Worst ship design in sci-fi?

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:28 pm

Uh....what possible reason would the Council have for doing that? That would be pretty much equivalent to saying the Iraq war was WW3, and trying to keep the public from realising that it's just some little country in the ass-end of nowhere. It's impossible.

Again, moving back to the main topic, I'd like to nominate the Victory class from B5. Not a bad ship overall, but the fact that firing the main gun means the ship loses all power for three whole minutes is massively stupid.

Reliant121 · Post by **Reliant121** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:40 pm

Yes that has got to be one of the biggest cock-ups in Science fiction.

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:57 pm

Rochey wrote:Uh....what possible reason would the Council have for doing that? That would be pretty much equivalent to saying the Iraq war was WW3, and trying to keep the public from realising that it's just some little country in the ass-end of nowhere. It's impossible.

That's Traviss for you. What's funny is that she tried to retcon mentions of quintillions of battle droids in "General Grievous: Lord of War" as "bad intelligence", despite the fact that said numbers were Grievous' own knowledge of the numbers of troops under his command.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:41 pm

Her latest book features some accountant (or something) hearing the word 'quintillions' and doing some "calculations" that "proved" that the numbers are imposible, or something. Of course, we never ger to see these supposed calcs.
I can see if I can find it, if you like.

Reliant121 · Post by **Reliant121** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 8:04 pm

I'm happy knowing that this woman sounds like a complete clot.

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:24 pm

Rochey wrote:Her latest book features some accountant (or something) hearing the word 'quintillions' and doing some "calculations" that "proved" that the numbers are imposible, or something. Of course, we never ger to see these supposed calcs.
I can see if I can find it, if you like.

The offending passage is:

Karen Traviss wrote:"Moron," she mumbled at the screen. The analyst was throwing out numbers, huge ones, and because her business was numbers she found herself reaching for a stylus and doodling a few figures on the nearest datapad. "I bet you don't even know how many zeros there are in a quintillion."

She did, though, and numbers comforted her, so she considered his argument. Then she started wondering how much metal went into a battle droid--forty kilos, at the very least--and multiplied it by a quintillion just out of curiosity, and then started wondering where all that metal came from if 90 percent of the average rocky planet was silica, and not all the remaining 10 percent was the right kind of metal, or could be mined anyway, and mining and ore processing took up a lot of resources...

From here. As for the actual numbers Traviss fails to provide:

The Earth's crust masses about 2.6E22 kg, and is about 5% iron, giving 1.3E21 kg of iron per planet. Traviss assumes a mass of 40 kg per battle droid (which I believe is unrealistic - that's far lighter than the average adult human), which makes a qunitillion-strong Separatist army 40 quntillion kg - 4E19 kg if you're using the most commonly used definition. There's enough iron in the Earth's crust to build the entire Separatist army thirty times over, using her assumptions. Not to mention that the Separatists control thousands of inhabited planets according to AotC, and probably several times that number of uninhabitable Mercury-type rocks. "Complete clot" doesn't even begin to describe her stupidity.

Post by **Mikey** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:51 pm

And yet, supposedly, you're the one who should have your trachea torn out for being able to figure that out correctly.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:58 pm

Yeah, that's where I found it, too, Seafort.

What. A. Dunce.

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 10:11 pm

Indeed - it would be a very long post if all Traviss' stupidity were to be analysed and debunked in even limited detail.

mwhittington · Post by **mwhittington** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 2:30 am

Wow, a woman dumber than Janeway! That's amazing!

mwhittington · Post by **mwhittington** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 2:44 am

Personally, I love Timothy Zahn's books. That boy can write a good yarn! I wonder what you'd get if Tom Clancy wrote some Star Wars or Star Trek novels. I love his books, I've got all of his Jack Ryan novels, and a lot of his other fictional works, like his NetForce series.

RK_Striker_JK_5 · Post by **RK_Striker_JK_5** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 3:18 am

Zahn's books rocked, yes.

Rocheyy, any stats on the Omega? reliant, info on the Narn ship?

Reliant121 · Post by **Reliant121** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 4:09 pm

mwhittington wrote:Wow, a woman dumber than Janeway! That's amazing!

I didn't think she was that bad. A bit patriotic and traditional but she had more fire than Picard, in my view.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 4:49 pm

Mwhittington wrote:Wow, a woman dumber than Janeway! That's amazing!

What's even more horrifying is that she's a real person.

RK: What stats do you want? Armament, size, and stuff like that?

kostmayer · Post by **kostmayer** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 5:44 pm

Reliant121 wrote:
mwhittington wrote:Wow, a woman dumber than Janeway! That's amazing!
I didn't think she was that bad. A bit patriotic and traditional but she had more fire than Picard, in my view.

Pah, I'd like to see her take on two armed Klingons single handedly.