Call to Arms vs Fleet Action and B5Wars

[Kyle81]

They still go pew pew pew and rapid fire.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Yes they do. They're not little guns, though, they're bloody nasty ship-killers, in use for a long time. Remember Franklin's talk about Centauri energy weapons, this suggests that pulsing weapons are the Centauri's main weapon, so it follows that they'd have more oomph than EA pulse cannons and the like, since these other races use beams as their main ship-killers.

 

[B_Steele]

Slightly off topic...sort of...but I always find it amusing how some little debates about assumptions based on this or that get some people so passionate when we are talking about a game, comic, tv show, etc.

I'm one of the biggest B5 fans out there (for obvious reasons), but I don't think I ever raised a flag for or against beams, ion cannons or giant space watermelon shooters.

Basically, I am happy if the game/show/issue is enjoyable and fun. It always strikes me as odd that something we all obviously love so much can get people so fussy with one another. I am against the idea of going strictly against what is told to us as fact in the show (the Vorlons and Shadows leaving, or Clark being a right bastard, for instance)...but unless someone came right out and said "Centauri don't use no beams! Those is ion cannons!" or some such, I would never say that they don't have any. It is an assumption, albeit one that has some evidence pointing toward it, but never has the universally-accepted canon (a term I DESPISE as an author involved in the license, btw) condemned the idea of a Centauri "beam team" either.

Anyway, back to what you guys were saying...and I have GOT to get back to work!

Food for thought,
Bry

 

[katadder]

cool 3rd ed centauri main weapons:
giant space watermelon shooters
actually that would be like a rail gun as the watermelons would be huge balls of ice by time of impact
can we get large raspberry jam catapults to jam scouts too

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Slightly off topic...sort of...but I always find it amusing how some little debates about assumptions based on this or that get some people so passionate when we are talking about a game, comic, tv show, etc.

I'm one of the biggest B5 fans out there (for obvious reasons), but I don't think I ever raised a flag for or against beams, ion cannons or giant space watermelon shooters.

Basically, I am happy if the game/show/issue is enjoyable and fun. It always strikes me as odd that something we all obviously love so much can get people so fussy with one another. I am against the idea of going strictly against what is told to us as fact in the show (the Vorlons and Shadows leaving, or Clark being a right bastard, for instance)...but unless someone came right out and said "Centauri don't use no beams! Those is ion cannons!" or some such, I would never say that they don't have any. It is an assumption, albeit one that has some evidence pointing toward it, but never has the universally-accepted canon (a term I DESPISE as an author involved in the license, btw) condemned the idea of a Centauri "beam team" either.

Anyway, back to what you guys were saying...and I have GOT to get back to work!

Food for thought,
Bry

I take things seriously if I care about them. Accuracy is everything as far as I'm concerned. If you guys are making up your own setting, do what you want; if you're using someone else's (and you are) then respect the fact it's someone else's property and creation and don't mess around with it. Canon (whether or not you hate the term, I do too) is what it is, regardless of whether or not we think it's stupid. It's clearly demonstrated in the canon that the Centauri prefer pulse weapons, so that should be reflected in the game. It's never explicitly stated that they have no beam weapons at all, so it's ok to give them some.

Please don't take this as an attack on you or MGP, I love the new edition of the game. I just get annoyed when people say things like "lol it's a game" to justify messing around with other people's work. No offence intended.

 

[LaranosTZ]

Erm, does it matter to you that JMS contradicts his own work at serveral points in the TV series, novels, and the AOG fluff that he approved himself?

He actually has a sense of humor about it too, since he has definately made it his goal to make a good story, not to nitpick over details. In fact I'm pretty sure he was quoted as saying that Whitestars move "at the speed of plot."

 

[B_Steele]

Please don't take this as an attack on you or MGP, I love the new edition of the game. I just get annoyed when people say things like "lol it's a game" to justify messing around with other people's work. No offence intended.

None taken. Ever. As a professional in this industry, I have to have thick skin or I'd cry myself to sleep every night because fans dislike my work on X or Y. *shrug*

As for the comment as to us messing around with other people's work...

We were granted the ability to make this game by Warner Brothers, and we (Mongoose Publishing) have put more words to paper for the license than any other single company or source to date. When does it stop being someone else's work and start to become "the collective works of Babylon 5"?

An interesting question, I believe.

