TCW CGI show and The State of the Debate

[Kane Starkiller]

See the thing is "is ICS correct?" and "would Empire defeat Federation?" are not the same thing. You pretend that if ICS is proven to be incorrect you "won" but that is not true. The galactic spanning civilization that can build Death Stars in a few years doesn't need ICS' gigatons to wipe the floor with the Federation. It just won't be as big of a massacre.

I would have no problem with disregarding ICS if you could be convinced to actually try and asses the civilizations more rationally. I remember one debate with JediMasterSpock which lasted for ten pages over whether Death Star is a ship. I loved his contrived scheme of Death Star without sublight engines hyperjumping from system to system carefully to swing around planets. Can't have the Death Star and it's implication for Empire's shipbuilding capacity can we.

[Mike DiCenso]

Couple questions:

1. Where does TCW fit in the canon hierarchy?
2. Does Lucas even care about what happens in it? He did essentially turf out the entire EU (or a good portion at least) with the prequels.

The TCW and the someday-to-be live-action series are considered "T-level canon", which last I heard, is somewhere between the G-level movie canon and their novelizations and the C-level canon of the EU.
-Mike

[2046]

I'll get to Kane later, but as for the TCW canonicity, Lucas has explicitly declared it to be part of his universe, as opposed to the parallel universe of the EU.

See the assorted later-2008 and 2009 quotes here:

http://www.canonwars.com/SWCanonquotes.html#2008

The pink text is TCW staff.

[The Dude]

Why do I have the horrible feeling that the live action (if it ever sees daylight) will visit Tatooine.

[Mike DiCenso]

See the thing is "is ICS correct?" and "would Empire defeat Federation?" are not the same thing. You pretend that if ICS is proven to be incorrect you "won" but that is not true. The galactic spanning civilization that can build Death Stars in a few years doesn't need ICS' gigatons to wipe the floor with the Federation. It just won't be as big of a massacre.

Even granting the near-total galaxy spanning civilization of the EU (the ANH novelization, as you well know suggests the Empire occupied only small part of it's modest-sized galaxy), the Empire without ICS will have a very difficult time defeating the Federation, or the Alpha Quadrant as a whole, never mind them trying to pull anything on the Borg, which would be suicide. What you have with the ICS gone and the TCW in it's place for SW tech would result in a scenario very much like Graham Kennedy's "Portal" fanfic from a decade ago. Tens of thousands of Imperial ships being wiped out by by a few thousand or so Federation ships until the tens of thousands behind that get enough firepower to damage or destroy enough of the Federation ships to maybe take a shot at the Federation planets... but then they have to contend with those member worlds' defense grids. Also see RSA's earlier posting about this very issue as well as read his Overview page where even he concedes industrial output to the Empire.

I would have no problem with disregarding ICS if you could be convinced to actually try and asses the civilizations more rationally. I remember one debate with JediMasterSpock which lasted for ten pages over whether Death Star is a ship. I loved his contrived scheme of Death Star without sublight engines hyperjumping from system to system carefully to swing around planets. Can't have the Death Star and it's implication for Empire's shipbuilding capacity can we.

The question is would the Federation simply be faced with a Great Marianas Turkey Shoot on a cosmic scale or not. Given the way the TCW is going, the answer is looking more "yes" than "no". It's no fight for the Federation if all it has to do is sit there at range and blast Imperial ships by the thousands out of the sky until the Empire gets sick of having it's ass handed to them, or the Rebellion topples it's goverment because it's too busy throwing away critical resources towards trying to take over one part of an alien and very hostile galaxy with other factions in it that would eat them for lunch, even assuming they somehow completely overran the Federation with shear stupid numbers. We've given you guys the benefit of the doubt many times, but over and over you all refuse to give even the slightest ground to Trek on about any point. If you don't believe me, just look at Wong's own pages for proof of that.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

but save for the über-wanker holdouts from SDN and SpaceBattles moderators, there won't be anyone to argue against.

You presumably meant this:

OK since you've asked let me try to respond to some of the stuff here.

but save for the über-wanker holdouts from SDN and SpaceBattles moderators, there won't be anyone to argue against.

So the "only" people left to argue are those from SDN? I'm curious, who else have you been debating stvsw? Wasn't it always people from SDN? So what exactly is changed, who are these other people/websites you have convinced or have changed sides?

