History Main / QuantityVsQuality

* In the mainline ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' games, the player is usually outnumbered 2 to 1 or worse. However, the enemies are often weaker than the player's units. Most games have a minimum damage of zero, so a bulky enough unit is effectively invincible no matter how many enemies attack it. Better yet, the unit can kill every enemy in one round of combat to open up space for even more enemies to attack it, potentially resulting in the OneManArmy removing half of the enemy's forces in one turn. If defense is low, the unit can resort to dodging instead and achieve the same results. In summary, [[QualityOverQuantity quality often beats quantity]].

* ColdSniper: The quality of the battlefield and it's every detail is one deadly game of hide and seek.

* Beer versus Cider. Two of the world's most popular alcoholic brews, have had many different origins and variations over the centuries. Beer is typically brewed in vast quantities, it's cheap with a hearty, malty taste in it's simple form. Cider however can be a little more expensive, but it's flavorful, lightly-filling and brewed with fruit over wheat (meaning it's healthier).

* Beer versus Cider. Two of the world's most popular alcoholic brews, have had a many different origins and variations over the centuries. Beer is typically brewed in vast quantities, it's cheap with a hearty, malty taste in it's simple form. Cider however can be a little more expensive, but it's flavorful, lightly-filling and brewed with fruit over wheat (meaning it's healthier).

** In general, the Imperial refugee fleet is the Quality to the Galactic Republic's Quantity. Cut off from the Imperium's billion-worlds supply network, the refugees have no reinforcements or logistical support other than what they can capture through conquest or recycle, whilst the Republic has virtually an entire galaxy's support in manpower and raw resources. However, the Imperium's forces and weapons technology are, as a general rule, stronger than their Republic counterparts. This is exemplified in the space combat scenes; despite outnumbering the Imperial ships hundreds to one, the Imperial ships are vastly superior in size, power, durability and range, racking up tens or dozens of kills before going down.

** In general, the Imperial refugee fleet is the Quality to the Republic's Quantity. Cut off from the Imperium's billion-worlds supply network, the refugees have no reinforcements or logistical support other than what they can capture through conquest or recycle, whilst the Republic has virtually an entire galaxy's support in manpower and raw resources. However, the Imperium's forces and weapons technology are, as a general rule, stronger than their Republic counterparts. This is exemplified in the space combat scenes; despite outnumbering the Imperial ships hundreds to one, the Imperial ships are vastly superior in size, power, durability and range, racking up tens or dozens of kills before going down.

** One of the Republic's subtler strengths, however, is that they are ''far'' faster builders and ''vastly'' superior at innovation compared to the Imperials. An Imperial battleship may be larger and more heavily armed than any of the native ships currently in use, but it would also take decades if not ''centuries'' for the Imperials to repair or build a new ship even if they had full access to the Imperium's industrial supply line. For comparison; in an early chapter, it's mentioned that it would take several months to do a complete retrofit of the entire Republic navy -- the Imperium would strggle to even fix a ''single'' ship in that time frame, even if they had a fully functioning forgeworld to dock it at.

** At the same time, the Imperial refugee forces are also massive in their own right, with thousands of {{Space Marine}}s and ships, and millions if not billions of Imperial Guardsmen.

** In general, the Imperium refugee fleet is the Quality to the Republic's Quantity. Cut off from the Imperium's billion-worlds supply network, the refugees have no reinforcements or logistical support other than what they can capture through conquest or recycle, whilst the Republic has virtually an entire galaxy's support in manpower and raw resources. However, the Imperium's forces and weapons technology are, as a general rule, stronger than their Republic counterparts. This is exemplified in the space combat scenes; despite outnumbering the Imperial ships hundreds to one, the Imperial ships are vastly superior in size, power, durability and range, racking up tens or dozens of kills before going down.

* ''[[Fanfic/StarWarsVsWarhammer40K Star Wars vs. Warhammer 40K]]'' gives Quantity to the Clone Wars-era ''Star Wars'' factions and Quality to the Imperium of Man, at least when it comes to [[SpaceBattle space battles]]. At the start of the story, both the Republic and CIS navies have thousands of capital ships at their disposal while the Imperial refugee fleet only has several hundred warships (including their smaller escorts). This is because the ''Star Wars'' galaxy is only facing a small portion of the Imperium's forces, which are stranded from their home galaxy and cut off from the rest of their empire. However, this gets offset by the fact that Imperial ships vastly outclass their Republic and CIS counterparts in size, power, durability, and range. So far, in almost every space battle, the Republic has lost tens of their own capital ships for each Imperial warship they manage to destroy.