Bry

 

[Taran]

However, JMS did spend a lot of time on backstory (as evidenced in the quality of the series), and keeping within the limits of that backstory is very important in order to keep a show (or other systems based on it) at top quality. (Take a look at Enterprise versus any other Star Trek show. They chose to completely rewrite the backstory with Enterprise and, thus, the show sucked even worse than "Wow! We found a way home! How can we screw it up?" Voyager)

JMS may have a sense of humour about it, but he has also noted in most of his interviews that he tried hard to prevent contradictions and inconsistencies, but that there was not much point getting anal about it because you can't prevent every single one. Thus the WhiteStar "speed of plot" comment (which I thought was hilarious).


As to the part of the Station that was blasted off by the "ion guns" or whatever they were (they never really spelled it out, I think you could call them whatever you want) was only attached to the rest of the Station on one end and you could make the argument that it probably wasn't heavily armoured due to a lack of purpose...

 

[Lord David the Denied]

You could make all those arguments, certainly. I prefer the majority interpretation of ion cannons being the guns the Primus uses to blast B5, and that they're pretty nasty.

As for Mongoose Steele's question, my answer is, never. It's the creation of essentially one man. Maybe modified later, but the Cthulhu Mythos is H.P. Lovecraft's creation, not August Derleth, or any of the other writers who used it. Middle-Earth is Tolkien's creation, not Peter Jackson or anyone else who's done a licensed work set in it.

MGP has the B5 license so new works are not messing about with JMS' work, but publishing inaccurate information about ships, etc that he created is. Where it isn't clear you have to make up your own thing, but always with recourse to the on-screen evidence before anything else.

 

[emperorpenguin]

Those aren't ion cannons. Never in the show are guns even referred to as ion cannons... and the fandom never even noted such things. Ion cannons were just tossed in by Mongoose when creating their own fluff for the universe..

IIRC "Acts of Sacrifice" and "And Now For A Word" are the two episodes which mention Ion Cannons. Mongoose didn't make them up

 

[Davesaint]

cool 3rd ed centauri main weapons:
giant space watermelon shooters
actually that would be like a rail gun as the watermelons would be huge balls of ice by time of impact
can we get large raspberry jam catapults to jam scouts too

Only if the ship firing the raspberry jam looks like a Winnebego with wings.

 

[Taran]

I never expected this topic to reach 3 pages...

 

[katadder]

that could well be the new sculpt for the brakiri/abbai armageddon ship

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I never expected this topic to reach 3 pages...

It's the way it goes. Topics take on their own life and direction...

 

[KJ]

I take things seriously if I care about them. Accuracy is everything as far as I'm concerned. If you guys are making up your own setting, do what you want; if you're using someone else's (and you are) then respect the fact it's someone else's property and creation and don't mess around with it. Canon (whether or not you hate the term, I do too) is what it is, regardless of whether or not we think it's stupid. It's clearly demonstrated in the canon that the Centauri prefer pulse weapons, so that should be reflected in the game. It's never explicitly stated that they have no beam weapons at all, so it's ok to give them some.

Please don't take this as an attack on you or MGP, I love the new edition of the game. I just get annoyed when people say things like "lol it's a game" to justify messing around with other people's work. No offence intended.

And if we all took your view to its conclusion, the Centauri fleet would consist of only three capital ships, one fighter and 2 shuttle types, while the Narn would have two capital ships, one fighter and one shuttle type - since that's all we see in the show, isn't it? Then we can reduce the Minbari to two hull types, on fighter, one flyer, Brakiri to two hulls and no fighters, Vree to two hulls and no fighters, Drazi to three and a fighter, Pak'ma'ra to one, PsiCorps to one plus a fighter. EA gets the most ship types on-screen with 8 plus 2 different fighters, IA gets six, two of which are unique (and one of them is destroyed...), two others old Minbari cast-offs, leaving the Valen (TLT version) and the White Star. The Abbai, Gaim and Hurr would have to be eliminated from the game altogether, as they have ZERO ships shown in the series. That should make things more to your liking, since we now only have what we've seen on-screen.

After all, it's not OK to give them anything else in their fleets - that would be messing around with someone else's creation.

BTW, with this "more accurate" game, how many times are you going to play it before getting bored with having no choices, or playing what amounts to the same game every time you play?

Like it or not, the Centauri have beam weaponry on their ships, and it's canon, official, approved by JMS and so forth (if you don't believe me, track down a copy of Babylon 5 Wars 2nd edition rulebook and read the intro by JMS). AoG's original designs were official enough to be included in The Lost Tales (Centauri Balvarin and Brakiri Tashkat, in case you weren't paying attention), but I'm pretty sure I didn't see an Adira, Nemesis, Marathon, Kabrokta, Corumai, Juyaca, or any number of ships from MGP on-screen.

