Anyone here remember Renegade Legion?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Yep, using the wrong equation for the job was not particularly impressive of me, I admit. Definite brainfart there.

I will say that we're approaching this from opposite directions; I'm making a guesstimate at the input energy and the velocity in consequence of that, via translation of 'power point' game stat to SI number x power points available and what kind of velocity is possible from that,
versus what the description implies and the energy requirements of that.

Force times distance? The distance involved would be the length of the accelerator barrel, begging the question.
Ek=1/2MV2 is more what I meant to do, and the numbers I got are too low- not only for the description, but for the 'observed' battlefield performance. The damned things are just problem- sticks.

Given that the crowbar is going to keep going forever, 'maximum range' has to be accurate prediction range, which probably has as much to do with how quickly a ship's drives react- how quickly the fusion torches can vary their thrust and expans their footprint- somethign under a steady, constant acceleration is just as predictable as somethign under no acceleration at all, is it not?
None of the descriptions indicate the big ships are any good at the footwork, and it raises a real concern with orbital defence stations- why does anyone still try to use them?

[Connor MacLeod]

Sorry for the delay. Real life gets in the way of large replies sometimes, especially when you have to go back and double check stuff. No rush in replying.

Isn't the idea that a tank or a fighter is capable of destroying a city single handed begging the question?
That is, they can do it...if they have nuclear level firepower. How do we know they have nuclear level firepower? Because they can do it. That is circular reasoning.

I'm pulling it from here under the "TOG/Renegade Cohorts" bit for tanks... which quotes the following:

"Traveling at 240 kph one meter above the ground, a Legion's grav armor represents the ultimate extension of conventional power. The grav tank is capable of delivering enough firepower to raze a city, but is so heavily armored and shielded that it can take its crew safely through a nuclear strike and still function.

Given that I've seen the other quotes mentioned in that same page in other places (the interceptor and Centurion one in particular) I assume that its valid: I'll also note another user on SD.net mentioned the Centurion bit quoted there.

Then there's the fact that (at least going by the Centurion rules) fighters and patrol craft are vulnerable to fire frrom ground attack There's also the not-so-minor fact that grav tanks and fighters are roughly in the same tonnage range.

For fighters, we know that from Interceptor, but even if we didn't the fact that artillery platforms can hurl nukes tells us a great deal.

There's no indication anywhere outside the equivalent of a recruiting poster that this can be done, and every indication in the durability of the vehicles against conventional fire, the numbers for buildings, that it is conventional crossfire.
Artillery can lob nukes, sure, but a front line MBT? Not by anything in the vehicle rules or the manual, nor by anything in the fluff that isn't open to a much more moderate interpretation.

HELL rounds aren't "just nukes". THey have gravwank attached to them as well as that bizarre fusion effect. And I should point out they may not even be nukes. "fusion" does not neccearily mean "nuclear fusion" (as Many a Trektard has tried claiming about SW powerplants, or 40K powerplants being fusion because they are called "plasma reactors.")

On the game rules in general- this is a game. It is a game. Let me repeat that again. It's a game. What the hell are you going to analyse, if not the game?
What I am doing is looking at the on- table performance and thinking, 'If this is true, then...' and trying to produce sensible results out of the game material, which fortunately happens to have a lot of SI units lying about here and there.

So tell me this. can you actually scientifically model the game based on its rules enough to provide accurate, interanlly consistent calcs (as in, you won't have to "ignore" sciencec to make the calcs work, or "ignore" aspects of the game to make the calcs work?) Is there no abstraction of the stats, or play balancing? If there is the latter or if you can't do the former, you're going to have a fucking hard time persuading me that the game rules are internally consistent enough to produce consistent, analytically accurate calcs. For fuck's sake, the Leviathan game measures a hex at 75 km, yet a battleship can occupy 4 hexes (or a cruiser at 3 hexes, or a frigate at 2 hexes.) You're telling me THAT is consistent? Wht about the absence eof a 3 dimesnional space? (which is a common problem across all games.)

Or are you giong to tell me that a Lancea has about 1% of the power of a Shiva class battleship (going by power ratings?) That would mean an entire wing of Lanceas has 3x the power output of a Battleship, which makes one wonder why the fuck they even bother with bigger ships to begin with? Or cruisers? They're slow as hell and not all that durable really if fighters can take them down.

