Karadan wrote:No, I suppose you aren't required to adhere to my standards of what proof are, but you must at least adhere to some sort of standards.
I'm an engineer. I deal with Proof every day of my life. I deal with insufficient information, methods of finding cause, identifying symptoms vs. cause... I have my standards, and I know mine work in real world situations.
Chief amoung that is IN CONTEXT quotes from the comic. Opinion does not trump a good quote.
You never mentioned Obediance, you simply said that scouts couldn't attack a city without orders and left it at that.
And you didn't go back and read the Klog, did you? Don't blame me for your ignorance. I am NOT your keeper. You want to play this game with me, then it is your job to start checking citations. Not just because you need to refresh your knowledge, but to make certain I am not lying. People do that. I appreciate that you trust me... but don't trust anyone.
And even then, that ignores the basic Erfworld rule of 'unled units must attack enemies'. You fabricated the idea that a wall constitutes an inability to attack (It doesn't necessarily, a wall might be nothing more than a bonus to defender stats in erfworld, and its absence or presence may not indicate a physical inability to attack like flying does).
Not fabricated. Parson has already demonstrated that basic Earthworld physics still operate (the question of the brick thrown from the wall), to a degree similar enough to our own that Parson cannot identify differences great enough to mention. Rob has stated that Erfworld is NOT a game, so it IS a real world with its own "physics." A wall may provide a bonus to the defender, but it is still a real wall that cannot itself be ignored. It is physical the same way as it is in our world, and it must be overcome in the same way a wall in ours must, not just with some die roll.
And clearly, since I mentioned it, I did not ignore that rule. I rely on it in the argument you don't seem to want to understand. A Scout that must attack what he can must attack any defended wall that he comes across, making scouts suicidal in the extreme. While Erfworld is not kind to its inhabitants, that seems counter to the intent of "scouting", since it reveals your own presence while ensuring you cannot find the enemy. The point of a scout is to FIND the enemy and report back without revealing your own existence. The "unled attack" rule ensures that a scout reveals his presence without reporting back the enemy deployment, the exact opposite of the goal of scouting.
It also ignores that Obediance includes a form of duty, in that Obediance may require a unit to disobey an order that is not in the best interest of that unit's ruler.
No non-Commander unit can make that kind of decision. You need direct knowledge of the purpose of your orders to decide if another choice has better interest. Obedience is, ultimately, what forces Units to do exactly what they are ordered to.
A Scout's job is to find and report, while keeping his own presence secret. In order to attack that city, the Scout violates every part of that order, keeping the knowledge of the existence of a city from his commander, reveals the existence of his forces nearby, and risks suicide against a hidden defense. There is no scenario I can come up with where a Unit could see such a gross violation of his Orders as even remotely desirable to his Ruler. The city is empty and not dangerous in any way, consequently what to do with it is a non-critical decision. Disobedience requires far more threat to the Ruler than that.
The only cases of Disobedience that we have seen so far are Commanders with intimate knowledge of their Ruler and the purpose of his orders. It is a SIGNIFICANT responsibility, and NEVER done lightly.
AKA they do have some level of initiative,
Only theoretically. Functionally, they lack the knowledge of their Ruler (by never having spoken to him) to decide what is good for the Ruler. We have not yet seen a single non-Commander Disobey, and those Commanders that have, have explained themselves directly to their Ruler when they did, with knowledge that the punishment may be Disbanding. You trivialize something that the comic has treated as a severe risk to the Unit's existence.
And once again, all this is irrelevant to the original question of a single unit taking an unmanned city.
No, the question raised was SPECIFICALLY a Scout, because it was viewed that only a scout would ever be sent alone into the wilderness. The idea was a Scout stumbles onto an empty city, because a lone infantryman simply never would, unless ordered to be a low-rent scout, which is still a scout. (But if there *is* a Scout special, a lone infantryman scouting could not determine the city to be empty, because he would lack the capacity to see through veils, mentioned in one of the quotes above. The lone infantryman could not attack the city without orders, because he can't be certain it is empty and not a trick.)
As above, it may add caveats about probability of of it being attempted, but won't change the yes/no answer.
The question did not inherently limit the breadth of arguments. A Scout being unable to attack the city due to orders was not restricted. The question followed the suggestion that the city being left ungaurded risked a lone Scout taking it, but if the lone Scout can't take the city because orders prevent him from doing so, then there was no risk as surely as the walls being too thick to dig through carrying no risk.
My standards of proof really aren't that high. All I want is evidence of some kind that directly points to an answer.
They *are* high. You are restricting arguments of a particular type, without examining the specifics of the original question. You are applying your own restrictions to the debate, but the question was never yours to limit.
You've failed to provide this.
I don't have to. It is up to the opposition to prove a scout could break down the walls. It is not up to me to prove the negative, that they cannot. Demanding proof of the negative is disingenuous, since evidence for it cannot exist. Only evidence that they can break the walls down can exist, if they can.
And even more than that, you've failed to provide a link between what you're claiming (That "scouts" can't attack a city without specific orders to do so), and the actual question at hand (Can a lone "scout" capture an unmanned city?).
Again, that is you applying restrictions to a question that was never yours in the first place. A mental inability to attack is just as effective a defense for the empty city as the scout lacking the capacity to break the wall down. You don't like that? You want only a physical capacity? Not my problem. You need to prove they can first. The burden is never on "proving a negative".
A scout will pass a city, any city, even a completely undefended one, to continue scouting unless it is provided with specific orders to do otherwise. That does not change weather or not a single unit can capture a city.
That was NOT the question we were considering. Please review the thread.
The question behind this question was: Why bother with token forces?
No, it was not. Please review the thread.
As for transylvito's and FAQ's walls, I take that to mean the bonus they provide wouldn't be a serious hindrance, as opposed to their ability to stop a unit outright.
Good for you. Again, the details of one city does not extend to all cities, especially when we know that the walls of another city (GK) were so enormously high you couldn't build a ladder tall enough to surmount it. Again, the question is not whether there is a city that one lone infantryman can capture, but "If you leave your walls undefended, are you vulnerable to a single Scout taking your city?" That you could do so with Translvito does not make the general case true, only say, "Some cities would be, if they constructed themselves such taht infantry can climb over the walls without siege."
Again, this goes to the Physics of Erfworld. Transylvito's walls are described as "ornamental" not functional. They are a real barrier, just ineffective at stopping anyone. Nothing there about a "bonus" to defenders, The description is physical in nature, and counters the idea of walls as only a bonus. As a bonus, the shape of the walls would be irrelevant... they would be just as effective if built 4 feet high as 400, since they are only a number, not a physical reality. Transylvito's walls being "ornamental" and ineffective tells us that walls are real barriers.