If I have to endure Mongoose (no offense) giving everyone cookie-cutter fleets (does every race really NEED a fleet carrier?), you can endure Centauri with canonically-approved beam weaponry.

:lol:

 

[KJ]

(double post)

 

[Taran]

Jeez.
That is not at ALL what he was suggesting. Nor what I was suggesting, either, seeing as David and I happen to agree wholeheartedly.

What was said was "Keep the bloody things inside the established framework!" Add to it from there if you wish (and have the legal right to, but please try to get the creator of the universe involved to sign off on it as well), but for God's sake, try to keep what is observed in the canon as close to the observed canon as possible.


(you might note that the above is Exactly why CBT has lasted so long while spin-offs (MWA and such) didn't)

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Since Taran's answered for me I'll withold the caustic remarks, and merely remind KJ to actually read what I posted instead of putting words in my mouth and then answering with spurious, sarcastic arguments.

 

[Locutus9956]

To answere a whole slew of posts posted since I last checked this thread:

1) Playing the games: Id say play both ATCA and B5Wars as theyre two very different games, ACTA is for fleet combat, B5Wars is for playing fights between a few ships and their fighters in great detail. Fleet action from what Ive read is basically like ACTA but just overcomplicated unnecessarily.

Modelwise, If youre going to play both, mount them on hex stands AoG style (the AOG metal hex stands are superb actually, far far better than the Mongoose bases imho) and simply measuer from the front stem in ACTA.

2) B5 'Feel' of B5Wars vs ACTA: This has been argued to death frankly but I still personally think B5wars is better at capturing the B5Feel. The centauri debate aside, it just got some things so right. In particular, adaptive armour, shadow energy abosprtion, and minbari stealth technology. It all worked beautifully and if you turned what was happeing in the game into an realtime battle in your mind it would have looked JUST like the TV show generally! ACTA is alot of fun and DOES have that special 'B5ness' to it but it just doesnt quite feel as 'real' somehow (and yes I know were talking about a TV show!). Stealth in particular in ACTA (and Im not getting into another stealth debate!) just doesnt feel like 'thats what we see on screen'. Of course ACTA has an advantage in that you actively control sensors as well as just firing weapons and so they could have stealth block sensor locks without directly havning to make it a weapon effect but such is life

3) The Centauri weapons: Ok now this one also has been debated ad infinitum! On the one hand, we never ONCE see a Centauri ship fire a beam weapon on the show and in a couple of episodes there ARE specific references to Cenaturi Ion Cannnons and them being explosive in nature rather than precisce cutting weapons. On the other hand, B5Wars based its designs DIRECTLY off the technical drawings from the CGI from the show where the Primus had 'lasers' noted. This was apparently a mistake but givent the circumstances its hardly AoG's fault! Furthermore JMS SAID in the preface he wrote himself for the AoG rulebook that 'the contents of this book is the definitive B5 Tech reference' (or words to that effect I cant remember EXACTLY what he said and dont have my book on me).

Now as much as I like JMS for giving us B5, if you follow what he says around at times, he strikes me at times as a bit up himself and somewhat arrogant (from what I've heard hes very quick to condemn other peoples handling of B5 in novels and the like and yet I've not yet read a B5 FAN FICTION with a worse overall story than, well, ALL the B5 movies aside from In the Beginning, and Crusade was hardly award winning material....) and has on many occasions contradicted himself in such matters and has flat out said at times that hes not bothered about techy details and just focusses on story.

Dont get me wrong, there is some utter crap out there that gets put forward as novels and when alls said and done B5 is JMSes brainchild and its up to him what he gives his blessing too but some of the comments I've read seem just a teensy bit hypocritical. As much as I love B5 theres alot of very very poor episodes and films in the franchise (its just fortunate that the good ones and overall story are so superb!).

But when alls said and done you cant very well argue for or against Ion Cannons or Twin arrays etc. Twin arrays WERE Ion weaponry, so really, whos to say that that wasnt just the proper name for them? And they were hardly pittiful little weapons, the heavier ones in particular were abosolutely ship killers and even the smaller ones due to sheer RATE OF FIRE.

 

[thatcash]

They put in some beam weaponry but only a few and they were very low powered beams.

Battle lasers...ugh. A little bit less hard hitting, but a more favorable range penalty and high Centauri sensors meant they hit more often. Not my favorite opponent to play against.