A What If: Change of "Ground Rules"
Posted: 2004-09-26 01:19am
Not sure how many times this has actually been done before. I'm sure at least some of us had lamented it privately or within the space of another debate.
As a reminder, this is a non-SoD question.
WEG laid out many of the 'ground rules' for Star Wars authors. Of course, those authors don't check out the screen, and let WEG's crappy research leak into their work. Some of them even seem to bring over the RPG model for writing their battles. When they aren't doing that, they bring the model used in TIE Fighter, which led to many well known gaffes. Rationalize them you may try, but really, we all know they are just stupid gaffes.
What if, instead of waiting till around the 21st century, LFL hired competent people of the same class as Curtis Saxton (since Curtis Saxton may have no interest at the time, or even be too young) to lay out the first ground rules?
Some of the improvements are obvious - everything would be the right size and all that. The ISDs would be Imperators. There would be no Super-class gaffe.
But what else would change? For example, Saxton uses the "Offense-Defense" model. In the WEG scheme, power differences between large and small ships are compressed. Under Offense-Defense however, the Executor would be nearly unassailable if it got "serious" (rather than like in ROTJ), so a typical Rebel vessel would likely be overwhelmed too quickly to cause harm. Or even if the Imperial vessel was substantially larger than the Rebel.
Also, since competent people that are not thinking about playbalance are up, when they write up the specs, they will probably say the ISD has a much more formidable AA defence.
Between that, most of the 'usual methods' that under WEG rules work won't work. Fighter attacks against capships would be relatively ineffective and would likely be repulsed. Hell, the TIEs might actually have shields, and a realistic (based on our historical experience) depiction from the get-go of a typical Rebellion would say that most of them are inadequately trained and would suffer heavy casualties against well armed and equipped government forces. Rebel starships might just be machine-gunned down by heavy Imperial vessels (of course, there would be a lot more of them than WEG thinks).
So what would that do to the depiction of the Galactic Civil War? Would the authors resort to even more stupid cop-outs than they do now to give their heroes a chance? Are the Rebel fleets going to get a little bigger?
Opinions? Thank you.
As a reminder, this is a non-SoD question.
WEG laid out many of the 'ground rules' for Star Wars authors. Of course, those authors don't check out the screen, and let WEG's crappy research leak into their work. Some of them even seem to bring over the RPG model for writing their battles. When they aren't doing that, they bring the model used in TIE Fighter, which led to many well known gaffes. Rationalize them you may try, but really, we all know they are just stupid gaffes.
What if, instead of waiting till around the 21st century, LFL hired competent people of the same class as Curtis Saxton (since Curtis Saxton may have no interest at the time, or even be too young) to lay out the first ground rules?
Some of the improvements are obvious - everything would be the right size and all that. The ISDs would be Imperators. There would be no Super-class gaffe.
But what else would change? For example, Saxton uses the "Offense-Defense" model. In the WEG scheme, power differences between large and small ships are compressed. Under Offense-Defense however, the Executor would be nearly unassailable if it got "serious" (rather than like in ROTJ), so a typical Rebel vessel would likely be overwhelmed too quickly to cause harm. Or even if the Imperial vessel was substantially larger than the Rebel.
Also, since competent people that are not thinking about playbalance are up, when they write up the specs, they will probably say the ISD has a much more formidable AA defence.
Between that, most of the 'usual methods' that under WEG rules work won't work. Fighter attacks against capships would be relatively ineffective and would likely be repulsed. Hell, the TIEs might actually have shields, and a realistic (based on our historical experience) depiction from the get-go of a typical Rebellion would say that most of them are inadequately trained and would suffer heavy casualties against well armed and equipped government forces. Rebel starships might just be machine-gunned down by heavy Imperial vessels (of course, there would be a lot more of them than WEG thinks).
So what would that do to the depiction of the Galactic Civil War? Would the authors resort to even more stupid cop-outs than they do now to give their heroes a chance? Are the Rebel fleets going to get a little bigger?
Opinions? Thank you.