Suggestions for Arguments on the main site

[Jim Raynor]

"Stormtroopers suck."
Explain that the Stormtroopers were taking part in a ruse during the Death Star 1 fight (as stated in ANH), and were likely doing the same on Cloud City. Why would the Imperials disable the hyperdrive on the Millenium Falcon, unless they wanted the heroes to reach it? Endor was bad but they were overconfident and caught by surprise. They were still kicking Ewok ass until Chewie hijacked an AT-ST. The Stormtroopers were actually quite good, such as when they siezed the the Tantive IV.


"The Jedi can't block continuous/wide beam phasers. They'll get owned by redshirts!"
They can block continous beam weapons, as seen in the Clone Wars series. And even if they couldn't, they could always dodge the shots, kill the Federation troops, telekinetically strip them of their weapons, etc.


"The EU isn't canon! George Lucas called it a parallel universe in Cinescape!"
The actual quote in question:

There are two worlds here," explained Lucas. "There’s my world, which is the movies, and there’s this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe – the licensing world of the books, games and comic books. They don’t intrude on my world, which is a select period of time, [but] they do intrude in between the movies. I don’t get too involved in the parallel universe.

It's amazing how often movie purists and/or Trektards bring this quote up to this very day, as if it actually supports them. True, Lucas used the words "parallel universe," but anyone with decent reading comprehension can see that he didn't literally mean it. He defines his "world" as a select period of time, NOT a separate universe apart from the EU. Lucas himself says that the EU intrudes between the movies.


"But Lucas also called the EU a different world in Starlog!"

As can be seen from his earlier Cinescape quote, Lucas likely doesn't mean that the movies and the EU are literally different worlds/universes. Leland Chee (Tasty Taste) commented on this quote at the official starwars.com forums:

On the other hand, the quote you provide makes it sound like the EU is separate from George's vision of the Star Warsuniverse. It is not.

[Ted C]

Back on topic...

Q wouldn't let the Empire win.

Star Wars shields are ineffective against physical objects (asteroids, proton torpedoes, kamikaze A-wings, etc.).

The Founders would quickly infiltrate and take over the Empire.

The Federation has resources we haven't seen that they could use to win (personal force fields, for instance).

Federation medical technology is better than Star Wars medical technology.

[Darth Servo]

"Stormtroopers suck."
Endor was bad but they were overconfident and caught by surprise. They were still kicking Ewok ass until Chewie hijacked an AT-ST.

Other factors in the battle of Endor that trektards insist on ignoring:

1: Ewoks had superior numbers
2: Ewoks had superior strength
3: Ewoks had superior knowledge of the terrain (homefield advantage so to speak)
4: Ewoks smaller size and camo coloring made them harder to hit.
5: Stormtroopers were handicapped by orders from Vader to "bring [Luke's] companions to me"
6: Ewoks used geurilla tactics to isolate small groups of stormtroopers where the STs could be more easily overwhelmed.
7: The "entire legion of my best troops" thought the attack on the "back door" was a diversion and were waiting at the main enterance.
8: Those clearly were not the Empire's "best troops" as they didn't even use camo armor or the AT-AT.
9: The troopers were prepared for a small rebel commando unit which they successfully defeated initially, not hordes of bears attacking.

Thats all I can think of at the moment.[/list]

[Batman]

While we're on the topic of Endor, the claim that since the AT-ST was crushed by the two trees, Imperial armour must be pitifully weak. Cue in the claim that so is stormie armour, because those puny Ewoks brought them down with rocks to the head and even shot arrows through the armour.

[Vympel]

Star Wars shields are ineffective against physical objects (asteroids, proton torpedoes, kamikaze A-wings, etc.).

That's a screenshot (proton torpedoes uselessly impacting the Droid Control Ship on TPM, asteroid impacts in TESB) and script quoting job (we've lost the bridge deflector shield). You'd have to be really dumb to make that argument, but people do.