Regarding the "devastating" evidence from TCW it all amounts to there not being mushroom clouds when they are fighting in atmosphere. Yet they weren't any mushroom clouds in "Starship Down", "Equinox" and "Dragon's tooth" all of which occur in atmosphere yet you still claim multimegaton energy levels for photons and phasers. Starfleetjedi itself claims even gigaton level firepower for Galaxy class starship. So, if you claim that it doesn't "look" as if there are multimegaton or multgigaton firepower on SW ships, at the very least you should try and apply some consistency for both universes.

I'll point out that the gigaton figure is only mentioned as a high end outlier generally.
More personally, I don't really dig treating the visuals from TCWS with the same reverence than I'd approach live action material, or even comics for that matter, since to me it's become clear that TCWS suffers from lack of attention, detail and polish.

As for combat ranges I don't remember ever hearing claims that SW ships have a decisive range advantage. Such claims always came from people arguing ST superiority.

That, you must have been living under a rock for ages.
Need you be reminded of the ranges claimed in the ICS? The case from the NJO about a massive destroyer firing across a star system?

Needles to say nothing in the movies or TCW series showed inferior ranges to those seen in any Dominion War battles, Borg cube battle, DS9 sieges, Scimitar battle etc. etc. etc.
In fact Sacrifice of Angels literally has Sisko trying to make a physical hole in a wall of ships with Defiant nearly scratching the paint off that Dominion battlecruiser as they punch through.

Well, DS9 really went down the shitter like TCWS as far as range is concerned. It's not like we haven't seen the E-D orbit a planet and conduct a precise phaser-based drilling operation (this shall put the phaser accuracy-range at 100-200 km), shooting missiles with same phasers or, more numerous, examples of torpedoes crossing great distances.

Globally, if you compare the ranges' high ends, I find that there are more of them in favour of ST, notably with torps, than for SW, but I'm not absolutely aware of all range claims either, notably through the support of specific examples from the SWEU.

Not really, Dude. Things are changing, though slowly, over at SB.com as more and more of the TCW comes out. Also note Kane Starkiller popping into this thread. Obviously he felt a need to try to do something to distract and derail this thread rather than address the issues.

LOL you've claimed victory for years. This was nothing but yet another self pep talk. "The state of the debate". Honestly.

Honestly, Wong has declared the same victory, but the difference is that he has literally rejected any debate, and refused to pay attention to new material or even newer claims about older material. A path followed by his fellow SDN mates when it comes to SW.
For one, he has never ever updated the page about the Turbolaser Commentaries, despite the obvious flaws which have been documented by me and others here and at SB.com.

For someone who loves to shred creationism to confettis, it's rather ironic.

See the thing is "is ICS correct?" and "would Empire defeat Federation?" are not the same thing. You pretend that if ICS is proven to be incorrect you "won" but that is not true. The galactic spanning civilization that can build Death Stars in a few years doesn't need ICS' gigatons to wipe the floor with the Federation. It just won't be as big of a massacre.

From what I saw in terms of firepower, range and, above all, the ability to travel via FTL over unknown territories, it will be at pain to curb the AQ alone, at least until they get a decent star chart.
Let's not mention the Borg, or the Dominion's forces, aside from what they were left with once the wormhole got stuffed.

And as we're talking about ship numbers, here's a demonstration of unchecked wank, typical of SDN: SDN: Naboo blockade and fleet numbers.
See the Dominion fleet parked over a planet in the pictures linked to by Mike, at the end of the thread?

I would have no problem with disregarding ICS if you could be convinced to actually try and asses the civilizations more rationally. I remember one debate with JediMasterSpock which lasted for ten pages over whether Death Star is a ship. I loved his contrived scheme of Death Star without sublight engines hyperjumping from system to system carefully to swing around planets. Can't have the Death Star and it's implication for Empire's shipbuilding capacity can we.

Although I didn't agree with JMS about the nomenclature, iirc, the question was interesting nonetheless. The hassle the ponderous DS1 had to go through to shoot at Yavin IV was more than puzzling.
A truly independent and mobile spaceship would have not been forced to lock itself into orbit of the gas giant Yavin.
Mind you, we could also wonder if the gas giant's gravity, or the local star's gravity didn't actually force the battle station into such a position, since we can safely consider that any decently updated star map would know, by the second, where all the planets of the Yavin system would be.
This would suggest that a battle station of that size and mass came with another limitation in how it could be placed.