Suspension of disbelief. When did that become a bad idea?

Do you even know what suspension of disbelief is? Or how it is typically applied to games? Analysis of game material has been discussed MANY times on this board across many game systems, and the problems are always the same, and I have yet to run across ONE game where the fluff should be disccarded unilaterally in favor of the game data alone. Indeed, SoD allows for the TYPE of material to be taken into account of the ability ot analyze it , much the same way SoD allows us to take into account a person's technical knowledge or understanding when using dialogue if they obviously don't know what they're talking about. An example is that artistic differences in a drawing may dismiss the fact that a person doesn't look like they might in "real life", and historical bias and "slant" may be utilized to account for discrepancies if a obvious contradiction occurs and there is no other way to deal with it (harmonization of evidence is to be preferred over outright dismissal.) Having a source based on a game can LIKEWISE make it biased, and the gameplay aspects can further make it unreliable by SoD (in some ways its even WORSE than a historical account, because entertainment factors in.)

Furthermore from the SoD perspective, the fluff material is considered "in-universe", whereas teh game stats are arguably "out universe" (becaues in universe its not going to be a game.)

And look at the fighter briefings and the cap ship manual- Renegade Legion suffers from the Unreliable Narrator problem. Look how politically slanted the write-ups are, and in many cases that was the game designers simply having a bit of fun, or pulling something out of their asses.

And I can say the same thing about the game stats. AS in "they're not meant to accurately depict reality, but to provide a fun entertainment". I repeat about the "multi-hex ships despite the fact hexes are suppsoed to be 75 km long" Are you goign to tell me battleships are hundreds of kilometers long too? By your logic we should disregard the "2.75" km size for the Shiva because its "in-universe" material.

More to the point, where's your proof of this bias supposedly making the fluff impossible to analyze? I can point to explicit examples of abstraction in the game, and I can point to SoD-style "in universe vs out universe" distinctions.

And lastly, can you (again) guarnatee that the game stats aren't likewise "pulled out of their asses?", because you either assuming they aren't, or you have specific proof this isn't the case. You don't get to just unilaterally declare "game fluff isn't canon but the game stats are", because you're both violating SoD and the spirit of analysis that has driven this forum (and indeed, the website attached to it as a whole.)

I do regard the in-game numbers as more reliable than the in universe equivalent of 'No Shit' stories and propaganda, and I remain to be convinced that the 'Blink of an eye' comment on the dinner- party bombardment isn't the equivalent of the dialogue from ST;TDiC.

I didn't say blink of an eye, I said "within moments" I assume you're not trying to strawman my arguments and this is simply a continued error on your part, because this is the second time I've corrected you on this, and I have a low tolerance for BS.

The other reason to take the game numbers seriously is that they provide a relatively hard lower limit. Even on my own relatively minimalist take, the numbers justify a level of firepower roughly equivalent to ST;TOS, lower sublight and higher translight speeds, vastly greater numbers, extent and political will.

Wait a second, this sound like you're backpedaling. First you claim the fluff should be tossed out because its unilaterally an exaggeration and the game stats are more accurate (despite bieng a fucking game, and the point of a game being entertainment.), now you're claiming that the game stats are merely lower limits?

That bombardment; game stat again- capital ships do use heavy missiles as a main weapon- and they are usually used in the opening and the end game, to kill small ships outright at the opening of a fight or finish big ones at the end; they are salvo fired in large rollback attacks. From the dmage they can do to another ship, I get a total of two gigatons per salvo per battleship.
There's the kaboom, and the laser fire on the rest of the planet to turn it red with heat followed- no necessity for a one second BDZ.

And do you care to actually provide the math behind this "two gigaton" calc, as where as you're pulling the variables from? From what I have read about capital ships in Leviathan, they're larger (but by an indeterminante degrgee) than fighter missiles, and they're fired in swarms of an unknown number.

For that matter, is it actually indicated that the HELL missiles in Centurion are the same thing as the capital ship missiles? We know artillery hell munitions aren't as powerful as the ones launched by grround installations (But not apparently at captial ships, as I mentioned before).