This reminds me of a cute little Darkstar lie whereby he points to this image from TPM of a dark area on one of the Droid Control Ship towers, claiming it's damage from the impact of a Vulture Droid that crashed into it earlier while chasing Anakin. Unfortunately, the droid fighter crashed far higher up on the tower, and there's no damage visible from where it actually did crash. What the dark area really is a side-on view of one of the dishes flanking the tower (the same one, in fact, that was ineffectually attacked with protorps).

[Ender]

Mike, on the topic of the destruction page, I have the following suggestions

1) You say their are equations for determining the reaction pressure, but state theyare irrelevent as the value for RDX has been experimentally determined. I'd include them so that they can be applied to other explosives

2) Expand the coverage a bit so that it addresses not only the differences between the effects of a laser/particle beam but also the usefulness of this method for analysis.

3) some sort of table containing relevent information to do these calcualtions would be beneficial. Consider that most SciFi effects are fractional sticks of dynamite or fuel oil or gasoline. This information would be useful for other calculations.

4) A more scifi-ish example, perhaps the guns from an AT-AT on hoth or some such. Something less generic. Lets not forget the roots of the site.

5) Include a discussion of nuclear weapons, or simply link to that section of the Nuclear weapons FAQ.

6) both a suggestion and a question: Power is very relevent, as you express. However the speed with which the explosive is consumed in the SFX is far, FAR faster then the speed with which the typical raygun does its damage (eg 1 kg of RDX is consumed in 6 microseconds, but a TL bolt hits in 1/15th of a second). Is this difference relevent for analysis? FOr example, the battle of Hoth used quarter sticks of dynamite for the antipersonnel blasts. DO I find the value for this, convert it to power, and convert that back to the new, higher energy yield that would be needed to match the shockwave and other effects of the explosion?

[Ted C]

And the plentiful "the Federation will just employ the [one-shot superweapon of the week] that they got from the [alien of the week] to defeat Imperial troops/starships."

Got any examples?

Let's see... assorted one-episode wonders...

the soliton wave (TNG "New Ground" -- capable of destroying planets, you know)
sun-destroying torpedoes (TNG "Half a Life")
dimensional inverters (TNG "The High Ground")
interphase generators (TNG "The Next Phase" and "The Pegasus" -- we all know they kept it)
transphasic torpedoes (VOY "Endgame" -- it obviously uses interphase generator technology to bypass shields and armor!)
sentient nanites (TNG "Evolution" -- obviously they'd be willing to help)
silicon-based life-forms (TNG "Home Soil" -- they're allies now, right?)
aceton assimilators (TNG "Booby Trap" -- how hard could it be to recover one?)
Tarsian War veterans (TNG "The Hunted" -- in a Trekkie fantasy, why the hell not?)
the Stone of Gol / psionic resonator (TNG "Gambit" -- Imperial firepower, armor, and shields become meaningless!)
Cytherian technology (TNG "The Nth Degree" -- all the Cytherians have to do is "alter" another crew member like they did Barclay to make a Federation ship invincible, right?)
alien mind control devices (TNG "The Game" -- surely the Empire would fall for it)
Borg shields (TNG "I, Borg" and very episode of VOY after 7of9 joined the crew -- obviously they can implant shield generator in anyone they want to now, right?)
Dyson sphere technology (TNG "Relics" -- the sphere must have been loaded with sophisticated technology which the Feds have surely reverse-engineered by now)
metagenic weapons (TNG "Chain of Command" -- we know they've got them)
isolitic subspace weapons (ST:Insurrection)
intron viruses (TNG "Genesis")
if all else fails, WESLEY can save them (TNG "Journey's End" -- Wesley has Q-like powers, and he has an interest in saving the Feds!)

[Darth Servo]

OK, I added those. Got any examples?

Obviously theres the swiss army deflector dish, the nanites, the frequency of the week to pass through shields, the Tox Uthat and the phase cloak.

