? Older EU? Newer EU? The movies? I am asking not whether or not the ICS is official, or endorsed, but whether it is accurate.

It is my personal opinion that the ICS provide very good visual depictions, but is not particularly accurate in terms of numbers or other technical information about how technology works in Star Wars. As for why, I will refer only to what I have said before - a combination of physics, common sense, and the movies/scripts/novelizations lead me to a very good determination of the behavior of Star Wars technology, which does not match the ICS.

But I believe other people have a few things to say on the topic themselves, both in defense of the ICS, and against it.

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

I entirely agree. There are several irreconcilable differences between the Saxton written ICS books and the rest of Star Wars, be that just the films, or with EU inclusion. They also includes several theories of the author that are entirely unsupported by the films.

1) Firepower figures. Not a single previous source has ever described or shown anything similar to the firepower figures from the ICS: AotC book. It is based on a twisted, spliced together version of a base delta zero operation (BDZ was initially supposed to wipe out a planet's population, probably something similar to Starfleet's general order #24, though that also goes unexplained in terms of how thorough the process is). It is also based on the assumption that the DS's superlaser was basically a huge turbolaser. What we see in the films and read in the rest of the EU shows variable firepower figures, but all of them are much lower than those put forward by the ICS.

2) Vessel Acceleration. Throughout the films we see ships travel at very lower relative velocities to everything, be that other ships, planets, asteroids, et cetera. Acceleration of Wars ships is several dozen Gs at most, enough to need inertial dampeners, but definitely not thousands of Gs like the ICS books claim.

3) Weapons Range. In ICS: RotS Saxton claims that Venator class ships have an effective range of ten light minutes. What we see is that most Star Wars battles take place a ranges less than naval battles of the early and mid 20th century. The fact that ISDs don't bother shooting at the Falcon until it is well within visual range proves that 180,000,000 kms is much to great a range for Wars ships to engage at. Since there has never been an explanation for why they engage at such short ranges, it should be assumed that they not do otherwise.

4) Size of the CIS's droid military . Millions of capitol ships, quadrillions of battle droids. Am I the only one wondering were the hell he got this? I guess you would expect a lot of ships and soldiers for a galaxy wide conflict, but unless the Kaminoan who said "200,000 units ready, with a million more well on there way" was referring to one unit being upwards of 1,000,000,000 troops, I don't see how the Republic stands a chance at winning this war (for more on the whole "unit" thing myself and others have been debating the meaning of it on the fleet size topic).

I also don't like the hypermatter annihilation reactors, but there are only two novelization quotes that contradict this and the passages aren't written in scientific terms. Saxton invented them in attempt to explain how the Death Star was able to generate enough power to destroy Alderaan using DET. This sort of power generation is unnecessary to explain what we see capitol ships do in the films.

There is also the issue of Saxton claiming that Turbolasers are actually light speed weapons and the very slow moving visible part is actually an aiming aid (there is an entire thread on this so I will leave it be). It is sufficient to say that I disagree with Dr. Saxton on this point.

[Nonamer]

Here's the catch about the ICS. You can, with some elbowgrease, find a source for every single one of the tech claims found in the ICS. For instance, the whole 200GT and higher turbolaser firepower figures are based on BDZ claims, which after some "interpretation" and massaging, you get to the point where a BDZ is slagging a planet's crust down to several miles or more. Also the lightspeed turbolaser claim came from screencaps where a target exploded one or two frames before the glowing TL bolt hit. Other claims, such as the acceleration speeds of various starships are in the thousands of Gs, come from some shots that seem to indicate, after some "interpretation" of course, that some ships changed velocities at very high rates or reached orbit in seconds. A favorite of mine is how Count Dooku reached orbit in a few seconds from Genosis, which seems to prove the thousands of Gs of acceleration, which I'll address later. Many other claims, like power generation or shield strength for starships are based on interpretations on words like "miniature sun" and self-references to firepower and acceleration claims that can only be true if other claims made by the ICS are true.

However, reviewing the ICS will show that all the firepower figures come from sources in the EU and not the movie or GL's stuff. Given how low some of the canonicity of some of these sources, such as the Scavenger Hunt for BDZ, these almost certain imply that the firepower claims themselves are very low on the canon scale, probably low-end G-canon at best and never C-canon. Other claims like lightspeed TLs are almost certainly VFX errors because they are contradicted by other depictions of the same weapon in different scenes. More interesting are the acceleration claims, but these have huge holes of themselves and are probably wrong. Back to Count Dooku's transist into orbit from Genosis, we can see from background visuals that he was still in the lower atmosphere several seconds into his departure (the sky was blue still). Then a second later he was in orbit. So unless he suddenly decided to go from very little acceleration to a monsterous jump in speed afterwards just when the scene changes, we are definitely looking at a chronological problem and not an acceleration problem. For other instances of fast acceleration in open space, we also have instances of very low relative acceleration. Likely these are VFX errors or strange visual illusions due to a lack of proper reference. The last, such as the power generation figures and shield strength, are either pure interpretations of non-technical wording or are self-referencing claims and cannot be taken seriously.

Even the non-technical claims are just really bad. One particular claim was the the destruction of Padme's personal ship in the beginning of AOTC. The ICS claims it was a bomb on the landing platform. However, if you watch that scene you clearly see the explosion resulted from the ship itself. It's pretty obvious that the book was written without closely watching the movie and is easily a seperate entity.

All in all, the ICS is "supported" by the rest of SW, but apparently only the most wanked out version of SW that requires a total ignorance of all contradicting claims. In ST-v-SW arguments these claims would never be agreed upon in a valid debate. More damning than just being a very questionable interpretation is that, in all honesty, Curtis Saxton is a lying prick. Go to his website the SWTC. You see amazing self contradictions all over the place. For instance you see Saxton calculating the DS II size to be in the range of 200-400km, then immediately precedes to drop it in favor of a 900km claim, and refers to only the 900km claim elsewhere on the site. If he was honest, he would refer to all sizes. Likewise all other numbers on his site refer exclusive to the highest calcs he did on other pages.

Another particular favorite of mine is his SPHA-T gun, described on his site here. Holy crap is that delusional. He really did suggest that the gun was on the order of 10e23 W, fired in the atmosphere no less. His explanation for how the weapon didn't drill itself a mile into the ground from recoil by magical "neutrino counter-beam firing in the opposite direction" or some other force field magic trick. Amazingly he fails to account for how the ship that was hit wasn't knocked into orbit in seconds, even the ship was clearly failing and had no propulsion power left. And the reason why the atmosphere wasn't ignited was that the ship's shield absorbed all that energy and turned into neutrinos, excluding the fact that the ship was failing and had lost power.

Obviously, as you can see, Saxton is a blatant liar. There's no way you can justify that claim and from a credibility standpoint you would reject the ICS on that ground alone. It should pretty clear what the ICS actually is, a blatant attempt to wank out SW without regard to plausibility or the movies. It is possible to use just the drawings, which were done by great artists who take the utmost care to detail and accuracy. The author however, was anything but that.

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

I tend to not like to think of people as dishonest, unless I have witnessed their dishonesty first hand. It's also possible that Saxton really does believe that what he says represents Star Wars (he probably thinks ILM is the one that is messing with Star Wars, making it seem really weak). As G2K pointed out on his site, Saxton even admits using the comic book to formulate his firepower figures, not the unfinished AotC. So basically Saxton has a different belief about what SW is than most people.

