Anyone not like the books?

[sea_monkey]

I'm pretty sure no one who has the capacity to ban you has actually threatened to do so. In fact, I seem to recall specifically telling you that we don't ban people based on how stupid their opinion is when you got all haughty that some other non-moderator (LeHah) said the same thing.

And I'm pretty sure that I never implied that I expected you to ban me. Rather I simply pointed out my amusement were that ever to take place, in response to someone else bringing it up. So, in both cases, your response made no sense.

Oh, this will be fun. I will do this, but I'd like you to first promise that you will address each point rather than ignore them or claim that X product 'doesn't matter'.

Sorry, there's not enough time to answer every single issue that you or everyone else has, it takes long enough just to READ this whole thing. But I will do my best to address the major ones.

That's an interesting way to look at it - even ignoring the pure "that's clearly just how it happened, despite the fact that you actually see heavier fighters sitting on the flight deck" factor. It has several flaws, though:

No, that's not "clearly just how it happened." Blair got a message from the Concordia, called Shadow, and then CHANGED INTO HIS FLIGHT GEAR, RAN DOWN TO THE FLIGHT DECK, AND THEN JUMPED INTO A FIGHTER HIMSELF. Anything beyond that is pure speculation.

It just so happens that, under your scenario (there are 400 fighters aboard Caernervon), the question is raised -- why was that even necessary, or smart? In fact it makes no sense at all. There's no way some guy in the commo room was the closest guy to the Concordia, or that it would make sense for only 2 fighters to rally to defend the flagship of the 14th fleet, when 398 others were available.

Specifically, 398 pilots aren't doing nothing. It's a fun idiotic visual that you can picture in your head, but it isn't a realistic claim. You don't build starbases with huge fighter complements because you're looking for a place to keep your fighters. There's a reason for them to be there. A whole lot of these ships will be flying ordinary patrols, escort missions, etc. When the station goes on alert, a large number of these fighters will be readied to defend the base itself. Add to this the fact that the station had already begun fighting the Kilrathi - Blair and Shadow discovered them in Gwynedd A. The bases resources are almost certainly being used to deal with this threat.

LOL ... "they were busy ... 398 fighters were busy." 398 fighters and the closest guy to the Concordia was the dude in the commo room.

Well like I said, I respect your opinion although I disagree. But remember -- your whole argument is in response to my pointing out possible continuity issues in the WCU. That I can't be right. If your whole argument based on the idea that "THERE'S A MASSIVE FIGHTER FORCE BUT YOU NEVER SEE THEM IN THE GAME BECAUSE THEY'RE HIDING!" ...... well I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

I don't think that's what canon means, though. Even if it were, Claw Marks is equally canon - the issue is a fun point for debating, not an excuse to stick your head in the sand and pretend that manuals don't exist.

Well, once you concede there are continuity issues in the WCU, and that there is room for multiple points of view, I guess I don't see where your problem with the issues I brought up comes from?

I note you stopped actually quoting when you realized how the exchange actually went. Note that what I accused you of ("based only on how another Wing Commander fan describes it") and what I said about reviews ("professional reviews") are in no way equivalent.

Note that I stopped exactly after I had made my point: I said I didn't like what I heard about Action Stations and you called me unenlightened -- which you then denied, and I proved you wrong again. And what you accused me of is simply incorrect -- for one, being not me, you're in no position to know why I do anything -- but in this case specifically, I ALSO mentioned that I was wary of AS because I heard it basically plaguerized Pearl Harbor and Midway ... and these being only the reasons I chose to list. So no, you had no point here.

It's interesting that you've gone through great lengths to make it sound ridiculous, given that your claim is presumably that Confed traded 14 pilots for 3 Fralthra and their fighter complements (and some bombers that came from nowhere).

It is ridiculous. 14 pilots traded for a large battle fleet. In my scenario, 14 pilots for 3 Fralthra, where Confed consistently maintains a higher kill ratio, is not probable, but certainly possible. Your scenario makes no sense.

Ah, what a wonderful argument. I can prove that 'glitches' exist, therefore can attribute anything I want to being a 'glitch'! I can prove that my cat is orange, therefore anything I say is orange is!

This is not my argument though. It does seem to be your argument however, that -- if it's in the game, it's supposed to be like that.

(And yes, some versions of the game displaying the wrong graphic is distinctly different from you not liking which ejection scene they picked for a given mission. We can, for instance, pinpoint exactly how and why the 'mixed up graphics' bug occurs.)

And I can pinpoint exactly how the "eject" after completing the mission objectives bug occurs -- whenever you eject after a mission, you go to the losing path, regardless of whether or not you completed the objectives, unless the game programmer did something specifically for that case. It simply didn't occur to him that anyone would eject after beating the game in SO1.

Just to make it clear -- your argument is that:

1) If you destroy the 2 Fralthra, and the 4 Gothri in Ghorah Khar 2D, and land on the Concordia, the Kilrathi retreat.

2) BUT, if you destroy the 2 Fralthra, and the 4 Gothri in the same mission, BUT you eject, the Kilrathi attack Ghorah Khar.

So basically the Kilrathi make their tactical decision based on whether or not ONE guy ejected, which they would have no knowledge of anyway since their force in that area was obliterated.

Yeah, that really makes sense.

 

[sea_monkey]

I'll save you the trouble, since you seem to have problems associating what post were talking about, even when its included in the quote (see below)

...

I don't see anything contributed to Forstchen's writing in there at all . . . do you? I go on to comment that Forstchen's placement of impenatratable shields before WC1 follows the 'seesaw' we see in the games. No novels, no manuals.

