Talk:Fall of New Caprica/Archive 1

This isn't a battle, or a "fall" of anthing. Please see our Standards and Conventions page's Battle write up. This was an "event", but no ships engaged each other and no soldiers shot at anything. It should be deleted. --The Merovingian 06:38, 15 March 2006 (CST)

While it is kind of a "fall", I agree it isn't really a battle. It's even less of a battle than Galactica vs Pegasus (and that one barely survived). No shots were fired in anger, and there wasn't even a serious threat that Galactica and Pegasus would stay and fight. In Galactica vs Pegasus, both sides had their weapons ready and aimed at each other. In this instance, only one side was effectively armed. There's no doubt that this is a significant event that deserves to be described, but it's too much of a stretch to classify it as a battle. The actual battle text could be summed up as "The Cylons show up, the Colonial Fleet retreats." --Steelviper 08:20, 15 March 2006 (CST)

I think it qualifies as a battle, or at least a rather significant military action, and was certainly a "fall," in fact, the fall and occupation of the newly established home planet of humanity. A massively superior Cylon force jumped in, the Adamas evaluated the siutation and made a tactical or strategic retreat from their position, which was then overrun by the Cylons. If this was not a "battle," (or at the absolute minimum a military event at least as significant as the "battle" between Galactica and Pegasus in "Pegasus" and "Resurrection Ship, Part I") then neither was the fall of Saigon or the evacuation at Dunkirk in World War II. We can argue all day about the technical definition of a "battle" (and point me to the proper Standards and Conventions definition, I cannot find it on the standards and conventions page), but this is a significant event, and the page should remain. --Felix Culpa 08:46, 15 March 2006 (CST)

Standards & Conventions can be found here, but there's nothing on it about the battle pages yet. Merv may be referring to the guidelines outlined in the talk page. I'll quote what I believe he is referring to:

<begin quote>

Generally, something deserves an article if:

• 1) A Colonial ship is destroyed (Vipers, Raptors, etc). They can't easily be replaced, and the loss of even one can be considered a blow. (The upcoming engagements in "Scar" might be a skirmish instead of a battle, depends how many ships are involved at once).
• 2) A massive number of Cylon vessels is destroyed, making the engagement a noteworthy event. For example, the "Great Cylon Turkey Shoot" resulted in no Colonial losses whatsoever, yet so many Cylons (hundreds of ships) were destroyed that it warrants it's own page.

An example of something that would not deserve it's own page is like when 2 Raiders were destroyed in "Final Cut", with no Colonial losses. No personnel or ships were lost, and the losses to the Cylons were insignificant in the extreme (considering that they still have production facilities and the Colonials do not).

As a rule of thumb, any engagement that involves a Battlestar or a Basestar firing it's own guns at the enemy is a "Battle" (Battle of the Coral Sea was a full scale battle, yet no enemy ships directly engaged each other; just fighters). However, if a Battlestar launches Vipers, but doesn't actually get involved in a small scale fight against enemy fightercraft, it's probably not a battle (case in point, "Skirmish over the Red Moon".

<end quote>

As for myself, I wouldn't necessarily advocate deleting all the content, but just moving it out of a "Battle" format. If we're to take the fall of Saigon as an example, we see that on wikipedia Fall of Saigon doesn't have a battle box. It's just got a description of the events. The evacuation at Dunkirk gets roped into the Battle of Dunkirk, which is still a battle (with casualties on both sides). --Steelviper 09:04, 15 March 2006 (CST)