Starfleet Jedi

Ok, in response to darkstar's challenge of me debating one on one, how about we have a debate. Parameters:

1. Try to keep things civil
2. The suspension of disbelief method is used unless if there is a quite irrevocable contradiction.
3. Typically, the debate is the Empire vs the Federation, but how about we make it the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances vs the 24th century Alpha Quadrant? Why? Because it would be more fair, and I feel guilty about arguing for a quite obvious evil Galactic Empire.
4. We use the canon policy given by Leland Chase; the EU is C canon. It's a part of the Star Wars universe, hence the term expanded universe, and to deny the vast majority of Star Wars material is a cheap copout.

My opening argument:

Space combat - the fact is, especially with the parameters, the ICS's are canon. Therefore, the statistics in it are canon. The burden of proof is not on me to prove them valid. Unless if you can provide an argument that debunks the ICS's, Star Wars pwns Star Trek quite handily in space combat.

Land combat - in Star Trek Voyager the 37s, phasers hit rocks...and cause some sparks. They don't even heat up the rocks, or cause any noticeable effect. This is consistent with almost all Star Trek episodes; phasers are not the uber vaporizing power weapons that some trekkies claim they are. They have been shown to have higher power settings, but in combat they are rarely used. Therefore, said power settings are either too impractical to use in combat or redshirts are morons.

Star Trek's problems go beyond that. They have no combined arms warfare. No tanks, no artillery, no grenades, no motors, not even body armor. Their phasers have terrible ergonomics, rarely any trigger guards or sights are seen. In Star Trek firefights often times turn into hand to hand combat, with guys with knives routinely beating guys with phasers. Star Trek ground forces would likely get their asses handed to them by WW1 ground forces. Star Wars ground forces have advanced body armor, automatic weapons, armored vehicles, artillery and overall a better ability to wage combined arms warfare than Star Trek does.

Industrial capability - The Galactic Federation of Free Alliances has up to a million member worlds. The Federation has...at most 1000, and the other Alpha Quadrant powers are unlikely to have much more or less. A long terms conventional war against a foe with 2:1 industrial odds is a big stretch. Against at least 1000:1 odds like in this war, fighting a long term conventional war is batshit insane unless if you have some extreme technological advantage. The only way that the Federation can possibly win is if they can win very, very quickly, but their relatively limited warp drive prevents that from happening.

Numbers - Star Wars has 100 quadrillion beings. The Alpha Quadrant has...trillions? This isn't really a contest, is it? Even if the Galactic Alliance only does a 1% draft of the population, that's 1 quadrillion soldiers, enough to outnumber the entire Star Trek civilian population.

A common rebuttal is the seemingly extremely low figures for the size of the Clone Army, aka about 3 million. This, however, is an absurd figure. That would be less soldiers than those fought in WW1 or WW2, which was over a single planet. Several contradictions to the 3 million figure occur:

1. Iirc, early in the Clone Wars the Republic orders an extra 1000 Acclamators. Add up the crew of that many Acclamators, and the number's about 50 million. The crew was entirely made up of clones; ironically, this statement comes from Karen Traviss.
2. Shock troopers were said to have a figuratively omnipresence on Coruscant. Coruscant has at least a trillion beings, and Galactic city spans basically the entire surface of Coruscant. This would mean that at least a billion shock troopers on Coruscant would be needed.
3. According to some sources, the CIS has quintillions of battle droids. This is likely an exaggeration, but there are somewhat more reasonable claims of quadrillions of battle droids. A 3 million man clone army would be absurdly outnumbered to the point in which they would have gotten curbstomped, even given the rather low competence of B1 battle droids.
4. In Star Wars Republic Commando, one of the main characters comments on the low numbers of the Clone Army and suspects that there is somebody manipulating the war.
5. The ROTS ICS mentions grand armies in plural form. Could there be more than one grand army?
6. There are indeed examples of non clone personnel in the GAR.
7. Based on the organizational structure of the clone army and the command relationship between the Jedi and the clones, if you were to take into account that there are 10,000 Jedi in the PT, the number of clones in relation to that would be far larger than 3 million.

We are referring to the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, not the Galactic Republic and its Grand Army of the Republic, which was secretly being sabotaged by Palpatine, so this doesn't really apply, does it? In order to maintain even a 1:1000 police:citizen ratio, the Galactic Alliance would have to have at least 1 billion GAS troopers on Coruscant.

As for ship counts, the Liberation of Coruscant from the Yuuzhang Vong involved tens of thousands of ships. The GFFA lost 300 capital ships. There are likely at least tens of millions of smaller patrol ships, which would be needed simply to maintain order along the vast expanses of the Star Wars galaxy. In comparison, the Federation was devastated by the loss of 50 ships. The dominion in full war mobilization had about 30,000 ships. Star Wars clearly has the advantage here.

