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ultrafilter posted:Londo's guards were able to wipe out a couple Shadows pretty easily, but B5's entire security team was overwhelmed by one Vorlon. That doesn't really say much about how the two races would fare in ship-to-ship combat, but it's consistent with the idea that the Vorlons are fewer in number but much stronger than the Shadows. Londo's guards chief weapon is surprise.
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Apr 24, 2021 15:26
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ultrafilter posted:Londo's guards were able to wipe out a couple Shadows pretty easily, but B5's entire security team was overwhelmed by one Vorlon. That doesn't really say much about how the two races would fare in ship-to-ship combat, but it's consistent with the idea that the Vorlons are fewer in number but much stronger than the Shadows. It's consistent with who they are as a whole; The Shadows are weaker, so they work from behind the scenes to make others do their bidding while they stay safe. The Vorlons are confident in their power and "let" the younger races do as they please so long as they behave, acting like guiding parents. And if the kids don't behave, the Vorlons can just discipline them without fear of reprisal (eg; Deathwalker).
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Apr 24, 2021 15:30
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The Centauri PPGs seem to fire much faster than human models. There's no way to compare the power of each shot, but it seems possible that they had an easier time killing Shadows than the humans did Vorlons because their hand weapons are a couple centuries more advanced.
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Apr 24, 2021 15:37
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Vorlons seem to be energy beings while the Shadows still seem to have regular bodies, unless being invisible also lets them phase shift.
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Apr 24, 2021 19:33
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ultrafilter posted:Londo's guards were able to wipe out a couple Shadows pretty easily, but B5's entire security team was overwhelmed by one Vorlon. That doesn't really say much about how the two races would fare in ship-to-ship combat, but it's consistent with the idea that the Vorlons are fewer in number but much stronger than the Shadows. I'm not sure about the shadows' strength. In the episode the long dark the invisible shadow creature/servant takes a lot of fire before being wiped out. It may simply be that the shadows have a wider variety of physical prowess than the vorlons.
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Apr 24, 2021 20:54
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ultrafilter posted:Londo's guards were able to wipe out a couple Shadows pretty easily, but B5's entire security team was overwhelmed by one Vorlon. That doesn't really say much about how the two races would fare in ship-to-ship combat, but it's consistent with the idea that the Vorlons are fewer in number but much stronger than the Shadows. Iirc, the Centauri were second only to the Minbari when it came to tech, so much so that the Narns became a major power on the back of derelicts Centauritech. So their weapons are probably much more powerful than whatever EarthForce had access to.
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Apr 24, 2021 21:02
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Okay, first of all, all of you suck not getting the monty python reference. The shadows that Londo's guards merk are caught entirely by surprise, which is going to go a long way to killing something.
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Apr 24, 2021 21:21
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CainFortea posted:Okay, first of all, all of you suck not getting the monty python reference. No we got it. We’re just ignoring it 
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Apr 24, 2021 21:27
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Kibayasu posted:No we got it. 
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Apr 24, 2021 21:29
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e X posted:Iirc, the Centauri were second only to the Minbari when it came to tech, so much so that the Narns became a major power on the back of derelicts Centauritech. So their weapons are probably much more powerful than whatever EarthForce had access to. You can probably use much stronger weapons when there's no hull integrity to worry about.
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Apr 24, 2021 21:38
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The weapons point is fair, but the B5 crew still had to mainline the station's reactor into a huge trap just to crack Kosh 2's encounter suit. I don't think Centauri PPGs are that good.
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Apr 25, 2021 02:02
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McSpanky posted:The weapons point is fair, but the B5 crew still had to mainline the station's reactor into a huge trap just to crack Kosh 2's encounter suit. I don't think Centauri PPGs are that good. And nothing they did actually managed much more than cracking the encounter suit. It was the remnants of Kosh and bits of Sheridan and Lorien together that grappled with Ulkesh, and they appear to have destroyed each other. A Vorlon planning to go into combat might well put a piece of himself elsewhere, maybe enough to be reconstructed later. Note that the Shadows seem to have had little trouble killing most of Kosh, though, when at melee range. He did defend himself. And it's possible that the poison used on Kosh in the Gathering was ultimately sourced by Shadow agents. So they can be killed more easily if you know the trick, and the Shadows seem to. I think the only Shadows we see die "in person" on the show, besides the two the Centauri guard cut down, die to massive explosions. Unclear whether the two with Morden were simply caught off-guard or are genuinely easy to kill. The only even vaguely canonical source I can find on this is the Mongoose RPG, which has Earthforce PPGs doing 2d6 damage while the Centauri Guard rifles do 2d8 with a higher rate of fire. Not especially helpful.