You simply misunderstood what I said. I didn't say that you used Forstchen's work in support of your argument, I said you used your argument to support Forstchen's work, and that I felt you had to go out of your way to go do so. Look again:

V: About the phase shields, all WC seems to be a seesaw of shield/fighter weapons strength ... (elaboration snipped)

SM: That's a good explanation if you're willing to go out of your way to make sense of everything Forstchen writes, I'm just not up to it.

V: I didn't even bring Forstchen into it until the very end.

So who's got the trouble associating the post we're talking about?

 

[sea_monkey]

Regarding your list, Loaf:

* The Wing Commander 2 style space stations have a fighter complement of 400, per the Kilrathi Saga manual.

This is a statement of CAPACITY. It is true, the orbital stations we see can hold 400 fighters. That's not surprising, considering they are so large. It is also true, I have never disputed this.

The question is are these stations perpetually at or near capacity? Well let's take a look ...

* At the Battle of Terra the "Mars and Earth orbital bases" provided "three hundred additional fighters".

That proves my point more than yours. Earth is the center of the Confederation -- they BETTER be able to scramble up a few hundred fighters? What's the other 99,000 fighters doing during the most important battle in the galaxy?

* In Action Stations there are "several hundred" fighters of all types based on the ground at Johnson's Island on McAuliffe.

Interesting. I have a limited ability to argue this point, having never read Action Stations. I'll simply say that it still doesn't strike me as being particularly numerous considering this is a major colony in the middle of Vega Sector, and soon to be the site of a huge battle.

* Home Defense squadrons, a concept from the Heart of the Tiger novel: "'There's a home defense squadron on Tamayo that flies Thunderbolts, sir,' Rollins said slowly. 'Strictly reservists, mostly rich kids who figured it was a good dodge to avoid active military service and still get to wear a pretty uniform and boast about being hot fighter pilots. The squadron was activated into Confed service when he cats moved into the system.'"

Never denied the existence of home defense fighters. They obviously exist. The question is, HOW MANY?

ONE SQUADRON on Tamayo makes your point? Remember, you're arguing 100,000 fighters, or about 300 per colony. If there's only about 15 fighters on one system, you're 285 behind, my friend.

* Re: a garrison at Blackmane Base, quote from the Heart of the Tiger novel: "... The Victory picks up at least nine fighters, sight unseen. This is interesting not only because it proves that garrison forces exist specifically at a base where you said they did not, but also the existence of the 'fighters are cheap, pilots aren't' culture my initial claim supported.

Again, NINE fighters? What happened to the other 391? What?

I never said Blackmane had NO fighters, silly, I said it didn't seem to have hundreds of them like you argued.

* Fleet Action. The Landreich purchases ten squadrons of reserve Rapiers (150 planes) for local defense.

Spread among multiple star systems right on the front lines? A significant number, but not overwhelming. Again, you're arguing *300 per colony*!

* Fleet Action. More units: the Landreich Colonial Air Guard, and the fact that Tolwyn claims that "local guard units" will remain in place to defend their homes during the final Kilrathi attack.

The existence of guard units, again, was never in dispute. The size of them is.

* Secret Ops. A series of bases not only replenish the Cerberus' fighter stocks, but they also assist in tandem strikes. Flying specifically with Casey: 21 fighters at Ella, 26 at Talos and 50 at Luyten.

So ... where's the other 200 at each of these systems?

* Wing Commander II. The game starts with your character flying alongside reservists at part of InSystem Security for the Gwynedd System - an organization complete with top of the line strike fighters (Sabres) and a large starbase.

AGAIN: The existence of guard units, again, was never in dispute. The size of them is.

The issue of the other 398 fighters at Gwynedd has already been covered.

* Wing Commander II. The fact that the Kilrathi hold the Heaven's Gate starbase means that the Confederation cannot retake the system. Presumably the bases value is in its massive fighter support capacity, not its single defensive flak cannon.

I agree here. But this is a captured starbase in Confed territory -- it's not at all unexpected that it would be highly fortified.

* Wing Commander III. Kilrathi planets are always defended by squadrons of fighters designed specifically for said purpose - Ekapshi.

Best point you brought up. There does seem to be a lot of those fuckers, doesn't there? But you would expect a lot of them on Kilrah, the center of the Kilrathi Empire. And, they don't seem to be able to fly in space, although as far as I know, that's never answered. Maybe they don't even have nuclear reactors on board.

* Privateer. The games seven-faction balancing system includes both a large number of Confederation patrols and an entire faction dedicated to fighter-based local missions - the Militia.

Your point being?

AGAIN: The existence of guard units, again, was never in dispute. The size of them is.

Funny how these massive home defense squadrons routinely request help against one or two pirate or retro fighters. I don't see why they don't just scramble the other 350 fighters aboard base?

Aside: silly missions like those (contract base defense vs 1 light fighter) are one reason I take Privateer less seriously. It's clearly made to be more *fun* as opposed to making sense.

* Privateer - Adding up all possible unique encounters with Confed and Militia units gives you several thousand total ships... without considering that these encounters can be repeated more than once by the games engine.

Uh ... several thousand spread among 50 systems? One thousand is 20 per system. Makes sense to me! Furthermore, adding up all the fighters at every location doesn't work, because *gasp* fighters *move*. Using that same logic someone who crosses paths with you four times would conclude you have 3 clones.

Also, if the majority of Nav points were *empty*, the game would have sucked. So they had to put something in there.

* In End Run the Tarawa engages a force of fifty fighters bearing 'local camo' - this is sighted that evidence that Kilrathi carriers have not yet arrived to pursue them.

Makes my point better than yours. Just *50* for defending Kilrah? Where's the hundreds, if not thousands of them?????

