Damien Hailey
May 15, 2002:
Well then, let's wrap this up, shall we?
Sorry, I'm a little pressed for time, so I can't go for the direct quoting here (might help me calm down, too. You DO bring out the worst in you opponents...). [Editor's note: I like the way he makes up an excuse to avoid addressing all of his failures while simultaneously attacking my personality again; do the little crybabies who I've repeatedly humiliated at spacebattles.com teach some kind of course in how to do this?] But If I missed anything, feel free to let me no (quickly, of course), and I'll address it.
200 GT Overinflated?/Assault Ship weapons/operations.
I don't feel that I've changed my position in it at all. At least not from my side. If you're suppourting ground actions, it's usually not a good idea to use BDZ-level firepower(or even light-nuke level) around soft friendly targets.
You're assuming they are incapable of adjusting their firepower from its maximums down to lower levels. If so, then what did General Veers mean when he ordered "maximum firepower" to his guns?
[Editor's note: I'm not even going to bother arguing his bit about not changing his position, because I trust that the reader can determine that for himself. All of a sudden he thinks the Acclamator is neither a troop transport or a heavy assault vessel, but a gunship, ie- its armament should be strictly limited to supporting ground troops?]
I do understand the need for it to have some heavy guns, such as it's forward-mounted Torpedo launchers, as it may have to go through hostile fleets in order to drop it's payload. I just feel that 200 gigs is a bit much for secondary cannons [Editor's note: notice how he simply assumes that the heavy guns are “secondary” combat armament, even though the missile launchers can only fire forward and the ship is obviously not very maneuverable. I suppose I could have taken him to task on this, but I was growing bored].
Again, you are assuming that they are incapable of adjusting their firepower, and that those figures are fixed yields rather than maximums.
"Innocent Question?" I only said I asked. I never said it was innocent.
Remember what you've been saying in this last message about how you don't speak nicely? Some people don't ask nicely, especially when they don't expect (or shouldn't have) a nice answer.
If you don't ask nicely, then don't expect a nice answer, and don't get snippy when you don't receive one.
But at the same time, I wasn't exactly coming here for this fight. Oh well, it's enjoyable enough anyway. I'll concede this point.
Thank you. The "we hate StarDestroyer.Net" briagade at spacebattles.com has been loudly spreading the lie that I ruthlessly attack anyone who E-mails me regardless of his tone, and that simply isn't the case. If somebody challenges me, I come out swinging. If they don't, then I don't.
"Mike Wong Vs. SpaceBattles."
Actually, the other boards are some of the better parts. Less Deimos Anomaly-style trolling. Maybe I just want to see you on a Story. Debate, or agruing something Non-SW-ST.
But I am serious here. Just try it for a while, as a *normal* member. I've dealt with the deluge of multiple combatants on SB myself. Just go there, and run a search in the VS. Board under "Pokemon." It should be called: "SAMAS vs. half of Spacebattles."
Then you should understand why it's pointless to try to "debate" those people. Don't think small; I'm not out to convince one particular group; my site is intended for the entire Internet, not to convince a bunch of ignorant blustering brats on one particular sub-section of one particular bulletin board on one particular website. It's a simple matter of fact that you cannot convince an idiot of your position; you can only make arguments that an intelligent and/or impartial third party will agree with, or you can try to make it entertaining.
My mail from non-partisan types is usually supportive (and yes, I've gotten lots of E-mails from Trekkies who say that they saw the error of their ways after looking through my site). The people on spacebattles.com "poison the well" against my site, so people coming from that site to mine invariably come loaded with so much baggage that a hostile response is almost inevitable. There is only a miniscule portion of my site which talks about spacebattles.com (almost invariably with disclaimers that my criticisms only apply to a small sub-group of its denizens), yet they make my whole site out to be a hatemongering assault upon their legitimacy. They would be happy with nothing less than total erasure of anything that mentions them at all, and I'm not going to do that.
It's easily doable, and you do have the one thing that wins it, even if your methods kind of undemine it (really, they do): Plain facts. You give the facts, straight up, and without any additional baggage.
Most of the baggage comes from your side. That's what the "poisoning the well" fallacy is all about. Step back, read through my entire site, and try to rationally decide for yourself whether how mean-spirited it really is before judging it. You want to take me to task for judging spacebattles? I have repeatedly acknowledged that I make no value judgement on spacebattles.com outside of a particular group of idiots on its "vs" forums, but I don't see you acknowledging that my Hate Mail pages are not representative of my original work, tech analyses, or essays.
Which brings me to the next point:
Style Vs. Substance?:
As much as you may hate it, Style is in fact it's own Substance [Editor's note: again, he defends logical fallacies; “style is in fact its own substance”? That should go on a list of quotable sb.com posts, right alongside IXJac's now-infamous claim that force and pressure have nothing to do with armour penetration]. Just like sometimes, Quantity is it's own Quality. You're in this to convince people of your point, right? Wrong as it is, your attitude does influence people's perceptions of your points, and it does turn people off. And yes, it does clearly show even when you state the facts.
It turns you off, because you're looking for something to attack. Since most of my E-mail is supportive rather than hostile, doesn't it occur to you that the omnipresent poisoning of the well (anyone mentions my site on spacebattles.com and a horde of whiners descend to attack it and him) has affected your perceptions? Why is the rest of the world so much more amenable to my website's general message than you and your associates?