I still don't understand, where he got 180,000,000 km weapons range from ships that are only seen to have bad accuracy at 1-100 kms.

[Nonamer]

If he really has a Ph.D in astrophysics he should definitely be smart enough to figure the holes in his arguments, as would any good scientist. You must conclude that he is either dishonest or stupid, and given his credentials it's probably the former.

[Mike DiCenso]

First off, Saxton didn't invent hypermatter (at least not publicly), the credit for hypermatter goes instead to David Reynolds, who wrote the first two ICS books. Admittedly, Dr Reynolds wrote the ICS with some inspiration from Saxton's Technical Commentaries website in mind.


As for the Saxton's maximizing of all Star Wars technology, we can only speculate as to his motives, but I believe there is sufficent enough circumstantial evidence to show that Saxton wrote AoTC ICS with a mind towards Star Wars winning the versus debate once and for all by codifying it once and for in what he and others believe to be the "canon" of the EU:

Saxton's behind the scenes Versus work:

http://www.st-v-sw.net/text/freaks/


Saxton's public debate postings from an old USENET thread called "Lightsabre deflection of Phaser beams":

Link edited to no longer break frame - JMS.


The other bit of circumstantial evidence is, of course, his acknowledgements in the AoTC and RoTS ICS. There he gives credit to several known pro-Warsie versus debators (you know how they are).
I am of the mind that Saxton likely went "below the radar" as far as the versus debate participation in order to maintain a semblance (facade?) of credibility as neutral party. Therefore I personally conclude that Saxton know full well what he is doing when it comes to maximizing SW firepower and powerput numbers, even if his logic in obtaining those numbers is faulty.
-Mike

[Kane Starkiller]

1) Firepower figures. Not a single previous source has ever described or shown anything similar to the firepower figures from the ICS: AotC book. It is based on a twisted, spliced together version of a base delta zero operation (BDZ was initially supposed to wipe out a planet's population, probably something similar to Starfleet's general order #24, though that also goes unexplained in terms of how thorough the process is). It is also based on the assumption that the DS's superlaser was basically a huge turbolaser. What we see in the films and read in the rest of the EU shows variable firepower figures, but all of them are much lower than those put forward by the ICS.

Sure there is. The very first Star Wars film showed Death Star blowing up a planet. That requird 10^38J. Assuming Death Star can recharge in a day that's 10^33W. Since Acclamator is 15o million times smaller it's power generation should be 6*10^24. And before you start screaming that it was a super-duper chain reaction the point is there is support for such figures.
Then there is Base Delta Zero. One of the incidents describes blasting off a planets atmosphere. You need something like 10^26J to blow up Earth atmosphere.

2) Vessel Acceleration. Throughout the films we see ships travel at very lower relative velocities to everything, be that other ships, planets, asteroids, et cetera. Acceleration of Wars ships is several dozen Gs at most, enough to need inertial dampeners, but definitely not thousands of Gs like the ICS books claim.

Sure it is. In AOTC we see Dooku's ship take off and reach the altitude of 10,000km before Yoda decides to pick up his cane and Amidala to run 20-30 meters into the cave to Anakin. That is what, 10-20 seconds? This gives us the acceleration of 25km/s2 or 2500g.

3) Weapons Range. In ICS: RotS Saxton claims that Venator class ships have an effective range of ten light minutes. What we see is that most Star Wars battles take place a ranges less than naval battles of the early and mid 20th century. The fact that ISDs don't bother shooting at the Falcon until it is well within visual range proves that 180,000,000 kms is much to great a range for Wars ships to engage at. Since there has never been an explanation for why they engage at such short ranges, it should be assumed that they not do otherwise.

Could you post the exact quote of that? Because from what I heard it is simply stated that Venator can theorethically hit a target that far not that it can neccesarily hit a manuvering target.

4) Size of the CIS's droid military . Millions of capitol ships, quadrillions of battle droids. Am I the only one wondering were the hell he got this? I guess you would expect a lot of ships and soldiers for a galaxy wide conflict, but unless the Kaminoan who said "200,000 units ready, with a million more well on there way" was referring to one unit being upwards of 1,000,000,000 troops, I don't see how the Republic stands a chance at winning this war (for more on the whole "unit" thing myself and others have been debating the meaning of it on the fleet size topic).

Of course you assume that Kamino was the only planet producing the army. You ignore the canon TPM novelization which describes that Republic already had a fleet and an army before the creation of the Grand Army. Then of course there is a fact they produced two Death Stars in last 23 years and that we are dealing with a civilization that had a galactic reach for 25,000 years (over 1000 generations).

Back to Count Dooku's transist into orbit from Genosis, we can see from background visuals that he was still in the lower atmosphere several seconds into his departure (the sky was blue still). Then a second later he was in orbit. So unless he suddenly decided to go from very little acceleration to a monsterous jump in speed afterwards just when the scene changes, we are definitely looking at a chronological problem and not an acceleration problem.

Really now. It must be very convenient to claim something was a film error when you don't like it. And what is so incredible about Dooku suddenly deciding to ramp up his acceleration rate?

For other instances of fast acceleration in open space, we also have instances of very low relative acceleration. Likely these are VFX errors or strange visual illusions due to a lack of proper reference. The last, such as the power generation figures and shield strength, are either pure interpretations of non-technical wording or are self-referencing claims and cannot be taken seriously.

Of course, let's declare all evidence we don't like a VFX error without any evidence and then accuse ICS of being dishonest. Yeah that's it that's the ticket!

Even the non-technical claims are just really bad. One particular claim was the the destruction of Padme's personal ship in the beginning of AOTC. The ICS claims it was a bomb on the landing platform. However, if you watch that scene you clearly see the explosion resulted from the ship itself. It's pretty obvious that the book was written without closely watching the movie and is easily a seperate entity.

By all means do provide evidence that explosion did not originate beneath the ship. Not to mention the looming question of why they simply didn't detonate the bomb in orbit if the bomb was inside the ship. Why wait until the ship lands on the platform?

All in all, the ICS is "supported" by the rest of SW, but apparently only the most wanked out version of SW that requires a total ignorance of all contradicting claims. In ST-v-SW arguments these claims would never be agreed upon in a valid debate. More damning than just being a very questionable interpretation is that, in all honesty, Curtis Saxton is a lying prick. Go to his website the SWTC. You see amazing self contradictions all over the place. For instance you see Saxton calculating the DS II size to be in the range of 200-400km, then immediately precedes to drop it in favor of a 900km claim, and refers to only the 900km claim elsewhere on the site. If he was honest, he would refer to all sizes. Likewise all other numbers on his site refer exclusive to the highest calcs he did on other pages.

What contradicting claims? Please enlighten me. If there are contradictions we discard those that cannot be reconciled.
And yes he did put up a table of all of his measurements like any honest researcher. But then he went with numbers that had most backup. 900km number had support from CINEFEX interview and ITW.

Another particular favorite of mine is his SPHA-T gun, described on his site here. Holy crap is that delusional. He really did suggest that the gun was on the order of 10e23 W, fired in the atmosphere no less. His explanation for how the weapon didn't drill itself a mile into the ground from recoil by magical "neutrino counter-beam firing in the opposite direction" or some other force field magic trick. Amazingly he fails to account for how the ship that was hit wasn't knocked into orbit in seconds, even the ship was clearly failing and had no propulsion power left. And the reason why the atmosphere wasn't ignited was that the ship's shield absorbed all that energy and turned into neutrinos, excluding the fact that the ship was failing and had lost power.

