Base Delta Zero

For polite and reasoned discussion of Star Wars and/or Star Trek.
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Praeothmin
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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by Praeothmin » Fri Jan 27, 2012 4:00 pm

sonofccn wrote:
SWST wrote:Of course, the same WEG implies imperial fleet sizes of hundreds of thousands of heavy destroyers, but that’s cherry picking sources to you.
I'd actually be curious which WEG book implies as such and what you mean by "heavy destroyers" a phrase I, at least, am not aware is used regularly in the Star Wars universe.
So am I...
I'd like to have that source quoting this...

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mojo
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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by mojo » Sat Jan 28, 2012 9:17 am

The Oragahn Trail wrote:Proof is that nothing, absolutely nothing of what you ever argued for here is either new or challenging towards claims made here before you arrived. You simply completely ignore what we did. You completely ignored basic statements, simple facts, crystal clear conclusions and solid logic, in favour of your denials and repetitive broken claims.
StarWarsStarTrek wrote:And obviously, nobody has ever made the argument that Dankayo had no atmosphere. Nobody has ever made the argument that the Death Star is not a conventional weapon in the Wars universe. Nope, every single one of your arguments are original masterpieces crafted by yours truly.
Of course, you have no problem with Picard quoting arguments from darkstar’s pages or his own blogs, meaning that they are by definition unoriginal. How many times has self-vaporizing asteroids been brought up already? Surely everyone beyond the original conceiver should be banned for blatant dishonesty!
usually i stay well away from actually arguing in the sw/st debate for lack of knowledge. usually i stay well away from arguing with you because i'm still waiting for you to return to the spaghetti thread. but this is ridiculous.
this is dishonest debate at it's finest.

1. oragahn points out that you have never made a single original argument in the entirety of your history on the board, and that every point you've ever made has been debated into the ground and, at least insofar as this board is concerned, has been debunked. this is not a new idea.
2. your response is that, in debating against points that have been debunked to the satisfaction of sfj, it is hypocritical of oragahn to LAY OUT THE ARGUMENTS WHICH HAVE DEBUNKED YOUR POINTS TO THE SATISFACTION OF THE BOARD.

you do see how this makes no sense, right? let me show you what you're saying one more time.
swst- ancient claim
oragahn- ancient response and demand for either new evidence disproving ancient response (which has never been provided) or concession of the point
swst- claim that demand of new evidence is hypocritical because ancient response is not original.

you are well within your rights to believe that these arguments have not been satisfactorily debunked by the provided responses. however, trying to debate them again while providing no new evidence whatsoever and simply ignoring the immense library of information which has debunked these arguments (again, at least to the satisfaction of this forum) or, WORSE YET, claiming that this huge volume of evidence and successful arguments against your points is invalid because someone made them before is just more trolling. i know you know better than to think this is reasonable debate. it's fucking disturbing for someone who spends as much time as you do complaining about strawmen to pretend that oragahn is claiming that his problem with your arguments is that they are not original, rather than his actual claim which is that you have totally failed to provide any new evidence or arguments against the ancient rebuttals to your ancient claims.

so, one last time:

A long time ago on a versus board far, far away....
WARSIE wrote:CLAIM OF STAR WARS SUPERIORITY
WARSIE & TREKKIE wrote:DEBATE ENSUES.
EVIDENCE FOR CLAIM PRESENTED..
REBUTTAL TO EVIDENCE GIVEN..
EVIDENCE AGAINST CLAIM PRESENTED..
REBUTTAL TO EVIDENCE GIVEN..
PATTERN REPEATS UNTIL EVIDENCE FOR CLAIM IS EXHAUSTED AND EVIDENCE AGAINST CLAIM BECOMES OVERWHELMING..
SFJ wrote:CONSIDERS CLAIM DEBUNKED.
Present Day...
StarWarsStarTrek wrote:SAME CLAIM OF STAR WARS SUPERIORITY, SAME EVIDENCE PROVIDED.
The Oragahn Trail wrote:EXPLODING WITH RAGE, POINTS OUT THAT SWST HAS NEVER PROVIDED NEW EVIDENCE FOR HIS ANCIENT CLAIMS OR NEW REBUTTALS TO THE ANCIENT OPPOSING EVIDENCE.
DEMANDS NEW EVIDENCE AND REBUTTALS OR CONCESSION OF THE POINT.
StarWarsStarTrek wrote:PRETENDS TO BELIEVE ORAGAHN'S COMPLAINT AGAINST HIS ARGUMENTS IS THAT THEY ARE NOT ORIGINAL SWST CREATIONS, RATHER THAN THE FACT THAT THEY HAVE BEEN DEBUNKED (LAST TIME- AT LEAST IN THE EYES OF SFJ) FOR YEARS AND YEARS.

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Praeothmin
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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by Praeothmin » Sat Jan 28, 2012 8:34 pm

mojo, that's too complicated, he won't understand...

I mean, he couldn't understand the idiocy of considering Dankayo a perfect BDZ example even with Oragahn's very detailed description at why it could not be... :)

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Mr. Oragahn
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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Jan 29, 2012 4:02 am

Opinion, not fact. What’s the point of a debate forum if you cannot argue points that are ‘wrong’?
An opinion which appears very valid, thanks to the remaining work available to anyone on this board. The same work you ignore repeatedly.
What is the point of debating if, when a conclusion is reached after an exhaustive exchange of arguments and evidence, any newcomer behaves like said exchange, said work, never happened?
Yet that is precisely what you do.
You know that we have posted plenty of evidence of low yields, that we have largely shown why the age old claims of super firepower were wrong. This is not opinion, this is fact, and it's very easy to find since anytime you'll think of a specific case, all it takes is using the search function to find the threads, pages or posts which precisely address the question and debunk fallacious claims.
If, at least, you have new arguments or new forms of evidence to provide, I'd have no problem to reconsider any question, but you don't. And I'm sorry, but logic is understood by many people, and you've constantly failed to defend your claims. So much that the only thing you could do is ignore the other side, go lalala, and restart the same claims elsewhere, claiming that nothing ever got debunked.
In essence, what I posted here.
Can you understand a single word of what I wrote? Can you?

Proof is that nothing, absolutely nothing of what you ever argued for here is either new or challenging towards claims made here before you arrived. You simply completely ignore what we did. You completely ignored basic statements, simple facts, crystal clear conclusions and solid logic, in favour of your denials and repetitive broken claims.
And obviously, nobody has ever made the argument that Dankayo had no atmosphere.
I did on this board, in this thread. It's a theory that works.
Nobody has ever made the argument that the Death Star is not a conventional weapon in the Wars universe.
Pardon? Are you claiming that no one ever said that the Death Star was a very unique and special kind of weapon?
If so, that would be a lie. A very big one, since it's been claimed over and over here and elsewhere.
It's also been claimed that it doesn't even exactly rely on a souped up conventional tech, but relies on exotic systems as well, and that eons before you came here.
This is nothing more than pure trolling, as you cannot honestly be so oblivious to what happened.
Wait, you can actually feign being that ignorant, as you simply need not to bother consulthing anything ever said/posted before you.
Basically, before you, there was nothing. What a God complex we have here.
Unfortunately for you, to the rest of the plebe, you look like a fool.
Nope, every single one of your arguments are original masterpieces crafted by yours truly.
For the Dankayo atmosphere, it's possible. It's not like it matters. The claims, or say... my claims, are correct, as far as I'm concerned. I even let you a chance to disprove them in the latest pages, and you've failed miserably thus far.
In fact, the leaking atmosphere is the only way to go in order to make the flavour text logical and plausible.
For the Death Star, as I said, you're a fool and terribly wrong, or a huge liar. Any ways, you're being of negative value here, as usual.
Of course, you have no problem with Picard quoting arguments from darkstar’s pages or his own blogs, meaning that they are by definition unoriginal.
I'm not on Picard's back 24/7, and I don't double check everything he types, genius.
Yet I consider that many things RSA wrote are good. That doesn't prevent me from telling Picard that I find his conclusions about Trek firepower simply ridiculous. Even RSA never claimed anything like he did. The closest on this board to have ever claimed figures remotely close to Pic's is JMS, and they still were far behind. Then, and again, way behind, probably came Mike D.
How many times has self-vaporizing asteroids been brought up already? Surely everyone beyond the original conceiver should be banned for blatant dishonesty!
The original conceiver of what? Are you arguing an intelligent and valid observation? The "gasoline rocks" thread is my pet, but I didn't remember that RSA had already tackled that question years ago, in a more superficial way apparently. Why is it so important to know when the claims were made?
We don't care, even if they're 2000 years old, as long as they are valid.

There's really something absurdly broken here. You cannot so miserably fail to comprehend the point of using proper logic and evidence to debunk claims, no matter their age.
It really takes a devious kind of mind to really do what you do.

And, eventually, to avoid inflating the size of this thread so you could again evade crucial points, you're welcome to focus on the BDZ part only.
And I would invite you to show me where anybody had made the argument that the turbolasers in the RotS quote were light due to their description of tracking starfighters, or the argument that Riker had to have been referring to fragmentation due to the fact that vaporization would mean that the very first impact would fragment the asteroid into trillions of pieces and make further vaporization impossible.
Nice try at a red herring. It's not because I make a general statement about your dishonesty that I'm opening a door to debate here everything that's been "debated" with you in multiple other threads.
What are we to do, if not ban you in light of such dishonesty, really? The only reason you're here is because JMS has yet to come to his senses about you really are.
How about you hop onto your spacebattles.com account and debate me there?
In case you didn't notice, genius, I've been permabanned from SBC by a case of cretinous mods who spent most of their time one hand in their pants glaring at their warhammer and star wars figurines.
Not that it's going to change anything about the way you behave.

A planet is raw materials. Its mantle and core are full of precious raw materials.
You plan to destroy them as well?
Do you even think before posting?
Wow, what an amazing feat in nitpicking technicalities.
No, it's not.
Obviously, there has to be a reasonable limit. Oil deposits regularly used by even a modern society does not pass this limit. Claiming that mineral deposits in the planet’s core that are never used somehow counts as assets of production is just grasping at straws.

You’re attempting to dismiss that “all natural resources” should be considered at all simply because you could conceivably stretch it to ridiculous lengths.
And that is exactly what I meant by already debunked claims. I think I even gave you a link to RSA's page where there's, in substance, the same kind of point I made here.
If you really want to deny all available resources of a planet, you have to deny the planet's entire mass, because in Star Wars, they can harvest a planet down to the core if they really want.


This is where it gets fun. Let's imagine how one could prevent, say, World Devastators from exploiting a planet's mass. You suddenly realize that even the Saxtonian BDZ falls terribly short of the requirements to prevent such machines from doing what they do best.
But don't get me wrong. As I said, exploiting raw materials is kinda easy in Star Wars, and you don't need to go looking for World Devastators to get there. You speak of natural resources which are never used.
By whom? How far? How much? You speak of oil deposits, but this is not Earth. Exploiting oil deposits and claiming it to be the apex of energetic resource harvesting in Star Wars is deeply stupid.
Hey, how do you expect to prevent industries from not exploiting the helium of gas giants for example?
I also find it amusing how I must suddenly be the reasonable one here. You just reversed the accusation, but I'm not the one claiming that the Empire has to turn an entire planet into a bright and boiling ocean of lava in order to effectively deny a planet to people and industries.
More importantly, I just love how you guys decide when it's good enough to stop your literalism. They say to remove all life and all resources, no? You say that's good basis for arguing for teratons of firepower because all of it has to be removed, but at the same time you must be parsimonious, otherwise you'd be falling prey to fanaticism and some kind of intellectual gluttony... how comical. Let's just say that the moment you put a foot in the door of absolutism, there's no honest reason not to get entirely through.
You're just being dishonest, conveniently stopping midways.
Heck, why not argue petatons within thirty minutes?
- Fisheries: artificial constructs to grow fish. Not to be confounded with natural fisheries, which would obviously require destroying most oceans to do so. Man made fisheries, even if underwater, can easily be targeted. Go look up for "fisheries" in a dictionary, and you'll see that no one needs to go for the meaning that supports absolutely ludicrous firepower levels.
Natural fisheries are “natural resources”.
The text from Galaxy Guide 9 (and the other thing abou the Sun assault team) only says fisheries, along citing other man made assets. I take the definition which doesn't support Saxton, and I'm in my plain right to do so.
The argument on fisheries was largely used to prove that oceans had to be boiled away.
It's not true. There are fisheries which don't require that, and the firepower that would be needed to boil away some oceans wouldn't leave scorched cadavers, burning buildings and smoking rubble.
- Underground mines: they're just tunnels, you cretin. You merely need to collapse them. If it's the ore inside that annoys you, you have to snap the planet away with MAGIC!
Sure. You “just” need to collapse every underground mine on the planet. Show me a single source stating that the cold war nuclear arsenal could do this.
Show me a source that says that the entirety of Earth was mined.
Let me explain you something. If you're going to say that they have to indiscriminately fire at the whole surface just to be sure not to miss the slightest pathetic dirt hole ever dug by some peasant, you're certainly not thinking strategically.
Targets that matter are targets of importance. Like areas of large activity, with evident support of high tech industrial means, the kind which might even allow the exploitation of resources even in compeltely hostile and naturally lethal environments.
These are easy to spot, even from space.
The small mines, no one gives a shit about them. Those who work in them, or more precisely, used to work in them, will have bigger concerns to care about than going down some small hole to grab some charcoal or else. Most likely because the people limited to that low level of technology will simply die and won't have a way to return to their irrelevant mines some time later.

This is quite ridiculous in fact, because a wanker's BDZ doesn't remove matter. It merely heats it up. You can still come some time later and grab the shit for yourself, assuming you have suits and vessels, working droids capable of retaining an artificial atmosphere.
Which is found in droves in SW.
See? Even by "your" silly definition, you actually don't deny the resources. You merely postpone their exploitation.

NOTE: I personally think the BDZ is also a clever way for private contractors with ties to the Empire to get their hands on raw materials without having to bother with fees and local customs anymore, and also making much more profit that way.
- Oil deposits, same stuff. You destroy all industrial assets. Otherwise, you need to destroy the whole planet.
Yes…like bottom-of-the-ocean drills and oil deposits.
Oil deposits ultimately are of little importance in SW. Don't even think you can gain some ground against me by arguing on that. See above.
- Aquatic creatures will die if you achieve proper nuclear winter and fire at seismic hot spots. A biopshere is a fragile thing, in case you didn't notice.
No, you really won’t. And no, the biosphere is not a very fragile thing as a collective whole. The vast majority of aquatic species survived the 100 teraton K-T extinction event (which actually did less damage that a base delta zero would).
The KT, again, was a local event, albeit of a huge magnitude. Can you comprehend that?
The creatures which survived could already do it under similar temperature conditions. The KT didn't involve a carpet bombing depositing nuclear firepower right at their door step, on the bed rock.
We've recently seen with the oil leaks in the Gulf of Mexico that you can hit a huge area with, what? A few miserable holes.
Now picture ships making such holes everywhere on your seabed.

