2046 wrote: We could probably continue arguing this for ages and never come to an agreement regarding Chakotay's first sentence, as far as I'm concerned, this is closed.
Yes, it is closed, and you are wrong. You can try to obfuscate with irrelevancies, but the fact remains that Chakotay wasn't bluffing. He warned Annorax that there was a danger in an effort to get Annorax to stand down, and Annorax chose not to listen. The danger came. Case closed.
Huh, that's not what Chakotay said. You're oversimplifying.
Maybe there's possibly a final way to really present things so as to make you see what you're defending. Remember that the danger you refer to solely came from within the TWS and nowhere else. Janeway's group had no way to deal some damage on their own. In fact, all that time until the field dropped, they were being owned.
We're dealing with that simple dichotomy about the method coming from outside or within.
You insisted that there couldn't be any bluff because Chakotay was telling the truth, that Janeway knew of a way to deal some damage (to the TWS), despite Annorax's confidence in this being impossible.
So what can that knowledge be and when does it prove to be the truth?
- Janeway's group came up with a way to overwhelm, bypass or deactivate the temporal field on their own. It is a self sufficient and tactically relevant knowledge that does not require sabotage or an insider within the Krenim.
Result: FALSE
- Janeway's group knows that the temporal field will be shut down and expose the TWS to enemy fire. It's a tactically relevant knowledge but totally out of control of Janeway's group.
Result: TRUE
The only way to make Chakotay's true is to have him imply that Janeway could count on the very reliable temporal field to be deactivated by the crew, because that is what happened. Every other claim about "her" knowledge of a way to deal damage would be false.
Meaning that by being honest and correct, Chakotay would have implied to Annorax that someone could betray him.
I claim Chakotay alluded to what is described in option 1. It is straightforward, simple, not risky and yet fits with the objective of convincing Annorax. This makes it a bluff though, adequate to try at that time.
You go with an interpretation that is (or largely includes) option 2: iIt is tactically inept and risks thwarting the whole plan.
You argue for a bluff because you think it connects to the next line about shielding planets
Yes, if Chakotay is in a situation where he's going to bluff, there's no reason to stop there, especially when the second sentence comes shortly after.
. . . disparaging Chakotay's threat as a mere deceptive bluff instead of a threat that we all saw proven correct allows you, in your mind, to start wiggling around with belief in that other statement. But, alas, you are wrong there, too.
Chakotay's threats should be taken at face value. The information on temporal shields can be transmitted to the respective homeworlds and spread, allowing planets to be protected. This only logically works if planetary shields exist.
Or threater shields that can be extended to protect urban areas. Also, it requires said shields, regardless of their size, to be able to withstand the shots from the TWS.
The example from the E-D stretching her shields would tend to show that the wider you stretch them, the weaker they become.
So logically you would actually want to maximize efficiency with smaller coverage.
But that is quite secondary to something else that is quite important.
See, your claim reminds me about the absolutism that was employed by Saxton and Wong for a Base Delta Zero operation, where they relied on the premise that a BDZ required an absurd level of destruction, which was pushed even further on google groups, SBC and here by people who claimed even greater firepower figures, oblivious to the absurd implication that mere sand would be an asset of production that would have to be dealt with; to the amusement of the debators standing against such nonsense.
The same thing happens here.
You say that the
planet must be protected, but it's totally false. The planets don't get erased once hit. Only the people and the artificial assets they built (nature remains after a wake, not buildings and people).
We have more than enough evidence to see that anything that is shielded will not vanish from the continuum. So you don't have to protect oceans, rivers, forests, mountains or even every single lost home. You just have to bring the vast majority of your population under protective domes enhanced with temporal sturdiness and you're done.
As much as you can protect a planet by putting some weapons here and there, you can also protect it (that is, defend what would be attacked) by protecting what needs to be protected.
Or are you going to argue for another round on the basis of some literalism? That, for example, when someone says that Earth needs to be protected, it means every single gram of sand in the Sahara for example? Every single cubic meter of salt water in the ocean?
That would be quite silly.
