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Why are Shadows First Ones?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Well, I've never played that game or read the Compendium, but I'd say "canon" is anything that JMS feels "bound" by (to not contradict) in the future. e.g. I hope the three Del Rey trilogies are "canon." Any parts of the game that pass this test of canon, are parts with which I'd want to become acquainted.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Oh, my. Taking your definition, the show itself isn't canon, since JMS later choose not to be bound by the story about the Black Star's destruction as told in "Points of Departure" when he did "In the Beginning"...


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Isn't this game composed of many parts, that are are all sold separately, and so you're never sure if you have all of it?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Well, you can be sure about that at least - there are no secret supplements
wink.gif

But it IS composed of many parts, and you could easily miss something...


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>What do you have to buy to get the complete game?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
...good thing trhey bring out compilations containing at least all the rules and all the ship comtrol sheets on a regular basis, for those who can't or won't afford to get everything AoG makes. Currently you can play the whole game wit the 'Rules Compendium', the counters from the 'Reinforcement Pack' and the SCS from the 'Ships of the Fleet' (and soon there will be 'SotF2' for the ships made in 2001, which are not in SotF cause that one came out fall 2000)


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Aren't there miniature ships used as playing pieces or something? Are the ships also canon?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Depends who you ask and how you define canon. IMO these are canon unless/until JMS says "no such ship in my universe". And who knows, maybe sometime in the future one of these AoG-made ships will even show up in a TV-B5 production (though I wouldn't count on it, because it would mean license entanglements those in charge will probably wish to avoid).
But the minis are very pleasent to look at once painted, even though AoG had to stop producintg the large scale line due to lack of interest (there are two starship ranges, small "Fleet-Action Scale" minis ranging from ¼ inch to 2 inch in length, and the older "Full Scale" ranging from 1 inch to 7 inch or so in length - sales on the latter went down after introduction of the former, since the small ships are much, much better to play the game with, cheaper so players can afford larger fleets, etc., and the few people like me who still bought the large ones to have nice B5 ships around just weren't enough to justify the cost of making new designs for AoG
frown.gif
)


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>A nanobot doing a Dr. Frankenstein from the cellular level? Highly unlikely, since the bunny would not attain "life." It'd just be a lump of assembled flesh.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Are you that sure about this? Watch or read "Frankenstein" again - his creature also was just an lump of assembled flesh, but became alive once the lightning shocked it's heart into working. So might the bunny - IF there is nothing else to life, no spirit or soul, just chemical processes in the brain, which at this time we do not know.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>It's more likely that a nanobot could do an artificial insemination, and start a baby bunny, but then again, so could a biologist, and that's starting from sperm and an egg, building blocks which the nanobot did not assemble, and that's also not creating an adult bunny directly from cells.
We're dealing with the spark of life, the soul, and what is required for sentience here, and nobody really "knows" the answers.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Exactly.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>So, I'm going to drop it and enjoy the story.
JMS will be OK as long as he doesn't try to completely explain the path to sentience.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Which is probably why he took care not to.
wink.gif


------------------
"ShadowScout"
Roman Alexander

"Go on, watch out for Shadows - we'll watch you right back!"

What do you want?
ShadowShips!
 
What is and is not canon is often on a sliding scale. The show is as canon as it gets. Changes are not made unless necessary to the story and most can be explained away(Yes at the time two casts probably was not supposed to be an slight of the workers by Lenier but within the story that explanation works). The books, trilogies and to Dream, are somewhat less so in that a few details have been changed and small mistakes were made but JMS has attempted to stay true to them as much as possible. Some of the comics, the ones JMS directly supervised, are in the same boat as the books. The short stories are canon unless a mistake was made, I don't remember any. Yes even Space, Time etc. which seemed to be written in part to shut up the 'I don't want death to mean anything so Marcus can come back' crowd.

The game was never released, changed by the gamers to make the game better, was a freakin' video game probably not to be seen by all that many people, and addressed story details that JMS would likely not have to address in any future shows or stories.

I would not only take it with a grain of salt but a bolder of salt.

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"I used to be known as Eric, the waiter with hands for hands." The waiter with stubs for hands in The Kids in the Hall
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>The game was never released, changed by the gamers to make the game better, was a freakin' video game probably not to be seen by all that many people, and addressed story details that JMS would likely not have to address in any future shows or stories.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Wrong Game!
The never released PC game was "Into the Fire" from Sierra, while I was talking about "Babylon 5 Wars" the certainly releasesd space combat boardgame from AoG (which BtW has already spawned two other related games - "Fleet Action" for large scale battles and "GROPOS" for B5 ground combat...). And the guys at AoG take great care not to do stuff that they know will clash with things JMS will do (that's why they have almost no post-show stuff, since that's where JMS is active with his following stories Crusade and now LotR)

------------------
"ShadowScout"
Roman Alexander

"Go on, watch out for Shadows - we'll watch you right back!"