You know, if the Empire happens to miss some bacterias and a few penguins but turn the whole planet into a proverbial cinder, I don't think their demonstration of firepower will be dismissed as some kind of failure at obscene, reckless and calous devastation.

- Forests and their wildlives aren't assets of production. Production only happens with a form of industry, even if primitive. As forests are the easiest part of the BDZ, destroyed with peripheral effects due to the bombardment.
Oh no, you can’t cut down trees to make houses (hence assist in production) without a form of industry beyond building an axe.
But the trues aren't the industrial assets of production proper. They're the resource.
They're treated as such because they only get turned into something else with the intervention of some form of tooling.

Above all things, absolutely all these arguments are NOTHING NEW.
And absolutely none of your rebuttals are anything new, and all involve a gross misunderstanding of the energy requirements to eradicate a planet’s ecosystem and destroy all assets of production. You think that a nuclear winter can destroy the aquatic ecosystem when none of history’s extinction events ever accomplished this.
You claim the rebuttals are nothing new, yet you don't even grasp the inherent problems of your position. And when I point that BDZ definitions to put a cap on how far one has to push destruction to achieve said BDZ, what essentially was your way to conveniently push the cursor as far as "melt the surface of the world", I tell you that's it both dishonest and convenient, as you're not denying the resources below said affected layer, and you're certainly not even denying the residue, the slag, resulting from the BDZ.

It also goes without saying that with ships capable of firing teratons, no one, not even the Emperor, would have seen a point having a weapon that just turns a planet into some pebbles field because there'd have been very little fundamental gain, on the scale of WOW. If anything, it would have made him look even more stupid.
That, again, isn't any kind of new point either.
And yet you quote me showing that I believe weapons can deliver megatons. It's not like a rain of concentrated high kilotons wouldn't work, you know, if you really have to reach some underground base.
Next time, try to read properly.
Nice job at dodging the point. Megaton weapons’ shockwaves are not dangerous “even kilometers below the surface”. You’re simply making shit up.
The shockwaves can actually cause much damage, as proved by the tremors which caused damage to Echo base.
I didn't claim that the overall structures would be damaged though. You can cause damage inside a building and even start fires without pulling the building down. Basic seismic stuff Japanese kids learn at school.
So please not ignore that point I re-made a third time.
Except that I'm not exactly pushing the idea that megaton blasts will dramatically deform the structures. That is why I'm saying one must continue firing downwards.
No, they won’t deform the structures at all. They must continue firing downwards for hours at your yields just to get to a single shelter. Yet they have to destroy them all in a matter of hours.
We don't even know if the structures will be deformed or not. We can already, in theory, place structures deep underground, even if we don't do it yet. Still, if some significant seismic activity were to happen, said structures, literally stuck to the walls of the cavity produced by the removal of the rock, would be distorted by the tremors and the walls of the underground compounds would be directly affected.
Unless, for some reason, the structure was isolated from the cavity's walls, or that the materials were of super durability. But we cannot claim such a thing for all structures possibly built in SW. We simply don't know how, for examples, all mining industries of the galaxy implant and build their underground structures. That's why I wasn't firm.
And that's why I said that to be sure you'd really destroy the target, you'd have to fire until your blasts really reached it significantly.

Considering how high nuclear yields are capable to vaporize considerable amounts of matter, especially in confined volumes (which will be the case the deeper they go), it won't take long to reach the underground levels.
Take Dankayo. Agent ZNT-8 obviously didn't have to reach the surface by crawling through kilometers of vertical accessway, with systems gone off.
That kind of depth would easily be reached by mid to high kilotons of rays fired at the ground. It's quite simple.

Oh, they can't be sure that they've destroyed all possible kinds of bunkers, even those they don't know to exist?
If that's going to be your counter argument, think again. In your view, SW ships can fires teratons. Their force fields and hulls can withstand that much firepower, plus thousands of gees of acceleration.
Let me tell you, then, that hiding a base inside the damn lower mantle of a planet would be a piece of cake.
This leaves you with no other solution but to have to blast the entire mantle apart as well. Gone are the times when only melting the surface of the planet, down to one meter or a bit more. Or even one kilometer. No, that's not enough anymore.

And again, this is how I prove that you're completely wrong. I'm only curious about the kind of over the top, reaching and pathetic squirming you'll pull in order to pretend being able to get out of this dead end.
The structures may be hard, but just like for helmets, they don't stop momentum. They won't stop tremors (unless built with systems to absorb shocks, but there's no evidence of that), and it's the machines inside which will suffer most. See Hoth and how the base was being dramatically shaken. Past some point, the inside was almost completely ruined.
Yes, they will reduce the effect of tremors, but they won’t really need to because the many kilometers of rock will have already made it completely negligible.
Think again if you believe that a few km of rock can significantly diffuse tremors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-wave <- compression waves, the most likely waveform resulting from an impact at the surface in my opinion.
Look at their respective speeds there : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Speed ... _waves.PNG and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehmann_discontinuity

Waves moving at a couple km/s will almost immediately hit your bunker the moment the blast has occurred.
The difference of material between the rock and the structure will be a factor of sudden change in the propagation. Of course, the fact that an underground structure is mostly hollow will certainly NOT help at all.

Most of all, read this : http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/faq/?c ... 2&faqID=88
USGS FAQ wrote:Q: Can nuclear explosions cause earthquakes?

A: On January 19, 1968, a thermonuclear test, codenamed Faultless, took place in the Central Nevada Supplemental Test Area. The codename turned out to be a poor choice of words because a fresh fault rupture some 1200 meters long was produced. Seismographic records showed that the seismic waves produced by the fault movement were much less energetic than those produced directly by the nuclear explosion.

Analysis of local seismic recordings (within a couple of miles) of nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site shows that some tectonic stress is released simultaneously with the explosion. Analysis of the seismic wavefield generated by the blast shows the source can be characterized as 70-80 percent dilational (explosive-like) and 20-30 percent deviatoric (earthquake-like). The rock in the vicinity of the thermonuclear device is shattered by the passage of the explosions shock wave. This releases the elastic strain energy that was stored in the rock and adds an earthquake-like component to the seismic wavefield. The possibility of large Nevada Test Site nuclear explosions triggering damaging earthquakes in California was publicly raised in 1969. As a test of this possibility, rate of earthquake occurrence in northern California (magnitude 3.5 and larger) and the known times of the six largest thermonuclear tests (1965-1969) were plotted and it was obvious that no peaks in the seismicity occur at the times of the explosions. This is in agreement with theoretical calculations that transient strain from underground thermonuclear explosions is not sufficiently large to trigger fault rupture at distances beyond a few tens of kilometers from the shot point.

The Indian and Pakastani test sites are approximately 1000 km from the recent Afghanistan earthquake epicenter. The question that has been asked is whether or not the occurrence of these nuclear tests influenced the occurrence of the large earthquake in Afghanistan. The most direct cause-effect relationship is that the passage of the seismic waves, generated by the thermonuclear explosion, through the epicentral region in Afghanistan somehow triggered the earthquake. For example, following the occurrence of the magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake in southern California on June 28, 1992, the rate of seismicity in several seismically active regions in the western US, as far as 1250 km from the epicenter, abruptly increased coincident with the passage of the earthquake generated seismic wavefield through each site. The abrupt increases in seismicity occurred primarily in regions of geothermal activity and recent volcanism. The mechanism by which this occurred remains unknown. The Afghanistan earthquake occurred at 06:22:28 UT on May 30, 1998 and the thermonuclear test most closely associated in time occurred at 06:55 UT or after the occurrence of the earthquake. The other nuclear tests occurred 2-20 days before the earthquake.

The elastic strains induced in the epicentral region by the passage of the seismic wavefield generated by the largest of the nuclear tests, the May 11 Indian test with an estimated yield of 40 kilotons, is about 100 times smaller than the strains induced by the Earth's semi-diurnal (12 hour) tides that are produced by the gravitational fields of the Moon and the Sun. If small nuclear tests could trigger an earthquake at a distance of 1000 km, equivalent-sized earthquakes, which occur globally at a rate of several per day, would also be expected to trigger earthquakes. No such triggering has been observed. Thus there is no evidence of a causal connection between the nuclear testing and the large earthquake in Afghanistan and it is pure coincidence that they occurred near in time and location.

One last point. The largest underground thermonuclear tests conducted by the US were detonated in Amchitka at the western end of the Aleutian Islands and the largest of these was the 5 megaton codename Cannikin test which occurred on November 6, 1971. Cannikin had a body wave magnitude of 6.9 and it did not trigger any earthquakes in the seismically active Aleutian Islands. Suggested reading: "Nuclear Explosions and Earthquake, the Parted Veil", by Bruce A. Bolt, W. H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, 1976. (UC Berkeley)
1st underlined piece: under a few tens of km, there's still enough strain to cause faults.
2nd underlined piece: why the planet will give a hand in producing more damage.
3rd underlined piece: the Indian test, on the eleventh of May, was only rated at 40 Kilotons.
4th underlined piece: science fail. I cannot fathom how the author reached such an absurd conclusion. The tidal forces may be 100 times greater than a 40 KT nuclear zbang! (and what about greater nuclear yields then?), but a nuclear blast is of considerable power, much different than the gradient pull and release from tidal forces that occur over several hours, not nano to micro seconds!

Oh, so a base designed to be evacuated ASAP inside a mountain being affected by trembles somehow equates to a shelter kilometers below the surface being affected by shockwaves from weapons of the same yield now?
Depth increases, but yields increase as well. I of course would never accept the idea that kilotons were fired at the mountain unless clear evidence was provided, which hasn't happened yet.
We're let with, at best, sub-kiloton shots which wreak havoc inside a base buried under hundreds of meters of rock and ice.
You’re making a factually incorrect assertion; that kilotons or megatons are somehow energetic enough to cause significant earthquakes felt through kilometers of rock when they are not.
Of course such nuclear tests will be felt through the rock. See above.
And nice job at bringing the AT-AT 150 kiloton point up.
I said mere kilotons. Where did you find that 150 KT figure?
Screaming that the explosion was just the base’s reactor overloading does not explain the secondary explosion and contradicts assertions that Wars uses fusion reactors, which do not combust. So if an AT-AT’s laser cannons at full power can yield triple digit kilotons, how could HTL’s yield no more?
I don't know what you're talking about here.

Only a total douche would ever think of melting the whole surface of a planet, down to several kilometers, just in order to dislodge some Rebels hidden in one or several bunkers he doesn't even know to exist for sure, instead of merely parking a minor force and just blockading the planet by starving the rats out.
Starving out? And exactly how long is that going to take, given the amount of food and water that could be stored in a sufficiently large shelter and the stated ability to synthesize nutrients (Slave Ship)?
They can't go anywhere. Meanwhile, your imperial garrison on the surface has access to all it needs. Of course, it doesn't take much superscience to use seismic systems to scan the inside of a planet deep down a couple kilometers (I suspect that kind of tech largely superior to what we can do today).
So at some point they may be able to find the rats if they really want to, time only being the limit.

If the Rebels can have access to months of food and food synthetizers, so can the Imperials.
And that is exactly what they do, fact. The Rebel Agent in Dankayo feared for his life from the bombardment, he did not say “they have so thoroughly blockaded the planet that I fail for my life”.
What the fuck? Isn't that a strawman? What is your silly point?
Yes, he feared for his life because when he recorded his message, the base was under bombardment.
Still, although that was not my point, I'll remind you that three ISDs and two transport ships makes for an effective blockade against such an isolated and small target.

And good job lengthening a discussion with some irrelevant shit, again.
And I told you that "all life" had to be rationalized because in Star Wars it can reach such levels that you never know you've killed all life until you snap the planet out of existence with MAGIC! or hyperspace shunting (Death Star).
So we have to go for what is enough to spoil a planet for most species and civilizations, and looking at what we see in Star Wars, it's clear that a nuclear waste land stuck in a nuclear winter, with a toxic and thick atmosphere and a poisoned biosphere is just good enough.
The least you can get is the explicit statement from many sources of the killing of “all sapient life”. If you want to debate whether “all life” includes unicellular bacteria, go ahead. But we know at least that all sentient beings must be killed, and this alone is more than your nuclear winter can accomplish.
You think?

That's patently false, for three reasons:

First because of the deep underground bunker scenario I detailed above, an extrapolation upon your own belief about what SW tech allows in terms of materials, force fields, heat dissipation, and so on (all more or less relevant to e22 W power level tech, if you don't get it).

Secondly because there be can sapient lifeforms which could live anywhere inside a planet for whatever reasons authors could come up with.
You could already start from the Filar-Nitzan. Again, let's not mention beings to pure energy, those which might be able to literally live in lava, or even planet wide organisms a bit like in the creature in the third Starship Troopers movie. Or what will you do against mineral-based sapient species which could live inside relatively cold-core planets? Oh look, shit that survives blaster shots (weapons which according to Saxton and I guess, you, would leave 0.5 meters wide craters in duracrete walls). Surely those things wouldn't have much problem living deep down Mars for example.

Thirdly, as a combination of both, sapience applies to machines with sufficient cognitive abilities, such as droids, and based on your vision of SW, there would be nothing to prevent someone from creating droids capable of surviving inside planets, just for the sake of it.

The thing is, no matter how we look at it, we have to consider that the BDZ order is tailored for the target. It has to be adaptive to some degree.
I wonder what books you've read, because the scenario I had has shown that you obtained massive casualties with minor application of firepower spread in an intelligent manner, with something like a hundred 15 KT shots at most (I said 10 KT in my previous post but it actually was 15 KT: clicky (although that's not the PDF I have, which is more detailed)).
“massive casualties” is not enough. You need to have 100% fatalities of all sapient life. You have failed to prove that your BDZ can do this.
And as seen above, it's impossible to guarantee unless you erase the planet from existence.
Plus smoking rubble, scorched corpses and burning buildings, etc.