Excuse me? Is this a discussion about ICS or some website? His website does not have an official status nor is it connected to ICS. Besides the 10^23W is derived under assumption that Core ship had shields on which he openly acknowledges. And neutrino counter beam is not a "magic trick" but a mechanism that has basics in physics since neutrinos don't intercat with matter.

Obviously, as you can see, Saxton is a blatant liar. There's no way you can justify that claim and from a credibility standpoint you would reject the ICS on that ground alone. It should pretty clear what the ICS actually is, a blatant attempt to wank out SW without regard to plausibility or the movies. It is possible to use just the drawings, which were done by great artists who take the utmost care to detail and accuracy. The author however, was anything but that.

I'm sorry but it is completely irrelevant wether Dr. Saxton turns out to be a serial killer. ICS is an official book and it's merits can only be determined on factual data not how nice a guy you think Dr. Saxton is.

If he really has a Ph.D in astrophysics he should definitely be smart enough to figure the holes in his arguments, as would any good scientist. You must conclude that he is either dishonest or stupid, and given his credentials it's probably the former.

Of course he is. Not that you have any evidence for his dishonesty.

The other bit of circumstantial evidence is, of course, his acknowledgements in the AoTC and RoTS ICS. There he gives credit to several known pro-Warsie versus debators (you know how they are).
I am of the mind that Saxton likely went "below the radar" as far as the versus debate participation in order to maintain a semblance (facade?) of credibility as neutral party. Therefore I personally conclude that Saxton know full well what he is doing when it comes to maximizing SW firepower and powerput numbers, even if his logic in obtaining those numbers is faulty.

Yeah that's it! It's all a big Warsie conspiracy. Back in 1997 he wen't "below the radar" all the time plotting and scheming how in 5 years he would be writing ICS to inflate the SW. Buahahahahahahahaha!
Paranoid doesn't even begin to describe it.

Why are you people so obsessed with Saxton's motives? First, since none of us can read his mind, that line of discussion is pointless. Secondly what difference does it make? Would it make ICS less official? What if George Lucas came out as a vs debator? Would that make his future films invalid in your eyes?

[Enterprise E]

The problem with the ICS is that it goes against not only the movies, but also the rest of the Expanded Universe as well, including books that were published after the ICS books were written. I can't see how anyone can take the ten light minute range of turbolasers as being accurate, especially when he says that they are accurate up to that range, when we see a turbolaser blast MISS an ISD at point blank range. If you look at the scene where a Mon Cal cruiser destroys an ISD, the first blast missed while a subsequent volley of blasts hits the center if the ISD and blows it up. As for the firepower figures, the ROTS space battle and the engagement between the Venator and the Invisible Hand puts the accuracy of those firepower figures into serious doubt. The largest yield that I know of for SW firepower figures before the ICS was 60 megatons based on the asteroid scene in TESB, for a Heavy Turbolaser. The ICS states that the medium turbolasers have a yield well over a thousand times that? And what is it based on?

And just so you know, I'm not against the ICS in and of itself. It's the fact that when a similar situation occurs in Star Trek, namely the yields seen in Star Trek DS9's "The Die is Cast", Warsies state how that can't be canon because other Trek episodes contradict it, not seeing the hypocrisy in that. It's not that I'm against the ICS, it's that many Warsies are being hypocrites accepting it despite its flaws, while not accepting "controversial" high end yields in Star Trek despite the fact that we see the explosions in the episode itself. That is why when I start a debate, I either allow both the ICS and TDiC, or I allow neither of them. I won't allow one without the other.

[Mike DiCenso]

Kane Starkiller wrote:
Sure there is. The very first Star Wars film showed Death Star blowing up a planet. That requird 10^38J. Assuming Death Star can recharge in a day that's 10^33W. Since Acclamator is 15o million times smaller it's power generation should be 6*10^24. And before you start screaming that it was a super-duper chain reaction the point is there is support for such figures.

Yes, the first movie shows Alderaan Alderaan being destroyed by the Death Star. No one is questioning that. What is being questioned, as you have noted, is how it does that. That is a critical point. If the SE and DVD versions of the Alderaan explosion had never been done, then we probably would be agreeing more with you that DET is the mechanism behind it. Unfortuanately, ol' George Lucas decided he wanted something different, and the explosion was juiced up with all kinds of CGI ring effects and other wackiness that makes DET questionable. Those are legitimate concerns, and no matter how you or any Warsie yells about it, it's gonna come up over and over again. So far, I haven't seen any convincing arguments post-SE for a DET superlaser.

Kane Starkiller wrote:
Then there is Base Delta Zero. One of the incidents describes blasting off a planets atmosphere. You need something like 10^26J to blow up Earth atmosphere.

You are correct about that, however there are a few cavets that go with it, too. First off, Dankyo was never described very well, but it seems to be a smaller than Earth sized body, with a thinner atmosphere and overall surface area. The escape energies for the Dankyo atmosphere will still require a significant amount of energy, but it not be on the same order of magnitude as sending Earth's atmosphere off into space. Second, the timescale involved in accomplishing this task is very vauge. Third, the number of ships involved is also unclear, but it seems that it took more than one star destroyer.

Kane Starkiller wrote:
What contradicting claims? Please enlighten me. If there are contradictions we discard those that cannot be reconciled.
And yes he did put up a table of all of his measurements like any honest researcher. But then he went with numbers that had most backup. 900km number had support from CINEFEX interview and ITW.

What you are refering to is the movie makers' intent versus what they actually put on screen for us (the audiance) to see. Being a semi-regular reader of CINEFEX, I can tell you that ILM folks have a habit of over-exaggeration when it comes to describing the "actual" size of the things they portray. Case in point, in the CINEFEX coverage of ST:FC, one ILMer describes the Enterprise-E as being 2,500 feet (762 meters) long! Is that the number we should go with for the E-E, or should we go with the designer's (John Eaves) intended 685 meters?

Mike DiCenso wrote:
The other bit of circumstantial evidence is, of course, his acknowledgements in the AoTC and RoTS ICS. There he gives credit to several known pro-Warsie versus debators (you know how they are).
I am of the mind that Saxton likely went "below the radar" as far as the versus debate participation in order to maintain a semblance (facade?) of credibility as neutral party. Therefore I personally conclude that Saxton know full well what he is doing when it comes to maximizing SW firepower and powerput numbers, even if his logic in obtaining those numbers is faulty.

Kane Starkiller wrote:
Yeah that's it! It's all a big Warsie conspiracy. Back in 1997 he wen't "below the radar" all the time plotting and scheming how in 5 years he would be writing ICS to inflate the SW. Buahahahahahahahaha!
Paranoid doesn't even begin to describe it.

Why are you people so obsessed with Saxton's motives? First, since none of us can read his mind, that line of discussion is pointless. Secondly what difference does it make? Would it make ICS less official? What if George Lucas came out as a vs debator? Would that make his future films invalid in your eyes?

First off, even if GL came out of the Versus Debate Closet, it wouldn't change anything, since Star Wars is his creation. Not Curtis Saxton's, not Mike Wong's, or mine or anyone else's, it is his. If he wants to wank out SW in order to trump all other space fantasy and science fiction franchises' tech, then that is his choice. It would certainly be disappointing to seem him stoop so low, but it would still be vaild. Fortunately, GL is not that kind of a person, and wanking out Star Wars' technology is not what his philosphy for the movies' story has been about.