What do you want?
ShadowShips!
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Well, I've never played that game or read the Compendium, but I'd say "canon" is anything that JMS feels "bound" by (to not contradict) in the future. e.g. I hope the three Del Rey trilogies are "canon." Any parts of the game that pass this test of canon, are parts with which I'd want to become acquainted.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ShadowScout:
Oh, my. Taking your definition, the show itself isn't canon, since JMS later choose not to be bound by the story about the Black Star's destruction as told in "Points of Departure" when he did "In the Beginning"...
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Alright, please spell it out for me.
blush.gif
Otherwise, I'm going to have to go back and rewatch both, and I don't have time today to do that.
frown.gif



BTW, this game, B5W is HUGE. The product list
http://www.agentsofgaming.com/b5wstock.htm

is 18 pages long. I bet, if you bought everything, you could sink several thousand dollars into it.
shocked.gif



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KoshN
-------------
Vorlon Empire

"To Live and Die in Starlight"
pilot movie for "Babylon 5 - The Legend of the Rangers"
January 19, 2002 at 9PM on The Sci-Fi Channel. http://www.scifi.com/b5rangers/


[This message has been edited by KoshN (edited November 19, 2001).]
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Alright, please spell it out for me. Otherwise, I'm going to have to go back and rewatch both, and I don't have time today to do that.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
PoD - the BS was destroyed by Sheridan when he mined the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter as a tactic he thought about to defeat Minbari stealth tech (since mines need no lock on which that tech denies, they just cover enough space ans blow as soon as the ship gets close enough), along with two escort vessels. (and considering the Minbari did enter the solar system only at the end, this must have happened shortly before the battle of the line)
ItB - the BS was destroyed in another system, early in the war, alone, and the method used was not so much a well thought out tactic, but a desperation move.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>BTW, this game, B5W is HUGE. The product list is 18 pages long. I bet, if you bought everything, you could sink several thousand dollars into it<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
True.
Which is why only complete B5 fanatics do that.
wink.gif

The rest only buys what they need - and if they're not sure, there is a link to the B5W Forums, where everybody can ask those who know what's in the supplements and in which supplements is what, so they can decide what to best spend their money on.

------------------
"ShadowScout"
Roman Alexander

"Go on, watch out for Shadows - we'll watch you right back!"

What do you want?
ShadowShips!
 
Hey i have a question!In The Long Twilight Struggle those three narn cruisers fire there forward particle lasers which converge on the tenticle and blow it off this ship had to be dragged away by another BC.Any thoughts on why this disabled the crab

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We live for the one!We die for the one!
 
Pain. The pilot might not be used to dealing with pain and affected by it more than others. Besides they did not exactly need its help to win the battle. While the close integration of the pilot and ship gives added control it also can make the ship more vulnerable.

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"Crying isn't gonna get your dog back. Unless your tears smell like dog food. So you can sit here eating can after can of dog food until your tears smell like dog food or you can go out there and find your dog."-Homer in The Canine Mutiny
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Hey i have a question!In The Long Twilight Struggle those three narn cruisers fire there forward particle lasers which converge on the tenticle and blow it off this ship had to be dragged away by another BC.Any thoughts on why this disabled the crab

---------------------------------------------

Pain. The pilot might not be used to dealing with pain and affected by it more than others. Besides they did not exactly need its help to win the battle. While the close integration of the pilot and ship gives added control it also can make the ship more vulnerable.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Exactly. Each "pilot" deals with pain in it's own way - some go into shock, some go berzerk, most try to ignore it and complete their mission (though they usually do so after they blow whatever ship hurt them out of the void).
On another note, loosing a tendril is also one of the nastier "wounds" a ShadowShip can suffer, since it's phasing drive is tied in with those tendrils, and if they loose one it cannot function correctly. Then the ship needs another one to "carry" it into hyperspace until it grows it's tendril back (which usually takes at least a week or so...)

------------------
"ShadowScout"
Roman Alexander

"Go on, watch out for Shadows - we'll watch you right back!"