Now, for a better idea of how ludicrous this BDZ debate got in the past, SWST, please see here: http://www.st-v-sw.net/BB/BBbd0.html# (if you can read post the canon related comments)
Humans largely depend on food types which are obtained from crops. Crops are very fragile resources, and bees play a central role there. Air currents do wonders to transport particles, notably nuclear particles, across entire oceans. They can do it with sand, which is heavier in general.
Wrong, modern humans depend on grown crops, Wars humans can synthesize food and water. And even if they can’t, your plan involves a comparatively long term (months) starvation of the survivors, perhaps more for sapients that do not require sustenance as readily as humans do.
The long term starvation is still much more cost-effective from a strategical standpoint than spending god knows how many gallons of fuel to produce an impressive lava canvas over a whole planet and pushing a great deal of your ship systems to their limits.
Truth is, contrary to your wet dreams, with the surface ruined nuclear winter style, plus with some emphasis on certain spots, the lazy blockade is more than enough at that point.
It doesn't take a genius to know that spreading the whole nuclear firepower of the planet over it surface would totally kill us. Around the 90s, the total nuclear firepower's yield was estimated at 20 gigatons. The scientific projection only used like 20,000 times less energy than that.
With the total yield, you can fire 2 million 15 KT bombs. That's of course totally overkill.
…no, it really isn’t. There would still be survivors, and the ecosystem as a whole would still surely survive. Many modern bunkers and bases are projected to require several megaton nukes to bust. Deep planetary shelters would be directly unaffected by a nuclear holocaust.
With 20 gigatons spread over the planet, in smart locations? You got to be joking. You can already get rid of nearly half the world population of Earth by firing at the largest first two or three thousand cities, which you can level with a pattern of spread multi-KT shots instead of one big megaton blast.

See for example 50 MT centered on New York here: http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hyd ... m=9&op=156
You can see how far it reaches, but also how the overpressure drops in strength.
If you try 50 KT, you'll realize that you certainly don't need a thousand such bombs to cover roughly the same area, with the advantage of bringing greater levels of overpressure over, in fact, a larger area than with the 50 MT blast. You don't even need a hundred 500 KT blasts to cover as much area.

A 90 MT nuke, according to the simulator above, presents a 15 psi coverage radius of 6.86 miles. A 90 Kt nuke a radius of 0.69.
The areas respectively are 147.842 and 1.496 square miles. This is a factor of 98. See? You need almost a hundred times more firepower with one 90 MT nuke than with several 90 nukes. Of course the scenario is not perfect because you may want some overlap going on, so you'd end firing almost twice more 90 KT shots to fill the blanks.

The following simulator is cool because it provides information about mass fires: http://www.nucleardarkness.org/nuclear/ ... simulator/

10 KT has a certain mass fire area of 5 km². A 1000 KT bomb has an area of 275 km². One yield is a hundred times superior to the other, yet the gain between one area and the smaller one is only of 55.

We still have Mike Wong's NEC: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Nuke.html

A 1 KT nuke has a ground air blast radius (for near total fatalities) of 280 m.
A 1 MT nuke has a radius of the same type that stretches over 2700 meters.

We have increase the yield a thousand fold yet the gain in coverage area is only 93 times superior.

The greater the blast, the less efficient it is. This discrepancy grows further as the yield increases. It comes as no surprise, then, that you could obtain the same overall effects produced by the KT event, with much less energy spread more intelligently.
Obviously, Imperials strategists would already have geological biological analysis tools in order to know, after scanning a planet, where to shoot to maximize destruction. Computers would immediately provide them a list of coordinates to aim at, which they could even do automatically.
Of course, this level of competence is something that you would never concede to the Empire unless if it happens to suit your ends, which doesn’t really change anything because you still haven’t provided jack shit to prove that this will eradicate all sapient life.
This level of competence is very basic. Now if they can't achieve that, if they can't get the computers to suck up that kind of data, I wouldn't expect them to be able to build power cores allowing for teratons of firepower.
No, in reality, spotting such geological formations is an easy thing. Much easier than spotting disturbances in planetary shields, which torpedo spheres do.
Cities, in general, aren't big secrets, so they shall be easy targets, no matter where they are.
Except that you would have to flash boil large portions of the ocean if there are plenty of underwater cities dispersed throughout the planet, as is the case in Mon Calamari.
You just have to destroy the cities underwater the way you'd destroy them above, with taking into account energy absorption by water and the different behaviour for the overpressure.
The bonus effect of vaporizing massive amounts of water is that it will create a massive vacuum which will immediately be filled by the surrounding water, which will fall onto the city and crush it even further, which doesn't happen much with air.
So what you lose one way, you gain the other way.
SW's medical science isn't a miracle. Its bacta comes in very limited supply.
What proof do you have that bacta comes in a “very limited supply” in a well supplied planet?
Let's get to first things first. What makes you think that the average planet to be targeted by a BDZ will be a well supplied planet? Especially when said supplies would obviously be targeted?
Notice that bacta doesn't clean up a biosphere. It's not useful if your world has turned to shite.
You know, for example, that by polluting all of a planet's stock of glaciers, you'd actually probably end killing ALL species which rely on fresh water?
Surely, humans and the like will be completely at loss, and bacta isn't really useful when used on non-sentient or semi-sentient species. They can't drive vessels and won't give you a hand.
Not even Flipper.
It would certainly not be enough to take care of a planetary population, assuming you could have access to it in any reasonable amount of time, or assuming you knew of what happened to begin with.
Actually, just a few hundred thousand survivors being cared for is enough to nullify the mission goal of killing “all sapient life”.
Same goes for bacteria or other creatures living deep underground. Safe for droids built from tech in your teraton-firepower realm. Same goes for anyone living in a base protected by a teraton-level forcefield a hundred km beneath the surface of a planet, somewhere you can't find. Or deep down in a gas giant.

I think you should do something constructive, like trying to provide a rationalization.
I don't feel like repeating myself as to why you cannot destroy all life on a planet for sure without removing the planet from existence. Same goes for the resources.
And same goes for the very fact that Soontir Fel knew what his mop-up teams would face.
There IS a discrepancy between the idea that a BDZ has to be understood as something as formidable as you may think it is (which is nothing more than you arbitrarily deciding where enough destruction is enough, basically), and the real results.
Get real, a proper medical evacuation of such proportions could only happen through massive heaps of collaboration, not with twitchy space born genociders flying around.
Because obviously, no planet at war with the Empire would ever have an evacuation plan for an orbital bombardment.
That is why a proper world destruction, as per the ISB, uses a hundred ships spread into three bombard squadrons and a light squadron which may, at time, give a hand to one of them (even if it's frowned upon).
They blockade the planet as much as they bombard it.
A handful ISDs alone might burn the world, but they'll have a hard time stopping all ships.
The whole "no escape" literalistic argument also has suffered. It's not tenable. It's an ideal goal, not one that should be expected to be achieved with 100% efficiency. At least not outside the use of a proper quantity of warships.
Remember, my lowly friend, that in a textbook definition of a BDZ, in the ideal scenario, a fleet of a hundred ships is required, even if an ISD can achieve the mission on its own.
This certainly reduces the chances of escapes as much as it renders any potential rescue harder as well.
“required” my ass, you liar. A single star destroyer has done a textbook BDZ (destroying everything) on numerous occasions. The Technical Guide and Imperial Sourcebook mention that a single ISD can do it. A fleet of mercenaries has done it. Indeed, the very same source you mention (which mentions that a BDZ fleet “typically” has such numbers) also specifies the composition of said fleets, and the vast majority of the ships are support vessels.

Obviously, intentionally or not, you are confusing ideally taking 100 support vessels to do a BDZ to thinking that you need 100 ships to do the damage, when the fact that one ISD can perform such a thing clearly implies that the 100 fleet ships are there to blockade the planet, not to actually fire at it.

Of course, the same WEG implies imperial fleet sizes of hundreds of thousands of heavy destroyers, but that’s cherry picking sources to you.
Time is not given, and there's no way to know if the language is a bit flowery or the data written under the scope of propaganda.

Now, on the other hand, the ISB gives us a clear description of what the Empire uses when it has to entirely destroy a world.
The BDZ terminology isn't found in that book, but the goal is exactly that, and not matched by any other description.
It also remains, to this day, the most detailed description of how the Imperial Navy operates and spreads its forces depending on the mission.
See there for a start: http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWbd0.html#II-B

We can consider, first, that an ISD has enough firepower to do some serious damage over an unknown amount of time, but it can't do the complete operation on its own without dramatically reducing the chances of success and the efficiency.

Let me enlighten you about the situation with information from the Imperial Sourcebook.

A typical System Bombard (SB) is composed of three Bombard Squadrons and one Light Squadron, for a total of 100 ships.
Squadrons contain from 14 to 60 ships on the average. They are composed of Lines.
Lines contain between 1 to 20 ships, with 7% of them comprising an average of 4 ships.
For the reminder, said ships are usually, at least, 100 meters long or more.
In some ways, ISDs are considered their own line.

Now, a Bombard Squadron counts 2 Torpedo Lines, 1 Skirmish Line and 1 Pursuit Line, for an average of 20 to 28 vessels.

A Torpedo Line consists of 2 Torpedo Spheres. It goes without saying that though they're used against planetary shields and principally built to get said shields down, they won't twiddle their fingers once the shield is down. They're considered small Death Stars, are much bigger than ISDs and are full orientated towards planetary bombardment.
A Skirmish Line is composed of 4 to 20 small ships on the average, mostly corvettes.
A Pursuit Line counts 4 to 10 ships, usually light cruisers but also corvettes at times.

A Light Squadron consists of at least 2 Attack Lines, 1 Skirmish Line and 1 Recon Line, for an average of 20 to 30 ships of all types.
An Attack Line contains 3 to 6 ships, few heavy cruisers or more numerous light cruisers or frigates.
The Recon Line is composed of 2 to 4 ships, usually light cruisers.

Now my personal observation is that the diagram of pages 104-105 is quite messy and unclear.
Still, we can note that in the description of a System Bombard, no ISD is present in the composition.
But we also know from the book that an ISD could in theory replace a line on its own.
I suppose one dedicated to heavy assault, planet assault or troop deployment.

Notice, then, that what should logically be a BDZ (although not named), is an action taken when the former siege of a world proved too hardened by enemies and that the Empire wants to deny the planet to rebels.
Also, notice that a real System Bombard then uses no less than 12 torpedo spheres (3 Bombard Squadrons x 2 Torpedo Lines x 2 torp. spheres), and that all other tasks required for proper blockade are taken care by a vast array of warships, from heavy ones to fast and smaller ones.

No EU author has yet bothered to paint such a massive event. They always put a huge emphasis on Star Destroyers, but it's absolutely clear that they'd do a so-so job at properly blockading a world.
For the fact, no less than two ISDs were pursing the Millennium Falcon in ANH, and failed to stop it. One single small ship, from a desolate planet with a limited population all concentrated in a few cities in a small inhabitable area.
And that for one of the most important missions ever.

As we can see, the complete destruction of a world and proper blockading of it does require some hefty amount of preparation and a considerable amount of ships, including some of the most powerful ever made by the Empire, surpassing by far even the Executor-likes in terms of sheer firepower.

One would wonder why the Empire would bother with such a mess if a proper and clean BDZ only require one ISD working its way around a planet under an hour or so, or a bit more.


The 100 TT event was a very focused delivery of energy. For all intents and purposes, it was a massive waste of it, if someone had used to destroy life.
And as I said, going down the absolutist route like you do, when it comes to the eradication of life, is considerably ludicrous.
It just can't work in Star Wars.
You completely failed to address what I wrote about various life forms, notably the Force. It's clear that you just can't win this.
Yes, it was a focused deliverance of energy…offset by the fact that it was 100 teratons, and did not even make a deep enough crater to reach a “deep planetary shelter”.
It is interesting; you have meticulously avoided discussing about what I wrote regarding the various life forms.
Obviously you couldn't gain any ground there so you decided to act like if I never said anything.

I largely demonstrated why molten slag needs to be rationalized. It's not without basis. My entire post before has precisely been about clarifying the whole contradiction from Scavenger Hunt between the objective of reducing a base to molten slag (and not the whole planet), and the real effects.
Yes, because the imperials clearly wanted to scavenge data and collect information from the base.
The book is clear, they wanted to reduce the base to molten slag, and the only failure after the completion of the mission was about not finding any trace of life once the ruins and remaining buildings were being explored by the troops.
You cannot deny that. So obviously, reducing the base to molten slag cannot be taken literally.
That's the demonstration based on Scavenger Hunt of course.
There's the same going on with Nar Shaddaa.

Nie to see you deny that as well.
All this thread is about demonstrating that after all. We have clear descriptions that contradict the literalistic way, like the age old Star Wars Technical Journal from 95 with its planetary surface turned into smoking debris in a matter of hours, or Hutt Gambit (which has been posted way too many times and which you cannot dismiss, no matter how hard you try to claim Fel to be ignorant of a BDZ is when Han knows what its effects are, in the same book!).
You do realize that “without basis” was not the primary argument of my post, but rather that you deny that the molten slag quotes are even valid as figurative definitions? What a nice way to twist an essential disclaimer into the focus of your response.
I reacted on the underlined part. You claimed I moved from A to B, A being claiming without basis that "molten slag" was figurative talking.
I definitely played all hands on table and presented all necessary evidence.
Besides, the fact that it is figurative means that it cannot be technically and literally accurate. No surprise you can't understand that, though, since you never ever computed why "to vaporize" didn't have to be taken literally either.


Wrong. I never said the eradication of life was immediate. The BDZ operation takes hours, not the total effects.
You see an inaccuracy because it's your reading comprehension that is at fault.
The total effects have to be committed within an hour for there to be no witnesses, genius. Even if you use a retarded interpretation of the Hutt’s Gambit quote, there are numerous examples of base delta zeros that the Empire did not want the public to know about, in which everyone died within a day of the attack.
Ah, the old "no witness" claim.
Time has no importance. They don't have to achieve the thing under one hour to avoid witnesses. They have to make sure that any ship which was about to leave the planet or even hyperspace way... doesn't.
They only need plenty of ships.
It's quite funny, since the people you parrot have used Camaas as evidence for BDZ operations (although never described as such btw), and yet there were witnesses. Heck, there even was a planetary shield generator which remained, never destroyed by the Bothans.
Tell me, Smarty One, how you'd BDZ ecumenopolises for example ? How do you avoid witnesses there?
Answer: with a huge fleet.
See, time is totally irrelevant.
And by very canonical statements, what is left of such a bombardment is smoking rubble, blackened corpses and burning buildings.
Let’s see…

Several omniscient sources and statements from Grand Admirals and Supreme Commanders, as well as physical descriptions of what actually occurs in a real BDZ…versus a young Boba Fett imagining the event in his mind. Both are of equal canonical sources.
Safe that it's not Boba Fett, idiot, but Soontir Fel, an Imperial pilot and captain with considerable experience behind him. If Han can know what a BDZ is, Fel surely will.
He's "imagining" as much as he actually knows what he's going to be looking for. It would be quite stupid to claim that as a captain of a warship, he wouldn't know what a BDZ operation is about.
So, going by your own culture of rationalizing rather than dismissing sources on a whim, you are left with two rationalizations…
The other citations are from people who are not providing technical descriptions but trying to impress people they talk to. Not that they actually make much of a literal point. For example, stone running like water is obviously an exaggeration since even under fluid form, it cannot happen. And it could be present in some places only.
Etc.
That Boba Fett’s reaction was in a knee jerk emotional mindset in his mind
It's not Fett.
OR…
That Niathal and Caedus were all fucking around with the reader and deluding themselves with overinflated capabilities, and the omniscient narrators were just fucking with us some more.
I see that you've been taking your information from this thread: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=148366
Most likely TC Pilot's post. Let's quote it here:
TC Pilot, @SDN wrote: A Base Delta Zero is an order to basically eradicate signs of civilization, and entirely context-sensitive. As far as I know, Caamas has nothing to do with a BDZ, it was just Palpatine contracting out some politically-beneficial genocide, and the completion of a BDZ on Nar Shaddaa wouldn't neccesarily need to be all that thorough.

