The generic Trektards never stop coming

[Darth Wong]

I don't talk about it much, but I still get a regular stream of totally generic Trektard arguments on the feedback page for the main site. Here's a recent example:

Name: Ryan
E-Mail: ribbit_the_frog_@hotmail.com
Subject: Have you seen a star wars movie?
Received: (qmail 715 invoked by uid 65534); 22 Apr 2007 23:20:42 -0000

Where do you get the idea that star wars has superior tactics and maneuverability vs. the federation? If you actually look at the movies, star wars capital ships line up in lines and fire broadsides into each other, yet you completely disregard that fact and throw out other unsupported arguments. Having fighters does not make for a superior fleet. Federation ships would laugh at the idea of sending tiny fighters against capital ships. Keep in mind that federation ships do not have to shoot and wait a couple seconds to take another shot. Federation ships fight from a much larger range and use much more advance tactics than imperial ships. Also, if sw ships have so much firepower than why do their rounds have such small explosions on impact. You need to take another look at your own movies.


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Honestly, how do people wind up this stupid?

[SilverWingedSeraph]

There comes a point where telling yourself, "Mabe they were just dropped on their head as a child. Repeatedy." Just isn't realistic anymore, and it saddens me, that stupidity such as this actually exists. People like this are great advocates for a selective breeding program. We need to breed the dumb out of our species, or find some other way to remove idiocy such as this from the genepool.

[Starglider]

Actually as broken trektard arguments go, that's one of the more sensible ones. It's superficial and clueless, but at least it doesn't depend on meaningless technobabble or simple logical fallacies. However the issue is well addressed on the SD.net 'naval tactics' page, so this email is pretty inexcusable (either they failed to read the site before arguing or they failed basic comprehension).

[CaptHawkeye]

(either they failed to read the site before arguing or they failed basic comprehension)

It looks like straight out denial with this idiot. Since he seems to have given the page a basic read. But apparently, something isn't just a river in Egypt.

I know you don't normally return fire in cases like this Mike, but are you going to do anything about this pansy?

[Teleros]

I'd be inclined to be civil at first - point out the many flaws in that argument and see where it goes. It's always possible he's just an idiot who didn't read the naval tactics section, but if he turns out to be a real nutter then up the temperature .

[Stark]

I don't think he's going to bother responding. You can instantly tell he's cherry-picking, so what's to gain from taking him to task on it? A headache?

[NecronLord]

I don't know what's sadder. That he thinks Star Trek tactics are somehow better, that he thinks 'line up and shoot' is actually disadvantageous in a three dimensional enviroment (Well, it can be, but as a rule 'bring maximum firepower to bare' is a good thing), or the fact that at no point in the movies do Star Wars warships 'line up and shoot broadsides.' It'd be cool if they did, but they actually tend to either take each other on fairly individually (As in RotS) or cluster together quite haphazardly (as in RotJ) during battle... At no point are there any walls or lines of battle.

EDIT: Ack. Said Wars instead of Trek.

[harbringer]

You could try the analogy of the granite block and the grain of sand ie. only in vast quantities with the sand erode the granite in any reasonable time span...and only with a lot of help ie. high velocity wind.

Or if you hit your head against a brick wall you will understand the problem that star fleet has ... bleeding an undamaged wall (ie sheilds) a headache that panadine wont solve and a bloody nose

all in all easy if he wants to listen

[Ghost Rider]

Actually the response should be, has he watched Star Trek....given they do use fighters for their *big* battles and such not. As for fighting at further range, really if he thinks closing IN at the distances they do, he's watching again with a very selective memory.

Usual dumbass, just not spewing "The Cortanic Radion Beam would destroy any SW vessel, hur hur."

[apocolypse]

GR beat me to it, but I was about to say that I can clearly recall the Federation using Perigrine fighters in the Dominion war against enemy capital ships.

[PeZook]

Seriously, Mike. Are you trying to say you don't actually get anything better than that? Not even hilarious, long rants? No poorly written and thought-out point-by-point rebuttals? Just a few sentences making no goddamned sense?

Or did you just choose a random e-mail?

[Aquatain]

Seriously, Mike. Are you trying to say you don't actually get anything better than that? Not even hilarious, long rants? No poorly written and thought-out point-by-point rebuttals? Just a few sentences making no goddamned sense?

Or did you just choose a random e-mail?

The price of victory is eternal boredom.

[Balrog]

Sometimes I think that they just wanna pull your leg, so they just pick some random topic, throw out a few generalizations and then go to their friends with "hehe look at what the stupid nerds do."

Still pretty stupid, but I'd rather believe that more humans are just pricks rather then that they're idiots.

[Darth Servo]

Where do you get the idea that star wars has superior tactics and maneuverability vs. the federation?

Where do you get the idea that Mike was basing his arguments on these factors rather than the TECHNOLOGY?

If you actually look at the movies, star wars capital ships line up in lines and fire broadsides into each other,

And Trek ships fly around, shooting randomly.

Having fighters does not make for a superior fleet.

Tell that to the US Navy.

