Data
File Updated:
Friday, July 23, 2021
(This is
a collection of quotations from the forums compiled by
fredgiblet, provided here in one huge chunk to make it
searchable. For the most part Arioch is answering questions
posted by forum-goers; when the question is included, it is
listed in blue, and Arioch's answer is listed in white. Often
the original question is omitted.)
WHAT DOES ALEX KNOW?
Although you could keep the ship's course a secret from most of
the crew, they are all academy graduates with basic astrogation
skills; they know how many jumps they've made and can guess the
general direction... if somebody shows them a starmap, I'm sure
they could recognize enough stars to be able to point out where
Human space is. But, as it happens, Alex's original position
(before he and Ellen were reassigned to damage control) was as a
pilot on the bridge, so he certainly knows the Bellarmine's
route. He also knows the location and rendezvous schedule of the
Prabhu the fifth ship that is being used as a communications
relay and refuel point.
As you can guess from Captain Hamilton's announcements to the
crew on p.4-5, he kept them fairly well informed on the ship's
location and status. Note also that the entire crew was taught
the Trade language. The idea being that any member of the crew
could (if necessary) function as an ambassador in the event of
the senior officers being killed or incapacitated.
What Alex won't know are Humanity's defense plans, or the
locations of the other three scout craft.
II
The existence of the Orgus and the combatants is common
knowledge. The degree to which the Humans are outclassed and the
genocidal nature of the war is probably not common knowledge.
You have to tell the population something... you can't gear up a
democratic society for war without explaining why it's
necessary.
ARE WE BEING PARANOID ENOUGH?
Once the decision is made to send the scouts out, it's pretty
much inevitable that the aliens are going to find you. In order
to inform Earth that you've made contact, you're going to have
to return home... and the aliens aren't stupid -- they can watch
where you go. If you don't intend to let the aliens know where
you are, what is the point of sending out scouts to establish
contact in the first place? Is it reasonable to expect that an
alien race will accept you as an ally if you won't even tell
them where your country is located?
Quote:
I give a dedicated Loroi expedition between two and five years
after 2160 to find one of the Terran colonies.
I give the aliens that long to find it, even without a dedicated
expedition. Human space is not one star; it's 40 systems across
35 light years, the edge of which is only 217 light years from
the actual front line. The Umiak are expanding aggressively in
the direction of Human space, as evidenced by the conquest of
the Orgus. The Loroi must also expand in the same direction to
prevent being outflanked by new Umiak-controlled systems. Human
space got stumbled into by refugees; they're going to get
stumbled into by something more potentially harmful. Contact is
imminent; the option to hide is not a viable one... unless
you're going to try something absurd like evacuation or
abandoning space travel and hiding underground. The whole
premise of the scout mission is to make proactive contact, and
attempt to gain more favorable terms while you still have
something to offer (and they are still a bit in the dark about
your capabilities), before one side or the other stumbles across
Humans space and simply imposes a deal.
LOROI BIOLOGY
Even if the Soia-Liron/Loroi biology used an X-Y type scheme for
determining gender (which is by no means certain), it's not
necessary to multiply the number of gene types to get an
off-balance gender ratio. Males produce both X and Y gametes;
you just have the male produce a disproportionate number of the
gamete type for the gender you want to favor. Earth mammals
don't produce an exactly even ratio of X-Y gametes anyway... in
Humans, about 5% more Y (male) than X is produced, and I suspect
in other species the differential is more pronounced.
II
Loroi probably have better cold tolerance than Humans, as they
conserve heat more effectively, but I would guess that their
heat tolerance is about the same as ours.
No, I think it would be at about the same temperature as our
limit, or about 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius). I
don't think that having a lower core temperature would
necessarily make you less resistant to heat.
III
Even assuming that Loroi and Umiak use the same chemical means
of encoding genes -- which is highly unlikely -- trying to
splice genetic material from one alien into an unrelated one is
like pasting a section of LISP code into a Java program... it
might do something, but only by accident, and the odds are a
million to one that it will even compile. There may be something
to be learned by looking at a LISP program and seeing how its
code solves a problem that might help you to solve the same
problem in Java, but the code itself (and sometimes even the
algorithm) is not directly usable.
IV
Luckily, there would be no issue of paternity, because there
couldn't be children.
V
Some of the characters have bluer lips to exaggerate their
feminine characteristics (Tempo's being the bluest). Whether
this is the natural result of her hot blood and pale skin, or
some sort of makeup, is best left to the imagination.
VI
Birth defects or brain damage might produce a telepathic mute.
Because Loroi social interaction relies heavily on telepathy, a
telepathic mute would always be something of a social outsider.
Probably not too different from how deaf people are treated in
our society. The handicap would almost certainly exclude her
from military service.
VII
The gender imbalance is not considered by the Loroi to be a
mystery, but rather a necessity of a warrior race. Most Loroi
assume that those races without such a gender imbalance (or a
similar reproductive boosting mechanism) are merely not suited
to galactic domination (read: inferior).
VIII
The Loroi are relatively long-lived, even without advanced
medical technology, and can live several hundred years. Aside
from very minor outward signs of aging (the bones and cartilage
still grow slightly over time, resulting in older Loroi growing
taller, and developing longer ears, noses, fingers, etc.), a
Loroi can remain healthy and relatively youthful looking
throughout most of her life. If a Loroi lives long enough (and
few do), around age 400 her biological system starts to crash,
and her body rapidly deteriorates. Medical technology can extend
life from this stage, but their martial pride usually prevents
them from taking advantage of it. One exception would be a
certain class of elderly Listel who linger on well past their
normal lifespans, serving as living repositories of information.
A long of things can dramatically shorten a Loroi lifespan --
physical violence, obviously, but also extreme stress, and
overuse of certain telepathic or telekinetic functions.
IX
With lower energy requirements than humans, most Loroi probably
only eat one meal per day.
I don't imagine telepathy requiring a particularly large amount
of energy. The brain may be an expensive organ to operate in
general, but in terms of use... I have never noticed getting
hungry by thinking too much.
In terms of physical activity, a Loroi and a female humans of
the same size and weight expend the same amount of kinetic
energy to walk a certain distance, but how much food energy each
must consume depends on efficiency and waste heat: efficiency in
the muscles, efficiency in digestion, efficiency in the
metabolic process of respiration and conversion of food to
energy. But also, and perhaps most importantly, in the
efficiency of the homeostatic system. Mammals expend a huge
amount of energy just running our systems on idle... maintaining
our internal temperature is very expensive. Exothermic
creatures such as reptiles that do not expend energy to maintain
temperature have vastly reduced dietary requirements -- a Komodo
dragon the same size and weight as a human can survive on as
little as one meal per month. Reptiles are of course less
energetic than mammals in general and conserve energy in other
ways as well, but you get the general idea. By having more
efficient metabolisms operating at a lower internal temperature,
Loroi generate less waste heat and therefore require less fuel.
X
A lower nominal body temperature does not make one less tolerant
to hot environments, but rather more tolerant. An organism with
a lower normal internal body temperature is more resistant to
high external temperatures than a human is, because there is
less internally generated heat to disperse into the environment.
Terrestrial reptiles are extremely resistant to hot environments
specifically because they do not generate internal heat (and can
survive in food-deprived ecosystems for weeks without food
because they do not have to expend the energy to maintain their
own internal temperatures). Being so-called "cold-blooded" means
that they are much more comfortable in hot environments than
cold ones. The fact that the Loroi/Soia-Liron biochemistry can
operate at a lower temperature than Terrestrial mammals can
doesn't by any sense mean that they are any more susceptible to
heat than we are. On the contrary, they can survive longer on
the same amount of food (having to expend less to maintain our
higher mammalian internal temperature), are comfortable at
cooler "room temperatures" of around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and
have less of a problem disposing of internally-generated heat at
temperatures above 90-100 degrees F. Overheating is, of course,
still a potential problem, but the Loroi will have the same
mechanisms that we have to cope with it, and will have a lower
baseline temperature with which to work. The temperature at
which human biochemistry overheats really has nothing to do with
the temperature range at which Loroi biochemistry can operate.
XI
Under the current situation, a warrior female in the fleet on
the front lines won't have a lot of leave time in which to get
pregnant (since this means returning back behind the lines, as
forward bases won't be safe enough to shelter males), but once
pregnant she can remain on duty almost throughout the pregnancy,
with notable exceptions being those with strenuous physical
duty, such as marines and combat pilots. Most Loroi warships
will have basic pre- and post-natal care facilities, and I can
easily imagine that it's common to induce early labor or perform
surgical extractions to allow the mother to get more quickly
back to duty. Warships require regular resupply, so babies can
be unloaded on supply ships or at base. Warrior children are not
usually raised by the birth mothers anyway, so this shouldn't
really constitute a problem.
XXII
Quote Voitan: With great medical advances,
wouldn't it be possible to transfer the fetus to an artificial
womb, and let a machine carry the pregnancy? Social stigma could
easily bar this practice. Is it possible? Is it important enough
to utilize resources for such a thing, if possible, and socially
accepted?
I think it is probably cheaper and less complicated to do it the
normal way. If your job is to sit at a console and punch keys,
being pregnant is probably not going to significantly affect
your job performance.
Also, with a live mother, there's the possibility of telepathic
stimulation of the unborn infant. I'm not really sure how
telepathically active a fetus would be, but it's something to
consider.
TELEPATHY
Loroi telepathy is not limited to line of sight. Senders can
broadcast to everyone within her range, or send specifically to
an individual she already knows (even if not in line of sight),
or send specifically to an individual she doesn't know, but who
is within range of signature detection (so that she can properly
"address" the message).
The normal sending range for most Loroi will generally cover
most of a ship's inhabited area, which tends to be the
relatively small region in the center of the ship. For
telepathic messages which need to move farther than this range,
the message can be relayed, similar to a verbal command being
passed along a WWII submarine from one compartment to another.
Of course, this sort of relay would be restricted for certain
official uses, much in the way an audio intercom would be.
II
Loroi telepaths can broadcast to all Loroi within an area, or
they can send a private signal to one particular Loroi they
either know or can see. They can't broadcast to a certain subset
of people, though they can send individual messages to several
different people in rapid succession.
Beryl would have broadcast her request for the shoes, and it
would have been relayed to the quartermaster, and nearly
everyone on the ship would have "heard" the message or its
relays. Because everyone hears such a relay, this method would
not be used by everyone to order new shoes, but rather only for
special, official business. Getting shoes for the alien was
considered important.
The Loroi do not usually communicate ship-to-ship via telepathy,
but via conventional voice and digital communications.
Ship-to-ship telepathy would have to be amplified; you'd either
have to have powerful telepaths on both ships (who could
send messages directly to each other), or the message would have
to be broadcast loud enough for everyone on the target ship to
hear, which would be disruptive (especially to those on the
sending ship).
From your description, Bonewits' psi system seems to be closely
based on the standard SJGames GURPS psi system, including
telesend, telereceive, antipsi and the like. The main difference
between Loroi telepathy and the GURPS system is that in GURPS
Telesend is literally "sending thought", and Telereceive is
literally "reading someone's thoughts". In Loroi telepathy, Send
and Receive are the abilities to send and receive telepathic
messages, which are not literally thoughts, and the ability to
read someone's unsent thoughts is a completely different skill.
III
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mjolnir
Could a particularly talented Loroi manage a
multiple-simultaneous-target contact? Something like the way
some people can follow multiple conversations better than
others? How easily can a Loroi focus on one particular "speaker"
if they are the target of multiple contacts? That is, is it a
simple "loudest speaker is heard most clearly", or could a pair
of Loroi engrossed in a discussion "tune out" other Loroi to the
point that it can be hard to get their attention? Or do all
telepathic conversations seem to happen in the same "place" to
the receivers?
I think this can be treated almost exactly like verbal
communication, since what we're talking about is the brain's
ability to comprehend, regardless of the medium. It is
difficult, but not impossible, to follow two simultaneous
conversations.
IV
Range of Farseer sense varies. "Average" Farseers are generally
able to sense some distance into the Umiak lines, although most
don't have the "resolution" to detect ships distinctly from
planetary populations, so for the most part they can only detect
ships when they have entered the lifeless Steppes, or
occasionally when they are moving through largely uninhabited
"transit" systems. Combined with the scouting ability of the
fast-attack groups, and the intelligence work of the Mizol, the
Loroi try to keep close tabs on Umiak fleet movements.
V
Loroi telepathy is a product of the way the Loroi brain is
structured; there isn't a telepathic "organ" or something
similar. It's not entirely clear even to the Loroi exactly what
makes some telepaths more powerful than others, so I doubt that
it's something the Umiak could easily adapt to their own
physiology. Umiak and Loroi would have very different genetic
systems. No doubt the Umiak did a great deal of experimentation
on the populations of the Loroi planets they captured early in
the war.
VI
As Siber mentions, it's the intimacy of the physical link that
makes casual contact unwelcome. In terms of a sexual encounter,
the intimacy of the physical link would normally be considered
an enhancement to the experience. A non-telepathic creature
might be more comfortable as a "buddy" that a Loroi could rub up
against without telepathic contact, but since the avoidance of
casual touching is an ingrained social behavior, normal
circumstances wouldn't offer that many situations in which a
Loroi would be rubbing up against an alien. Well, normal
circumstances, anyway. But also, the telepathic physical link is
a non-sexual way that same-sex friends can express intimacy, so
there's a limit to how much of a "buddy" such an alien would be.
VI
They're touch-operated controls. Some key switches may require
the telepathically "hot" touch of a Loroi to activate, however.
VII
We've had brief discussion about telepathy/consciousness as it
relates to "quantum mind" before (though not using that specific
term). Mjolnir makes a good point about the pitfalls of
attempting to make too-specific explanations of fictional
phenomena, but I think it may be going too far to suggest that
we shouldn't think about it at all. Quantum mind suggests three
concepts that can be of use in thinking about Loroi telepathy:
that there is some sort of physicality to consciousness, that an
object or event can span multiple planes of existence, and that
objects or events can be physically linked in ways that are not
obvious. Taken as a whole, that does offer some suggestions as
to how one consciousness can detect the presence of others at
distance, among other things. Such theories of how fictional
phenomena may function are (in my opinion) mostly useful not for
technobabble, but rather for suggesting additional possibilities
that are implied by the function. But as was mentioned, it's
having a consistent set of rules for how a phenomenon behaves,
and not necessarily how well those rules relate to known
physics, that is useful.
VIII
In this case, the explanation is a lot simpler... Fireblade did
not have the same training in mental discipline that most Loroi
receive as children that helps to keep subconscious telepathic
"babble" under control.
IX
I think it would have to be a mixture of both. I imagine
telepathy working on a number of levels simultaneously. Given
that Loroi telepaths can read alien minds, and even something as
simple as Alex's brain interpreting Fireblade's telepathic
presence as an image, there has to be a universal element to
telepathic communication. More complicated communication will
probably require some sort of structure that (however intuitive
it may be) must be learned, so this will probably lead to
telepathic dialects. More complicated forms of telepathic
communication (that is, higher-level than simply sending the
image or description of an item every time the item is
mentioned) can improve the efficiency of communication -- you
don't have to send the full description of "dog" if your
recipient already knows what a dog is, but rather a symbol
instead -- but when such symbols are not recognized, you can
fall back on more basic descriptions. Because of the speed and
two-way nature of telepathy, such interrogative back-and-forth
about what that "dog" you just mentioned is, might be a natural
and non-intrusive part of normal conversation. Also, a structure
and "grammar" to telepathy provides for an opportunity for
clever and artful telepaths to socially demonstrate their wit
and artfulness in communication.
X
Touching is not strictly necessary for telepathic connection --
the physical contact enhances the connection. It's not a binary
on/off thing... standing close to someone may improve the
connection to a degree, touching the person's shoulder through
clothing improves it more so... touching the bare skin of the
hand even more so, increasing with the amount and intimacy of
contact.
XI
Telekinetic attacks against inanimate objects are limited by the
Teidar's ability to judge distance to the target; it may take
some "poking" around for her to achieve a hit looking through
binoculars. Against a living target, a Teidar may be able to use
her telepathy to pinpoint the location of the enemy, potentially
even beyond visual range (if her telepathy is sensitive enough).
However, a Teidar's attention is not infinite; in the midst of a
heated skirmish, a distant sniper may be very difficult to
notice before it is too late.
XII
For ordinary Loroi, detecting a telepathic transmission means
being within the normal sending radius of that transmission.
Loroi with exceptional telepathic sensitivity can detect
transmissions beyond their normal range, and this can also be
enhanced by large mechanical amplifiers. Such room-sized
amplifiers are usually for the purpose of enhancing detection of
signals (or mental signatures), and not broadcasting of signals.
Given enough power and instrumentality, it is possible to
mechanically amplify an ordinary Loroi individual's telepathic
transmission so that it may be readable at interstellar
distances, but this is not usually done. Keep in mind that
during the pre-starflight Loroi period of internecine warfare,
amplified telepathic transmissions were used by the Loroi for
the purpose of attacking the minds of their fellow Loroi, and
the telepathic amplifiers worn by Mizol and Teidar are for the
purpose of attack, not communication. If you imagine trying to
amplify an audio signal generated from Chicago so that it could
be heard in New York, and consider what that might do to the
hearing of people in the surrounding areas, you get an idea of
why this is potentially dangerous to unintended recipients. A
telepathic signal can be focused in terms of "frequency" to
attempt to limit the contact to an individual Loroi, but there
are limits to how effective this focusing can be. Using
telepathy at interstellar FTL communication is possible, but
limited to unusual situations in which the target is a known
amplified Farseer who can detect a transmission at a specific
"frequency" and low enough power that it will not potentially
lobotomize nearby ordinary Loroi, or where transmitter and
receiver are in a "safe" location free of nearby vulnerable
listeners, or else in such a desperate situation that the sender
is willing to accept such a risk to telepathic bystanders.
Warning an outpost of an incoming Umiak strike may not be
worthwhile if you destroy the minds of the majority of the
people you are trying to warn.
Farseers can sometimes transcend this limitation, but they are
limited in number and, not to give too much away, in lifespan.
Farseers are a limited resource that must be allocated very
carefully.
