Ambrosia Software Web Board: *Run screaming in the other direction* - Ambrosia Software Web Board

I'm bringing back the most interesting piece of content we ever had on this board. Time to remeber all the old arguments.

Question: In a straight military fight between the Ishimans/Humans of Ares time and the Empire at its height, who would win? No web board RPG stuff.

My answer: The Ishimans/Humans.
Reasons:
[list=1]
[*]the Ishimans have better ships
[*]the Ishimans have more ships
[/list=a]

Support for my crackpot position coming soon™.

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I do not know, as we'd have to see something where ships from both sides actualy engaged in combat to see which was better. I remember the stuff about "lasers suck in Ares, and they're the average weapon in Star Wars." Well, not all weapons of the same basic kind are the same. For instance, which would you rather have hit your house: a 200 mm tank shell, or a 16-inch shell fired from a battleship with enough force to propel it 15 miles?

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"You can get much further with kind words and a loaded gun than you can with kind words alone."
- Al Capone

Ok, here's support for #1.

Ishiman/Human ships make much better use of FTL. In Star Wars™, ships can only use FTL for travel (extremely risky at that, gravety wells, mass shadows, and all that; explaining why calculating hyperspace jumps takes so long (sources: A New Hope, The Courtship of Princess Leia)). In Ares, well, we all know: superlight fighting is hard, but superlight can be used to run/regroup(slightly more tricky than running).

This implies a generally better understanding of physics, which means better sci-fi style weapons. Not to mention the obvious tactical advantage that the Ish could retreat at will if caught in a fix and the Empire NEVER COULD without considerable risk (space in the Ares universe isn't charted, and the Empire would obviously be coming here), especially if a gateship could generate mass shadows or interfere with hyperspace.

Support for #2 coming soon™.

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The humans in the Ares universe make pretty much no difference whatsoever. Their combat ships are very few, and pretty much all suck (except for the gunships, but there aren't very many of those because they're still a relatively new design).

The empire at it's time would dominate. Period. I believe Admiral Palleon once said "200 Star Destroyers. Out of a fleet that once consisted of 2 million..."

Throw in a Death Star. Throw in three Super Star Destroyers. Throw in all the millions of squadrons of fighters that they have.

The biggest ship the Ishimans have is that one Gateship, which is slightly larger than a Star Destroyer, and that's not even a combat ship (Surprise, Darkk). The Ishimans only have a few carriers (why else would they value their carrier in Assassin so much?). They obviously have a very large number of Cruisers and Gunships, but only a few Heavy Cruisers (you see them only a few times and they're valuable).

Face it: The Ishimans aren't a very militaristic race, and neither are the Humans (Source: Nathan Lamont). The Empire, however is very militaristic and many times larger than the Ishiman Stellar Protectorate.

(Forgive my mood, I'm listening to the battle theme from Star Trek VI)

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
-Alduran Outlaw Rick Blazer
StarLance

Slug, your argument is funny. My sources say 25 thousand. I consider 2 million absolutely rediculous. But, well...

At Bokleo we meet 2 carriers: ISN 2020187 and ISN 8738810. Subtract smaller from larger and you get 6.7 million. That is the minimum size of the Ishiman fleet. Confused? First, you should know those are ID#s. Then, assume that the 2020187 is the oldest ship they have. Now assume 8738810 is the newest. Unless there's some reason that the Ish have scrapped a huge portion of intermediate ships, that gives you the fleet size. If all those were gunships (averaged strengths), it would still go poorly for the Empire, based on sheer numbers and the tech advantage mentioned above. Add to that the small size of the Ishiman territory, and you see that the Ish would be in a great defensive position.

Oh, and as for the big, dumb, death star: ships don't need to be disabled to be moored. Ask the Bazidanese Battleship from CH 15. After fixing the escorts they could spend a year or 2 on it.

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(You were right Darkk, it was twenty-five thousand. Specter of the Past Page 6)

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6.7 million ships, perhaps. The flaw in your logic is that you assume every ship is a combat ship. How many times must I quote Nathan Lamont?....

The Ishiman are not a militaristic race

Most of those ships are probably freighter ships, schooners, freighters, passanger liners, tankers, etc. (including their gateship)

Hmm, but that's assuming the Ishiman do have that many ships. How do we know they use base ten? Why not base 9? How do we know that's not some exotic coding and is a ship numbering system? How do we know a lot of those ships between the 2020187 and the 8738810 weren't retired?