Hyperdrive vs warp - Even the lower end hyperdrive figures are faster than warp drive. In order to allow for casual galactic travel like hyperdrive does, it would have to be able to go at extreme speeds, far faster than warp drive. The fact is that the Voyager took 7 years to cross the alpha quadrant even with help from various dues ex machinas. In Star Wars, crossing the galaxy takes at most weeks.

This is further evidence that Star Wars wins against Star Trek with ease. The Alpha Quadrant forces can't mount any invasion of the Star Wars galaxy because their ships are simply too slow. They can't reliably send reinforcements across major portions of the quadrant because that would take too long. Therefore, they'd play an entirely defensive game where they spread their forces dangerously thin, because their forces can't afford to have to go across large distances to defend a territory. The GFFA can basically attack anywhere at anytime with no warning, and then retreat with no fear of the slower ST ships from getting at them.

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Ok, in response to darkstar's challenge of me debating one on one, how about we have a debate.

My what?

Parameters:

1. Try to keep things civil
2. The suspension of disbelief method is used unless if there is a quite irrevocable contradiction.
3. Typically, the debate is the Empire vs the Federation, but how about we make it the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances vs the 24th century Alpha Quadrant? Why? Because it would be more fair, and I feel guilty about arguing for a quite obvious evil Galactic Empire.

A. Way to go for narrowing the topic.
B. The GFFA is an EU construct. I have no particular knowledge or interest in it.

4. We use the canon policy given by Leland Chase;

I have no interest in canon policies that come from figments of your imagination. (As you've been repeatedly told, there is no such person.)

the EU is C canon. It's a part of the Star Wars universe, hence the term expanded universe, and to deny the vast majority of Star Wars material is a cheap copout.

You might as well toss fanon in there as well. I choose "Portal". Or, better yet, my as-yet-incomplete fanfic, parts of which I will write and toss in as needed during the debate for the express purpose of trying to "make it a better comparison to" Wars. Y'know, kinda lIke how Certain partS of the EU were made.

Seriously, though, if you're gonna call for a debate and also try to set the topic and terms all in one fail swoop, as it were, then I don't have any interest. Perhaps if you have something new to add to the canon debate you can go there, rather than declare it valid by your personal authority. Or you can pick something a little smaller scale than the whole frickin' thing.

However, just for some free advice, a poorly-regurgitated version of Mike Wong's old SDN Overview page, mixed with some unsourced claims ("Iirc, early in the Clone Wars ..."), and arguments against your own canon (e.g. your anti-3-million schpiel), do not a good beginning make.

*sigh* darkstar, what are the parameters that you would suggest then? That we only include the movies and nothing else? Whether or not you think it's canon, it's fair to allow in the EU as long as it does not contradict G canon. If it does, then G canon wins.

How about this:

The movies, novelizations, etc. are used.
The EU is allowed as long as it does not contradict any of the above.

You have no incentive not to agree to this, unless if you feel that having the EU on the Star Wars side gives them the win. There's a reason why the Expanded Universe needs to get approved by Lucasarts. There's also a reason why it's called Expanded Universe and not Seperate Universe.

If you don't think that the EU is canon, do you agree that it's at least official, having been licensed by Lucasarts? If George Lucas approves of a product, then it's canon, and part of the Star Wars franchise.

Funny . . . I haven't considered myself patient for a long time. But thanks for saying so.

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Whether or not you think it's canon, it's fair

This concept is dead wrong. It is in no way fair to include material that isn't canon for one side while restricting the other.

The movies, novelizations, etc. are used.
The EU is allowed as long as it does not contradict any of the above.

And by what criteria shall we assert non-contradiction, hmm? Going by the SDN example, there is virtually no way to establish a contradiction, because sufficiently creative imaginations will find haphazard ad hoc ways of pretending away any clear contradiction into a mere contrariness, be it via reimagining of clear terms or injection of unsupportable additional notions into the text.

Indeed, by even suggesting such you've already set us on a course toward semantic warfare. And while the debate can certainly end up in such scenarios all by its wee lonesome, it is madness to open the field to even more material. That way is chaos.

You have no incentive not to agree to this, unless if you feel that having the EU on the Star Wars side gives them the win.

My, aren't you cutesy-clever to phrase it that way!

Given that there is explicit evidence of recent EU having been written to make it seem more powerful than Trek, your implicit assumption that the EU would win may be correct, at least in a debate against a reasonable opponent.

If you don't think that the EU is canon, do you agree that it's at least official, having been licensed by Lucasarts?

Official what?

If George Lucas approves of a product, then it's canon, and part of the Star Wars franchise.