 

[sea_monkey]

Dear jedi2187,

I don't think you're contributing to the current debate on which this thread is centered. Constantly calling out that Frosty is a silly little boy and menstrates like a girl does not make you look either mature or intelligent. Please stop existing so this exciting debate can continue untainted.

With love,
ace-1

Yes, we must dispense with the heathens. There's no room for disidents in the cult of Wing Commander!

PS. Not that I'd expect you to know anything about vaginas, but "little girls" don't menstrate my good friend, because a female must go through puberty to experience menstration, after which she is no longer a "little girl" but a teenager or a "young woman."

The Church of Wing Commander = OWNED.

 

[ace]

Yes, we must dispense with the heathens. There's no room for disidents in the cult of Wing Commander!

PS. Not that I'd expect you to know anything about vaginas, but "little girls" don't menstrate my good friend, because a female must go through puberty to experience menstration, after which she is no longer a "little girl" but a teenager or a "young woman."

The Church of Wing Commander = OWNED.

"It would be really funny if you banned me because that would prove that I'm right and that you're jerks"

I am simply astounded by the onslaught of immaturity you have thrown at me, a person who has never even said a word to you, for the sole purpose of trying to make yourself look cool among people you keep saying you despise. I strongly suggest that you keep debating with the people in this thread instead of begging us to ban you.

I never said "little girl" once in my post. I said "little boy" which was in reference to your post saying he was a 120 lbs. geek who takes tae kwan do, and menstration in reference to jedi's post about periods, so really you wasted all that fantastic wit about vaginas for nothing. It's too bad too, you really proved how manly you are. Oh well, you almost read things right. Hmm...maybe this is why you keep sounding stupid in this debate.

 

[Frosty]

Multi-posting makes Baby Jesus shit blood...

Though it's generally considered gauche to criticize spelling, grammar, and word-usage in a forum, I just can't resist with you. It's been so long since I last harassed a CZer about their English; we'll see if I still got it. Also included: substantive argument...

So what you're saying is your miserable "real" life causes you to create a perpetually pissed-off persona on an internet message board where you try to delve some satisfaction out of existence by hurling insults annonymously over the internet? Gee who would have guessed that?

Yeah, who would have guessed that? Oh I don't know, perhaps nobody who isn't a moron.

Why do you put "real" between quotation marks like that, as if quoting me? Because you're stupid? It's really awesome how you continue to make these ridiculous assumptions about my life and my personality, when it's so easy to actually find out. And by awesome I mean retarded. People are laughing at you.

In addition, I really wouldn't use "delve" that way, if I were you. It's really stretching the limits of the word's definition. I believe the word you were groping for is "derive."

Exactly, you've got no answer. Because you're whole argument is based on proving what is "true" in a fictional world, which is probably the most ridiculous thing imaginable, next to actually getting mad over such matters.

I've already given my answer, but you chose to ignore it, which seems to be a pattern for you. First of all:

truth (trōōth)
n. pl. truths (trōōthz, trōōths)

1. Conformity to fact or actuality.
2. A statement proven to be or accepted as true.
3. Sincerity; integrity.
4. Fidelity to an original or standard.
5. 1. Reality; actuality.
   2. often Truth That which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence.

Though any of those definitions could be used to argue the validity of my use of "truth" when referring to the contents of the Wing Commander canon, I will draw your attention simply to 4-1, which clearly proves that within the context of Wing Commander, which all parties understand to be wholly fictional, "truth" can be used to describe anything which is considered to be an actuality. For instance - and this is a simple one, for your sake: more than one capital ship in the Confederation Navy bears the name "Concordia" over the course of the war. This is a verifiable truth within the context of the Wing Commander universe.

I'd like to be able to claim that I don't understand why you'd argue that there can be no truths within the framework of a fictional universe, but I do understand, and it's a stupid reason. You think that you can simply invalidate every argument we make against you by waving your magical NoTruth wand about and chanting a spell. You imagine that if you convince people of that, then you've effectively rendered the canon equivalent to whatever random ideas pop into your head.

Unfortunately for you, it doesn't work that way, and you're the only person here who wishes it did.

You asked me to prove cruisers and destroyers were capable of carrying fighters and bombers, which I did. Destroyers can carry fighters and cruisers (specifically the Waterloo) CAN carry fighters and bombers.

You have thus far been able to prove that cruisers and destroyers can carry light fighters, and that a single cruiser has carried - in a test bed capacity, mind you - a handful of prototype bombers. You have not proven that other cruisers of the same type can replicate that feat without modifications to their structure, crew and loadout, and you have not proven that it has happened at any other time, least of all as a sincere combat deployment of weapons.

Even disregarding all that, carriers still remain the only way to transport large numbers of heavy bombers and the resources (both men and material) needed to keep them operating effectively for any appreciable amount of time. Carriers are the sole bearer of the premiere strike craft in Wing Commander, and are, as a result, vastly more important to the war than gun cruisers and destroyers.

In fact, several plot elements throughout the games make no sense if these stations carry hundreds of fighters all the time.

Please list of these, in order of their occurrence, those "plot elements" which would not be hindered by the performance of the hardware the games were designed for.

Gwynedd: Why does Blair have to run down from the commo room, change into his flight gear and get into a fighter in order to save the Concordia, when there should be 398 fighters sitting around or in space already to defend the Concordia. This only makes sense if there's not a lot of fighters aboard.

Rather than ask why he "had" to, let's ask, "Why not?" He'd already sounded battle stations, so many crewmen who were busy moments ago watching TV or reading a book or whatever the hell starbase crews do when they're not being shot at would have already been on their way to their posts, including some actual comms officers to take his place. He was the best combat pilot on the station, so there would have been no purpose to calling hundreds of fighters back from their necessary guard duty, with a real Kilrathi presence finally in the system. Moreover, what would be the point to scrambling tens of fighters to intercept a handful of Sartha?

