The destruction of the Vesuvius

6) Exactly what was Tolwyn's position in the Confederation during the Conflict?

I don't think anyone here can answer with any degree of certainty what exactly the answer - legally - to any of these questions is.

Tolwyn was head of the Strategic Rediness Agency (SRA) ha! got you! I could answerer tyour question!!!
 
Tolwyn was head of the Strategic Rediness Agency (SRA) ha! got you! I could answerer tyour question!!!

Well I still have some questions there. What exactly does that give him the authority to do/control? We know, I believe from the novels, that's he's taken four (I think it was four?) factory ships into service that could be better placed helping colonies recover from the war to build his super ships, but how much power did he have beyond that?
 
Race to Earth Sequence. Now I could link to all the preceding cutscenes, but it really shouldn't be necessary as this alone has enough with the banter between Panther and Hawk to establish that there is no standing order to destroy the Vesuvius.

I've watched this and I can't figure out why you assume that - heck, even in the clips you included we have Eisen providing Blair with the Vesuvius' weak points... and Pliers' offering to arm him with a flashpack and telling him where he needs to drop it for the mission. You can't play the game and not have an inplicit understanding that the goal is to destroy the Vesuvius (it's on your nav map, if you want it in writing).

Nevermind that such an order would be insane. Blair's friendship with Paladin and war hero status was good enough to get him into the assembly, but avoiding war relied upon referencing the atrocities commited by the Black Lance and Tolwyn overstepping himself to show they were true. Snatching victory from the gaping jaws of defeat only because of a combination of who he knew, his reputation, and getting a gut reaction doesn't make taking out the Vesuvius a good idea. As you should well know from the choice table if Blair isn't able to pull off all three war is declared. Or have you not played the game?

I have played Wing Commander IV... but as I said in my last post, I've never managed to get to the Senate without destroying the Vesuvius first. :) Again, though, this is focusing on the result rather than the plan - which wasn't to get Blair to sneak into the Senate at all.

Historically:

USS Maine:
Probably was destroyed by a freak accident in reality. As it played to their biases the Americans however used it to justify war.

Lusitania:
In reality originally the U-boats were doing things more conventionally originally if for no other reason it was more efficient. Then the British began arming their freighters, and transporting military supplies on liners such as the Lusitania. Thus the British had done as much to insure such an incident as the Germans. This didn't prevent it from becoming a great propaganda victory.

HMS Hood:
This ship was the pride of the British Navy at its time. After being sunk by Bismarck the British took such affront they skirmished practically their entire Navy to take out one ship.

USS Cole:
Despite the fact the ship has continued to serve admirably after repairs following the incident with the dingy,

The problem with this historical argument is that we can bring out just as many examples of militaries using *pre-emptive strikes* as part of their war strategy (many of them will even be the same examples, looked at from the other side's perspective! The U-Boat attacks, for instance, were supposed to take out war materials before they could reach Europe).

That's certainly the mindset of the people who ordered the attack on the Vesuvius, probably on several levels -- stop Tolwyn, stop the attacks... and if there is to be a war, knock out the Confederation's best new carrier before it starts. Remember, this is the same country that days earlier organized a coordintaed strike against Confederation production facilities in the Speradon system. It's not a case of Blair making some especially immoral decision - it's a case of a nation that's hoping there won't be a war but that is doing everything it can to prepare for what it sees coming (and yes, they're making decisions that aren't "right" in some black and white sense). That's all an interesting discussion to have, but it certainly doesn't boil down to just Blair suddenly deciding to destroy the Vesuvius.

Destroying a ship is an Act of War, and their biases are well established as being heavily in favor of war already. Destroying a nations flagship is a very personal affront to everyone that serves and its citizenry. Hence for example your old friend Paladin being perfectly ready to have your head lopped off on the spot if you aren't aggressive enough with presenting your case.

There's no indication that the Vesuvius is 'the flagship' of the Confederation (in the Star Trek sense). Until he leaves for Earth, it's certainly Admiral Tolwyn's flagship (so, not when it's actually destroyed)... but being a genocidal crazy person's personal warship doesn't quite stir the patriotic heart strings in the same way (the Intrepid is, however, the "flagship of the Outerworlds Fleet", for whatever that is worth).

Let's presume Blair did kill Tolwyn with the Vesuvius and Seether kills both the Intrepid and Blair. Can you seriously argue the Assembly would not declare war, and thus the ten worlds be hit as per the standing orders you enjoy referencing? Humanizing the nature of the error is all well and good, but it doesn't make it cease to be an error. Nor does the game forcing the option prevent debating of the ethics morality and otherwise. Tolwyn doesn't get a chance to bail out of the Black Lance in the game because he's utterly scripted, does that mean his actions are not up to such debate?

To begin with, this assumption is one of those basic logical fallacies -- leading the question. You've added "Seether kills both the Intrepid and Blair" to the scenario for no other reason than because it gives you the outcome you want. This necessity alone should be enough to show you it's the wrong way of thinking (in fact, your presumed scenario could be simplied to: imagine the Blair doesn't reach earth... and, well, duh, of course the war goes on).

