Sci-Fi Tech Center F.A.Q.

 

 

Yes, it's a FAQ. More like an explaination, really. And let's bring up the questions......

 

Q: Who are you and why did you put up this page?

A: I am an eighteen-year old sci-fi fan from Central Florida (and not Palm Beach County, so I don't want to hear anything about not being able to fill out a ballot!). My parents only had two kids, and lucky me, I got to be the first. At least I have a little brother instead of a little sister.

As for why I put up this page, because it was something no one had done before. Everyone does analysis for the "Big Three", Star Trek, Star Wars, and my personal favorite, Babylon-5. But what about the little guys? Starship Troopers, Galaxy Quest, Men in Black, they are all very cool sci-fi movies and yet no one had bothered to analyze how their weapons work, or how big their ships are.

Ironically, the page started as just a little corner of my fanfic webpage. I started out with the Starship Troopers bazooka nuke blast radius calculations, mostly to shut up one of the pathetic losers at Spacebattles.com's web board. Then I got my hands on a video capture card, and decided to do some serious work. This was when Xoom became NBCi and their FTP went down, so I went back to Spaceports and set this up as the Sci-Fi Tech Center. It's also become a place to house my flame war page and any essays/rants I made write up.

Q: Why do you only have a handful of actual analysis pages on here?

A: These things take time, and I don't put all of my time into this site. You don't just type up a technical page, or scale a starship, in a minute. You have to make sure you have the right picture angles, the right pixel counts, or that the calculations are correct, etc. Hell, for about a month my N.S.E.A. Protector scaling page had the wrong length due to a calculation error, which I only found when I decided to do a lower limit to it's size, showing what happens when you're not careful. And now it's even less likely I'll be getting new stuff since I don't have a vid capture card anymore, and it will be a while before I get another one or vid capture equipment like the Dazzle.

Q: Why don't you put more time into this site?

A: Why should I? It's a hobby, not my entire life. Besides, I enjoy writing more than I do going over various technical issues.

Q: Why writing over technical analysis?

A: Because in tech analysis, I'm merely going over someone else's work. In writing, I'm creating my own work. While in order to do proper and objective tech analysis one must stick completely to the facts, in writing the imagination is what matters.

Q: But fanfics come a dime a dozen. Good tech analysis is more visible.

A: True, there are a lot of fanfics out there, and more people seem to know Mike Wong for his tech site than for his excellent "Conquest" fanfic. But I will forgo modesty and admit that I have garnered many readers, particularly for my MechWarrior: Scorched Earth fanfiction. Scorched Earth has gotten popular enough that it has literally taken a life of it's own, to the point that I have no less than four people already writing fanfiction based on the Scorched Earth universe, because while it is linked to the pre-established BattleTech universe, Scorched Earth is my creation. And if I had to choose between it and this site, the Sci-Fi Tech Center would be no more.

Q: Don't you know that Mike Wong/Brian Young are full of shit and can't be trusted?

A: You have a problem with Mike and/or Brian, take it up with them, not me.

Q: You should link to Tigerclaws' B5 tech site. It's more reliable than Brian Young's.

A: If that's your opinion, I can't change it. But I completely disagree.

Q: Even Mike Wong has a link to Tigerclaws, and contributes to his site.

A: That's Mike's business, not mine. As for "contributing", he checks TC's math, not his method. TC's methods are what concern me.

Q: Why don't you like Tigerclaws?

A: I have trouble respecting a person who fails to realize that an explosion is spherical and uses arbitrary multipliers in his weapon and defensive calculations. Even the people who frequent his message board have stated they feel his numbers are overblown.

Q: Don't you know that Brian Young is just a Warsie trying to make B5 look bad so that he can claim SW could beat it?

A: Don't you know that spouting such conspiratorial nonsense makes you look stupid? Yes, Brian likes Star Wars, but he also likes Babylon-5, and does not feel he needs to augment it's firepower just so it can "beat" Star Wars or Star Trek. Stop going to vs. debate forums and just like the show for Christ's sake.

Q: Sony's official Starship Troopers site says that the Rodger Young is an Aries-class starship and is 550 meters long, not 1200 or 1600.