Have you actually even seen the cut-scene and played the mission, or did you just hear about it from somebody?

I'll leave the list of evidence for LOAF to handle.

They aren't ... but then again that's NEVER been my argument.

And I never said it was. Clearly you're attempting to undermine our arguments by claiming that they're "rationalizations" that we "invented." The insinuation obviously being that all of our counter-arguments to any point you make are really just crazy fallacies we've invented in our spare time.

I questioned how that would help you out at all, if it were true, since it'd pretty much guarantee the same for you. I did not state that your entire argument has been that your fake reasoning is somehow better than mine.

When you get done with this week's edition of "Reading Rainbow", try actually reading what I actually said.

"It's an excuse to try to make Forstchen's bad writing fit. You have to invent rationalizations for why a contradiction (phase shields/torpedoes were new in WC2, phase shields/torpedoes were new in 2634) is not actually a contradiction."

What exactly is your argument in this case, if not that our counterpoint is null and void by virtue of being "rationalizations" that we've "invented." I think maybe you should concentrate more on understanding my posts, than the other way around.

Yet again my literacy-challenged friend -- I have never argued "what is canon?" I don't care. That's for geeks like you who want to be the holder of the sole truth of the Church of Wing Commander.

Yet again another dodge-and-weave. If you want to prove you're right, and argue with us, that's the playing field. You can call us geeks and make typically baseless and inflammatory remarks about "the Church of Wing Commander" until you're blue in the face. It won't make you more correct, though.

And no matter how much you pretend that you're too cool for this, that you're well above the level of "geeks...who want to be the holder of the sole truth etc." the frequency and reliability of your counter-argument posts give the lie to that notion.

LOL @ newbies. So every time someone DARES to question the Church of Wing Commander, the heathen must be excommunicated?

More like any rectum-licking cockgobbler, such as yourself, who shows up nearly a decade late to the scene, should probably avoid making the assumption that he's saying anything new at all, and should definitely avoid acting haughty, self-righteous, and indignant when confronted.

I'm going to skip over your unnecessarily multiple posts directed at LOAF and let him handle those, and move straight to this:

Yes, we must dispense with the heathens. There's no room for disidents in the cult of Wing Commander!

More like there's no room for cocky newbie ass-humpers who go around deliberately pissing off every community veteran in sight.

There can be no dissenters. This is not a matter of opinion or interpretation, this is a matter of the correct facts and the incorrect lies. You either support what's right, or you support what's wrong, and if you're wrong, you're not a dissenter, you're merely incorrect. You're welcome to be incorrect, but go fag up some other WC forum if you have to go around proclaiming it.

PS. Not that I'd expect you to know anything about vaginas, but "little girls" don't menstrate my good friend, because a female must go through puberty to experience menstration, after which she is no longer a "little girl" but a teenager or a "young woman."

This is unintentionally hilarious for a variety of reasons you could probably make yourself aware of in less than five minutes, but the only one I'm going to bring up is the continued misspelling of the word menstruation in this thread. Come on - if you're going to be a smartass, at least show some competency with the language.

Some random Interweb tard with an anti-WC cock up his ass = OWNED.

 

[Viper61]

This is not my argument though. It does seem to be your argument however, that -- if it's in the game, it's supposed to be like that.

Man, theres a difference in the wrong graphic showing up on the screen and actual overall game and mission design .

As for the on-going 'hundreds of fighters' argument flying back and forth, I'd like to add something. Theres a difference between number of fighters and number of pilots. Number of pilots is the major bottleneck, as someone in this thread has already said a while back. Fighters can be made by the thousands, pilots can't. So what's the holdup in having a hundred or so pilots to do the many daily patrols involved in in each ISS and home guard units jurisdiction and the hundreds of fighters stationed on a base? It seems like a waste to have a carrier withdraw from an area until a new fighter supply ship can rendevous with them if replacement fighters (and parts) can be stored on system bases (which we see carriers picking up fighters in this manner in a few places in WC IIRC). Confed can have 100,000 fighters spread throughout its borders, it just may not have the pilots to use them.

Also, for everyone of sea_monkeys "base is under attack, why are Blair + 1 only sent in to deal with it! Where are all the ISS?!?" Every attack we see against a base in WC is pretty weak (take Blackmane, do you really think a Kilrathi fleet would send nothing more than 4 Dralthi, 8 Darket, and 4 Paktahn bombers against an entire base? "Lets take this system, but lets leave a huge Confed staging area intact!" That sounds like a reasonable tactic to me ) Could it be that the rest of said fighters are off elsewhere in defense of the bases, battling the rest of the task force sent to destroy the station? I'm sure they aren't just sitting on their butts, as you so eloquently put. "We don't see them because they are somewhere else" has just as much credibility to describe the situation as "We don't see them, so they don't exist!" (actually more, since we have documented evidence that they are, in fact, there in some capacity)

As for the Sartha attack Shadow and Blair go to stop in Gwynedd, who says no other ISS defense units responded to Blairs emergency signal? "The best pilot for the job" gets on the scene and there are 5 Sartha left .. .whos to say there weren't more and the Concordia fighters and ISS got them before being blown out of the sky before our heroes arrived on the scene?

You simply misunderstood what I said. I didn't say that you used Forstchen's work in support of your argument, I said you used your argument to support Forstchen's work, and that I felt you had to go out of your way to go do so. Look again:

Quote:
V: About the phase shields, all WC seems to be a seesaw of shield/fighter weapons strength ... (elaboration snipped)

SM: That's a good explanation if you're willing to go out of your way to make sense of everything Forstchen writes, I'm just not up to it.

V: I didn't even bring Forstchen into it until the very end.


