2046 wrote:Mr. Oragahn wrote:[
So you. So slimy. So disgusting. You remind me of those insidious and manipulative characters
Classic projectionism from the guy who has argued out of every side of his mouth in this thread, dancing between sides in the same post at times, often arguing by way of mere shade-throwing against points or persons without any evidence to back it up, and always circling back around to the same "conclusion" no matter what. As disgusting as your methods have been in this thread, I would like to thank you for the above . . . I wear it like a badge of honor to have earned such ire from the likes of you.
Again, had you been a reasonable person, you'd have toned down the interpersonal nonsense when asked, you'd have made my repetitions unnecessary, and you wouldn't have turned yourself up to 11, thereby making it prudent to put your errors in reasoning and argumentation on full display.
You don't even know what projecting means. All of things, I'm certainly not the one latching onto the legs of any other participant in this thread, mere member or mod, or even some imaginary friend, in order to rally them to my righteous cause whilst pointing fingers at the opposition because they're hurting and stealing our pressshious super ubiquitous planetary shield technology.
You just label as "unreasonnable" anything that doesn't suit your views and blast that motto out like a broken record. Not helpful.
Your problem is that you don't fancy The Conclusion so you're going to whine whine whine on and on and on...
And to substantiate all of this (because otherwise it wouldn't be funny), here comes the rest.
Point II (Year of Hell, Bluffing)
We won't agree obviously.
Repeating Chakotay's first sentence was only a truthful warning is just you obviously denying the
strong plausibility of a deception of Annorax. I'm not even saying that
it's the only way to understand Chakotay, but that it's a logical interpretation. Yes, we could stick to Chakotay making a general statement, which is pretty much what you've done but from my point of view this requires denying about everything regarding the plot.
Still, most of what I had to say about that specific point has been detailed on page 5 already (
here and
there).
2046 wrote:
Thinking of it, had Chakotay been totally unaware of the mutiny, he still could have made the very same statement, word for word, if he wanted to convince Annorax to forget about his mad quest.
Guess what, O? You just shot yourself in the foot. This is a correct statement and completely contradictory to your claim. Chakotay could make this logical surmise and know nothing more. And y'know what? That wouldn't be a bluff either.
Sorry, I didn't paste the entire text I wrote. I acknowledge this single sentence is confusing regarding the point I was making beforehand.
I thought of what it could sound like in a
different context, one with Chakotay unaware of the mutiny, in order to illustrate the elements that do matter once we're back to the episode's real context.
In order for a deception to exist, one has to know there is a truth but also being holding it back to some degree.
I didn't say the mutiny wouldn't happen, only that Chakotay could have said the same thing even if he wouldn't be aware of it.
In this different context, he wouldn't know of the truth. There would be no plotting on his side. His statement could be taken as a plain truthful statement.
This conclusion is the one you pick, but for an episode that presents a clearly different situation. Essentially, your position hinges around a grossly incomplete acknowledgement of the episode's facts.
You only know that as a being part of the audience.
Nope. It is the reality of the situation. A bluff isn't defined by the bluffee, nor a warning by its recipient, before the outcome is determined, as Oragahn tries to do. It is based on the truth-value of the warning or, having none, the bluff.
As an audience, we can know the truth value in advance, a la peeking at the poker player's cards to see if he really has a good hand or to raise on or whether he is just holding random garbage and hoping to bluff a win out of it. In this case, we happen to know that Chakotay is holding the cards in advance, but by the end of the battle *everyone* knows it.
(Well, at least until the timeline is excised by Janeway's victory. But, lest you latch on to that as a lifeline, Oragahn, do note that I refer only to the knowledge of characters in the timeline being followed . . . the YoH timeline was still excised by not-a-bluff.)
How does that even begin to debunk my point? Especially the part involving Annorax's logical tactical conclusion as a consequence of Chakotay's statement, which you could at least deign to address to some degree.
You simply entirely miss the point about being the audience vs. not being part of it (like being in Annorax's shoes for one).
You,
again, literally sniped 2/3 of a post that detailed this part. It's very easy to pretend being right when you don't even try to respond to the arguments.
