Page 197: Playing games

[grixit]

Also, it seems strangely naive to think that an artifact of a civilization with much more advanced technology than yours is really off when it's not doing anything. In fact, that explains to me how the bot has a reading on the current mental states of the loroi. Clearly, there is a communications medium that no one else can detect.

On the flip side, i'm guessing that the historians don't have psionics. Perhaps in some future episode, there will be a historian threat which Red will neutralize with a burst of tk.

[Krulle]

I would be really wondering if the Historians ever leave a system they use behind "clean".

For political reasons, they might do so in exceptional cases, but otherwise I think they will only leave the impression of having left.

They are a sophisticated batch of software routines after all, and those are easy to copy.

So, if they switch off the projector to go to the Prophet's Reason, I am sure only a data set gets transferred, and that the construct actually stays in the projector. It will pretend to be an empty bucket though, so that the Loroi may feel like being able to trust the Historian constructs slightly more. And it will not visibly activate unless emergencies dictate to do so, or until they can pretend that the Historian Construct has just been transferred to the device.

[inxsi]

I would be really wondering if the Historians ever leave a system they use behind "clean".

For political reasons, they might do so in exceptional cases, but otherwise I think they will only leave the impression of having left.

They are a sophisticated batch of software routines after all, and those are easy to copy.

So, if they switch off the projector to go to the Prophet's Reason, I am sure only a data set gets transferred, and that the construct actually stays in the projector. It will pretend to be an empty bucket though, so that the Loroi may feel like being able to trust the Historian constructs slightly more. And it will not visibly activate unless emergencies dictate to do so, or until they can pretend that the Historian Construct has just been transferred to the device.

I wonder if the loroi know the construct is still in the projector but think it is "turned off." I could see the Historians providing an "off" switch, or teaching the loroi how to construct the projectors with one, knowing that the constructors can bypass it to some degree. It did not seem like the loroi were aware of the projector having an active datalink to the Prophet's Reason on the bridge of the Tempest when it apologized for the meager resources it had available. Though maybe it was just keeping stealth datalink capabilities hidden and dislikes using a detectable and light speed datalink? It also makes you wonder how secure loroi systems are from them - maybe that is something humans can offer (eventually when we get better at it) - IT specialists

[GeoModder]

For all we know a Historian Construct just hops from system to system and communicates as needed through ansible (FTL communication). The Pocket(tm) 'app' on Alex' tablet may be nothing more then a conduit or alert circuit for the Historian Construct on Prophet's Reason.

[Clockwork Ninja]

Maybe the holofirm us a cute-ified version of them, and they are really the Antarans?

The resemblance is even closer with their later versions:


I think it's no secret that the comic is at least inspired by the Master of Orion games, I mean look at the Elerians:

[Krulle]

MoO2 is listed as inspiration on the webpage anyway:

Acknowledgements
The Loroi borrow stylistically from previous space sirens (especially the Elerians from Master of Orion 2, and the Syreen from Star Control 2) and from the blue-skinned aliens of Japanese animation (most notably the Gamilas and Deingil from the Space Battleship Yamato series). They are intended as an homage to the "Space Amazon" archetype... blue and otherwise.

Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is Outsider based on the game Master of Orion?
A: The game was an important inspiration for Outsider.

[Ithekro]

The Elerians are basically hax on some levels. You can see what is in every star system and you can track the movements of all the alien species. So you will know where Orion is from the start. In the newer version by WarGaming, this means you can preplan out your colony and defense stations route as you can effectively bottle up a huge region of space by taking the right hyperspace lane choke points, denying some really good worlds, and Orion, to any other race very early into the game. If they want any of that, they have to fight you or you have to let them by via treaty. (Side note: For some reason I'd like to see if WarGaming could update the game to include some of the races and concepts from Master of Orion 3 using what they have in place now. As I recall that game had good lore and a good situation for a game, but the mechanics were horrid and buggy. I remember playing it, and it was bad. I tried it again a year or so ago, and its still not very playable. The first two games are wonderful, and the new version is actually fun, if simpler that the others. And update that includes gas giant dwelling races. The possibility of the Galaxy having a council from the start and you having to work via diplomacy or conquest to the unseat the Masters. Also maybe the parasite species)

Such a power might be interesting in a game like Stellaris, especially after the recent update that maintains a much greater fog of war over the galaxy if you don't have spies to tell you where the other races' space even is.