The third reason to take the game material seriously is that almost everything there is available on how these forces interact is in there. What does what to which? can a Fluttering Petal survive a strafing attack by two Ictus? Is the new renegade Huntress class battleship- trading off a spinal mount for more lasers- really a match for a TOG Shiva? By going with an analysis based solely on sustained fire, inert target, you're throwing half the reason for bothering to analyse away. And especially when the numbers bring you into flat contradiction with the game material, on what the hell fighters actually use as missiles, then I have to think maybe it's time to put down the sack of salt.

Because you assume that the game stats must automatically model reality? Give me a break. The game isn't even "in-universe" like the fluff is. As you said "its a game". which maens its meant for entertaiment value primarily, scientific accuracy second (or third, or more). This doesn't break SoD in the least, before you try that argument again. If you don't believe me, I'll be happy to take this up with any number of other analysts, up to and including Mike himself.

And yes, Fighters can use Hell missiles, but can you piont out to me a source where it actually says they use them against capital ships? The source I saw that mentioned was Centurion, and the context was in attacking groudn targets. Cap ships as we know, use them, but cap ship weapons aren't fighter scale weapons, are they?

The fourth reason is the in game history, which, again, unreliable narrator, but it does seem that the human race was in a bad way at the beginning of the seventh millennium; plague- or biowar- followed by alien invasion. Most of humanity was politically dependent on the KessRith at that time, and the Terran Republic was born out of a revolutionary movement to overthrow the alien overlords.

So, by your logic, a game which is designed from the beginnign for fun, and which may or may not be internally consistent with itself, nevermind science is supposed to be more reliable than fluff that you supposedly call "unrelaiable?" Its not "unreliable" just because you think it is. As I said, I can just dismiss the game simply BECAUSE its a game, and by SoD I have a better argument than you do. (Again, in universe vs out universe.) Appealing to your nebulous "unreliable narrator" does not change this fact.

Calling orbital defence the HELL missile's primary purpose is stretching it a bit; they are the defensive installation's primary means of defending itself, sure, but cut to Leviathan and "Interceptor describes anti-fighter types, and Centurion describes anti vehicle missiles. These are not weapons of mass destruction but missiles designed to damage a small target. HELL munitions, first described in Centurion, are much more powerful."

HELL missiles as outlined in centurion are primarily for stopping kinetic bombardment attacks on a planet, but they evidently can be used as anti-fighter weapons due to their proximity effects. Other missiles (such as interceptor missiles) don't seem to have proximity effects - they seem to be impact/shaped-charge type attacks (you wouldn't need to hit the fighter otherwise to damage it.)

Oh, and WRT your prior calc, did you also notice they differentiate between "blast" and "the shockwave" associated with atmospheric explosions? (I believe this gets mentioned in Leviathan, with Capital ship missiles.)

That kinda makes your original calc problematic, since you were going by the blast wave created IN AN ATMOSPHERE! At best this means it refers to the fireball, and at worst it means its uncalcable since we don't know what the "blast" is supposed to represent (for all we know its part of the gravwank - I should note that while a nuclear detonation in space could be said to technically have a fireball, its not really going to be like an atmospheric one either.)

The reason that doesn't seem to make sense to you is that you're way out in big number land far beyond what the rulebook evidence will bear.

Or, maybe I'm rather suspicious of using "out of universe" game stats as a means of providing accurate numbers over "in-universe" fluff.

I'll note again that accusing me of wanting to deliberately inflate the numbers is yet another backpedal on your part, since you were claiming that the game-stats based numbers are "merely" lower limits. Its also probably a logical fallacy of some kind or another, but I'm not really interested in looking it up.

On the group formation thing, the desctiptions change as one rub#lebook gets superseded by another; what weas described in Interceptor as a 'group' is stated in Leviathan to be a 'Squadron', and carriers are no longer a distinct type, but a qualification to other designations.
Ten battle squadrons forming a group is in the fluff text for the Renegade Repulse- class battleship, describing a deployment of such.

Wait are you telling me that game stats and rules are INCONSISTENT? Is this yet another backpedal, or are you breaking out the old "we can only analyze parts of game material, so e can only really selectively ignore it?" Because if its the latter, I'm gonna tell you we're breaking SoD as well (you're not allowd to just pick and choose what you analyze, and if there are obvious flaws in the material that compromises its reliability as a primary source. At best, you can use it as supplementary material)

[Connor MacLeod]

Yep, using the wrong equation for the job was not particularly impressive of me, I admit. Definite brainfart there. [/quoite]

It happens.

