Part 2:
LOAF said:
(You also seem to be confused about the word humanoid - it's not a weird alien name made up for Privateer 2 to describe the inhabitants of the Tri-System. It's an actual word that means having a human form. You, Kris, Quarto and I are all 'humanoid'. . . Privateer 2 uses 'human' and 'humanoid' on occasion -- presumably using the latter to seem more unusual. . .)
No, I’ve used the term in accordance with its standard meaning, denoting man-like species. Yes, we humans are humanoids, but not all humanoids are human. That’s the only sense in which I’m using the one word. What you don’t like is that I’m using the word “human” in a relative sense, but that’s really its nature vis-à-vis “humanoid” (particularly in a sci-fi context). In short, in the Tri-System: “Who da man?” Not Ser Arris, apparently. (But he could, nonetheless, be our kind of man.)
And I notice in your argument besides that you still are forced to
presume some reason why the word “humanoid” is being used at all. So much for your argument. Personally, I don’t care how EA ends up using it, I’m only interested, in this thread, in how they might be.
The Free Republic of the Landreich is not part of the Confederation. The Empire of Kilrah is not part of the Confederation. Firekka . . . Oasis . . . Etc. Whether or not the Tri-System is part of the Confederation is absolutely meaningless as to its connections or past connections to the rest of the Wing Commander universe.
Absolutely meaningless? Hardly. That it isn’t part of Confed must weigh on you, for if it were, you’d have a strong argument that, just like the rest of Confed and its “associates”, it uses “our” calendar. But given that it isn’t part of Confed, the possibility remains that it doesn’t have a reason to use and so doesn’t use “our” calendar. I understand why you’re not happy about that, but trying, and blatantly, to pretend it doesn’t matter is not credible.
Privateer 2 has something like thirty different planets -- that's thirty different definitions of a year that *have* to vary. Without the simple Earth-derived year that has been applied to everything from bird aliens to Kilrathi having private conversations with eachother the word year as indicative of a passage of time is *absolutely meaningless*. Yes, it 'could' be similar - but even if it is similar-to-the-same in one case, it's going to be variably-to-vastly different in twenty-some others. And if you eliminate year as a solid measurement in Privateer 2, you do so everywhere else as well.
Well, here you go again – mass hysteria in the WC universe, if not every gaming universe, and so on. You seem to be saying that there’s room in “our” universe for only one kind of “standard” calendar. But we have at least two already – the Kilrathi’s sure ain’t the same (obfuscation and wishful thinking aside). And despite Origin’s waffling over whether to go with a new definition of a meter or a straightforward base-8 conversion – apparently deciding to do both at the same time – I thought it at least handled relating the two calendars pretty well. Certainly the sky hasn’t fallen yet over our being obliged in this case to re-calculate (base-10) numbers we otherwise would take for granted.
Sorry, but your complaint reduces simply to a question of how easy the given conversion is, as well as to when it is and isn’t necessary in the context of the given game.
Besides, a developer (if he/she decided to posit a different time line for the Tri-System) could simply “reveal” that the Tri-System – whether or not it also uses “our” calendar – has its own
local, tri-system-wide, standard calendar. (“Oh, come on you silly WCers, why-oh-why would the people of the Tri-System care about relating strictly tri-system-based events, like crime and local history, to some
universally standard time frame? And sure, I suppose people
outside the Tri-System might be curious to do that, but that wasn’t P2 now, was it? Anyway, here’s a nice and simple conversion table to help you do that for those P2 dates, since in our new game we do relate the two realities, but also since some of you appear to be, if I may say so, a little too stressed for your own good.”)
How does this statement stand now that we've established that the Tri-System and the rest of the universe have an interconnected history? To be more exact - if I go through the trouble of cataloging a good number of 'Earth history' references in Privateer, will this invalidate your point?
No, because any of us can always posit a “what-if” (as I’ve done already) that accounts for whatever degree or level of “interconnectedness” you care to assert (and really, you might as well stick to your British colony theory) but that still does not require the Tri-System to be using “our” calendar. Not knowing how the Tri-System originated and evolved, not knowing if or how it is “engaged” with any other government or society, we can “connect the dots” of its discrete details, arguably Earth-related or not, in any number of ways. Get over it.
On the contrary, I would be happy to play with all kinds of dates. I love that kind of timeline and I love the power it gives you to fix little continuity errors when they arise... and I enjoy all sorts of universes that have fun 'new' dating systems.
Well, then you need a canon-based explanation for how and why “our” calendar gets used in a given case. My problem with P2 is, based on what it tells us about the Tri-System, I can’t draw the conclusion that the Tri-System
is using “our” calendar. (And a future developer could therefore choose, in all good conscience, to make it otherwise.)
I just refuse to accept that one exists in Privateer 2 without being told so - the possibility that it *could* is not enough for me, and the fact that one has never been introduced (to the point of things not making any sense from a xenocultural perspective) in Wing Commander means I'm not willing to assume.
