Questions about SD.net

[Master of Ossus]

Often you will find people citing the Star Wars Technical Commentaries
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/

Wait. This ICS book was written by Curtis Saxton. That page is by Curtis Saxton.


He has to know a lot about SW if he was allowed to write an official book (and the site appears to be accurate.

You've found out Dr. Saxton's secret identity! It's [drum roll] DOCTOR SAXTON! Well done.

[Darth Yoshi]

Speaking of which, how's the ripping of DarkStar's site to shreds coming along, MoO?

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Tell me, Captain Jack Frank, are you always this naive?

[jegs2]

Another thing to consider is the relative ages of the universes. The "ST World has had FTL travel for what -- 500 to 1000 years (excluding the Enigma Demigod Uberraces lik Q and his ilk)? Conversely, the "SW world has had hyperdrive technology for more than 25,000 years. There's a little bit of time difference there, and just maybe the SW universe might be ahead of the power curve if for no other reason than that...

[Lord Pounder]

Oops i think we scared him off.

[IceHawk-151]

[quote="Ender"]The numbers come from Attack of the Clones Incredible Cross Sections by Dr. Curtis Saxton.

The trekkies you encountered are just delusional. The Wars numbers are most assuradly dead on as they are verbaitem out of a quasi canon book. quote]

I do so enjoy how the EU novels are simply "Official" and display a maximum of "multi-gigaton" recoils and that the ICS (Which BTW is complete speculation based on absolutely NO Oncsreen evidence when it comes to Captial weapons) states 200 GT Turbolasers and it is thought of as Quasi-Canon.

The truth is that Star Wars ICS books and Star Trek Tech Manuals are the same thing. They both state unsubstantiated numbers that may or may not have supporting evidence from the series and movies. However because someone like Curt has affiliated himself with the ICS those set of books get boosted higher in the canon ratings. That is total bullshit. We never see the Acclamators fire thier weapons, hell I can't even make out any turrets on the vessels from my DVD. Saxton has a webpage dedicated to analyzing technical aspects in the Star Wars Univserse, why doesn't he explain his findings there?

Until Saxton himself comes out and explains how he came to these numbers or Episode II displays an Acclamator using these weapons the 200 GT figure has as much clout as the Yields for Phaser Rating listed in the ST Tech Manuals.

[Ghost Rider]

Small yet very valuable point...The numbers in the tech maunal mean zilch and the reason Wong and many others use them is simply because well it gives the Trekkies high give that the only piece of canon accepted by Paramount is the series and movies...everything else is not.

There is no official for Trek thus saying the Saxton's book which is actually official vs something that is used to humor Trekkies, is not in the same ball park of analogies.

And I'm sure someone will be along to tell you how more than likely Dr Saxton came up with the numbers...but you could start by looking at the bloody ESB asteriod bit...but hey just a suggestion.

[IceHawk-151]

I already checked out the ESB scene.
The asteroids I saw took between 350 and 500 KT to vaporize.
Wong and Saxton seem to concur with that estimate, but claims massive asteroids were also destroyed. I agree that this is a low level estimate, but not as low as Wong says it is.

The reason that everybody is flocking to the defense of ICS is that without that 200 GT number the Official yields for Star Wars max out at around 20 GT for heavy weapons. The mid-range would place Star Wars around the mid-megatons, instead of gigatons. That would place SW within arguing distance of the Federation. Nobody wants to argue against ST anymore, so they are all defending the 200 GT "copout". Everybody attempts to rationalize numbers away. For instance, they say that the 500 KT weapons used in ESB were mere anti-fighter platforms. They ignore the fact that these weapons were used against Capital Ships throughout the ROTJ Battle.

I don't care how you people think the 200 GT number came about. You can take the number and try to support Saxton. I want to know what logic Saxton used to find this.

[BabelHuber]

However because someone like Curt has affiliated himself with the ICS those set of books get boosted higher in the canon ratings.

You don´t seem to see the point. Dr. Curtis Saxton has interpreted SW on his own. However, George Lucas seems to think that his work has such a value that he is competent enough to write the AotC ICS.

This means something. Like it or not. But if you can find something on his page that is wrong, by all means, tell us about it.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Wrong

1. It doesn't matter if Dr. Saxton did precise calculations or pulled 200 gigatons out of thin air. They're official!
2. Since ICS is about only the movies, they're higher then the EU.

[Ender]

The numbers come from Attack of the Clones Incredible Cross Sections by Dr. Curtis Saxton.

The trekkies you encountered are just delusional. The Wars numbers are most assuradly dead on as they are verbaitem out of a quasi canon book.

