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Adarx
Ted's Take
    After the debate was over, Adarx sent an illegal third post to Spacebattles.  He also sent it to me, but asked me not to post it.  I deleted it, never having read it.  I considered it a blatant attempt to have the last word, and considered it less than relevant.

    However, Ted (one of the driving forces behind Babtech) sent me his own rebuttal to Adarx's illegal post and asked me to include it in this section.  In the message below, he is addressing me about Adarx's post.

Copied from SB:

awfully jumpy to claim victory aren't you? I thas been just under 47 hours since I recieved your reply.

Notice that he didn't even bother to submit some kind of evidence of the timing of his receipt.

My, my, my, this is getting old.

No, the argument that you're about to be subjected to is old.

First, I don't care what you claim the post to be, my inbox says it was 21k. Now mind you I did NOT try to use it to claim victory as would other debaters like Dark Star. I suggest we drop it.

Since he's already given that one up, we can just ignore it.

Secondly, your different ship red herring is really annoying. Red herring as defined by your idles website is as follows:

"Idles"?

The red herring is an irrelevant subject, usually introduced in an attempt to drive the argument away from its original subject.  If you feel that the posted definition is incomplete, feel free to post all of it. The way I see it, this is good enough. The fact that the whitestar and the Vorlon Fighter are different ships is irrelevant. Are the Enterprise D and E different ships? Yes. Does their warp work the same? Yes. Are the ISD and SSD different ships? Do their turbolasers work the same way? Yes.  Are the White Star and Vorlon Fighters different ships? Yes. Do their Vorlon defense systems work the same way? Yes. Your attempts at misdirection are apperant to everyone. Give this line up.

This whole line of reasoning *itself* is a red-herring, since you addressed the visibility of shields on Vorlon Fighters despite their differences.

Next, another annoying Red Herring of yours. You posted what Babylon 5 wars has to say about GRAVITIC shields. Thats all well and good except the Vorlons don't use GRAVITIC shields, they us ELECTROMAGNETIC shields.
Irrelevant and off topic.

Adam was right about him coming back with that.  Of course, we already know that they're functionally identical for game purposes.

Among others of yours are Strawman attacks like claiming I said the fighter wasn't destroyed at all.

I don't recall you ever claiming he said that.  He might have claimed that the one that flew into an *500 MT atomic blast* survived at somepoint, but I don't recall the issue ever coming up in this argument.

Another thing you do which is dishonest is post those pictures of the 'debris' without posting the counter evidence. You offered to dig out images for me in the spirit of good sport. I accept your offer. Please post the image of the Drazi ship colliding with the camera with the 'Vorlon Fighter Debris' being closer still to the camera. It would be the last few scenes of the Vorlon Fighter death sequence which you conviniently left off the end of the clip you posted for me.

Is the frame he's looking for in any of the stuff you've *already* made available?  If so, he's once again trying to make you do all the work.

Another interesting point I realized while I was contemplating this technique, the burden of proof is not beyond a reasonable doubt but merely a preponderance of the evidence. The fact that your statement that it was a single volley that destroyed it is not controdicted or supported by the show makes your statement specualtion. You have no evidence it WASN'T damaged
by previous fire. I cannot prove for a fact that it was. I can and have been showing however, the statement you provided about the one volley kill is certainly not set in stone and has much room for specualtion. Yes, I said speculation. Speculation is a valid tool when confronting someone who is using specualtion. You say it wasn't damaged. I can say it was and have just as valid a position as you WITHOUT posting anything to back it up. Why? Because you never posted anything to back yours up. You said it happened the way you like to interpret it because we never see anything to the contrary on the show. I don't know which kind of fallacy that is but it is a fallacy.
Just because we did not see it does NOT mean it didn't happen in that universe. If you want to claim that, let us take it to the most ludicrous extreme. We never see any of the crew on any vessel use a toilet. Therefore they never did. We never see Franklin die, therefore he lived forever. We never see a Mindrider Warship destroyed, therefore none ever were. We never
see... well, you should get the message. We did not see it get hit, therefore it never took damage beforehand. Same concept, same fallacy.