All in all, the aliens also proved to possess terrible shielding against the temporal weapon, and very, very little resources to defend their very historical existence, not just their home world.
So basically, we see that:
- planetary shields are not necessary to tactically protect a planet's relevant elements.
- alien temporal shielding sucks so much that even a single temporal beam would very likely punch through a planetary shield of an already high power and strength.
- aliens have scant resources to protect their very ontological existence.
The evidence and necessity for planetary shields in Year of Hell is absolutely weak.
Vessel shields and some structure shields can't do the job,
Technicaly, if they're strong enough and that you have them in enough quantities to protect people and most artificial assets, they can. Theater shields need not be cramped either, as I already explained.
For example, Voyager proved it by tanking the temporal wake and not suffering a nut from either shield loss or even partial continuum displacement (the TWS pushes things out of the continuum to erase elements from history altogether). And Voyager could resist direct exposition to the beam.
However, regarding the aliens' defensive technology and their shields, their proven weakness and their limited resources certainly does not bode well for their true chances of survival against the TWS. Which means that statistically, Chakotay is indeed making stuff up because we have good reasons to believe that the upgrade alone won't suffice. Nevertheless, he tried imho.
and would merely become isolated components which, per the Ram Izad incursion which occurred with a temporally-shielded Voyager running amok, wouldn't represent a death-knell to calculations as you have argued.
If you pay attention to the calculations, you'd see ethat the wake would have not crossed those 50 LY and not reached Voyager by the end of the day (reports to Annorax always came within the day of an incursion btw).
Please note that I didn't annoy you with the observed wake's speed on screen –essentially ignoring appaling visuals– since that would entirely bury this idea of the wake even having any kind of astronomical incidence because it would be a molasse.
Instead, I used the transcript and Annorax's orders proving that the wake has a clear limited speed not sufficient to reach Voyager within the day of the Ram Izad incursion (and thus before the report gets presented to Annorax).
How the reports get processed, I don't know. It seems to be a contradiction and looks like writers messed up, but then that would hardly strengthen your position because you couldn't rely on a script known to be faulty.
You have no case. The fact you won't give up on even the bluff argument just proves you are simply trolling.
I am sorry if this looks like trolling to you. Contrary to you, I actually do address every single point you make, and when there is a clear misunderstanding, I ask you to reword your claim so I can understand what you meant.
You are sullying the forum with such behavior right in front of a new and valuable guest.
Wait. Are you saying you brought a guest and I'm disrespecting this person??
Come on Robert, you can't possibly be reaching that low... :|
Is there an argumentation fallacy known as Appeal to the Plebe's Support, because you certainly are very fond of using it. :)
Although it seems to be more about a conflation of a soft ad hominem and a quest for a moral high ground.
The fact you are trying to redraw my being embarrassed . . . for you and the forum and for me by having to point the basics out to you with varying degrees of patience . . . as an indication of weakness rather than an appeal from a position of vast comparative strength is your own addle-brained error borne of nothing more than sheer desperation.
That was... lengthy. :/
You have not clarified your statement regarding space civilizations, rural areas and whatnots.
I have no need to. It is clear and accurate. Your evasions and feigned ignorance do not constitute a rebuttal, or even a real reply.
There is neither evasion nor any feigned ignorance. I simply don't understand the heck you were alluding to and to me it sounded like a very silly argument you were making.
So, I already told you that I may have misunderstood you. You clearly see that I haven't understood what you meant (although a hint of paranoïa seems to have you convinced that I do it on purpose). You didn't agree with my interpretation of your remark. Ok, fine.
I ask you then to reword your point.
It's been several posts that you have essentially told me to fuck off. Politely, of course.
Such is not the basis of discussion and you're simply looking for trouble.
You have also not replied on the projected capacity of planetary shields for the Nihydron and Mawasi that reasonnably shows them to be so weak that they wouldn't matter against the TWS, making Chakotay's remark another piece of pure pretense. Do you have any solid logic to refute that?
Already provided: You have taken a beam of almost unimaginable content and properties, one capable of selectively altering individual molecules, and treated the reaction of some shields against it like it is a laser melting steel. That's prima facie silliness. We don't know anything about the interaction at all.