So who's got the trouble associating the post we're talking about?

You are the one that seems to have the hard-on for Forstchen since you bring him up at every turn. That whole spiel about the Shield/Weapon seesaw was to explain what happens IN THE GAMES, not going out of my way to fit AS into anything. A third grader could make the same deductions out of the available information.

"Oh wow, WC2 now has impenetratable shields! that means either A) weapons got weaker (not something you'd do to win a war) or B) Shields got stronger/more advanced. 'B' would be the correct answer.
Oh wow, Privateer/WC3 has come out and large capital ships can now be harmed by fighter weapons. That means either A) fighter weapons got stronger/more advanced or B) Shields got weaker. I believe since the arms race doesn't go backwards that 'B' is the correct answer.
Wow, WC4 is out and the newest badass capital ship can't be hurt by fighter weapons! Either A) weapons got weaker or B) Shields got stronger/more advanced. Since this is the advancement of warfare, 'A' doesn't make alot of sense, so B would be the correct answer.
Wow, Prophecy is 7 years later and all ships have shields impenatrable by fighter weapons, except the uber powerful plasma cannon. That leads to the deduction that shields were once again totally impervious to fighter weapons at some point between WC4 and WCP, until the new whiz bang gun Confed puts out is able to defeat them. This means A) weapons are getting stronger/more advanced or B) shields are weakening. The correct answer, taught to us by centuries of warfare, would be 'B'.

I'll be damned, I detect a trend here! Could it be that fighter weapons and shield dominance 'seesaws' as technology grows? I would lay money that somewhere in the future (post Prophecy), all fighter weapons will be able to penetrate capital ship shields. I'd also lay money that somewhere in the past (before WC1), capital ship shields were impervious to fighter weapons. That damn near almost fits (ie - runs completely parallel) with mankinds 'normal' warfare evolution (your enemy builds a better defense, you have to devise an offense to combat it and vice versa)."
Then, sometime the next year after Prophecy is released, Action Stations hits newstands, and low and behold, Forstchens novel already fits within the PRE-EXISTING pattern of the shield/weapon technology seesaw. "A stretch to make sense of everything Forstchens writes", huh?

Oh, and I guess since you dropped this line of debate . . .

The WC2 manual specifically refers to phase shields and torpedoes as "the latest" in technology.

Viper responds with -> So all the ads and articles I see written about "the latest" in RAM advancements/MP3 capacity/fighter/WLAN/printing or scanning definition technology means it is the very first RAM chip/MP3 player/fighter jet/wireless system/printer/scanner ever? That dog don't hunt.

that maybe that line doesn't prove that WC2 is the absolute first time phase shields and torpedoes could exist? So maybe, they could have existed as the first weapons mankind uses in space (WC universe, of course) or somewhere else in the timeline, maybe, somewhere around the time of Action Stations?

C-ya

 

[Nemesis]

The Church of Wing Commander = OWNED.

What is this with you and religion, which you earlier dissed? And why this crusade against the idea of accepting EA/Origin and its licensees as the sole authority for WC? I explained earlier how the canon of fiction in general is a longstanding form of gaming (which, by the way, must accept the authority of the given fiction’s “author"). No one’s saying you have to play, but for us, it’s fun. How is it you don’t understand that, let alone respect it?

 

[vindicator]

Why is sea_monkey still talking? Frosty, pleas stop using gay terms to describe sea_monkey as it hurts this gay man's self-respect to have my lifestyle eqauted to this egotistical jerk. Please Sea_monkey, you talk about the WC church, if you actually were a WC fan, LOAFs arguments would have appeased you, as they are very sound.

-Rance-

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Sorry, there's not enough time to answer every single issue that you or everyone else has, it takes long enough just to READ this whole thing. But I will do my best to address the major ones.

Funny, you don't address the Privateer quote. Care to do so now?

No, that's not "clearly just how it happened." Blair got a message from the Concordia, called Shadow, and then CHANGED INTO HIS FLIGHT GEAR, RAN DOWN TO THE FLIGHT DECK, AND THEN JUMPED INTO A FIGHTER HIMSELF. Anything beyond that is pure speculation.

It just so happens that, under your scenario (there are 400 fighters aboard Caernervon), the question is raised -- why was that even necessary, or smart? In fact it makes no sense at all. There's no way some guy in the commo room was the closest guy to the Concordia, or that it would make sense for only 2 fighters to rally to defend the flagship of the 14th fleet, when 398 others were available.

I'm pretty sure that Blair explicitly explains to Angel why he was the one who came to the rescue.

But yeah, we should have seen hundreds of fighters give up their normal missions to rush to engage those five Drakhri. Just like all the other base defense missions in Wing Commander, like when the Tiger's Claw launches a hundred fighters to defend itself when it's attacked. Oh, I mean two Scimitars. Or when the Victory orders a 'magnum launch' of all forty fighte... I mean two Arrows. Clearly Caernervon is the exception here.

LOL ... "they were busy ... 398 fighters were busy." 398 fighters and the closest guy to the Concordia was the dude in the commo room.

Well like I said, I respect your opinion although I disagree. But remember -- your whole argument is in response to my pointing out possible continuity issues in the WCU. That I can't be right. If your whole argument based on the idea that "THERE'S A MASSIVE FIGHTER FORCE BUT YOU NEVER SEE THEM IN THE GAME BECAUSE THEY'RE HIDING!" ...... well I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

Who are you quoting? I agree with the sentiment (if a base has 400 fighters they're surely there to do a job - especially when the system is under attack), but I can't find your quotation in this thread.

Well, once you concede there are continuity issues in the WCU, and that there is room for multiple points of view, I guess I don't see where your problem with the issues I brought up comes from?

