ChrisReid said:
LOAF's entire point is that it's an extremely low possibility. The whole implication that all nonzero possibilities are equally valid is absurd.
Its not that all non-zero possibilities are equally valid, it’s that all non-zero possibilities are still viable possibilities. Its so much more likely that the Austerlitz is a Concordia-class, but because it’s a 6% chance (from LOAF’s ‘low’ 6 CDN number, not really an accurate way of looking at it since we have no idea how many were actually built, but one of the only ways we have – 2% by my minimum number of 3 to make sure what we know about the WC universe actually makes sense) of happening means that it can happen (especially given we don't know how many were constructed).
Bandit LOAF said:
(which, of course, was the goal of 'removing' it from the continuity in the first place)
A simple “Concordia being the last of her line” sentence from an-always-remorseful-about-the-old-days Blair in the WC3N or WC4N would have sealed it for every debate from there on out if that was the original intention. The PTC being decommissioned just ‘limited’ the spread of the ‘evil’ one-shot kill (but “oh by the way, by the time your given the opportunity to use it, you might blow yourself up”) technology. Which, the PTC retirement reason of ‘continual problems’ would have to include problems we aren’t aware of or the PTC fire button would just have had a “Do not press if your reactor is below XX% power!” label placed above it. Wonder gun it is not.
Apparently, they wanted to remove this technology from the timeline so much that they later went to the bullpen again and called up the perky, but always error-prone (and now uber-powered), “single shot fleet-kill weapon” for Prophecy.
Bandit LOAF said:
Also, your earlier observation that the Concordia was 'bulkier' than the Tiger's Claw was incorrect: based on their silhouettes, the Terran Confederation-class is only ~20 meters wider than the Bengal-class.
Gotcha. My mistake.
Bandit LOAF said:
I find it hard to believe that you "find increasingly more problematic", given that you've just gone on about how you think yards are built for specific classes of ships (despite any conclusive or even suggestive evidence to support this idea).
I do think that yards are built for specific classes (or there would be no reason to build the same ship for years on end, you dream up a replacement with a little bit better stats and “boom” you get to build it tomorrow, so to speak. Seems to work fine for the CDN as a carrier under your reasoning), but you don’t. The full phrase is “something I find increasingly more problematic if you want to believe a new design can instantly replace an old one”. I find it problematic under your vision of what takes place.
Bandit LOAF said:
(In terms of the Concordia-class ships, I generally attempt to go by the same ship list on which Origin has referred for Secret Ops. This is, of course, not really canon -- but it's one of those things that it's perhaps better to abide than not. I would throw it out the minute it's contradicted in the future, of course, but that doesn't seem likely to happen in the immediate future. Of course, it calls the Austerlitz Concordia-class, too...).
Then why wasn’t this great little nugget of “non”-canon slipped in way earlier in this debate? Would have been great point to consider in if I was actually justified in spending my time proving that a CDN can exist post BoT. Why isn’t the plethora of Pre-BoT information reflected in the carrier list (besides all the post WC4 stuff which I would guess at least a portion of which comes from this source)? The “along the same lines of canon” WC bible (for internal use by Origin sanctioned products) seems to make the cut with the Jutland class (its only reference IIRC being the WC Bible) showing up (under the assumption it’s the replacement for the Bengal - which didn’t make the list in the first place, so I have a little bit of difficulty wrapping my brain around why its replacement gets bumped up to “fleet carrier” status). Why ignore something that is “better to abide than not” when other more error-ridden sources have made the grade?
Bandit LOAF said:
That said, I don't see how one carrier surviving 34 years of war makes it probable that another carrier more likely to survive compared to its contemporaries. The Ark Royal doesn't have a giant space magnet that increases the probability that the Austerlitz as opposed to fifty eight other carriers survives for longer. (Or that makes the Austerlitz Terran Confederation-class to begin with...)). To put it another way - it's improbable (perhaps) that the Ark Royal survives however many battles its in -- but that doesn't make it *more* probable that any other specific carrier would survive (because you can apply the same logic to the Viper or the Washington or any of the other field of ships). I'm no mathamagician, but I'm pretty sure probability doesn't work that way at all. Flipping heads ten times in a row doesn't affect the fact that I have a 50% chance of getting it the eleventh time.
Well, I somehow got out of college with a minor in Mathemagics and I really have a problem wrapping my brain around the usage of permutations, combinations, when to use factorials of what, etc etc when it comes to probability, so don’t feel bad
.