The Imperial Sourcebook, which is one of the only sources that really treats it in a technical manner, says the order pertains to the destruction of all planetary resources, including population centers, arable land, and fisheries.

That said, there's also plenty of references to capital ships being able to turn planets to "slag" or "molten slag."

"Niathal was very quiet. And she hadn't said a word about Jedi StealthXs wandering around at will in the fleet assembly area. Any commander would have been in a flap about that, unless they thought it was a problem that didn't have their name on it.
I'm not stupid, Admiral.
"Thoughts?" said Caedus, looking her way.
"I've often fought the urge to reduce a planet to molten slag myself, "Niathal said, unmoved. "Probably for totally different reasons to you, Colonel. But I agree with Gil-holding what we seize is going to be a drain on resources, unless Fondor shows some pragmatism and rolls over. Let's give them an extra reason for doing that, beyond annihilation." - REVELATION,LEGACY OF THE FORCE

"Daala's Star Destroyers controlled enough power to turn entire planets to slag, but she didn't want to do that here. "Dantooine is too remote for an effective demonstration," she said, "but we can make use of it nonetheless." -JEDI ACADEMY DARK APPRENTICE

"Besany didn't think she'd been crashing around any-where. She was mortified. "Why should I believe you?"
"Because Qiilura has a fragile ecology and we know Skirata is a vengeful little piece of vermin who really could persuade the fleet to melt it to slag. We want to be left alone now. Really alone."
"I see."
"We'll maintain a presence here, by way of insurance," said the Gurlanin. "Not that you'd notice." " - REPUBLIC COMMANDO: TRUE COLOURS

"Niathal was watching the exchange with faint interest. "This is an exquisite ethical argument, but right now I'm more concerned with stopping Corellia repairing an orbital weapon that was capable of taking out the Yuuzhan Vong and that will, if brought back online, ruin the Alliance's entire day."
Omas almost twitched. The power play was luminous in its visibility. "What would you prefer to do, Admiral? We failed to destroy it last time."
"We can reduce a planet to molten slag from orbit. Let's not rule out the possibility of needing to do that to Centerpoint-even if it would be best preserved to defend the Alliance."
"It's populated," said Luke.
"So are warships." " - LEGACY OF THE FORCE BLOODLINES

Pay particular attention to this next one:

"Suddenly scrutiny from the Empire brought al normal life on Nar Shaddaa to a screeching halt. Moff Sarn Shild proclaimed the Hutts' lawless territory would benefit greatly from stricter Imperial control. As a public-relations stunt, Shild was authorized to blockade Nal Hutta and turn the smuggler's moon into molten slag." -Essential Chronology

"Have you ever seen what a Star Destroyer can do to the surface of an unshielded planet? Stones run like water and sand turns to glass. And I have two Star Destroyers at my disposal." -Crimson Empire
None mentions a BDZ, and none provides any information about the duration or quantity and nature of ships involved.
Plus there's always the chance that several of them are figurative.

Funny thing that the one we must pay special attention to also happens to be the one which precisely shows that molten slag, in that book, equals scorched corpses and burning buildings according to Soontir Fel, captain of a warship.

As I said, the second is too vague: it's speech to impress someone, it's obviously not technically accurate, and doesn't say if it's meant to apply to the whole surface.
And of course, no time is given, as usual.

So I comfortably rest my case.

On a sidenote, the wookieepedia page about BDZ is pathetic: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Base_Delta_Zero
Note the various claims of BDZ and also the offsite sources referenced.

To TC Pilot's credit, he corrected the source of the line about the fisheries, since it's found in Galaxy Guide 9.

No man made lava (safe in Saxton's wet tale he sort of managed to cram in some ICS or Inside the World book).
You can’t say “no man made lava” because a source separate from Saxton (a novel) explicitly stated so.
Which one?
Milagro was a very localized event. Crimson Empire is of dubious value. All other quotes fail under the no ship type/number no duration/no mention of a BDZ (which is a very specific procedure), and some of them can also be figurative.

Not that it matters much, since his entire model rests on the idea of firepower scaling down in such a way that the Millennium Falcon's shields shall tank megatons, when we know they can't (they can't protect from TIE firepower indefinitely as seen in ANH, and when the hull is hit, the whole ship isn't disintegrated, yet in the TESB novelization, a mere E-web tripod gun can seriously damage her hull!).
It doesn’t matter what his model rests on, because it isn’t a theory, it’s a canonical statement. What does Traviss’s work rest on? Nothing, she makes shit up. That’s what authors do. They don’t have to base their shit on other people’s shit, they can make it up themselves. You might as well deny the “blackened corpses” imagination because the author’s model was nothing, he made it up out of nothing.

And you’re wrong anyway, because you can’t rationalize the G canon X wing’s vaporization of cubic meters of the Death Star’s surface other than claiming that they were fireballs (IN SPACE!) when they clearly were not, or claiming that those tiles were really critical parts of the Death Star laced with explosive material that just happened to look the same as everything else and be placed on the surface.
Vaporization of cubic meters of metal... which didn't leave any considerable holes at all.
RSA has tackles this on this X-wing firepower falsehood page.
See? I rationalize. You don't.
I rationalize Rationalize the Death Star novel’s mention of hypermatter and its semi-essential component to the plot. Rationalize Slave Ship. Rationalize “continent destroying hellhounds” or the statement that hypermatter exceeds matter/antimatter in energy potential (Death Star novel). Or the explicit mention, predating Saxton, of hypermatter reactors in the original ICS.

Heck, rationalize Saxton, Great Rationalizer. After all, his reach extends to several authors and several source guides, hardly just two.
I'm going to rationalize in a way that takes into account most of the sources possible. As you may see, if you read this board, including the thread AGAINST the ICS, this very thread or the one I wrote about Black Ice, there's ample proof that we need to go towards a firepower in the terajoule region.
That Slave Ship mentions something about recoil in the giga-tonnage range is unfortunate. Noted, but unfortunate, no matter what.

As for Saxton, I have no interest in trying to rationalize his nonsense. He openly ignored past sources to favour his extreme methodology based on cherry picking and Wong's sophisms.
This is of no interest. It's in such contradiction with the rest of SW that only an imbecile or a priest of his cult couldn't see that there wasn't a single shred of care for coherency. All he was interested in was imposing his vision and destroying anything else.
Why bother?
It's not worth it. Not only because all the silly claims largely come from a few books which can easily be dismissed in light of the much greater evidence against Saxton's claims, but also because I'm not going to bother bridging everythin when such wasn't his intent at all to begin with.

He wasn't reforming anything, he was leading his own revolution, destroying everything else. You can glue back together two fundamentally opposed models. As simple as that.

Note that I don't even know what to do of the Slave Ship quote. I don't see how it is useful to you either, since according to the Saxtonian model, TL bolts are nearly massless. So the real firepower corresponding to a recoil relative to explosions in the giga-tonnage range.
It would still fall short of three orders of magnitude at least regarding the claims of firepower. Let's remember that Venators were given more than 800 teratons of firepower, with ISD obviously being well superior. Being in the near petaton region or already in said region; potentially a million times greater than what Slave Ships alludes to!
See, it doesn't even support the ICS anyway.

JMS once had an interesting idea: http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... ?f=4&t=180
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonne#Unit_of_force
1 ton/tonne = ~9.8 kilonewtons.
giga-ton = 9.8 e9 kN = 9 e12 N
This would be a measure of the force of the explosion, as the rate of change in gas pressure and volume over time.
There's possibly something to do there, but it's getting complicated, as it's possible one would have to understand giga-tonnage under the context of gas pressure in a barrel.
It's just too much work, and useless to either sides anyway.

Besides, when will you do the rationalization. From my perspective, your sources are outnumbered a great deal.

For one reason: because it's an idiom that's specific in its use and meaning, to Star Wars.
So there is an idiom present only used in Star Wars. Of course, no character ever implies this, and no author ever clarifies it to us. And your evidence that this idiom is so common that even OOU narrators consistently use it all the time is precisely zero.
I demonstrated that it's an idiom, that's all.
Besides, you don't need to be told when one uses an idiom to know it, recognize it, accept it and understand it, so why require this from fictional characters?
It's stupid.

The nuclear winter scenarios actually involved massive wastes of energy over urban centers, and they never involved scenarios of furious bombardment on specific targets such as volcanoes and other seismic fault lines, the former being perfect to cheaply maximize the release of particles in the atmosphere.
So now you’re criticizing professional Cold War plans in the case of a nuclear war, right? After all, they never targeted volcanoes with their megaton nukes in their simulations.
Indeed, they never did. Because they didn't wish to destroy the planet through any possible trick.
Which is why it's considerably tame in light of what can be done to achieve mundicidal efficiency.
He couldn't see a thing because an unilateral bombardment on a planet would result in the body covered with a brown/greyish blanket, with nuclear-like fireballs occasionally piercing through.
With your kiloton weapons, no, not really.
Wut?
After hours of bombardment from several ships, most likely under normal procedures, torpedo spheres?
Fucking aye!

So that Mon Cal could have certainly not seen a thing.
Where did you get that citation from, and could you please provide the entire line?

Forests are burned. Raging fires take care of any forest, as they produce magnitudes of heats which can eat through your average lush jungle.
It goes without saying that numerous nuclear explosions will certainly have some effects on the winds, which are going to nurrish and propagate the fires.
After all, you cannot dump thousands of megatons of firepower into a biosphere and expect walk-in-the-park climatic conditions.
Forests survived K-T. Vegetation will not be “boiled” off the planet.
Of course they did, because no one targeted them with beam weapons, you dolt.
Who the fuck spoke of boiling off the vegetation by the way? I hope you're not going to refer to Camaas? I already covered that one in that thread, in much more detail than anyone on the whole internetz.
Water is poisoned, (industrial) fisheries (also simply called fisheries) are immediately destroyed, nuclear winter finishes off a great deal of the life which needed light to survive, resulting in the death of natural predators.
If this were the case, then the K-T extinction event would have wiped out the oceans, when in reality as many as 75% of aquatic species survived it.
Irrelevant since I don't abide the idea that oceans need to be wiped out.


If they need to be targeted, they would.
Mineral deposits are not worth shooting at unless there's some major exploitation going on.
An entire planet, mantle and core included, are mineral deposits after all.
So there's clearly a limit to how far one can push the idea that such ensembles need to be destroyed.
Of course there’s a limit to reason…that limit being all mines and surface(ish) deposits.
Lol. When your silly absolutism doesn't work anymore, let's claim that you're the one being reasonable, all of sudden.
Fact is, no, mines in Star Wars have no reason to be at the very surface like in old fashioned Western movies.

Read that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremes_o ... bterranean

Yeah, we apes already got that deep into the planet.
Still the surface I guess?

Btw, that debunking was completed within 15 seconds and a grand total of four clicks.

Heck, Dankayo wasn't exactly turned into rubble much, yet it was object to reduction to molten slag.
But we both know you don't give a shit about that fact.
Actually, the “small rebel base” was to be reduced to “slag” (and various quotes suggest that this at least partially did happen literally; such as computer parts being scavenged from portions of slag), but nowhere to my knowledge to “molten slag”.
No you fuckwit. I already gave you the links multiple times.
It's written "molten slag": http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... 1&start=60
And good to see you admit, amidst another string of deformations, that this unilateral and terrible world-ending "molten slag" actually turned out to be a very partial slagging, one which didn't prevent either stormtrooper nor the rebel agent from walking on the surface!
Thank you for shooting your own foot, genius.
Where in that picture does it imply that the topsoil has be atomized, and in what universe would this be classified as "dense clouds" or "being to settle" in more time than it takes for two imperial transports to mobilize and deploy troops? It would completely settle within minutes at the most, and "being to settle" from a figurative standpoint within seconds.
Proof?

A dense cloud can simply be something which is very opaque. No need to spin that any further.

The picture shows a dust cloud.
You don't know what a dust cloud is?
A cloud of dust? Invite yourself to explain when all dust clouds have been atomized.
Pardon? I show you a picture of a dust cloud, a cloud of particles of dirt you know, since you don't seem to realize at that point what a cloud of particles kicked off the ground could look like in otherwise normal weather conditions.
That, in contrast to your idea of what happened to Dankayo, which essentially results in no possibility for any "cloud" to form or even settle anytime soon, since it's all been turned into super heated material, possibly plasma, thanks to those copious amounts of teratons...

Hey, do you get it?

When will you actually quote me explaining this simple shit to you and see how you can actually debunk it?

If the part about the clouds settling is not to be taken literally, and just means the ships descended onto the planet and landed quickly, then fine, there's no need to butcher that extract any longer as you do.
Fuck, you never expect anything to be taken literally when it does not suit your needs. Of course, vaporizing half a building is obviously literal, and vaporizing humans when there is vapor can be taken literally as well. So can 30% of the planetary crust being destroyed, even if you can clearly see that such a thing did not happen.
Show me how clouds can form inside what would essentially be a lava world covered with a nice photosphere-like blanket on the outmost orbit if it weren't for the fact that it's mixed with crap, since the old atmosphere has been replaced by a new one made of ground kicked up high in the sky all over the planet, so much that everything on your sides and above you is a complete superhot poisonous fog!

The kind of course that would obviously prevent ZNT-8 from seeing anything through his binoculars.
Address this or retract.