Actually, I was thinking that somebody would produce quoted arguments.

OK, here are some from a particular dishonest idiot over on MSN.com

Empire lasers will not affect Federation shields. The lack of effect on Federation shields was seen during ST:TNG episode, where a ship fired lasers at the Enterprise-D for quite awhile, and barely even raised the shield temperature.

Made up out of thin air.

I will have all Alpha/Delta quadrant vessels outfitted with slipstream drive, which as we discover in Voyager has the ability to move 70,000 light years in well under 1 hour, much faster than all claims you have made regarding even the speediest SW vessel.....these ships will tow 8472 ships thus spreading them quickly. Inhabited worlds will be destroyed or assimilated. Destruction as we see in voyager only takes about 2-3 minutes (maximum) for a set of 8 Species 8472 ships.....then on to the next.

As for the argument that slipstream is unstable, since the Borg assimilated a species that used it as a matter of course, I will have the Borg assure a solid stable slipstream drive.

Forgetting that the slower model that the borg MIGHT have assimilated was now where near as fast as the one Voyager experimented with.

Using what is known from Voyager, eight ship wolfpacks in slipstream can move to a new planet in seconds or minutes. For calculation, let us say 5 minutes, then 3 minutes for destruction (assumes one planet per system that is inhabited). Each eight minutes a planet is destroyed. Each day 180 planets are destroyed. Since I have several thousand ships I decide to have100 wolfpacks, so 18000 planets per day. This will require 167 days to destroy 3 million planets. This does not include the ones assimilated.

Completely ignoring SW planetary shields, the need for the 8472 planet buster recharge time among a host of other problems.

I will also use Iconian portals (as seen in TNG and DS9) to put thousands of Borg on all capital ships, into berthing areas to assimilate anyone there, into deserted passageways to inject nanoprobes into the ship and turn the ships into Borg vessels.....after you lose several thousand of your ships to the Borg and the woldpacks do their work, you will have no planets or ships. Oh, the portals simply by pass any shielding or other known defences.

The Oconian Portals in the first place have NO, REPEAT NO, REPEAT NO IDENTIFIED LIMITS OR RESTRICTIONS..........................
In other words, I can use the portals to throw nanoprobrobes across the universe.....

Nice no-limits fallacy as well as ignoring the fact that nanoprobes need to be injected directly into the target.

Oh, BTW, there is a Voyager episode where 29th century nanoprobes reach out and assimilate any biological matter.....which means..........

I will throw out 29th century nano probes.....have them assimilate ships and people.....that means you have to guard against EVERY CUBIC MILLIMETER.....in ALL ships...............and all 6 episodes and the 2 animated episodes between.....there is no evidence to suggest that you have the ability to defend against that

More

Oh, and as to whether nano probes can assimilate other technology.....there has been NO, REPEAT NO.....technology that has NOT been assimilated.......oh gee.....you mention Data.....down side.....there is NOTHING (and I have reviewed the episodes) that even SUGGESTS that the Borg have injected EITHER Data or Lore.....OOPS!!!!!!!!!!

Beautiful what a desperate trektard can come up with, isn't it?

[nightmare]

Here's a classic. A super star destroyer is weak because a that small ship [A-Wing] can take it out. The Death Star is weak because an X-Wing can take it out. Combined version: Fighters can destroy SW ships, so a photon torpedo blow them up easily.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Here's one: The Dominion could beat the Empire because they can produce troops way quicker.

[Shroom Man 777]

That can be debunked so fucking easily by how the Republic was able to pour out quintillions of clonies in a three year war. Unless we use Karen Traviss' travesty.

[Batman]

On the NBC portion of your stormtrooper page, you might want to address the Rabid Stupid Asshole's arguments that stormtrooper armor isn't sealed.

What the fuck does he base that on, since they're said to be able to withstand vacuum for brief periods?

Actually, there are several scenes in the OT where you can see the neck of the wearer, showing the suit is not sealed. At that particular moment and if memory serves most of them were with Han and Luke in ANH, who had never worn stormtrooper armour before.