* ''[[Fanfic/StarWarsVsWarhammer40K Star Wars vs. Warhammer 40K]]'' gives Quantity to the Clone Wars-era ''Star Wars'' factions and Quality to the Imperium of Man, at least when it comes to [[SpaceBattle space battles]]. At the start of the story, both the Republic and CIS navies have thousands of capital ships at their disposal while the Imperial fleet only has several hundred warships (including their smaller escorts). This is because the ''Star Wars'' galaxy is only facing a small portion of the Imperium's forces, which are stranded from their home galaxy and cut off from the rest of their empire. However, this gets offset by the fact that Imperial ships vastly outclass their Republic and CIS counterparts in size, power, durability, and range. So far, in almost every space battle, the Republic has lost tens of their own capital ships for each Imperial warship they manage to destroy.

* Joff makes a complete joke of Renly's rebellion in ''FanFic/PurpleDays'' by countering his colossal 100,000 "strong" army of conscripted, barely-trained peasants, with his professional fighting and exquisitely mobile fighting force of 5,000. Nothing Renly's Quantity does can overcome Joff's Quality.

* WeakButSkilled: Hurt them with what you best.

* An unexpected place these arguments pop up is in debate about minimum wage. It's been heavily documented that when there is a minimum wage hike companies invariably lay off workers. They either find a way to do the job through automation or with fewer, better-trained people. Thus the higher minimum wage is, the fewer people have access to a minimum wage job, but it becomes much better for the ones that do. [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement We will not attempt to decide which side is right]].

* Cold Sniper: The quality of the battlefield and it's every detail is one deadly game of hide and seek.

* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', despite being one of the smaller pirate crews seen, the Straw Hats have proven to be one of the most dangerous crews in the world. When Luffy declared early on that he wanted at least ten members for his crew, he ''knew'' he wanted them to be on par, hence the reason he chooses highly specialized members instead of just anyone he comes across (even though he proposed this to several zombies in Thriller Bark, but just because they looked flashy; Chopper, Franky, and Brook are both flashy ''and'' specialized).

[[AC:Sides with Quantity]]

[[AC:Sides with Quality]]

** The GreatOffscreenWar between the NCR and the Brotherhood of Steel: the Brotherhood fielded small teams of Knights and Paladins with great training and very advanced technology like PoweredArmor and energy weapons; the NCR fielded large armies of conscripts who can expect nothing more than a rifle, a metal helmet and maybe a couple grenades and a little body protection if they're lucky. The Brotherhood initially inflicted heavy losses on the NCR, but the NCR could maintain these losses, and their isolationism and stringent standards started to bite as the war dragged on and their small armies were whittled down. Eventually the Brotherhood were nearly annihilated at the Battle for HELIOS One - their leader, a scientist with no military experience, demanded the Knights hold the line at all costs while he delved inside the base for a supposed superweapon that would turn the tide of the war, a gamble which didn't pay off and decimated the Brotherhood.

* CripplingOverspecialization: Try to do one thing very well, do everything else very poorly.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' and ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'':
** This is one of the calculations pretty much every player must make when selecting an army to field on the tabletop. Each army has its own Warhammer Armies book (called a Codex in 40k) with an army list detailing the abilities of the various troop types, war machines, characters, and monsters that make it up and assigning each a points value based on how powerful and effective it is in game terms. Most games are played between two armies of a fixed equal points value (say 2000 points, for instance), so if you want to pack your army with large numbers of troops you will have to take lower quality ones and skimp on the powerful stuff, and if you want lots of elite troops, heroes, wizards, and powerful monsters then your army will be smaller overall. Different races or factions in the games tend to occupy different portions of the quality-quantity spectrum, with some specialising in higher quality troops, others specialising in cheap but numerous troops, some in the middle of the spectrum, and a very few offering the choice of playing to either end.

* In Steve Jackson's ''{{TabletopGame/OGRE}}'' one player has a bunch of conventional tanks, infantry, and artillery. The other player has the [[TankGoodness Ogre]].

* ''TabletopGame/{{Battletech}}'': The Clans vs. the Inner Sphere often comes down to this in an actual game. Clan battlemechs are individually superior to Inner Sphere ones and their mechwarriors have better stats (3 gunnery and 4 piloting vs 4 gunnery and 5 piloting for an Inner Sphere), but they are also far more expensive. A Clan player will usually end up facing twice the number (or tonnage) of Inner Sphere opponents in a balanced game, but the Clan 'mechs will be far superior to anything the Inner Sphere player can bring to the table. In terms of lore this was also broadly true, with the Clans invading the Inner Sphere with a laughably small army of extremely elite and motivated warriors, but this got further complicated by the Clans' [[HonorBeforeReason honour code]] and [[StrategyVersusTactics most of them fatally misjudging the scope of invading such a massive piece of territory]].