Talk:Battery/Archive 1

Rails

David Templar writes:

"If the rails mount on the guns serve any real functional purpose, it is probably heat dissipation; due to the lack of any medium to draw heat away from objects in space, disgarding waste heat would be a serious issue for the show's apparently chemical-propelled projectile weapons."

This seems like making up excuses for a production error, to me. If the intent of those rails really is heat dissipation, they would be much wider to provide a larger surface to radiate heat on. --Peter Farago 18:15, 31 March 2006 (CST)

I concur. They just like the word "railgun" because it sounds cool. Distinctions between various slightly different kinds of hypothetical weaponry probably never occured to them. --CalculatinAvatar 20:26, 31 March 2006 (CST)

I never said it wasn't an excuse for production error, though I doubt it was so much error as "it looked cool". However, since the show's full of production errors to explain away (I'd love for someone to explain to me why they bothered dressing up guns in the miniseries but stopped in the TV series as anything other than laziness) and we have been explaining them away all over this wiki, I don't understand why this one should be any different. =P --David Templar 21:28, 31 March 2006 (CST)

It might be widespread, but I don't have to be happy about it. --Peter Farago 22:21, 31 March 2006 (CST)

Haha, fair enough. Believe me when I say I prefer tight scripts over fanwanking any day, despite my ability to fanwank with the best of them. That unfortunate skill came from the nightmarishly long 7 years of Voyager and not nearly short enough 4 years of Enterprise... And with RDM's aversion to technobabble and reluctance to keep military/tech advisors on hand, BSG is a series destined to go down the path of fanwankery. Hell, even trying to stay consistent between episodes would cut down on the fanwank, they don't need a tech advisor for *that*. --David Templar 22:37, 31 March 2006 (CST)

What makes this case especially egregious is that the cannons have never even been referred to as "railguns" in any canon source. I don't think you can get much worse than fanon fanwank. --Peter Farago 22:50, 31 March 2006 (CST)

I shamefully admit my own involvement in that unfortunate incident. I didn't start it, but had a part in continuing it for a time. --David Templar 23:14, 31 March 2006 (CST)

You know, if we were talking about a land-assault vehicle instead of a space ship, that would make this whole thing a case of fanon cannon battletank fanwank. --Peter Farago 23:34, 31 March 2006 (CST)

Cleanup

Thoughts on what cleanup should be done to this article? JubalHarshaw 07:32, 9 January 2007 (CST)

The first thing, based on the earlier comments here, is to rename this article to something like "Point defense cannons," with the original name redirecting here. Probably, the article's information is otherwise correct in describing their function. I'll take a looksee on the article and then move it--it's had enough time in committee. --Spencerian 10:47, 9 January 2007 (CST)

Re-imagined Series definition: Battlestar Group ^{(TRS: "Water")}. It also doubles as an acronym for the television series itself.