Nothing I said about the Ark Royal has a direct link to proving the Austerlitz is a CDN. Your right, probability doesn’t work that way (although there is the ultra slim chance that the coin will land on its side, making both heads and tails a little less than a 50% probability- I know I hate that stupid example too). What I was picking at is your stance that, since its not very likely the Austerlitz is a CDN (6% by your numbers) that it shouldn’t be considered an option. Wing Commander is full of long odds situations, almost to the point that they are the rule
. Do you really want to calculate what the odds of Tarawa pulling off what they did in ER were? Or take a shot at Tolwyn stopping the Hakaga’s and company in FA? Since we can’t really apply weighting to the chances of events happening in our favorite fictional universe, all we can use are the raw “alive/dead/produced“ carrier numbers, which is what was done in the 1 out of 15 chances the Austerlitz is a CDN number. Its highly improbable that the Ark Royal survived, but it did (1.5% - raw numbers), just an onhand example of how long shots in the WC universe are not unheard of. If we really had the stats to get complicated, you could take the raw numbers for every engagement the Ark Royal was in and stack them up against each other. With the cumulative nature of probability, I don’t think you would come out any better since it lasts through 35 years of engagements – though not continual – and with its initial engagement, its chances IIRC have already dipped down to only a 50% chance of surviving (actually slightly greater than that since the Concordia already had 1 or 2 torpedoes in her, but that starts adding weighting factors which can’t really be done without getting way in over our heads, but you get the idea.
Using the same idea, given we knew the outcome of Vukar Tag (3 of 4 survive) and the BoT (2 of 7), the TCS Concordia initially only has a 21% chance of surviving both (it being the only carrier to fight in both engagements). That’s only 2 engagements in an “illustrious” career. If we started doing the math for the opponents it faced one on one (or in larger battlegroups) throughout its tenure and factored in the strength of the carriers faced at both major engagements, that number would begin to fall rapidly.
Doesn’t matter how low the percentage is, you can still get there in the end (and in quite a few of WC situations, the outcome is usually a very low probability result). So even though a possibility is low, can it
never happen? Of course not.
Bandit LOAF said:
First, read what you've quoted: criticalmass didn't ask about "post-BoT"; he asked about "2673-2681" (post-war). There's yet another layer of improbability here -- that Confed is keeping their faulty, crippled dreadnaught around while scrapping large portions of the fleet.
That is true, I misread what ciritcalmass asked. The answer still couldn’t be no, though. The percentages just keep going down but there is always the possibility.
Bandit LOAF said:
Had criticalmass asked your question, I would still say no. Anything is *possible* if you go through ridiculous lengths to make it true - if you want to have a Terran Confederation dreadnaught in Wing Commander III you can make up an elaborate story. Yes, the Confederation could secretly build more dreadnaughts without us ever hearing a reference to them... they can even have an amazing fixed gun that we've never heard of! Hell, our story can involve time travel if you want -- we can cite some Privateer 2 references for that.
Hard ons for the superships do not justify reintroducing them just because you want to show off a 3D model or have your Mary Sue be captain of a giant space gun.
(Ooh, oooh, no, we'll do The Final Countdown in the Wing Commander universe. The TCS Concordia will travel back in time to Space Pearl Harbor and fight the Kilrathi.)
You can come up with any elaborate way you want to try and dismiss the possibility or gripe about “ridiculous lengths” but the
direct from simple deduction bottom line is still true about the Austerlitz and can be summed up in 2 simple questions.
Can the Austerlitz survive the BoT? Yes, 3 carriers were killed in drydock with 4 (or 5/6, depending on what you count as a “carrier”) possible victims. The Austerlitz or the Viking (or 1 of 2 ships whose identities we aren’t sure of) could be that ship.
What class is the Austerlitz? We don’t know (unless the SO document finds its way into becoming a canon source). From the information we have about it, it could be a Concordia-class, a Jutland-class, or a Confederation-class (in that order of likeliness).
Bandit LOAF said:
That said, it is incredibly improbable (as demonstrated) that the TCS Austerlitz is a Terran Confederation-class dreadnaught -- similarly, it goes against the spirit of removing the ships from the continuity in the first place and the very spirit of Wing Commander III itself (the Confederation is losing the war and now relying on older carriers because ships like the Concordia have been lost).
Improbable, but not impossible. If your going to keep throwing demonstrated low probability numbers out over and over again, you might try the one where Austerlitz is a CDN and survived the BoT. It’s a much lower number.
I also have no idea how this goes against WC3. Confed is losing the War because the Kilrathi just seriously ripped apart several worlds and now have a fleet of 25+ carriers and who knows how many escort ships. The Confederation is at an all time high (at least since we’ve been a part of the story and according to what has to be introduced to satisfy our sources) of 18 carriers (12 if you want to get ticky and say that everyone of the carriers that are destroyed in 2669 happen before we join WC3). 15 of those 18 carriers are less than 3 years old. How does Confed keeping its old light carriers in operation to compete with the 25+ Kilrathi carriers have anything to do with the fact that another CDN (which would be older than the majority of the fleet carriers) may have survived the BoT?
Bandit LOAF said:
(Finally - Concordia and Confederation are both words which mean alliances or unions. If I had to name others, I'd give them names like Alliance and Union... or perhaps more specific names, honoring particular present-day unions -- 'TCS Firekkan Alliance' and the like.)
Alright, I can live with that. So that makes 2 classes of pre-WC3 vessels that seem to have stayed with their naming conventions through at least 2 ships.
C-ya