An issue has been raised to my attention about the opening of the "On Gossamer Wings" thread - not one that would collapse the main point of the thread, but certainly an important issue nonetheless.

Some have argued that my acquisition of the damaged Ghost was unfair, going so far as to calling it godmoding, and generally being of the opinion that as it would help level the technological playing field it is far too much of an advantage to be allowed into my hands. The argument I have heard against is twofold, and in fact does make sense, but those who have made it wished me to start this thread, so I'll have to do my best to relay it clearly here along with the full circumstances of the stiuation and my rebuttal.

The situation goes like this: After the battle of Teth, a number of Black Dragon ships were destroyed, crippled, or otherwise lost, including at least a few of the powerful "Ghost" ships. The battle of Teth is already controversial, as it was initiated by Kraken, and went off to begin the whole war much to the displeasure of many BDE roleplayers, however it still stands has having happened as part of continuity, thus the losses are official.

During the thread itself, I included a fairly dismissive line about clearing the battle's wreckage from space and (presumably, from the line I gave) collecting the wrecked Coalition and Black Dragon ships. I didn't think much of it at the time, as my focus was more on war preparation and character development, but recently Beff's new character concept (a scientist) got me thinking to how we could get access to Black Dragon technology, and I remembered that we did in fact recover some wreckage from the battle.

As such, I began my part of the thread by describing Regrad overseeing the examination of the one Ghost wreck recovered that was whole enough to study. This is about the full length and bredth of the situation.

Now here, as far as I can tell, is the problem people have with it. Firstly, they say that I didn't put enough work into the recovery of the wrecks - one line, easily lost in the flow of more center-stage character developments, isn't enough to describe what could be vital scale-tipping evidence. As such, it's suggested that the wrecks would never have been recovered at all, and would have remained out in space, because my effort was insufficient.

Secondly, they point to the dissassemblers, the automated system in place aboard ghosts to break them down when wrecked, built specifically to keep them out of enemy hands.

My counterarguments to the points go like this: First off, I most definetly said the line about recovering the wreckage, and if someone had a problem with this it should have been broached by some party then. Yes, BDE has had some difficulty with membership, but if that is the case why should I be penalized for it? There's still room to put in vast writing effort and development in the actual breaking down and examination of the technology, in fact, a whole new character will be involved in the process, which surely shows that the process is being given the respect it deserves.

Maybe it isn't fair that Kraken made this attack, maybe it also isn't fair that he made use of BDE ships in the way he did and did not deal with vital issues like recovering technology from the fight when it would be best to do so - when the statements were made, when they could be changed or dealt with easily - but now is too late to insist that actions were unfair or excessive at Teth, and to retroactively change it in the favour of the Dragons would be just as unfair. At the least, if it can be declared I didn't make the effort to take the wreckage then, then I should be just as entitled to go back and change it so that I can write something that would easily allow me to explain this situation, a formal and proper capture of Dragon technology.

This problem also ties into my rebuttal to the second issue. Kraken wrote nothing on the topic of the dissassemblers, or their deployment. They're automatic, true, which means we can safely assume that they were probably deployed on most ships, reducing them to whatever, but at the same time the whole scenario was left undefined, which means that I could later paint a scenario where perhaps they did not deploy correctly on one ship, leaving it relatively unharmed. During the first boarding issue at Tammar, Omnae said that unless one player defines a situation or circumstance, then the other may (within reason) do so, during a combat situation - the incident then being where I had described the enemy hangar bay as silent and empty, because until then Tir Esias had said nothing to suggest it was filled with activity and fighter launches.

This is a similar situation, where neither side had said much on the fate of the crippled Dragon ships, so I simply took the initiative and said that almost certainly most would be destroyed, but perhaps one was not. Is this me taking an advantage? Yes, but will it win the war by itself? No, probably not, it's unlikely to even level the playing field much in time for it to make a difference - consider that my fleets are already engaged, so any redesigned technology would take so long to be mass-produced that the war would probably be over! The advantage is a fair one to take, however, when you consider how omissions in the past have lead for problems in the future (remember the Bird of Prey with no shields?).