I do so enjoy how the EU novels are simply "Official" and display a maximum of "multi-gigaton" recoils and that the ICS (Which BTW is complete speculation based on absolutely NO Oncsreen evidence when it comes to Captial weapons) states 200 GT Turbolasers and it is thought of as Quasi-Canon.

The truth is that Star Wars ICS books and Star Trek Tech Manuals are the same thing. They both state unsubstantiated numbers that may or may not have supporting evidence from the series and movies. However because someone like Curt has affiliated himself with the ICS those set of books get boosted higher in the canon ratings. That is total bullshit. We never see the Acclamators fire thier weapons, hell I can't even make out any turrets on the vessels from my DVD. Saxton has a webpage dedicated to analyzing technical aspects in the Star Wars Univserse, why doesn't he explain his findings there?

Until Saxton himself comes out and explains how he came to these numbers or Episode II displays an Acclamator using these weapons the 200 GT figure has as much clout as the Yields for Phaser Rating listed in the ST Tech Manuals.

Bitch, bitch, bitch, whine, whine, whine, moan, moan, moan.

Do you have anything to contribute, or just more bellyaching?

[Spanky The Dolphin]

And if you do decide to continue bellyaching, at least make sure it's up to date.

[IceHawk-151]

I am well aware of Saxton's interpretation of Star Wars. Infact I value his site far above Mike's. Curt is one of the few people who designed a Star Wars site without showing any bias in his anaylisis. However the reason we don't see any Bias in Saxton's work is because he doesn't state any numbers as fact. There is one set of numbers for his take on the ESB scene. He gave a range of possible yields, not a number, and he stated his theory. Between the fact that Saxton has put so much effort into taking a subjective look at Star Wars and that he has done so in a very detailed manner I can understand why Lucasfilm hired him for the job. However I do not believe that Saxton was given the job and then told, "We'd Like you to make up figures for these ships". If you look at Saxton's view on Star Wars form his Webpage alone you can see that his strength is not in inventing things. His strength is in looking at the facts, and then deriving plausible, logical, and reasonable answers to various questions. That is why I would like to know how Curtis himself came up with these numbers. Blind Faith is not my strong point. I require proof before I put stock into something. Dr. Saxton seems to be a credible man, and if he can present a case for how he derived these yields I may well agree with him. Yet, without Saxton's presentation of the facts that he used to derive these numbers from, the listed yields in the ICS are arbitrary numbers in an official book. They can be as flawed as the listed length of the Executor throughout the Star Wars universe.

Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Just because something is stated to be official does not mean it is true. Official statistics must be scrutinized most carefully in order to verify that they are a true representation of what we see in the movies.
By your first point may I assume you accept the length of the Executor as 8 Km? It doesn't matter whether or not that number was created without any reasearch because it is official.

And the ICS is equal to the rest of the EU literature and you know it. If the book only stated, as fact, what we see and hear in the movie then it could be considered higher than official. However the ICS stipulates about things that we have never even seen nor heard of from the movies. As far as the movies are concerned we cannot even be sure that the Acclamators are truely armed.

I will say this however. If Episode III shows Acclamators firing thier weapons, and if something is done to prove thier power is in the upper GT range I will concede my argument. Untill then however the ICS is purely an official document with no more clout than the Thrawn Trilogy.

[IceHawk-151]

Bitch, bitch, bitch, whine, whine, whine, moan, moan, moan.
Do you have anything to contribute, or just more bellyaching?

Strange, I was just about to ask you the same thing.

[Anarchist Bunny]

I am well aware of Saxton's interpretation of Star Wars. Infact I value his site far above Mike's. Curt is one of the few people who designed a Star Wars site without showing any bias in his anaylisis. However the reason we don't see any Bias in Saxton's work is because he doesn't state any numbers as fact. There is one set of numbers for his take on the ESB scene. He gave a range of possible yields, not a number, and he stated his theory. Between the fact that Saxton has put so much effort into taking a subjective look at Star Wars and that he has done so in a very detailed manner I can understand why Lucasfilm hired him for the job. However I do not believe that Saxton was given the job and then told, "We'd Like you to make up figures for these ships". If you look at Saxton's view on Star Wars form his Webpage alone you can see that his strength is not in inventing things. His strength is in looking at the facts, and then deriving plausible, logical, and reasonable answers to various questions. That is why I would like to know how Curtis himself came up with these numbers. Blind Faith is not my strong point. I require proof before I put stock into something. Dr. Saxton seems to be a credible man, and if he can present a case for how he derived these yields I may well agree with him. Yet, without Saxton's presentation of the facts that he used to derive these numbers from, the listed yields in the ICS are arbitrary numbers in an official book. They can be as flawed as the listed length of the Executor throughout the Star Wars universe.