On the other hand, Saxton does not own, nor is the creator of Star Wars. He is imposing his own interpretation as a fan on the tech, and apparently at some point decided that he wanted to see Star Wars technology trump at least Star Trek's. His involvement in the behind-the-scenes Warsie support group was exposed for all to see (link was provided to copies of the posts he made there on Wayne Poe's little forum), and I provided a link to at least one public USENET thread he was involved with in mid-1997.

Why is this important? Because he is often touted as a true neutral third party by Warsies. His motives affect the outcome of his conclusions. If he secretly wants Star Wars to trump Trek or any other SF tech, then he might use highly questionable methods to arrive at those exaggerated conclusions, rather than be truthful about SW tech shortcomings. It also puts into question the ICS books he has written. He was given a chance to codify his vision of SW tech, rather than what is actually portrayed, and gives credit to know versus debators who have supplied him with many of these exaggerated firepower and power generation figures. This isn't paranoia, Kane, it's the truth of the matter, backed up by at least some evidence.
-Mike

[Nonamer]

Back to Count Dooku's transist into orbit from Genosis, we can see from background visuals that he was still in the lower atmosphere several seconds into his departure (the sky was blue still). Then a second later he was in orbit. So unless he suddenly decided to go from very little acceleration to a monsterous jump in speed afterwards just when the scene changes, we are definitely looking at a chronological problem and not an acceleration problem.

Really now. It must be very convenient to claim something was a film error when you don't like it. And what is so incredible about Dooku suddenly deciding to ramp up his acceleration rate?

How convenient is it that the screen pulled away the moment before we get to see this massive ramp up in acceleration? It's also very strange that he'd ramp up his acceleration signficantly after getting shot at when it would've been smarter to hit max speed as soon as possible. It has all the making of a VFX error: one time event, unsupported by other scenes (none of the TF ships accelerated that fast), implies stupidity on the part of the people doing the action, etc.

For other instances of fast acceleration in open space, we also have instances of very low relative acceleration. Likely these are VFX errors or strange visual illusions due to a lack of proper reference. The last, such as the power generation figures and shield strength, are either pure interpretations of non-technical wording or are self-referencing claims and cannot be taken seriously.

Of course, let's declare all evidence we don't like a VFX error without any evidence and then accuse ICS of being dishonest. Yeah that's it that's the ticket!

We have very strong evidence that SW ships and fighters do not have great acceleration. There are a few exceptions, but they are easily explained if we assume they were VFX errors or merely visual illusions. It makes sense to go with the larger body of evidence.

Even the non-technical claims are just really bad. One particular claim was the the destruction of Padme's personal ship in the beginning of AOTC. The ICS claims it was a bomb on the landing platform. However, if you watch that scene you clearly see the explosion resulted from the ship itself. It's pretty obvious that the book was written without closely watching the movie and is easily a seperate entity.

By all means do provide evidence that explosion did not originate beneath the ship. Not to mention the looming question of why they simply didn't detonate the bomb in orbit if the bomb was inside the ship. Why wait until the ship lands on the platform?

Doesn't matter. The explosion came right out of the body of the ship. There was no reason to believe a landing platform bomb either, especially considering they should've blown up the whole landing platform to ensure a kill. Perhaps there assassinator wanted to wait till the ship actually landed before using the bomb in order to create maximum shock value. No matter, the claims of the ICS is simply contradicting what we saw which is another mark to its uncredibility.

All in all, the ICS is "supported" by the rest of SW, but apparently only the most wanked out version of SW that requires a total ignorance of all contradicting claims. In ST-v-SW arguments these claims would never be agreed upon in a valid debate. More damning than just being a very questionable interpretation is that, in all honesty, Curtis Saxton is a lying prick. Go to his website the SWTC. You see amazing self contradictions all over the place. For instance you see Saxton calculating the DS II size to be in the range of 200-400km, then immediately precedes to drop it in favor of a 900km claim, and refers to only the 900km claim elsewhere on the site. If he was honest, he would refer to all sizes. Likewise all other numbers on his site refer exclusive to the highest calcs he did on other pages.

What contradicting claims? Please enlighten me. If there are contradictions we discard those that cannot be reconciled.
And yes he did put up a table of all of his measurements like any honest researcher. But then he went with numbers that had most backup. 900km number had support from CINEFEX interview and ITW.

There are numerous claims for a DS II size of 160km, yet he blatantly ignored them. More interesting is that he would use questionable sources like SH for BDZ yet ignore even better sources for smaller DS II sizes. It's a very blatant act of selectively choosing evidence.

Another particular favorite of mine is his SPHA-T gun, described on his site here. Holy crap is that delusional. He really did suggest that the gun was on the order of 10e23 W, fired in the atmosphere no less. His explanation for how the weapon didn't drill itself a mile into the ground from recoil by magical "neutrino counter-beam firing in the opposite direction" or some other force field magic trick. Amazingly he fails to account for how the ship that was hit wasn't knocked into orbit in seconds, even the ship was clearly failing and had no propulsion power left. And the reason why the atmosphere wasn't ignited was that the ship's shield absorbed all that energy and turned into neutrinos, excluding the fact that the ship was failing and had lost power.

Excuse me? Is this a discussion about ICS or some website? His website does not have an official status nor is it connected to ICS. Besides the 10^23W is derived under assumption that Core ship had shields on which he openly acknowledges. And neutrino counter beam is not a "magic trick" but a mechanism that has basics in physics since neutrinos don't intercat with matter.

In case you haven't figured, Saxton wrote the ICS. He them proceeded to calculate the power of the SPHA-T from his own source, even though it's obvious from the scene he's wrong about the numbers. And you are blatantly ignore many pieces of evidence I have just brought that proves him wrong. The failing ship was not ejected into orbit, nor was the atmosphere heated in any significant way. He is wrong here and he should have rejected the ICS outright given this event. Anything less is proof of him being a liar or an idiot.

Obviously, as you can see, Saxton is a blatant liar. There's no way you can justify that claim and from a credibility standpoint you would reject the ICS on that ground alone. It should pretty clear what the ICS actually is, a blatant attempt to wank out SW without regard to plausibility or the movies. It is possible to use just the drawings, which were done by great artists who take the utmost care to detail and accuracy. The author however, was anything but that.

I'm sorry but it is completely irrelevant wether Dr. Saxton turns out to be a serial killer. ICS is an official book and it's merits can only be determined on factual data not how nice a guy you think Dr. Saxton is.

Strawman. The question is whether Saxton is intentionally lying in the ICS and has a history of exaggerating or ignoring evidence in order to support his cause. We have pretty significant evidence that this is the case. Just like we don't believe random claims from scientists who have a history of faking evidence we shouldn't believe Saxton here.

And you cannot use the ICS as evidence for its own validity. The question of whether the ICS is a "official" book is irrelevant.

If he really has a Ph.D in astrophysics he should definitely be smart enough to figure the holes in his arguments, as would any good scientist. You must conclude that he is either dishonest or stupid, and given his credentials it's probably the former.

Of course he is. Not that you have any evidence for his dishonesty.

I see that you're not much of a listener either. I have laided the argument against Saxton, and you've ignored most of it.

