Now in an effort to drag this away from becoming yet another STARK IS A BAD PERSON thread, I'm going to actually make one last attempt at salvaging something like discussion.
Gunhead wrote:
I think the more removed the series you're watching is from real life, it becomes more muddled since you have to take in what people say at face value, inconsistent descriptions of events and base calculations on less than solid sources. So that's when you'd have to use all three you've described there. At which point you basically have to achieve some sort of consensus what is considered "canon". If you can't then it will probably just degenerate into a shouting match with people trying to dig up examples of the most MEGATONNES!
Whilst you technically make an accurate point, I think its very much a 'point of view' thing as to what is 'REAL LIFE.' I think its pretty self evident from various threads had on here pertaining to 'realism' and hard sci fi that people tend to have a pretty wide definition of what that all encompasses and don't always agree. Quite often I think the assumption about 'realistic' tends to assume that human beings are going to act like fucking logical robots, rather than as evolved (and sometimes irrational) monkeys. This is important, I think, because what 'makes sense' can depend very much on the context you decide to take - one thing could 'make sense' in a political/diplomatic or human/irrational context, yet make no sense in a so-called 'rational' manner, and in theory this shouldn't be wrong but I do think there is a general perception that things should be 'rational' and discount the human/irrational side of things (which in my mind can include politics, religion, and many other ventures relying on human thought and communication.)
On top of that is that it can be muddled by the knowledge pool (or limitations) of the people involved, their general flexibility, emotional investment in the series (and how it manifests), and a whole slew of other factors that can skew debate/analysis. Consensus is a part of it too as you mention, and that can definitely be dangerous (esp if its a group consensus 'defining' things.)
Ultimately it ocmes down to terminology and interpretation being sometimes tricky to deal with, because you can't control how other people will react to or interpret something, and that creates so many potential 'failure points' when it comes to analysis you almost have to be flexible about it. Again this is from personal experieince in my working with 40K. Odd as it sounds, the less seriously I took it and the less invested in MY point of view being the right one I got, the easier it got to deal with this shit. The same would be true in Star Wars too if you could break some of the ritualized bullshit (EG STar wars either has the biggatons or doesn't, NO OTHER ANSWER. Or whether it really has fuckton huge numbers of starships as implied by the deaths tar. Or whatever calculation/belief you care to consider.)
Hmm.. That's a tough one. I think a person with a different perspective could see my point of view and how it fits the evidence while still holding his conclusions better. It really comes a matter of opinion then and at that point it's a case of agreeing to disagree. If someone holds a preconceived notion of something, he's probably going to be much more unwilling to see it from my perspective. Kinda hard to put your finger on it really.
It IS tough, because as I said before - you can't control how people interpret your words and what ideas it conjures in their head. In a virtual enviroment like this one, bereft of visual and audio cues to go on, interpretation is VERY difficult and if a person is careless in phrasing their ideas and concepts, misunderstanding and misinterpretation can be very easy to achieve, especially if people couch their inferences in 'past history/past behaviour' - which itself can be dangeorus, since people do change. Heck, I know I've changed quite a bit in my attitudes over the years and still am.
What I try to do with this, and part of what lead to the 'magic bullet' stuff you derided earlier, is forcing myself to adopt different ideas just for the sake of pushing it outside of any potential comfort zones or 'absolutes' I might cling to. Its kinda second nature for me to think 'well this is how things make sense to me the most, so thats how I want it to be' but that can be misleading depending on what its based on. Partly its a sort of 'test' to see how well those ideas stand up when contrasted with alternate views, partly its just to hedge my bets because its always possible one idea will fail (they quite often have for me, so having backups helps) and partly because it defuses potential arguments because I'm able to adapt/incorporate ideas better than other people might be, even if other people view those answers as 'silly'. Because again, people will usually view things differently and you can't change that short of mind control.
This is where it, to me at least, it becomes a numbers game. Saying that x is more powerful than y is less than useless when y is a broad category. Even if you'd make it x is more powerful than the U.S army M256 120mm tank gun, you're still not really telling me in what way it's more powerful. That's why you often see something described as more effective against x when you read professional material on weapon systems. The problem is, that in RL too we have several gauges to what is considered more effective. Something like grenade x having more explosive in it than grenade y is straight forward, but when you start looking at blast, shrapnel radius, penetration... it becomes a lot more difficult.
That is indeed a problem with alot of 'analysis' and vs debating, and falling into looking at things just 'one way' is a fairly common trap - one I've fallen into. 'energy' figures (Esp BIGGATONS) in debating and analysis is a prime example, as more often than not it is used (intentionally or unintentionally) more as a scorekeeping system (EG the person who can dish out or absorb more ENERGY is clearly the superior force.) which can be misleading if oyu don't think about it in a more complex, multiple approach manner (eg neglecting force/momentum, for example, which is something many sci fi fans still do I've noticed.) Heck we had a prime example of that earlier in this thread, I think. Its also why I've come to rely less more on single figures and more on ranges and trends in the numbers.. the more data you have the better it is, generally, which perhaps explains my attmepted completionist approach to things.