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Apr 25, 2021 05:04
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It's not often we get good news in this thread, so: happy 71st birthday to Peter Jurasik. Enjoy this incredibly low quality video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be9jVRRfEzE
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Apr 25, 2021 14:15
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I'd say you're right. Keep in mind that Vorlon Planet-Killer basically went uncontested, and you'd think if the Shadows had the means to kill it then they would ASAP. Why would they, not their problem 
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Apr 25, 2021 17:21
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Also it might just be that whatever the shadows cloaking tech is isn’t compatible with the sort of armor a Vorlon has built into their encounter suit; it’s not really a measure of relative ‘might’ it’s just a very different sort of defense, which is therefore vulnerable to a different sort of attack.
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Apr 25, 2021 17:48
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I do seem to recall JMS stating that the Shadows Londo's guards shot were caught by surprise and ran off to recover, not killed. I can't for the life of me find the quote any more, though.
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Apr 25, 2021 17:50
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Polaron posted:I do seem to recall JMS stating that the Shadows Londo's guards shot were caught by surprise and ran off to recover, not killed. I can't for the life of me find the quote any more, though. Nothing about it in JMS speaks on Lurkers
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Apr 25, 2021 17:55
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Narsham posted:The only even vaguely canonical source I can find on this is the Mongoose RPG, which has Earthforce PPGs doing 2d6 damage while the Centauri Guard rifles do 2d8 with a higher rate of fire. Not especially helpful. Do they have stats for the Vorlons and Shadows?
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Apr 25, 2021 19:02
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Surely there was an rpg or card game that could answer these questions.
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Apr 25, 2021 21:27
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The RPG discussion made me dig up the PDF because I remember it from 20 years ago, and I am lolling very hard right now at the Ranger class description Possible careers and professions: Living For The One, Dying For The One.
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Apr 25, 2021 21:48
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I have some kind of B5 RPG and it's really poorly laid out, Vorlons are not a playable race and they don't really have stats available (but I couldn't really find an NPC creation section).
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Apr 25, 2021 22:21
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I have some kind of B5 RPG and it's really poorly laid out, Vorlons are not a playable race and they don't really have stats available (but I couldn't really find an NPC creation section). That sounds like the first try at it, The Babylon Project. Got one supplement and a GM screen and that was it, if I remember right. The Mongoose game had a much larger library.
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Apr 25, 2021 23:10
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Midjack posted:That sounds like the first try at it, The Babylon Project. Got one supplement and a GM screen and that was it, if I remember right. The Mongoose game had a much larger library. Mongoose doesn't provide Vorlon stats in the mainline books, but there's a Vorlon/Shadow supplement that... isn't very helpful. Shadows and Vorlons are "classes" and their hit points are therefore level-dependent. Kosh is statted as a 15th level Vorlon, with 72 hit points. The encounter suit gives him 15 points of damage reduction plus a force field. Ulkesh is a 10th level Vorlon, with 50 hit points. He ought to have an encounter suit but it isn't statted out. And the Shadows have a class and racial statistic modifiers, but no sample Shadows because we never met a named Shadow in the whole series. (They do stat out Justin, though.)
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Apr 26, 2021 00:09
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Midjack posted:That sounds like the first try at it, The Babylon Project. Got one supplement and a GM screen and that was it, if I remember right. The Mongoose game had a much larger library. Yeah, that's the one. The art is just atrocious, and it's just.. I don't know, it gives real "lazy tie-in" vibes.
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Apr 26, 2021 01:16
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Yeah, that's the one. The art is just atrocious, and it's just.. I don't know, it gives real "lazy tie-in" vibes. It was a bad game.
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Apr 26, 2021 01:19
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Midjack posted:It was a bad game. It didn't have a loving level 15 Vorlon, though.
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Apr 26, 2021 09:28
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I played in a short B5 campaign many years ago, and the main thing I remember is that a full-auto PPG burst kills everyone in the room, every time. This led to liberal use of explosives. I have no idea why anyone plays D20 Modern.