Plus, as a related note, the funny idea that the Death Star and its n e32 J of energy couldn't even fire through the superior part of the Yavin's redish atmosphere: the amount of energy absorbed by the top layer of the atmosphere would have been peanuts. Unless of course the true energy of the super laser was more in the teraton/petaton range, and any interaction with an obstacle's matter would have weakened the beam and perhaps even disrupted it, if not literally dissipated the technobabble effect into the gas giant.

See, all simple observations to make, but which SDN keeps at bay. The debate is probably dead over there for the mere fact that SDN is playing dead and resting on old notions which are considered unchallenged over there, but only over there.
LalaLand, in other words.

Which, as a sidenote, also explains the wank applied in equal measure to Warhammer 40,000.

That pic is pure loads of awesome sauce, Robert! Where'd you find it, and what in hell was it originally intended for?
-Mike

Much training, to improve your research skills, still you need.

Are there still defenders of the ICS Faith on SB.com? You betcha! Point 45 and Vympel/Leo1 haven't gone away as far as I know, nor have those number of the pro-Wars (read: also pro-ICS) mods. In one sad recent case we had a pro-SW mod on SB.com attempting to try and change the rules so that TCW as inadmissible because of the blatent contradictions.

And one of the pro-SW mods literally banning people for what actually amounted to good arguments against certain pro-SW claims. See here.

And people, "its", not "it's". ;)

[sonofccn]

I remember one debate with JediMasterSpock which lasted for ten pages over whether Death Star is a ship. I loved his contrived scheme of Death Star without sublight engines hyperjumping from system to system carefully to swing around planets. Can't have the Death Star and it's implication for Empire's shipbuilding capacity can we.

Personally I think that was the debate I enjoyed watching the most. It was very entertaning but to the matter at hand. If I may ask why praytell does the Death Star need to be a ship to have any bearing on shipbuilding capacity? Death Stars, regardless if they are ships are not, are not built in the slightest like star destroyers, are expected to handle differnt stresses etc. There is likely little similarity, beyond the hyperdrive of course, between a Death Star and a ship that you couldn't find in a starbase or other large construction. Ie rooms, piping, lights etc. So logically the Death Star being a ship has as much bearing to industry as the Death Star not being a ship, a very large sum of resources which the Empire can produce over X number of years. I don't think anyone here as ever denied this, merely argued how does it scale from the Death Star to warships.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I remember one debate with JediMasterSpock which lasted for ten pages over whether Death Star is a ship. I loved his contrived scheme of Death Star without sublight engines hyperjumping from system to system carefully to swing around planets. Can't have the Death Star and it's implication for Empire's shipbuilding capacity can we.

Personally I think that was the debate I enjoyed watching the most. It was very entertaning but to the matter at hand. If I may ask why praytell does the Death Star need to be a ship to have any bearing on shipbuilding capacity? Death Stars, regardless if they are ships are not, are not built in the slightest like star destroyers, are expected to handle differnt stresses etc. There is likely little similarity, beyond the hyperdrive of course, between a Death Star and a ship that you couldn't find in a starbase or other large construction. Ie rooms, piping, lights etc. So logically the Death Star being a ship has as much bearing to industry as the Death Star not being a ship, a very large sum of resources which the Empire can produce over X number of years. I don't think anyone here as ever denied this, merely argued how does it scale from the Death Star to warships.

I believe there's an EU fact about how one of the two Death Star was built from mass produced mundane modules that could be found in Star Destroyers just as well. But don't quote me on this. It's also limited in some ways, because all EU schematics, even disagreeing ones, show that there are parts of the Death Stars, actually very large ones, that simply were totally unique to the battle stations.
I believe that the modules would be used to fill up the living quarters, namely the surface of the station, plus perhaps some random decks here and there, stuff that doesn't need to be properly tailored for the battle stations, as long as it's anchored to massive structural pylons that can support the insane stresses.

That said, again, the Empire had no limitless resources. It either was the DS, or the super duper fleet, and globally, even if it could produce such a fleet, there's no proof that there would be enough people to man those ships: the Death Star, if properly automatized, and with assistance of droids, would require less "pilots" than an equivalent mass-amount of starships.