And that's why I honestly don't believe you can ever, in any fiction, reach a state where you can solidly explain everything about their weapons. The RL measurements for this stuff are not 100% and when you're analyzing fiction, you get slapped with less than stellar examples to draw data from, lots of singular instances and other stuff which basically reduces your analysis to the level of and educated guess. It can be a really really educated guess though if you can get enough to go on with or you can rule out the contradictory stuff.
Nope. Its definitely a piecemeal process. But for me thats part of the charm. I honestly enjoy the 'puzzling out' bits, and I suspect most sci fi fans who do 'analysis' whether its of existing franchises, or part of some fanfiction, or hard sci fi stuff... they like the worldbuilding and puzzling whether they realize it or not. So 'solving it all' can actually be counter-productive. It never hurts to have some more mysteries you can come back to and puzzle out later, and I actually find that having to adapt or change previously held assumptions is more enjoyable for that reason. It keeps the whole experience alot more organic and interesting.
And precision is definitely anathema to sci fi stuff in the vast majority of cases, but that's hardly a problem either, as that means it can also be adaptable. Again its a perspective thing. I think this is sort of where obsession with 'canon' can be deceptive - the idea that you NEED everything explained out in precise, absolute (and realistic) detail and you need everything within a rigid framework can do more harm than good really. It risks turning something that is a hobby into religious dogma, really.
While recoil would be an issue, we rarely get good enough data to really gauge the effects on joints, recoil absorbers etc. To really evaluate this, we'd need some solid non derived data on the materials used on the robots / vehicles, which we rarely do. That's why we're stuck with for the most part just accepting the "well it didn't break, I guess it's tough enough" approach. Same goes for exotic ammo / propellant etc. We can only really gauge the effect it has and then draw some conclusions on the exact type of the round and so forth. In a sense, the assumption that say a .50cal round in scifi is the same as ours is both wrong and correct. It's wrong because we might not know what the round is made out of, what's the propellant etc. It's right in the sense that it's a good place to start your comparison with. All and all, I think here too the problem is what I referenced earlier. Penetration figures etc. are not 100% accurate and again if you slap on all the baggage that comes with analyzing a piece of fiction, you are can get estimates and that's about it.
One of the more neglected aspects is heat. All guns cause heat and with big automatic guns, that becomes a major issue really fast. I'd peg that above recoil when it comes to non trivial issues we get in scifi all around but specially in robit stuff.
-Gunhead
Yeah thermal effects are a non trivial consideration. Most people assume 'certain amount of energy = TNT explosion' even though that's not neccesarily true - it depends on how its handled/delivered. What's more, it can ignore LONG TERM effects: I think its fascinating to consider how dangerous long term effects of 'high energy' warfare, industry, etc. may impact society (its something that is an important consideration in Real life, for that matter.) If you have one of your stereotypical 'agricultural worlds' engaged in a war, dumping huge amounts of energy via firepower into it may acutally be a bad idea because of what it does to said enviroment.
I always considre recoil a good starting point for many things because, if for no other reason, its a more conservative limitation than most. Like with 40K tanks - recoil has always been a huge limiting factor there, but its very difficult to effectively handwave away the problems inherent in it, and even if you do huge recoil can actually still be counter-productive (if it makes the tank rock with every blast, that's going to throw your accuracy all to hell, etc.) But in alot of fiction where you have 'RAILGUNS' or analogues (like Mass Effect) I've seen people posit ludicrous firepower figures (or equivlaencies. 'at least .50 BMG or better' seems to be a lower limit there.) with total disregard to the issues of recoil.
Which basically comes back to interpretations, inferences, and method really, and how adaptable you are in all of those, and how many different perspectives you can (and are willing) to consider.
In the context of Gundam and the machine guns, there's another consideration that just occured to me - sometimes we see them ejecting casings, but I dont always remember them ejecting casings. Like with the 'variable barrel sizes' or velocity issue (as well as the lack of effects we'd associate with firing such a big, powerful gun.) there's lots of ways to take it. the traditional 'visuals over dialogue' type approach is one, which requires explaining it (no matter how hare brained the idea.) Or you could throw out some visuals (even though this has to be handled carefully, lest you create contradictions when it comes to interpreting OTHER visual evidence.) Or you may disregard visuals and go with the dialogue/fluff (which has its own interpretation pitfalls.) and of course you could try to hybridize some form of the above (or any other approach one can think of) which is okay as long as you can manage to make it reasonably consistent. I think its pretty obvious there's a consensus that this is an abnormal/outlier feat of SOME kind, but the disagreement really stems on how one should analyze/rationalize the incident (or more particularly, which is 'best'.) even though all potentially can rationalize it.
.
) there.