I will say that we're approaching this from opposite directions; I'm making a guesstimate at the input energy and the velocity in consequence of that, via translation of 'power point' game stat to SI number x power points available and what kind of velocity is possible from that,
versus what the description implies and the energy requirements of that.

Except its not going to work. I doubt "power points" scale linearly, even though the game rules make it obvious they're supposed to.

Force times distance? The distance involved would be the length of the accelerator barrel, begging the question.
Ek=1/2MV2 is more what I meant to do, and the numbers I got are too low- not only for the description, but for the 'observed' battlefield performance. The damned things are just problem- sticks.

I'm not even sure WHY you included F=MA to begin with, since that has nothign to do with energy, the only thing it could work with is the work equation before (no pun intendeD) but even then I'm pretty sure its being mis-used (you'd really need to know variables you don't have, like the time to accelerate, which is going to be incredibly short for a relatavistic accel)

Given that the crowbar is going to keep going forever, 'maximum range' has to be accurate prediction range, which probably has as much to do with how quickly a ship's drives react- how quickly the fusion torches can vary their thrust and expans their footprint- somethign under a steady, constant acceleration is just as predictable as somethign under no acceleration at all, is it not?

not for a spinal mount. Spinal mounts have the drawback that they're fixed-axis, so that means that to aim them you need to turn the ship (Which also suffers accecleration limitations.) Range and projectile speed and the target's velocity (And, if it matters your own ship's velocity) matter here, becuase they'll determine engagement times and the ease of tracking. The further away it is, the less the Spinal mount needs to track it by in order to compensate. The faster your ship goes, the closer you'll be getting, which means you ned to track in a wider arc. THe faster the enemy ship goes, the wider your tracking becomes. And of course, projectile velocity (and range) determines how quickly the projectile will reach the target over a given range (pitted against target speed and ship size).

So its quite possible under certain cases to be moving in a predictable, straight line and still miss. Though I'm sure I'm oversimplifying that, there could be other accuracy related variables (recoil, ,for example, is a huge factor for accuracy)

None of the descriptions indicate the big ships are any good at the footwork, and it raises a real concern with orbital defence stations- why does anyone still try to use them?

Probably because, as a game, its not meant to make logical sense in any quantiative/analytical manner? It makes "enough" sense to sustain suspension of disbelief, and as I've admitted before, its one of the most well-thought out games ever (even in terms of gameplay), but that's a far cry from saying its "highly consistent and logical.") there are still various bits of idiocy (like the plastic bullets needlers and slug weapons use in Legionniare, or the excessive use of gravwank.) and even outright inconsistencies between the variable material.

That's another reason why I'm not sure you understand SoD how it applies in this case - SoD is not a straighytjacket requiring youo to take very little word or number in the source material at face value (Which, I point out, ,yopu yourself claimed by invoking the supposed "unerliable narrative" excuse, even if youo tried using it as a blanket dismissal, which is wrong also.) Its not a bloody religion, after all.

[Connor MacLeod]

Just for some shits and giggles a while back I took a look at the game stats as a means of "analysis, this is what I turned up:

2e19 watts Shiva class BB (150,000 power units, 4.21 million tons, 2 gee thrust.

8.5e18 watts Syracuse class cruiser: (85,000 power units, 1.63 million tons, 2 g thrust

7.5e18 watts Bantha -class frigate, 75,000 power units 967,000 tons, 3 g thrust

7.9e18 watts Fulger class DD - 40,000 units of power, 765,000 tons, 4 gee thrust

5.64e18 watts Serpens class DD - 40,000 units of power, 541,000 tons approx, 4G thrust

5e15 watts for a hypothetical 200 tonne fighter at 10 gees (Assume 2500 power units) (this is just a generous approximation really)

2e15 watts if we go with interceptor rules, I'll use a lancea from RL Interceptor (1400 units power, 70 ton mass, 11 gee accel

And you know what? The power unit stats don't prove to be very consistent with each other, save beteen the Syracuse and the Bantha. You know what's even better? It gets alot worse if you compare fighters/patrol craft to capital ships. A wing of fighters together ought to have more raw firepower than a battleship, nevermind the patrol craft. So why bother with capital ships if fighters can overwhelm them? Even better, how come fighters can threaten a capital ship with its weapons, yet the turret weapons can only threaten fighters patrol craft and other small targets? According to Leviathan, they're the same kinds of weapon!