Federation ships would laugh at the idea of sending tiny fighters against capital ships.

For about two seconds before their warp-cores go boom.

Keep in mind that federation ships do not have to shoot and wait a couple seconds to take another shot.

Neither do Imperial ships. In ANH, we see TL turrets on the Death Star firing three or four shots per second.

Federation ships fight from a much larger range and use much more advance tactics than imperial ships.

In one-on-one battles, not in fleet actions.

Also, if sw ships have so much firepower than why do their rounds have such small explosions on impact.

Because you don't have large fireballs in space.

You need to take another look at your own movies.

Pot, kettle, black.

[wilfulton]

Honestly, how do people wind up this stupid?

My guess is part denial and part asshole.

When you wank off over your star trek ships so much and "lazors cunt pen-uh-tr8 our navigational deflexxors" and then have your bubble burst a low powered (repeat low powered) LTL, it's probably a lot for someone that doesn't have a life to take.

The incurable assholism part comes where he has to get in your face with his "uh-uh!" rant about how he did not get tendinitis from wanking off too much.

[Connor MacLeod]

Oh, lets look at my favorite no-analysis claim by the anti-wars crowd:

Also, if sw ships have so much firepower than why do their rounds have such small explosions on impact.

I've lost track of the number of times this stupid line of argument gets trotted out, an the staggering lack of analysis or thinking it betrays, yet it persists. (particularily in ROTS, given we see that light-laser cannon gundeck on a Venator hit by weapons fire.)

What is an explosion? An explosion (or rather the fireball, unless this guy is moronic enough to think energy weapons always behave like bombs. He very well might, alot of idiots I deal with do.) is, for all intents and purposes a violently and rapidly expanding cloud of gas. It can expand at varying rates, but its expanding, and its gas.

This is an important distinction, because how big an explosion is is going to depend HEAVILY on the materials and enviroment involved. In an atmosphere, of course, the fireball is largely superheated air and/or vaporized matter. Conventional explosives vaporize themselves violently to create their effects. When you hit a starship, or an asteroid with a TL, any "Explosion" you see is going to be a result of a porttion of its matter being rapidly/violently vaporized (IE TESB asteroid.) In space, on a starship (IE ROTS), the only "explosions" you get is the vaporization of part of a starship, and the size depends greatly on the properties of the materials (which are unknown.), so the fact we see bolts hitting ships without creating massive "fireballs' is not neccesarily indicative of anything.

Another related matter to this is that in many cases (IE TESB, TPM) shields tend to skew results dramatically where the presence/absence of fireballs can be. For example, at Hoth, we see blaster fire striking the ground without vaporizing massive plumes of snow into steam, which we would expect if those weapons had the level of destructive ability exhibted eslewhere (AT-ST bolts on Endor, ,h and blasters, lightsabers, etc.) We know a planetary shield is being used, fo course, so that is skewing the results and the lack of explosions - hell, we SEE such interactions. Same with TPM and the lack of grgass fires despite blaster bolts hitting hte ground.)

As for the whole "range" issue. Even in the Battle of Coruscant, most ships weren't "lined up" firing each other in Age of Sail fashion, they were enaging targets offscreen or at a distance (hundreds of kilometers, according to the novelization.) The only "close range" battle was against the Invisible Hand, and they were clearly trying to board and rescue Palpatine in that case (so it doens't count. Closer ranges would be needed to more accurately cripple the ship, as well as to help prevent it from getting away. using tractor beams, for example.)

We see longer ranges in many other cases: ROTJ had hundreds/thousands of kilometers engagement ranges, TPM had the Naboo cruiser being hit by fire at hundreds/thousands of kilometers, and ISDs/ground defenses engaged at thousands/tens of thousands of kilometers (within seconds) in TESB (combat range is going to be at least half or a third of that under most cases.)

Hell, the TESB novel indicated the Falcon could be targeted from hundreds or thousands of km away by ISD point defenses (again to disable), even though Lord Edam once tried to misrepresent that as an absolute upper limit (even though fighters and capital ships are not the same thing.)

The rate of fire issue is a laughable point. Nevermind that, as Servo says, higher rates of fire have been observed (Slave-1's guns, DS tls, falcon's quad guns, X-wings, Ventors in ROTS, etc.), what exactly is supposed to be the limit of firing once every few seconds? Considering the numbers of guns an ISD has, its not exactly a limitation. and barrages of fire aren't impossible (ROTS and TPM demonstrate this, and the novelizations support that.)

The lack of movement is not neccesarily a "problem", it simply represnets the fact that power on a starship is not infinite. You can move at a given speed, or fire your guns at a different level, but you can't fire your guns at max and move at max acceleration necceesarily (unless you're name is Sarli and you think SW has mass lightening.)

Fighters are a non-issue as well. Most Imperial vessels as a rule do not invest in "fighter-bombers" the way the REbels do - their fighters are specialized "Defensive" designs, or are designed to act as offensive extensions to the ship's weapons (precision bombardment or soft-killing.). Only larger gunboats or blastboats (which are tougher and have more firepower) might be seen to act in anyy independent role. (And often have access to small-cap ship firepower all their own, in limited measures at least.)