George Lucas approves, directly or otherwise, of the sale of many "Star Wars" branded products. What you fail to comprehend is the fact that that alone does not make something canon or otherwise related to the storyline of Star Wars in any way, especially when the originator of said story explicitly rejects such notions.

I would accept terms where the EU is acceptable, but no facts not represented in the Lucas canon are allowed. But at that point the EU's as good as out anyway.

Alternately, fanon.

How about this:

Movies/novels/etc.
EU

If there is a contradiction between the EU and the movies, a rationalization can be attempted as long as it is reasonable. For example, if a blaster is said to be able to make a huge hole in stuff but when it hits a trooper and does not make such a large hole, it can be rationalized that the trooper's body armor lessened the blast. However, if an EU source states that Obi Wan can't swim, but then we see him swimming, then such is in this debate an irrevocable contradiction. Therefore, we'll be very strict when dealing with EU contradictions. However, we will not be as strict when dealing with contradictions against T canon, because it's not as high as G canon. We'll still be strict, but more wiggle room will be allowed.

Is this fair?

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:How about this:

Movies/novels/etc.
EU

If there is a contradiction between the EU and the movies, a rationalization can be attempted as long as it is reasonable.

To borrow Kor's perfect shorthand of my somewhat more verbose variation, this means that any debate will be reduced to defining what is considered a reasonable rationalization. Which is basically the same thing as semantic warfare over what constitutes a contradiction.

Besides which, I'll tell you straight up that I don't know jack about the content of that separate continuity . . . which is pretty patently obvious to everyone . . . so I have neither the interest nor the capability to debate with you about it. And, of course, facts from one book are often retconned with future books, with the retcon only appearing as a side note or even on StarWars.com forums, so I don't think it's very likely I could spend the time to become an expert on it.

For example, if a blaster is said to be able to make a huge hole in stuff but when it hits a trooper and does not make such a large hole, it can be rationalized that the trooper's body armor lessened the blast.

See, there's the problem, right there. You think that sounds like a perfectly innocent example, but with that little surface-scratching concept (for there are many possibilities) you've just rewritten the Star Wars canon to conform to the EU, with your own interjection about armor included.

In the Star Wars canon, all we see of said blaster is that it makes said small hole in said armor. That is the limit of our knowledge, and while we can make guesses from that, they are only guesses and would have to be treated as such.

However, by adding the EU material, you have changed the nature of the canon because you have changed the nature of the blaster. Sure, in the canon we might surmise that the gun might make a bigger hole in other objects, but it is just as likely that the gun is some uber-penetrator that is designed to make little to no hole at all, like an Olympic diver hitting the water. We don't know, and it is unwise to speculate . . . but the EU has speculated, and now you demand its acceptance.

And from that, you then further rewrite the canon by asserting that the armor is the reason for the lack of large hole, rather than other possibilities like setting, range, or any other of myriad possible reasons.

Do you not see the problem with that? A simple example like that one, and you've totally rewritten canon about a blaster. Now, when next you see the blaster in the canon, what will you expect if you see it pointed at a tree? A huge hole . . . and won't it strike you funny when that doesn't happen?

See, with TCW we are seeing the EU trampled almost without limit. And while I can bring up TCW and canon examples that will demonstrate the folly of most any really bad EU nonsense you bring to the table, the simple fact is that doing so is a waste of my time. You shouldn't have treated the EU as a part of the Lucas canon to begin with.

So no, no deal.

Darkstar........this is not an insult, but......your are soooooooo f!@$ing boring. I mean, wongs statistics and arguments may be debatable (aka bullshit) but at least he's entertaining. Come on, take the argument and pull this guy apart!

There's really no room for comments from the Peanut Gallery here, Leon. This is really between RSA and SWST to work out between them, if they can.
-Mike

Uh, darkstar, did you read the part where in the example where I stated that the blaster makes large holes in stuff that is not organic, but when hitting soldiers it creates smaller holes? Logic would determine that said soldiers had body armor. If they only were shown hitting soldiers and making small holes, then logically the blasters made small holes.

Fine then, though. Since you seem to be so desperate to not include C canon, for this debate we'll only include G canon. But there's a compromise. That means also no T canon either. Deal?

Request denied.

I have no idea why you are so insistent on making your screwing about with the canon part of the debate without actually debating about it, and I do not care. I will not comply.

Furthermore, you have failed to narrow the scope as suggested. If you yourself were a really interesting debater I might be intrigued at an offer to go over the whole bloody thing again, but you're not.

I see no profit in debating about any Star Wars material that is not the Star Wars of and by George Lucas, the contents of which he himself has made clear, with supporting commentary by many others. Even Chee has recognized the existence of dual continuities.