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
-Alduran Outlaw Rick Blazer
StarLance

OK. I-S-N. What's it stand for? Since it uses human letters, I'm guessing it's already been translated. Ishiman Stellar Navy? Ishiman Star Navy? Something like that. Giving civilian ships a NAVAL designation would be rathar unwise, as it would make them legitimate military targets.

Ok, now for that base nine thing:
Bilateral symetry is generally considered a prerequisite for being an advanced life form here on Earth. Assuming the universiality of the laws of biology (they're remotely based on chemestry and physics, which have been proven universal), the Ishimans have it. Thus, they have the same number of fingers on each hand. We know it's at least 10 because 8s would not appear in base 8 or lower.

Retiring that many ships would be rathar odd, as there would be much older ships (ISN 2020187) in service than out of service.

As for an exotic coding system, the ships are both carriers, and thus would have ONE digit exactly the same.

2020187
8738810

Doesn't look like it.

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We're not sure what ISN stands for, but we suspect Ishiman Stellar Navy, which only implies a military designation. There have been "Navy"s in history that are not for war. It's just that there have been more war navies than peace so that's how the word 'Navy' became synonymous with 'Battle Fleet'

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That is sort of one-dimensional thinking. They both have the same number of digits don't they?

If you were at a grocery store, buying two or three packs of meat and you looked at the unique barcodes for each pack, you'd seee none of the digits would have to be the same.

And I do believe many of the ships between the two carriers were retired and/or worn out. They're Carriers. Carriers were built to last a long time.

I feel this is a matter Nathan Lamont should intervene in, seeing as we can't make up our minds.

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
-Alduran Outlaw Rick Blazer
StarLance

[This message has been edited by Slug (edited 11-12-2000).]

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That's because those barcodes actually are what I described: unique ID#s.

As for the "Navy" issue, name one nonmilitary organization that was called a "Navy". That's irrelevant anyway, as it was translated by humans who probably consider "Navy" and "battle fleet" synonymous.

As for the retiring issue, I see nothing about carriers special enough to make the Ishimans keep in service a carrier almost 7 MILLION ships prior to the current one. That the numbers jump from 2 million to almost 9 million in the lifetime of one ship indicates that the Ishimans had been doing an unprecidented military buildup, prehaps in preperation for defense against suspected Cantharan agression.

As for Lamont, any statement contradictory to the above would constitue a RETRACTION, indicating going against the facts he set out for us. The info in the game is quite obviously in my favor.

And you still cannot meet my argument about superior Ishiman tech. All my arguments in favor of superior Ishiman tech could be used for the HUMANS having superior tech as well. Also, the Empire still considers less-than-a-kiloton nukes a threat (proton torpedos, see any game/movie), while noone in Ares does (if they did, the UNS would be using them, but this is only one of many arguments).

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That was a wee bit combative. Sorry, my real life™ is killing me.

First off, a symbol: ¿

Secondly, the "facts" set forth in the game you're talking about are a couple of numbers which are open to any interpretation you want. They could be the date of production for all we know, or some random "lucky number" chosen at "birth" for the ship. Numbers are nothing, and Nathan isn't retracting anything by putting the situation right.

And thirdly, and this applies to the entire discussion- who cares?

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Sundered Angel,
The One and Only
Ares Webboard Moderator, and all-around Nice Guy

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Err, the "Merchant Navy"?

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But what about our good friend the ISN 0910969 from "Hornet's Nest"? That's an ISN registration for a non-combat ship.

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Well, that's the whole point, isn't it?

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"Anything that can be achieved using magic can be achieved using technology." -Salrillian Illegal Publicist ekt-Herna in his last message to the Salrillian public.

If I remember correctly, ISN 0910969 was a science vessel (which are used by the military in other sci-fi), and a legitimate military target (the auds attacked it).

Of course, I'm guessing, because I haven't been able to play in months.

No one has challenged my tech argument yet. Here's another part to it. In The Empire Strikes Back, a Star Destroyer's bridge is demolished by an asteroid. Ares ships just bounce off normal asteroids. Green asteroids are specificly explosive, no refrence is made to the Hoth Asteroid Field being anything out of the ordinary. Conclusion: Ares FIGHTERS have stronger shields.

Who cares about numbers when the only weapon the Imperials have that does noticeable damage is the superlaser? As for that, see tractor moors.

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What's the matter? Are you just going to bow to my mad reasoning skilz and play dead? Put some fight into it!!!

So far no attacks at all have been made on my tech arguments (maybe because they are undeniable), and only roundabout attacks on my numbers argument.

I will accept any setlement by Nathan Lamont on the ISN #s, provided he posts it himself.