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

So Kane, you think that a Star Wars vessel's firepower is directly proportional to its size? So a Vietnam War gunboat should have proportional firepower of modern nuclear missile sub. Several high caliber machine guns, compared to 240 thermonuclear warheads.

As for the pre-existing republic military, why would it be calls the grand army of the republic if it was a trivially small portion of the total ground forces.

There are also some pre-Saxton ICS things that I don't feel are consistent with Star Wars, but the first two books don't have such blatantly incorrect "facts." An example, I don't think that an ISD has 72 TIE fighters/ bomber/ interceptors on board. The only time we see that many is when there is a fleet of ISDs, and SSD, and DS2.

[Kane Starkiller]

It's the fact that when a similar situation occurs in Star Trek, namely the yields seen in Star Trek DS9's "The Die is Cast", Warsies state how that can't be canon because other Trek episodes contradict it, not seeing the hypocrisy in that. It's not that I'm against the ICS, it's that many Warsies are being hypocrites accepting it despite its flaws, while not accepting "controversial" high end yields in Star Trek despite the fact that we see the explosions in the episode itself. That is why when I start a debate, I either allow both the ICS and TDiC, or I allow neither of them. I won't allow one without the other.

First of all no one ever showed any calculations regarding TDiC. Because they are impossible to make. No one knows what those brown circles are supposed to represent and they sure as hell are not fireballs.
The only "evidence" is dialouge that states that crust will be destroyed in 1 hour. And naturally Trekkies assume that destroy means vaporize or blow off the planet.
And since we have seen that photon torpedoes have difficulty even with 100-500 meter asteroids, carry less firepower than several km2 of solar flare you are damn right I object to Trekkie claims that weapons from similar civilizations can suddenly vaporize hundreds of thousands cubic kilometers of rock per second and have teraton level firepower.
ICS on the other hand has NEVER been proven wrong. The trouble with you Trekkies that every time there are contradictions within the EU you always go for the worst possible example that will make SW side the weakest and then you are all dumbfounded when other people don't follow your metodology.

Yes, the first movie shows Alderaan Alderaan being destroyed by the Death Star. No one is questioning that. What is being questioned, as you have noted, is how it does that. That is a critical point. If the SE and DVD versions of the Alderaan explosion had never been done, then we probably would be agreeing more with you that DET is the mechanism behind it. Unfortuanately, ol' George Lucas decided he wanted something different, and the explosion was juiced up with all kinds of CGI ring effects and other wackiness that makes DET questionable. Those are legitimate concerns, and no matter how you or any Warsie yells about it, it's gonna come up over and over again. So far, I haven't seen any convincing arguments post-SE for a DET superlaser.

There it is again. Is it chain reaction or direct energy transfer? Naturally Trekkies go with chain reaction even though they can't explain how and why those effects point to a chain reaction and how and why would energy obtained through chain reaction vastly exceed the energy imparted by the Death Star. Once again you pick the WORST POSSIBLE option for Star Wars and then act all surprised when other works don't follow your methodology.

You are correct about that, however there are a few cavets that go with it, too. First off, Dankyo was never described very well, but it seems to be a smaller than Earth sized body, with a thinner atmosphere and overall surface area. The escape energies for the Dankyo atmosphere will still require a significant amount of energy, but it not be on the same order of magnitude as sending Earth's atmosphere off into space. Second, the timescale involved in accomplishing this task is very vauge. Third, the number of ships involved is also unclear, but it seems that it took more than one star destroyer.

You are completely missing the point. Not only do you have no evidence that Dankyo was smaller than Earth but you are ignoring the fact that only a small fraction of turbolaser energy will be expended to actually give the air molecules kinetic energy. Most of it will be spent on heating the ground which actually drives up the estimate by an order of magnitude. And of course standard Trekkie modus operandi is also present: let's make all of the assumptions needed in order to make SW look the weakest. You would no doubt argue that there were thousands of ISDs out there bombarding the planet for weeks in order to produce the most conservative estimation of SW weaponry. Once again I see no reason why ICS is bad if it doesn't make the worst possible assumptions every time there is an uncertanity.

What you are refering to is the movie makers' intent versus what they actually put on screen for us (the audiance) to see. Being a semi-regular reader of CINEFEX, I can tell you that ILM folks have a habit of over-exaggeration when it comes to describing the "actual" size of the things they portray. Case in point, in the CINEFEX coverage of ST:FC, one ILMer describes the Enterprise-E as being 2,500 feet (762 meters) long! Is that the number we should go with for the E-E, or should we go with the designer's (John Eaves) intended 685 meters?

Naturally you ignore the ITW source I also provided not to mention that 685 vs 762 meters is not like 160 vs 900 km.

First off, even if GL came out of the Versus Debate Closet, it wouldn't change anything, since Star Wars is his creation. Not Curtis Saxton's, not Mike Wong's, or mine or anyone else's, it is his. If he wants to wank out SW in order to trump all other space fantasy and science fiction franchises' tech, then that is his choice. It would certainly be disappointing to seem him stoop so low, but it would still be vaild. Fortunately, GL is not that kind of a person, and wanking out Star Wars' technology is not what his philosphy for the movies' story has been about.

On the other hand, Saxton does not own, nor is the creator of Star Wars. He is imposing his own interpretation as a fan on the tech, and apparently at some point decided that he wanted to see Star Wars technology trump at least Star Trek's.

But his work is official and recognized by Lucas's companies. Which means that his motives are completley irrelevant. Not that he was dishonest mind you but it just goes to show how weak your technical arguments against ICS are when you have to resort to such ad hominem attacks.

His involvement in the behind-the-scenes Warsie support group was exposed for all to see (link was provided to copies of the posts he made there on Wayne Poe's little forum), and I provided a link to at least one public USENET thread he was involved with in mid-1997.

I looked up his profile and he only made two posts in threads that were involved in vs debates. His posts were concentrated on defending his own work, namely the Death Star power. The other post was about Trekkie no laser myth but even there he simply attacked the idiotic notion that a certain type of shield could absorb infinite amount of power without specifficaly entering into STvSW debate.
As for his "warsie support group" all I saw was few people discussing various calculations they made. There ceartainly wasn't any hint of making up numbers or dishonesty.

Why is this important? Because he is often touted as a true neutral third party by Warsies. His motives affect the outcome of his conclusions. If he secretly wants Star Wars to trump Trek or any other SF tech, then he might use highly questionable methods to arrive at those exaggerated conclusions, rather than be truthful about SW tech shortcomings. It also puts into question the ICS books he has written. He was given a chance to codify his vision of SW tech, rather than what is actually portrayed, and gives credit to know versus debators who have supplied him with many of these exaggerated firepower and power generation figures. This isn't paranoia, Kane, it's the truth of the matter, backed up by at least some evidence.

You showed ZERO evidence that he was involved in the debate apart from defending his work in a single thread in 1997. Your only "evidence" is your claim that him communicating with Michael Wong somehow makes him dishonest: Never mind that you never demonstrated that Michael Wong is dishonest but you also make the claim the dishonesty somehow osmotically transfers through internet.
Like I said paranoia or deliberate ad hominem attacks.

How convenient is it that the screen pulled away the moment before we get to see this massive ramp up in acceleration? It's also very strange that he'd ramp up his acceleration signficantly after getting shot at when it would've been smarter to hit max speed as soon as possible. It has all the making of a VFX error: one time event, unsupported by other scenes (none of the TF ships accelerated that fast), implies stupidity on the part of the people doing the action, etc.