And before you start claiming I made up numbers again, I'll remind you that the very same rules for RL all state that ships run on reaction drives, and make no mention of mass lightneing. so its also based on the game stats (masses and such) provided. The actual sustained engine power figures are rather irrelevant though, I could plug in numbers based on hex/turn accel calcs and still come up with the same ratios, and its the power unit/power output ratios being inconsistent that are important.

Hell, even disregarding the above, comparison of power vs mass for a battleship and a fighter proves even more absurd. The aforemtnioned Shiva has 150,000 power units, but masses only 4.21 million tons. In other words, it has .036 power points per ton. A The Lancea abofe has 1400 power units but masses a mere 70 tons. Or, 20 power units per ton. On a ton for ton basis, ,a fighter is orders of magntiude moer powerful than a battleship. Or compare it this way. A wing of Lancea would have over a million units of power, compared to a mere 150,000 for a Shiva, and only masses a FRACTION of that tonnage. (50,000 tons vs 4.2 million tons.) If you compared by tonnage (an equal mass of lancea vs 1 Shiva) - you get 60,000 lancea... and 84,000,000 power units! No matter how you cut the numbers, the conclusion is absurd - battleships would be useless in combat and have no coneivable advantage save FTL or durability (and fighters aren't durable, but they're far cheaper, even if you lose the entire wing.) And this isn't even factoring in missiles.

Another fun example is how the game damage system handles force/momentum vs energy, particularily with regards to physical impactors vs energy weapon. Collisions and spinal guns in particular. Do you have "energy damage points" and "momentum" damage? Does it model those out accurately? Does it account for other aspects of those two bits (like power, or intensity, or pressure?) Do I even have to explain the relevancy of those things to you? And how about nukes, eh? Do they model the differences between thermal and blast effects? What about radiation? Electromagnetic pulse? Or are all those effects lumped together in damage, even though the damage mechanism of each would differ? How about directions and velocities with collision? Two objects approach ing head won't beheave the same neccesarily as those hitting perpendicular, or even a rear end collision.

From my observations of the Leviathan game, at least, damage points are damage points whether its a physical impactor, collison, nukes, or an energy weapon. That doesn't look very "accurate" to me, it looks more like an abstraction. THe smae is probably true of Interceptor and Centurion (mass drivers vs lasers or particle beams, etc.)

Then there's the already mentioned problems with starship masses (being too light for their internal volumes. A TOG shiva class battleship has several times the internal volume of an ISD without the dorsal/ventral fins, ,yet it is at least 10 times less massive despite being larger. I've heard people argue for the ISD being at least twice that. And then thre's the same problems the Honorverse had, where its ships had a density of "cigar smoke" for their volumes, and they had to settle on an average density of 250 kg*m^3 to make it work out, and can be read about here.)


Acceleration (as calculated before) won't match up really well either without abstracting it (constant accel for a battleship or cruiser over the number of hexes indicated for one turn, for example, will come out ot an accel to less than a gee, which means that to get a few gees for most starships you have to abstract the acceleration time.) You'd have to actually assume the ship STOPS accelerating for certain periods of time for it to work out, which is (to say the least) extremely odd if you're trying to manuver.

Hell round effects (Centurion, or Leviahtan bombardment) don't really scale out well either, becaue the stats don't really define any accurate "fireball", blast or thermal effects - they just assign what seem to be arbitrary distances. I tried comparing "hex radius" to "nuclear effects" radius off Mike's claculator and it didn't really work out (except maybe for cratering, because the HELL rounds seem to turn the hex itself or the hexes in the destroyed radius for cap ship versions, into a huge crater)

Leviathan mentions allocated power is lost in successive rounds (IE you can't store up additional power from round to round.) This is, frankly, absurd as it violates either thermdynamics or intelligent ship design. Where does the energy go? The only possible thing is I can think of is that they'd deliberately vent it to space, but what possible purpose would that serve (it would make the ship MORE detecable, and it wastes fuel.) More to the point, they would have to deliberately design some sort of "energy dumping" mechanism into the ship for no discernable purpose. Yet, this would HAVE to be true were one to take game stats as factual.