XIII
Farseers detect the presence of the minds of a ship's crew. They
can do this at great distance, but I would expect that the
resolution of this detection at extreme range is not very good.
By which I mean, if you have a planet a dozen light years away
with several million people on it, and a ship in orbit with a
few hundred people on it, I doubt a Farseer would be able to
reliably pick out the crew of the ship as separate from the
population of the planet. Farseer detection is most effective
when the enemy is moving through unpopulated areas, which is why
the "dead zone" of systems has become an important advantage in
the current Loroi defense. It is least effective when enemy
forces are stationary in enemy territory. When the Loroi
offensive regained lost ground and neared Umiak-populated
territory, it became harder for the Farseers to accurately
determine the locations of the Umiak fleet's reserves.
XIV
The Loroi female should only store the male gametes long enough
for her reproductive system to come online; this is a mechanism
to avoid the need for regular menstrual cycles, but it's not
intended to eliminate the need for multiple matings, which are
necessary to control population growth. If the female could
store sperm indefinitely, then the female could continue to
reproduce indefinitely without further copulation (like an ant
queen), and that would make limitation of access to males
useless as a form of population control.
Also, this activation of the reproductive system would be
involuntary, likely triggered by the act of fertilization
itself. No doubt appropriate drugs exist to suppress this
activation for those who are not interested in getting pregnant
(or triggering a pointless menstruation, even when other
contraceptives are used). But in any case the female would not
trigger conception "at will."
Originally Posted by Entity325
So apparently for the Loroi, conception occurs about a month
after?
Probably more like a week or two. In humans, I think it takes
about two weeks to ovulate, and about a week to prepare the
uterus after menstruation (both being done concurrently).
XV
Yes, the glowing eyes are a cue for the reader that there is a
psi ability in operation. Whether or not it is real or perceived
is an open question.
XVI
Just one slight question, the TK/PK
ability requires that you SEE the target, i am wondering about
manipulating something INSIDE something you can see.(specificly
refering to mental surgery, which could be HIGHLY useful for a
spook....with enough understanding of anatomy it should be
possible to create a death that would look VERY natural without
a rather detailed autopsy.)
As long as you can locate the target, whether through sensory
contact or anatomical guesswork, you can affect it. Without some
sort of sensory feedback, however, it may be difficult to
determine whether your attempt was successful.
Pinching off blood vessels, especially around the heart, or
constricting the heart itself would also be effective ways of
killing someone that might be difficult to diagnose.
XVII
Originally Posted by Mjolnir
Does the force available depend on the mass, volume, or cross
section of the object? Or can it be exerted on a small pebble as
easily as on a wall?
I think this would depend on your degree of skill at
manipulation. Ideally, you could choose whether to spread the
force across a large area or focus it on a small area.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mjolnir
As for the PK...regardless of heat capacity or phase changes? Or
for your typical bag of mostly water?
Both PK applications involve adding energy (in the form of heat
or kinetic energy) essentially from "nowhere," so I wouldn't
think that conductivity or heat capacity would matter... though
I am open to being convinced otherwise.
XVIII
TK can be used to move any object, including yourself. If you
have power sufficient to lift your own weight, and control such
that you don't hurl yourself into the ceiling, you could
"levitate" with it.
If you weigh 200 lbs. in Earth normal gravity, it takes 200 lbs.
(890 N) of TK force to levitate.
In the Outsider system, the force comes out of "nowhere" and is
arbitrarily applied to the target. The user does not experience
any opposite force, nor is she required to supply the energy
required to generate the force. Obviously, this breaks several
rules of physics, but there is nothing to prevent you from
applying the force to yourself.
In a more "realistic" TK system that tries to obey the laws of
physics, in which, say, the TK user had some sort of organ that
could generate a field capable of moving objects, then when she
applies a pushing force against an object, she should experience
an equal, opposite force. This means that she should be able to
lift herself off the ground by pushing down against it.
XIX
Yes, the problem with the "realistic" system is that the more
you flesh it out, the more problems you run into. If you're
experiencing the Newtonian "pushback" from your TK use, chances
are you're experiencing that force specifically in whatever
organ is producing the "TK field". How much force you can apply
is going to be limited by how much pushback force you can
withstand yourself, and if said organ is your brain, that's
going to be a serious limitation. Even if the pushback force is
somehow spread across your whole body, your TK is still going to
be limited more or less to the amount you could physically lift
yourself. Trying to lift a boulder is out of the question...
you'll crush yourself.
Then there's the question of the first law of thermodynamics:
how do you supply the energy required to generate TK force? If
your body is required to supply this energy through it's own
metabolism, this is also going to limit you to lifting not much
more via TK than you could physically. I recall someone telling
me about a system for powering TK -- I think it might have been
a Niven story -- in which the TK user "paid" for the TK use by
having heat drawn out of his body... and if he lifted something
too heavy, he'd freeze to death.
XX
The story requirement is that Fireblade has very powerful
telekinesis, able to apply several tons of force. I mentioned
above the problems this poses in terms of power source and
reaction force. Given these requirements, it seems to me the
only "realistic" solution is that this force and the energy
required to power it can't originate directly from Fireblade's
body, as the "equal and opposite" force would kill her, and a
humanlike body really isn't capable of producing that kind of
energy anyway. So that means it has to come from somewhere else.
Adding detail does not always add realism. If you're on shaky
scientific ground to begin with, trying to explain a system you
don't understand can do more harm than good. You could develop
some sort of "equal exchange" system to justify the power
source, similar to that used in Full Metal Alchemist, in which
which the TK user converts matter to energy and uses this to
somehow generate a force, but I think this creates more
believability problems than it solves. There is also the issue
of artificial replication: the more you understand how psi
works, the more likely you'll be able to artificially replicate
the effect and eliminate the need for living psis altogether.
XXI
As was mentioned, unamplified telepathic messages don't have a
very long range. This isn't a problem for communication within a
ship, as messages can be relayed from one individual to another,
kind of like a verbal command being repeated and relayed on a
submarine in a WWII movie. For ship to ship communication,
however, conventional radio or equivalent EM transmitter
receivers must be used. The majority of this transmitted
inter-ship communication will be data, but there is also voice
communication.
As was also mentioned, in addition to the range limitation to
normal telepathy, voice has the advantage that it can be
recorded and archived. The Listel are used to record telepathic
communications, but of course they are not computers, so a voice
record is much easier to search, index and cross-reference than
a Listel's memory. The voice interactions between the Loroi
officers on different ships are terse, formal, and somewhat
stylized, as you will see in the comic very shortly.
Telepathic amplifiers are only seldom used for long-distance
communication. The main reason is crew safety. Imagine using a
loudspeaker powerful enough to allow spoken commands could be
heard on a naval ship from miles away; it might work, but would
almost certainly shatter the eardrums of everyone on your ship.
Telepathy is occasionally used for long-distance communication,
but it is generally done with a modest amplifier on the sender
(often a Mizol), and a much more powerful and elaborate
reception-booster on the part of the receiver, usually a
Farseer. Farseers are used because of their sensitivity, and
Mizol are usually used as senders because they are often skilled
enough to be able to send a message that is "tuned" specifically
for the intended target, so that the disturbance to those near
the sender is minimized. Farseers and Mizol are both in
relatively short supply, and amplifiers are expensive
(especially the room-sized ones used by the Farseers), so only
squadron flagship will generally be equipped with them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Karst45
in the post you linked they talk about Fireblade having "sleep
talk" am curious as to where that information was said. was it a
written novel?
We were discussing unconscious telepathic communication, and I
mentioned that it's not uncommon for a Loroi to "talk"
telepathically in her sleep, and in particular that this is
problem Fireblade has. I think this is listed as a quirk on the
character sheet, also.
XXII
The large room-sized Farseer amplifiers are for boosting
reception rather than transmission (and to help screen out local
telepathic noise); these are usual primarily for remote
signature detection. A sender with a moderately powerful
portable amplifier (such as one Fireblade or Tempo might use)
should be detectable by a boosted Farseer, though you'll want to
use a Mizol's ability to target the message to avoid disturbing
Loroi near the sender, as these portable amplifiers are powerful
enough to be used for telepathic attacks. Also since the
information transmitted in this fashion is likely to be
sensitive, you probably wouldn't want to broadcast it for public
consumption anyway. But Farseers are a very limited (if somewhat
abused) resource; there aren't enough of them to use as a living
interstellar phone network.
Males are as likely as females to have Farseer-level telepathic
sensitivity, and there is a subset of the male Philosopher caste
that performs a function similar to that of Farseers, but males
are not normally permitted to be Farseers. Though the Farseers
are technically a civilian caste, they are often put aboard ship
in harm's way, and even operation from a safe location carries
with it potentially serious health risks.
XXIII
And to clarify: physical contact for a Loroi is essentially a
boost for her normal telepathic abilities; it's like having a
wireless device than you can plug in to a land line for a huge
increase in bandwidth. It's not an "emotional" or empathic link
per se; Loroi telepathy operates on a variety of levels
simultaneously, conscious and unconscious, emotional and
logical. But a better link with more bandwidth does allow for a
more complex interaction... kind of like the difference between
shouting a message across a river and whispering provocatively
in someone's ear.
Loroi telepathic abilities can affect non-telepathic aliens, to
a certain degree depending on that species' relative
susceptibility, ranging from overwhelmingly effective (Golim) to
no effect whatsoever (no comment). Achieving physical contact
with the alien will increase the effectiveness of the telepathic
contact, such as it may be. Even Alex, who has recently surmised
that he must be resistant to telepathy in some way, was able to
recognize Fireblade's telepathic presence when she touched him,
and even to recognize that she was attempting to probe his mind.
Actually, Alex's semi-conscious mind was able to detect
Fireblade's presence even before she touched him... though this
probably says as much about Fireblade's amplified power as it
does about Alex's supposed resistance.
FIGHTERS
Quote:
Originally Posted by Keehra
As far as I remember, the crews of fighter crafts use oxygenized
liquids to prevent grayouts/blackouts from gravitational pulls.
This would prevent vocal communication, wouldn't it? In the
Sidestory I let the pilots of the Poii fighters communicate
telepathically. Please don't tell me I was wrong
The breathing fluid does prevent the vocal cords from operating
(according to what I've heard), so the pilots will have to use
an alternate method of communication. Telepathy doesn't have the
range to be used for general-purpose communication, though it
could be used in specific situations when the ships are in close
proximity (so your comic page is not technically wrong there).
Messages will still be sent by radio, but they will have to be
generated by keypresses or some sort of neural link. If you've
played a team-based first-person shooter, you know it's not hard
to quickly send complex command with just a few keypresses, so
this is probably a primary method of communication. An argument
could be made that a neural link would be required just to
control the fighter during high G-stress (when it might be
physically very difficult for the pilot to move even her
fingers), and a fluid-filled helmet no doubt restricts
visibility, so communication through a neural link also looks
like a strong possibility. I haven't given the matter a great
deal of thought, because it's not something I plan on focusing
on in the story.
II
Fighters can indeed be shot down with ease when at close range,
and thus are not very effective against enemy capital ships, and
are used by the Loroi primarily in anti-missile defense (as
mobile point-defense batteries). They are also used to a lesser
extent in larger numbers as long-range standoff missile
platforms. I don't know where you got the impression that
missiles in Outsider are useless, because they're quite useful
when employed in certain ways. Because they can be easily shot
down, they must be used in large numbers to overwhelm enemy
defenses. Even the Loroi use torpedoes, but they don't have the
ample supply of them that the Umiak do.
III
Human bone is roughly twice as dense as soft tissue, so when in
an acceleration fluid that has the same density as soft tissue,
bone should exert a force about half of its normal weight. Bone
accounts for about 20% of human body mass, so we're talking
about a force under acceleration on your bones that is roughly
10% of your normal weight. A fluid-suit human pilot under 40G
will experience a weight similar to a modern pilot under 4G;
moving one's hands or head inside the suit should not be a
problem. Even outside the suit, I think you'd probably still be
able to move your fingers pretty well; your hands are dense but
not very massive. As acceleration increases, the weight of the
bones will eventually start to damage the soft tissue, but that
is probably into acceleration ranges that are outside the realm
of this example.
As an aside, one way that G-tolerance could be improved in an
engineered species would be to make the various body tissues as
even in density as possible.
As for powered assistance, I don't think it will be necessary,
but again... whatever feedback you would use to trigger the
power assist could simply be used for ship control instead,
removing a point of failure. User-friendliness is not the top
priority here; sticking someone into a fluid-breathing suit is
an inherently unnatural act. Anyone with even the tiniest hint
of claustrophobia will be completely useless as a hardsuit
pilot.
IV
A hardsuit helmet is probably big enough that you can move your
head within the fluid independently of the helmet itself, but if
your helmet is filled with fluid, chances are you're not going
to be able to see much out of the front visor anyway. You'll
have to depend on artificial visual inputs, be they projectors
that deliver information directly to the eye, or "jacked in"
data that bypasses the eyes altogether.
V
In an atmospheric aircraft, when an aircraft is crippled, it's
going to crash, and the pilot is just an ejection away from
safety. In a space fighter, there's no ground to crash into, and
space is likely more dangerous than a crippled fighter. Space
fighters might include escape mechanisms, but it would be an
unusual circumstance in which being ejected into empty space
would be less dangerous than just staying with the crippled
fighter. It's also more likely, given the high damage potential
of the weapons in play and the compact nature of the fighter,
that any hit damaging enough to cripple the fighter will kill
the pilot as well.
In the classic anime Gall Force, the fighters had an ejector
hardsuit (called a "struggle suit", hehe) with thrusters that
could maneuver -- and to a certain extent, fight -- on its own.
In a realistic physics environment though, given the high
velocities that a 40G fighter can build up, it doesn't seem
likely that any suit thrusters could be sufficient enough to get
you out of trouble in the moment (such as colliding with that
planet you're heading towards), much less bring you to a safe
harbor. And it would have to be a heavy, expensive item to carry
around in a fighter.
ORDERS
Perhaps he's referring to such recorders on large ships, where
you might want an audio record of what orders were given when,
and such. Here the Listel on duty is the primary record, but
this is obviously not sufficient, particularly if the ship is
destroyed. Certain key types of orders will require a spoken
component for the audio record... such things as weapons fire,
change of duty, or other critical functions. These commands
would either be spoken directly by the commander, or relayed in
spoken words by one of the staff officers.
INERTIAL COMPENSATION
The effect of a kinetic hit on the ship will be the same to the
crew no matter how the ship is accelerating. As the transfer of
kinetic energy in such a hit is momentary rather than
continuous, even if such a hit is not countered by the inertial
dampers, a crewmember thrown into a wall by the force will hit
the wall with exactly the same force whether she is thrown 50
meters first or whether the wall is right next to her. On the
contrary, assuming that the artificial gravity is still working,
the momentary jerk could be less of a problem along a long
corridor, as the crew will still be pulled toward the floor by
the artificial gravity, and will have a chance to use friction
to roll to a stop before hitting the opposite wall.
The inertial dampers and artificial gravity are assumed to be
fairly reliable. There aren't handholds all over everything, and
there aren't great padded linings all over the walls. The
damping system can counter any engine acceleration that the ship
is capable of. As for an uncompensated kinetic hit that
substantially alters the momentum of the ship enough to kill the
crew... such a hit is also likely to cripple the ship.
Any engine (and here I mean powerplant) has a maximum output per
second, and when you pump all of that into your drives, that's
your maximum thrust. You may be able to temporarily increase
engine output over 100%, but this just means more power... more
power for the engines, more power for the inertial dampers.
Thrust here is limited only by power generating capacity, not by
crew or structural concerns. You can build a ship that will do
40 or 50 G, if you make it light enough and give it big enough
engines. 30 G is a pretty ambitious figure... that's a lot of
energy output for ships of the sizes we're talking about.
An inertial damper (which cancels the effects of acceleration)
and artificial gravity (which pulls you toward the floor) are
probably different mechanisms. It's true that you could use
artificial gravity instead of an inertial damper to counter the
effects of acceleration, but then you have to have very close
integration between the AG and the drives, because if the drives
should quit unexpectedly, then you have 30 G of AG slamming you
toward the front of the ship. As Gallthan mentions, the fact
that you have a reactionless drive suggests that you already
know how to create an inertial damper, and that the two devices
may be related. However, this doesn't necessarily solve the
problem of how to create the artificial gravity that sticks you
to the floor.
The initial idea on artificial gravity was that it was related
to the jump drive mechanism; ships too small to have AG are also
too small to have a hyperdrive. The most likely way I can think
of to punch a hole in space-time through which to slip into
hyperspace is by creating an intense gravitational field, so
jump drive suggests artificial gravity generation. The fact that
the intense gravitational field doesn't rip the crew or the ship
to shreds implies an effective internal inertial damping
capability. I suspect that all three effects (reactionless
drive, artificial gravity, and inertial damping) are closely
related. The rationale for small ships not having the latter two
is that there is some sort of "critical mass", or rather of
power generation, that is needed, and the small craft just can't
produce that much power. (The real reason being that I wanted
the Loroi to use fighters/carriers and the Umiak to use
gunboats/tenders.)
MORE POWER
That's true; like in SFB, the engines are your primary source of
energy, which is used to power most of the systems on your ship.
There will be backup reactors and the like (auxiliary power),
but big energy expenditures like firing the main batteries will
require main power, that is, engine power. If you divert all
power to the drives, you will be able to accelerate faster than
if you are reserving some energy for weapons fire, but I'm
guessing not by much. Accelerating a 350 kiloton cruiser at 30 G
for one second requires 15 terajoules, which I suspect is enough
energy in the form of weapons fire to burn that cruiser to
cinders. If we hypothesize that the cruiser has four main
batteries, and that each main battery requires about 10
terajoules to fire, and can fire once every minute, then maximum
weapons fire consumes 40 TJ per minute, while the drives consume
900 TJ per minute. So diverting weapons power to the drives adds
4% more energy, which (assuming the efficiency remains the same)
adds 1.3 G. If you can run the powerplants at 105%, that nets
you another 1.4 G. So is "sprinting" at 32.7 G instead of 30 G
going to save the ship? Probably not in most cases (an extra 2.7
G won't help you outrun a 60 G torpedo), but the option is
there. The application that comes to mind is trying to get
across a system faster in an emergency, but that's also the
situation in which overloading the engines for a prolonged
period is the most dangerous.
ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY
An inertial damper (which cancels the effects of acceleration)
and artificial gravity (which pulls you toward the floor) are
probably different mechanisms. It's true that you could use
artificial gravity instead of an inertial damper to counter the
effects of acceleration, but then you have to have very close
integration between the AG and the drives, because if the drives
should quit unexpectedly, then you have 30 G of AG slamming you
toward the front of the ship. As Gallthan mentions, the fact
that you have a reactionless drive suggests that you already
know how to create an inertial damper, and that the two devices
may be related. However, this doesn't necessarily solve the
problem of how to create the artificial gravity that sticks you
to the floor.
The initial idea on artificial gravity was that it was related
to the jump drive mechanism; ships too small to have AG are also
too small to have a hyperdrive. The most likely way I can think
of to punch a hole in space-time through which to slip into
hyperspace is by creating an intense gravitational field, so
jump drive suggests artificial gravity generation. The fact that
the intense gravitational field doesn't rip the crew or the ship
to shreds implies an effective internal inertial damping
capability. I suspect that all three effects (reactionless
drive, artificial gravity, and inertial damping) are closely
related. The rationale for small ships not having the latter two
is that there is some sort of "critical mass", or rather of
power generation, that is needed, and the small craft just can't
produce that much power. (The real reason being that I wanted
the Loroi to use fighters/carriers and the Umiak to use
gunboats/tenders.)
II
The harnesses on the Tempest bridge chairs are for emergencies
in which the artificial gravity fails or can't compensate for a
sudden impact; this situation doesn't happen very often (as you
can guess from the large open spaces in the ship's interior).
Artificial gravity is required to cancel out the terrific
acceleration generated by the ship... if your artificial gravity
is out, you can't move, and chances are you're about to become
very dead. As for momentary impacts, again, if the gravity
system can't compensate for an impact, the instant acceleration
will likely be enough to kill anyone who's not rigged into a
fluid-filled pilot hardsuit, so it's not worth expending too
much worry over. Except for certain positions (such as helm)
that may be required by regulation to be strapped in at all
times, most officers won't wear the restraints most of the time.
SHOE GIRL
"Shoe-girl's" name is Nial ("Cloud"), by the way.
MALES
Some of the Loroi males do belong to a civilian Philosopher
caste, which is not strictly religious but does have some
spiritual aspects, having similar functions to the Listel as a
keeper of memory (though in a civilian context), and also
providing some of the spiritual guidance that a priesthood
might. I don't know whether Philosopher males would practice
abstinence, but I doubt it. I think it would be kind of funny if
Loroi spiritual advisors also gave physical comfort... sort of a
cross between a Father Confessor and a Geisha. Then again, Loroi
society is not monolithic... there are no doubt various sects
with different practices, perhaps some practicing abstinence.
Anyhow, Beryl isn't hitting on Alex, and she doesn't think he's
hitting on her. She is merely reminded by Alex's comments that
Humans and Loroi are similar in many ways, and she's trying to
cover the ones that could be potentially problematic.
II
Yes, a male Loroi character (Dozal Lenara, "The Welcome Rain")
along the lines you mentioned is planned. He is the character
depicted in
this concept.
III
Loroi males would be limited to civilian education and careers,
but would not otherwise be limited in those terms. They don't
get pregnant and aren't generally involved in child-rearing, so
even the most sexually active Loroi male will have free time to
pursue personal, academic or professional interests. Male status
isn't low, it's just somewhat restricted.
SEX
Some of the Loroi males do belong to a civilian Philosopher
caste, which is not strictly religious but does have some
spiritual aspects, having similar functions to the Listel as a
keeper of memory (though in a civilian context), and also
providing some of the spiritual guidance that a priesthood
might. I don't know whether Philosopher males would practice
abstinence, but I doubt it. I think it would be kind of funny if
Loroi spiritual advisors also gave physical comfort... sort of a
cross between a Father Confessor and a Geisha. Then again, Loroi
society is not monolithic... there are no doubt various sects
with different practices, perhaps some practicing abstinence.
Anyhow, Beryl isn't hitting on Alex, and she doesn't think he's
hitting on her. She is merely reminded by Alex's comments that
Humans and Loroi are similar in many ways, and she's trying to
cover the ones that could be potentially problematic.
Beryl didn't say anything about monogamy or permanent
relationships, she was talking about the one to one Human gender
population ratio. Where a Loroi male has 8 or 9 females at any
given time to worry about (if he's "pulling his weight"), a
Human male only needs to worry about one. There's nothing to say
it has to be the same female over time, or that a male can't
"steal" an extra female from another male. On the contrary,
permanent relationships between males and females are actively
discouraged among the Loroi, who do not have the social
institution of marriage or an equivalent. So that's not what
Beryl would have meant.
II
As Siber mentions, it's the intimacy of the physical link that
makes casual contact unwelcome. In terms of a sexual encounter,
the intimacy of the physical link would normally be considered
an enhancement to the experience. A non-telepathic creature
might be more comfortable as a "buddy" that a Loroi could rub up
against without telepathic contact, but since the avoidance of
casual touching is an ingrained social behavior, normal
circumstances wouldn't offer that many situations in which a
Loroi would be rubbing up against an alien. Well, normal
circumstances, anyway. But also, the telepathic physical link is
a non-sexual way that same-sex friends can express intimacy, so
there's a limit to how much of a "buddy" such an alien would be.
Regarding the female Loroi sex drive, I think the comment that I
made was that female Loroi do not have as powerful a sex drive
as male humans, and that Loroi have alternative telepathic means
to satisfy a need for intimacy that could curb a "need" for
regular sex. This was in response to speculation that Loroi
females would necessarily resort to rape or homosexuality when
deprived of access to males (as human males sometimes do). I did
not mean to imply that Loroi females are frigid or uninterested
in sex, merely that they're not as obsessed about it as most
human males are. As Siber mentioned, a lowered drive is not no
drive.
I don't think there's necessarily a trigger for a Loroi
"breeding drive"; when presented with a ready and willing male,
a Loroi female is unlikely to decline an opportunity for sex.
The Loroi female needs to have an interest in sex, the ability
to cope with long periods of time where it is not available, and
the readiness to take advantage of the short periods of time
when it is available. Anyway, all a female has to do is receive
the sperm... it's the male that has to get "heated up", so to
speak... and as we know, the Loroi males are constantly ready
for action. The act of copulation itself is what triggers
ovulation in the female, since in Loroi this is done after the
fact (and sperm is stored until the eggs are ready). So the
"breeding drive" is a social control rather than a biological
one; a population explosion is triggered just by allowing more
females access to the males.
III
A large, muscular frame would be a very alien element to the
Loroi, so the reaction to such a male would depend heavily on
the individual. It would be outside the normal Loroi standard of
attractiveness, but it's important to consider that biology does
not allow Loroi females to be especially picky about who they
mate with.
Human females that like pretty or boyish men might find Loroi
males attractive, but their small (almost childlike) stature
might put some women off.
Since Loroi and human females are nearly identical, I have no
doubt that most Loroi males would consider the possibility, if
given the opportunity (which is unlikely).
IV
I guess an important distinction to draw is that for humans, sex
is associated not just with pleasure, but as the glue that holds
a long-term mating pair-bond together, and this mating pair-bond
is the most important relationship in our society (in our
Western culture, at least). For Loroi sex can be just as
pleasurable, but they don't form long-term mating bonds, so for
the Loroi the one has nothing at all to do with the other. The
most important relationships for a female Loroi are going to be
with her female relatives and comrades.
Another need that sex satisfies for humans is intimacy, but
since the Loroi are telepathic, they have alternative, possibly
more effective methods for satisfying this need.
So yes, I'm also interested in the kind of intense relationships
that close bandmates might form, but I'm trying to resist the
human impulse to sexualize everything, and I'd like to avoid the
"amazon lesbian" cliché... it's not like there aren't plenty of
examples already out there in webcomicry. And it's also not like
a story about a lone male swimming in a sea of hot female
space-elves really needs a whole lot of sexing-up.
V
Many of the Loroi will be expecting Alex to behave like a
sex-crazed Loroi male; if he were to suddenly grab Beryl, they
would make him stop, but otherwise it would probably be laughed
off as silly male behavior. Even so, I don't think this would be
a good idea if he is trying to get the Loroi to take him
seriously as a representative of humanity.
FIREBLADE
Because the reader doesn't know Fireblade's motivations, she may
seem capricious or even brutal... and that's an appropriate
misconception for the reader to have at this point. There were
two ways the elevator scene could go... either Fireblade could
step out of the way and let him fall to the floor, or she could
use her PK to stop him. Catching him physically is not an
option.... Fireblade would not allow Alex to stumble into her,
for a variety of reasons. The best option for Fireblade (and for
the story) is to use her PK, because it is a demonstration for
Alex of her ability. This demonstration is in some ways in
Alex's best interest, because (from her point of view) the fact
that she is unarmed seems to embolden him, and he needs to know
that when they reach the bridge (which is their destination), if
he makes any sudden unexpected movements, she may be forced to
kill him on the spot... she needs to make Alex believe that she
can and will do it. Unfortunately, gently stopping Alex's
stumble with PK was also not an option... Fireblade does not
have fine control with her PK (especially with the amplifier
on), and so she has essentially two force levels with which to
shove things: "really hard" and "lethal". And she's a
professional soldier, not a diplomat... she couldn't care less
if Alex's ego is bruised. The Loroi have substantial reason to
mistrust Alex at the moment (some of which will be revealed
shortly). For all she knows, he was trying to stumble into her
on purpose.
As I mentioned before, in the first draft of the page I had
Fireblade stepping out of the way instead, because I was worried
that a sudden confrontation between Alex and Fireblade would
derail the current conversation with Beryl. But I was able to
find a way to write it such that there was only a single page of
interruption (with Beryl essentially continuing as if nothing
had happened, apologizing as if it had been her fault), so I
went with the PK shove.
STEALTH
Stealth doesn't work very well in this milieu, given the
enormous output of detectable energy generated by starship
engines. Most long-range detection would be done via passive EM
sensors and telescopes rather than active radar, anyway.
Coasting at the edge of a dust cloud with your engines off is
about as close as you're likely to get to "unnoticeable", and
that's exactly what Bellarmine was doing
II
I agree with the general philosophy that a "stealth ship" is
impractical in this milieu, but I think it's going too far to
assume that a ship can't hide, on occasion, if it wants to. The
action in Outsider doesn't take place in deep space, but rather
in the confines of a star system, where there are a lot of
objects that are a heck of a lot hotter than the background
radiation -- billions of them. If a ship lights up its main
drive, there's a good chance you're going to be able to see it
no matter where it is in the system, but unless you've been in a
system watching continuously, a non-maneuvering ship near a
planetary mass (or other hot mass) would not be so easy to
instantly detect, if you didn't know specifically what you were
looking for. It's often said that there's no terrain in space,
but I think that's a gross oversimplification. Especially when
you're talking about a proto-planetary system where there is a
huge, hot accretion disk of gas and dust spanning the width of
the system, along with high-energy jets at the poles of the
protostar.
MYTHS
The Loroi heroic myths are very ancient (their sources probably
predate the Splintering, as the different splinter factions have
similar myths) and have become very "tall" tales in the
retelling (even today, the stories are not written down, but
told only telepathically), and have become an important part of
Loroi philosophy. They are similar to Greek or Norse heroic
myth, except that the gods are replaced by very powerful Loroi
heroes. Tempest would be one such, with "realistic" powers just
as telekinesis, but also "mythical" powers such as control over
animals, the elements, and malign spirits. The bauble would
represent some sort of artifact that might have been the focus
of one or more of these powers.
The scene would be a depiction by a modern Loroi artist, and she
has portrayed Tempest in iron-age Loroi warrior attire, even
though the real Tempest (if there was one) certainly predates
that period, but I imagine this being a common convention for
mythical characters, sort of like how King Arthur is commonly
depicted in 15th Century plate armor when he more likely lived
in the 6th Century.
TORPEDOES
Yeah, I assume most of the torpedo/warhead launchers probably
use some sort of rail or coil mechanism to expel the torpedo at
high velocity so that it can quickly light it drive without the
danger of damage to the firing vessel from the exhaust plume.
The exit velocity might vary widely, according to type. I'm
guessing that the Loroi forward prongs would make ideal housings
for the long launch tubes.
The Loroi launchers can fire 6 torpedoes per 80 seconds. That's
all I have at the moment.
I think you'd want them to be as long as you can given the
layout of your ship, but if this is not a primary weapon, then
you probably aren't likely to redesign the ship just to allow
for longer tubes. Loroi launchers would probably run the length
of the prongs. Umiak just use box/array/rack launchers, so I
would image that they're using boosters of some kind.
INTERNET
One limitation on planetary internetworks in Outsider (including
those on Terran planets) is the lack of FTL communication, so
what you will have is a series of disconnected networks, one for
each system, rather than a single connected whole. Each local
planetary network might have logical "nodes" that represent the
networks of other systems, and contain archives of data from
other networks, as well as "virtual" addresses for contacts on
other networks, but this data will have to be "refreshed"
irregularly by the equivalent of mail ships traveling between
systems. You can send an email from Earth to Aldea, but it may
take several weeks to get there. Aldeans can search off of
archived Terran Internet data, but the data may get pretty
stale... especially considering how quickly a massive amount of
data on Earth's network changes, even if there are regular ship
transits through which to carry the data, it might be very hard
for the colonies to keep up with what's going on at the level of
detail to which Googlers have become accustomed... some data
could easily get months or even years old. So I think that even
in a relatively open society (as we may assume Humanity has
become in 2160), there may be some informational as well as
cultural compartmentalization due to lightspeed lag between star
systems.
Now the Loroi, on the other hand, are not an open society, and
are further compartmentalized by caste, region, and even family.
This is part cultural and part a reliance on telepathy, which
requires proximity. There are certainly Loroi planetary
information networks with great repositories of data, but the
Loroi are more comfortable using telepathy than reading and
writing. They would much rather "listen" to a telepathic story
than read one written down, and much rather "learn"
telepathically from a teacher than from a textbook or a webpage.
The advantage is that information can be very quickly and
effectively transmitted via telepathy, and with the addition of
eidetic individuals such as Beryl to act as repositories of
knowledge, Loroi institutions of research and learning can be
very formidable, in a certain sense. This is part of how a Loroi
can be educated to a Terran college level at an age of only 12
years, and also how Loroi scientists could go from "modern"
technology to jump drive in less than 50 years (once they knew
where to look), and how Loroi weapons engineers could develop a
weapon as formidable as the Pulse Cannon in only two years
(after having been given a Historian Plasma Focus as an
example). The drawback, however, is that much information tends
to stay compartmentalized within each local intellectual
community, and rarely jumps the geographical and social
boundaries between telepathic societies. This is part of why the
overall rate of Loroi technical advancement is slow compared to
ours; each group rarely knows about what another is doing, and
so the "connections" that are so critical to innovation, where
two unrelated technologies A and B are combined to create
innovation C, are rare in Loroi society. And if you want to
learn something, you need to find a teacher in your physical
location. So, to get back around to the actual question, the
role of eidetic individuals in the storage and retrieval of
information is still very important, even with the existence of
a local internetwork.
In the matter of "connecting" information between
compartmentalized intellectual circles, however, the role of the
Listel and other eidetic individuals in innovation is even more
critical, because a Listel can absorb an enormous amount of
information from within one telepathic network (be it a caste
organization, or a scientific community, or a military unit),
and then physically move to another network and disseminate that
information. This is one of the few ways that such information
can be moved effectively across the "gaps" between social
compartments.
The trick here of course is getting such individuals to move
from one society to another, which is also something that
doesn't happen much among the Loroi.
ALEX'S BRAINPOWER
It's not integrated into the academy curriculum; there was a
special program teaching it to a limited number of cadets, and
among the teachers were one or more of the Orgus refugees... the
Terran linguistic experts were still learning it at the same
time as the cadets. Those cadets that scored high in Trade
Language had an advantage when applying for the mission. As you
can guess, the preparations made in the year and a half
following the Orgus contact have been pretty intense.
The TCA Academy (which serves both the Colonial Fleet and the
Scout Corps) is the premier military academy on Earth, and only
the best and brightest of Earth's 25 billion people are chosen
to enroll. Alex has to be a pretty smart kid.
WAR, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
The Terran Colonial Fleet has only existed for about 50 years,
and has no genuine space combat experience. The Loroi Imperial
Fleet has existed for more than a thousand years, and has fought
in no less than seven conflicts, not including the current one
that has been going on for 25 years.
TECH DEVELOPMENT
In order for the Humans, who are way behind the Loroi in
military technology, to have a tech that was so much better than
Loroi or Umiak equivalent in order to be significant in combat,
then yes, for Humans that would be super-tech, because it would
be about a tech level and a half above the rest of Human
technology. By the way, I disagree that technology is a "tree"
where you can choose which "branches" you want to study,
independently of other branches. Rather, it seems to me that
technology is only a "tree" in strategy games; in real life,
it's a "web" or a "net"... the nodes are connected laterally.
You can only advance so far in one isolate field until you begin
to run into limitations imposed by another field that you have
neglected, because inventions are linked by many different
technologies. I don't know of any examples in history where a
culture was substantially inferior in a critical military
technology (as in several generations inferior), while being
somehow superior in a different military technology. Da Vinci
knew enough about the principles of flight to design a
helicopter, but it could never work, because the powerplants and
materials sciences of his time were not up to the task.
Remember, we're talking about the Loroi having a thousand years'
head start in technology. Humans can innovate much more quickly
than the Loroi, and it won't take a thousand years to catch up,
but that's not going to happen overnight.
ARMOR vs WEAPONS
The test version is that screens can stop damage equal to the
screen class times the ship's size class plus one. So a cruiser
(size 3) with class III screens can stop 12 points of damage,
and a battleship (size class 4) with class IV screens can stop
20, etc. This is probably not enough to compete with the weapon
tables, as it allows a cruiser's full volley a good chance to
penetrate a battleship's screens and armor at pretty long range,
which is probably not acceptable. Haven't had time to play with
this and balance it out. Anyhow, the screens regenerate quickly,
but can be reduced over time if they are repeatedly penetrated.