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Apr 26, 2021 12:04
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e X posted:Hey, I don't know if anybody is familiar with him but SfDebris is a science fiction reviewer who is also doing Bablyon 5 and has been for at least the last 10 years. Recently he covered Interludes and Examinations and while giving his analyses of Kosh's final experience, he mentions that the Vorlons not only didn't fight the Shadows due to their gentleman's agreement, but that they also wouldn't be match in a straight up military conflict and actually need the alliance of the younger races to stand a chance. I'm a big fan of SFDebris, and I will defend him a bit on this one. It's not quite clear to me how much of B5 he had seen before starting his reviews (in contrast to Star Trek, which he clearly saw all of before starting his online career). And his spoiler policy is sometimes a bit confusing, what with not reviewing episodes in order. So yes, while watching the whole show makes it clear that the Vorlons and Shadows are quite evenly matched, coming to a different conclusion is acceptable at this point of the show. Until this episode, we basically didn't see Vorlon space forces in action at all. At most you had Kosh's ship flying around and maybe hiding a passenger, but that's it, except where they blow up Deathwalker. But Jha'dur was in an unarmed shuttle, a Drazi ship could have shot it out of the sky as effortlessly as that Vorlon ship. The only difference is that Earth would have reacted quite differently to them shooting down an Earth shuttle with human pilots and guards on board, not to mention an extremely important alien asset. The non-reaction by Earth implies the power of the Vorlons, but this is pretty subtle stuff. In contrast, we've seen Shadow ships decimate Narn fleets with basically no losses, and chase down the most advanced ship of the younger races, full with Vorlon and Minbari technology, only being destroyed by extraordinary circumstances (that are hard to replicate). Shadow ships have been a big threat for a long time at this time, and coupled with Kosh's own statement that they are few, coming to the conclusion that the Vorlons wouldn't be a match for the Shadows would be absolutely valid with the information the viewer has up to this point, imho.
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Apr 26, 2021 12:37
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The Babylon 5 CCG had Vorlons which did weird things not directly comparable to other characters (Kosh Naranek, Ambassador Kosh), a rather under-powered Ulkesh that was more there as something you play to get rid of someone else's Ambassador Kosh (in theory, I don't think it ever saw competitive play) and then later on some more regularly statted Vorlons which were very powerful but hard to actually get on the field, and therefore not really worth playing either. Kosh Naranek did see competitive play due to the initially rather loose wording of the card but that got fixed and it was never seen again.
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Apr 26, 2021 13:11
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Why the hell would you try to review something like B5 not in order though?
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Apr 26, 2021 15:07
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CainFortea posted:Why the hell would you try to review something like B5 not in order though? Because he only reviews episodes that his supporters/Patreons payed him to review, or voted for him to review. And if less important/filler episodes don't get the donations/votes before later episodes, then he will review them out of order.
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Apr 26, 2021 15:27
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Torrannor posted:Because he only reviews episodes that his supporters/Patreons payed him to review, or voted for him to review. And if less important/filler episodes don't get the donations/votes before later episodes, then he will review them out of order. So he's basically reviewing a semi-random shuffle of the work instead of the work. Okay.
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Apr 26, 2021 15:41
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Torrannor posted:Because he only reviews episodes that his supporters/Patreons payed him to review, or voted for him to review. And if less important/filler episodes don't get the donations/votes before later episodes, then he will review them out of order. Hmmm. Yes. I shall start a Patreon to review individual chapters of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'm sure I don't need to read the whole thing for those to be relevant.
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Apr 26, 2021 16:23
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SFDebris is good you goons.
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Apr 26, 2021 16:36
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Burning_Monk posted:SFDebris is good you goons. Is the citation to prove this in a previous episode? Cause if so I haven't seen it cause i'm an idiot who watches things out of order.
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Apr 26, 2021 17:08
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Burning_Monk posted:SFDebris is good you goons. SFDebris is very good and his analyses is normally spot on, hence why I ask about his statement about the Vorlons and the Shadows.He also has seen the series previously, so it's not like its a blind review of random episdoes. I think he even watched it aired iirc. e X fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Apr 27, 2021 |
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Apr 27, 2021 10:48
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e X posted:SFDebris is very good and his analyses is normally spot on, hence why I ask about his statement about the Vorlons and the Shadows.He also has seen the series previously, so it's not like its a blind review of random sidesteps. I think he even watched it aired iirc. oh I see. That's okay then.
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Apr 27, 2021 14:04
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SFDebris is good and while I know he reviews things in a haphazard order for reasons discussed, I really wish his site reflected that fact. Episodes are ordered by the order of the actual in-series episodes, not by the order he reviewed them in. So there's no easy viewing order because sometimes he'll reference reviews of future episodes he did in the past and it's likst wha
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Apr 27, 2021 15:17
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Apr 30, 2021 09:42
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I like that the two non-American cast members are flicking the Vs rather than giving the middle finger. It's a sign that it wasn't just a staged photo op.
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Apr 30, 2021 09:56
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