Meanwhile, on my end: I have been getting a little(okay, a lot) like that during this debate, as well, and I apologize for it. I try to keep it to substance over style myself, but even I miss. Yes, even against you. [Editor's note: why does the conciliatory tone always appear after it's plainly obvious that an opponent is hopelessly outgunned?]
Empire's actions in the Asteroid field. You did make some good points about their competence, and I did miss the ISD's position in the fleet, even after seeing it myself.
As I said before, it seems that you have been uncritically accepting arguments from your associates on the basis of their popularity. Even the most casual glance at the scene will show the Executor right there behind the ship, and if someone approaches it with open mind and clear perspective, that won't slip by. But when you're just looking for evidence to confirm what you perceive to be the popular viewpoint, it will slip right by you.
Okay, here's how I would've handled the situation. Take a look, and see if it was better or not.
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Keep my ship on the inside part of the fleet, suppourting the outer ISD's with my own probes and TIEs. Incedentially, make sure at least one possible approach for asteroids is covered by one of those ISD's.
The asteroids are coming from all directions simultaneously. It isn't a matter of approach routes; we're not talking about human attackers.
Natually, make sure all gunners are ready to destroy all incoming asteroids, *particularly* those heading for the bridge tower. The delay could leave the ship open to further damage.
What makes you think they were not attempting to destroy all incoming asteroids, particularly those heading for the relatively flimsy bridge tower? The fact that they missed one out of thousands does not mean they were tactically unprepared. By that token, every army in history has been tactically unprepared.
If the ship's guns were mostly down, request fire assistance from nearby Star Destroyers, possibly the Executor itself.
Again, what makes you think the Executor was not assisting?
And finally, make sure there are no asteroids nearby if for any reason, I have to drop my shields.
Given the speed of the asteroid in question, it could have been more than 50 km away when they dropped shields for the holo-transmission (assuming it lasted one minute, which isn't exactly a long conference). Given the sheer density, it's not realistic to expect them to completely clear out a volume of asteroids a hundred kilometres wide for a one minute holo-trans.
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In Vader's case, I would've:
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Instead of just sending the entire fleet into the belt, Id've had them surround it, Hyperspacing to positions around the field, and if needed, blasting out sections of the field to drive them out(they tried it with TIE bombers, why not step it up a bit?). From there, send in the Executor and the undamaged ISDs into the cut-off area to flush them, with the outer groups keeping a full scan of the area for when they try to escape.
Three points:
1) Vader didn't give a shit about their safety
2) The Executor was in good shape, so he had no personal reason to worry.
3) Sending the entire fleet after the Falcon raised the odds of capturing them.
Vader's priorities may have been different than what yours would have been, but that should not be interpreted as stupidity. Besides, Vader had no military training. There is no reason whatsoever to denigrate the tactical skills of the Empire at large based on his motives and priorities, unless you're just desperate to find nits to pick (which is usually the case with the anti-SW crowd, which is usually desperate to attack SW in order to bring it down to the leve of ST or B5, and which will even resort to pointless criticisms such as dredging up obscure sci-fi novels and saying "see? This novelist made an even more powerful sci-fi universe", just to win some sort of meaningless victory against big bad SW).
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As for the field scenes itself, the ship showed no evidence of Ion Cannon damage as was shown (as opposed to the ship they did show being hit by it), which is why I discounted the possibility of IC damage.
Sounds to me like you're going on someone else's description of the scene, instead of watching it for yourself. There is no obvious physical damage to the structure of the ship after the ion cannon impact. See the attached picture [of an ISD just after being hit by the ion cannon, displaying no visible damage whatsoever] and video clip [Divx5 format]. It's sad how many anti-SW arguments rely on lies about the content of the film.
Not to mention the TESB script mentioned that ISD being hit as drifting helplessly off into deep space.
Tell me, how many of these arguments are yours, as opposed to being parrotted from someone else? The novel said the ship "plunged into deep space". It did not say that this condition was somehow permanent, and that they were never able to regain control, and that they never rejoined the rest of the group.
And the reason I left out the reason for the ISD dropping it's shields to make the holonet transmission is that I didn't see any reason for it to have to drop the shields, as it was shown that they could recive other transmissions while shielded.
A holo-transmission is different from a voice-only transmission.
If it was specifically mentioned in a novelization, I suppose sombody did, in fact, see my original problem (independently, of course), and came up with that reason.
The novelization never mentioned the entire incident. It mentioned a smaller ship (presumably a support vessel which we never saw) being completely destroyed by an "enormous asteroid" (and 70m is hardly enormous relative to an Imperial vessel), but there was nothing about a relatively small asteroid hitting an ISD's bridge tower.
If I missed anything, sorry, but I've run out of time. If it's important, we still got a day to go. I'll try to get back to it later.
I seriously doubt that you or any of your fellow debaters will be able to figure it [my riddle] out, but I'll wait until tomorrow before posting this exchange. After that, everything is AOTC, AOTC, and more AOTC.
May 15, 2002:
Just in case I wasn't clear at the end of my last message, the remaining point that I wanted you to try to figure out was the fact that you can pummel a ship with a physical impactor even if its particle shields are strong enough to stop it. If you can't figure it out, ask some of the self-professed "science experts" at spacebattles.com's "vs" forums who claim that I'm full of shit.
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