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In Season 2 of The Expanse Alex, the pilot of the Rocinante prepares the ship for a battle with a opposing battleship at Thoth Station by running and rerunning simulations. Through the simulations, he becomes quite pessimistic that the Roci will survive the encounter, believing that either missiles will destroy them at long range, or the enemy's rail-gun will destroy them at short range after a very short period of locking onto them.

The actual event holds surprises not accounted for in the simulations and, surprise!, the main cast more or less wins the day. However, after the battle is won Alex reruns the simulations, and...

accounting for the updated intelligence from the actual fight, and accounting for the new circumstances, in the revised simulations the Rocinante still never survives.

Does this have any significance beyond Alex's emotional response to the casualties of the encounter? For example, does it imply that Things Were Not As They Seemed on board the opposing ship?

I have only seen the show, not read the books, so apologize if this covered in the latter and not the former.

Lexible
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    From what I remember, it's not that the Roccinante never survived in simulations, it's that he was never able to execute it perfectly with no casualties. The point was to show how upset Alex was by even minimal loss of life. It's been a while since I've read the books, but I believe this detail was added, as was a lot of the character building details. – Kai Oct 24 '17 at 18:20

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From comments Alex makes later about "next time I'll save them all" it would appear that he took the loss of one of the improvised boarding pods quite hard. As the person most responsible for the protection of the otherwise helpless pods during their flight to the station it's not a stretch to imagine he would feel that way and his military background in the MCRN probably encourages him to believe that training and practice can help him in keeping his comrades safe, hence the repeated simulations.

motosubatsu
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