Don't say "already provided" when you never did. I presented the calculation and you never ever bothered addressing it once.
Also, refrain from appealing to incomprehensible technowhatever and needless complications we don't know of (appealing to ignorance, essentially) when it's a rather straightforward issue. We see what a ship shield can do, my method is a rather fair and simple projection of what a bigger and tougher shield would do.
You have not explained why we should believe that aliens who can't assemble more than two warships (weaker than Voyager) for the defense of their entire species would yet have the resources for deploying mighty planetary shields. It isn't logical.
How many ships, as a percentage, would you have provided to a crazy smelly woman in a broken ship?
You mean after an alien female captain of a battered warship came to you with solid evidence that an advanced and very big hostile ship is erasing entire species from the universe by simply shooting at their home worlds, and that said ship will do the same to you? Coming from a woman who also was so serious about it that she pulled your entire defense tech up perhaps a whole century or two by sharing an upgrade she'd have no reason to share with you otherwise?
I don't know.
And you ask me what I'd bring with me to deal with that?
Why. Maybe just a Death Star if I could?
Let's just note that the coalition with the Nihydron and Mawasi was forged on day 226. The last time anything happened before that day was on day 207.
1 to 19 days, say 9, is quite enough for preparation. All in all, these aliens wouldn't exactly be taken by surprise within minutes; they were planning a preemptive attack.
Indeed, the entire Romulan Empire sent all of two ships to stop a genocide and war with Earth in Nemesis.
What data did they have? Did they take the threat seriously? Were they sure that two ships would be enough?
I'm not knowledgeable enough about Nemesis.
Provide material please.
Most of the time the Federation sent just one ship to defend itself . . . be it the Code One of Lazarus, the Romulan incident of 2364, et cetera.
Most incidents? Like the defense of Earth (and all its sand and rocks)? When they were dealing with enemies that had an insane advantage, like, say, a Borg Cube?
Cut the crap.
Oh, and one more thing:
In the case of Elba II, moving to the far side may not have involved the simplistic advantages we are considering. Fir instance, suppose that the concern was that overloading the shield could cause an explosion, itself merely a hypothesis. This could be true anywhere an overload was executed. But maybe the issue was that the Enterprise phasers couldn't be tuned to the precise output to avoid it, whereas hitting the shield on the other side of the planet allowed a little more wiggle room due to the weakness of the shield at that point.
That is to say, it isn't that they needed the weak spot to penetrate the shield, but that they hoped the stress level on the generator might be restrained a bit by penetrating it there.
Why, hello! That is literally what I have been saying since day one. Thanks for catching up! :)
No. At no point have you argued for what I said, which was a specific tech conjecture.
There couldn't be a more glaring proof that you never properly read my posts.
I'm just going to quote one of them wherein I talk about Elba II (one with comments in orange btw, hardly invisible):
(In the following quotation, I corrected the parts where I forgot to properly edit the orange colour tags, some were missing. I also emphasize in a different colour the part that proves that you were essentially parroting me.)
Myself wrote:
I beg to differ, for very obvious reasons.
I covered many of these problems
here and
here already, but I'm going to provide comments in a different fashion in this thread.
Transcript time. Behold.
Whom Gods Destroy wrote:
SCOTT: Mister Sulu, what do your sensors show?
SULU: We can't beam anybody down, sir. The force field on the planet is in full operation, and all forms of transport into the asylum dome are blocked off.
SCOTT: We could blast our way through the field, but only at the risk of destroying the Captain, Mister Spock and any other living thing on Elba Two. [The first time I read this, without being aware of the planet-wide attribute of the force field, it did make sense as I thought it described a theater shield. But now... either these people are absolute cretins for not figuring out not to shoot right ontop the asylum, or there's something else about that force field that's a wee bit different from a typical shield.]
MCCOY: How can we be powerful enough to wipe out a planet and still be so helpless?