[Darth Servo]

What the fuck does he base that on, since they're said to be able to withstand vacuum for brief periods?

A handful of pics from the films where we can see the trooper's skin. And remember, all that official lit is "EU parallel universe". He site seems to be down at the moment though or I'd post a link to that particular article (link broken of course).

[Darth Wong]

What a fucktard; you can leave a modern NBC suit unsealed too. I almost forgot how retarded a typical Darkstar argument is.

[Aaron]

In real life if your wearing an NBC suit you don't seal it unless your under NBC attack or under threat of NBC attack. I would imagine the Stormtroopers operate on the same principle.

[Darth Servo]

In real life if your wearing an NBC suit you don't seal it unless your under NBC attack or under threat of NBC attack. I would imagine the Stormtroopers operate on the same principle.

Of course the principle of "limited air supply" is totally lost on people like RSA.

[Batman]

Having worn the inefficient and not particularly sealed NBC gear the Bundeswehr issued back in my day, I wouldn't seal my armour unless I absolutely had to, either.

[Aaron]

Having worn the inefficient and not particularly sealed NBC gear the Bundeswehr issued back in my day, I wouldn't seal my armour unless I absolutely had to, either.

I'm wondering if the Stormies have overheating issues if they seal their armour like we do when we seal up our NBC suits in real life? In RL we have to adopt a work to rest schedule and drink lots of water as the suits are very hot.

[Elheru Aran]

Having worn the inefficient and not particularly sealed NBC gear the Bundeswehr issued back in my day, I wouldn't seal my armour unless I absolutely had to, either.

I'm wondering if the Stormies have overheating issues if they seal their armour like we do when we seal up our NBC suits in real life? In RL we have to adopt a work to rest schedule and drink lots of water as the suits are very hot.

The helmets seem to come off easily as per ANH-- probably the Death Star's troopers didn't bother sealing the necks as in normal operations they wouldn't be running into gases and suchlike, or Luke and Han simply didn't know how to do so.

One presumes there may be a cooling system within the suit's black body-weave, which could tie in with that panel on their back plate. It's not beyond SW technology, certainly, and in fact could add some extra strength to the body-glove.

[Vympel]

The Original Trilogy Visual Dictionary specifically refers to the sealing controls on the Stormtrooper suit. Like everyone said, the notion that you'd walk around in a sealed suit all the time is fucking moronic.

Never mind these two Stormtrooper chaps:



Stormtrooper suits can be sealed. Highest Canon.

[Lord Poe]

Ah, the good 'ol days!

Well, if you want an idiot argument section, you couldn't do any worse that Dicenso's idiocy:

+http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... ?p=483#483

Again, I wish that the Strek-v-SWars forum and Matt Carpenter's site was archived somewhere, since this very question got answered, at least where SW light and medium turbolasers were concered.

A lot of the controversy comes from how you scale the asteroids being destroyed by the ISD in TESB, and in making assumptions as to whether or not the asteroids are actually being vaporized, fragmented, or something else entirely (like the material disappearence effect being discussed by JMS and Kane).

To be absolutely generous, we can assume vaporization, that the asteroids are more or less solid nickel or iron composition, and that the asteroids are essentially perfect spheres (they are clearly not) The problem then becomes one of determining the size of those asteroids. That's were the big controversy lies. No one can come to an agreement on their size because there is nothing, except the TL bolts themselves, that are close enough to the asteroids to provide a reasonable scaling with. Warsies will almost invariably fall on using Brian Young's old Turbolaser Commentaries site for asteroid scaling, which generally places the size of the asteroids at around 20-40 meters in size. But the problem is that Brian Young was found to have made some serious errors in his scaling assumptions; namely in using screen caps that show the Falcon being chased by the ISD Avenger, and went with the assumption that a series of flack bursts near the Falcon are asteroids being vaporized. If you go back and look at those scenes frame-by-frame, you'll see that there are no asteroids being hit at all. Another problem is that Young stopped working on the TLC site a number of years ago, and would have let it die altogether but for Mike Wong saving it and bringing it in under the SDN domain. The TLC site has seen little updating since. The errors made in the late 1990's with questionable screencaps are still painfully evident for anyone who bothers to take a look, and is honest about those errors. However, those errors have been compounded apon, mostly because they give the pro-Wars side a seemingly large advantage in the Versus Debate with vastly inflated firepower figures.