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The ISN designations are not given to ships sequentially, so no, you cannot extrapolate the number of the ships the Ishiman's have by the ISN number.

The numbers are the equivalant of names to them, which have meanings only to the Ishiman -- cultural references, numbers associated with individuals or events, numbers associated with famous ideas or theories, that kind of thing, arranged in some sequence which has special meaning to them.

Thank you. I'm still not sure AG came up with that before he read this post, but it doesn't matter. I yeild argument 2.

Nobody can deny argument 1, though. You guys just can't win if you don't try.

I don't really care enough to try. As far as AG just thinking that up when he read the post, I think he thought it up a long time ago. He's been working on Ares stuff for years, and has talked about such miniscule details many times before.

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"You can get much further with kind words and a loaded gun than you can with kind words alone."
- Al Capone

I guess he probably was. I'm just paranoid-delusional.

C'mon, people, show some debate spirit!!

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Just because I consider myself something of a nonconformist....

I'll admit from the start: I'm not real big on Star Wars. I haven't memorized the plots, the tech., etc. (although I do know the characters...the main ones, at least).

Ok, the Empire has ion cannons. The closest the Ares universe can come to that is the Electronic Jamming thingy that the Cantharan Gateship had. Except the ion cannon would be able to fire far more rapidly. The fact that it disables a ship for a long time, instead of until a ship gets out of the EJ field, helps, too. A handful of Star Destroyers could take out an Ishiman fleet, if they were armed with a few ion cannons.

The Empire also has droids, which would increase the number of ships they could put on the front lines, as well. Sure, they might not be all that intelligent, but if your ship's targeting system's overwhelmed by the sheer number of targets (probably fighters), then your targeting system's not much use, now is it? Of course, the same would go for the Empire's ships, but the droids could be programmed to use sensors and sight only, ignoring a targeting computer under that situation. An Ishiman fleet might no know of the size of an Empire fleet and could end up the worse for it.

Finally, the Empire has a "technology" could help greatly, as well: The Force. Think the Ocular Net (and I know I spelled that wrong) was good? The force is probably a lot better.

Like I said, I don't know much about Star Wars tech., so feel free to laugh at my feeble attempt at debate on the behalf of the Empire.

~IB

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"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
--Jeremy S. Anderson

[This message has been edited by Idiot_box (edited 11-14-2000).]

In Ares, lasers are capital weapons. In Star Wars, lasers are fighter weapons. The Capital weapons in Star Wars are a particularily heavy and explosive variation of the laser, the TurboLaser.

Please don't get me started on weapons physics, explaining the StarLance disruptors gave me a headache.

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
-Alduran Outlaw Rick Blazer
StarLance

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No need. I understand laser physics well enough to know that the Empire capital ships use lasers with more kinetic energy (must be using a cesium cloud...), and Empire fighters use lasers that seem to be the equivalent of those used in Ares. Heck, I could build either type, if I had the money to buy the supplies.

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"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
--Jeremy S. Anderson

Read the shield statement. Read Mag's post on compairing lasers. I'm still ahead. As for ion cannons, they only disable when the shields are DOWN. Refer to sentance 1 of this post.

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Only for the humans. Photokinetic beams could be 50x as strong as turbolasers for all we know. We CAN compair the shield strengths.

When Ares fighters have better shields than Star Destroyers, it's time for you to admit defeat.

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Ah! But as you keep saying, "for all we know." For all we know, ion cannons would be able to penetrate the shields of Ares ships without having to have their shields brought down in the first place. After all, the EJ field works while shields are up, right?

BTW, someone bring up the brief version of the physics of the EJ field. I'm not sure, but if the EJ field relies on magnetics, then the ion cannon would have the same effect.

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"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
--Jeremy S. Anderson

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I've got the brief version of the (possibly wrong, but official) physical explanation of ion cannons: the cannons fire streams of ions that interfere with the electrical systems of the target. Ions, like asteroids, are particles. Ergo, they can't just waltz right through Ares shields.

As for the force, it plays no offensive/defensive role in capital ship combat until the ressurection of Palpatine. I'm refering to the time period spanned by the movies. The force does ZIP at Endor (it didn't even kill anyone, unless Vader levetated Palpatine to the shaft, and it sure looks like he threw him) except serve as a subtle command and control system.

Nobody but me has come up with a convincing argument about shields yet. In case you haven't noticed, I claimed that Ares fighters had stronger shields than Star Destroyers based on observed asteroid collisions with both. Note that the asteroids in Hoth are carbonacious/metallic, not concussive (like green asteroids).

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