A smarter mind, however, with access to the Empire's resources, would clearly drop the Doomsday toys, and focus on recruitment and more starships.
But this is not what happened. The Emperor was the Empire, and the Emperor was mad.

[l33telboi]

So the "only" people left to argue are those from SDN? I'm curious, who else have you been debating stvsw? Wasn't it always people from SDN? So what exactly is changed, who are these other people/websites you have convinced or have changed sides?

Well, let's see. SDN is probably the most inactive board in regards to versus debating, and it mostly consists of people just bashing random mail-senders these days. SFJ is a bit more active. But the most active place of the all is, of course, SB. By such a margin that it's pointless to even thing SDN matters anymore.

And that's where the difference comes in. The hardcore warsies on SB are all from SDN, and their numbers are dropping, while the number of people thinking the ICS is the accumulated wank of one guy is increasing. And the TCW just helps to drive home the point. There are already many debates that were hotly debated before the release of the TCW, which have now been put to rest. With the side who was wrong being, oddly enough, the warsies.

Regarding the "devastating" evidence from TCW it all amounts to there not being mushroom clouds when they are fighting in atmosphere.

Much, much more. We now have several incidents of asteroids crashing into ships, ships crashing into ships, fighters crashing into ships, proton torpedoes used inside an atmosphere, etc.

The funniest thing though is the continued demonstrations of fighters being effective against capital ships. The ICS pretty much says that this couldn't happen, unless we're talking something absurd like a million fighters all attacking one capitalship at once. And that's something of a problem.

The TCW also hit other stuff with the nerf-bat, like the Jedi, soldiers, droids, etc. To the point where B1 droids are pretty much the most ineffective soldiers in sci-fi, right next to Signs aliens.

Yet they weren't any mushroom clouds in "Starship Down", "Equinox" and "Dragon's tooth" all of which occur in atmosphere yet you still claim multimegaton energy levels for photons and phasers.

So the best you can do is try to pull a: “Well, since your franchise doesn’t do things right either, let’s mutually agree to forget about those parts.”

That’s a problem. Because not everyone is a either a warsie or a trekkie.

As for combat ranges I don't remember ever hearing claims that SW ships have a decisive range advantage. Such claims always came from people arguing ST superiority.

Yeah, it's not like any warsie would ever take the lightminute quote from the ICS and try to present is as evidence, right? That's just never happened. Not even in a recent thread in the Pure SW sub-forum on SDN. The funny thing though is that most of the time people present this as evidence they’re too stupid to fathom why weapons won’t remain accurate when we’re talking about lightminute ranges, even if the ‘projectiles’ were traveling at c.

Needles to say nothing in the movies or TCW series showed inferior ranges to those seen in any Dominion War battles, Borg cube battle, DS9 sieges, Scimitar battle etc. etc. etc.

They show inferior accuracy. By a large margin. Remember when you had three Venators a few kilometers behind the Malevolence, blasting with all they had and missing with more then 50% of their shots? Almost as bad as the hit rate on the Blockade Runner or Millenium Falcon in the original movies.

Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that Star Trek has demonstrated that they’re ship can blast stuff from thousands of kilometers away either. It’s just that they don’t do it often. Ships in Star Wars have never demonstrated it.

What TCW does show is Clonetroopers operating in space (last episode also shows this) and having nightvision thus putting to rest silly claims of lame plastic suits with obstructed vision.

So basically the only good thing to come out of the TCW so far is that it has shown clone troopers in space... for a while, before they start to suffer ill effects from it? That’s pretty damn sad. Obstructed vision is pretty much canon too, given Luke's dialogue in ANH. Plastic suits, well, they might as well be, given that spears penetrate them easily enough.

[Kane Starkiller]

Even granting the near-total galaxy spanning civilization of the EU (the ANH novelization, as you well know suggests the Empire occupied only small part of it's modest-sized galaxy), the Empire without ICS will have a very difficult time defeating the Federation, or the Alpha Quadrant as a whole, never mind them trying to pull anything on the Borg, which would be suicide. What you have with the ICS gone and the TCW in it's place for SW tech would result in a scenario very much like Graham Kennedy's "Portal" fanfic from a decade ago. Tens of thousands of Imperial ships being wiped out by by a few thousand or so Federation ships until the tens of thousands behind that get enough firepower to damage or destroy enough of the Federation ships to maybe take a shot at the Federation planets... but then they have to contend with those member worlds' defense grids. Also see RSA's earlier posting about this very issue as well as read his Overview page where even he concedes industrial output to the Empire.