****

Now, mind you, that was pretty much the same thing I'd figured on. I've tried analyzing enough games to know the potential pitfalls, and I'd have been highly shocked if RL WERE somehow accurately model-able (poor company would have put in far more work than it needed.) I've even heard of inconsistencies in "correlating" the games for analytical purposes (armor points, for example. I remember that on SB some guy tried doing firepower calcs based on the ingame stuff and it came out to be sub-kiloton inoutput. I don't need to begin to describe the problems there insofar as mass and accel go...

That is not to say that the fluff won't have errors or problems in it, because it does and will (the spike/slug weapons fire plastic bullets, I can't even begin to handle the insanity there.) and those will have to be addressed, reconciled and/or ignored as well. But in the evidential hierarchy of SoD analysis, text based evidence already suffers a blow from the fact it is based on words rather than visuals (By SoD-style analysis, anyhow) and game stats suffer even more,. That sort of limits you and forces you to be alot more painstaking (and time consumingly cautious_) in handling the data (otherwise you don't have anything.) In RL's case, there is proportinoally less data to begin with (compared to 40K or Star Wars), ,so you can't just toss things out without a very good reason. Ultimately what it comes down to is consistency and what "works out" best given the myriad data.

Edit: I'll also note that I deliberatel rahter undercut my power generation figures above, because I didn't use a more "realistic" (IE non gaseous) density for ships, I completely ignored the requirements for fuel-mass/propellant (These ships operte for days or weeks on end. That neccesiates some fairly hefty fuel requirements. Nevermind the fuel requirements neccecsitated for feats like vaporiziong or removint a planet's oceans or atmospheres, or melting its crust.) And acceleration figures are quite open to interpretation for various reasons as well (power allocation for one.)

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I lost track of this thread and, as such, I concede the argument.

[Connor MacLeod]

There's no reason to concede anything, its not an argument, I'm just trying to make you understand how SoD will apply here. Its kind of a tricky situation, and there's no real way to generalize it. everything will be case by case, and the only things that you can really afford to matter are science and consistency (if you don't there's no real point to doing the calcs, is there?)

[Kojiro]

Man, I remember this game. It was one of two games I stumbled across about 17 years ago now as a kid and got me into wargaming. It and original Space Hulk were my first wargaming loves.

For the life of me I can't remember anything except you could paint targets, damage was done with neat template things and my renegades were blue. Damn but I loved it though. I always thought that damage system should have shown up somewhere else.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Consider the nature of the game; this, or any other system, represents a particular take on reality.
It has it's own laws and consequences, it's own abstract space of actions and results.
Now, I am a gamer, and that plays a larger part in my psyche than it ought to in any sane man's; certain things I take for granted.

One of them being that, fiction and game design being what they are, one rule that always gets included is the law of unintended consequences. There are always holes, abstractions, four- colourisations and concessions to style; Take any game system coldly, at face value, and it probably will reduce itself to absurdity.

Another one is that game design is a creative art, and as such it doesn't always boil out the way the artist intended it to.
This is the reason I wanted to pay more attention to the game mechanics; it's analogous to the difference between a hustings speech and a legislative record. The fluff text is what they want you to think, the gameplay is what they've actually done.

For instance, at the games club recently, I was spectating at a game of WH40K while waiting for my players to arrive, and I found myself pointing at the table and going- No. that's wrong. It does what? No, it can do this instead, and are you sure they don't have that?
I mean, in that case, the background material has got richer (and the game material poorer, IMO) to the point where the actual play has become secondary.

I wasn't convinced that was the case here. So, I thought about it, decided that the project I wanted to follow was one of taking the system coldly, at face value, and letting it reduce itself to absurdity. Seeing from that where the holes and strangenesses were.
(I mean, it almost worked. The behavious of spinal mounts is definitely one such logical hole.)
Of course, then there was going to be the problem of explaining how those low numbers could possibly account for incidents in the background like Buntari's bombardment.

And rereading the posts I've made already, I hadn't laid the groundwork for any such idea or project, not so as you would notice anyway.
At this point, it would start to look as if I was moving the goalposts- either that, or I've made a pig's ear of presenting my case so far.

Basically I think I've let myself down badly on this one, not putting in the effort it deserved, and there is a certain amount of ambient life chaos- my employment situation's up in the air again and I have a medical problem I'm in denial about and hoping it goes away, in addition to other projects.