If it's to be taken literally, I've told you that SW ships are seen to land and take off very rapidly, so even moderate clouds of dust lifted up by moderate explosions would still be settling before small deployment ships would land (such as those 50 meters long transports).
So in both cases you're wrong.
Only in a thread like this would you admit that “SW ships are seen to land and take off very rapidly” (read: mobilize troops and land within seconds). If we were discussing Star Wars ship speeds, you would venomously deny claiming such a thing.
Address the point idiot, instead of lying and whinin'.


Pardon? What? Irrelevant?...
It's Han's thoughts. The words are not meaningless. Otherwise the whole book is.
What an amazing way to take every argument to its extreme conclusion. Obviously, every word of the book has to matter in every context, or else the entire book must not matter.
The words are there for a reason, douchebag. They serve to carry a meaning, an idea, which otherwise would have remained the sole property of their author's mind.
So yes, when I see a word, I act like if it were printed in the goddamn book, instead of denying their very existence.
Even though the fact that Han thinks it possible that they might decide to burn Bothawui obviously means that Wars firepower is within that order of magnitude (or else there would be no consideration at all), and the “maybe” simply questions whether or not they would actually do it, since, you know, Han can’t read the future.
There is no information given about the time or the real extent of the destruction. It isn't a given that they'd burn the world.
The witnesses, they'd be the people in the two fleets pounding each other, which the Imperial ships were to finish off by surprise.

Just drop the point, you can't win that shit either.

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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by StarWarsStarTrek » Mon Jan 30, 2012 1:18 pm

An opinion which appears very valid
Which does not mean that denying its validity = ban worthy offense.
Pardon? Are you claiming that no one ever said that the Death Star was a very unique and special kind of weapon?
Is your comprehension of sarcasm this hilariously bad?
Pardon? Are you claiming that no one ever said that the Death Star was a very unique and special kind of weapon?
Red herring, we were referring to whether or not saying something that is 'wrong' is ban worthy, that anybody who does not support theories that are right "to you" should be banned.
In case you didn't notice, genius, I've been permabanned from SBC by a case of cretinous mods who spent most of their time one hand in their pants glaring at their warhammer and star wars figurines.
Not that it's going to change anything about the way you behave.
In case you didn't notice genius, I was being sarcastic.
If you really want to deny all available resources of a planet, you have to deny the planet's entire mass, because in Star Wars, they can harvest a planet down to the core if they really want.
Funny; in a seperate thread, you argued the exact opposite, trying to justify Traviss's ridiculous claim that a star system could not produce quintillions of battle droids by denying that they can mine cores. Yet when it suits you, you turn around and think that the core counts as a usable resource...on an inhabited planet! Really now?


But hey, if you disagree that oil deposits count as natural resources, what is your interpretation of "all natural resources" anyway?

It's not true. There are fisheries which don't require that,
Holmes, it said all fisheries, and all natural resources. Get your mind around it.


Let me explain you something. If you're going to say that they have to indiscriminately fire at the whole surface just to be sure not to miss the slightest pathetic dirt hole ever dug by some peasant, you're certainly not thinking strategically.
No, you don't understand. A base delta zero is not a standard bombardment order designed to just cripple a planet's resources. A base delta zero is the highest order of bombardment, and is intentionally overkill. Hence why there is eradication of all natural resources, life and assets of production.

The KT, again, was a local event, albeit of a huge magnitude. Can you comprehend that?
The creatures which survived could already do it under similar temperature conditions. The KT didn't involve a carpet bombing depositing nuclear firepower right at their door step, on the bed rock.
We've recently seen with the oil leaks in the Gulf of Mexico that you can hit a huge area with, what? A few miserable holes.
Now picture ships making such holes everywhere on your seabed.
Again, provide sources. Show me which of the various books written by credible authors on nuclear holocaust that predicts any significant damage to aquatic wildlife.


But the trues aren't the industrial assets of production proper. They're the resource.
Irrelevant distinction, especially since, if "they're the resource", they fall under "all natural resources".
The shockwaves can actually cause much damage,
No, they can't. You're trying to argue against science here. There is a reason why underground nuclear bunkers are not kilometers below the surface, they don't have to be.

We don't even know if the structures will be deformed or not.
Yes, we can. It's a matter of fact that megaton weaponry cannot collapse bunkers kilometers below the surface.



<snip>

No evidence that the tremors can reach underground kilometers, and none more that they would be strong enough to collapse even civilian structures.

Respond to rest later.

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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by StarWarsStarTrek » Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:35 pm

Going over several points in this thread, forgive me if I miss anything.

You attempt to discredit the destruction of all oil deposits and mines on the basis that “all natural resources” can be stretched to destruction of the planet core itself. You have also denied that “all sapient life” really means all sapient life because it can be extrapolated to mean exotic life forms inside the planet core or energy beings or shit.

Obviously, there has to be a reasonable limit to “all natural resources”, and destroying the planet’s core is clearly past this limit, especially since an inhabited civilization has no need to mine its own core (a rather dangerous action). I would not claim that a star destroyer destroys a planet’s core, because that’s ridiculous.

However, to say that oil deposits cannot be categorized reasonably as “natural resources” is simply ridiculous. It is even more ridiculous to deny that “all sapient life” can mean “all sapient life barring supernatural or overly exotic energy beings.”

Due to this, your version of Base Delta Zero would not meet to the slightest degree the prerequisites of a base delta zero. You keep asserting that your BDZ would kill off the population from radiation, but offer no math nor sources supporting that a Cold War nuclear arsenal could cause 100% fatalities to a planetary civilization. You then say that survivors can simply be starved out over time, which is not only far too slow to match a base delta zero but also won’t result in all sapient life being exterminated, given that Wars can synthesize food and the underground Coruscant peoples can survive without any contact with the outside world.

You seem to implicitly concede that planetary shelters and military bunkers dispersed across the planet would be too much to destroy with your BDZ, but instead that the Empire would deploy troops to barricade the survivors and root them out, but such an effort would do little to get rid of droids that require no sustenance. Indeed, radiation isn’t going to affect droids, and yet all droids are destroyed from a Base Delta Zero.

Nor would a Cold War nuclear winter destroy all natural resources by any stretch of the word, nor all assets of production, nor would it resemble any figurative definition of molten slag. The planet’s surface itself would be completely unaffected aside from a few small craters.
In order to completely destroy all sapient life, all natural resources, all assets of production, all droids, boil vegetation off of the planet and make the planet uninhabitable to a space age civilization four decades after the fact, as well as making the air instantly fatal to a Force user years after bombardment, you basically have to reduce the planet to literal molten slag, or expend energy on the level of such an act.
Mind you, the literal interpretation of molten slag is the canonical version thanks not only to Saxtonian ICS’s, but various authors that read Saxton and went along with it.
What’s more, your interpretation fails to affect the actual planetary surface itself on a global scale. You target cities and critical population centers, and wrongly expect the fallout to kill off the rest of the populace and wildlife. But we know that Base Delta Zeros affect the entire planetary surface.
"Daala's Star Destroyers controlled enough power to turn entire planets to slag, but she didn't want to do that here. "Dantooine is too remote for an effective demonstration," she said, "but we can make use of it nonetheless." -JEDI ACADEMY DARK APPRENTICE
"Besany didn't think she'd been crashing around any-where. She was mortified. "Why should I believe you?"
"Because Qiilura has a fragile ecology and we know Skirata is a vengeful little piece of vermin who really could persuade the fleet to melt it to slag. We want to be left alone now. Really alone."
"I see."
"We'll maintain a presence here, by way of insurance," said the Gurlanin. "Not that you'd notice." " - REPUBLIC COMMANDO: TRUE COLOURS

"Niathal was watching the exchange with faint interest. "This is an exquisite ethical argument, but right now I'm more concerned with stopping Corellia repairing an orbital weapon that was capable of taking out the Yuuzhan Vong and that will, if brought back online, ruin the Alliance's entire day."
Omas almost twitched. The power play was luminous in its visibility. "What would you prefer to do, Admiral? We failed to destroy it last time."
"We can reduce a planet to molten slag from orbit. Let's not rule out the possibility of needing to do that to Centerpoint-even if it would be best preserved to defend the Alliance."
"It's populated," said Luke.
"So are warships." " - LEGACY OF THE FORCE BLOODLINES


"Suddenly scrutiny from the Empire brought al normal life on Nar Shaddaa to a screeching halt. Moff Sarn Shild proclaimed the Hutts' lawless territory would benefit greatly from stricter Imperial control. As a public-relations stunt, Shild was authorized to blockade Nal Hutta and turn the smuggler's moon into molten slag." -Essential Chronology

"Have you ever seen what a Star Destroyer can do to the surface of an unshielded planet? Stones run like water and sand turns to glass. And I have two Star Destroyers at my disposal." -Crimson Empire

Now, all of these quotes mean that a base delta zero devastates the planetary surface itself, not just the sentient population on the planet. By your base delta zero, radiation and shit would fuck up living things on the planet, but the planet itself looks more or less exactly the same. Sure, a few craters here and there, but many parts of the surface will be unaffected (no, radiation and shockwaves will not devastate the planetary crust), but the entire planet’s surface is supposed to be reduced to “molten slag”, whatever you think it means.
Nar
“stones run like water and sand turns to glass” – in other words, a star destroyer melts stones and glasses beaches, which implies the targeting of the entire planet rather than localized strikes against population centers.

"Throughout the Trioculus affair , the New Republic was engaged in a protracted military campaign for possession of Milagro, a world located at a key hyperspace junction. The Empire was prepared to lay waste to Milagro rather than allow the Rebels access to its manufacturing facilities. Following three months of exhausting clashes between AT-AT walkers and the New Republic Army, the defeated Imperials slagged the planet's surface with a withering orbital bombardment, then fled."- Essential Chronology, p71.
The imperials slagged the planet on a whim before retreating. They would not have had hours to do this, nor would they have been able to land troops. Heck, it isn’t even specified as a Base Delta Zero.

"Sunlight ripples across a sea of shimmering glass. Glass that had once been part of iridescent domes, towering minarets, soaring archways, vertical towers, and all the other structures that constitute a city. A city reduced to a sea of manmade lava, as Imperial laser cannon carved swathes of destruction through the once-beautiful metropolis."- Jedi Knight p47

A sea of manmade lava is far too explicit to refer to a bunch of smoking ruins, doesn’t it? Heck, it implies that laser cannons did this or contributed to the fact.
It implies that base delta zeros turn cities to molten slag rather than blast them into smoking rubble, something which is only ‘supported’ by the visions of a young Boba Fett, matched up against an actual description of an actual event.

"The shield has to cover everything from the beach to the tops of the mountains. On the North side it should be possible to blast through the mountain and open up enough of a gap to let our bombers in. Once we're under the shield, the generators go and it's over ... Grand Isle would be no match for two squadrsons of Y-wings. In addition to two laser cannons, the Y-wings sported twin ion cannons and two proton torpedo launchers. Each ship carried eight torpedoes, which meant either of the squadrons packed enough firepower to turn the lush, verdant landscape of Grand Isle into a black, smoking mass of liquid rock."- Rogue Squadron, p216,224

If a squadron of Y wings can literally slag an Isle, why can’t a star destroyer literally slag a planet?

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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by sonofccn » Wed Feb 01, 2012 1:25 pm

SWST citing Jedi Knight wrote:"Sunlight ripples across a sea of shimmering glass. Glass that had once been part of iridescent domes, towering minarets, soaring archways, vertical towers, and all the other structures that constitute a city. A city reduced to a sea of manmade lava, as Imperial laser cannon carved swathes of destruction through the once-beautiful metropolis."- Jedi Knight p47
Jedi Knight wrote:Sunlight rippled across a sea of shimmering glass. Glass that had once been part of iridescent domes, towering minarets, soaring archways, vertical towers, and all the other structures that constitute a city. A city reduced to a sea of manmade lava, as Imperial laser cannon carved swathes of destruction through the once-beautiful metropolis. The resulting slag was thicker where buildings had been clustered and thinner out toward the suburbs, where the military base had been established.

The past could still be seen, on a hill where a nearly translucent temple glittered with emerald beauty, on a rise where a half-melted statue stretched a hand toward the heavens, and out on the silicone plain where isolated groups of dwellings remained untouched.
A little less than a full meter of crust melted into molten slag considering there are still buildings, a hill and a half melted statue.
"Daala's Star Destroyers controlled enough power to turn entire planets to slag, but she didn't want to do that here. "Dantooine is too remote for an effective demonstration," she said, "but we can make use of it nonetheless." -JEDI ACADEMY DARK APPRENTICE
"Besany didn't think she'd been crashing around any-where. She was mortified. "Why should I believe you?"
"Because Qiilura has a fragile ecology and we know Skirata is a vengeful little piece of vermin who really could persuade the fleet to melt it to slag. We want to be left alone now. Really alone."
"I see."
"We'll maintain a presence here, by way of insurance," said the Gurlanin. "Not that you'd notice." " - REPUBLIC COMMANDO: TRUE COLOURS

"Niathal was watching the exchange with faint interest. "This is an exquisite ethical argument, but right now I'm more concerned with stopping Corellia repairing an orbital weapon that was capable of taking out the Yuuzhan Vong and that will, if brought back online, ruin the Alliance's entire day."
Omas almost twitched. The power play was luminous in its visibility. "What would you prefer to do, Admiral? We failed to destroy it last time."
"We can reduce a planet to molten slag from orbit. Let's not rule out the possibility of needing to do that to Centerpoint-even if it would be best preserved to defend the Alliance."
"It's populated," said Luke.
"So are warships." " - LEGACY OF THE FORCE BLOODLINES


"Suddenly scrutiny from the Empire brought al normal life on Nar Shaddaa to a screeching halt. Moff Sarn Shild proclaimed the Hutts' lawless territory would benefit greatly from stricter Imperial control. As a public-relations stunt, Shild was authorized to blockade Nal Hutta and turn the smuggler's moon into molten slag." -Essential Chronology

"Have you ever seen what a Star Destroyer can do to the surface of an unshielded planet? Stones run like water and sand turns to glass. And I have two Star Destroyers at my disposal." -Crimson Empire

Now, all of these quotes mean that a base delta zero devastates the planetary surface itself, not just the sentient population on the planet. By your base delta zero, radiation and shit would fuck up living things on the planet, but the planet itself looks more or less exactly the same. Sure, a few craters here and there, but many parts of the surface will be unaffected (no, radiation and shockwaves will not devastate the planetary crust), but the entire planet’s surface is supposed to be reduced to “molten slag”, whatever you think it means.
Nar
“stones run like water and sand turns to glass” – in other words, a star destroyer melts stones and glasses beaches, which implies the targeting of the entire planet rather than localized strikes against population centers.