What a load of BS.  He *still* wants to claim that the fighter had taken previous damage based on an appeal to ignorance.  On a completely amusing side note, we *have* seen people use the bathroom in B5.

You want to play with B5Wars gameplay statistics? Fine. Let's play. You claim that it is possible for a Thunderbolt to destroy an undamaged Vorlon Fighter in a single shot with a back hit. Lets ignore the fact that your claim that the shot hit the rear of the fighter is debatable at best.
Fine, we'll assume that the shot magically turned around and hit the Vorlon Fighter in the rear. Now what? Odds of such a hit destroying the Vorlon Fighter are 35:1 against your position. Mine is a more likely scenario, therefore, I win.

Pure idiocy.  You conclusively proved that it was possible for Thunderbolt to destroy a Vorlon fighter in a single shot, and he tries to refute you by claiming that it's *unlikely*!  He may not be smart, but he's got a lot of balls, at least.

You claim that our exchange about the kill almost any fighter in one shot is a leap of logic. Fine, prove it. Show any thoer stat that could possibly allow for a different fighter to survive a hit. Let me list them for you:

Of course he ignores the quoted description of the Thunderbolts weapons, including the statement that it unequivocally *can* destroy any fighter in one shot.

General Durability: Would help you survive when hit.
Firepower: Completely irrelevant.
Maneuverabilty: Helps avoid being hit but not survive it.
Acceleration: Same as above.
Power Output: Completely irrelevant.
Pilot Competancy: Same as above.
Armor: Component of durability.
Shields: Same as above.
Structural integrity: Same as above.
Technology Level: If anything it adds to general durability. Otherwise completely irrelevant.

Did I miss anything or is it reasonable to conclude that the most durable fighters take hit better than the rest? You claim it is a leap of logic fallacy, prove it.

Of course the most durable fighters take a hit better.  This isn't a question of which fighter is more durable, though.  It's a question of whether a Vorlon fighter is so durable that it can *always* survive a direct hit from a Thunderbolt.

You showed an image of a Vorlon Heavy Cruiser preparing to fire. Good for you. That proves what? That it was preparing to fire. You then used a leap of Logic fallacy to conclude that it was firing to intercept.

No, you observed that, whether by accident or design, the Shadow beam hit the weapon field at the front of the Vorlon cruiser, and that field was able to dissipate the Shadow beam without harm to the Vorlon ship.

Enough of this. The odds are stacked against you.

Yet another groundless victory claim.


    This is the first time I've actually read Adarx's illegal third post.  I note that he provided no evidence at all in this post.  I also note that he didn't even quote a single word of my second rebuttal, much less address the points I made.

    He did nitpick one point that I will clarify for you here.  In the Babylon5Wars game, Vorlon ships don't use gravitic shields.  They do use electromagnetic shields like he said.  But what he didn't tell you is that they are functionally identical.

Gravitic shields operate by creating a slight gravity well around the vessel, causing weapons to shift slightly on their courses and either miss or glance off the target.  Functionally, they are identical to EM shields for all purposes, and even share the same type of icon.
Rules Compendium, Page 96
    In other words, my point stands as said.

    He asked for the full clip until the Drazi ship rams the camera.  I don't understand what this has to do with the Vorlon fighter, as it clearly was destroyed and the debris had already scattered by this time.  And the videos I provided way back in the preliminaries went all the way through to the Drazi/camera impact.  This was in my third preliminary post, and Windows tells me that adarx2.avi was created on January 12.

    Nevertheless, as he apparently can't see what is going on, I made a larger clip of the scene and slowed it down to 4 frames per second.  You can see it here.  Or, you can see a large version at normal speed here.

    Note that my statement which was in debate is simply a description of this scene.  We see a Thunderbolt destroy a Vorlon fighter with one volley.  The Burden of Proof was on Adarx to show that what we see in that clip is not what actually happened.

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