Certain weapons (such as lasers and mass drivers) can penetrate
screens better than others, and plasma weapons can reduce screen
strength whether they penetrate or not, due to "splash" effect.
Blasters are affected by screens normally but are good at
penetrating armor. Armor ratings range 3 to 7 points for Loroi,
4 to 10 points for Umiak.
II
Defensive screens have reduced effectiveness against lasers, but
they do affect them.
III
The Tenoin vacc suit is something intended for a pilot, and not
for EVA work or infantry combat. Soroin/Teidar boarding parties
would have a more robust armored pressurized combat suit, and
EVA work crews would have something in between.
The current Loroi helmet designs have a decent about of room in
the back of the head for coiled up hair. As for Fireblade's
over-the-top mane... someone once showed me an idea for a helmet
with some sort of iris for allowing the hair to actually flow
into space (and given the Loroi enthusiasm for heroes with
ridiculously long hair, I'm actually considering it), but that's
TBD.
Combat assault armor is going to be a lot tougher than the
corridor walls -- likely by an order of magnitude or more.
Bulkheads are not designed to resist weapons fire, but combat
armor certainly is. In particular, the Umiak hardtroops will
have hard armor that's three or four inches thick in some
places. Rubber bullets wouldn't even bruise a Loroi wearing the
standard duty uniform.
IV
The idea behind the function of the armor is that there's a
black fiber mesh bodysuit that provides basic protection against
most forms of attack: ballistics, blades and beams. The thicker
colored "plates" are of a similar material, hardened to the
consistency of leather, and provide slightly more protection in
the covered areas, but really this part is cosmetic and largely
ceremonial.
WEAPON TECH
You can paint a target with a laser at very long range, it just
won't do much damage past a certain distance because the laser
loses focus and the beam spreads. And, as has been mentioned,
there are a lot of ways to counter a laser: ablation,
reflection, etc.. Particle beams and plasma weapons are meant to
be more "advanced" weapons where there's an esoteric technique
used to keep the beam together at longer ranges, such as
braiding of oppositely-charged streams in the case of the
blaster, and some sort of carrier wave in the case of the plasma
focus. I suppose you could in theory do the same thing with a
laser, but it seems to me that photons are going to be harder to
corral than charged particles or plasma.
But mostly "because I say so." Lasers and mass drivers are
supposed to be "primitive" in this milieu. Again.... fiction,
not prediction.
II
Let's look at it another way. In an ion beam, how much do you
think the actual mass of the ionized particles is going to be?
The only way these particles can be accelerated to a very high
fraction of lightspeed is if they're not very massive. Probably
very small fractions of a gram. The target is damaged partially
from the kinetic energy of the ions, but also from the
electrical discharge. This is nowhere near the kind of damage
you'd get from a 1kg railgun projectile, but at least you can
score a hit. Even at .1 c, a railgun shell takes 100 second to
cross 1 LS to the target; that's more than enough time for even
a 6 G ship to dodge.
A plasma beam (or pulse) operates on the very same principle as
an ion beam, except using a different mechanism. Depending on
the type of plasma used, the "bonus" damage (above and beyond
kinetic energy) could be heat, electrical discharge, or even
matter-to-energy annihilation if the plasma were made of an
exotic material. But that aside, the plasma weapon is not just a
fancy mass driver, any more than an ion beam is.
If you accept that a charged particle beam can travel near
lightspeed and still have the mass/energy required to damage a
ship, then I don't understand the reluctance to believe that a
plasma weapon could do the same, provided that you can deliver
it on target.
III
The small, turreted weapons that the Terrans use on their ships
are most likely to be coilguns, and they are limited in velocity
due to the small physical distance that is available to
accelerate the projectile. The speed estimates of the Attack
Vector coilguns are low (as the Terran ships are significantly
larger and more powerful than the ships in AV), but it doesn't
really matter if you increase the Terran coilgun mass driver
velocity by a factor of 100 or more; even at 1,000 kps, you're
still talking about a ballistic shell that takes 5 minutes to
cross 1 LS and has an effective to-hit range of less than 10,000
km. The Terran warships are essentially glorified police
cruisers; they are designed for very close-range interception
duties against civilian or criminal threats that are not likely
to outgun them. They are simply not designed for fleet combat at
long ranges against opponents that are larger and more powerful
than themselves. If it makes you feel any better, don't think of
the Humans as "weak," but rather "unprepared."
If you wanted a higher-velocity mass driver, you could design a
ship with a railgun that extends the full length of the vessel,
(or on a very large spinal mount like the one in the concept
art). With this sort of weapon, throwing much smaller
projectiles, you might get a high enough velocity to have a
meaningful chance of hitting a target beyond 10,000 km, although
you now have the issue of the whole ship being a weapon that has
to be pointed at the target. However, if the Terrans were going
to build dedicated war-fighting ships, this is a system they
might include. But this is still going to be a short-ranged,
crude weapon by alien standards.
IV
The drive plumes of the engines would interfere with targeting.
It's certainly possible to fire weapons aft, and a number of the
Loroi ships do have aft-facing point-defense turrets, but I
think if you put your main turrets pointing aft, the
interference from your drive plume could definitely hamper your
long-range accuracy.
The Loroi like to have "Front Toward Enemy". The bow of the ship
is where the heavy armor and screens (represented by the prongs)
are oriented on Loroi vessels, so it makes sense to have all
your heavy weapons able to fire in the forward arc. You can do a
very effective slashing attack, even while still under full
acceleration, in which you keep your nose pointed at the enemy.
Even while running away, you can usually keep your broadside to
him, which will still allow most Loroi heavy weapon turrets a
clear field of fire (if you roll the ship so that your top or
bottom side is to the enemy).
V
Sure, but it seems to me the use of such countermeasures will be
very limited. As Northstar suggests, I don't think
noise-saturation ECM techniques will work without some kind of
medium to bounce signals off of. You might still use "false
return" techniques to attempt to deceive a sensor as to your
true nature (sort of like shining a searchlight at someone
trying to see you), but this will only make you easier to
target, so unless you're talking about some sort of "Wild
Weasel" ECM drone that is trying to draw fire away from a larger
ship, I don't think this will be very useful in most cases.
Because a starship's drives and weapons put out such a terrific
amount of energy, you're going to be using a combination of
active and passive sensors for targeting, and even if your
active radar is somehow fooled, you still have an incredibly
bright optical and IR target. Using a combination of
countermeasures (false return ECM and decoys) you might succeed
in momentarily confusing a seeking weapon to attack the wrong
target, but I don't think such a deception will fool another
starship for more than a few seconds.
VI
Granted that data analysis is always the long pole of the tent,
given the computing power at the tech levels of the story, I
would still expect that ship-based targeting systems are going
to be very difficult to fool. Even a torpedo-mounted system is
going to be pretty smart.
VII
Right. To elaborate slightly, the Wave Loom is the Loroi
analogue of the Yamato's Wave Motion Gun. The silver doors at
the bow of the Tempest open to reveal the twin muzzles of the
weapon. The basic concept of the weapon is that it uses the same
sort of carrier wave as the Pulse Cannon, but on a much larger
scale to (essentially) conduct the full output of the engines
(in the form of exotic, high-energy, volatile particles) toward
the enemy. The "loom" aspect of the weapon is that it includes a
series of accumulators that can be charged over time, building
accumulated energy into some sort of exotic and sinister
"lattice" that can be used in devious and destructive ways that
might be more interesting than a simple directed drive plasma
beam. But I haven't quite got that part figured out yet. The
disadvantage of the weapon is that it takes all of the ship's
power to charge, and the firing saturates the heat systems of
the ship, leaving it unable to maneuver or fire weapons for a
short time after discharge.
VIII
All the weapons are heavily automated and are capable of firing
themselves, and all targeting will have extensive computer
assistance in terms of course prediction. etc. Targets for
defensive fire tend to be relatively close to the ship,
well-described by active sensors, and the defensive weapons tend
to have a comparatively high rate of fire, so coordinating
defensive fire is pretty much just a matter of allocating
weapons to targets and letting the automated systems engage
them. Engaging offensive targets at distance is a more
challenging task requiring the operator to make predictions of
how the target may change course, set patterns of fire when
necessary to increase the chance of a hit, and time weapon
discharge for maximum effect (as the cooldown for the main
batteries is measured in minutes).
Fire control, both offensive and defensive, can be managed in a
number of different ways depending on the situation. Defensive
fire is usually decentralized; a squadron controller usually
assigns targets to each ship, and then it's up to each ship's
fire control officers to decide how to allocate weapons to
targets. Offensive fire can also be managed in this way (sort of
a "fire at will"), especially when the opponents are numerous
and small, as they often are against the Umiak. When facing
larger, harder targets, the fleet commander or squadron leader
may opt to focus fire, with a squadron controller personally
allocating targets and even remotely triggering fire from other
ships.
The 27 ships of Tempest's Strike Group AE are divided into four
squadrons, each with its own squadron leader, subordinate to
fleet commander Stillstorm. So Tempest FIRE1 will at times be
directing offensive fire for multiple ships. In this particular
case, the squadron escorting Tempest is led by the cruiser
Torrent, so defensive targets are being allocated by an officer
on that ship. In the case where Tempest was allocating defensive
targets, there would be an additional FIRE3 officer acting as
squadron controller sitting at the AUX1 station to FIRE2's
right. Obviously, offensive targets can quickly become
defensive, so the officers have to work closely together as a
team.
In any case, both FIRE1 and FIRE2 have a lot of help; in
addition to the automated systems, there are additional fire
control officers seated in the row below and forward of them to
offload tasks if necessary, as well as crewmembers at the
physical site of each weapon mount, to monitor and troubleshoot
potential problems.
IX
Both sides use three basic classes of torpedo: small, medium and
large. Each side will have all manner of variants, but they can
be abstracted thusly:
SR - 50G, very short endurance - used by Loroi fighters and
small Umiak vessels
MR - 40-45G, medium endurance - standard ship-carried torpedo
LR - 50-60G, long endurance - often used as "tail-chasers"
The standard torpedo would be roughly 15 meters long, which is
the length of a modern F-16.
X
Regarding electronic warfare: as far as I know, I don't think
modern navies have specialized EW ships, but rather, EW is
integrated into normal units, and there are a variety of
aircraft and other deployables to assist in EW. I would expect
countermeasures to be similar in Outsider.
XI
Torpedoes in Outsider will rarely achieve an actual collision
with the target. Generally, a torpedo will maneuver as close as
it can to the target until it comes under fire, and then (if it
is close enough) it will expend its remaining fuel to explode --
either in a simple omni-directional blast, or in a more focused
jet (similar to how a shaped-charge warhead works). This is a
matter-annihilation reaction (essentially the same as a
matter-antimatter explosion), so it's very energetic;
XII
Quote:
1. How powerful are infantry portable weapons?
At this technology level, man-portable tactical nuclear weapons
are possible. Obviously, the heaviest weapon is not always
appropriate to every situation, and there will still be cost
restrictions.
Quote:
2. Do marines and crew need to use underpowered weapons (shotgun
vs rocket launcher) to avoid hull punctures and other problems
when repelling boarders?
The answer to this question is pretty self-evident.
Quote:
3. Do infantry forces (ground based as opposed to marines) exist
in large numbers?
Yes.
Quote:
4. For planetary invasions, are things like tanks and APCs
rendered obselete by overwatch orbital support?
No, armored vehicles are still very important; tanks are much
less expensive than orbital craft and can be in more places at
once. At this tech level, most armored vehicles have limited
flight capability and can double as close-air support units, or
even in some cases as dropships.
Quote:
5. Is body armour effective against direct hits, or is it still
more important to get out of the way?
It's always important to get out of the way. In general, body
armor is designed to deal with area-of-effect attacks such as
grenades or artillery, or to deflect glancing hits from small
arms. A direct hit from an armor-piercing weapon has the
potential to defeat almost any armor.
Quote:
6. How many forms of martial arts are there still in use, and
how have they evolved beside firearms?
Unarmed combat techniques will still be taught, but they don't
have a significant impact on futuristic (or modern) combat. The
only potential change in such techniques might involve the new
possibilities offered by genetic or cybernetic enhancements.
Quote:
7. Swords?
No. Ranged weapons are useful both at close range and long
range; melee weapons are useless at anything but point-blank
range. You will see some swords and knives among the Loroi, but
these are purely ceremonial items. (Obviously, troops will have
a variety of utility cutting tools that can double as emergency
weapons, but I don't think that was the question.)
Quote:
8. Power armour?
The Umiak use heavily modified, armored cyborgs. I think this is
the closest thing to powered armor you will see in Outsider.
Quote:
9. How would YOU deal with with enemy forces capable of
telekinetically killing you on sight.
If fighting in the open, I would try to use numbers. Only a few
of the Loroi are telekinetic; it's important to eliminate them
as soon as possible. A Teidar can't stop an attack she can't
see, so attacks from beyond visual range, or multiple attacks
from different directions can be effective. Unfortunately, this
is not always feasible in close quarters. If my ship were
boarded by a Loroi force including Teidar, my only real option
is to destroy the ship. This is the option Umiak commanders
generally take.
Quote:
10. How would bulkheads and "security chokepoints" work on the
average spaceship.
They probably wouldn't be very effective against well-equipped
assault troops. It's not that hard to cut new passageways
through the structure of the ship. If vital control centers are
enclosed by an armored ring, this might delay the enemy
somewhat, but such structures are heavy and expensive, and
probably limited to large combat vessels.
Quote:
11. Why the hell do people in the future never wear helmets?
(generally speaking)
It's not just the future, but essentially all fiction;
characters are easier to recognize when they don't have
face-concealing helmets on. But if you notice, the Loroi
security guards in the detention area on page 36 are indeed
wearing helmets.
Quote:
12. How would the loss of gravity and atmosphere affect the
average shipboard firefight. (in terms of the crew and of
tactics)
Loss of atmosphere will only affect the fight in the sense that
only those troops with pressurized suits will be able to
participate. Loss of gravity can be counteracted to a certain
degree by magnetic boots and the like, but it will make forces
less mobile -- which side this benefits will depend on the
situation.
XIII
Interceptors are used mainly as defense against enemy torpedoes
and small craft, and can also be used as scouts or pickets when
larger vessels are not available. Their hardpoints can mount AMM
missiles or short-range torpedoes, and so can be used against
larger ships in a pinch, but they would probably not be very
effective in this role unless used in large numbers. The
convenient thing about the light interceptors is that almost any
ship with a decent sized shuttle bay can carry a few, so they're
nice little force-multipliers.
The Loroi also have attack fighters and dual-role heavy
fighters, but these are mostly found aboard dedicated carriers
and are best suited to the role of system assault, where there
are many small- to mid-sized craft that need to be chased around
planetary obstacles, and there is an advantage to being in a lot
of places at once.
MARTIAL ARTS
The basic GURPS system distills martial arts into two different
types of skills: "hard" forms that emphasize blows and kicks,
and "soft" forms that emphasize holds, locks, and throws. The
hard skill is called "Karate" and the soft skill is called
"Judo", just for simplicity's sake. Loroi "Judo" would be
something taught for unarmed defense, primarily against other
humanoids, along with knife skills and other basic things that
are also taught to modern American combat personnel. One would
not be expected to take on an Umiak hardtrooper with Loroi Judo.
XENOPHOBIA
I have used the term "xenophobic" to describe the Loroi in the
past, but the Loroi do not truly have a "fear" of outsiders, but
rather are usually uncomfortable around and intolerant of
non-Loroi, and have a highly ethnocentric point of view, in that
their psionic abilities make them superior to others (and that
they believe they are descended from the Soia, and are therefore
the rightful heirs to that galactic empire). Fireblade came late
to Loroi society, so she is herself a bit of a cultural
outsider. However, like other Loroi born since the start of the
war, who have never known peace, it is easy to see all non-Loroi
as potential enemies.
LOROI SOCIETY
Loroi industry is certainly hard-pressed, and the Loroi social
institutions are certainly being put to the test, but I wouldn't
go so far as to say that either is crumbling. War is a natural
state for the Loroi, so being in full war production is
something the Loroi are good at. Except for specialists (such as
Teidar and Farseers, that are hard to find and take a long time
to train), the Loroi are mostly able to replace their losses in
both personnel and materiel at an acceptable rate. The problem
for the Loroi is becoming psychological; the replacements are
ever-increasingly younger, and always being on the defensive is
starting to erode the confidence of both the war-fighters and
the civilian population supporting them that they have any
chance of winning the war. The Loroi had hoped that a defensive
strategy could win them the war via attrition (since Umiak loss
rates can be two or three times those of the Loroi), but so far,
aside from a brief slackening prior to the Loroi Semoset
offensive in 2144, the Umiak haven't yet shown any signs that
they are reaching their industrial or reproductive limits. There
is enormous political and social pressure on the Emperor to go
on the offensive, and it is only increasing over time. As Kambei
in the Seven Samurai said, "If we only defend, we lose."
II
The Loroi Emperor is an appointed military dictator, similar in
some respects to the shogun of medieval Japan. The position is
not hereditary. The Emperor is appointed by the Diadem, which is
the ruling council of the Torrai caste and functions as
something across from an Admiralty Board and an Executive
Cabinet. The appointment is usually fait accompli, following a
power struggle between contenders. The office of the Emperor is
usually held for life; though the Diadem retains the nominal
authority to replace the Emperor at any time, this has only
happened once and the result was civil war.
Federal power in the Loroi system is in the hands of the
military, executed by the Emperor, the military bureaucracy,
military governors and the military court system. The federal
legislative body is the Union Assembly, which includes delegates
from non-Loroi worlds. However, much law is determined not by
the Assembly but instead by Imperial executive order.
Local civilian governments vary widely, as there are many
traditions of government among the many subcultures on the three
original Splinter Worlds, in addition to the many new colonies
and assimilated alien worlds. Each world has its own charter,
subject to the administration of an Imperial governor. Most
worlds are subdivided into multiple nations and principalities,
each in turn having their own local community governments. Some
territories are directly controlled by various military castes
and other military entities.