So how big are the asteroids? On both the Strek-v-Swars.Net forum, as well as Matt Carpenter's forum, a variety of scalings were done, often using the approximate width of the TL bolts, as opposed to Young's method, which involved comparing the asteroids to the TL's length. The use of the TL width produced a more accurate scaling, simply due to the fact that height (when impacting or just a frame from impact an asteroid) is less effected than using the length since the the length measurements require correcting for the 3/4 view perspective we are seeing them at. The height of the TL was determined based on comparisons of TL bolts passing close to objects like the X-wing fighters in ANH, and the Falcon in TESB. After that was done, an average was made, and the ratio of the height of the TLs to the long axis of the asteroids was determined. When all was said and done the asteroids in the TESB ISD scene were averaged out between 1.5 to 8 meters. On the extreme outside 14 meters was the maximum size (as scaled by Kane Starkiller). Nowhere near the 20-40 meter size. So about 16 TJ, assuming a perfectly spherical asteroid of 8 meters. The wattage would be around 48 TW, since it takes 8 full frames out of 24 to vaporize the asteroid. However, because the asteroids are lumpy, not perfect spheres, the energy and power required to vaporize them will likely be somewhat less than this.

Starfighters firepower has been often compared to Slave I's demonstrated firepower in AoTC, which falls well below the 600-900 gigajoule firepower often cited is pretty well documented on RSA's St-v-SW.Net website. We clearly see asteroids being shattered, with little or no vaporization or melting observed, and an extremely generous upper range firepower of 19-20 gigajoules under the assumption that the asteroids shattered are solid spheres of iron. Even if we assumed that Jango Fett had the blasters dialed down in output, as Saxton and his apologists suggest it was, it is still very interesting to note that Obi-Wan's Jedi starfighter could actually still be threatened with destruction.

So I'am putting in with light to medium TL bolts at low single to double-digit TJ range firepower, and top-of-the-line starfighters and small ships at low gigajoule firepower.

[Vympel]

Ah, the sad ravings of the marginalized nuts. 1.5m metre asteroids eh? Brilliant, that is. I'd love to see that scaling.

One thing I don't understand, is why these whingers even bother saying "well, that was never demonstrated in the movies" when they're all having a good girly cry about how awful the big meanie ICS is. No wait, scratch that, I do understand- they're too fucking stupid to understand that lower limits are just that, and think that when Dr. Saxton puts pen to paper, he must be contractually restricted to lower limits rather than realistic estimates that take into account things like the difference between an energy beam and a centrally buried explosive.

[Shadowtraveler]

Hmmm...occasionally the phaser's auto-aiming capabilities are mentioned in debates. Might make a minor arguement.

[Darth Servo]

Has the old "half impulse power = half the speed of light" argument been mentioned?

I just watched ST IV this afternoon and they said straight out that it would require 12 minutes at full impulse to get the BOP from San Francisco to Alaska in the film. Hardly relativistic speeds.

[Batman]

Remember the yokels probably stayed in-atmosphere rather than going fractional orbit so there were limits on the speeds they could pull (without being detected at least). Of course that'd not be full impulse but then they think full/half/whatever impulse is a speed rather than a power setting so...
Sometimes TV SciFi writers need to be reminded that in space, things work a tiny bit differently.
Of course, there's the leaving the spacedock scene from ST VI, where 1/4 impulse amounts to about 2 gees or thereabouts...