Blech, the whole Wong's site is bias bullshit. He gives the Feds Dominion War tech without their ship loses. Just because he accepts the facts and can interpret them to see how bad Trek would lose, he's bias. Again, how Saxton came up with his figures is irrelivant, their still offical and not contradicted by canon. The Executor 8km bs is contradicted by several other offical sources and canon, and, this is just a guess, those are WEG figures, which I don't think even have offical status, and even if they do are contradicted often by canon.

Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Just because something is stated to be official does not mean it is true. Official statistics must be scrutinized most carefully in order to verify that they are a true representation of what we see in the movies.
By your first point may I assume you accept the length of the Executor as 8 Km? It doesn't matter whether or not that number was created without any reasearch because it is official.

There aren't any contradictions in canon to that figure, so it is true.

And the ICS is equal to the rest of the EU literature and you know it. If the book only stated, as fact, what we see and hear in the movie then it could be considered higher than official. However the ICS stipulates about things that we have never even seen nor heard of from the movies. As far as the movies are concerned we cannot even be sure that the Acclamators are truely armed.

Really, did you freeze frame the one or two scenes with the Acclamators and look at where the TLs are, the only scene I remember with them is from a considerable distance away, and the concept sketches or even the accualy models we see in the movie, up closer, do have the TLs, but again, the fact that Acc have TLs is shown in offical, and not contradicted by canon. Sorry you lose again.

I will say this however. If Episode III shows Acclamators firing thier weapons, and if something is done to prove thier power is in the upper GT range I will concede my argument. Untill then however the ICS is purely an official document with no more clout than the Thrawn Trilogy.

Hey stupid, offical is canon unless something else higher on the "canon ladder"(novels, movies and maybe the radio dramas) contradicts it. You can't simply dismiss it because it's offical, you have to prove that canon contradicts it.

[Anarchist Bunny]

Bitch, bitch, bitch, whine, whine, whine, moan, moan, moan.
Do you have anything to contribute, or just more bellyaching?

Strange, I was just about to ask you the same thing.

Wow, that comeback takes me back. All the way to Kindergarden.

All you have done is bitch about how you don't want to pay attention to the 200 gigaton figure because it's offical, and overall shown an utter lack of understanding for Lucasfilm's canon policy. The burden of proof lies on you to give us evidence from canon that contradicts the ICS's figures, everything else is just your pouting.

[Ender]

Bitch, bitch, bitch, whine, whine, whine, moan, moan, moan.
Do you have anything to contribute, or just more bellyaching?

Strange, I was just about to ask you the same thing.

Show me one single fucking place where I have ever complained for one second about published numbers. Where I demanded that the authors take time from their personel lives to post the work. Show me a single one. You guys want the work shown so that you can try to nibble it to death and play semantics. "Well the asteroids appear to have been vaporized, but really they were just fragmented and the SFX technicians were too lazy to put the fragments in, so obviously all the numbers are wrong". It's bullshit. You guys are looking for every single possiblity to throw the whole damn thing out. But under the rules of the debate, you can't. The numbers were published. Saxton could have prefaced it with "Suck it down, you trekkie bitches" and the numbers would still stand.

Fuck, if you want to disprove it, Wong did so on his site on the Dooku going to orbit part. Odd that you guys never bring up that canon contradiction. Wait, that's because its even higher, and thus the exact opposite of what all your needleing and whining is suppossed to accomplish, isn't it?

[LMSx]

The reason that everybody is flocking to the defense of ICS is that without that 200 GT number the Official yields for Star Wars max out at around 20 GT for heavy weapons.

If we assume each turret of the Quad HTL is 1/4 the total, then each *individual* turret is worth 50 GT of firepower, only 30 GT off the 'official yield'.

[Ghost Rider]

Strange how he doesn't try to disprove Saxton but instead screams that obviously Saxton pulled them out of his ass because he doesn't like them.

He never goes back to the whole TNG TM being equal to AoTC: ICS as well...hmmm.

[IceHawk-151]

"There aren't any contradictions in canon to that figure, so it is true. "

The SSD is 17.6 Km by a canon source, so the official is wrong. Or was that what you meant?

"Really, did you freeze frame the one or two scenes with the Acclamators and look at where the TLs are, the only scene I remember with them is from a considerable distance away, and the concept sketches or even the accualy models we see in the movie, up closer, do have the TLs, but again, the fact that Acc have TLs is shown in offical, and not contradicted by canon. Sorry you lose again."