What do you want?
ShadowShips!
 
does anyone have any idea why the shadows would use ships controlled by sentient beings rather than fully sentient ships themselves, like the vorlons?

i ask because this seems revelant. it either means that the shadows never had the number to pilot ships themselves (which is very possible, seeing they had only one known habited planet, and the vorlons had an empire), or it could mean something more logical, that they were SAVING their 'big guns' so to speak for the real battle, which never really hit them.

i know many would mention the 'big last battle', but they and the vorlons were 'tricked' into fighting one another by the alliance, niether side planned direct confrontation. that would mean that all the shadow ships weve seen, werent meant for fighting 'first ones', they were meant for keeping the younger races in line. and THAT would mean that weve never seen what kind of weapons the shadows built for fighting other first ones. we know they have some kind of weapons to hold off most of the other first ones (they did it during the earlier shadow war), we just havent seen them (i suspect whatever way they killed kosh was one of these weapons on a smaller scale, like a handgun or something of the sort). make any sense?




------------------
"its not enough that i succeed, everyone else must fail for me to achieve happiness"

"better to let a thousand guilty go free than to punish one innocent"

"the best way to find the REAL boss of any establishment is not to look for they person who signs the checks, but to look for the person who hires the lawyers."

"i say live and let live, and anyone who cant live by that should be taken out into the street and shot in the head"- george carlin
 
Best guess has always been that it is just Cheaper and Easier to plug someone into the ship than to grow a brain for the ships.

It's not like the Shadows (or the Vorlons, for that matter) really Cared much about how many "primitive" people they killed.

They cared about the end result, 1,000,000 years in the future.
Us monkeys and lab rats just didn't matter all that much.

It does imply that the Shadows were the more "solitary" race. When they rode in those ships, it was just a taxi ride.

The Vorlons, OTOH, had intelligent ships so they could Converse and have companions on long journeys.

As far as the Weapons each used, it's very possible that they had taken the tech as far as they cared to.
After all, if the weapons could be made any more powerful at the Small sizes we saw, they wouln't have needed to build those Planet Killers so BIG.
There are physical limits to the amount of energy that can be released by any weapon.
Usually the point at which the weapon does more damage to the person Behind it than to the one in Front.

Until Kosh, neither side had killed or been killed in many years.
The First Ones had their wars and finished them millions of years ago.
Like ourselves with our "Mutual Assured Destruction" policies during the Cold War, each First One race knew that wars between them were simple mutual suicide.



------------------
The 3 most common elements in the Universe:
Hydrogen, Greed, Stupidity!
 
According to the first Psi Corps book


<table bgcolor=black><tr><td bgcolor=black><font size=1 color=white>Spoiler:</font></td></tr><tr><td><font size=2 color=black>

A vorlon was killed on Earth, his encounter suit was found on Mars. The Vorlon was helping to create the telepaths.
</font></td></tr></table>



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Andrew Swallow
 
Bakana managed to say exactly what I thought. It was an extremely cheap way to build ships with better judgement. They wanted to build more ships more cheaply.

The Vorlons chose to build an intelligent ship with a large degree of free will, the Shadows simply removed free will from an already intelligent being.

I guess it somehow suited their ideology. They would help their allies "evolve" but it would come at the cost of providing someone to pilot the battlecrabs.

---

In the end the Shadow approach was truly failed technology as Kosh put it. Not only would a sentient being deprived of sentience (Shadow vessel) have worse judgement than an artificial intellect complemented by its pilot (Vorlon ship), but they would also be vulnerable to pain and telepathic interference.

---

Theorising about Shadow and Vorlon tech also gave me a curious way to explain why Z'ha'dum was in such a lousy condition -- as if it had suffered a severe attack in the past.

Let us assume that the Shadows are waiting for a Minbari attack against Z'ha'dum. There must be a fairly large fleet there. Now what would happen if someone with knowledge from the future, assistance from the Vorlons (and perhaps a few technomages) would "pluck out" the Eye...

...for example calculate its hyperspace location and open a nice little jump point inside it. With the Eye gone, Shadow fleets would follow their pre-programmed urge to destroy. They would destroy everything in sight and eventually themselves -- which would explain the Shadows' unexpected defeat and rather large holes in Z'ha'dum. The Shadows would be shocked enough to halt the war, withdraw for 1000 years and build more than one Eye in the next time.

Just a crazy idea. I may perhaps use it in fanfic.

[This message has been edited by Lennier (edited December 01, 2001).]
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>does anyone have any idea why the shadows would use ships controlled by sentient beings rather than fully sentient ships themselves, like the vorlons?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
My theorie is that it is quicker to build their ships this way, allowing them to go from zero fleet (hibernation) to full active in record time. No need to let the ship learn to build it's sentience, just plug in an adult CPU...
And also the ships used by the vorlons are not entirely sentient - they alone are on the mental level of a well trained dog; good enough for some tasks, but need extra guidance by an Vorlon to function at full efficiency; which of course puts the Vorlon in question in danger if there's fighting.
The Shadows avoid this by using a CPU-Pilot, which gives their ships the mental level of the person used for this while keeping the Shadows out of the line of fire. (and has only the drawback of being vulvnerable to teep jamming)
BtW, in ancient times the Shadows actually Did pilot their ships, which made them almost invulvnerabe to teep interferance. The ships they used also were more powerful then, since the ones we see in the show are constructed for quick quantity instead of taking the extra time to get the best possible quality (why should they care - it's not their butt anyway, it's just a YR CPU). But in old times, when it was them who sat in these ships, they did make them better...