"Throughout the Trioculus affair , the New Republic was engaged in a protracted military campaign for possession of Milagro, a world located at a key hyperspace junction. The Empire was prepared to lay waste to Milagro rather than allow the Rebels access to its manufacturing facilities. Following three months of exhausting clashes between AT-AT walkers and the New Republic Army, the defeated Imperials slagged the planet's surface with a withering orbital bombardment, then fled."- Essential Chronology, p71.
I see nothing supporting a literal interpentation, no scenes of great destruction. What you cited is no more compelling than the "power to a destroy a planet" or "turn the world into a cinder" type statments we get in Star Trek.

As well I'm still waiting for which WEG book has "fleet sizes of hundreds of thousands of heavy destroyers "

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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by General Donner » Wed Feb 01, 2012 7:24 pm

sonofccn wrote:I see nothing supporting a literal interpentation, no scenes of great destruction. What you cited is no more compelling than the "power to a destroy a planet" or "turn the world into a cinder" type statments we get in Star Trek.
I agree. If anything the Milagro example from the Essential Chronology actually injures the claims of Saxtonian firepower, as we get to see the planet afterwards in another book, and it's nowhere near having had its crust liquefied. Further establishing that turns of phrase like "slagging a planet's surface" need not always be interpreted literally.
As well I'm still waiting for which WEG book has "fleet sizes of hundreds of thousands of heavy destroyers "
Presumably an extrapolation from the Imperial Sourcebook, which says:
Sectors and Regions
A sector is an economic and political division which originated in the early days of the Old Republic. Originally a cluster of star systems with approximately 50 inhabited planets, the definition of a sector became vague and the average sector grew in size during the latter days of the Republic. Now unimaginably large sectors contain vast numbers of inhabited worlds with no regard to limiting factors. Sectors are governed by Moffs.

Sectors are grouped together into larger territorial entities called regions. The Empire has countless regions, which can contain from as few as three to upwards of thousands of sectors.
Sector Group
A Sector Group is the sum total of Naval strength which the Empire expects to commit to a normal sector. [...]

A Sector Group can be expected to contain at least 2,400 ships, 24 of which are Star Destroyers, and another 1,600 combat starships. Thousands of Sector Groups are at the Emperor’s command as he seeks to bring the galaxy firmly under his control.
Depending on how one interprets the "thousands" of sector groups, we can get over a hundred thousand star destroyers without trying very hard. (Minimally the number would be 48,000 or more.) It's not quite the "hundreds of thousands" claimed, unless we take it to mean something more like ten thousand sectors, but close enough. And such an interpretation can also be legitimate, IMHO. (Though it's obviously not the most conservative one.)

Oh, and while on the topic of BDZ and the old WEG RPG, I was reminded of an old line from a really obscure sourcebook:
Goroth: Slave of the Empire wrote:Even with a stash of weapons, the underground will not be able to remove the Imperial presence from Goroth. All they will be able to do is make it financially impossible for the corporations and the Empire to continue "business as usual." What will the Empire's reaction be? An all too likely response will be sterilization of the planet - perhaps using bioagents delivered in missiles from orbit. With the world cleansed of the "troublesome Gorothites," the Empire would likely as not reestablish the hyperbaride facilities using other "client-workers" shipped in from other systems.
From this it would appear that not all of a BDZ needs to be brute force. Possibly not even most of it. Biological weapons can also be employed to take care of any survivors of initial bombardments. (The "sterilization of the whole planet" bit I'm inclined to regard as hyperbole, considering how such expressions are often used in other settings, but total or near-total extermination of the local intelligent species is probably likely.)

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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Feb 02, 2012 12:19 am

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:
An opinion which appears very valid
Which does not mean that denying its validity = ban worthy offense.
I think you want to rephrase that.
Pardon? Are you claiming that no one ever said that the Death Star was a very unique and special kind of weapon?
Is your comprehension of sarcasm this hilariously bad?
Ah, now it's sarcasm. I suppose this is your next phase of trolling: making claims the same way you always did, never give a single hint of sarcasm going on, and when properly bitchslapped because of the idiocy of your latest claims, claim that it was sarcasm, of a caliber that even a toddler would grasp.
In the end, what does it bring to the thread's quality?
Nada.
Pardon? Are you claiming that no one ever said that the Death Star was a very unique and special kind of weapon?
Red herring, we were referring to whether or not saying something that is 'wrong' is ban worthy, that anybody who does not support theories that are right "to you" should be banned.
Wait wait wait. Now, to that sentence you quoted, which isn't dramatically different than the one just above, you reply "red herring" like if you were actually debating the point.
Where is that claim of clever sarcasm now?
In case you didn't notice, genius, I've been permabanned from SBC by a case of cretinous mods who spent most of their time one hand in their pants glaring at their warhammer and star wars figurines.
Not that it's going to change anything about the way you behave.
In case you didn't notice genius, I was being sarcastic.
Ah, another piece of that golden sarcasm of yours...
Try to leave that to people who actually know how to make good sarcasm.
If you really want to deny all available resources of a planet, you have to deny the planet's entire mass, because in Star Wars, they can harvest a planet down to the core if they really want.
Funny; in a separate thread, you argued the exact opposite, trying to justify Traviss's ridiculous claim that a star system could not produce quintillions of battle droids by denying that they can mine cores.
Lie. I never said such a thing, and I wouldn't be surprised that it would be nothing more than you failing at basic comprehension.
Yet when it suits you, you turn around and think that the core counts as a usable resource...on an inhabited planet! Really now?
And what about you face the fact that the technology is there, for a change? It's not just the core, but we can start with the crust and the upper mantle (in the case of geologically active worlds).
But hey, if you disagree that oil deposits count as natural resources, what is your interpretation of "all natural resources" anyway?
I didn't agree that they represented a relevant source of energy in the SW galaxy, which basically has access to fusion devices the size of backpacks.
Now if they use some kind of diesel, fine, but there are plenty of ways to fuel fusion devices, and oil deposits certainly isn't the most obvious one when you can simply harvest the material from any random gas giant in much greater quantities than any oil deposit available.
And let's not talk of "hypermatter", as the silly superdense fuel Saxton dreamed of.
It's not true. There are fisheries which don't require that,
Holmes, it said all fisheries, and all natural resources. Get your mind around it.
All fisheries can simply mean all the fisheries that fall under the definition of the man made structures. Then, you destroy all of those specifically. I consider that the mention of fisheries outside of natural resources isn't an accident either.
Let me explain you something. If you're going to say that they have to indiscriminately fire at the whole surface just to be sure not to miss the slightest pathetic dirt hole ever dug by some peasant, you're certainly not thinking strategically.
No, you don't understand. A base delta zero is not a standard bombardment order designed to just cripple a planet's resources. A base delta zero is the highest order of bombardment, and is intentionally overkill. Hence why there is eradication of all natural resources, life and assets of production.
No, it's just the highest order of bombardment. It's never written it has to be overkill. That is your invention.
Overkill is putting much more energy into a task than necessary.
Which obviously doesn't happen considering what we've seen of Dankayo after the base was meant to be reduced to molten slag, or what things looked like on Camaas after what supposedly one of the most artificial destructive procedure ever accomplished, or again what we know would be left after a BDZ, as per Fel's knowledge and dread.
The KT, again, was a local event, albeit of a huge magnitude. Can you comprehend that?
The creatures which survived could already do it under similar temperature conditions. The KT didn't involve a carpet bombing depositing nuclear firepower right at their door step, on the bed rock.
We've recently seen with the oil leaks in the Gulf of Mexico that you can hit a huge area with, what? A few miserable holes.
Now picture ships making such holes everywhere on your seabed.
Again, provide sources. Show me which of the various books written by credible authors on nuclear holocaust that predicts any significant damage to aquatic wildlife.
Why should I do that, when their scenarios are geared towards bombardment of urban centers and other industrial areas mainly?
No one has done an essay on the application of multi-kiloton rays on the sea bed.
But the trues aren't the industrial assets of production proper. They're the resource.
Irrelevant distinction, especially since, if "they're the resource", they fall under "all natural resources".
Then anything would be an asset of production since you can, theoretically, exploit absolutely everything there is. When there is matter, there always is something to do with it. Yet assets of production and natural resources are separated. You need to destroy the resources AND the tools and techniques.
Then, depending on the quotation we analyze, we'd have to see if a distinction is made between a resources in its broad scope, and a natural one.

Now, this useless point aside, let's just remember that trees need light, clean water, like neither radiation nor fire.
All of which will fail under the carpet bombing scenario I presented.
The shockwaves can actually cause much damage,
No, they can't. You're trying to argue against science here. There is a reason why underground nuclear bunkers are not kilometers below the surface, they don't have to be.
At the magnitudes we speak of, under a barrage of fire, yes, they can, and science does prove it. Especially since beam weapon actually deliver ALL the energy into the ground.
We don't even know if the structures will be deformed or not.
Yes, we can. It's a matter of fact that megaton weaponry cannot collapse bunkers kilometers below the surface.
It all depends on the construction method, tools and materials. Tremors have been seen in the past to break the basement pillars of towering buildings, from quakes happening several kilometers away.
I didn't say that the structures would automatically collapse. In fact I didn't even say that the tremors would have any considerable chance of producing any collapse, unless the construction was not very good, since it all depends on how they're built. However, they won't prevent stuff inside the compounds from moving, unless the buildings are specifically built to absorb tremors. Stuff that falls also means pipes on walls which may break, electric cables which become twitchy and start fires, etc. Precisely why buildings can burn because of tremors while they don't even get structurally threatened.
Then, again, my point being that if the location of the base is know, application of firepower on the same spot will get rid of it.
If not, after all is done, a minor garrison and seismic survey will take care of any activity.
<snip>

No evidence that the tremors can reach underground kilometers, and none more that they would be strong enough to collapse even civilian structures.

Respond to rest later.
First, you really think tremors can't reach underground, kilometers beneath the surface?
You think they travel horizontally only, or something? Are you serious??

Secondly, please define how deep the bunkers will be. You keep referring to structures several kilometers under the surface.
Bunkers are placed at a certain depth, in general, to provide protection against known levels of weaponry your enemy possesses.
What makes you think that digging merely kilometers under the surface, and not literally close to hundreds of kilometers or more under it, will provide protection when ships in SW of the size of the Millennium Falcon can supposedly tank, and thus fire megatons of energy, and when the ISDs can fire more energy than the Venators ever did, that is, above the 800 teratons and more?
Conclusion: your premise is nonsense. Digging several kilometers under the surface would make sense in light of weapons in the TJ or low PJ range, although it may not be perfect, depending on the quality of the construction: from top notch to glorified bunker, if your bunker is nothing more plastic walls glued together and slapped onto the walls of the grotto, with bits of concrete here and there.
Digging some kilometers under the surface, in an universe which back during the Clone Wars, had large transport ships already firing 200 GT and larger and newer combat ships capable of channeling the entirety of 40,000 tonnes of fuel annihilated per second to their main guns, is completely stupid as it is absolutely useless.

So are we to believe that the rebels dug the bunker of Dankayo a hundred kilometers beneath the surface? Most peculiar since we can't really picture ZNT-8 finding an accessway and going up, step by step. He'd have certainly never managed to arrive in due time, obviously. Yet that would be the only way he could have begun to hope surviving the multi-teraton impacts at the surface.

See, this is where it doesn't work. For bunkers to be relevant in your vision of SW, they need to be placed literally inside the mantle of a planet like Earth.
That is already stupid and obviously not working in the case of Dankayo.
But it also means, in your scenario, that for the Imperials to be sure that they have destroyed all life, they have to reach deep down there, and achieve that all around the planet. So much that they'd essentially be capable of stripping a planet of its crust.

Now, the stupidity of such a vision being made clear, let's also remember when we ever saw that kind of firepower displayed by SW ships outside of the books Saxton had a hand in, beyond the shadow of any single doubt.
Oh! The shockzorz! There's none. Absolutely none. Zip. Nada. Not even Slave Ship's quote could come to the rescue.
Even the picture we see on wookieepedia's BDZ page and at SWTC does not support that kind of firepower, as I demonstrated.



I could also post the quote from Gothmog I once pasted here: http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... 5443#p5443
Gothmog wrote:Just a comment on the use of the word slag (having worked in the metals industry for a number of years):

Slag is not, outside of a very specific context (the refining of metals) a technical term--within the context it does represent a specific material, resulting from a specific process (the purification of metals/metallic ores under heat). It is essentially the waste product..... and in many cases (depending upon the particular metals and processes, as well as the nature of the impurities) the slag is a mixture of vitreous and carbonated materials.. the melting is not complete.

Used outside of that context, it is simply slang--representing materials that have been affected (possibly melted, but not necessarily) by high heat. It does not represent a precise condition or a particular material (indeed, much of the top meter of a planet cannot be reduced to slag, because of its chemical composition... the bio-matter that constitutes a significant portion of the soil will simply combust or carbonize).
Heck, it even allowed me to retrieve this gem:
Chirs O'Farrell wrote: And in Edge Of Victory I, Jacen states that "Boster preaty much slaged the place"....when nothing of the sort happened. Its just a statement people in SW throw around to show massive destruction, like we do today.
Heck, it even reminded of a good thread from SBC: http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=18860

Notice how IXJac blasts the no escape argument in a few lines:
IXJac wrote: To focus on one point, the one hour claim can in fact be totally disproved.

It is based soley on the assumption that the attackers must destroy everything on the planet before people can escape. However multiple canon and official sources clearly show this is not a valid assumption. Additionally it contradicts military logic.

We have Hoth, whch clearly shows even a limited defense can hold off an entire fleet for some time, enabling escape. We also have Nar Shaddaa, which shows that in the standard BDZ attack pattern, civilian transports will easily have time to evacuate before the attackers even come in range of the planet. This is reinforced by a scene in the comic "In Deadly Pursuit" where every civilian ship on a planet evacuates prior to the arrival of an attacking Star Destroyer. All this clearly shows that a standard Imperial attack has no way of preventing any ships from departing, and in fact by the time the attack begins most capable of leaving will already have left.

Then, there is the example if Ithor; Leia made it clear that to evacuate the entire planet would take almost all the resources of the New Republic, and even then would take weeks. So, not only can all the initial transports easily flee, but the Imperials would have a timeframe of weeks to worry about significant fractions of people not on those initial ships leaving.

Finally there's military logic - if stopping tansports is a priority, the initial attack will not focus on destroying everything as quickly as possible - it will focus on destroying all transports and spaceports. Once these are eliminated the actual attack on the population centers, people, industry, etc, can take as long as it needs. Thus the need to prevent escape (of which there is no evidence that such a need exists) has no bearing on the time the actual "scorced earth" takes to impliment.