That's not rational and it also isn't a reasonable assumption; we can see from the video you posted above that Seether is still on the Intrepid as Tolwyn is leaving... so in our theoretical scenario that manages to catch Tolwyn, Seether would also be killed and the Intrepid would reach Earth unopposed. As for the ten worlds, the attack was to be launched by the surviving Black Lance forces *on the Vesuvius*; so it's unlikely that it would have happened with the Vesuvius destroyed and those crews dead.

All of which are hopelessly obsolete by 2673 and thus shouldn't be part of the Vesuvius complement. Why not include Rapier Mk3s and Dralthi VIIs if your so determined to list every jump capable fighter that existed but has no place on the Vesuvius' deck?

The fighters I listed, with the possible exception of the Gladius, are all brand new. The Morningstar and Crossbow entered service six years before Wing Commander IV -- and the Wraith, Phantom and Banshee two years after them. That's pretty darned new compared to Hellcats and Arrows (twenty-plus year old designs) which we see flying off the Vesuvius.

Reference? The local encyclopedia doesn't reference it as optional. Further I do not recall any reference to such a capability or see why they should have it.

You can fly jump-capable Arrows in Armada watch Thunderbolts jumping in Secret Ops.

There was not enough time between Tolwyn's taking Seether aboard and Talos where they could have taken Axius apart and moved it to the Vesuvius. Further on the Vesuvius they would be out of position even if the F-107s have enough fuel to make enough jumps to get from Sol to the UBW. Nevermind given established travel times it taking merely hours from them to cross Sol sector, entire quadrants, and the rest is absurd. This supposing they would not simply be seized by the authorities.

The Lances seem to have essentially unlimited jump fuel; the travel time is the issue in the scenario you're positing. But - the attack wasn't against the UBW at all... it was against Confed's inner worlds (where the Vesuvius already was) aimed at spreading fear and support for the new war. (I'm not sure who the authorities are who are supposed to seize Black Lance ships, though - the Confederation Space Police charged with keeping a watchful eye to preventing completely invisible fighters from moving anywhere in the vastness of space? Where were those dudes during everything else that happened in Wing Commander IV on both sides?)

(And let me take a ruler to my own palm here - I went back and checked the novel and it's *five* worlds and not ten.)

This would lend credence to Tolwyn intentionally sabotaging the Black Lance's efforts, but not much else. A plot point Malcolm McDowell does subtly work into his performance.

I'm sure you have a great theory, but there's nothing about this in Wing Commander IV. We know too much about the conspiracy and the man's role in it to believe that Tolwyn is anything but the man who started the thing in the first place; heck, we get his inner monlogue in his cell at the end of the novelization... there's no secret plot to bring down the plan that he carefully organized and ordered.

That's nonsense. If they had no legal body how could they declare independence? Why is there a unified Border World Militia under a unified command?

George Washington was legally commissioned by the legal body, even if they hadn't gotten around to ratifying a constitution yet. Why do you insist on trying to pretend these problems are somehow unique? And all over the distinction between use of de facto verse de jure regarding Blair's captainship. A point you just effectively conceded by declaring there would be no legal body to make him de jure Captain.

A legal body only in so far as they managed to eventually win the war and retroactively *become* a legal body. :) I think we just had this discussion in another thread - if things go differently, Washington is hanged as a traitor and not treated as a foreign military's representative. More to the point, though, in the above example it's the same spit-and-glue union as the Border Worlds (with a little bit more time for organization) -- there's no admirality court or promotion board to decide who gets what job. Washington wears a uniform to the Continental Congress and so they make him head of the army...

(And is this whole seething rant-page because of my cutesy post way back when? I'm sorry - I think we're looking at this very differently. I would say he was the "de jure" captain because he was assigned the position and was recognized by the admiral(s)... in my mind, that's as legal a Captain as you can be in a four day old fleet made up of someone else's trash. My way of thinking says that he would only be the 'de facto' captain in a scenario where he took the duties without being asked - either because he was the ranking officer aboard (and he wasn't!) or somesuch... I'm thinking of Bear in End Run, maybe. The real captain and XO died and he took over because he was the next man on the ladder.)

Given not only is Blair a pilot, but Confed divided his service branch from the Navy what possesses you to think he would have had to have been Officer of the Deck in his early years?

This is an odd question to ask, since the sentence that sparked it specifically says the reference came from running a text search of the novel and the script for 'officer of the deck'. From the record, Blair's inner mologue while Sosa gives him a tour of the Intrepid's CIC: "She took him from station to station, explaining the purpose of each and answering his questions. Blair was heartily grateful for her in-depth knowledge of the system. He'd served as the officer of the deck on innumerable occasions in his career, and worked as an operations and flight deck officer repeatedly, but the hodge-podge equipment was new to his experience."

Why is the idea that the bridge must be always manned, and there is a singular Captain and XO such a hard concept that you have spent numerous posts arguing that a Officer of the Deck cannot exist when there's absolutely no reason to assume it shouldn't?