How convenient? Are you saying that special effets people deliberatly edited the film at that point so that we the audience don't see it's supposedly slow acceleration? And here I go again: PROVE that it was a VFX error. By the way look up ROTJ sometimes especially Endor approach. You'll see the planet visibly getting larger as the fleet moves in which suggests relative speed of hundreds of km/s. Since they stoped before hitting the Death Star they had to decelerate at many km/s.

We have very strong evidence that SW ships and fighters do not have great acceleration. There are a few exceptions, but they are easily explained if we assume they were VFX errors or merely visual illusions. It makes sense to go with the larger body of evidence.

Look up suspension of diebelief sometimes. VFX error is not an option unless there truly is no other choice. And you really demonstrate that you are a fanatic: attacking an official source and calling it's author a lying prick while trying to kick out evidence that supports his work.

Doesn't matter. The explosion came right out of the body of the ship. There was no reason to believe a landing platform bomb either, especially considering they should've blown up the whole landing platform to ensure a kill. Perhaps there assassinator wanted to wait till the ship actually landed before using the bomb in order to create maximum shock value. No matter, the claims of the ICS is simply contradicting what we saw which is another mark to its uncredibility.

PROVE IT. You do realize you have to back up your claims? Especially if you are calling an author of official source a lying prick. But you don't have any evidence have you? You're just a fanatic who doesn't like ICS. Well too bad.

There are numerous claims for a DS II size of 160km, yet he blatantly ignored them. More interesting is that he would use questionable sources like SH for BDZ yet ignore even better sources for smaller DS II sizes. It's a very blatant act of selectively choosing evidence.

He didn't ignore them you liar. He put them on his page but at the end of the day only one figure can be correct. He chose the one which had support in other official publications.
And please do provide those "better" sources for DS2 and wxplain why BDZ sources are questionable.

In case you haven't figured, Saxton wrote the ICS. He them proceeded to calculate the power of the SPHA-T from his own source, even though it's obvious from the scene he's wrong about the numbers. And you are blatantly ignore many pieces of evidence I have just brought that proves him wrong. The failing ship was not ejected into orbit, nor was the atmosphere heated in any significant way. He is wrong here and he should have rejected the ICS outright given this event. Anything less is proof of him being a liar or an idiot.

You know repeating the word "blatanly" won't make your arguments stronger. You provided no evidence whatsoever expect your feel that everything that supports his book is "VFX error". And you still ignore my point that Dr. Saxton himself acknowledged that his calculation is based on an assumption that Core ship shields were functional.

Strawman. The question is whether Saxton is intentionally lying in the ICS and has a history of exaggerating or ignoring evidence in order to support his cause. We have pretty significant evidence that this is the case. Just like we don't believe random claims from scientists who have a history of faking evidence we shouldn't believe Saxton here.

The validity of ICS can only be determined by wether the material in it contradicts higher canon material. So far you have provided no evidence that this is the case. You have provided no evidence that he is exaggerating or ignoring evidence.

And you cannot use the ICS as evidence for its own validity. The question of whether the ICS is a "official" book is irrelevant.

Where have I used facts from ICS to prove ICS? I used ITW, CINEFEX and data from the films.

I see that you're not much of a listener either. I have laided the argument against Saxton, and you've ignored most of it.

You have done nothing but whine about how everything you don't like is a "VFX error" and that "Saxton is a lying prick" without providing a shred of evidence.

So Kane, you think that a Star Wars vessel's firepower is directly proportional to its size? So a Vietnam War gunboat should have proportional firepower of modern nuclear missile sub. Several high caliber machine guns, compared to 240 thermonuclear warheads.

Of course you ignore the fact that Vietnam gunboat doesn't carry nuclear weapons while various Star Wars ships all use turbolasers which are fed from main reactors.

As for the pre-existing republic military, why would it be calls the grand army of the republic if it was a trivially small portion of the total ground forces.

Palpatine said he would create a Grand Army of the Republic. No one ever said that the military force seen at Geonosis was the totality of the Grand Army.

There are also some pre-Saxton ICS things that I don't feel are consistent with Star Wars, but the first two books don't have such blatantly incorrect "facts." An example, I don't think that an ISD has 72 TIE fighters/ bomber/ interceptors on board. The only time we see that many is when there is a fleet of ISDs, and SSD, and DS2.

Why would we have to see them? Some of them can easily be off sreen patroling the perimeter of the fleet or scouting ahead. Really the US aircraft carrier has 85 planes which are actually bigger than a TIE. You are saying that's unreasonable for an ISD which is 100 times bigger than Nimitz class to carry 72 fighters? We never see thouands of Federation ships on screen do we? We see maybe 50 at most. But you don't question the dialouge that mentiones 600 ships or more?

[Nonamer]

It's the fact that when a similar situation occurs in Star Trek, namely the yields seen in Star Trek DS9's "The Die is Cast", Warsies state how that can't be canon because other Trek episodes contradict it, not seeing the hypocrisy in that. It's not that I'm against the ICS, it's that many Warsies are being hypocrites accepting it despite its flaws, while not accepting "controversial" high end yields in Star Trek despite the fact that we see the explosions in the episode itself. That is why when I start a debate, I either allow both the ICS and TDiC, or I allow neither of them. I won't allow one without the other.

First of all no one ever showed any calculations regarding TDiC. Because they are impossible to make. No one knows what those brown circles are supposed to represent and they sure as hell are not fireballs.
The only "evidence" is dialouge that states that crust will be destroyed in 1 hour. And naturally Trekkies assume that destroy means vaporize or blow off the planet.
And since we have seen that photon torpedoes have difficulty even with 100-500 meter asteroids, carry less firepower than several km2 of solar flare you are damn right I object to Trekkie claims that weapons from similar civilizations can suddenly vaporize hundreds of thousands cubic kilometers of rock per second and have teraton level firepower.
ICS on the other hand has NEVER been proven wrong. The trouble with you Trekkies that every time there are contradictions within the EU you always go for the worst possible example that will make SW side the weakest and then you are all dumbfounded when other people don't follow your metodology.

Do you have any idea how hypocritical that statement is? Switch all the names around and it still will be true.

How convenient is it that the screen pulled away the moment before we get to see this massive ramp up in acceleration? It's also very strange that he'd ramp up his acceleration signficantly after getting shot at when it would've been smarter to hit max speed as soon as possible. It has all the making of a VFX error: one time event, unsupported by other scenes (none of the TF ships accelerated that fast), implies stupidity on the part of the people doing the action, etc.

How convenient? Are you saying that special effets people deliberatly edited the film at that point so that we the audience don't see it's supposedly slow acceleration?

Do you understand what a VFX error is? It's a mistake or accident that implies something they didn't intend.

And here I go again: PROVE that it was a VFX error. By the way look up ROTJ sometimes especially Endor approach. You'll see the planet visibly getting larger as the fleet moves in which suggests relative speed of hundreds of km/s. Since they stoped before hitting the Death Star they had to decelerate at many km/s.

Prove that it isn't. There are numerous examples of the ships not accelerating very fast at all like Dooku's ship's acceleration for the entire on-screen period. Likely, these fast acceleration events are VFX errors.