III
Q.How large is the Loroi warrior caste?
Might be as much as half the population.
In addition to points mentioned above, many functions and
services that we would consider to be civil (government
administration, judiciary, police and emergency services,
medical services, civil engineering) are mostly handled under
the auspices of the Loroi warrior castes.
There would also be individuals who had "retired" from active
service and were doing something else, but a Lorori warrior
never stops being part of the warrior culture, and as was
mentioned, the exertions of nearly the entire society are
directed toward the war effort.
Care of the males would normally be a civilian task.
Coordination of access to the males would be more complicated
and based on local power structures.
IV
Quote:
Originally Posted by fenghuang
I read somewhere (I can't remember if it was the Insider
material or the forums) that the Loroi only went into space
because of very compelling circumstances. Given that according
to the timeline less than 50 years elapsed between first
telepathic contact (803) and first physical contact (850), was
it the 'rediscovery' of other Loroi that made them go into
space? Or was it something else that I missed?
The development of powerful telepathic amplifiers allowed
Farseers on Deinar to detect their counterparts on Perrein,
about whom they had been completely unaware. The question of
Loroi origins had always been a matter of great debate, so it
became a matter of prime importance to make contact with these
lost relatives. The Deinar Loroi already had a fairly high level
of technology, and had recovered the remains of Soia-era
starships centuries before, so it didn't take them long to
bridge the gap.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fenghuang
Also, how advanced were Perrein and Taben compared to Deinar? It
seems that Deinar plays the most prominent role in the early
timeline. Just wondering!
I'm pretty sure I posted this essay on Loroi cultural groups
before, but for some reason it never made it into the Insider. I
think it answers your questions about the early colonies, so
I'll repost it:
• Deinar: Prior to the colonization of Maia, Deinar held the
largest population of Loroi (about 1 billion in 850 CE), and
today it is still the capital and cultural center of the Empire.
Deinar is a temperate world that sports a wide variety of
climes, and accordingly Deinarids are found in many shapes,
sizes and hues, and are roughly divided into three major racial
groups (Barraid “of the mountains”, Tadan “carapace”, and Login
“nomad”). A non-Loroi would probably not notice the difference
between the three. Barraid are reputed to be tall and athletic,
usually fair-skinned; Tadan are darker-skinned but also tall,
and have a reputation for beauty; the Login are shorter and
rangy, with a reputation for toughness. All three races are
renowned as vicious and accomplished fighters, so aside from
some cosmetic differences, they are all inherently Loroi. The
majority of the higher animal species on the planet are Soia-Liron
(“ancestor-blue”) genestock, quite different from the more
primitive native organisms. Soia-era artifacts are relatively
common on Deinar, so even in the “ancient” period, many
high-tech items were known, and the Loroi always had a cultural
sense of being the descendants of an earlier civilization. The
various nation-states on Deinar had a long and contentious
history of warfare prior to the reunification of the Splinter
Colonies, and had developed a complex set of warrior castes. The
Torrai, Soroin, and Teidar castes all have their roots on
Deinar, as do the Farseer and Philosopher castes. For unknown
reasons, perhaps because of the large starting gene pool, the
largest number of current Loroi with psychokinetic abilities can
trace their ancestry to Deinar.
Mezan, an inner desert world of the Deinar system, was the first
world to be colonized by the Deinarid before starflight and
reunification. Early in the “modern” period (roughly 375 CE),
several Deinarid factions experimented with spaceflight. Mezan
was uninhabited, but Soia artifacts there were well-preserved in
the dry environment. New technologies discovered on Mezan
triggered a fresh round of global warfare on Deinar, but also
proved crucial to the development of psi amplifiers and, later,
starflight. Mezan currently supports a very small population,
but is home to various research academies, including the main
academy for the Listel caste. The Mezan Loroi are of mixed
geneology; the Loroi of the Mezan sub-culture are contemplative
and inquisitive, and often considered by other Loroi to be naïve
and overly idealistic.
Because of the baggage of many thousands of years of nation
conflict, local nationalism still exists on Deinar, and still
affects Loroi politics in general. Many members of the Loroi
Axis (the opposition party) are nationals of states that were in
traditional conflict with the current ruling power.
• Perrein: A hot, wet, jungle planet, Perrein was home to a
relatively small (~200 million) population in 803 CE when they
were contacted by Farseers from Deinar. The habitable zone of
Perrein’s native ecosystem is populated with dense rain forest
and dangerous organisms; Loroi settlements tended to be small,
dispersed and somewhat insular. As on Deinar, Perrein knew
constant warfare between its city-states, but because of the
hostile and dispersed geography, conflicts usually consisted
less of large armies and more of small teams of elite troops.
The Mizol were Perrein’s equivalent of the Teidar, and the caste
still has its headquarters here. Physically, Perreinids are of
medium height, and often have dark hair and larger than average
ears. Perreinids form a single large racial group; the frequent
conquest and reconquest of city states seems to have kept
bloodlines tangled, even in remote communities. Without the
abundance of Soia-era artifacts available on Deinar or Taben,
Perrein technology was comparatively primitive, and without Soia
texts as a baseline, the Perrein dialect of Trade was barely
recognizable during contact; however, the Perreinids have
perhaps the strongest spoken tradition among the Loroi, and have
a reputation for being easy to communicate with (if not always
easy to trust). Perrein produces formidable telepaths, and has
the highest occurrence of psychokinetic abilities as a
percentage of any Loroi population, though Perreinid
psychokinetics tend to be of lower power-levels. Many telepathic
technique schools (including the Mizol) are still based here.
Although at the time of reunification the population of Perrein
represented nearly a quarter of all Loroi, since then the
population of Perrein has grown the least of the three Sister
worlds, and is still less than half a billion.
More than any of the other Loroi cultures, the Perreinids have
enjoyed a truly exotic diet of weird native creatures from their
world. Their unusual palates are often the subject of jokes; it
is said that it’s impossible to turn a Perreinid’s stomach.
• Taben: Though Taben was arguably the most technologically
advanced of the three Splinter Colonies prior to spaceflight,
due to the large quantity of Soia-era artifacts littering the
ocean floor, Taben was the last of the three to be reached by
Deinarid ships, 92 years after the initial telepathic contact.
Taben had by far the smallest population of the three, and also
the lowest occurrence of psychokinetic abilities in the
population. As a result, the Tabenids have often perceived
themselves to be treated as the junior partners in the alliance.
Taben is an ocean-covered world, with relatively small land
masses; there are two main racial groups, the fair-skinned
northern sailors (the majority of the population) on the small
continent of Beleri, and the darker southern divers who inhabit
the Amenal archipelago. The northern group in particular is
known for being very tall and thin, and fair hair and especially
yellow eyes are normally a trait unique to the Northern (Belerid)
Tabenids; they are also often kidded about having larger than
normal noses. The sailors on the stormy northern seas enjoyed a
long tradition of heroic seamanship, from fishing and “whaling”
to trading and exploring, and even raiding and piracy. In the
warmer, calmer southern islands of Amenal, where the seas are
shallow in places, the Southerners (Amenal) often dived in
search of treasure and artifacts. Loroi resistance to pressure
and their efficient metabolisms allowed Amenal divers to descend
to remarkable depths, long before the development of
submersibles. The southern islands became a center of trade and
learning (and a target of northern raiders). While by the time
of the contact in 895 CE the Southern Tabenids were living in
fairly high-tech islandic and aquatic habitats, many Belerid
still sailed wooden ships. Because of the limited amount of
arable land and frequency of disastrous weather, population in
pre-contact Taben never got much above 50 million, and was
perhaps as small as 30 million at the time of contact. Though
the Listel traditions pre-date the Splintering and existed in
each of the three colonies, the second of the major Listel
academies is located here in the Amenal islands on Taben. The
Tenoin caste also has its traditional roots here, and is
headquartered in an orbital facility. Alone among the three
colonies, Taben did not have a constant history of inter-tribal
conflicts, aside from the occasional northern pirate raids on
the southerners. The elements were a strong challenge in and of
them themselves, and the communities were widely dispersed, but
traded frequently.
Not surprisingly, Taben is known for its variety of seafood, and
sea-greens form the traditional staple of the Tabenid diet.
Because of their perceived cultural differences and traditions
of isolationism and self-rule, Taben has often been a seat of
dissent in the Empire, among the Belerids in particular. In each
of the two major Loroi civil conflicts, Tabenids have formed a
major part of the rebel faction. Today, many of the members of
the Loroi Axis, the opposition party, continue to be Tabenid.
• Maia: The term “Maiad” is both a cultural and a biological
classification; it is used both to refer to the culture of Maia
specifically and also to biologically classify Loroi of mixed
descent who do not fall into the traditional three racial
categories of the Sister Worlds. Maia was an early Loroi colony
(1311 CE), a large, fertile world with a welcoming climate and
bountiful resources. Maia was the first Loroi world to have
reproductive restraints almost completely released, which in
addition to producing a population explosion had a powerful
impact on local culture. Maia culture is the “melting pot” of
the Loroi Empire, and tends to be more easy-going than the
relatively uptight Sister worlds. Maia is currently by fair the
most populous Loroi world, and continues to enjoy relaxed
reproductive controls (in comparison to other Loroi worlds), and
it continues to be a major source of emigrant population for the
rest of the colonies.
Together with this secondary descendant population (the
Detan-Maiad or “new” Maiad), the Maiad represent a very large
numerical percentage of all Loroi. However, this larger colonial
racial group does not possess a unique culture. Detan-Maiad are
common in the colonial frontier, such as in the Maiad and Seren
sectors. Maiads comprise all shapes and sizes.
V
Sure, there are civilian freighters and transports. Most would
operate during wartime pretty much the same way as during
peacetime, except of course that there would be contested
systems that they could not enter peacefully. But most
commercial traffic moving within Loroi territory or between
Loroi and allied territory doesn't have much to worry about in
terms of enemy activity. During the war, there would be a lot of
military cargoes available for civilian transports to carry, so
they'd be doing pretty well. Courier vessels are also very
important in a system without FTL communication, and there will
be civilian and well as military couriers, and some private
couriers who will take on military-style duties. Starships are
very expensive, so they would be mainly operated by commercial
guilds, and less by individuals.
VI
Loroi society is very much centered around the warrior
culture... the Loroi of the warrior castes are generally of much
higher social status than the civilians. The Loroi government is
essentially a military dictatorship, so the warriors are in
charge. The interaction between a warrior Loroi and a civilian
might be something like the interaction between a medieval
knight and a local merchant or artisan; the knight needs the
services of the civilians and so must interact with them to some
degree, but no more than is absolutely necessary. Even in
peacetime, civilian concerns take a back seat to military
ones... now at war, there's no question that military concerns
are paramount.
Civilian society closely follows the example set by the warrior
castes; the civilian equivalents of the warrior castes are more
like regional guilds or companies centered around a specialty,
with their own internal hierarchies, and with many of the Loroi
within a guild being blood relatives.
VII
Birth defects or brain damage might produce a telepathic mute.
Because Loroi social interaction relies heavily on telepathy, a
telepathic mute would always be something of a social outsider.
Probably not too different from how deaf people are treated in
our society. The handicap would almost certainly exclude her
from military service.
VIII
The gender imbalance is not considered by the Loroi to be a
mystery, but rather a necessity of a warrior race. Most Loroi
assume that those races without such a gender imbalance (or a
similar reproductive boosting mechanism) are merely not suited
to galactic domination (read: inferior).
IX
Semoset is a traditional Loroi event on Deinar, celebrated once
every 20-30 years (to coincide with the periodic arrival of a
comet in the Deinar system). The festivities involve feasts and
athletic competitions (similar to the Olympics), and last for
about a month and a half.
X
I think there's some middle ground between "we are instantly
able to replicate this technology" and "this lump of material is
no help to us whatsoever." Even the most dilapidated spacecraft
wreck is going to be of major interest to a lesser-developed
culture, even if the only benefit is of speculation about what
might be possible. You may not understand the implications of
the remains of the FTL drive you're examining if you're at the
iron age level of technology, but the galley kitchen implements
may be extremely interesting to you.
Imagine if your culture grew up surrounded by these kinds of
artifacts. At every stage of development, pre-existing examples
of whatever you're trying to invent (in whatever state of
decomposition) already exist for you to examine. This cannot
help but be a major benefit to the progress of technology in a
culture.
XI
The Loroi military is very professional, and so I would expect
that dueling would be highly illegal. However, with such a long
martial tradition, it's going to be inevitable that various
Loroi sub-cultures will have long histories of ritualized
dueling, and much less formalized fights are no doubt common in
the largely unsupervised child-bands, so duels will probably
still happen, but in the shadows.
XII
Males are going to be very important genetically, if only
because males can be much more prolific than females in terms of
passing on genes. Although a successful warrior female's high
status may give her access to a harem of males for breeding, she
can only give birth to a limited number of children during her
lifetime - especially if she's a busy warlord - even given her
potentially long lifespan. Her brothers, sons and nephews,
however, can father hundreds or even thousands of offspring in a
lifetime. Even civilian females can give birth to warrior
children if mated with males of warrior pedigree. And remember
that males can also have powerful telepathic or even
psychokinetic abilities that will make them especially prized as
breeding partners, regardless of their social origin, as these
traits are very important in warriors.
In terms of social evolution, we must expect change to be slow
for the Loroi... they are a warrior culture with very rigid
social structures that are reinforced both by biology and a
history of almost constant conflict, both internal and external.
Though conflict has the potential to effect rapid change, it
seems to me that it more often has the effect of slowing change
instead, especially when it becomes the norm (as in various
"warring states" periods in Earth history).
The current conflict with the Umiak has been very short in terms
of the entire history of Loroi spacefaring culture (25 years in
a span of more than a thousand), though it is certainly
unprecedented in terms of scale and destruction. I'd add at
least one item to Kavalion's list:
4) Pragmatism. Losses of both population and infrastructure on
planetary scales and the looming threat of potential
extermination may force some breakdowns in the otherwise rigid
structure of Loroi society, where required by simple necessity.
A bit like a depopulated Europe after the devastation of the
Black Death (and still facing military threats from the East),
the Loroi must find a way to get things done any way they can,
whether or not it follows their traditional ways of doing
things. Jobs that are traditionally reserved for warriors of
status might have to be given to a civilian female, or an alien
ally, or possibly even (gasp) a Loroi male.
XIII
The Loroi have varied sub-cultures and traditional eating
habits, but for the most part the youthful military Loroi
encountered in the story are hands-and-knife eaters. Futuristic
technologies make prepackaged "Hot Pocket" style heatable
finger-foods the main staple of the Loroi warrior's diet, so in
most cases even a knife is not required. Older Loroi might have
more sophisticated eating habits, but the Loroi are not a
"banquet" culture; in contrast to Humans, eating is considered a
private biological function (in a similar class as going to the
bathroom) and is not a shared social event. This in addition to
the warrior taboo of eating in front of males means that we
won't see much of it in the story. Alex's "vomitorium" -- in
which he finds (by trial and error) which Loroi foods he can
digest -- is summarized rather than directly shown.
XIV
Loroi warriors are considered adult for all legal purposes when
they complete trials and standard training, usually at about age
9. The war has been going on for 25 years, so that's more than
two and a half biological generations.
Because reproduction is restricted during peacetime and not
during wartime, the majority of pre-war officers are between the
ages of 50-150, and all the wartime-birth warriors are under the
age of 25, and only a handful in between. But yes, there is a
stark culture clash between the old timers and the new kids,
even if they don't look physically very different.
XV
I meant to say that most warrior Loroi don't have formal group
dining practices, and that eating is considered a pragmatic
function, but not an exclusively private thing (going to the
bathroom wouldn't be an exclusively private thing, either). In
the training camps, there is a rule that young warriors are not
supposed to eat privately -- this is a actual taboo in some
real-world primitive hunter societies, presumably so that
everyone can see who is consuming the limited resource of food.
As adults, Loroi warriors would have no problem eating alone,
but when in the company of others, they feel more comfortable
eating where they can be seen doing so, to follow the tribal
rule... whether their companions are themselves eating at that
moment or not. But there is not a scheduled time of day for
eating, or even a designated location for it. Meals are had in
whatever location is convenient, whether at a desk or just
sitting on the ground.
This is something I can imagine having a lot of local cultural
variation, but the above is how I plan to handle it in the
comic.
I imagine something like an office break-, with a variety of
facilities that off-duty personnel can use, including food
dispensers or maybe even some cooking paraphernalia.
XVI
But yes, Loroi are omnivores.
XVII
Originally Posted by Radkres
How long is the orbit, day, and night cycle of the three Loroi
home worlds?
I don't know, but since all three are temperate Earthlike worlds
orbiting Sunlike stars, it's very likely that the orbital and
rotational periods of each are very similar to Earth standard.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Radkres
Does the Loroi and the Umiak use Soia Empire based time and date
systems?
Not really. There are "galactic" time and date standards with
some Soia elements in them that are used as a sort of standard
measure and method of conversion, but both the Loroi and Umiak
have their own individual time/date systems. Loroi standard time
is based around Deinar standard time, and would be similar to
Earth standards. Umiak standard time is based around that of
their own home planet, which is a low-G planet orbiting a dim
red star, and so is likely very different.
XVIII
Star systems are given names which are usually applied equally
to the name of the system, the primary (star), and the major
inhabited planet of the system; other planets in the system
referred to as I, II, III, etc., unless there is a more specific
regional name. (This is the nomenclature employed by Star Wars,
and it makes a certain amount of sense to me.) In the case of
the three splinter worlds, each of the stars were referred to by
local populations by the same name meaning "the sun", so even
here the primaries are referred to as Deinar, Taben and Perrein,
respectively.
The Deinar system is relatively young, from a stellar age point
of view, and so there is still a lot of dust and debris in the
system, and comet/meteor activity in the system is still
moderate. This isn't a problem with modern countermeasures, but
it did make quite an impression on the primitive Deinarid Loroi.