Anyway, I've posted all this multiple times But just restating for the record.
2001 man, 2001. And you, SWST, you're still repeating the same used shit eleven fucking years later. See how IXJac was already complaining that he was repeating himself!
Points which RSA also made and which were repeated by plenty of people here and elsewhere during that huge timeframe.

So where were you, oh silly one?
Surely, you'd know that you must not take all of your information from one same single place (SDN mainly, as far as you're concerned).

Again, in response to IXJac's old post, I couldn't stress more the fact that a proper destruction of a world, as per the Imperial Sourcebook, involves a hundred warships, all over 100 meters long, including no less than twelve torpedo spheres.

This amount of torpedo spheres isn't surprising either, since planetary shields are the affair of overlapping forcefields. It's most logical that each one of them would have its weak point.

Let's also remember, before you continue to cut and paste quotes to form the definition you like, that the one from the SW Adventure Journal didn't mention the destruction of life:
A World to Conquer, Star Wars Adventure Journal #2, p.256 wrote: "Base Delta Zero is the Imperial code order to destroy all population centres and resources, including industry, natural resources and cities. All other Imperial codes are subject to change, as you well know, but this code is always the same to prevent any confusion when the order is given. Base Delta Zero is rarely issued. ...."
The definition of population centers is quite humorous in fact.
Let's do a quick Google on that one:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22popul ... definition

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dict ... ion-center
That one is clear: you strike the most populated areas. Exit the rural zones then and lightly populated ones. Population density is useful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_of_population
This one shows that the understanding of population center can lead to very odd results depending on the reference, be it the world or a country.
Obviously there are less problems with taking countries as the basis to locate population center, since it's largely related to a 2D measurement, which doesn't make much sense for a planet (and even if you unwrapped the planet, you'd still get pop centers in the middle of nowhere).
So this view on PC is probably the less useful, as logic would dictate that they fire where sensors indicate the greater densities of people.
The definition of wikipedia is a space-based average. A proper planning would require segmenting continents and determine the best targets, I.E., those of highest population density.

http://www.ndsu.edu/sdc/data/ruralurban ... nmetro.htm
"Frontier is more of a concept than a specific definition, so the number of people living in the frontier and the amount of land that is frontier will vary depending on the definition you select.

Frontier areas are sparsely populated rural areas that are isolated from population centers and services. Frontier is sometimes defined as places having a population density of six or fewer people per square mile. However, this definition does not take into account some of the other factors that may isolate a community. Therefore, other definitions are more complex and address isolation by considering distance in miles and travel time in minutes to services.

Definitions of frontier for specific state and federal programs vary, depending on the purpose of the project being funded. Some of the issues that may be considered in classifying an area as frontier include population density, distance from a population center or specific service, travel time to reach a population center or service, functional association with other places, availability of paved roads, and seasonal changes in access to services. Frontier may be defined at the county level, by ZIP code or by census tract.

Rural-Urban Commuting Areas (see rural definition #3 above) can also be used to identify very remote areas, which could be considered frontier-like due to their isolation from population centers." - From the Rural Assistance Center website: http://www.raconline.org/info_guides/fr ... ierfaq.php
Rural def 3 is interesting, as it refers to a population density, a number of heads per area.
The article shows that there are three zones: frontier, rural and metro. The beginning of the excerpt makes a difference between frontier, rural and population center and services:
"Frontier areas are sparsely populated rural areas that are isolated from population centers and services."

http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-co ... ion-center
We actually see that meaningful population centers are actually not that numerous and large.


Warships can take care of the largest targets while squadrons of bombers can fire bombs at the equivalent of villages.
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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Feb 02, 2012 12:27 am

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Going over several points in this thread, forgive me if I miss anything.

You attempt to discredit the destruction of all oil deposits and mines on the basis that “all natural resources” can be stretched to destruction of the planet core itself. You have also denied that “all sapient life” really means all sapient life because it can be extrapolated to mean exotic life forms inside the planet core or energy beings or shit.

Obviously, there has to be a reasonable limit to “all natural resources”, and destroying the planet’s core is clearly past this limit, especially since an inhabited civilization has no need to mine its own core (a rather dangerous action). I would not claim that a star destroyer destroys a planet’s core, because that’s ridiculous.
You may notice that I didn't focus solely on destroying the core, but before that, taking care of the mantle. Anyway, did you fail to notice that the projected firepower of a single ISD, logically equal and most likely superior to a Venator, should be in line with the fact that a Venator can annihilate 40.000 tonnes of fuel per second?
Now, I'm not sure how much fuel such ships must carry as per the latest ICS, but let's just remember that 40.000 tonnes of matter being annihilated will provide 3.595e24 joules. Considering that a Venator is said to be able to channel all of said energy output, from its reactors, to its weapons, a relatively total efficiency would allow for nearly 860 teratons channeled through the guns. Per second.

Don't you think that amount of firepower is ridiculous?

One of the reasons Saxton, Wong and co argued for such figures hinged on the idea that all life had to be destroyed (including natural fisheries). It is their absolutism which resulted into the figures they've been known for, among other things.
When in fact, they had been all but dishonest in conveniently deciding of how absolute the destruction had to be. We can see the extent of the stupidity of their absolutism in the exchange between RSA and Ossus (one of their cult minions of the time).
They decided on their own, without ever giving a good reason, where that absolutism had to stop. Again, all too convenient.
One would ask them why they think that teratons are necessary. They'd say that they're necessary because, aside from the "molten slag" argument (which Sarli had properly identified as not being part of any BDZ definition), all life has to be destroyed. Hence a level of firepower which will produce massive craters on the planet. Then, as I did with you, one would ask them why do they stop at that level of firepower, since they can't know that they will be able to destroy all life for sure. They will probably do what you do, that is, claim that one has to be reasonable -the height of comedy coming from them or you- and that for some reason, "surface" is implied or suggested (it isn't, really).
Basically, the very core of their position was a complete lack of reason and parsimony. So is yours.
It is simply not acceptable that you suddenly appeal to reason to defend figures which were not based on reason at all and which were solely due to their authors' arbitrarily stop-the-cursor on the magnitude scale at a level that fitted their star wars substitute for pornography.

If you want to defend your position, you'll have to find something better than claim to reason.
However, to say that oil deposits cannot be categorized reasonably as “natural resources” is simply ridiculous. It is even more ridiculous to deny that “all sapient life” can mean “all sapient life barring supernatural or overly exotic energy beings.”
Read again. I never said oil deposits can't be considered natural resources. I said that you basing your arguments and your defense on them was silly in SW considering the relatively low importance of oil deposits in SW (they have much better sources of energy with fusion - for example a prototype battle station preceding the Death Star could eat ice asteroids for fuel to power its hypermatter core).
Due to this, your version of Base Delta Zero would not meet to the slightest degree the prerequisites of a base delta zero. You keep asserting that your BDZ would kill off the population from radiation, but offer no math nor sources supporting that a Cold War nuclear arsenal could cause 100% fatalities to a planetary civilization. You then say that survivors can simply be starved out over time, which is not only far too slow to match a base delta zero but also won’t result in all sapient life being exterminated, given that Wars can synthesize food and the underground Coruscant peoples can survive without any contact with the outside world.
Actually, as you saw above in the first part of my post, A World to Conquer's definition of a BDZ doesn't include the destruction of all life but the targeting of population centers, which is very interesting.
The other definition from Hutt Gambit asks for the destruction of all life, but then goes to the length of specifying all sorts of other targets to destroy in detail, which would be an absurd tautology considering the levels of energy necessary to rely destroy ALL life beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt.

Let's look at two other definitions of a BDZ.
Like Han's one (delivered by the author as as channel to Han's knowledge). That second definition also mentions droids to be captured:
Hutt Gambit wrote:Han swallowed, his mouth dry. Base Delta Zero was an order that called for the decimation of a world--all life, all vessels, all systems--even droids were to be captured or destroyed. His worse nightmare come true.
It's also in the same book that we get privy to what a BDZ operation's results are, thanks to the same trick used by the author, but to read into Fel's mind this time. And it's damn clear that we're dealing with a nuclear holocaust: "... They'd have to send down shuttles and ground troops to mop up, and he, Fel, being a conscientious commander, would have to oversee that operation. Visions of smoking rubble strewn with blackened corpses filled his mind"
So your arbitrarily adjustable absolutism is discarded.

The last one comes under the following form:
Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim, p. 54 wrote: Chapter VII: Military Units

(sniped)
The First Sun is a repulsorlift infantry regiment designed primarily to run search-and-destroy missions, which he troops of the unit jocularly refer to as SLAMs (Search, Locate, Annihilate mission). Indeed, the regiment often undertakes missions with the same objective as the "Base Delta Zero" command: the elimination of all assets of production, including factories, land, mines, fisheries, droids, and sapient beings (particularly any witnesses that may have seen atrocities being committed).
BDZ, here, is only centered on the destruction of all assets of production: all assets included thereafter are obviously already man-altered or to be man-altered to some extent.

As I already said, fisheries can be understood such as "hatcheries for fish" where hatchery is understood as "a place where eggs are hatched under artificial conditions"; a fishing establishment, where establishment can be understood as "a permanent civil or military organization", "a place of business or residence with its furnishings and staff" or "a public or private institution", which in all cases obviously points to a very localized activity.

More on the First Sun Mobile Regiment:
Star Wars Adventure Journal 15, Special Military Unit Intelligence Update, p.54 wrote: The regiment assisted in a dozen invasion and suppressions, and specialized in SLAMs (Search, Locate, Annihilate Missions), operations devoted to region-wide eliminations of all production assets. The regiment excelled at these assignments and hired only the worst sociopathic thugs to carry them out. Several notable atrocities were committed or compounded by First Sun troopers.
Later, SLAM are described as "wanton destruction", clearly pointing out the unnatural and overkill nature of SLAMs.
Here again, the focus is on production assets, and a regiment of mercenaries largely relying on repulsorlift vehicles can complete their missions on large areas; "region-wide" precisely.
Are we supposed that they complete a SDN localized BDZ, that is, liquefying the surface of the region to a one meter depth at least?
Let's notice that Galaxy Guide is the only source to mention the destruction of fisheries, and yet in both this book and in the SWAJ, the FSMR possess absolutely NO logistical asset nor any kind of weaponry which would allow them to complete the annihilation of entire zones of aquatic life. Their equipment is simply unfit for such goals.




Arable land is ought to cover greater areas, but then again, they're hardly that complex to ruin, nor as numerous and large as one may think. First of all, radioactive particles are one of the easiest way to pollute areas, something the Empire does achieve voluntarily:
Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments of the Rim, p.27 wrote: Chapter II: Imperials
Radiation Zone Assault Troopers

(sniped)
The armor may be distinctive, but it is not well-known. Sometimes radtroopers are sent into areas that have been filled with radiation as a result of prior combat or natural conditions. In other circumstances, the Empire may actually fill a battle area with radiation. In either case, often only those wearing spacesuits can survive.
See? The Empire knows how to pollute an area with radiation in a way that doesn't prevent troopers from walking there, but their suits is the only thing that prevents them from dying.
It is reminiscent of what happened to Honoghr.

Sidenote: "all radiation zones above grade-four cause continuous malfunction in most powered weapons."

Most striking actually is what we learn of what arable land is supposed to be. It is to be completely dissociated from the concept of agricultural land.
As per wikipedia's page:
Wikipedia, arable land wrote: In geography and agriculture, arable land (from Latin arare, to plough) is land that can be used for growing crops.[1] It includes all land under temporary crops (double-cropped areas are counted only once), temporary meadows for mowing or market and kitchen gardens and land temporarily fallow (less than five years). Abandoned land resulting from shifting cultivation is not included in this category. Data for arable land are not meant to indicate the amount of land that is potentially cultivable.[2] As such, it has to be distinguished from "agricultural land", which, according to FAO definition, additionally includes land under permanent crops as well as permanent pastures. In 2008, the world's total arable land amounted to 13,805,153 km², whereas 48,836,976 km² was classified as "agricultural land".[3]
[2] leads to a dead link, but the website, FAO.org (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) provides a search function.
After a few keystrokes, we reach a list of results, including the following page:

http://www.fao.org/docrep/W5146E/w5146e0a.htm

"Arable land
The arable land area is calculated from the harvested areas presented in Appendix 17 and discussed in Chapter 4, and the cropping intensities."


http://faostat.fao.org/site/375/default.aspx

This page defines arable land as a subcategory of an agricultural area:

"Agricultural area, this category is the sum of areas under a) arable land - land under temporary agricultural crops (multiple-cropped areas are counted only once), temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, land under market and kitchen gardens and land temporarily fallow (less than five years). The abandoned land resulting from shifting cultivation is not included in this category. Data for “Arable land” are not meant to indicate the amount of land that is potentially cultivable; (b) permanent crops - land cultivated with long-term crops which do not have to be replanted for several years (such as cocoa and coffee); land under trees and shrubs producing flowers, such as roses and jasmine; and nurseries (except those for forest trees, which should be classified under "forest"); and (c) permanent meadows and pastures - land used permanently (five years or more) to grow herbaceous forage crops, either cultivated or growing wild (wild prairie or grazing land). Data are expressed in 1000 hectares."

b and c are excluded from the arable land category, and this dramatically reduces the types of land which can be targeted. More than anything else, they're exactly the clear result of the work of man.
Arable land is later defined exactly as underlined above.

As such, if we understood fisheries the way wankers do, they'd be the only asset of production designing a completely wild, natural and untapped potential source of production or wealth, completely at odds with the whole rest of the definition.

You can take a look at the percentage of arable land on the wikipedia page. Only a massively harvested, widely temperate world with little oceans would offer the largest area to destroy.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion: only one description (Han's, in The Hutt Gambit) definition mentions the destruction of all life, and immediately countered by even more direct evidence from the same source, through the knowledge of a currently Imperial Captain, Soontir Fel.
All other definitions focus on the specific and in fact, largely tactical destruction of man-made assets of production.

It is interesting to see that, as pointed out by Sarli (and I largely built upon his claim) that the BDZ definition used by Wong, Saxton and their acolytes is nothing more than a completely construction, a massive conflation of cherry picked elements.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Feb 02, 2012 12:29 am

You seem to implicitly concede that planetary shelters and military bunkers dispersed across the planet would be too much to destroy with your BDZ, but instead that the Empire would deploy troops to barricade the survivors and root them out, but such an effort would do little to get rid of droids that require no sustenance. Indeed, radiation isn’t going to affect droids, and yet all droids are destroyed from a Base Delta Zero.
Droids, as per Han, are to be destroyed or captured. Ultimately, if the Empire doesn't know about the existence of a deep underground bunker, why would it consider its BDZ operation a failure?
There isn't a single mention of planned over-the-top destruction of unidentified units at all.