Because they aren't continuity issues. "Maniac is 23" v. "Maniac is 17" is a continuity debate. "I don't think carriers are important because I hate the novels" isn't.

Note that I stopped exactly after I had made my point: I said I didn't like what I heard about Action Stations and you called me unenlightened -- which you then denied, and I proved you wrong again. And what you accused me of is simply incorrect -- for one, being not me, you're in no position to know why I do anything -- but in this case specifically, I ALSO mentioned that I was wary of AS because I heard it basically plaguerized Pearl Harbor and Midway ... and these being only the reasons I chose to list. So no, you had no point here.

I'm pretty sure I didn't deny calling you unenlighted (though I do doubt that I used the word 'unenlightened'). That's certainly how I feel.

I'm also pretty sure you don't know what the word plagiarized means.

Or how to spell it.

It is ridiculous. 14 pilots traded for a large battle fleet. In my scenario, 14 pilots for 3 Fralthra, where Confed consistently maintains a higher kill ratio, is not probable, but certainly possible. Your scenario makes no sense.

My scenario is 14 pilots (+an unknown number of fighters, +an unknown number of other waves of an attack) to destroy/disable/disuade roughly 48 (actually 24, doubled solely for your protection) attacking bombers in a defensive capacity. I guess it's just because I'm not the brigtest avacado on the truck, but I don't see how this is ridiculous compared to 14 pilots (well, 30 - lets be fair, you doubled a number too) for 120 fighters and 3 cruisers.

This is not my argument though. It does seem to be your argument however, that -- if it's in the game, it's supposed to be like that.

Barring any indication otherwise, then yes.

And I can pinpoint exactly how the "eject" after completing the mission objectives bug occurs -- whenever you eject after a mission, you go to the losing path, regardless of whether or not you completed the objectives, unless the game programmer did something specifically for that case. It simply didn't occur to him that anyone would eject after beating the game in SO1.

Just to make it clear -- your argument is that:

1) If you destroy the 2 Fralthra, and the 4 Gothri in Ghorah Khar 2D, and land on the Concordia, the Kilrathi retreat.

2) BUT, if you destroy the 2 Fralthra, and the 4 Gothri in the same mission, BUT you eject, the Kilrathi attack Ghorah Khar.

So basically the Kilrathi make their tactical decision based on whether or not ONE guy ejected, which they would have no knowledge of anyway since their force in that area was obliterated.

Yeah, that really makes sense.

"And what of the human pilot who has caused us so much trouble?"

(+1, proper use of quotation marks.)

(And no, that's not how the ejection system works. Missions can be programmed with all sorts of ejection outcomes. When the game wants to force you to return to base (as in K'Tithrak Mang 4, for instance) you get the 'captured by a Bloodfang' cutscene. When writing a WC2 mission you make a conscious choice as to what the ejection outcome is - there's no 'default to' setting.)

You simply misunderstood what I said. I didn't say that you used Forstchen's work in support of your argument, I said you used your argument to support Forstchen's work, and that I felt you had to go out of your way to go do so. Look again:

Quote:
V: About the phase shields, all WC seems to be a seesaw of shield/fighter weapons strength ... (elaboration snipped)

SM: That's a good explanation if you're willing to go out of your way to make sense of everything Forstchen writes, I'm just not up to it.

V: I didn't even bring Forstchen into it until the very end.


So who's got the trouble associating the post we're talking about?

The argument exists with our without Action Stations, though - I don't see what your point is.

This is a statement of CAPACITY. It is true, the orbital stations we see can hold 400 fighters. That's not surprising, considering they are so large. It is also true, I have never disputed this.

The question is are these stations perpetually at or near capacity? Well let's take a look ...

Capacity and complement are not synonyms. Insert the obligatory dictionary.com whoring here - capacity is the maximum amount something can hold, complement is the amount needed to make up a whole (it also has a valid Naval definition - "The full crew of officers and enlisted personnel required to run a ship.").

(Now, certainly I am not saying that the base at Gwynedd must specifically have 400 fighters - carriers may have taken on some as replacements, some may have been lost in the recent Kilrathi attack... but the ideal number of fighters assigned there barring losses should be 400.)

(And now for an admission of something I'm actually wrong about - the number is 350, not 400. It's interesting that you hadn't nailed me on that error yet.)

That proves my point more than yours. Earth is the center of the Confederation -- they BETTER be able to scramble up a few hundred fighters? What's the other 99,000 fighters doing during the most important battle in the galaxy?

In 300 other systems defending their planets from the same Kilrathi attack, unable to move from place to place without a carrier to transport them. We've been over this before and you've chosen to ignore it before.

Interesting. I have a limited ability to argue this point, having never read Action Stations. I'll simply say that it still doesn't strike me as being particularly numerous considering this is a major colony in the middle of Vega Sector, and soon to be the site of a huge battle.

Eh, you can at least familiarize yourself with McAuliffe from various manuals - it was a surprise attack, not a case of Confed garrisoning the base because they believed the Kilrathi were bearing down on them.

Never denied the existence of home defense fighters. They obviously exist. The question is, HOW MANY?

ONE SQUADRON on Tamayo makes your point? Remember, you're arguing 100,000 fighters, or about 300 per colony. If there's only about 15 fighters on one system, you're 285 behind, my friend.

Heck, I don't know how many. All I know is that there are ISS starbases with 400 fighters each and that the Confederation is losing hundreds of ships a day. Everything else is just evidence of the militia/HD/ISS fiction needed to support these concepts (evidence which you claimed did not exist - you went off about how we never see local fighters).

(char limit, brb)

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Again, NINE fighters? What happened to the other 391? What?

I never said Blackmane had NO fighters, silly, I said it didn't seem to have hundreds of them like you argued.