The brain sweat it would take to dig myself out of the hole, work up and present a coherent argument, and catch up with and offer reasoned and civilised disagreement- or for that matter agreement- with Connor's analysis, is probably beyond me at the moment.
So the most reasonable thing to do seems to be for me to bow out and let Connor get on with it.

[Connor MacLeod]

Consider the nature of the game; this, or any other system, represents a particular take on reality.
It has it's own laws and consequences, it's own abstract space of actions and results.
Now, I am a gamer, and that plays a larger part in my psyche than it ought to in any sane man's; certain things I take for granted.

That may be true, but at best that mindset complicates analysis, and it worst it defeats the purpose. A certain standard of consistency between "our" world and theirs has to exist for analysis to be possible, so there's limits to just how far one can assume their universe is a "take" on reality. certain things are required of course (IE FTL like T-space), but not others (IE thermodyanmics, conservation laws, etc.)

One of them being that, fiction and game design being what they are, one rule that always gets included is the law of unintended consequences. There are always holes, abstractions, four- colourisations and concessions to style; Take any game system coldly, at face value, and it probably will reduce itself to absurdity.

That's why you take things on a case by case basis. Some of the ingame stuff may be usable in some fashion, but it can't be handled in any "blanket" manner. THe same is true of fluff too, but not quite to the same degree, and you probably can't do it linearly

Another one is that game design is a creative art, and as such it doesn't always boil out the way the artist intended it to.
This is the reason I wanted to pay more attention to the game mechanics; it's analogous to the difference between a hustings speech and a legislative record. The fluff text is what they want you to think, the gameplay is what they've actually done.

Most RL artwork as I've seen won't offer much for analysis (I rarely go by much wartwork in 40K either. just a few things.) Thus far the only thing I've used diagrams or pictures for is scaling starships or stations with obvious scaling marks (eg tessdrake station in Tessdarke run, which has a TOG Shiva battleship inside it)

For instance, at the games club recently, I was spectating at a game of WH40K while waiting for my players to arrive, and I found myself pointing at the table and going- No. that's wrong. It does what? No, it can do this instead, and are you sure they don't have that?
I mean, in that case, the background material has got richer (and the game material poorer, IMO) to the point where the actual play has become secondary.

True, but alot of sci fi analysis really is more of a sort of storytelling than it is about gaming. You really have to submerse yourself "in universe" and formualte rationalizations or interpretations of data from an "in universe" perspective, and continuity is very much "in universe" as well. Arguments like "technical incompetence of laymen" or "personal bias" or "propoganda", even thoguh they dismiss stuff, are carefully "in-universe" excuses, after all. But you don't use them arbitrarily or lightly either.

I wasn't convinced that was the case here. So, I thought about it, decided that the project I wanted to follow was one of taking the system coldly, at face value, and letting it reduce itself to absurdity. Seeing from that where the holes and strangenesses were.
(I mean, it almost worked. The behavious of spinal mounts is definitely one such logical hole.)
Of course, then there was going to be the problem of explaining how those low numbers could possibly account for incidents in the background like Buntari's bombardment.

Low numbers can often be reconciled with higher numbers for varying reasons. There might be reasons not to want to use excessive firepower (collateral daamage on a valuable target, a ship being badly damaged and not at full capacity, low fuel, etc.) But the same isn't true of the reverse, you can't mesh lower firepower examples iwth higher without invoking technobabble (IE Phaser NDF disappearing rahter than vaporizing), but in RL's case it requires invoking a needlessly complex additional mechanism (and one that isnt wholly consistent with the data anyhow. Much of the evideence points to many weapons inflicting thermal damage, for example. Such as NPCs and EPCs and Lasers.)

And rereading the posts I've made already, I hadn't laid the groundwork for any such idea or project, not so as you would notice anyway.
At this point, it would start to look as if I was moving the goalposts- either that, or I've made a pig's ear of presenting my case so far.

You can, but Ithink its going to be alot more complicated and you're not going to lay down any sort of stable or consistent framework. At best, I figure you'll get "generalized" calcs or calcs working in a "specific case" basis.

Example. I was reading Interceptor, and it notes that asteroids that fighters in a hex can collide with (or need to evade sharply in order to avoid hitting) can be destroyed (they have something like 200 damage points.)