Deinar I, also called Mezan, is a hot, sandy wasteland that was
colonized after the redevelopment of spaceflight, mainly due to
the high density of Soia-era artifacts preserved in the dry
environment. Mezan is hot, moonless, and though heavily
terraformed, still mostly unsuited for Loroi life outside the
underground habitats. The main inhabited planet, Deinar III
(usually just called "Deinar"), has minimal axial tilt, and
therefore not much seasonal change. The planet has two moons;
the outer moon, Talas, is about one-fifth the mass of our Moon;
the inner, Mepona, is very small and trails a faint ring,
probably the result of a recent impact. Deinar has only very
primitive native life, at the microbial stage; the surface is
dominated by imported Soia-Liron life forms. It is in most ways
very similar to Earth, though colder and more arid.
Perrein's primary is fairly old, and moonless Perrein is in a
relatively close orbit (still within a Terran-style biozone) and
has little axial tilt, and again little seasonal change. The
climate is hot and wet, and dominated by a sophisticated
ecosystem that has evolved through plants to higher land
animals. The heat from direct sunlight is mitigated at the
surface by the canopy of monstrous foliage. The Perrein day
would be longer than ours.
Taben's primary is about the same age as ours, and while
moonless, Taben has an axial tilt similar to Earth's that
indicates a massive impact in primordial times. The
preponderance of surface water helps to mitigate the effects of
seasonal change, but there are still major differences in the
climate zones between the northern islands (Beleri) and the
equatorial islands (Amenal). The shallowness of the southern
seas also helps to make them much calmer than the stormy
northern seas. Taben's rotational period would be shorter than
Earth's, with no moons to help slow it down.
XIX
Almost all the Loroi characters under the age of 25 will have
had at least one child. Keep in mind though that for most of
them, they will have had very little contact with such children,
partially because Loroi children are usually not raised by their
birth mothers, and partially because most of the Loroi
characters at hand have been fighting hard on the neglected
Seren front for years on end, without any personal time to
devote to family matters.
Beryl has one child, who is by this point four or five years
old, and Fireblade is childless.
XX
Loroi warriors receive unarmed and melee combat training from a
young age, and so they can be dangerous hand to hand fighters,
but a properly trained human male would have a size and strength
advantage.
XXI
There are more different Loroi sub-cultures than there are human
sub-cultures, so I imagine they would have a wide variety of
differing musical styles and interests. That said, most forms of
traditional Loroi music are strictly instrumental, without
vocals. However, the Loroi also have access to the music and
arts of their alien neighbors, and the Barsam in particular have
a strong tradition of song.
XXII
I think so, to a certain extent. The Loroi probably attempt to
make a clear distinction between the "Platonic love" of
companionship and the more carnal feelings of the mating drive,
but they aren't animals, and the males they're mating with
aren't animals either, but pleasant, intellectual people who are
often spiritual and philosophical leaders in the community... no
doubt there are times when the one feeling bleeds over into the
other. Attachment is discouraged, and obsession even worse, but
I'm sure it happens anyway.
XXIII
Since the ordinary range of telepathy generally doesn't
generally reach beyond the confines of a ship, the Loroi have to
use the same ship-to-ship communication methods that we would
use... transmitted voice and data. Much of the information
exchanged will be non-verbal, but in a busy situation it is
probably easier (even for a Loroi) to speak into a communicator
rather than have to type a text message. So all pilots and any
other officers likely to be in charge of a ship (of any size)
will need to have competent basic verbal radio skills, although
the verbal messages exchanged in the heat of battle are somewhat
terse and ritualized (as you will very soon see). Higher-ranking
Loroi will often have underlings who perform this disdainful use
of speech for them, but all will need to have good comprehension
skills and the ability to override a verbal order when
necessary.
The issue of a fighter pilot immersed in a fluid G-suit is more
complicated, as this would incapacitate her vocal cords, but I
think it would be hard for even a hardsuited pilot to be able to
operate a ~40G fighter without being neurally "jacked" in, so I
suspect they have other ways of communicating. Even were this
not the case, I know from playing online shooters that it is
possible to choose fairly complicated messages from a relatively
few number of keystrokes.
XXIV
The Trade characters double as numerals. I originally intended
to have an additive Roman/Hebrew-like system, representative of
its archaic origin (and to help explain why the Loroi hate math)
but it was just too complicated and didn't match well with the
examples I already had written down for the class names (Lerril-ZP
for "Halberd Mk.17"), so I settled on an octal system with no
zero:
1 : P
2 : Z
3 : E
4 : G
5 : T
6 : A
7 : R
8 : M
So here ZP is octal 21, or decimal 17.
I said that partially in jest, but there's some truth to it.
Like language, math and science are viewed by the Loroi as alien
tools that must be grudgingly mastered in order to fight
effectively. Having computers that can do the math for you eases
the pain of fumbling with an archaic numerical system, but it
does mean that the Loroi are not on the top of the charts when
it comes to advanced theoretical math. They're good at applying
existing principles, but not so great at coming up with new ones
on their own.
How much math does your typical Loroi warrior have to learn as
part of their general education?
About the same amount as a human kid would be required to take
for ROTC, which isn't very much.
Quote:
Are there Loroi civilians of certain castes who have to learn
more? Or do they let other species (like the Pipolsid) handle
most of the maths?
Certainly civilian engineers would need more math. Loroi aren't
incapable of doing math, they just don't like it, and appreciate
it when others like the Pipolsid or Historians can give them
examples to work from. And as with any species, personal
attitudes will vary greatly from individual to individual. There
will no doubt be Loroi who just love math, but perhaps not as
many as the engineering corps would like.
Lack of a zero as a placeholder digit to express numbers does
not indicate that you don't have the concept of a null value.
The Loroi write the word bishires ("nothing") to indicate a null
value, as I imagine the Romans probably wrote the word nihil to
indicate the same thing. Not having a zero digit makes
arithmetic harder to do by hand (though I would point out that
the Romans accomplished quite a bit of complex engineering with
their system), but whether your computer input and output is
formatted base-10 with a zero, base-8 without a zero, or even as
Roman numerals, this really has nothing to do with how the
numbers are represented and manipulated in the computer
internally. Assuming that Loroi computers are based on a binary
on/off system, it's very likely that they represent binary
numbers in almost exactly the same way we do -- perhaps even
grouping them into the same 8-bit bytes as we do (since this
would correspond nicely with their octal input/output system) --
the only difference being whether a null value is represented by
8 "offs" or 8 "ons".
A hardware adder works exactly the same way whether 8 "offs"
represents 0, 1, 255 or 256. The boundary conditions are all
just implementation. Our own computer systems use a dizzying and
contradictory array of different ways to represent numbers, from
differing methods of describing floating point numbers of
various precisions, signed and unsigned integers of differing
sizes, alphanumeric characters, and everything in between...
with differing bit orders, "special" bits for sign or error
correction, and "secret" bit combinations to represent nulls and
all manner of other quirks. Early 16-bit Intel systems had the
high-order and low-order bytes backwards (maybe they still do...
thank God I don't have to work at that level anymore). These all
had reasons for being weird, and could be awkward for
machine-level programmers, but they didn't have any significant
impact on performance (or on the experience of the end-user,
even a technical end-user), even in the slow-computer era in
which they were introduced. I sincerely doubt that even the most
kludgy of numeric representations will have a any kind of
serious performance impact on the kind of computing power we're
talking about c.2160.
But as I mentioned before, Loroi computer binary representations
are probably nearly identical to ours (in principle), the only
significant difference being how numerals are represented in
input and output.
The 8-digit system is a Soia relic, and has always been with the
Loroi, as have devices that use it. They inherited the system
the same way Western Europe inherited the Roman system, and if
the Romans had also left examples of pocket calculators, I'm not
so sure Europe would have been so quick to jump on the Arabic
system after the Crusades. If the Loroi had been forced to start
from scratch, it's reasonable to assume they would have
developed a base-10 system, regardless of whether it had a zero.
A null value (as in, "I have no bananas"), and the Arabic zero
as a placeholder digit (as in, Arabic "10" instead of Roman
"X"), are two completely different concepts. The concept of the
null value is as old as language, but the zero as a placeholder
digit is a relatively recent invention, originating in India and
moving to Europe in the 11th century via the Muslim occupation
of Spain (and the Crusader occupation of Arab lands). Using nine
digits and a zero placeholder for a decimal system makes doing
arithmetic by hand a lot easier than using the Roman numeral
system, but as I mentioned before, if the Romans had left the
medieval Europeans examples of computers and pocket calculators
that used Roman numerals as input and output, then doing
arithmetic by hand would be of limited value, and it's not clear
to me that the mathematicians of the day would have been so
quick to abandon the traditional system for a foreign one. As an
example, I'm a fan of the Metric/SI system, the benefits of
which are undeniable, but we Americans seem to be having trouble
getting even science organizations such as NASA to switch to it.
Thanks to the electronics revolution of the late 70's and early
80's; nobody cares whether your calculator has to internally
multiply by 100 to get from centimeters to meters, or multiply
by 36 to get from inches to yards... either way you just hit the
button. As NASA has found out, having different departments
using two different systems at the same time can get you into
trouble, but in the computer age it really doesn't matter which
system you use, as long as it is used consistently.
The Loroi haven't switched to a zero-based system because they
don't need it. It doesn't offer them a significant benefit over
what they have that would justify an official change.
To claim that binary computer numerical representations
"unavoidably" use zeros (in the sense of a placeholder digit)
seems to me to be more of a philosophical argument than a
technical one. It's convenient for us to think of the on/off of
a binary computer system as equivalent of binary zero and one in
a zero-placeholder system, but that's just the way we think of
it. If you have 8 bits to represent a number, and off is A and
on is B, then you have 256 possible combinations, in the form:
*snip*
Each of the 256 unique combinations represents a number. As long
as the represented numbers are integers and consecutive, it does
not make any difference whatsoever what the represented range of
numbers is. It could be 0-255, 1-256, 64-319, -127 to +128, P to
ERM, Quatloo to Bleen, or any other range of 256 numbers you
choose. Using exactly the same hardware binary adder logic we
have today, AAAABAAA plus one is AAAABAAB, and BBBBBBAB minus
AAAAABAB is BBBBBAAA, regardless of what numerals these bit
patterns represent. We use all kinds of arbitrary mappings for
bit patterns. In the ASCII system, the 8-bit binary patterns
represent alphanumeric characters... but you can still add ASCII
capital-A to ASCII [space] and get ASCII lower-case-a. Binary
patterns can be used to represent whatever that you want them to
represent. Shuffling arbitrary definitions of bit patterns to
and from various internal representations is unlikely to have
significant impacts on the processing power of a 2160 computer
system. See: XML processing.
XXV
Since a lot of Loroi production comes from non-Loroi factories,
most of the key union members (Delrias, Pipolsid, Neridi, Golim
and probably Barsam) will need to have the design specs for most
Loroi technology.
XXVI
Both Soroin (warrior) and Tenoin (pilot) castes can rise to the
rank of XO and Captain. Normally, upon reaching command rank,
the officer is admitted to the Torrai (command) caste -- with
much pomp, ceremony and extra training -- but in wartime it's
not always practical to pull captains off the line, so there are
a lot of Soroin and Tenoin brevet captains running around.
The Captain and XO will not always be on the bridge, so more
junior officers will have opportunities to temporarily take
control of the ship, and must be trained accordingly.
XXVII
Yes, that's the general idea. Loroi crew each have their own
bunk capsules (they don't have to share), which are sealable
both for environmental safety and telepathic privacy, but only
those above a minimal rank have any kind of private space
(beyond a bunk) to themselves. Communal space is considered a
higher priority to the Loroi military than private space.
The reason the corridors seem empty (as should soon be clear) is
that the ship is on combat alert, and everyone is at their
combat stations, prepared for imminent enemy contact. This is
also the reason why Alex is being brought to the bridge to speak
to the Mizol Parat (who is also a key bridge officer), rather
than to her private office.
XXVIII
I don't have much in the way of hard Loroi population figures.
Checking my notes, the three Loroi splinter worlds had a
combined population of about 1.25 billion in 850 CE, at the time
of rediscovery of starflight. I had made a note that Perrein's
population had only increased from 200 million to 500 million
since then, but that this was unusual, and also that the most
populous Loroi planet was Maia. Most Loroi worlds would probably
have populations much small than that of Earth, but Loroi
territory is perhaps ten times as large. I would guess at a
figure somewhere in the neighborhood to 50 to 100 billion. With
high birth rates and appalling casualty rates, the number could
fluctuate a lot.
As for the Umiak, I wouldn't even venture a guess, except to say
it's "a lot more."
XXIX
I decided that they don't have one. Nobody salutes when the
Commander enters the infirmary, nor when Beryl and Fireblade
(who are fairly senior officers) pass the various Loroi in the
corridors. No doubt there is some kind of formal telepathic
acknowledgement that occurs between superior and subordinate,
but that's something we can't see. Because many of the Loroi
don't speak, I try to use body language when I can to give some
insight into what's going on, and I figure that's easier if the
Loroi are relatively informal with their posture and
gesticulation. If they had to snap to attention and salute, then
their reactions to Alex would probably be hard to read.
I can imagine Loroi troops standing straight at attention in
some circumstances; like human infantry, Loroi would also have
been fighting in ranks at some time in the distant past, and so
I can see that tradition surviving in some form like ours did.
XXX
The Loroi equivalent of the handshake would also be
telepathic... initiating a telepathic conversation would be
considered a friendly gesture. It is not exactly a lowering of
defenses, as a telepathic connection can be used by either party
to attack the other, but communicating telepathically with
someone may allow them to learn things you may not have wanted
to tell them. When Loroi do not trust each other, they use
verbal communication.
If the Loroi were really trying to gain someone's trust and
lower barriers, they could actually touch hands... but that
would be the intimacy equivalent of giving someone a bear hug
and a kiss.
XXXI
The Loroi Empire consists of six sectors, each containing about
20-50 developed systems and 1-4 major population centers. It
covers an area roughly 100 parsecs across.
The number of ships is harder to pin down; it's certainly in the
hundreds and perhaps in the thousands. They are destroyed and
replaced at a relatively high rate.
XXXII
Officers on duty at certain important positions on the bridge
keep their rank tabs lit, partially to indicate that they are
active at that post (whether or not they are actually in their
seats at the moment), partially to make them easy to find at a
glance.
Beryl and Fireblade are not on duty at bridge posts at the
moment (the orange-haired Listel and the purple-haired Teidar
are currently sitting at the posts Beryl and Fireblade would
normally man, respectively). Tempo is technically on duty, since
there is not someone else sitting in her empty chair, but she's
busy talking to aliens at the moment, and many normal rules
don't really apply to the Mizol position anyway.
XXXIII
Loroi are ominvorous. They have various sub-cultures, including
some that live at a very primitive level, so I'm sure they have
all kinds of gross delicacies. There won't be too many
opportunities to go into Loroi eating habits in the comic, but I
may be able to work some things in. Taben would obviously be
known for seafood, and Perrein, which has a vibrant ecosystem
almost untouched by Soia-imported lifeforms (other than the
Loroi themselves), produces a variety of unusual delicacies that
make other Loroi turn up their noses.
Starships at this tech level no doubt have very effective
methods of food preservation, but fresh food is probably still
going to be desirable. Large ships like Tempest can afford space
for a small garden for growing small amounts of fresh food; in
particular, fungi would be an ideal food to grow on board ship,
allowing you to turn waste into food without even requiring
sunlight. I do have a short scene planned in the Tempest grow
room where they have these huge, phosphorescent Perrein fungi
all over the place.
I also have another scene planned where they try to introduce
Alex to the Loroi equivalent of coffee.
Agreed, I think the vast majority of food aboard a starship
would be preserved, and it would probably be pretty decent. But
a little fresh vegetable would always be welcome, and the fungi
seems essentially "free", except for the space allocated and the
water (which is recoverable), it seems like a good use of waste
products.
I'm not so sure that a 3-month supply of water is out of the
question, but regardless, a spacecraft is a closed system. The
only way you could "lose" water is if you dump it overboard. The
vast majority of consumed water is going to come out with the
waste, and this is all recoverable.
XXXIV
I think that the Loroi would have a wide variety of performing
arts, and the more ornate and abstract the better... Cirque du
Soleil would probably be right up their alley -- perhaps with a
sort of telepathic opera instead of singing. They would not be
offended by the physical contact between the performers...
remember that humans have touching taboos as well -- we aren't
allowed to touch strangers on the street in the way that
acrobats touch each other either, but we understand that it's a
performance and normal rules don't apply. Loroi also don't take
the social taboo to impractical extremes... a Loroi medic, for
example, won't hesitate to touch a wounded Loroi in any manner
that may be required.
The Loroi would have many kinds of non-vocal instrumental
performances, and a variety of live performances of various
dance/acrobatic styles, and they would have recordings of each.
But I think the stage performances would be very abstract, as
the Loroi are accustomed to the use of telepathy for
storytelling. They would find our television and movie dramas
very confusing... they would probably think they were looking at
documentaries.
However, since the war has been going on for 25 years, the Loroi
probably do not devote much in the way of resources to
entertainment, so whatever traditions they had before the war
are probably stretched thin, especially with their emphasis on
live performance. Almost any kind of performance would be a
novelty.
XXXV
Loroi written literature would be pretty much strictly
nonfiction.
XXXVI
During peacetime, I can imagine a lot of athletic sports that
the Loroi would enjoy, from outright arena combat to more
abstracted sports similar to ours. However, all of these would
have been suspended by several years into the war, and the
younger Loroi probably wouldn't even remember them. But
certainly, sparring with each other will be a frequent pastime
for shipboard Loroi crews. Most Loroi fighting forms will
involve the use of a weapon (knife), but there will also be
unarmed moves. In Loroi vs. Loroi combat, physical contact
favors the more powerful telepath, as telepathic "shouts" can be
used to disorient or even stun an opponent.
Psychokinesis is relatively uncommon, and almost anyone who has
it is going to be railroaded into the Teidar or Mizol or another
similar specialty. If you're facing a group of Loroi troops,
most of them will not have PK, but you can probably bet that
there's at least one squad leader that does -- so Loroi
traditionally did not use a lot of ranged weapons because they
were easily deflected.
Psychokinesis (moving things with the mind) and telekinesis
(moving things remotely) are pretty much the same thing. The
GURPS system nomenclature had telekinesis as the specific
ability to move objects, and psychokinesis as the more general
power of matter manipulation (including telekinesis and things
like pyrokinesis), so I sometimes ape this distinction,
referring to the power as PK and the act of moving something as
TK.