I leave the argument to others, now, but it appears this might require staff involvement, or at least deep debate on some of the critical unwritten rules that underly TRF. There are some things that can only be learnt from experience, or guessing (Deploy fighters, thenraise shields!), but to suddenly declare an action invalid because of a requirement I had not heard of and could never have known is unfair.

Argument stems from:
[url]http://www.therebelfaction.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7388

More specifically:

"Sir? Are you all right?"

Panacka woke up. "Orders... have all ships put on emergency rescue, our primary concern is the recovery of stranded allied vessels and survivors. I'll make further calls for support and relief as soon as possible."

He sighed deeply, it always ended like this, but it hadn't ended yet.

***
The hours of clean-up saw most of the wreckage removed from space, and that which could be salvaged had been. All of that was being handled by ships meant for the task, while the Quadratic remained docked with a key space-station above the planet, a meeting-ground for leaders and representatives.

In his room, filling in a preliminary report to present to the Tethian Parliment as well as the Coalition House of Representatives, Panacka nodded numbly as his officers and fellow captains around him recounted the details. He sat in a simple chair with the officers crowded round, a subdued meeting where they found it difficult to discuss the events they had witnessed.

The argument is less R&D and more a matter that he put no work into the actual capture of any specific vessel beforehand. He claims my ships took a hit in the disassemblers, a nano-sized object located over ever square nanometer of the inards of my ships hull. Basically, his only claim to shuting down the system is as substantial as me claiming to punch you in the blood.

Took a hit to the dissassemblers... thats like me saying I shot you in the blood. We all just assumed you were crippled. Where did I shoot you? In the arm or in the head? The entire vessel is assemblers and disassemblers, if you had read any of those R&D's you could tell that, but again, this is beyond the point.

You mention this offhandedly, where the old role was five thousand words to take a ship. I don't care what you think these new rules are, you dont go from 5000 to 15 words becuase you feel you have done better elsewhere. You do good everywhere you want to do anything in or you dont do it.

Lets see now, for maths sake...

Fury of the Dragon (Teth) - Ends - 12-20-2005
Gossamar Wings - Begins - 03-13-2006

Seems a bit longer than an hour to me...the time it takes for the disassemblers to do their work...

It makes little difference to me. A plot point that could be examined and restructured. It was not my idea nor is it now, however; I hope for a swift resolution.

Actually, this issue might be hard to have resolved, considering how busy people are, but both arguments have been laid out, and since the thread neither relies on nor focuses on the possession of BDE technology (Since with or without the wreck, the tech-gap would still exist, meaning we'd still seek a scientist) I figure we might as well proceed for now.

If a point is reached where something is actually being done with the Ghost (and the parties involved still wish to have the issue looked at), and the issue is still unresolved, then I'll hold off, or dance around it and deal with other stuff instead.

Well when you fired on the ghosts, you mentioned them being turned into scrap metal floating the planet. That would pretty much mean that they were blown into pieces, and in that case, recovering anything sensitive would not be a high probability.

The actual line is "The Ghosts' captains either realized that they had been seen or quickly became the newest addition to Teth's growing scrap-heap."

I wouldn't take that as necessarily meaning they were turned into a fine mist of metallic atoms, it's more a case of hyperbole, and under the new system I took damage to be vague enough that you could attack a large group of ships and just class damage as "Lots" without specifying just how that was distributed or in what way. Of course, it must have been distributed somehow, so if someone later decides to say how that is because no one else has, where's the harm there?

Also, note that there's at least some probability that a combination of battle damage and technical faults would result in the dissassemblers not deploying as intended, and there were a lot of ghosts (and lots of damage being dealt) in that battle, so it's less of a case of me taking a ghost and saying it wasn't dissassembled, more like me taking the only not-disassembled ghost (Does that make sense? My point is emphasis). Anyways, it still isn't too vital, so we can always wait until more decisive opinions are put forth.