The Battle of the Line...

[SuperSaiyaMan12]

We know there were 20,000 humans participating in the battle, but doesn't that seen a little low? Its the last defense of Earth. Shouldn't 200,000 or even 2,000,000 have been marshalled for the defense?

[Aaron]

That's likely just the number of crew on the ships and fighters, not those in any planetary defences. B5 was a little light on the size of fleets and crews.

[Deepcrush]

The battle of the line had some 20,000 ships. Anywhere from one to two thousand of them were capital ships. The rest were fighters and shuttles.

B5 was never really light on the numbers of ships. Remember that each race had only a single home world, not dozens or hundreds like SW or ST. Also remember that by the Battle of the Line the EA had been on the worst end of a very costly war for the last two years.

[Aaron]

Is the actual quote 20,000 people or 20,000 ships?

[Deepcrush]

Ships, Sinclair said that only about 200 ships survived the battle which would mean that almost no one would have died if it was only 20,000 people.

[kostmayer]

In "Late delivery from Avalon", Dr Franklin says that "20'000 of our best went in, and a little over 200 survived". It always sounded to me like he was talking about people, not ships.

Can I ask what episode Sinclair stated that 200 ships, survived, I have them all to hand atm.

[Aaron]

In "Late delivery from Avalon", Dr Franklin says that "20'000 of our best went in, and a little over 200 survived". It always sounded to me like he was talking about people, not ships.

That's what I got out of it as well.

[kostmayer]

I googled the quote, and it seems there's some pretty - shall we say "heated" debate about the subject elsewhere on the net. If you think we're bad behaved sometimes you should read some of those boards.

[Aaron]

Got any links?

[kostmayer]

http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=74410

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 0&start=50

[Aaron]

Ugh, Spacebattles.

[Deepcrush]

The whole "Only two hundred" thing counting people wouldn't make sense since a Nova Class has more crew then that. Not to mention that we have more then one Earth Cruiser surviving which has a crew around that number.

[Sionnach Glic]

I googled the quote, and it seems there's some pretty - shall we say "heated" debate about the subject elsewhere on the net. If you think we're bad behaved sometimes you should read some of those boards.

Damn right. Even the most totaly out of it Trek or Wars fans are nothing compared to the worst of the Babylon 5 fans.

[Deepcrush]

I'm going to have too disagree with that one Rochey. IMO, SW and ST fans tend to take the cake on crazy.

[Tsukiyumi]

Damn right. Even the most totaly out of it Trek or Wars fans are nothing compared to the worst of the Babylon 5 fans.

You're getting awful close to versus territory there, Rochey.