First, Blackmane is not the same type of starbase as Olympus/Heaven's Gate/etc, so it's unreasonable to expect that it has the same 400 (350, my error) fighter complement. That said, the novel is quite specific about the fact that Blackmanes pilots are unavailable due to the fact that they're needed to run the evacuation. Here's the paragraph: "That means Blackmane Base is being shut down. Everything's shifting to Vespus and Torgo. Anybody who can herd a boat will be needed to fly ships for the evacuation. I might be able to snag some fighters. They'll probably be glad to unload a few from their reserve stocks and save space for other outgoing cargo."

Spread among multiple star systems right on the front lines? A significant number, but not overwhelming. Again, you're arguing *300 per colony*!

The existence of guard units, again, was never in dispute. The size of them is.

My argument is simply that we know Confed must have roughly 36,500 fighters to lose in a year, given the Privateer quote. The 100,000 is a made up number based on this data. It could be significantly higher or slightly smaller. The important point of the argument back on Page 2 was that the number is divided by 400 systems rather than able to serve at any point anywhere.

So ... where's the other 200 at each of these systems?

Fighting the giant hoarde of invading alien insects with someone other than Lt. Casey, perhaps? That's small universe syndrome - Casey's lone patrol mission isn't the end all of what's going on in history at a given point.

Best point you brought up. There does seem to be a lot of those fuckers, doesn't there? But you would expect a lot of them on Kilrah, the center of the Kilrathi Empire. And, they don't seem to be able to fly in space, although as far as I know, that's never answered. Maybe they don't even have nuclear reactors on board.

The Kilrathi Saga manual calls them "Light Atmospheric Fighters" - presumably they're for planet-only interception. I think we see more of them at once at far-flung bases like Alcor and Hyperion than we do at Kilrah.

Your point being?

AGAIN: The existence of guard units, again, was never in dispute. The size of them is.

Funny how these massive home defense squadrons routinely request help against one or two pirate or retro fighters. I don't see why they don't just scramble the other 350 fighters aboard base?

Aside: silly missions like those (contract base defense vs 1 light fighter) are one reason I take Privateer less seriously. It's clearly made to be more *fun* as opposed to making sense.

I'm not sure what your hard-on for magically impossible scrambles is, nor am I sure how you've worked it into Privateer. Militia units sending distress calls isn't really you-specific, nor is it of any use for someone about to be killed by a pirate to wait for a Gladius to take off somewhere else.

(Wait, I see, you're talking about the generic missions not the actual coming across militia who are fighting pirates. These are flown for individual corporations, not for military units. It'll always say something like "Raxis Mines requests a Privateer to engage Retro forces".)

(That said, doing things like defending bases from pirates is the reason the government would license Privateers in the first place...)

(... Damn games, always being fun.)

Uh ... several thousand spread among 50 systems? One thousand is 20 per system. Makes sense to me! Furthermore, adding up all the fighters at every location doesn't work, because *gasp* fighters *move*. Using that same logic someone who crosses paths with you four times would conclude you have 3 clones.

Also, if the majority of Nav points were *empty*, the game would have sucked. So they had to put something in there.

So... what, now the existence of militia forces in Privateer is a 'glitch'...?

Makes my point better than yours. Just *50* for defending Kilrah? Where's the hundreds, if not thousands of them?????

Actually, what we're told is that the initial wave is 50 fighters (actually, 6 then 20 then 25)... and that a "steady stream" of similar attacks is launched across a twenty hour period.

Yes, we must dispense with the heathens. There's no room for disidents in the cult of Wing Commander!

PS. Not that I'd expect you to know anything about vaginas, but "little girls" don't menstrate my good friend, because a female must go through puberty to experience menstration, after which she is no longer a "little girl" but a teenager or a "young woman."

The Church of Wing Commander = OWNED.

I AM BEATING MY CHEST ON THE INTERNET!

Weren't you just telling Frosty he was a sad little man for doing that? What changed?

(And what the fuck? Who insults ace for absolutely no reason? He's the nicest freaking guy on the internet. You're just lashing out at everyone who remotely disagrees with you. Or in this case someone who has absolutely nothing to do with the debate other than that he's doing his job as a moderator properly.)

So what you're saying is your miserable "real" life causes you to create a perpetually pissed-off persona on an internet message board where you try to delve some satisfaction out of existence by hurling insults annonymously over the internet? Gee who would have guessed that? LOL

Frosty isn't anonymous. He's Olde Saybrooke's original golden boy, Asher Lawson. I'm going to see him at the wedding on Saturday. For a reasonable sum I'd be willing to kick him in the nuts for you.

Frosty loves all of god's creatures.

The fact that, while you visit several orbital bases and even serve on some during the games, you never see or hear of hundreds of fighters scrambling from bases. Ever. Nor do you ever hear of this being an option. In fact, several plot elements throughout the games make no sense if these stations carry hundreds of fighters all the time.

Gwynedd: Why does Blair have to run down from the commo room, change into his flight gear and get into a fighter in order to save the Concordia, when there should be 398 fighters sitting around or in space already to defend the Concordia. This only makes sense if there's not a lot of fighters aboard.

We can let Blair answer that.

Blair: When we got your distress call, I knew I was the best pilot to help.

And there you have it. (Incidentally, that's not 'I was the only person on the base! There are no other fighters anywhere! We build giant starbases for no reason and then don't staff them!', it's 'of all the pilots there, I was the best one'.)

Olympus in WC2: Comes under attack by enemy fighters, requests your assistance. Afterward, you/Hobbes "saved" Olympus. If there were 400 fighters aboard, why were you even necessary in the first place ... let alone did you "save" the station?