And just the same, I see no profit in debating only an artificially small portion of that same canon. Just counting what's in the visual medium, we were stuck at the end of RotS with about 13 hours of canon material. Each season of TCW gives us a bit over 8 additional hours (22 episodes at 22 minutes each), meaning that as of the end of the second season we had 16 hours of TCW, and as of this writing we have around 20. That's a total of 33 hours of visual canon, and yet you would seek to remove 3/5ths -- 60% -- of that small amount. Why? It makes no sense to me.

Star Wars already has so little canon compared to Trek. Ballparking based on 28 seasons and 25 episodes per season and 45 minutes per episode, Star Trek has 525 hours of material, or about 16 times more than Star Wars as of this writing, and 40 times more if you don't count TCW. And hell, I even forgot to include the various Star Trek films in that count.

Basically you want to do David and Goliath but have David tie an arm and a leg behind his own back? That's silly.

So, if you want to debate, then I'll tell you how it's gonna be.

1. The canon of Lucas is in full effect. You can find it on CanonWars.com . . . basically, that's the movies and related material plus TCW.

2. Aim for a narrow topic. You could even do a specific scenario, which is not narrow but at least constrained. I'm negotiable. But I don't want it to be too boring.

3. Rounds and Time Limits:

I've already been wasting too much time lately getting dragged back into forum postings, but I seriously do not have time for this.

A. Three rounds. You post, I post, you post, I post, you post, I post. Fini.

B. From the opening post, the debate shall last no more than 10 weeks, with due times evenly distributed in two-week intervals.

In other words, the due time for each post shall not be more than two weeks after the due time for the prior post, but early posting does not start the clock.

So, let's say you posted first on the 20th of January. That would mean I had until the 3rd of February to respond. And even if I posted a response on the 21st of January, you would still have until the 17th of February to respond.

However, if we are both able to fly through pretty quick, then this can be over real fast.

No offense, but your double standard is astounding. You accuse me of removing most of Star War's source material, even though the EU accounts for probably over 90% of Star Wars canon. Listen, you might not think it to be canon, but it's still at least official.

However, I'll agree. G canon + T canon. However, things can't all go your way. The ICS and other reference guides/technical guides are still counted as canon. Why? Because all of the quotes you quote about George Lucas's stance on EU are referring to the storyline after and presumably before the movies. He has not stated any disregard for reference guides that are about the movies.

Also, G canon shall be regarded as above T canon. If T canon even slightly contradicts G canon, it's out.

This is a fine compromise. You've debating SW vs ST long before TCW came out, and I'm still letting you use it, so be fair and give me the reference guides. So the canon policy for this debate:

G canon
T canon
Reference guides

Deal? If yes, then please give opening arguments.

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:No offense, but your double standard is astounding.

I am employing no double-standard. The EU is not canon, TCW is, therefore I reject your attempts to create a debate where you get to pick and choose. Don't give me that double-standard crap.

However, I'll agree. G canon + T canon. However, things can't all go your way. The ICS and other reference guides/technical guides are still counted as canon. Why?

Because you can't accept the fact that your actual George Lucas Star Wars doesn't beat Star Trek. It's the same problem that caused whatzisAustralian from SWTC and his SDN friends to explicitly create examples for the ICS that would make it seem that Star Wars tech was superior to Star Trek tech, as documented and reported previously.

So, now you explicitly want this anti-canonical and manufactured claptrap included in the debate, because you know you'll lose otherwise. I know your predicament . . . it's the same as the predicament of every SDN type, which is why they are so noisy and whiny about it all.

But the fact is that over the past few years the facts regarding canon policy have become more well-known, and now only very few actually believe that the EU has any real sway in the mind of Lucas and the creation of Lucas canon. And more and more, folks know that there are indeed dual canons.

Now, you want to mix and match and whatever, that's fine. You can have the ICS. But I get fanon. Or you can't have the ICS. I don't care. If you won't accept a debate that uses the actual damn canon policy, then go the hell home and shut up and stop wasting my time.

Your next message should read "terms accepted", or else don't bother replying because you've lost. You don't get to make the challenge then set the rules. I've been more than patient.

And for crying out loud, if you want to set up a debate that's winnable for you even without using stuff that isn't Lucas Star Wars, be creative and pick something. Hell, I'll concede right now on theoretical manufacturing output or access to raw materials or the like. Geez, I mean I know you wanna set it up so you win at the start, but don't be so bloody obvious about it.

Or pick something that's up in the air so that we might actually make some progress and the debate would be useful and not a waste of time.

But all this whiny monkeying around you've been up to is over. Put up or shut up. You made the challenge, now live up to it.

Woah...you're saying that a reference guide that's specifically about a movie made by Lucasarts is not part of the same universe? Are you this uncompromising? If I made a guide to a computer, is it not related to that computer?

However, I think that our terms are a good compromise; heavily favoring you, since they include the low end TCW and don't include the EU. I'm busy right now, so I'll come up with an opening sometime.