Exactly as I said. You are incapable or unwilling to approach the debate rationally. I don't know how many times it has been pointed out to you that "modest" is not a defined mathematical term and thus useless as means of determining the size of the galaxy not to mention that galaxy is spiral and stated to be 100,000ly wide in several EU sources. Not to mention that you continue to misrepresent the novel quote as saying that Empire is a tiny fraction of the galaxy rather than the worlds being displayed on the screen being a tiny fraction of the galaxy which of course they are. Million worlds is nothing compared to 100 billion stars in a galaxy the size of the SW one.
At the end of the day Empire/Republic is stated to consist of 100,000-1,000,000 worlds while Federation is stated to consist of 150-1000 worlds with the addition of Empire possesing planets like Coruscant which by themselves have population likely 1000 times larger than Earth.
ANH opening scroll: "...stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy". Not a fraction of the galaxy but entire galaxy.
Then of course there is explicit statement from the ROTS novelization that turbolasers can vaporize small towns which puts them at megatons at least. Given the observed volume of firepower SW ships can produce the idea that Federation ships outgun SW ships 10:1 is ridiculous.
EDIT: As for "Portal" that comes from an author that believes Federation ships happen to be immune to SW ship fire because they happen to use "lasers" and Starfleet is immune to that you see. Not to mention the bonus of having Utopia Planitia shipyards survive the destruction of Mars by Death Star. That one was fun.

The question is would the Federation simply be faced with a Great Marianas Turkey Shoot on a cosmic scale or not. Given the way the TCW is going, the answer is looking more "yes" than "no". It's no fight for the Federation if all it has to do is sit there at range and blast Imperial ships by the thousands out of the sky until the Empire gets sick of having it's ass handed to them, or the Rebellion topples it's goverment because it's too busy throwing away critical resources towards trying to take over one part of an alien and very hostile galaxy with other factions in it that would eat them for lunch, even assuming they somehow completely overran the Federation with shear stupid numbers. We've given you guys the benefit of the doubt many times, but over and over you all refuse to give even the slightest ground to Trek on about any point. If you don't believe me, just look at Wong's own pages for proof of that.
-Mike

As I said no evidence of this supposed great firepower advantage the Federation has. You have never given any ground since you refuse to even acknowledge the galactic reach of the Galactic Republic/Empire so how can we even begin to start a discussion about ship to ship combat.

That, you must have been living under a rock for ages.
Need you be reminded of the ranges claimed in the ICS? The case from the NJO about a massive destroyer firing across a star system?

This is yet another issue: your insistence of pretending that official SW sources and SW fans are one and the same. They are not. If the NJO and ICS state such ranges than that is the official SW material not something made up on discussion forums whether you agree with it or not.
While there are instances of long range engagement in both SW and ST the actual battles always take place at shorter ranges.

Well, DS9 really went down the shitter like TCWS as far as range is concerned. It's not like we haven't seen the E-D orbit a planet and conduct a precise phaser-based drilling operation (this shall put the phaser accuracy-range at 100-200 km), shooting missiles with same phasers or, more numerous, examples of torpedoes crossing great distances.

Globally, if you compare the ranges' high ends, I find that there are more of them in favour of ST, notably with torps, than for SW, but I'm not absolutely aware of all range claims either, notably through the support of specific examples from the SWEU.

And there are also instances like Rebel Ion Canon striking the ISD at ranges in thousands of km in Empire Strikes Back. There are such examples on both sides.

From what I saw in terms of firepower, range and, above all, the ability to travel via FTL over unknown territories, it will be at pain to curb the AQ alone, at least until they get a decent star chart.
Let's not mention the Borg, or the Dominion's forces, aside from what they were left with once the wormhole got stuffed.

And as we're talking about ship numbers, here's a demonstration of unchecked wank, typical of SDN: SDN: Naboo blockade and fleet numbers.
See the Dominion fleet parked over a planet in the pictures linked to by Mike, at the end of the thread?