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"ShadowScout"
Roman Alexander

"Go on, watch out for Shadows - we'll watch you right back!"

What do you want?
ShadowShips!
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ShadowScout:
BtW, in ancient times the Shadows actually Did pilot their ships, which made them almost invulvnerabe to teep interferance. The ships they used also were more powerful then, since the ones we see in the show are constructed for quick quantity instead of taking the extra time to get the best possible quality (why should they care - it's not their butt anyway, it's just a YR CPU). But in old times, when it was them who sat in these ships, they did make them better...

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

So the ones Valen fought were tougher, or are you speaking more ancient than 1000 years ago, as in when the First Ones (not just the Vorlons) fought the Shadows?

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KoshN
-------------
Vorlon Empire

"To Live and Die in Starlight"
pilot movie for "Babylon 5 - The Legend of the Rangers"
January 19, 2002 at 9PM on The Sci-Fi Channel.
http://www.scifi.com/b5rangers/
 
The idea of it being cheaper to make the ships that way doesnt really strike me as apllying, since I doubt very much the shadows were tight for finances. im pretty sure they had about as much use for money as the vorlons did.

isnt it possible that those ships were built in the way that they were (having sentient beings as CPUs) because the primary purpose of the ships was to deal with lesser younger species, usually the very species that the CPUs were made of. i have a theory that the shadows probably had other more powerful types of weapons to deal with first ones, like the vorlons specifically, its just that when the last war happened, they hadnt planned on dealing with other first ones, and hence had to utilize there nearest assets, those being the ships built for dealing with younger species. its kind of like how shepards use dogs to round up lambs, rather than using a a motorcycle or such.sound viable?

------------------
"its not enough that i succeed, everyone else must fail for me to achieve happiness"

"better to let a thousand guilty go free than to punish one innocent"

"the best way to find the REAL boss of any establishment is not to look for they person who signs the checks, but to look for the person who hires the lawyers."

"i say live and let live, and anyone who cant live by that should be taken out into the street and shot in the head"- george carlin
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>So the ones Valen fought were tougher, or are you speaking more ancient than 1000 years ago, as in when the First Ones (not just the Vorlons) fought the Shadows?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Loong before that.
The Shadows stopped piloting their own ships shortly before and during the Kirishiac War, many, many millenia before Valen's time.
It was during a time when the other first ones were not yet at the pinnacle of their powers and technology (Kirishiac hadn't yet developed hyper-dense armor, Torvalus were still testing their cloaking shading field, Vorlons had only just grown their better & bigger ships...), while the Shadows had already reached theirs (except the Triad -older than Shadows- and the Walkers -almost as old as Shadows- of course).


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>The idea of it being cheaper to make the ships that way doesnt really strike me as apllying, since I doubt very much the shadows were tight for finances.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Not cheaper, quicker. Once they stopped piloting their own ships (and risking their own butts), they started embracing a "Quantity over Quality" approach; especially since they began using these ships as disposable units in their quest to kick over the galactic anthill...

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"ShadowScout"
Roman Alexander

"Go on, watch out for Shadows - we'll watch you right back!"

What do you want?
ShadowShips!
 
who are those other first ones you mentioned? i noticed you mentioned a species called the triads, whom you said were older than the shadows, but didnt both delenn and lorien say that the shadows were the first to walk among the stars, after loriens race that is?

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"its not enough that i succeed, everyone else must fail for me to achieve happiness"

"better to let a thousand guilty go free than to punish one innocent"

"the best way to find the REAL boss of any establishment is not to look for they person who signs the checks, but to look for the person who hires the lawyers."

"i say live and let live, and anyone who cant live by that should be taken out into the street and shot in the head"- george carlin
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR> but didnt both delenn and lorien say that the shadows were the first to walk among the stars, after loriens race that is? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Delenn did, Lorien wasn't very specific.

Of course, Delenn only knew what Kosh & Ulkesh told the Minbari.
While Kosh had no reason (that we know of) to lie, we can be fairly sure that the Minbari were told "Only what they Needed to Know."



------------------
The 3 most common elements in the Universe:
Hydrogen, Greed, Stupidity!
 
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