The point of bringing it up was to emphasize the nature of the Captain in command of the ship, and reinforce the fact of Blair's position as captain. Instead of letting it be you've argued around the point like I insulted your mother.

I'm genuinely unsure what you're talking about, and I've just spent twenty minutes going over the previous posts to try and piece it together. As far as I can tell, your original argument was that Blair wasn't really the captain of the Intrepid and mine was that he was. Is there anything else here? Wilford (or Richards?) transfers Eisen off the Intrepid and Blair is made Captain. That's all there is to it - he's not the watch officer or the officer of the deck or the XO any other secretly-not-really-the-captain-because-I-don't-want-him-to-be position which may or may not exist in Wing Commander.

The corollary, if I'm reading this all right, is simply my insistence that we need to learn from *Wing Commander* and not any other source how a ship's bridge is organized; this is not some claim on my part that there *isn't* an Officer of the Deck (in fact, my last two posts cited proof that there *is*) or that a bridge doesn't need to be manned (of course, to be truly anal I do have to point out that the Intrepid doesn't have a bridge in Wing Commander IV:)); simply that we learn from Wing Commander and not necessarily Master and Commander or 'real life' how all this works (for example, as you just pointed out, none of these other examples include Wing Commander's odd cross-services sharing of duties on the same ship... and the fact is that as important as some tradition is to the Navy, lots of things have changed between the age of sail today and lots of things will change between today and the age of 27th century spaceships).

As for insulting my mother, I'm certainly sorry if I'm coming across this way - I'll say that you aren't exactly exactly being the most pleasant fellow here (Can we stop with the passive-aggressive questions? Can we?). I do like arguing about Wing Commander and would certainly like to continue doing so.

Clearly this is novel only as it's in direct contradiction with the game sequence. Where is this supposed to occur given they only barely catch up to Vesuvius at Talos by using numerous shortcuts and running a virtual gauntlet in the process?

To pull this contradictory version of the history out our your pocket in effect is conceding the point with game based history. Nevermind such a major fleet action would be as good as a Declaration of War by the UBW, if the more minor stuff wasn't good enough. The Declaration of War, not Tolwyn's existence, being what is tied directly to their worlds getting sprayed down with nanobots, by your own admission.

You're being kind of obnoxious here - /you're making an argument about this, so you must secretly be conceding it!/ isn't amusing or clever. Moreover, I've been citing the novel since... the beginning of this thread? (well, 1996). I even specifically talked about Wilford's fleet in my second reply to you a week ago... so I'm not 'pulling this contradictory version of the history out of my pocket' in some sudden shocking change of heart.

The fact is, we have absolutely no idea how long the chase to Earth takes in the game. It's nice that some Youtube guy has glommed it all together, but there are plenty of transitions in there in the actual game where other events can take place (and where plenty of time may be spent just *moving*, too). The fact that there's nine minutes of video doesn't mean the trip fro Axius to Earth took nine minutes and it isn't some inherent proof that the frigate attack or the delivery of extra fighters from the Princeton or any of those other things didn't happen.

As for "as good as a Declaration of War" - that's one of the basic problems here, isn't it? You're setting awkward standards and insisting on them for no specific reason. No offense to the Union of Border Worlds or the concept of war, but there's about a hojillion things in Wing Commander IV that, were I the Confederation, would be grounds for war -- invading Speradon, stealing the Princeton, destroying the weapons factory, capturing all those Bearcats, destroying that heavy cruiser, blowing up the jammer transport, kidnapping the commander of the SRA, infiltrating a black ops base, crippling the Lexington and just moving the Intrepid alone into Confederation space, for instance. I don't tsee the gradiation in a world where all of these things happen but don't start a war but the ONE STEP TOO FAR is that if there's also two escort carriers shuttling replacement fighters to the Intrepid (in fact, Paladin even claimed that the very existence of the Intrepid was certain cause for war! Barring the reveal of Tolwyn's plot, a war is coming... the rest is forgiven *because of that*, not in spite of it).
 
Well I still have some questions there. What exactly does that give him the authority to do/control? We know, I believe from the novels, that's he's taken four (I think it was four?) factory ships into service that could be better placed helping colonies recover from the war to build his super ships, but how much power did he have beyond that?

On its face, the Strategic Readiness Agency was a broad command charged with preserving post-war military readiness; Tolwyn may not technically be the highest ranking Naval officer in 2673, but he has the broad command authority and responsiblty that make him the de facto head of the armed forces (oh no!). He seems to have power over wide-ranging things like war production and is responsible for lobbying for the military in the Senate... but also seeming minutae like ship assignments personnel movements.

The suggestion, in False Colors, is that it's an office he essentially created for himself (or at least maneuvered himself into) to give him the power to enact his Black Lance conspiracy. Remember that after the war he was somewhat disgraced - he was court martialed over the Behemoth debacle and was left on half pay with no real hope of assignment. He built himself back up by taking down another military coup ("Belisarius", discussed earlier) and making for himself the SRA job with the logic that doing so would prevent such conspiracies in the future -- when in reality the whole thing was to hide his own plot.
 
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