This probably best exemplified as the difference between how I understand Dankayo, and how you do(n't): I see an attack on a known base, and the bombardment focuses on the base only (which is clearly identified as the goal in the book fyi).
You believe that whole planet is turned upside down.

Bleh...

Nor would a Cold War nuclear winter destroy all natural resources by any stretch of the word, nor all assets of production, nor would it resemble any figurative definition of molten slag. The planet’s surface itself would be completely unaffected aside from a few small craters.
A nuclear winter is a result of a heavy bombardment, not another name for a bombardment, idiot. Pay attention.
The bombardment will target those assets so there's no reason for them to evade destruction.
In order to completely destroy all sapient life, all natural resources, all assets of production, all droids, boil vegetation off of the planet and make the planet uninhabitable to a space age civilization four decades after the fact, as well as making the air instantly fatal to a Force user years after bombardment, you basically have to reduce the planet to literal molten slag, or expend energy on the level of such an act.
Ah, now you have to reduce the planet to molten slag.
Funny thing, you don't even realize that you argue in favour of my position now.
Besides, notice -as I said in earlier posts- that an universe which can field >1 km long ships which can generate hundreds of teratons per second and sustaining accelerations in the multi-thousand gees at least, would have absolutely no issue producing artificial biospheres capable of being perfectly fine while placed right in the middle of a planet. In fact, they wouldn't even be troubled by being placed right under the photosphere of a goddamn blue giant!

Mind you, the literal interpretation of molten slag is the canonical version thanks not only to Saxtonian ICS’s, but various authors that read Saxton and went along with it.
No. Scavenger Hunt contradicts literalism. So does Hutt Gambit (thus mitigating the "molten slag" from the Essential Chronology). And all the sources barring the ICS never explicitly prove that the mention of molten slag couldn't be slang.
Not to say that no fleet number as no timeframe are ever given a-ny-way.
What’s more, your interpretation fails to affect the actual planetary surface itself on a global scale.
It does. Temperature cools dramatically, poisoning spreads all over the globe.
You target cities and critical population centers, and wrongly expect the fallout to kill off the rest of the populace and wildlife. But we know that Base Delta Zeros affect the entire planetary surface.
Killing the rest of the wildlife doesn't seem to be required in the proper definition of a BDZ, and considering the number and size of ships involved in a by-the-book mundicidal procedure as explained in the ISB, there's no doubt that there'll be more than enough firepower dropped on the world to destroy assets of production and population centers. Wild fires and enhanced seismic activity will help a great deal. Depositing radiation will also kill most life. No one will be able to flee world as spaceports will obviously be targeted first.
The world, in one word like in thousands, will be ruined.




You reposting a wide variety of quotes already dealt with, like it would change anything by now wrote: "Daala's Star Destroyers controlled enough power to turn entire planets to slag, but she didn't want to do that here. "Dantooine is too remote for an effective demonstration," she said, "but we can make use of it nonetheless." -JEDI ACADEMY DARK APPRENTICE
"Besany didn't think she'd been crashing around any-where. She was mortified. "Why should I believe you?"
"Because Qiilura has a fragile ecology and we know Skirata is a vengeful little piece of vermin who really could persuade the fleet to melt it to slag. We want to be left alone now. Really alone."
"I see."
"We'll maintain a presence here, by way of insurance," said the Gurlanin. "Not that you'd notice." " - REPUBLIC COMMANDO: TRUE COLOURS

"Niathal was watching the exchange with faint interest. "This is an exquisite ethical argument, but right now I'm more concerned with stopping Corellia repairing an orbital weapon that was capable of taking out the Yuuzhan Vong and that will, if brought back online, ruin the Alliance's entire day."
Omas almost twitched. The power play was luminous in its visibility. "What would you prefer to do, Admiral? We failed to destroy it last time."
"We can reduce a planet to molten slag from orbit. Let's not rule out the possibility of needing to do that to Centerpoint-even if it would be best preserved to defend the Alliance."
"It's populated," said Luke.
"So are warships." " - LEGACY OF THE FORCE BLOODLINES


"Suddenly scrutiny from the Empire brought al normal life on Nar Shaddaa to a screeching halt. Moff Sarn Shild proclaimed the Hutts' lawless territory would benefit greatly from stricter Imperial control. As a public-relations stunt, Shild was authorized to blockade Nal Hutta and turn the smuggler's moon into molten slag." -Essential Chronology

"Have you ever seen what a Star Destroyer can do to the surface of an unshielded planet? Stones run like water and sand turns to glass. And I have two Star Destroyers at my disposal." -Crimson Empire

Now, all of these quotes mean that a base delta zero devastates the planetary surface itself, not just the sentient population on the planet. By your base delta zero, radiation and shit would fuck up living things on the planet, but the planet itself looks more or less exactly the same. Sure, a few craters here and there, but many parts of the surface will be unaffected (no, radiation and shockwaves will not devastate the planetary crust), but the entire planet’s surface is supposed to be reduced to “molten slag”, whatever you think it means.
Nar
“stones run like water and sand turns to glass” – in other words, a star destroyer melts stones and glasses beaches, which implies the targeting of the entire planet rather than localized strikes against population centers.
Been there done that.
More of that nonsense wrote:
"Throughout the Trioculus affair , the New Republic was engaged in a protracted military campaign for possession of Milagro, a world located at a key hyperspace junction. The Empire was prepared to lay waste to Milagro rather than allow the Rebels access to its manufacturing facilities. Following three months of exhausting clashes between AT-AT walkers and the New Republic Army, the defeated Imperials slagged the planet's surface with a withering orbital bombardment, then fled."- Essential Chronology, p71.
The imperials slagged the planet on a whim before retreating. They would not have had hours to do this, nor would they have been able to land troops. Heck, it isn’t even specified as a Base Delta Zero.

"Sunlight ripples across a sea of shimmering glass. Glass that had once been part of iridescent domes, towering minarets, soaring archways, vertical towers, and all the other structures that constitute a city. A city reduced to a sea of manmade lava, as Imperial laser cannon carved swathes of destruction through the once-beautiful metropolis."- Jedi Knight p47

A sea of manmade lava is far too explicit to refer to a bunch of smoking ruins, doesn’t it? Heck, it implies that laser cannons did this or contributed to the fact.
It implies that base delta zeros turn cities to molten slag rather than blast them into smoking rubble, something which is only ‘supported’ by the visions of a young Boba Fett, matched up against an actual description of an actual event.
I completely nixed the Milagro event. Shit, I did it a few posts ago again, with lings to older posts:
http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... 021#p39021 Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:33 pm
Heck, you dare repost the quote after I tell you that it's a "localized event":
http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... 088#p39088 Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 4:02 am

Another proof that you ignore not only discomforting evidence, but also people's posts altogether.
"The shield has to cover everything from the beach to the tops of the mountains. On the North side it should be possible to blast through the mountain and open up enough of a gap to let our bombers in. Once we're under the shield, the generators go and it's over ... Grand Isle would be no match for two squadrsons of Y-wings. In addition to two laser cannons, the Y-wings sported twin ion cannons and two proton torpedo launchers. Each ship carried eight torpedoes, which meant either of the squadrons packed enough firepower to turn the lush, verdant landscape of Grand Isle into a black, smoking mass of liquid rock."- Rogue Squadron, p216,224

If a squadron of Y wings can literally slag an Isle, why can’t a star destroyer literally slag a planet?
That other thread you posted in but didn't give a shit about its content.
You may want to read it.
At once.

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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by sonofccn » Thu Feb 02, 2012 1:20 pm

General Donner wrote:If anything the Milagro example from the Essential Chronology actually injures the claims of Saxtonian firepower, as we get to see the planet afterwards in another book, and it's nowhere near having had its crust liquefied.
Well I as always defer to your greater Star Wars lore. :)
General Donner wrote:Depending on how one interprets the "thousands" of sector groups, we can get over a hundred thousand star destroyers without trying very hard. (Minimally the number would be 48,000 or more.) It's not quite the "hundreds of thousands" claimed, unless we take it to mean something more like ten thousand sectors, but close enough. And such an interpretation can also be legitimate, IMHO. (Though it's obviously not the most conservative one.)
Well at nine thousands sector groups it would top over the two hundred thousand mark so I would agree it is a supportable position, through not quite what one might expect of "hundreds of thousands", I would take issue at SWST claim it was implied, the number is left quite vague, and his use of the word "fleets" which has a different meaning in the ISB then sector groups, IIRC fleets are supposed to be the smallest unit which they can transfer across but my mind may be going again.

Plus it may be the purist in me but they are Star Destroyers, not Heavy destroyers.;)
General Donner wrote:From this it would appear that not all of a BDZ needs to be brute force.
Nice find. At the very least the Empire has options in rendering a planet's sapiant life dead. And degrees in how total since it appears in that case the Empire would at least consider resettling the planet with less troublesome race so a Star Destroyer tasked with "slagging" a world need not be performing a BDZ or be tasked with eliminating resources.

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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Feb 02, 2012 8:39 pm

As per the Essential Atlas, it seems that there were about 1024 regional sectors after The Russan reform in 124 BBY. Palpatine had rearranged that by dividing some sectors into smaller ones and creating some new ones by banding together unaffiliated subsectors. It's obvious that the new sectors would, in the first case, be small ones and thus bear small fleets, while the later would vary in size, depending on the number of subsectors agglomerated.

We also learn more about Honoghr, and the leaking of a defoliant used as a bioweapon, trihexalon. The chemical agent was leaking from the carcass of a Separatist research vessel, and that leak alone was sufficient for the product to spread over the planet within weeks. Within months, Noghri began to starve and die.
That bioweapon doesn't seem to be directly linked to Lok Durd's own defoliator weapon.

More about Caamas:
Essential Guide, p. 158 wrote: The Caamas Firestorm. The Caamasi, known for twenty-five thousand years of levelheaded pacifism, expressed alarm at the galaxy's sharp turn into dictatorship. The planet's leaders preached a return to the philosohpy of "peace by moral strength." Unwilling to punish Caamas publicly, Palpatine arranged for the sabotage of its planetary shields and its bombardment by mercenaries. The wildfires ignited by the attack drove many of the planet's life-forms to extinction.
We also learn that Mon Cal (or Mon Calamari or Dac) had planetary shields:
Essential Guide, p. 158 wrote: The Subjugation of Mon Calamari. Knowing that Mon Calamari possessed both a tradition of outspoken defiance and an array of galactic-class shipyards, the Empire quickly brought the planet to heel. A traitorous Quarren switched off the planetary shields prior to the Empire's invasion, and Imperial Star Destroyers sank three Mon Cal floating cities in response to local resistance. But Mon Can and Quarren guerrillas united and eventually drove off the occupation force, freeing up the naval supply lines that would prove critical stocking the Rebel Alliance fleet.
Also, we learn earlier on that Echo Base was an extension of some pirate base built by a Mon Cal.

Grievous series of deadly strikes against several worlds is referred as "scorched-earth assaults".

@ General Donner
Good find, that quotation from Goroth: Slave of the Empire , but it doesn't fit the BDZ requirements. Obviously, industrial assets are still up.

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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Feb 02, 2012 10:26 pm

There is another BDZ "definition" which is a clear conflation of the original definitions, clearly inspired by the relentless and engaged work of SDN denizens, as it bears the same marks:
Starships of the Galaxy, p. 96-97 wrote: Star Destroyers are among the few vessels used for orbital bombardment, a favorite tactic of the ruthless Empire. Entire planets have been frightened into submission by the mere presence of an Imperial Star Destroyer in orbit. Imperial Star Destroyers are capable of delivering precise orbital strikes--destroying a small section of a planet--as well as delivering bombardments that wipe out all life and industry on a world (a tactic known as Base Delta Zero). Only those planets that have powerful shields can withstands the turbolasers of an Imperial Star Destroyer, and some worlds (including Caamas) have been devastated by such tactics.
I don't have enough time there to check if there's any greater details on the firepower of warships there.
What we can note is twofold.
First, as said above, this is a very short definition, and literally a copycat of the handily crafted definition SDN and Saxton have championed for years. It's short and vague enough to allow for great literalism and exaggeration.
Secondly, Caamas is now officially declared as having been the targeted of such a "tactic" (funny choice of word for the scale of the operation and its effects on a whole sector). What we know for sure is that Caamas never saw its surface melted away the way Saxton and Wong claimed. It's impossible to know if the rather short reference to BDZ was written with a specific goal in mind or as a result of some kind of overlooking, but in the end, what we can conclude is that the claim of extinction of all life and destruction of all industry is quite a great simplification of what happened, and this turn of phrase is now clearly meant to be understood as an indication of a world having suffered a fate similar to Caamas'.

The case of the Base Delta Zero inflation which started more than a decade ago is definitely closed, once and for all.

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Re: Base Delta Zero

Post by SpacePaladin » Fri Feb 03, 2012 12:19 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
Starships of the Galaxy, p. 96-97 wrote: Star Destroyers are among the few vessels used for orbital bombardment, a favorite tactic of the ruthless Empire. Entire planets have been frightened into submission by the mere presence of an Imperial Star Destroyer in orbit. Imperial Star Destroyers are capable of delivering precise orbital strikes--destroying a small section of a planet--as well as delivering bombardments that wipe out all life and industry on a world (a tactic known as Base Delta Zero). Only those planets that have powerful shields can withstands the turbolasers of an Imperial Star Destroyer, and some worlds (including Caamas) have been devastated by such tactics.
I don't have enough time there to check if there's any greater details on the firepower of warships there.
Earlier on in that book they describe the Acclamator doing something similar:
Starships of the Galaxy, p. 57 wrote: In dire situations, several Acclamators could join forces to perform an orbital bombardment designed to eradicate all factors of production (including all sentients). Codenamed Base Delta Zero by Old Republic, Confederacy, and (later) Imperial forces, such a technique was used sparingly against systems that were too rebellious to be conquered.
I'm inclined to believe that Starships Of The Galaxy wasn't meant to be taken with the Saxtonian definition in mind, because Gary Sarli, one of the dudes who helped deflate the BDZ, was an editor on this book. And while yes, the terminology can be abused to the wankers' favour, remember these people aren't (or at least shouldn't be) writing with the intent of intervening in the various online debates, but rather giving what sounds cool and gets their point across. I'm guessing they are letting part of the Saxtonian definitions creep in because like it or not, he was a published author, but they are more keeping what can be salvaged and seemed to work with the setting, rather than blindly adhering to everything.

I'm thinking they're trying to get across the idea that the operation is a planetary scale Scorched Earth policy.

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