Have you played the mission? Hobbes and Blair take off to return to the Concordia and happen to be there when the base is attacked. Here's the briefamajig from /Guides:

Olympus: Captain Blair, report to the flight deck for immediate launch!
Hobbes: Prepare to engage autopilot for Concordia, Maverick. And remember, Maverick, if we wind up in combat, I want you to take command.
Maverick: Roger, Hobbes. I'll engage autopilot on your mark.
Olympus: Hobbes, Maverick, do you copy? Olympus is under attack by Drakhri!
Maverick: Hobbes and I will take 'em, Olympus!
Olympus: Thank you, Maverick!
Maverick: Don't thank us until we get the job done, Olympus!

Olympus in SO1: They lost 14 pilots after the 1st wave and all they've got left is 2 Sabres and a Ferret? So they lost 397 planes, of which 96% managed to eject on time and were recovered safely?

They say that a Sabre and a Ferret are ready to fly, not that they're the only fighters they have.

Blackmane: Why is a light carrier with like 60 fighters on it being called to defend a station with over six times that many? Where are these fighters while you're being swarmed by Paktahns in that mission, anyway?

I was not aware... that four Paktahns constitutes a swarm.

(I know we already discussed this above - abandoning the base and all - but I just had to say that. Solely for future reference, the Victory's complement is 40 fighters.)

When you get done with this week's edition of "Reading Rainbow", try actually reading what I actually said.

Sadly, Reading Rainbow is no longer produced on a weekly basis. They only made four episodes last year, due to a lack of funding. Here's an article about the problems they've been having. You'll probably want to donate money, so as to be able to continue to sarcastically acusing people posting to a message board of illiteracy. Because that makes sense.

LOL @ newbies. So every time someone DARES to question the Church of Wing Commander, the heathen must be excommunicated?

You're silly.

Silly trumps stupid. We already talked about this - no one is oppressing you, so the line is a little tired. People aren't disagreeing with you because they've formed a secret cult specific to that purpose, they're doing so because they think you're wrong. The fact that your replies to them are largely in this vein probably only reinforces that belief.

(Why you believe this is truly a crowd pleaser is beyond me. We're all a little old for 'I'm right because jerks say I'm wrong!')

 

[HammerHead]

OH MY GOD!

this shit is UNBELIVABLE!

What is going on here? Have you gone mad?

A man has his own opinion, base on a base of knowledge he has and believes in. A debate was initiated, by him, in which those of us with a wider base of knowledge tried to explain and to answer his questions. he in turn REFUSE to except the answers the he was given - which were given based on HIS OWN REQUESTS...

And suddenly someone is threatening him with physical violence, another one is calling him gay, thus insulting other people... and the one who started this whole fiasco is screaming to be banned, solely for the pleasure of naming ALL OF US jerks.

COME ON!
Let him believe what ever he wants and stop this damn "your-are-more-studied-no-you-are!" nonsense now.

It has gone ugly enough.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

It seems to me that the initial poster and I are still having a fairly reasonable debate.

 

[HammerHead]

Yeah, well his debate with other people kind of gone NUTS.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Eh, it's the internet, people will be stupid no matter what. I'm involved in the debate, so I'll leave any moderation decisions up to ace or Chris.

 

[HammerHead]

Good to know there are still some SAINE people out there

 

[Viper61]

Wow, Prophecy is 7 years later and all ships have shields impenatrable by fighter weapons, except the uber powerful plasma cannon. That leads to the deduction that shields were once again totally impervious to fighter weapons at some point between WC4 and WCP, until the new whiz bang gun Confed puts out is able to defeat them. This means A) weapons are getting stronger/more advanced or B) shields are weakening. The correct answer, taught to us by centuries of warfare, would be 'B'.

Apparently in my sleepy state last night, I must not have finished my sarcastic thought. My correct answer for that situation would, of course, be 'A'

C-ya

 

[LeHah]

Know what I haven't had in a while? Big League Chew.

 

[ChrisReid]

Eh, it's the internet, people will be stupid no matter what. I'm involved in the debate, so I'll leave any moderation decisions up to ace or Chris.

And we are indeed poised with our finger over the trigger. Game on.

 

[Edfilho]

Sea Monkey is the original Pathetic Descendant of Monkeys. TM.
He really thinks he is some kind of WC messiah, ready to save his own wing-commander-universe-that-he-created-on-his-own from the evil people who insist on taking the information stated to be true by the owners of the franchise as the truth!

You know, Monkey, I was already around argueing with people about WC canon a loooooong time ago. I was usually OPPOSED to LOAF and company on several RELEVANT issues in the WC universe. I, Delance, Gene Tang and others... We really had some incredible debates, but we agreed on one thing: All the games, manuals, non-movie books and game guides are canon. How are we supposed to debate a subject if we have no common ground, no foundation?

And we at least debated some RELEVANT (repeating the word here) issues, not something like "I hate the books so carriers are lame", completely inane.

Even if I ever shared your base-less opinion (which I didn't), I'm sure I'd have granted the point by now, because oodles and oodles of contrary evidence has been offered time and again. All you did was bob and weave and thump your chest (like a nice monkey) and misinterpret everything.

It is actually funny to follow the debate. You stated several times that even though it is widely documented, if you can't see something, then it cannot exist! it is surely brilliant. Probably the Battle of Repleetah was a shameful lie, because we never saw it...

And you seem to believe that writting LOL a lot will undoubtedly prove your points... Creepy. You insulted Ace just because he asked you to stop insulting people and keep yourself to the debate! You know, I'm brazillian, I started learning english only 17 years ago, as a second language, but I'm sure I'm able to READ and COMPREHEND it a lot better than you. Maybe it's because I do not suffer from paranoid delusions of grandeur and persecution.