The way telekinesis works is that the user can apply a force
(limited by power, which varies by user and subject to
amplification) to an object that they can sense. There is no
theoretical limit to range, but functionally it is limited to
something you can see and accurately judge the distance to, so
for most people this will be 25-50 meters. A living target may
give off a telepathic signature that can be used to help in
determining range, so attacks against a living target will be
subject to telepathic range. Attacks at very long range will be
very difficult; looking through a scope will let you see a
target at long range, but will not help you judge the distance.
PK abilities are strictly limited to squad-level combat. Even PK
power levels as formidable as Fireblade's would have no effect
on a warship at range.
Fireblade and Tempo both have PK abilities, but they differ
greatly in power and scope. I have spec'ed some of these out in
the GURPS system. With her amplifier, Fireblade's nominal TK
push force is about 1,500 lbs (6,670 N), and significantly more
when she becomes enraged. She doesn't have fine control in terms
of manipulation -- she can't thread a needle with her TK -- but
she can shove you into a wall with enough force to be
potentially lethal. She can also use her PK to heat up an object
at a rate of about 500 degrees F per 1 lb. per second (108
degrees C per 1 kg per sec). Between these two abilities, I'm
sure you can imagine a wide variety of methods for killing
things.
Tempo's PK power is unamplified and comparatively feeble, with a
push force of about 1/4 pound (1.1 N), but she has very fine
control, ideal for the sorts of things that a Mizol might do...
manipulating remote switches or rearranging items on someone's
desk when they're not looking. Tempo's key abilities are
telepathic rather than kinetic.
Both Fireblade and Tempo get a chance to show their abilities
off in Chapter 2, so a demonstration of these concepts is not
far off.
XXXVII
During World War II, Roosevelt allowed baseball to continue
during wartime, on the premise that it was important for morale
both at home and for military forces overseas. However, baseball
lost most of its players to the military, and had to face
serious resource limitations due to rationing. By 1944 teams
were reduced to fielding 15-year-old pitchers and one-armed
outfielders. Now imagine if the war had lasted for three
generations, still and was still going on with no end in sight.
Baseball might still exist, but it would probably be only a
shadow of what it once was.
For the Loroi, the emphasis on live performance and the lack of
FTL communication means that entertainment can still be an
important morale boost for civilians on the home front, but
warriors at the front hundreds of light years away will probably
not get to see much of it. Also, warrior children go into
isolation for training at a young age, and are usually deployed
soon after graduation, with limited options for entertainment in
the little off-time available to them, and little experience of
higher culture. A ship pulled back from the lines might offer
the young crew a chance to experience some homefront Loroi
culture, but in some cases this might be like taking the Feral
Kid from The Road Warrior to a production of La Boheme. (Okay,
that's an overstatement, but you get the gist.)
Tempest in particular has been on the line for a long time, is
overdue for refit, and is operating with an under-strength crew,
most of whom are replacements. The base they have been operating
out of, Azimol, was once an inhabited system but now contains
only military installations (the civilians long since having
fled or been killed during the Umiak occupation). The only
performances the Tempest crew are likely to have experienced in
the last several years would be those they had organized
themselves.
XXXVIII
I think Loroi would find beauty contests quaint. They are
certainly aware of the concept of female beauty -- they
obviously spend some effort on how they look, and visual
aesthetics are important to them. However, because they are the
dominant gender, they don't have an inferiority complex over
being "ogled" or treated as objects, so a hooter contest would
probably not be offensive to them, though they might find it
silly. To them it would be something like lining up a bunch of
people and judging them on how big their ears are.
XXXIX
It's hard to imagine Loroi males being used for this kind of
entertainment, given their small numbers and relatively high
status. Loroi females would probably not have the appetite for
constant titillation that human males do, but then again, Loroi
females may have to go very long periods without any kind of
sexual contact, so you figure there might be some interest
there. It's hard to imagine what form such interest might take.
Pinups come to mind, but females are culturally discouraged from
fixating on a particular male (as you can probably imagine,
given that most females would not have an opportunity to mate on
multiple occasions with the same male), so I'm not sure that
makes sense. The other thing that comes to mind are
representations, possibly abstract, of the male apparatus
(eastern lingam spring to mind). But probably best to leave that
where it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mithril
how about poker? kind of moot since they are telephatic and all.
However, I see the game become popular in an attempt to train
your telephatic to block other people. what do you guys think?
The Loroi have a chess-like game called Crossfire; the play is
strategic, but for the Loroi an important part of winning the
game is the telepathic contest between the players as each tries
to read the other's thoughts. This game is shown being played in
chapter 2.
XXXX
There are all kinds of physical mechanisms to achieve a skewed
gender ratio; if your gender-choice mechanism depends on X or Y
gametes from the male, for example, you simply produce more of
one type than the other. I don't think the specific method used
is important, except to say that in this case, parthenogenesis
would remove social control over population growth, which would
probably be disastrous for an almost-all-female warrior species
with high reproductive rates.
You're right that the evolutionary processes that create such a
ratio and maintain it over time is an important, separate
question. A while ago when I was thinking about Loroi
family/clan dynamics, it occurred to me that high-status Loroi
females could benefit a lot by having a larger percentage of
male children, since those males could more effectively spread
her genes than female children could. This was worrisome,
because you might expect that this pressure could cause the
percentage of male births to rise over time (especially during
peacetime, when it's the high-status females who are doing most
of the reproducing), eventually balancing out the male/female
ratio.
However, as you mention, this potential evolutionary benefit to
the individual must be balanced against the overall benefit to
the group. Outside of reproductive and social capacity, the
Loroi males are pretty much deadweight; they don't gather food
or maintain dwellings, but they still consume food. Being a
warrior species, a Loroi tribe with a higher than normal ratio
of males risks being at a severe disadvantage in food gathering
versus consumption, or more to the point, in combat against
another tribe with a larger percentage of fighting females.
Also, males can spread genes but not bear children, so every
male that replaces a female reduces the raw reproductive
capacity of the group. So, a larger percentage of male offspring
may benefit the individual's genes, but a smaller percentage
benefits the family/clan group as a whole.
Also, the social nature of the Loroi and specifically their
traditional "clan" extended family system, in which most of your
colleagues are mothers and daughters, sisters, cousins, aunts
and nieces, means that the people around you are your close
relatives, and the propagation of their genes are nearly as
important to you as your own. The power of this concept can be
seen in action in social insects and similarly organized mammal
and even primate species in which only the alpha females are
allowed to produce offspring, and the other females forgo their
own genetic interests in favor of protecting the offspring of
their sister/mother/cousin's. I think it's plausible to suppose
that this counter-pressure could prevent the trend toward higher
percentages of male births without direct social intervention.
XXXXI
Very nifty art, icekatze -- I especially like the
disgruntled former catch-carrier, and very nice drawings of
Ashrain and Arclight. And a cool sport idea, too. I think the
Loroi would like any team sport that gave you a chance to brain
your opponent with a stick.
I can see this kind of thing developing in the southern Amenal
islands, where the warmer shallower seas would be more
surfer-friendly... it could be used for fishing with a spear, or
perhaps a crook for snagging nets. I wonder how practical it
would be to one-hand control a conventional windsurf board
though... the crook would help you hang on, but it wouldn't
really help the mast stay upright. I'm trying to imagine a
configuration that would allow better structure for the sail but
still allow enough movement to that the sail can be easily
shifted. Maybe with the mast rooted closer to the bow and a
secondary support strut farther back.
Which reminds, me I never did post that Loroi subculture stuff
in the Insider. Another item on the to-do list.
XXXXII
The colored rank tabs are used to mark relative rank within a
cast -- they aren't an absolute measure in the way that our
military ranks are. You have to use the caste uniform color
together with the rank tab color to figure out the officer's
position and title. In our system, a supply officer with the
rank of Captain would outrank a combat platoon leader with a
rank of Lieutenant, and that just won't do for the Loroi. Each
caste has its own hierarchy, and aboard a ship with multiple
castes, there is a somewhat Byzantine interplay of the various
titles, who reports to whom, and who has what function in the
running of a ship. As an example, Beryl is a relatively
high-ranking officer aboard the Tempest in the sense that she
has yellow rank tabs and is a member of commander's senior
staff, but as a member of the Listel which is a support caste,
she has very limited authority in terms of being able to give
combat orders to even a junior Soroin officer.
In the Loroi Fleet, there are five primary warrior castes: two
conventional combat tracks (Soroin and Tenoin), and two
specialist psi-oriented combat tracks (Teidar and Mizol) that
lead to a fifth command track (Torrai). There are also a number
of support castes (Listel, Doranzer, Bistimadi, and others) that
are considered outside the normal command structure.
The two primary combat castes, the Soroin and Tenoin, make up
the majority of a ship's crew and officers. The relationship
between the Tenoin and Soroin can probably be compared to that
between the fliers of the US Navy and the Army Air Corps in the
1930's and 40's: two groups with similar and sometimes
overlapping responsibilities, but who come from very different
backgrounds and traditions. The Soroin are ususally the most
numerous, and arise from the land-based warrior traditions of
Deinar, whereas the Tenoin owe their roots to the seafaring
traditions of Taben. At the lower-rank levels, the Soroin tend
to fill roles dealing with weaponry and physical security, and
the Tenoin deal more with navigation and the operation of small
craft. At the middle and upper ranks, there is more overlap
between the two, and the most senior titles on the ship for each
caste are the same -- a first officer, for example, can be
either Tenoin or Soroin. Either caste can also go on to special
training as a Torrai and rise to command grade. Overall, the
Tenoin, Soroin and Torrai share a more or less combined rank
structure and chain of command aboard a ship.
Specialist castes such as the Teidar and Mizol are not part of
the regular chain of command, except as exists within their own
departments, but they interact with the regular command
structure in complex ways. As you might expect, Teidar are
regularly placed in command of Soroin security forces, and while
Teidar are not permitted in most circumstances to directly
command a ship, she may be required to resolve disputes over
succession of command in unusual circumstances (such as where
there is no clear senior officer aboard a captured prize vessel,
or such as where the whereabouts, condition or competence of the
current senior officer is in question). Mizol usually report
directly to a ship commander, and have few direct reports
besides Farseers or other Mizol, but they can occasionally take
part in Teidar-style direct action and so may also be put in
charge small units of Soroin or even Teidar. Mizol are also
prohibited from taking direct command of a vessel, but the
senior Mizol usually fills a role (in addition to that of
diplomat) across between an intelligence officer and a political
officer, and is often in a position to deliver Admiralty-level
commands to the ship's captain (sometimes through Farseer
contact). Higher-ranking Teidar and Mizol do have the
possibility of moving up to the Torrai command caste, but this
is rarer and these will usually be in staff positions rather
than ones in direct command of line units.
The support castes such as the Listel or Doranzer are generally
entirely outside of the regular chain of command, and generally
can rise only into the upper echelons of their own internal
caste hierarchies.
To more of a wrench into the works, ships of different sizes may
be missing some of these positions -- a smaller vessel might not
have a Mizol, a senior Teidar, or even perhaps a Torrai captain
(the commander in this case being a Soroin or Tenoin "Torret",
or even a Mallas in the case of a very small ship). The Loroi
seem to like their societal mechanisms complicated. Also, an
officer's responsibilities in terms of her caste hierarchy may
not always be totally compatible with her responsibilities
within the command structure of her current assignment.
XXXXIII
Tempest has only a few interceptors that are used almost
exclusively for point defense, so this is probably not a
high-profile enough subject to have its own seat on the
innermost bridge "ring". My notion was that hangar and small
craft operations would be handled from the subsystem section
(which reports to the SYS station on the inner ring), and that
coordination of deployed fighters would probably be handled by
the fire control staff.
No doubt a dedicated carrier would have more specialized
squadron command personnel on the bridge, or perhaps a separate
flight control room.
JUMP TECH
Since you have to put enough energy into your jump to escape the
departure star's gravitational field, the destination object
needs to have enough of a mass to pull you back down again. The
smaller the mass you're aiming for, the farther away from the
destination star you have to be before you jump, and the smaller
a target you have to hit. You might use some "null" points (as
C.J. Cherryh would say) such as brown dwarfs at target points,
if you had them mapped out and wanted to be sneaky, but you'd be
riding the ragged edge of the safety margin. Intra-system jumps
are functionally impossible at this tech level. The Oort cloud
objects are too small and scattered to have a significant effect
on the vector of a jumping starship; certainly they're not
enough to pull one out of hyperspace.
Trying to jump from a Lagrange point would be the same as trying
to jump from Earth orbit; you'd be deep within the Sun's gravity
well, and you'd still have the gravitation of the outer planets
to contend with.
II
You can, but they don't yet. The galactic civilization is by no
means yet at a level where every possible technology is
developed. The nice think about telepathy is that you don't have
to understand how it works to be able to use it.
The issue trying to send information via probes or streams of
data through hyperspace is the way jump drive works:
1. A ship can't "fire" probes or data into hyperspace without
being drawn into hyperspace itself. In theory it might be
possible to "project" a jump field on to a different location
and build a sort of stargate, but the baseline galactic
civilization doesn't have the capability to do that.
2. Gravity affects objects in hyperspace, and is necessary to
pull objects back into realspace, since the path through
hyperspace is ballistic. The object entering hyperspace must
have the correct velocity and trajectory to both ensure its
escape from the departure gravity well, and ensure its capture
by the destination gravity well. I'm not sure how you might
transmit an electromagnetic signal into hyperspace, but if you
could, the problem then is how to get the signal back out again.
3. Because gravity affects objects in hyperspace, it's very
difficult (read: impossible) to jump "past" an intervening star.
Which means you can't throw probes at the home planet; they have
to jump star to star the same way a ship would. Add to this the
power and mass requirements for the jump drive, and you have a
100m probe with a starship drive that must have the systems to
navigate through realspace, perform multiple jumps, etc. In
other words, you don't have a probe, you have a small manned
courier vessel, and it still takes just as long to get a message
from point A to point B.
4. Short-jumps are possible in theory, but nearly impossible in
practice. For example, say you want to jump from Jupiter to
Saturn. You can jump with velocity small enough to escape
Jupiter's gravity and be captured by Saturn, but the problem is
that you're still within the Sun's larger gravity well. It's
very hard to short-jump within a star system without getting
sucked into the star itself.
III
Jump distance limitation isn't really a question of energy, but
rather a question of increasing risk of path perturbation
through the interference of other masses. The more dispersed
stars are going to be easier to jump to at longer distances
because of reduced gravitational interference from other stars,
and the denser clusters are going to be more dangerous for the
reverse reason, especially if there is a large amount of
interstellar gas and dust to account for, or if there are very
massive stars that exert undue influence. So your massive star
clusters and star-forming regions are going to be natural
barriers to jump travel. If you had two stars all alone without
any other nearby stars and little interstellar medium, then the
safe jump distance between them could be very large. However,
there are few places like this in a busy galactic arm.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crosshair
I find it curious that there isn't more talk about working to
increase the ability/range of jump drives. Perhaps this could be
accomplished by sublight mapping of gravity wells along the path
of jumps using probes to increase accuracy.
Beyond accurate measurement of stars, which will have already
been done, there's not much to do to increase safe jump
distance. The mechanism that makes jump drives inherently risky
(and therefore requiring a certain margin for error) is the idea
that the topography of hyperspace is chaotic. That is, you can
predict the large-scale curvature of hyperspace by accurately
measuring the local masses and their relative motions, but there
are going to be small-scale structures that change from moment
to moment that are difficult to accurately predict. These small
perturbations pile up over distance, increasing the probability
of a misjump. Improving jump accuracy by a significant amount
means either being able to scan hyperspace from realspace, or to
report measurements made from within hyperspace, either of which
requires what amounts to faster-than-light communication, which
is currently beyond the capabilities of the main combatants.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TommiR
The area of space in the comic is naturally not an isolated
bubble of space, and there may well be other species lurking
just outside, with their own agendas.
Actually it is, to a certain extent. Galactic space, on the
large scale, has a fairly complex terrain. A succession of
massive supernovae has blown out complex "bubbles" in the
interstellar medium. We are near the middle of one such bubble,
in which the density of the interstellar medium is relatively
low. On the borders between bubbles, where the expanding shells
or shock waves of interstellar gas blown out by the supernovae
collide, you have nebulae (molecular clouds) and star forming
regions, and young, massive star clusters. In the case of our
Local Bubble, the Gould belt represents this boundary. These
boundary regions will present obstacles to jump travel, and will
ultimately define the territorial limits of star empires.
The Orion arm is roughly 40,000 ly long, 3,000 ly wide and about
650 ly deep. The bubbles are large enough that they blow
"chimneys" vertically through the arm, top and bottom. This is a
pretty good visualization of a 1500 light-year top-down view of
the nearby Orion arm Galactic center in the direction of image
top.
The territory of the factions of Outsider is mostly confined
within the ~400 ly wide Local Bubble. Loroi and Umiak space
would be in the lower half of this region.
Some bubbles will be joined by spacious corridors that freely
allow travel between them, some will have narrow corridors that
are difficult to cross, and some boundaries may be impassable by
the current capabilities of the combatants.
IV
Originally Posted by Absalom
Here's a thought, it was recently mentioned that the outermost
limits on the expansion of any empire in this setting are the
higher-mass-density 'walls' of interstellar gasses surrounding
the 'supernova bubble' that we're in. Should it be
possible/feasible to create 'jump oases' in the 'walls' so that
jumps could be performed to usable distances through said walls?
I'm thinking a scout-sized jump vessel with a meaningful sized
warhead to produce a low-density region, then another, then
another, so that you could cross to another supernova bubble by
jumping along the path. It would certainly be expensive, and
would require maintenance to be used for a few thousand years,
but what if you just needed to evacuate from the local bubble
without being immediately followed, and both knew the need was
inevitable, and had the time?
A shock wave from any explosion, no matter how powerful, still
only expands at (less than or equal to) the speed of light. So
you're talking about a very lengthy timescale for creating new
bubbles or tunnels. Also, the interstellar medium itself is only
the minor part of the problem; the more significant obstacle is
the star clusters and massive stars that formed in the bubble
boundaries, and these are not easily cleared out.