A flight of skiprays or assault gunboats with anti-ship ordnance loadouts will pose a major threat to ST ships.

[Connor MacLeod]

Honestly, how do people wind up this stupid?

Within the confines of a VS debate or sci fi analysis, I find that the vast majority of people are simply too lazy to do a proper job of it or can't be bothered to go through the time consuming process of research or calculations. So instead they substitute intuition for analysis. IE, because a "fireball" is so small, it must not possess alot of firepower. Even though that the premise and conclusion fail to really account for the potential variables involved.

Usually these are also the same people who "ask" for help in doing calcs or analysis because they can't do the work themselves, even though they'll argue like they are knowledgable (even if thay admit to ignorance. Some people never consider or refuse to consider knowledge to be a limiting factor in vs debates.)

[nightmare]

IE, because a "fireball" is so small, it must not possess alot of firepower.

People also fail scaling a lot. Naboo torpedoes only make tiny dot marks when they explode? They must be really weak.

OOORRR... it might be because we see an overview of a 5 klick ship and the explosions from the directed yield fighter-grade torpeodes are actually over 150 m in diameter...

[Adrian Laguna]

Having fighters does not make for a superior fleet.

Tell that to the US Navy.

Not a valid comparison. The US Navy operates planet-side, the Imperial Navy operates in space. Atmospheric fighters have a dimensional advantage over warships, in space this advantage disappears.

However, in both the Star Wars and Star Trek universes fighters do offer a certain advantage because the point-defence in both universes is not advanced enough to make the deployment of strike-craft a futile and suicidal endeavour. If Star Trek could shoot down fighters, then they a) wouldn't be employed and b) they would also be able to shoot down the slow as molasses photon torpedoes.

[Starglider]

If Star Trek could shoot down fighters... they would also be able to shoot down the slow as molasses photon torpedoes.

That came up in a recent thread I started on the utility (or otherwise) of warp-powered missiles. Apparently Voyager did shoot down one of their own torpedoes, on purpose, in order to create a much bigger explosion than a normal PT detonation. This isn't quite as stupid as it sounds - if PTs really do carry 1.5kg of antimatter then the Pegasus asteroid incident suggests that they have horrible reaction efficiencies, and some bizarre property of the phaser NDF effect could conceivably boost the yield from the observed hundreds of kilotons up to the theoretical megatons or tens of megatons. Someone was claiming that this is the reason Trek ships don't use phasers to shoot down torpedoes at close range; it would actually cause more damage than letting them detonate maually. If that's true your explanation is actually confirmed at anything other than point blank range, as even in close-range fleet battles they don't pick off torpedoes as their enemies launch them (and destroy them with the detonations).

[Starglider]

it would actually cause more damage than letting them detonate maually.

Gah 'detonate normally' even, forgot to preview. Of course if you accept this incident the logical question is 'why don't phototorps employ this yield-boosting method in normal use'. I can only assume that the effects of a capship-grade phaser shot cannot be simulated by equipment that can be crammed into a PT warhead and that ECM prevents them from pulling the 'shoot own torpedo right before impact' trick in normal combat.

[bz249]

[quote="Adrian Laguna"][quote="Darth Servo"][quote]Having fighters does not make for a superior fleet.[/quote]
Tell that to the US Navy.[/quote]

Not a valid comparison. The US Navy operates planet-side, the Imperial Navy operates in space. Atmospheric fighters have a dimensional advantage over warships, in space this advantage disappears.

However, in both the Star Wars and Star Trek universes fighters do offer a certain advantage because the point-defence in both universes is not advanced enough to make the deployment of strike-craft a futile and suicidal endeavour. If Star Trek could shoot down fighters, then they a) wouldn't be employed and b) they would also be able to shoot down the slow as molasses photon torpedoes.[/quote]

From what I know the main goal of the fighters is to aid the fire control, do reconnaissance and of course to shot down the enemy's recon crafts and protect the friendly ones. Quite similar to the job of the interwar scout planes.

[Lord Pounder]

Isn't it a little stupid to make a weapon that does more damage when hitting something accidently than when it is hit's the target? I'm not Stewart from SDI but I always figured it was best to make a weapon with maximum boom possible.

[Starglider]

Isn't it a little stupid to make a weapon that does more damage when hitting something accidently than when it is hit's the target?

Welcome to the Starfleet Weapons Design Division! We hope you'll enjoy your stay with us and make a valuable contribution to our core mission: delivering underpowered, overcomplicated, unreliable, unergonomic and plain stupid weapon systems!

[Ted C]

If Star Trek could shoot down fighters, then they a) wouldn't be employed and b) they would also be able to shoot down the slow as molasses photon torpedoes.

TNG "The Price" showed that it's possible to shoot down a torpedo (or, in this particular case, a Ferengi "missile') in flight.

On the other hand, Worf couldn't guarantee shooting down Soren's trilithium torpedo in ST: Generations before it got from the planet to the local sun.