Of course acknowledging this strong plausibility of deception would mean that Chakotay's statements should be seen as less reliable, because he would not be there to make strictly truthful statements as if he were picking facts from the book of
Astropolitics and the use of Military Assets in the Delta Quadrant, but actually playing mind games with a deluded man he wants to convince to stop.
I also don't think I made any secrets about the implications of my arguments either. So I find it quite amusing how you "expose" this like some conspiracy gonzo as if there was anything inherently manipulative and sick about my position, only to make it look less acceptable. It's just another way to try to ridicule the statement instead of actually dealing with its content.
The fact remains that Chakotay knew Janeway had zero options to ever hope grabing even an ounce of a half-arsed victory short of a trick that was
totally out of her control. The obvious attempt at a deception by Chakotay here would have been to have Annorax think Janeway actually did.
The bluff would be revealed simply when Annorax would have the confirmation that Janeway indeed couldn't harm the TWS but that someone on his ship had planned to backstab him, something he didn't imagine possible (again, we've seen how Annorax is a trusty fella).
From a general point of view, Chakotay's statement would apply to any normal situation where a Starfleet ship would possess weapons or tech to defeat a defensive system and would have been simply direct and true. From a contextual point of view strictly relevant to the episode in question and the plotting that was going on, his statement is simply incorrect.
I think it's a very straight forward understanding of the situation, although I'm not adding much to what I already said many times. From the moment this subtopic started, your entire position has been to deny any exchange on that point by never ever once consider what Annorax would obviously be led to believe.
2046 wrote:III. Don't mess with my Elba II, too
I see that Oragahn was unable to help himself. Now, not only is the shield dumb by design, but additionally it was wrapped around the planet by the evil genius Garth, making it weaker.
It's a suggestion, a theory. No more no less. It just happens to use elements we know of too, like the utter non-existence of force fields of that size in the UFP, the complete non-use of anything even larger than a small theater shield by the Klingon military to protect a top priority compound on their most important military world, and the link between shield surface area and strength, the later which even if it weren't confirmed in Trek, would still be a valid point to make simply in the face of physics.
How large was the shield supposed to be initially? Just wondering, because if the Enterprise-D shields get perilously weak at an extension of five kilometers (presumably tubular), it seems to me that the thousands of spherical kilometers one would expect from a planet would have meant the shield could've tanked novae until extended.
How could we know?
As part of a modification, the strength-size ratio would have to be very linear for the most part and also benefit from a high joule:area ratio too.
Ship shields logically are mounted from the very beginning of the construction and part of the blueprints. Meanwhile, a theater shield (which I think we know can even be deployed iirc what has been provided in this thread) would tend to remain more flexible, generally because it's a separate system of its own and meant to cover structures on the ground that come in various shapes and sizes and cover different surface areas.
And indeed, why extend it at all, except to satisfy Oragahn's irrational insistence that planetary shields must not exist?
I described it as part of Garth's gamble. The lethal consequence of dropping the world encompassing force field was quite obvious and no one would try to defeat it under such conditions.
I don't think I claimed it was a fantastic and ideal suggestion.
After all, despite knowing how dangerous it would be to the people in the dome if the shield were to be defeated in some fashion, Scott and McCoy still go for it.
At face value, it makes no sense at all. It's silly. We just know of the weakness but that alone tells us nothing. So we have to
extrapolate why they'd do that despite the high risk of casualties.
The entire episode is almost an endless quest of necessary extrapolations.
After all, it is the episode wherein Garth literally claims that a flask he holds contains a powerful explosive that would completely destroy that planet or something equally retarded, if he were to simply
drop the flask on the ground. Yeah, I mean, he really cooked that from within an isolated asylum. What the hell do they store there??
When was the last time you heard of the US stockpiling nuclear fuel for explosives in a supermax prison, alongside all the necessary tools to actually make the explosive workable?
Mmm... well, they may actually be using antimatter or at the very least fusion fuel. Okay, whatever. The guy created a megahyperantimatter then. With tools you'd expect to find in an asylum. The guy is some kind of Tony Stark.
So yes, that's exactly the kind of guy who could very well pull that kind of extreme gamble I described.