I've seen no such thing. Range is pretty much the same if you are talking about a standard battle, there is no evidence for a firepower disparity in Federation favor and all this talk about "unknown territories" FTL problems comes from them using starcharts. So what? We use maps today, they help, it doesn't mean somehow our ships are ten times slower without them. As for the Borg the first thing is to agree at least on how Empire vs Federation would go until we expand it to other races.
As for the Dominion fleet did anyone ever claim it doesn't possess 1000+ ships? Or are you saying those images prove the existence of even more ships which they don't.

Although I didn't agree with JMS about the nomenclature, iirc, the question was interesting nonetheless. The hassle the ponderous DS1 had to go through to shoot at Yavin IV was more than puzzling.
A truly independent and mobile spaceship would have not been forced to lock itself into orbit of the gas giant Yavin.
Mind you, we could also wonder if the gas giant's gravity, or the local star's gravity didn't actually force the battle station into such a position, since we can safely consider that any decently updated star map would know, by the second, where all the planets of the Yavin system would be.
This would suggest that a battle station of that size and mass came with another limitation in how it could be placed.

Plus, as a related note, the funny idea that the Death Star and its n e32 J of energy couldn't even fire through the superior part of the Yavin's redish atmosphere: the amount of energy absorbed by the top layer of the atmosphere would have been peanuts. Unless of course the true energy of the super laser was more in the teraton/petaton range, and any interaction with an obstacle's matter would have weakened the beam and perhaps even disrupted it, if not literally dissipated the technobabble effect into the gas giant.

See, all simple observations to make, but which SDN keeps at bay. The debate is probably dead over there for the mere fact that SDN is playing dead and resting on old notions which are considered unchallenged over there, but only over there.
LalaLand, in other words.

See all of these "problems" assume that the command crew of Death Star had the same sense of urgency as the viewers. They didn't. From their perspective Death Star was indestructible and they were content to glide to the firing point and blow the target out of the sky. Even when some crewmembers warned Tarkin that there is a possibility of success he didn't listen.

[Praeothmin]

I don't know how many times it has been pointed out to you that "modest" is not a defined mathematical term and thus useless as means of determining the size of the galaxy

And we've refuted your claim just as many times.
Do you need to re-read the thread?
Here it is:
http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... &start=120

Please remember you never proved anything, or brought any counter-arguments except for:
"Nyu-hun, I don't agree, and one lower canon-source says 100 000LY..." which we refuted with the higher canon source.
We're still waiting for your counter-arguments... :)

Given the observed volume of firepower SW ships can produce the idea that Federation ships outgun SW ships 10:1 is ridiculous.

I have to agree, I also think a 10:1 difference is ridiculous.
If we take the averaging of all examples for ST and SW, I believe we are closer to a 1:1 ratio then anything else...

And there are also instances like Rebel Ion Canon striking the ISD at ranges in thousands of km in Empire Strikes Back.

If you're talking about the ISD that was about to capture the Rebel ship, it was at most at a range of a few hundred km, not thousands of km away...

See all of these "problems" assume that the command crew of Death Star had the same sense of urgency as the viewers. They didn't. From their perspective Death Star was indestructible and they were content to glide to the firing point and blow the target out of the sky. Even when some crewmembers warned Tarkin that there is a possibility of success he didn't listen.

Really?
I thought they wanted to destroy the Rebel alliance once and for all.
Taking your sweet time to get there means a lot more Rebels can escape, and you have much higher risks of seeing the Rebel leaders get away, while attacking directly as soon as you're in firing range, whether directly or through the outer layers of the planet, means close to zero chance of any Rebels escaping...
I think they had a good sense of urgency, on the contrary.
There is no logical reason for them to take their sweet time, unless they wanted many Rebels to escape...

[Kane Starkiller]

And we've refuted your claim just as many times.
Do you need to re-read the thread?
Here it is:
http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... &start=120

Please remember you never proved anything, or brought any counter-arguments except for:
"Nyu-hun, I don't agree, and one lower canon-source says 100 000LY..." which we refuted with the higher canon source.
We're still waiting for your counter-arguments... :)

You have done nothing in that thread but pretend that "modest" means "below average" which it doesn't. Also you claimed that "modest" means "not big" but since "big" itself is not mathematically defined in any way it's again meaningless in the face of explicit numbers from the EU. Obviously after seeing that you won't budge and keep pretending that "modest" has a mathematical meaning I gave up.