The fact that in the movies we can't see the Acclamator's weapon systems simply shows that, as far as Canon goes, we cannot be sure whether or not the ship is actually armed or not. Official references to give it weapons, and I intend to agree. However the point was that if you were to go by the highest valued information we have absolutely NO IDEA the offensive capabilities of an Acclamator.

"Hey stupid, offical is canon unless something else higher on the "canon ladder"(novels, movies and maybe the radio dramas) contradicts it. You can't simply dismiss it because it's offical, you have to prove that canon contradicts it."

I don't wish to dismiss the figure because it's official. I wish to dismiss it because it does not fit in with onscreen firepower. From AOTC we have KT level energy weapons for Slave I. From ESB we have high kiloton to low megaton level LTL's. ROTJ shows us Star Destroyers and Rebel ships using the same type of weapon witnessed in ESB against other Star Ships. Thusly from the movies we are aware that Capital Ships are using weapons in the ranges of low megatons against other ships in order to punch through shields. We don't see HTL's used until later in the battle when all the ships are damaged.

So from the movies one can stipulate that the Light Weapons are within the low megaton range (1-10) and the heavy weapons are in the upper (500-1,000). The heavy weapons are very powerful, but not so powerful as to make the Light Weapons obsolete. Thusly explaining a reason why 90 % of the weapons fire we see comes from the light weapons.
Would you not think that a logical assumption from what we see onscreen?
With that knowledge in hand I cannot blindly accept the ICS numbers.

For the ICS numbers to be true the Rebel ships were using 500KT-10 MT level weaponry in an attempt to break through TT level shielding. (Your forums's own theory) Not only that, but the Star Destroyers with 100 MT Turbolasers were using the same weapons in turn against Mon Cal criusers which are said to have greater shielding than the ISD's themselves!!!

Oh, and Ender.
I agree, many of the rabid trek fans do resort to arguments like that. I however have not. I am battling the ICS numbers because I think Saxton was giving a wink back at all the fans of his site with the 200 GT number.

And just so we don't get confused. I am a Wars fan first, Bab 5 fan second. Why don' you try to ease back on the hissy fits. The reason I don't like the ICS numbers is because I'd rather Wars win versus debates because of it's own merits. Not because some fan was given a pinch of authority and decided to give his pals a copout argument.

[IceHawk-151]

Strange how he doesn't try to disprove Saxton but instead screams that obviously Saxton pulled them out of his ass because he doesn't like them.

He never goes back to the whole TNG TM being equal to AoTC: ICS as well...hmmm.

One cannot disprove the result of a calculation when he doesn't know the orignial numbers. SHow me exactly how Saxton got the 200 GT number and I WILL attempt to prove him wrong. You can't show me how he got the numbers, so I can't do that. So I am forced to find another way to discredit it. The only way I can do that is by falling back on the old calculations I remember from SB.com and the other Wars sites I've found.

Oh and LMSx.
Look at the other forums. There is already talk about how the 200 GT is a "lowend" figure. Most of those posters are already trying to scale up from 200 GT LTL cannons. Believe me, ICS is a copout meant only to defeat all debates.

[Ghost Rider]

So are you going to show us how some showings that you say are going to disprove Saxton's numbers...I mean if you have such and they follow up, then okay...you have proof, but so far you have basically said 'Saxton is wrong and I know it.'

Show us proof of what he did is wrong and how you came to this particular conclusion.

[IceHawk-151]

I also forgot to mention the fact that assuming 20 GT would be 180 GT cut from the ICS number. Read the stats again. The 200 GT is clearly meant as a "per barrel" output. The fortunate thing is that everybody has realized how strange 800 GT Quad Turrets sound and have yet found a way to make that sound rational.

[Ghost Rider]

Give something more than your personal speculation.

I mean when one person goes Saxton is wrong and Lucasfilm is just a dumbass beyond words to give him any sort of staus beyond apocrphya...people want why you said that beyond your SUBJECTIVE opinion.

[IceHawk-151]

So are you going to show us how some showings that you say are going to disprove Saxton's numbers...I mean if you have such and they follow up, then okay...you have proof, but so far you have basically said 'Saxton is wrong and I know it.'

Show us proof of what he did is wrong and how you came to this particular conclusion.

My reasoning was kinda laid out in my last post on page 3. However it is not well presented nor well detailed. It gives a rudimentary understanding of my postion atleast.

I'll try for a more detailed account later. Right now I'm off to check the other part of the forum.