Oh and he also turned a medical chair-thing into an auditive torture device.
On the one hand, you try to make it seems as if you are not drilling down into speculation but merely going with the most basic facts provided.
Characters clearly know about the killing attribute. I don't speculate on that.
You most certainly do. You have decided that the shield kills people when phasered down.
I said I don't speculate on the characters knowing about the killing attribute. It means what it means. The rest is called a theory and yes,
that is speculative.
Alternatives with greater explanatory power and less nonsense exist.
Do they? :|
That is, within the confines of a shield design that is "normal" and "fine" to re-use your words:
Generator overload and detonation? Shield projectors installed on the dome surface that might blow? Shield generator being air-cooled by poisonous atmosphere?
All promptly debunked in
this post, towards its end (unless again, once ascribing to one of those ideas, you wouldn't mind the implication of UFP engineers being complete idiots of the highest order).
Therefore, for your normal and fine shield to stand on, you went looking for even more dubious and absurd conditions like... super explosive atmosphere, or super explosive crust, etc., none of which even fit with the episode either.
:/
It's even more absurd when you think that the best way to build a prison is actually to let it float in space, next to star. You get both vacuum and lethal radiations as ubiquitous and natural elements to reduce the chances of evasion. Stack a shield on that that only covers the prison-station, not a whole damned useless planet, and you're done.
an explosive atmosphere... you think it would have been mentionned.
Why? There was no mention of why shuttles couldn't fly in the atmosphere, a detail your speculation leaves out.
My speculation doesn't even have to mention that element, although I reported it as soon as I read the transcript of that crazy episode, and that's starting with the older thread.
An explosive atmosphere... they mention the poisonous nature of it, so you'd expect them to mention the explosive property too, especially considering that the plot involved a starship shooting nuclear-level beams at a force field with the intent of going through it.
In fact, that speculation is unnecessary because an explosion occured inside said atmosphere and never triggered a world wide fire apocalypse.
All explosions are equal, then? Fascinating.
Maybe you believe the explosion that killed Marta was moderate?
Transcript time (again):
SULU: There's been an explosion on Elba Two!
SCOTT: Point nine five!
MCCOY: It must've wiped out everything.
So now the
explosive atmosphere would also
only react beyond a given
threshold superior to: random wild fire, thunder storm, superbomb made by Garth that "must have wiped out everything", any explosive that Enterprise's crewmembers could carry (like, say antimatter charges of some kind, easily kilotons or more), volcano's pyroclastic explosion (which can reach into the megaton range) and last but not least, meteorite reentry or impact (again, megaton range or more). And of course we'd have to believe that the energetic density of that atmosphere would also prove to be high enough to defeat the dome in case a chain reaction would be triggered.
So that's three elements: kaboomy atmo + threshold above all known natural causes and a number of artificial ones but still under the Enterprise's firepower + sufficiently high energetic density so once the kaboom begins the dome is destroyed.
There's actually a reason why I mention Occam's Razor.
Besides, for this wild idea to work, shooting on the other side of the planet would somehow conveniently not result into a chain reaction actually spreading right back to the dome. Perhaps that's another parameter we may add to that already strenuous and obligatory list of yours, right?
And if there was a maximum range to the chain reaction before it would weaken, why not mention it and therefore try to shoot say 100 km away from the field's focal point right above the dome? And how could transporters even work in that potentially 50~100 km thick fiery soup now? And this, and that...
It really is simple. The ranking for the lethal causes first starts with the ship's phasers: guys shoot through the force field but hit the dome or too close to it and that kills people. Even the dialogue would perhaps support this as Scott says Kirk Spock and any other living being would be
destroyed, which is an odd choice of words unless there's something perhaps very kaboomy about the event. However, the problem is easily avoided by simply shooting 5 km away from the dome. It's stupid enough it cannot be that. So we look elsewhere for another explanation.
Secondly, it's the shield. For some reason, defeating the shield triggers a mechanical failure that directly affects the dome. I covered that part too and no options make sense if one wants to claim that the shield is normal and fine, all of them having the designers being ultimate dumbfucks.
