StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Cao Cao wrote:I have to wonder if things like the Culture or a TARDIS would send these people into permanent comas if they had to deal with them like they do this stuff.

I don't think they'd like Dr Who very much, no. Just look at the published stuff on the Daleks. Entire galaxies of resources, five entire galaxies as protectorates. Intergalactic invasion fleets. Manufacture of planet-covering hospital facilities (cunning plan #9128) in hours "Ten million ships aflame" at the final battle. They'd have a fit.

I think we should kidnap Travissty and make her watch that stuff, Clockwork Orange style. Well, okay, no, but it would probably do her some good.

Anyway, a lot of the problem is ignorance of scale matters on behalf of writers, and agenda. For example, take the Death Star.

The writers of the RPG stats and so on lowball the Death Star figures terribly. There's an obvious reason for this - if you can see that Luke Skywalker killed a thousand times the number Stalin killed, or more, in one go, he suddenly looks a lot less saintly. Especially given how many of them might happen to be janitors trying to put their kids through college.

And of course, the Excecutor. Some of these stats, I suspect, are made to make it reasonably possible for anything less than an entire fleet of rebel ships to take the mighty command ship on. For that reason, take anonymous star cruiser #1. If we were making statistics for it, we would be inclined, as it's twice the length of an ISD, and roughly the same shape, to compare it to an ISD. You and I would generate ballpark stats for it that are based on ISD stats by 2 cubed. RPG writers seem more disposed to just multiply it by two. So, for example, if we take a crew of 37,000 for the ISD, most people here would be inclinded to estimate anonymous star cruiser #1's crew at around 296,000, assuming it's basically just a scaled up ISD. But your average WEG writer, is more likely to go for 74,000 people.

Then we have the Excecutor's infamously anaemic fighter complement. They're inclined to multiply the ISD stats by five (to make the 8Km length). It's been published as 144 fighters, which is an even more pathetic mis-scaling, being two times the complement of an ISD. Conversely, our "realistically" scaled anonymous star cruiser #1 could expect to carry a complement of 576 TIE fighters. In actuality, the only way that larger ships should be proportionately less powerful than smaller ones is when they run out of surface area to tack the guns onto. And even then, there are some huge, high capacity guns, like the Munificent's, or of course, superlasers, which can keep these ships practical, no matter how big they get (Within reason, of course).

And of course, once these statistics get out there, people who like them, or hold to the 'old school' sources, will tend to favour whatever fits with this small view of the ships and of course, universe, rather than wanting to give them up.

Take for example, the Katana Fleet. 200, 600m long craft. A terrifying threat, it would seem, because there are two hundred of them. But one 3.6 Km ship of the same proportions would have the reactor power of 216 dreadnaughts. There's a fair chance that in a straight up fight, the entire Katana fleet wouldn't be a match for a single Anon. Cruiser #2, though of course, it is more tactically useful in some ways, in that it can be spread around much more readily.

18-Till-I-Die wrote:I still say i dont get it.

These are the rabbid SW fans, but in most other cases rabid fans want to make their universe seem larger not smaller. Look at hardcore Fivers, Trekkies are renown for this, even StarCraft has its followers. But this is like fanaticism in reverse, like Nightmare said, its like they like 'em small...the smaller the better.

I dont get it man.

How powerful an universe is not very unimportant for people which are not interested in vs. debates imho. It's strange that they are not interested in consistency though, even the few authors I asked questions about their verses seem to be interested in consistency.

They're interested in consistency, but a twisted form of consistency. You see, anything that goes against the old school WEG sources (which many of these idiots grew up with) in "inconsistent," no matter how wrong the WEG sources were. Bringing in visuals from the movies doesn't work, because they don't want to be bothered with doing any scaling, and nothing is as easy as opening a WEG sourcebook or Essential Guide and seeing a number right there in front of you. Bringing in logic or common sense doesn't work, because these retards clearly don't think things through. That's proven by the fact that none of them would tell you that Executor is a glorified parade float rather than an actual (if impractical, in their opinion) warship or that the Clone Wars were a series of pussy skirmishes, both logical conclusions to their minimalistic crap. It basically boils down to being stupid and lazy.

VT-16 wrote:

EU says there was thousands of ships at Corusant, yet I watched the film and I don't recall seeing anywhere near that many ships. A few dozen at best.

Oook, you must have seen a different copy of the film, then. I recall capital ships swarming the screen, but maybe that's just me.

I remember the capital ships yes, filling the screen due to their size though, not because there were thousands of them.
It has been a while since I watched it like, but I don't think they showed all that many. My mistake if I'm wrong, it just didn't give that kind of scale to me.

Yes, its so nice to see Dr. Saxton villified, while these fanboys fucktards are fully willing to allow Traviss to define herself as the Mandalorian Monarch. She names her fans "FANdalorians", her detractors "talifans", and makes up her own special language for Mandalorians.

I've never seen Curtis do this. He presents the evidence, evaluates it, and generates a conclusion. He's never endorsed a niche fanboy movement around him called "Saxtonites", no matter what the retards on TFN and sw.com say.

So go ahead, you SW "fans". Let Traviss have her very own Klingons.

I've had a discussion with Karen Traviss at another forum (which is very strict on how to deal with VIPs) about this issue:

+http://www.galacticsenate.com/index.php ... 968&st=340#

EDIT: Try the link now, Vympel.

That link is broken for me.

I still got nothing. Do you have to be a member to view? Coz I can surf the forum fine.

Hmm, yes apparently you must be a member (I didn't know that). Well, I can repost it later. Oh, Wayne is a member...