EDIT: Just for fun here is an excerpt from an article about a new sattelite of our own Milky Way from universetoday.com:
"Our own group (the Local Group) is small in mass and extent while its two largest members, though large by spiral galaxy standards, are quite modest in comparison to the largest galaxies known to astronomers (the giant ellipticals)."
Well what do you know. Our own "large" galaxy described as not only "modest" but "quite modest". If I were to use your broken logic I would reach the conclusion SW galaxy is actually much larger than Milky Way since it's only "modest" and not "quite modest".

If you're talking about the ISD that was about to capture the Rebel ship, it was at most at a range of a few hundred km, not thousands of km away...

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/dvd/zs ... aunch2.jpg
The ISD is further away from the planet. I doubt that is a few hundred km. Even so it clearly establishes that SW guns are capable of accurate shooting beyond that observed in Clone Wars.

Really?
I thought they wanted to destroy the Rebel alliance once and for all.
Taking your sweet time to get there means a lot more Rebels can escape, and you have much higher risks of seeing the Rebel leaders get away, while attacking directly as soon as you're in firing range, whether directly or through the outer layers of the planet, means close to zero chance of any Rebels escaping...
I think they had a good sense of urgency, on the contrary.
There is no logical reason for them to take their sweet time, unless they wanted many Rebels to escape...

Evacuate in 30 minutes? No one said they went as slow as possible but there was also no need to burnout their engines nor any pressing need to try and shoot through the upper layers of Yavin's atmosphere as was suggested.

[Praeothmin]

You have done nothing in that thread but pretend that "modest" means "below average" which it doesn't.

And you have done nothing to prove that it doesn't when it does.
But you're right, since neither of us will budge, I won't discuss this anymore... For the moment... ;)

The ISD is further away from the planet. I doubt that is a few hundred km. Even so it clearly establishes that SW guns are capable of accurate shooting beyond that observed in Clone Wars.

Yup, it does indeed seem far from the planet, but since we really can't see more then a small portion of it, it's hard to gauge (thanks for the pic).
Let's say it's between 500 and 1000 km, since I also agree the ranges are greater then what is shown in TCW...

Evacuate in 30 minutes? No one said they went as slow as possible but there was also no need to burnout their engines nor any pressing need to try and shoot through the upper layers of Yavin's atmosphere as was suggested.

While 30 minutes is short to ensure total evacuation, it is still more then sufficient to evacuate all the Rebel leaders if they had so wanted to.
So why not just shoot through the outer layers of Yavin if the DS is so powerful?
There's no need to disintagrate the entire Yavin moon, just destroy it sufficiently to obliterate the Rebel base.
Since they were able to calculate exactly where the base was, and since we are talking about aiming at a planet (or moon), you really don't need to be as precise as if you were shooting at a ship.
So, if there goal was to eradicate the Rebels (as I believe it was stated), then they should have fired through Yavin if possible, or came out of Hyperspace right next to it, again, if possible...

[sonofccn]

I remember one debate with JediMasterSpock which lasted for ten pages over whether Death Star is a ship. I loved his contrived scheme of Death Star without sublight engines hyperjumping from system to system carefully to swing around planets. Can't have the Death Star and it's implication for Empire's shipbuilding capacity can we.

Personally I think that was the debate I enjoyed watching the most. It was very entertaning but to the matter at hand. If I may ask why praytell does the Death Star need to be a ship to have any bearing on shipbuilding capacity? Death Stars, regardless if they are ships are not, are not built in the slightest like star destroyers, are expected to handle differnt stresses etc. There is likely little similarity, beyond the hyperdrive of course, between a Death Star and a ship that you couldn't find in a starbase or other large construction. Ie rooms, piping, lights etc. So logically the Death Star being a ship has as much bearing to industry as the Death Star not being a ship, a very large sum of resources which the Empire can produce over X number of years. I don't think anyone here as ever denied this, merely argued how does it scale from the Death Star to warships.