We have very strong evidence that SW ships and fighters do not have great acceleration. There are a few exceptions, but they are easily explained if we assume they were VFX errors or merely visual illusions. It makes sense to go with the larger body of evidence.

Look up suspension of diebelief sometimes. VFX error is not an option unless there truly is no other choice. And you really demonstrate that you are a fanatic: attacking an official source and calling it's author a lying prick while trying to kick out evidence that supports his work.

I've both demostrated numerous problems within the ICS and proved the author a liar or an idiot. That is beyond argument at this point. Suspension of disbelief here is an excuse. You cannot accept contradictory evidence and still maintain SoD. Something has to go and it must be the most problematic claims.

Doesn't matter. The explosion came right out of the body of the ship. There was no reason to believe a landing platform bomb either, especially considering they should've blown up the whole landing platform to ensure a kill. Perhaps there assassinator wanted to wait till the ship actually landed before using the bomb in order to create maximum shock value. No matter, the claims of the ICS is simply contradicting what we saw which is another mark to its uncredibility.

PROVE IT. You do realize you have to back up your claims? Especially if you are calling an author of official source a lying prick. But you don't have any evidence have you? You're just a fanatic who doesn't like ICS. Well too bad.

Prove it otherwise. The explosion came right out of the ship from the movie itself and there is no reason to believe something else.

There are numerous claims for a DS II size of 160km, yet he blatantly ignored them. More interesting is that he would use questionable sources like SH for BDZ yet ignore even better sources for smaller DS II sizes. It's a very blatant act of selectively choosing evidence.

He didn't ignore them you liar. He put them on his page but at the end of the day only one figure can be correct. He chose the one which had support in other official publications.
And please do provide those "better" sources for DS2 and wxplain why BDZ sources are questionable.

You do not reject sources you do not like. You must include all viable claims that you have found, no matter what. That is the scientific way unless you can disprove the other claims. And the BDZ came out of Scavenger Hunt, which is a adventure role-playing game AFAIK. The 160km size for DS II came from a technical manual I believe, which is just as valid as ICS from a purely canonicity standpoint.

In case you haven't figured, Saxton wrote the ICS. He them proceeded to calculate the power of the SPHA-T from his own source, even though it's obvious from the scene he's wrong about the numbers. And you are blatantly ignore many pieces of evidence I have just brought that proves him wrong. The failing ship was not ejected into orbit, nor was the atmosphere heated in any significant way. He is wrong here and he should have rejected the ICS outright given this event. Anything less is proof of him being a liar or an idiot.

You know repeating the word "blatanly" won't make your arguments stronger. You provided no evidence whatsoever expect your feel that everything that supports his book is "VFX error". And you still ignore my point that Dr. Saxton himself acknowledged that his calculation is based on an assumption that Core ship shields were functional.

Why don't you prove any of your claims first. I have clearly demostrated good evidence for everything I said.

Strawman. The question is whether Saxton is intentionally lying in the ICS and has a history of exaggerating or ignoring evidence in order to support his cause. We have pretty significant evidence that this is the case. Just like we don't believe random claims from scientists who have a history of faking evidence we shouldn't believe Saxton here.

The validity of ICS can only be determined by wether the material in it contradicts higher canon material. So far you have provided no evidence that this is the case. You have provided no evidence that he is exaggerating or ignoring evidence.

This is a discussion over the validity of the ICS. You cannot use status of the ICS as proof of it's own validity. That is something that fundementalists tend to say and not scientists. And I have definitely proven him a liar or an idiot in the SPHA-T case. Frankly this has turned into a broken record.

And you cannot use the ICS as evidence for its own validity. The question of whether the ICS is a "official" book is irrelevant.

Where have I used facts from ICS to prove ICS? I used ITW, CINEFEX and data from the films.

You constantly tout the officialness of the ICS as evidence for it's validity and demands others to prove otherwise. You cannot do that. You must judge the ICS purely on its merits.

I see that you're not much of a listener either. I have laided the argument against Saxton, and you've ignored most of it.

You have done nothing but whine about how everything you don't like is a "VFX error" and that "Saxton is a lying prick" without providing a shred of evidence.

Seriously, this has become a yelling match. You are not listening to any of the evidence I've provided and instead have just covered your ears and started to scream platitudes about ICS.



Let me say one thing about the ICS. In the last 2-3 years, the argument for it has diluted into one single argument: You must "prove" ICS to be wrong or else it is totally right. I've already addressed this in the other thread. Not only is it a perversion of the canon hierarchy it is also easily contradicted by nearly canon. The problem resides in the meaning of the word "proof." Normally, this means proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In this regard it has been proven long ago. The problem is that for many Saxtonites/SDNers, "prove" means provide a mathematically level of proof that is irrefutable. This second goal will never happen. The ICS can not be neither proven nor disproven under this meaning of proof. Thus this second demand is better off being ignored in all debate in this matter.

[Mike DiCenso]

Yes, the first movie shows Alderaan Alderaan being destroyed by the Death Star. No one is questioning that. What is being questioned, as you have noted, is how it does that. That is a critical point. If the SE and DVD versions of the Alderaan explosion had never been done, then we probably would be agreeing more with you that DET is the mechanism behind it. Unfortuanately, ol' George Lucas decided he wanted something different, and the explosion was juiced up with all kinds of CGI ring effects and other wackiness that makes DET questionable. Those are legitimate concerns, and no matter how you or any Warsie yells about it, it's gonna come up over and over again. So far, I haven't seen any convincing arguments post-SE for a DET superlaser.

Kane Starkiller wrote:
There it is again. Is it chain reaction or direct energy transfer? Naturally Trekkies go with chain reaction even though they can't explain how and why those effects point to a chain reaction and how and why would energy obtained through chain reaction vastly exceed the energy imparted by the Death Star. Once again you pick the WORST POSSIBLE option for Star Wars and then act all surprised when other works don't follow your methodology.

Yes, there it is. This hiding of Warsie head in the proverbial sand when it comes to dealing with the effects of the Death Star SE explosion's inconsistancies wit a DET mechanism will continue to haunt you guys for a long, long time. We've already have gone over it on the previous forums. The ring effect and other strange things like the material disappearance, all point away from DET. Naturally you continue to pretend it's of no significance, or try to explain it away with lame planetary shield bunko.

You are correct about that, however there are a few cavets that go with it, too. First off, Dankyo was never described very well, but it seems to be a smaller than Earth sized body, with a thinner atmosphere and overall surface area. The escape energies for the Dankyo atmosphere will still require a significant amount of energy, but it not be on the same order of magnitude as sending Earth's atmosphere off into space. Second, the timescale involved in accomplishing this task is very vauge. Third, the number of ships involved is also unclear, but it seems that it took more than one star destroyer.

Kane Starkiller wrote:
You are completely missing the point. Not only do you have no evidence that Dankyo was smaller than Earth but you are ignoring the fact that only a small fraction of turbolaser energy will be expended to actually give the air molecules kinetic energy. Most of it will be spent on heating the ground which actually drives up the estimate by an order of magnitude. And of course standard Trekkie modus operandi is also present: let's make all of the assumptions needed in order to make SW look the weakest. You would no doubt argue that there were thousands of ISDs out there bombarding the planet for weeks in order to produce the most conservative estimation of SW weaponry. Once again I see no reason why ICS is bad if it doesn't make the worst possible assumptions every time there is an uncertanity.