Anyway, Star Wars is dead for me at the moment. With everything good about it behind me (re: Episode III and immediate books following that- DK books, Dark Lord, etc)- I've lost interest. Crap like this just makes me scoff even more- we're supposed to believe that bad intelligence led them to overestimate droid army numbers by god knows how many orders of magnitude? Give me a fucking break. Thousands of star systems, dumbasses. Hundreds of thousands dead per day. Deal with it.

Yes, I've also become disillusioned.

It's true, the people behind Star Wars right now are turning it into shit. The EU has always been a pale, shitty reflection of the movies, kept in check only by the fact that new movies would come out and forcibly swing the EU back to George Lucas' original vision. Now that there are no more movies coming out, the same morons who came up with shit like IG-88 controlling the Death Star and "Dreadnaughts" less than one tenth the volume of an ISD (what the fuck kind of a name is "Dreadnaught" for something so small?) can have free rein.

I remember the capital ships yes, filling the screen due to their size though, not because there were thousands of them.
It has been a while since I watched it like, but I don't think they showed all that many. My mistake if I'm wrong, it just didn't give that kind of scale to me.

It's both actually, they fill up the screen in numbers and in size ;)


Arkady Hodge-alert!:

He's on the prowl again, filling up Wiki-articles with fanon once more. This time it's the clone trooper numbers. Standard Hodge-tactics, wait a few months, then proceed with another retarded stunt. I'd like a concentrated attack on these fanon-elements.

I changed the article, but he's gonna do something, I'm sure. Back me up, those of you who actually have time for it, ok?

Could I also get the quote he made about not paying attention to canonical sources? I read something about that, whilst searching the forum, but it was posted in 2004. That'd be a laugh to pull out.

Interesting conversation you and Ms. Traviss are having on the Galactic Senate boards. She seems to realize just how puny the numbers are, but she seems to have no inclination to do anything about it.

It seems to me that this whole thing started up over a terrible misinterpretation of the term "units" by LFL.

One item of note:

I say again: find me hard data beyond the Saxton books.

Why must the hard data be from beyond the Saxyon books? What's wrong with the Saxton books? Why are they in every minimalist's "not really canon" list?

Of course, you CAN count the number of clones on the parade grounds of AotC and in the space battle of RotS (assuming in the latter case that the clone gunners we see aren't the only ones in the whole fleet...a patently absurd assumption). Toss that out there.

Oh, and is there any basis to her claims of rampant misogyny among Star Wars fans? Seems to me that she's "targeted" because she writes the Republic Commando books referencing the number as well as writing the "retcon," not because she's a woman. James Luceno and other authors have used the tiny number, too, so it's not like it's just her.

Well she can't come into contact with Saxton's books. It'd react with her anti-logic and cause an explosion.

Seriously, downsizers don't like what's in those books and are incapable of refuting them. So they simply choose to bury their head in the sand and ignore them.

When Mace Windu is told he has "five special commando units standing by, Sir", do we not see more than five troopers follow him into battle?

Are they gonna be selective about "units" in the film as well?

Oh, and is there any basis to her claims of rampant misogyny among Star Wars fans? Seems to me that she's "targeted" because she writes the Republic Commando books referencing the number as well as writing the "retcon," not because she's a woman.

Do make sure to tell her that, for my part at least, my criticism of her has nothing to do with her being a woman. Just that the ideas behind some of her writing is ludicrous.

Anguirus wrote:Interesting conversation you and Ms. Traviss are having on the Galactic Senate boards. She seems to realize just how puny the numbers are, but she seems to have no inclination to do anything about it.

Yeah, it has been... interesting to say the least.

Anguirus wrote:Oh, and is there any basis to her claims of rampant misogyny among Star Wars fans? Seems to me that she's "targeted" because she writes the Republic Commando books referencing the number as well as writing the "retcon," not because she's a woman. James Luceno and other authors have used the tiny number, too, so it's not like it's just her.

I can only speak for myself of course, but it doesn't have anything with her being a woman. I think she's a good author, she writes vividly and graphically, but besides that...

This is the same woman that had the temerity to compare criticism of her writing to the proceedings of the Spanish Inquisition. To say that she has an exaggerated sense of victimhood is to understate the matter somewhat.

So now we're all wife-beating misogoynists because we dont like her retarded numbers for the Grand Army. Riiiight. Cause there is NO other logical reason to disagree with her than personal bias against women, of course! You meanies why cant you leave her alone! Stop killing our love with your hate-speech!!!

Edit: no better yet...where do i get that Roll-Eyes smiley with the smaller Roll-Eyes smileys vomitting out of its mouth?

Who is this person to retcon the size of the droid army to fit with her "vision" of Star Wars, rather than retconning her own works to fit with Lucas' vision as found in the movies? Let's just hope this absurdity doesn't spread to that TV show they're supposed to make. Otherwise we might see the mighty Imperial Coruscant Defense Force, and all two Stormtroopers in it...

18-Till-I-Die wrote:where do i get that Roll-Eyes smiley with the smaller Roll-Eyes smileys vomitting out of its mouth?

Probably by stealing it from Uranium, but please don't clutter the thread with it. I think it's too big for a smiley...

Dooey Jo wrote:Who is this person to retcon the size of the droid army to fit with her "vision" of Star Wars, rather than retconning her own works to fit with Lucas' vision as found in the movies? Let's just hope this absurdity doesn't spread to that TV show they're supposed to make. Otherwise we might see the mighty Imperial Coruscant Defense Force, and all two Stormtroopers in it...

George Lucas is overseeing the show personally IIRC.
He at least has always kept his universe vast and not tied down into silly, small figures.
I fear the inevitable retconning that will come after, though.

Yeah, you can say alot about Lucas, but he always likes to make things look as big and spectacular as possible. CGI's a godsend in this regard.