GARTH: But I've arranged a more merciful end for her because after all, Captain, she is my consort. One tiny crystal implanted in her necklace, a portion of this explosive no bigger than a grain of sand. I propose to detonate it from here. [For the reminder, a vial of that stuff was said by the mad genius to be able to vaporize the entire planet. Not sure how many grains you can put in that vial but it may seem that Garth was overestimating his voodoo juice by a notch or two after all.]
(Marta is left alone, choking.)
GARTH: Poor girl. Poor, dear, suffering child. I will help her now.
(Boom!)
[Bridge]
SULU: There's been an explosion on Elba Two!
SCOTT: Point nine five! [OMG! That's almost... ONE!]
MCCOY: It must've wiped out everything. [A very powerful explosive. For example, grains of antimatter would already weigh several grams, more than enough to generate a hefty multi-kiloton explosion.]
SCOTT: Immediate probe. Is the force field in place, Mister Sulu?
SULU: Yes, sir. Solidly.
UHURA: (at Spock's station) Life continues to exist on the planet. [Despite occuring very close to the dome (Marta had no suit), the dome's still there! We can conclude that only direct fire from a capital ship could get through the shell.]
MCCOY: Got to break through it somehow.
SCOTT: Doctor, I told you we couldn't do it without killing everyone in the asylum dome. [Two elements: 1: implies that they could actually get through the force field, but it would kill all the people in the asylum. 2: in all that time (and to recoup a similar commentary from above), not a single one of them suggested that maybe they should try shooting further away from the dome (5, 20, 100 km away, who knows?) in order to avoid killing people down there beccause of bleedthrough firepower? Sorry, but that makes them be complete morons and it's hard to believe. Unless, for the sake of their intelligence and a sense of respect, that where you shoot on the force field doesn't really matter regarding the unavoidable fatal consequences under the very, very solid dome. Thus hinting that the moment you poke the shield with some blunt force, the asylum housing the shield generator explodes regardless of where you aimed at. Hence the unstable explosive generator "theory".]
MCCOY: I know it, Scotty.
SCOTT: Well, there's one last thing we might try. Perhaps the ship's phasers can cut through a section of the force field at its weakest point. Where did you say that was located, Mister Sulu?
SULU: On the far side of the planet, Mister Scott.
MCCOY: Will it leave a margin of safety for the people below?
SULU: Yes, sir. [Now that is precious. They're planning on drilling a hole through the other side of the planet-wide force field and still are seriously asking about the survival rate of the people stuck under the super sturdy dome! This is impossible to take at face value unless, again, that force field is so fubar that the moment you crack it open, it blows up no matter what... or perhaps if you aim for a weakspot, you needn't apply the full array of the ship's firepower (beams + torps) and you may get through, but without overloading the generator and thus not killing the people bunkered inside a super tough compound on the other side of the world. If we assume that the Enterprise had torpedoes, it is indeed interesting to notice then that they chose to rely on the phasers only, and tried to achieve some kind of "clean cut" by narrowing the beams. Perhaps to really make it efficient and maximize the intensity, reduce the energetic waste from weapon fire and thus lower the risk of a dramatic overloading.]
SCOTT: Prepare to change orbital path, Mister Sulu.
SULU: Orbital co-ordinates released, sir.
SCOTT: Break synchronous orbit. Come to course one four mark six eight.
(after a few moments)
SULU: Course one four mark six eight. Synchronous orbit re-established, sir.
SCOTT: Ship's phasers to narrow beam.
SULU: Ship's phasers ready, sir.
SCOTT: Let's punch a hole in it. Full power. Another blast, full power.
SULU: Force field still holding, sir. [They may continue firing, we don't know. I suppose they would for quite some time. The episode ends quickly after that (perhaps a dozen minutes?). At some point Spock proposes to beam down some people, which strongly suggests that the Enterprise had stoppped firing and failed to get through.]
Thus, unless one agrees with the exploding shield generator and its supplement that it was pushed to insane limits, the episode's plot really runs in full retard'o mode, as evidenced by my earlier comments in the two posts I linked to.
Moving on with your silly accusations (really, please make an effort).