Even if we ignore everything else we do know this:

1.) Dankayo's size is at best unknown (useless then to describe it as having an Earth-density atmosphere when it could have one as thin as Mars for all we know). So again, Warsies here attempting to once again maximize what ISDs can do, even though there is nothing here to support their claim.

2.) It took at least two (Devastator and Relentless are cited), possibly more star destroyers (in some sources 98-100 ships are required) to do the job in an unspecified amount of time. Some sources cite less than a day (implying hours).

3.) Dankayo is described in the source book as "evenly cratered". Not "slagged", not "melted down several meters", ect. Just even cratering of the surface, and there was one survivor found in a deep shelter, further arguing against any melting. That the Imperial forces actually had to go through a mop-up operation afterwords on the off chance of survivors at all is rather telling.

Therefore, to assert that Dankayo is exactly Earth-like, to assume 10e26 joule energies applied to the removal of it's atmosphere, and the melting of the surface requiring 200 gigaton turbolasers is just as equally dishonest, and shows only that Warsies are interested in hyping SW firepower beyond any rational limit. Saxton seems to want to subscribe to that extreme upper limit, rather than take a lower limit, or a happy medium. It's sloppy methodologies like this that he and other Warsies employ that create the issue. At best Saxton is sloppy, at worst he may be dishonest, or both.

What you are refering to is the movie makers' intent versus what they actually put on screen for us (the audiance) to see. Being a semi-regular reader of CINEFEX, I can tell you that ILM folks have a habit of over-exaggeration when it comes to describing the "actual" size of the things they portray. Case in point, in the CINEFEX coverage of ST:FC, one ILMer describes the Enterprise-E as being 2,500 feet (762 meters) long! Is that the number we should go with for the E-E, or should we go with the designer's (John Eaves) intended 685 meters?

Kane Starkiller wrote:
Naturally you ignore the ITW source I also provided not to mention that 685 vs 762 meters is not like 160 vs 900 km.

Oh come on. They don't have to be an exact percentage here. It illustrates that ILM has no freakin' clue about things like "continuity" in these matters. They either didn't know, got screwed up on, or deliberately ignored the designers' intent on the sizes in both cases. In the Return of the Jedi Sketchbook, it is clearly given that the second Death Star is supposed to be 100 miles (160km) in diameter. So again, I ask you, what are we supposed to take as gospel here? The visuals, as even Saxton has acknowledged, place the upper limits for the DS2 around 500 km (his methodologies are often not made clear for how he derived some of his values). When the canon visuals don't match the backstage nonsense, Saxton goes as fars as to make up a super-trench which is clearly not visible anywhere in RoTJ, or even vaugely implied.

First off, even if GL came out of the Versus Debate Closet, it wouldn't change anything, since Star Wars is his creation. Not Curtis Saxton's, not Mike Wong's, or mine or anyone else's, it is his. If he wants to wank out SW in order to trump all other space fantasy and science fiction franchises' tech, then that is his choice. It would certainly be disappointing to see him stoop so low, but it would still be vaild. Fortunately, GL is not that kind of a person, and wanking out Star Wars' technology is not what his philosphy for the movies' story has been about.

On the other hand, Saxton does not own, nor is the creator of Star Wars. He is imposing his own interpretation as a fan on the tech, and apparently at some point decided that he wanted to see Star Wars technology trump at least Star Trek's.

Kane Starkiller wrote:
But his work is official and recognized by Lucas's companies. Which means that his motives are completley irrelevant. Not that he was dishonest mind you but it just goes to show how weak your technical arguments against ICS are when you have to resort to such ad hominem attacks.

You overexaggerate the recognition aspect of this. It's no ad hominem to call someone out on wrong-doing. He got a shot at codifying the Warsie exaggerated firepower figures and he went for it. The acknowledgements in the AoTC and RoTS ICS are there for anyone to read. When you honestly draw the varying lines of evidence together, it stinks of him doing so for purposes of winning the versus debate.

His involvement in the behind-the-scenes Warsie support group was exposed for all to see (link was provided to copies of the posts he made there on Wayne Poe's little forum), and I provided a link to at least one public USENET thread he was involved with in mid-1997.

Kane Starkiller wrote:
I looked up his profile and he only made two posts in threads that were involved in vs debates. His posts were concentrated on defending his own work, namely the Death Star power. The other post was about Trekkie no laser myth but even there he simply attacked the idiotic notion that a certain type of shield could absorb infinite amount of power without specifficaly entering into STvSW debate.

It doesn't matter how you try and twist it, Kane. He still jumped in, and got himself publicly involved. The moment he attacked Graham Kennedy over the laser power issue, is the moment he truely became imbroiled in the debate.

Kane Starkiller wrote:
As for his "warsie support group" all I saw was few people discussing various calculations they made. There ceartainly wasn't any hint of making up numbers or dishonesty.

They went about trying to justify high-end numbers that had little or no basis in SW fact, while at the same time went to great length to belittle high-end examples from Trek. The pushing to find or create examples to attack Robert Anderson's work has also figured into the efforts of this group. A group, that I might add, included (may still include), Curtis Saxton, who has claimed and proclaimed by other Warsies to not be involved at all in the debate. That's a lie, and that's hypocrisy.

Why is this important? Because he is often touted as a true neutral third party by Warsies. His motives affect the outcome of his conclusions. If he secretly wants Star Wars to trump Trek or any other SF tech, then he might use highly questionable methods to arrive at those exaggerated conclusions, rather than be truthful about SW tech shortcomings. It also puts into question the ICS books he has written. He was given a chance to codify his vision of SW tech, rather than what is actually portrayed, and gives credit to know versus debators who have supplied him with many of these exaggerated firepower and power generation figures. This isn't paranoia, Kane, it's the truth of the matter, backed up by at least some evidence.

Kane Starkiller wrote:
You showed ZERO evidence that he was involved in the debate apart from defending his work in a single thread in 1997. Your only "evidence" is your claim that him communicating with Michael Wong somehow makes him dishonest: Never mind that you never demonstrated that Michael Wong is dishonest but you also make the claim the dishonesty somehow osmotically transfers through internet.
Like I said paranoia or deliberate ad hominem attacks.

He did more than merely "communicate with Michael Wong", he was completely involved with that group and their designs. Wong's own dishonesty is well-known, and at least out in the open for the public to see. But a big "shame on you" goes to Curtis Saxton for claiming one thing, then doing another. Exposing of the group is merely icing on the cake, and all you can do is rant and rave about us mean old trekkies calling him out on it. The evidence is there, even if you don't like it, and don't want to see it for what it is. Saxton is clearly not the neutral third-party saint that you guys want to make him out to be.
-Mike

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

Kane, I used that example because of the difference in weaponry, I didn't forget about it (I would have used a battleship otherwise). A superlaser is not a turbolaser. They don't look or act remotely the same. The Death Star and its superlaser are unique, regardless of DET or Superlaser effect.

Nonamer, the purpose of this thread is to determine the accuracy of the ICS books, not their validity or place in canon. The result of the accuracy should affect their validity, but they aren't the same issue.

In general, why I don't like the ICS books is that they tend to show the high end stats for Wars. I would also object to them showing low end stats. I think that median estimates should be used from both sides. That being said, "The Die is Cast" (DS9) and "A Taste of Armageddon" (TOS) are top level canon, while ICS is either low level canon or non-canon depending upon you interpretation of SW canon.