Well, if this is, as you make it sound, just an article of faith for you – that absent a clear and unambiguous statement by EA that it is a different calendar you will choose to believe it is the same calendar – why bother arguing over possible logical interpretations of the text and game play? My only point in these regards has been and remains that in the end we don’t know enough to say for sure what kind of calendar is being used, and accordingly, we should remain neutral on the question. So, no, I’m not a member of your “religion” on this point, but how does that give you the right to trample on my “science”?
Every Kilrathi number in Voices of War is the equivalent human number put through Windows Calculator's base-eight conversion. I used to think it was an amazingly cool thing for there to be unusual numbers in VoW – TC and I treated it as a base ten number and calculated Kilrah's orbital period! -- but then I noticed that and the entire thing became somewhat of a joke.
Yeah, it’s almost like the concept of canon has become a joke to you now too, as with that express redefinition of a meter in Voices of War that I guess you want to say we should ignore and pretend doesn’t exist. Holy cow, at what point in your travels were you waylaid, kidnaped, and brainwashed by the anti-canon “rebels”? (Oh, but I guess you wouldn’t be allowed to recall that, would you?) I’m afraid all I can do is keep knocking you on the head with facts and logic.
And since we’re discussing Armada, why is it, do you suppose, that Origin decided to play with the concept of the Kilrathi calendar and metric system there? I mean, it was free to have done that in any of the prior games, I would think. Why only in Armada? Is there anything “special”, perhaps, about Armada that might account for it? Any thoughts on that? I mean, if there were “something” about Armada that set it apart from the other games and that could be seen as having motivated the desire to differentiate the Kilrathi systems of measurement, we could then see if P2 presents any similar aspects that,
purely on the basis of consistency, predict the same should – or, at the very least, might – have been done for that game.
This is never a reason to appreciate the current continuity. They could retcon *anything* tomorrow - we can't live our lives assuming that that *will* happen because it *could*. If we go with what EA 'could' do, none of the continuity is safe.
Of course it’s a reason to do so, because it’s based, not on whim (or faith), which you imply, but on reason. Though I would say you have been guilty in this thread of confusing the two.
The problem is, once again, that you can apply this claim to any aspect of any thing - refusing to acknowledge Privateer 2's rightful place in the timeline because you don't want it there is silly.
Except that we don’t know what its “rightful place” is yet. Otherwise, I couldn’t care less.
Anyone who doesn't like Rightous Fire or Secret Ops or Wing Commander 2 can immobilize it in a similar manner - we therefore need a system of analysis that requires *proof* that Privateer 2 uses a different dating system rather than conjecture that Privateer 2 *could* use a different dating system. If we base our facts on remote possibilities we won't ever get anywhere with anything - and we'll be going against the original concept to do so.
We do have and follow a system that requires proof – our theory and practice of debating canon. And in this case, such debate yields no firm conclusion about P2's calendar (or much of anything else about how the Tri-System fits into the WC universe).
But you refuse to accept that, and I can only come back to my query whether you’re being overly protective of the fact it’s a WC game, or you’re positing some new level of dogma – “In the absence of express contradiction, it is Origin’s/Humanity’s/My dictate that we believe, fervently and fearfully, that the way of the Confed is true for all the universe and for all eternity, Amen.”
In either case, I just don’t see the need. (But I’ll be happy to consider the dogma-thing if the CIC will offer to freely provide all “true believers” with monk-like, WC-initialed robes. Cool!)
. . .The *point* of dates is so that they can be used to tell the amonut of times between things. On this level of thought, what would be the point in creating a new system of dates that exists only to be unrelated to the single system used in every other source?. . .
Well, what would be the point of creating a WC game that has no material “tie-ins” to the rest of WC? And yet, that’s what happened. So much for your argument. We can wish it were otherwise, but the consequences for any analysis of P2's canon are obvious – we can’t say with any confidence how the Tri-System will be further delineated in relation to the rest of WC. It’s up for grabs. And in accordance with our debates of canon generally, we should never say – or maybe
promise is the better word – any more than logic allows, and in this case logic is at a loss to say much of anything.
What exactly are you seeing here that no one else does?. . .
You took a poll, did you? How exactly? Care to post it?
No, it’s not what I see but what I’m not seeing that’s the problem. (You know, my dear Gregory, like that dog that didn’t bark in the night.) Here was an opportunity for Origin to lay out and confirm the basic canon of P2, the Tri-System’s relationship to humans, Earth, and the Confederation,
every single thing you’ve been desperately trying to convince us of in the absence of such express confirmation, and Origin
passed on the opportunity, settling instead for the most equivocal and generic description possible, the kind of statement a person makes when wanting to reveal and/or commit himself to as little as possible.
That’s bad news for your argument, and not because it serves as any indication of how a future game
will treat the Tri-System (a foolish extrapolation), but because Origin showed us that it itself lacked the degree of faith
that you have in what a future game will confirm.
I guess your only recourse now is to vow in this thread that
you will be that future developer. We certainly don’t have a reasonable basis for any sure conclusions otherwise regarding the Tri-System.