That is calcable in a broad sense. We do know hex size, and the indications are that the asteroid takes up most if not all of the volume of the hex (Say maybe a 10-15 km asteroid - it could be samller, but the smaller it is the smaller volume it occupies, and the easier it is to fragment. I doubt you would have it be more than half the diameter of hte hex, or it wouldnt be such a threat because of the sheer volume of the hex. An 8 km asteroid occupies 1/7th the volume of a 15 km diameter in the hex), and we can use the ADC to calc the energy needed to fragment it. You can use that to determine firepower in some way, but there would probably be some abstraction that you would take it as a rough example (you could say that fighters have multi-kt sustained firepower, or missiles might be multi-megaton. It takes ALOT of energy to fracture a multi-mile asteroid, after all.)

A good way to indicate how it might not work out consistently is this:

I noticed reading the Interceptor rules that the way that "thrust" is figured out differs from how its handled in Leviathan. In the latter, thrust is based on class (all battleships have 2 thrust, cruisers 3, ,etc.) While in Interceptor thrust is its calculated from available power output (that not used by weapons, shields, etc) and divide by mass.

Small problem of ocurse is that while its fialry consistent for fighter and patrol ship scale objects, it doesnt scale up beyond that. Battleships have, for example, 100,000+ units of power (as opposed to 2500 units max for a fighter.) I already commented on the problem here, but I can do it in a better way.

By interceptor standards, a Battleship should have .04 points of thrust, given the low power output. Or, going by the Leviathan Thrust/mass, it should have over 8 million (possibly more). Which I admit is more consistent, but it doesnt work with the power charts as given in the rules for iether Interceptor or Leviathan, so yeah.. And there's still the fact they basically abstracted thrusts for capital ships in Leviathan by class rather than by design.

So you see why I say "case by cae" basis. If you were going to have to do a "damage point/power" comparison, you might go by Interceptor rules for th emost consistent and convert Leviathan to that, but even then its going to be a kludge (which is okay, because kludging things is very much also apart of sci fi analysis. Not much will always be neat or perfect.)

Basically I think I've let myself down badly on this one, not putting in the effort it deserved, and there is a certain amount of ambient life chaos- my employment situation's up in the air again and I have a medical problem I'm in denial about and hoping it goes away, in addition to other projects.

doing a good job at sci fi analysis can be time consuming, tedious, and tiresome, because alot of it involves having the right knowledge, and being willing and able to double, triple, or quadruple check for errors. And even then you can make errors or keep learning new things (or revising things) Its taken me literally years to get where I am, and I'm nowhere near the analyst that some people are.

Its just not something you can go into half-assed either. Those of us who like to do a thorough job with it usually end up getting annoyed at people who do the half assed job, that's all. I try not to let it be personal, but if I offended I do apologize in that regard. RL will be one thing I'll not always be able to rely on "personal information" for, there are just some sources I can't get ahold of without exceptional effort (or paying far more than I'm willing to.)

And it takes time. Collaboration does make things easier tho. And it can be a form of peer review (criticism isn't bad per se, it just needs to be more informed at times to be effective. But sometimes people catch thingsI miss, or contribute insights or analysis that complmeent or exceed my own. And sometimes I am wrong.)

The brain sweat it would take to dig myself out of the hole, work up and present a coherent argument, and catch up with and offer reasoned and civilised disagreement- or for that matter agreement- with Connor's analysis, is probably beyond me at the moment.
So the most reasonable thing to do seems to be for me to bow out and let Connor get on with it.

You don't need to bow out. as I said, its a collaborative effort and it need not be adversarial. As long as you're willing to undeerstand how I am approaching this and how I look at it (this is not as critcism, but I HAVE been at the sci fi analysis thing longer) Its not about who is right, its about finding the "Best fit" for figuring out the universe. I may have to revise my own estimates for firepower down for variosu reasons (recoil for eample) - what I stated beofre was just a range (lower/upper limits) I do believe it willb e cl oser to UPPER limits, than lower, but It may very well turn out that multi-petaton firepower is unworkable as well.

When I start doing thi sformally, it will be alot like the 40K threads, with comments welcome (even some argument.) because I dont want everyone to just blindly agree with me (that happens somewhat in 40K) In RL's cae, I'll be welcoming aid even more, because my knowledge base of it is imperfect and I will need people to contribute further info for a better picture (IE the Leviathan ship discusiion thingy I asked about earlier)