Your argument is that Scotty and crew were too dumb to hit the weak spot. The closest you came to what I said was the 50km reference to bleedthrough, which was part of the same 'dumb' position.
Of course, given your scattergun speculating in the thread you can probably find something similar now and claim it is what you meant all along, but that would be additional mere dishonesty.
Actually, it seems that despite my best and most generous efforts, you were totally off the mark for the whole thread.
For example: "Your argument is that Scotty and crew were too dumb to hit the weak spot."
LOL. No. Never, in fact.
I don't even know where to begin with!
How could I have ever made such a claim, when that's exactly what they do in the episode (shooting at the weak spot), which I have never denied nor had any problem with since day one.
Just to hammer that through, here's what I already said on page 2 (with bright colours, to help you):
Myself wrote:
That only concerns Elba and it's pretty much what is described. One single UFP ship, not even a
warship, had
an experienced crew quite confident (and that is what matters) that they had a chance at piercing the planet-wide shield on its weakest point.
Now let's just imagine an actual
warship, or god forbids, more than one!
Myself wrote:
I already pointed out that they may last longer. However, your only and single evidence that a planetary shield would hold on for a longer duration is Elba II,
which the Enterprise's crew considered possible to pierce at its weakest point with phasers on narrow beam only (worried for the safety of the people) and which, for all intents and purposes, only showed a resistance superior to what the Enterprise would output in a limited timeframe with those
restrictions, with absolutely no demonstration that it could even repel the firepower of, say, the equivalent of a flotilla of three warships (twice less than what attacked the Krenim temporal ship for instance). They didn't use a greater firepower because they knew it would kill people down there and for the reminder, there was no obligation to shoot just ontop of the asylum.
The very fact that it was considered possible for one single armed exploration/science ship to put a hole in that shield is all that matters because it puts a firm cap on how sturdy that shield could really be. The fact that less discriminate application of firepower was thought to condemn the people down on Elba II also strongly implies that the Enterprise's full firepower would actually poke a hole.
Then at the very top of page 3...
Myself wrote:
It is absolutely clear that Scotty does consider it more than doable to get through the field –he doesn't say they couldn't get through it, period– but that the energy delivered onto it by the Enterprise would be so devastating that it would also kill the people they were trying to save.
And that concern was still very valid in their minds despite the fact that they tried to drill through it by shooting at a point on the opposite side of the world!
You completely disregard that too.
Then, how do we know that they're not putting everything in the attempt that failed? Because it's written in plain text above. If they were to brute-force their way through the field, it would kill people inside the dome.
So they aim for a weakspot, use narrow beams, and try to get through knowing fully well, as per Scotty's previous remarks, that they must be careful about the power they put into that. Considering Scotty's two first lines of dialogue I quoted, that he says they could get through it but it would kill all people, it is quite clear that they wouldn't put everything into the weapons because of how dangerous the operation is. That's precisely why they weakest point in the field seemed a good option.
All of which also provides more evidence that "your" little suggestion was nothing new to me.
You're free to check on the rest of pages 3 and 4.
Now that we're done with that grotesque lie of yours, let's explain again what my problems are, since obviously you seem to start computing simple concepts after the tenth post or so.
What I had problems with, which is already heavily documented by now, concerned the lack of decision to shoot at another spot instead of right on top the dome so as to avoid to hit the dome with any eventual bleedthrough the moment the beam (or torps) would punch through (which was even irrelevant to the idea of trying a weaker spot), and the need to check for the safety of people located underneath a super dome that could tank nearby nuclear firepower when shooting at a shield on the other side of the planet.
Geez, it's not like I have already typed that shit a billion times (starting with an older thread wherein we already discussed this case)!
So please show a bit more honesty and try to read correctly.
The debate is over. You were wrong. Thanks for the blog material, though. I shall enjoy making merry of the many examples of dishonest argumentation you provided. And hey, take heart . . . maybe it'll be helpful in future idiot-proofing, since I haven't dealt with one so dedicated or conniving in quite awhile.
I couldn't care less about your blog but I sincerely hope you'll find all the online support you need over there. <3