So it either leaves us with an extrapolation that uses things that could be possible with a notch of tolerance regarding elements not being pointed out; like, "oh crap, mad dude has literally stretched the shield to unsafe levels that are massively taxing the generator, we can't take the risk of punching through the shield, it would kill all people down there" but can be accepted because it's physically possible and relies on other pieces of evidence outside of this episode.
Or randomly fly with completely exotic factors that are far more demanding in terms of assumptions, which are directly contradicted by the episode unless you add even more ifs and buts for these factors to work, and yet manage to paint a picture that still leaves us pondering the wiseness of the UFP engineers; after all, we could agree on the merits of why a poisonous atmosphere could make for an extra barrier against evasion from a hardened dome, but it really becomes silly to think that an explosive atmosphere would ever be accepted as a safe and decent parameter against evasion when it's detrimental to the safety of everybody down there and that there wasn't any massive obligation to even build a prison there to begin with (see my point about a space prison above).
So moving on...
OK, your new defense now is to throw a huge amounts of speculation, most of which doesn't even work (but you don't care), in opposition to the simple facts that we're given.
This is the ballsiest line of Oraghan's post. The dude's been speculating up a storm and declaring everything in Trek canon stupid if it contradicts him (or just pretending not to know it), but when counterspeculations are provided that show his speculations to be unnecessary, why all the sudden he takes offense at the huge amounts of speculation and claimed opposition to simple facts.
Remember, too, that this is the same guy who wanked himself into a tailspin to try to prove Chakotay was being dishonest about something . . . anything! . . . in Year of Hell, damning me for refusing to consider the contents of amd states of minds in relation to reactions to warnings. Now, all the sudden, he adopts KISS principles.
Are you arguing the case of Elba II's shield or Year of Hell? Please make your mind up.
KISS works when there is no need to go beyond it.
It's more like a reorganized and more readable presentation of points and evidence to dodge the usual quote-quote format of posts that is usual in such discussions. Got a problem with that now? o_O
With YoH we have no need to speculate, so Oragahn does. With Whom Gods Destroy we are clearly missing pertinent facts, so Oragahn demands we ignore facts.
LOL, what a load of nonsense.
It is just so obnoxious. He'll never give up. Even if I transported him to the Trek universe (he may need a visit to Elba II, actually) and let him interview people, he'd call them liars if what they said wasn't what he wanted to hear.
Aaaaaaaand more BS. :)
He claims his is "a measured claim that doesn't require extremely exotic attributes." Except it does, insofar as explosive shield generators unobserved in all of Trek canon otherwise and which he himself decries as stupid.
Except that the suggestion I made says that we have never seen a shield pushed to those insane limits and that is the cause of the lethality of its failure after a successful bombardment. Other than that, yes, I don't recall a ship exploding after losing shields (which would rather defeat all of your propositions that involved an explosion of the shield generator of some sort), a point I already made
here, on page 2.
Although Trek is notorious for exploding consoles but that's another thing...
Meanwhile, one of my speculative options at least has precedent, as well as greater explanatory power for the episode's other details, besides.
Such as?
I mean, aside the fact that it does not even mesh with the episode to boot, as I have proven in my earlier post and in my reply a few paragraphs above.
Oragahn's claim ignores canon in favor of the insisted-upon stupidity, and his counterattack is to pretend that all explosions are equal to each other.
It's absurd, but when O decides to go off the reservation, as he does from time to time, he doesn't screw around.
That was a fine list full of hot air I believe.
2046 wrote:III-A. Elba II Leftovers
Regarding the additional posts…
Mr. Oragahn wrote:And now we can add dumb liberators to the list of dumb people in the Trek universe.
I am old enough to remember when he pretended he wasn't assigning stupidity to Trek characters.
What? :)
How many times have you tried that tired dodge, Robert?
Skipping a couple of nonsensical lines, we come to a good one:
You mean skipping relevant arguments. AKA sniping.
Just quoting myself and emphasizing the elements you left out.
Me wrote:And now we can add dumb liberators to the list of dumb people in the Trek universe.
See, if liberators were to come, they'd logically note the same problem Scott and McCoy observed.
Also, would they be in touch with Garth, they'd also know what to avoid doing, probably because Garth would have told them.