A: I know.

Q: This means you screwed up when you scaled.

A: I've checked the scaling. The calculations were correct, the pixel counts were correct. I scaled using the far ship in my strip-to-height scaling shot, and found that it's stated size was even larger than the original ship I had used. My scaling is correct.

Q: They're the official site. They're right, you're wrong. You should change your page to match their length.

A: If you want, take them over me. But I do not feel that their scaling was done right (if at all), and refuse to change anything on my page. Much like how most Star Wars analyzers do not use the data from West End Games' role-playing material. It is considered "official", but it's still wrong because it has improper sizes for the Super Star Destroyer and other ships, and indeed has been overruled by later tech material.

Q: Why won't you change the number? Can't admit you were wrong, can you?

A: Yes, I can admit when I'm wrong. But I'm not wrong. I carefully scaled the Rodger Young. Ironically, the number given by the site is close to the subjective estimates that Brian Young and I had prior to my using the pixel counts in scaling. The number given makes me wonder if the person who wrote it bothered to actually scale the ship as it is in the movie.

Q: You're just doing this to make the ship look bigger. Stop deluding yourself and accept the official number.

A: No on both counts. Unless you can find a problem with my scaling, a legitimate problem and not a nitpick, don't even bother trying to pursue this.

Q: Why is there only one person in the Hall of Morons and Assholes?

A: Because I haven't had time to add my second addition.

Q: Why do you hate MechWarrior 4 so much? It's going to be cool.

A: I hate it that the idiots who made the thing took away the freedom of design. Maybe their harebrained Hardpoint System works for normal BattleMechs, but the idea of the OmniMech is modular weapon configuration, allowing for quick and easy re-configuration to fit the situation. And spending time with the asskissers at Dropshipcommand has hardened my stance. I am not going to waste my money buying what I consider to be the greatest disgrace to the MechWarrior line.

Q: Why do you hang out at Spacebattles.com? I've heard that only morons even go there to debate.

A: That is a load of steaming crap, and sounds like something they say on the alt.startrek.vs.starwars newsgroup. What groups like that (or to be precise and fair, their fanatical members) fail to realize is that Spacebattles was not created to be a vs. debating community but a general sci-fi community with ties to 3D art. Yes, vs. debating became prominent (it's expected for a site dealing in animated movies depicting ships from different universes fighting), but if tomorrow we banned vs. debating, Spacebattles would still function.

Q: Mike Wong says that the Empire would easily crush the Federation. The movies at Spacebattles are dead wrong, and you're misleading people by not doing things the right way.

A: Mike himself likes Spacebattles (thus the reason he links to it). If he disagreed with how Johan Alm does SWvs.ST, I think he'd probably have done something about it by now. As for our movies being "wrong", who cares? If you don't like watching the movies, don't. Plenty of people enjoy them, and even those who participate in vs. debates acknowledge that the movies we have should not be forced to adhere to projected winners in the debates. In fact, the only people I know who have disagreed were all extremist fans, especially the extremists at ASVS.

Q: What do you think about vs. debating?

A: It can be a good intellectual exercise, or in some cases, a very good laugh. But like all things, it can be taken too far. I have had to deal with many fools who take this seriously, and some actually came up with a lameduck "disclaimer" for Spacebattles that the movies made there are not "canon" and do not reflect the "true results" of how the battles would go. This was what I considered to be the pinnacle of stupidity: it's fiction, and it doesn't matter. If you don't have fun vs. debating, then you should find something else to do.

Q: Who do you think would win between Star Trek and Star Wars?

A: I really don't care, but I feel that in an allout war involving every single weapon at their disposal, the Star Trek universe would wipe the floor with the Star Wars universe. The reason is simple: omnipotent beings.

Q: What is your favorite sci-fi?

A: Babylon-5. With BattleTech (aka the MechWarrior universe) coming in second place.

Q: What are your hobbies outside of tech analysis and writing?

A: Hanging out at Spacebattles plus chatting on ICQ with people I know, writing, making music mixes from various soundtracks, writing, watching documentaries, and did I mention writing? :-)

Q: Are you crazy?

A: Sometimes. :-)