I believe there's an EU fact about how one of the two Death Star was built from mass produced mundane modules that could be found in Star Destroyers just as well. But don't quote me on this. It's also limited in some ways, because all EU schematics, even disagreeing ones, show that there are parts of the Death Stars, actually very large ones, that simply were totally unique to the battle stations.
I believe that the modules would be used to fill up the living quarters, namely the surface of the station, plus perhaps some random decks here and there, stuff that doesn't need to be properly tailored for the battle stations, as long as it's anchored to massive structural pylons that can support the insane stresses.

That said, again, the Empire had no limitless resources. It either was the DS, or the super duper fleet, and globally, even if it could produce such a fleet, there's no proof that there would be enough people to man those ships: the Death Star, if properly automatized, and with assistance of droids, would require less "pilots" than an equivalent mass-amount of starships.

A smarter mind, however, with access to the Empire's resources, would clearly drop the Doomsday toys, and focus on recruitment and more starships.
But this is not what happened. The Emperor was the Empire, and the Emperor was mad.

Well as you said the Death Star likely employed only a fraction of the personnel and support systems the equivalent fleet of Star Destroyers would have taken. The Empire, judging from Alderan, had only a light hold on it's core worlds much less it's outer rim ones. Factor in the Imperial's racists preferences excluding all but very highly skilled aliens and the reserve pool might have been shallower than it might first appear. It's possible the Empire could not field the equivalent hulls, at least not in a reasonable time frame, and the Death Star offered, had they managed not to blow each one up in the same day of the start of operations, a quicker, and more fearsome, path to the same goal. The cowing of the Imperial planets into line.

[2046]

I really shouldn't do this, because Kane's obviously super-desperate right now what with the whole 'you must ignore 'modest', but you don't so we can't even talk about ship combat!' absurdity . . . but I did request his input, so . . .

Regarding the "devastating" evidence from TCW it all amounts to there not being mushroom clouds when they are fighting in atmosphere.

No mushroom clouds when ships, shielded or not, are trashing one another in atmosphere, yes . . . that's a big thing in TCW.

Yet they weren't any mushroom clouds in "Starship Down", "Equinox" and "Dragon's tooth" all of which occur in atmosphere

"Starship Down" was within the high pressure of a gas giant. It did show a large area of gases affected, but we don't know what to expect in that environment precisely. "Equinox" featured a single phaser shot during reentry that missed, and we can't see where it hit, so that's a bogus claim on your part.

"Dragon's Teeth" featured phaser shots against fighters within a kilometer or two . . . hits observed against Voyager were against shields and from an unknown weapon. You might be able to work with that episode, but at the same time you'd have to realize that even if you proved your case, it would simply be as much of an outlier as TDiC.

For Star Wars, however, we have zero on-screen evidence of even kiloton-level weaponry. The one thing we do have is from the RotS novelization, but even then it's vague enough to leave wiggle room. I've quite kindly and generously concluded about 1.5 megatons . . . but it could go orders of magnitude lower for consistency with the rest of the canon.

So where are those Wong/Saxtonian yields?

As for combat ranges I don't remember ever hearing claims that SW ships have a decisive range advantage. Such claims always came from people arguing ST superiority.

Lol! Are you that new? You guys have been arguing for Trek spitball range and claiming light-minute ranges for how long?

So where are those Wong/Saxtonian ranges?

[quote[Needles to say nothing in the movies or TCW series showed inferior ranges to those seen in any Dominion War battles, Borg cube battle, DS9 sieges, Scimitar battle etc. etc. etc.
In fact Sacrifice of Angels literally has Sisko trying to make a physical hole in a wall of ships with Defiant nearly scratching the paint off that Dominion battlecruiser as they punch through.[/quote]

Yes, but unlike Star Wars, we have just as many examples of long range (tens of thousands of km) fire.

What TCW does show is Clonetroopers operating in space (last episode also shows this) and having nightvision thus putting to rest silly claims of lame plastic suits with obstructed vision.

Not at all. Space and lame plastic are not contrary . . . the Jedi weren't even wearing the plastic. Why would plastic armor not work in space? It isn't like the armor itself was ever thought to be airtight. And of course we know there's something fishy going on, what with the whole Blue Shadow thing.

And as for vision, I thought you guys claimed the helmets had all that nightvision and binoculars and other sensor data integrated into the helmet.

So where are those Wong/Saxtonian supersoldiers with complete NBC protection and blah blah blah?