RyanCole said:
Haesslich,
1) Ok, so the Kilrathi destroy all the intelligence information on the ship. That's fine, there'll be other things to salvage like the rest of the ship such as its engines, armor, weapons, etc.
That's the main reason you capture ships - as I pointed out before, you don't generally do so unless they're some super-secret valuable technology like cloaks or torpedoes involved. Intelligence is the primary reason you'd want a ship, unless it's a new capship or fighter that's just appeared... and even then, you can get a LOT out of debris. Freedom Flight had one tech who'd studied captured Fralthi debris, which gave us a lot of data on the ship's performance and other valuable data. The only reason we WERE able to capture the Ras Nik'hra was because she was surrendered by her commander to us, who'd arranged for a loyal person on the bridge and who'd moved the rest of her crew into the launch bay - this kept the ship from being self-destructed, and also kept the crew in one place to get ejected into space if need be.
Ralgha nar Hhallas understood the difficulties in letting the enemy onboard his ship, unlike some people I can mention.
RyanCole said:
2) Not appearing in this post
You fail completely to address this argument - that war is open, often violent conflict, and that war in space is particularly lethal and not prone to leaving any survivors. It doesn't take much to kill a person in such an environment - most POWs are going to be taken on a planet, since you're not likely to immediately get killed by vacuum, cold, exploding fighters or starships, or the massive weapons discharges required to get through the shields or armor. Or, for that matter, the ship's self-destruct charges or overloading reactor in the event that they're about to be boarded and do NOT want to be responsible for their Clan's dishonor or destruction through an enemy attack waged using the intelligence on their ship?
RyanCole said:
3) The word war means conflict, period. If two masses of people have a conflict of words, they're having a war.
No, they're having an argument or debate. War, as defined by most dictionaries, includes open and armed conflict between two groups, or the period during which it takes place. Wars of words tend to escalate into some form of violence, sooner or later, given human temperaments, or some other form of force is employed. Even economic wars - they can include sabotage, destruction of the other companies' merchandise, and disabling workers if needed. Look at the preceeding several centuries for examples of such tactics. Even Henry Ford employed people whose jobs were to inflict physical injury.
George Washington understood this - it's why the economic war against the mother country was supported by an armed campaign. That's also why George III sent his redcoats to British North America and the Colonies - he understood that economic measures weren't enough to win the war they'd begun. That's why His Royal Majesty's Navy was brought into play.
RyanCole said:
4) I didn't think the tractor beam would be capable of towing a fighter. The only problem with leech guns is that Confed didn't have them in the Kilrathi War. Perhaps in new WC games that should change. The thing to do is to not get killed but to capture every prisoner, capship, and fighter in the game.
Tractor beams ARE capable of towing fighters - at least destroyer ones are. Fighter ones, we've yet to see tested in that fashion... though if it's an enemy ship, chances are his buddy'll try to destroy you, if he doesn't blow himself up. Why invent an extra technology when one already exists?
Confed DID have Leech Missiles during the Kilrathi War - check the Voices of War or the Academy manual for them. They existed, though they were never widely employed as the admirals and generals commanding recognized that they were special-use weapons designed for specific missions. Since Confederation Space Force pilots are neither trained to board enemy ships, nor do they generally attack targets which CAN be captured unless they're part of a Special Op or ground mission, we never used them in the first several games.
Beyond which, have you even gotten into a real fight, or did your Mother keep you from going to school? A real fight against someone who's taller and stronger than you (Kilrathi tend towards 7' in height and double a human's weight, plus have other weapons like knives to augment what they already have naturally) is NOT a cakewalk. So how are you going to stop a fighter from blowing itself up, short of hulling the cockpit and killing the pilot inside? Wishful thinking? Or a capship? Board it yourself, and personally disable and stun every member of the crew within, trusting that the commander or engineers or whatever will not trigger the self-destruct sequence or overload the reactor, even if you should be somehow 'good' enough to go through a lot of Kilrathi? There's a REASON there are Marines, and for their massive losses - 10% losses in one assault on a Kilrathi-held area are considered LIGHT. That's several hundred people dead, and that's considered minimal casualties... on a GROUND campaign.
Space? Rarely do we see Kilrathi ships captured, and for good reason - by the time the boarding party makes it past the hangar bay or into the core of the ship, the captain or surviving officers have triggered scuttling charges or overloaded the reactors to kill everyone by destroying the ship itself.
RyanCole said:
5) Capturing ships gains everything that Joshua & I listed.
Not really - Kilrathi tend to suicide if they're heavily into the warrior code, or else if they're entrusted with important information. The main reason Kirha did NOT was because he was serving someone as liege-lord, and only went and offed himself after said person died. It's also hard to give medals to a dead person who failed his mission (capturing ships when he wasn't supposed to). Remember, when we head out on a mission, our
orders tend to be 'kill this ship', and usually for a reason - we're trying to take out supplies (which we can't use), enemy commanders (whose deaths are almost inevitable no matter how we pull the mission, unless they're on the ground), or else to protect our assets on the ground or in space from assault through proactive measures.
Besides that - the Marines are the ones who capture ships, and even they don't do that often. They board the ship; you merely protect them from enemy fighters or capships. Notice during those few missions where we do escort a captured ship (an event that was rare enough to be commented on by our commanders) how they tended to be the toughest ones in their respective games - the WC1 Ralari mission comes to mind. There's a reason they tend to suicide, beyond the Warrior Codices which make surrender a dishonorable act. Again, the Kilrathi will want to deny intelligence to us, so even if YOU disabled the ship, a passing fighter would try to blow it up, on orders, if it was a fighter-scale craft... or the enemy would self-destruct. Capships are given a similar treatment, as you'll know if you even played WC1, much less read False Colors.
RyanCole said:
6) Honestly, I doubt that most Kilrathi would've cared to have followed the will of the Emperor & committed suicide. Each Kilrathi has a distinct and different personality and is not a mindless following robot. Many Kilrathi have family they'd probably want to go home to see. In Wing Commander Heart of the Tiger, the Emperor states to Thrakhath how that many Kilrathi families weren't buying the "die with honor in battle" stuff - they were on the brink of rebellion.
It's NOT the Emperor, as we've repeatedly said - it's SIVAR. You know, God. If it's not for Sivar or the Emperor, then it's loyalty to their own clans which prevents most from trying to be captured alive. If you've read False Colors, you'll know the stories they spread about humans - one being that we killed and ate captured Kilrathi - and that the afterlife is important to the Cats. You don't get into the Afterlife by allowing yourself to get captured; that's a point noted in the novels, time and again - you do so by either killing enough people to bring you an escort, or by doing damage to the enemy. It's not merely about the Emperor - it's about their life-after-death too.
Or are you telling me that you'd let your ship be captured, knowing that if the enemy takes it, your family's going to die in the next attack planned using this data? The reason that the families were rebellious there was NOT because they hated war - they hated the Emperor for continually
losing the war, and in doing so had killed off many of the next generation. They also acknowledged that he was plotting against them - Baron Jukaga notes in Fleet Action how the Emperor is using the war to keep the families divided and from turning on him. It's stated there that, without an external enemy to fight, the Kilrathi are likely to turn on one another in war instead.. and this time, wipe themselves out with their technology.
Stop treating them like humans in furry suits - they're aliens, with a different biology, mindset, and culture.
And give me the last twenty minutes of my life back - heck, hand over your wallet too.