And would they be incapable of having the asylum personnel lower the shield whilst Garth would be held prisonner inside a cell, then too bad for them, plan ruined.
But that would not be a relevant suggestion because in the episode, Garth was in control of the asylum.
And would they be incapable of having the asylum personnel lower the shield whilst Garth would be held prisonner inside a cell, then too bad for them, plan ruined.
Ah, see, he *can* even.
Point?
But that would not be a relevant suggestion because in the episode, Garth was in control of the asylum.
Oops, nevermind, maybe he can't.
Can't what?
We were talking about the design of the shield. The context of the part he quoted and replied to specifically referenced the design concept, from his dumb-by-design assertion versus my tongue-in-cheek counterpoint. A lunatic taking over the asylum was, I'd wager, not considered part of the normal operations by design, but I will at this point go ahead and defer to Oragahn's greater experience with asylums.
What the heck are you talking about? In fact, who are you talking to? You're replying to me and then the next paragraph, you mention me in the third person?? Is that your imaginary friend listening, again? :3
Whatever your point is, make it clear.
Additionally, O suggests that Occam's Razor favors his view.
It's based on external canonical data that relates to shields and even a rather logical physical principle (stretching something thin weakens its structure).
In the end I'm not dedicated to that theory to the point of not being open to sensible and working alternatives. It's just that it's possible and leaves UFP engineers unscathed because every single other explanation you provided simply failed on that department.
Then again, as I previously said, if you want to go with straight face value, then we have a wide planet-encompassing force field somehow cast by a device itself controlled from inside the asylum. It was thought to be defeatable by the Enterprise (no duration specified). Scott and McCoy think they could blast through it but it would kill people in the asylum. No explanation ever given as to why that would happen, but it's an obvious consequence to Scott and McCoy (and no one else on the bridge disagrees). The shield also has a weakness on the other side of the planet which Scott and McCoy think could be defeated by the Enterprise's weapons. In fact, the weakness of the force field would allow a shuttle to be sent to the surface. For some reason, it's not suggested to continue using the shuttle beyond the landing zone. When trying to shoot at the force field on the far side of the planet, they're still concerned about the safety of the people in the asylum. They fire at the weak spot but fail to punch through the field.
The dialogue is also strange to some degree, with the use of the verb to destroy when refering to not only some people but also any other living thing on Elba Two:
SCOTT: We could blast our way through the field, but only at the risk of destroying the Captain, Mister Spock and any other living thing on Elba Two.
MCCOY: How can we be powerful enough to wipe out a planet and still be so helpless?
Plus Sulu says something and McCoy's answer sets what would seem to be contradiction regarding the idea of the force field actually preventing things from getting through (although what is blocked is beaming, from teleportation to phasers, which is perhaps an interesting clue to investigate):
SCOTT: No breakthrough?
UHURA: No, Mister Scott. Still no response from the planet.
SCOTT: Sensor readings?
SULU: The force field is weakest on the far side of the planet. We can send down a shuttlecraft carrying a team in environmental suits.
MCCOY: It won't work, Scotty. They'd have to cover thousands of miles through poisonous atmosphere before they'd ever reach the asylum.
SCOTT: Aye, you're right. Even if they made it, they couldn't carry anything powerful enough to break through the asylum dome. Only the ship herself could do that.
MCCOY: Probably kill Jim and Spock.
SCOTT: Doctor, they may already be dead.
Sulu reports the weakness of the force field and immediately affirms that a shuttle transporting some personnel could therefore be sent down. McCoy replies that the people would have to walk thousands of miles.
So they'd obviously be deployed on the ground, but the shuttle could mysteriously not be used to reach the asylum!
So at that moment, shooting through the force field isn't a requirement. It prevents people from being beamed up or down, but doesn't stop a shuttle from deploying people on the ground, yet for some reason the shuttle can't be used to fly to the asylum and, in the end, the Enterprise still tries to shoot through the force field.
It's a rather complicated combination of attributes right there.
All in all, this weird force field is a type of technology simply never ever seen again elsewhere in the UFP, even when strongly expected; quite the contrary in fact, and is equally absent from all other major factions of the alpha quadrant.