I don't think the bubble boundaries represent impenetrable
boundaries to jump drive, as you can cross a star cluster by
making lots of shorter, safer jumps through it, and the
interstellar medium even at its densest is still extremely
diffuse. The terrain of the bubble boundaries will encourage
some routes and discourage others, though, as ship range (or
rather endurance) is a factor.
TACTICS
Guerilla ground combat is the ideal asymmetrical theater of war
if you're the underdog; even untrained Iraqi insurgents (who
would be useless in conventional combat) can take out
top-of-the-line American armored vehicles with RPG's and
roadside bombs. But though guerilla forces can cause casualties
and harass supply lines, they can't actually hold a position
against a determined assault from a superior foe. I doubt you
could describe Terran and alien forces as "well-matched", since
the aliens are going to have superior weapons, armor and sensory
devices, as well as complete air and orbital superiority. If the
Terrans did have some way to prevent the Loroi from using their
telepathy to detect enemies on the battlefield, this would
negate a Loroi advantage, but it would not itself be an
advantage, because the Terrans do not themselves have a similar
ability, and because the Loroi are quite capable of fighting
using their regular senses and mechanical sensors. And being
physically larger than your opponent is not much of an
advantage, since hand-to-hand combat probably accounts for less
than 1% of modern combat. This is of course academic, since
ground combat between Humans and Loroi is unlikely in the
extreme; the Loroi would not bother with the expense and delay
of occupying the Human worlds at this stage of the war... if the
Humans are not willingly cooperative, the Loroi response will
likely be to simply destroy us and deny our infrastructure to
the Umiak. Ground combat with an Umiak occupation force is a
more possible scenario, but still unlikely; if the Umiak arrive
in force, I would expect the Humans to play ball rather than
fight.
II
GEOMODDER: As on being able to fire at the
Umiak while retreating, with a 5-10 G surplus acceleration
reserve over the enemy there should be time to whirl the ship
around occasionally and fire aft with your bow weapons, and have
spurts of acceleration to keep the gap wide.
In addition to GeoModder's point, keep in mind that not all
engagement are going to be between fleets that have completely
matched velocities. In particular, when you have hit-and-run
attacks by Loroi ships out in the Steppes, the Umiak forces are
going to be at system travel velocity (which takes many hours
both to build up and to cancel out) and so are the Loroi ships,
so when they meet it's very likely that the crossing velocity
will be fairly high, more than either side can cancel out
quickly afterward. So no matter what either side does in terms
of acceleration, the two fleets are going to close and then
rapidly separate. So even if the Loroi ships aren't accelerating
at all, their existing vectors will carry them swiftly past and
away from the Umiak, and they can keep their noses pointed at
the enemy and just shoot and coast, and then if the Umiak aren't
actively trying to get away, the Loroi can loop around the
system primary and do it again. The Umiak can start trying to
match velocities as soon as they see the Loroi raiders in an
attempt to bring them into a matched-velocity battle, but this
will mean killing their travel velocity, expending valuable fuel
and causing them a delay of perhaps several days... not to
mention that the Loroi, being faster, can avoid contact
altogether if the Umiak try to match velocities in this manner.
The Loroi will be more than happy to lead the Umiak fleets on a
merry looping chase around the system, wasting precious Umiak
fuel, for as long as they like. So in most cases, the Umiak
really don't have any choice but to maintain course and take the
best shots they can at the rapid passing Loroi raiders.
III
Unlike the Loroi, the Umiak don't know where the bulk of Loroi
forces are at any given moment; attacking a Loroi system is
usually the only way they can bring Loroi forces to battle; if
the Loroi want to avoid battle, they can. The Umiak typically
attack a single system with as large a force as they can spare,
but they must leave substantial defensive forces in place to
deal with potential Loroi counterattacks. If the Umiak were to
pull all of their ships into a single assault fleet (leaving
nothing for defense), and attack a single Loroi system, the
Loroi (who can see them coming) could leave a token force to
harass the Umiak as they crossed the Steppes, and then send a
large part of the Loroi reserves in a massive counterattack into
now-undefended Umiak territory and cut the Umiak lines of supply
(not to mention trashing Umiak border systems). Because of
Farseers, the Loroi fleets be very flexible in how they run
their supplies; they can arrange to rendezvous with resupply
convoys in relative safety and keep the supplies away from Umiak
raiders (knowing where the Umiak are and aren't and being able
to relay that information faster-than-light), whereas the Umiak
must maintain well-protected pre-planned supply routes. The
Umiak juggernaut fleet may do substantial damage, smashing a few
border systems while the Loroi defenders play cat and mouse with
them, forcing them to expend fuel and munitions. Once the Umiak
are out of fuel, the Loroi recall their reserves, defeat the
massed Umiak fleet in detail, and then mount a full offensive
deep into the Umiak industrial heartland. And the war is over.
IV
No matter how long this war has been going on, there is never
going to be a single “best” strategy for all situations. The
right strategy is going to depend very heavily on the specific
situation, the forces in play and, more importantly, what your
enemy is doing. Since it’s usually not clear what your enemy
intends to do, victory often goes to whichever commander does a
better job of figuring out his enemy’s intentions, while
disguising his or her own.
I recall several people saying that there is no “terrain” in
space. I don’t think that’s true. Stars and planets can have two
substantial forms of impact on combat -- they can block line of
sight, and they can be used as gravitational slingshots. A
Jupiter-sized planet is about half a light-second across… that’s
a significant obstacle on the tactical scale. A star’s gravity
can be used to reverse the course of a high-speed ship that
might otherwise require many hours or even days to cancel out
with engine thrust. I can easily imagine a commander playing
“chicken” with her opponent by maneuvering near an asteroid
ring. Gas and dust (like the Naam proplyd) can be used to
conceal movement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by osmium
Now multiple jousts could mean that either fleets are large and
firing times are long such that each passing actually
significantly reduces the size of the fleet (i.e. offensive
weapons are vastly superior to defensive ones). Or that defenses
are strong and take a while to whittle down. OR that defenses
are strong enough that significant damage is done, but that by
the time the second joust happens "damaged" ships have been able
to repair the damage.
The “jousting” nature of some engagements is caused by high
velocities and limitations of acceleration; it has nothing to do
with weapon or defense effectiveness. Allow me to explain.
There are going to be two basic types of ship-to-ship
engagements. The first type is an engagement in which the two
sides have more or less matched velocities. This will generally
occur when one side is defending a fixed point, or when the two
fleets meet by mutual consent (one is not trying to avoid the
other). In this case, the ships can close to within weapons
range and slug it out. Maneuver is important, but at 30G
acceleration it takes 24 minutes from a standing start to cross
max beam weapon range of 1 light second (LS)… it takes time both
to close range and to get back out again.
The second type of engagement occurs when there is an
interception, but the two sides have more differential velocity
than can be counteracted within a tactical time scale. In this
case, the two fleets will close, cross, and then move beyond
weapons range before the delta-v can be counteracted. In this
case, if both fleets still want to fight, the two will arc back
and close again, and you may get repeated "jousting"-like
passes. If one fleet chooses to disengage, it can generally do
so after any of these passes, unless the enemy is significantly
faster.
Most of the fleet combat in Outsider will be either the Umiak
assaulting a defended Loroi system, or a Loroi fast raider group
attacking an Umiak assault force while en route through the
Steppes, so both types of engagements will be common. Let’s
think about the dynamics of the second type of “jousting”
engagement.
A typical warship system transit speed might be 1%
lightspeed (roughly 3,000 km/s), which takes 2.8 hours to build
up or cancel out at 30G. Of course, crossing velocity will vary widely
depending on the situation and what each commander is trying to
do.
Let's imagine one fleet intercepting another fleet at a crossing
velocity of 1% lightspeed, and assume the top acceleration for
both fleets is 30G. This is a speed of 36 LS per hour. The ships
will engage with beam weapons when they get closer than a
distance of 1 LS, but at their current delta v, the opposing
ships will remain within firing range for less than 2 minutes
before they zip past each other, which is only enough time for
about two volleys of main weapons fire from each ship. Assuming
that both commanders still want to fight, the two fleets are now
moving away from each other at 3,000 km/s. If both fleets turn
and max accelerate toward each other again, it will take a
minimum of 2.8 hours before they can cross again; 1.4 hours to
cancel out the separation velocity (at a maximum separation of
12.76 LS), and another 1.4 hours to close the distance again. If
both commanders continue in this way, what you have will be a
series of crossing passes 2.8 hours apart, in which the ships
are only in range for less than 2 minutes at a time. In
practice, one or both commanders will probably choose to reduce
acceleration on the inbound half of the arc, which will
gradually reduce separation velocity and maximum separation over
the course of the fight, but each side will still have long
periods of time to regroup, repair and contemplate the next
move. If either fleet decides to retreat after a cross, the
engagement is over. The enemy may pursue, but the fleeing fleet
has the velocity advantage.
Given this initial case, let’s consider the situation of a Loroi
fast strike group intercepting an Umiak assault fleet that is
heading through the Steppes en route to Loroi territory. The
Loroi group will have a top acceleration of about 30G, but the
Umiak fleet’s heaviest units will probably be limited to about
25G. Although the Umiak ships have better fuel endurance than
the Loroi, the Umiak must conserve fuel for their assault
mission, and so probably can’t waste fuel jockeying with the
Loroi for position. As a result, the Loroi commander is probably
going to be able to dictate where she intercepts the Umiak, and
at what crossing velocity. The Umiak is probably going to have a
much larger fleet, a substantial firepower advantage at medium
to close range, and better capability to absorb punishment. The
Loroi heavy weapons have longer maximum range. So, what tactics
do you use?
The Loroi commander’s goal is to cause maximum damage with
minimal loss, and to try to get the Umiak to waste as much fuel
and ordnance on her raiders as possible. Her options seem pretty
straightforward… she can dictate the pace of combat and has the
range advantage, which means she’s ideally suited to hit and
run. The Loroi will try to cross at a relatively high velocity,
and at a distance that favors the long-range Loroi weapons, so
that the Loroi can zip by, fire and be out of range before the
Umiak can get close. If she has them, the Loroi can even use
nutty one-shot weapons like the Wave Loom, since she only has
time for a few volleys on each pass anyway.
The Umiak are in a difficult situation, but they have a variety
of options. The Umiak goal is to conserve ships, fuel and
ordnance for the eventual attack on Loroi territory, but they
probably won’t be able to avoid contact with the Loroi raiders.
One option is to more or less ignore them… hold course, speed up
as much as your fuel budget can afford, and adopt a spread-out
defensive formation that puts your high-value assets at the
center and your smaller vessels in a spread-out ring around
them, perpendicular to the angle of the enemy course and closer
to the enemy, so that if the Loroi wants to get close enough to
fire at your heavies, she’ll have to run a gauntlet of your
escorts, or dare to go right down the center of the ring and
under the guns of the heavies themselves. This option means
you’re going to lose ships (if the Loroi elects to pick off your
escorts), but you’ll save fuel and munitions, preserve your
heavy units, and you won’t lose time chasing the enemy.
Another option is for the Umiak to use their numerical
superiority and divide their forces. This will allow grouping of
faster ships into faster sub-fleets (Umiak escorts can usually
do 30G+, and gunboats as much as 35G for short periods), and
will also allow the Umiak to put different sub-fleets in
different locations and on different vectors to confuse the
Loroi and make it harder for her to hit and run without being
hit back. Putting squadrons of escorts and gunboats out “behind”
the main force can give them a head start on trying to catch
Loroi ships slashing past the main group, or act a
discouragement against attempting to loop back for a second
pass. They can expend torpedoes to try to hit Loroi ships on the
high-speed cross, or to chase the tails of ships that faster
groups are “almost” catching. This option will use up fuel,
munitions and time (as well as ships), but offers the
possibility of doing serious damage to a Loroi commander who
gets too aggressive.
This is just one example of one kind of engagement. Tactics used
in a battle defending a planet, for example, would be very
different.
V
Originally Posted by brianm
Not to be an annoying hole-poker, but, if the Loroi commander
only needs to get the Umiak fleet to waste fuel, it seems the
superior tactic is to cross a few light-seconds ahead of the
Umiak and either lay mines, or fire down the line of advance. At
25g acceleration, even a diffuse cloud of titanium marbles is
going to be a serious issue (unless the shields can be expected
to repel such dead physical objects without letting any through,
and without too much strain). If dead mass works, the Umiak are
screwed; the Loroi can just dump sand in their path every
light-minute and force them to burn all their fuel.
As icekatze mentions, it's a very trivial effort to dodge such
obstacles, particularly when they are placed in full view of the
enemy. As has been mentioned before, mines have no use in space
combat; even if you can entice the enemy to run directly into a
minefield, ships formations are spread thousands of kilometers
apart... the odds that a ship will happen to stumble within the
blast range of a mine are pretty long (unless you place millions
of mines... which doesn't seem very economical). The closest
thing to a mine would be a remote-activated torpedo. Which,
again, can be given a wide berth when the enemy observes you
placing them just a few light-seconds away.
VI
Missile launch rates are pretty fast in comparison to the time
scale of combat. The Umiak torpedo arrays are box launchers that
can empty a full load in just a few minutes. Some ships have
reloads in internal magazines.
In a transit engagement, when fast Loroi raiders make slashing
attacks on an Umiak assault fleet, the Umiak will limit their
use of torpedoes, conserving them for the later system assault. They
will sometimes utilize long-range torpedoes to chase the tails
of raiders that come too close, or lob them at long range at a
raider squadron that is turning for another pass, in the hope of
catching them off guard.
In a head-on assault, the Umiak will usually launch as many
torpedoes as they can at the outset, timed (if possible) to
coincide with the arrival on target of the gunboats and smaller
warships for maximum saturation of defensive fire. Those ships
with reloads will continue to fire during the battle as quickly
as they can. In this sort of battle there is usually no attempt
to conserve ordnance... torpedoes sitting in the magazines of a
destroyed Umiak ship do them no good.
VII
Most Loroi fighters have atmospheric re-entry capability, but
there's no reason to bring them into the atmosphere to fight
when you can probably engage the same targets from low orbit.
It's a bit like hauling a destroyer out of the water onto the
beach to fight an enemy on an island... you could do it, but why
would you? Or maybe a better analogy is landing an F-15 and
driving it around the streets like a tank. You wouldn't be able
to use most of your weapons or the full power of your engines,
and you'd be incredibly vulnerable to any yokel with an AK-47.
VIII
I believe that the Navy still uses frigates as pickets (or at
least would if it were in an actual war situation where the
safety of airborne AWACS aircraft was not guaranteed), without
any special radars. In the wet navy, the ultimate limit of radar
range is in the curvature of the Earth and inevitable blockage
of line of sight. In space, there is no such barrier, and
detection ranges are much greater, so the utility of a fleet
"scout" destroyer with beefed up sensors is questionable.
Of course you'll have scouts, but they'll be solo
exploration/patrol vessels of the Bellarmine type, and the
difference will be extended range rather than superior sensor
capability, the latter of which must be very good in all combat
vessels.
IX
Each side has effective ground forces that have conducted
successful planetary invasions against the other. Loroi Teidar
are nearly unstoppable on the battlefield, but they are very few
in number. Cyborg Umiak killing machines are both fearsome and
plentiful, if perhaps they lack subtlety. However, there are
many tactical and strategic factors that determine victory, of
which troop quality is only one.
X
In an impact, it's not your acceleration but rather the masses
of the ships and the closing velocity that will determine damage
potential. Even the slowest differential velocities we're
talking about are in the range of 10-20 kilometers per second -
ten times the muzzle velocity of an armor-piercing tank round -
and often much, much more. So the energy produced by even the
glancing collision of a relatively small vessel is going to be
devastating. The kinetic energy produced from a head-on
collision by a small 250 ton fighter at a relatively modest
closing velocity of 80 km/sec would be:
KE = ½mv²
KE = ½ * 250,000kg *(80,000 m/s)²
KE = 800,000,000,000,000 joules
or 800 terajoules. Which is roughly equivalent to the yield of a
190-kiloton tactical nuclear weapon. A lot of this kinetic
energy will probably blow through the hull of the larger ship,
but even so the heat generated by the impact will be enough to
convert some of the mass of both hulls into hot plasma. With or
without oxygen, I would expect there to be a significant
fireball that will no doubt cause secondary damage.
So almost any collision between two comparably sized vessel is
likely to cripple if not completely disintegrate both vessels,
and even a larger vessel being rammed by a much smaller one will
probably be very badly damaged. However, given the scales and
velocities involved, collisions between vessels are very
unlikely, even if one vessel is actively trying to ram the
other.
Maybe, in an unusual circumstance. The Umiak don't employ
dedicated kamikaze craft -- that's what torpedoes are for -- and
an Umiak ship that's close enough to attempt to ram is also at
optimal weapons range - both for the Umiak and the Loroi. It's
unlikely that both ships would survive to reach collision...
generally one or the other would be destroyed by weapons fire
first. A case where I can imagine an Umiak ship trying to ram a
Loroi might be during a high-speed pass as Loroi raiders are
trying to slash through an Umiak formation on a hit and run
attack... an Umiak escort might try to get in the way of one of
the Loroi ships as they cross at high relative velocity. But
even in this case, it's hard to ram a ship that's trying to
avoid you.
XI
Regarding mines: first, geosynchronous orbital velocity is about
3 km/s, so a retrograde projectile would have a differential
velocity of 6 km/s. That's fast enough to do significant damage
if a hit is achieved, but it's very slow in combat terms; if the
enemy detects the projectiles, even at very close range, they
can dodge them pretty easily. Making the projectiles
low-observable will be critical, but warships will use optics as
well as radar, and these projectiles will be at relatively close
range. Since the projectile must close to zero range to strike
the target, there's a decent chance the intended victim will
detect it before it can strike.
Second, even if you limit yourself to mining a very specific
orbit in this way (such as an equatorial geostationary orbit),
the odds of a collision are very, very low. Making the
projectiles smarter increases the chance of a hit, but also
increases unit cost. Theoretically, you might use such an insane
number of projectiles as to make the chance of a hit in this
specific orbit more likely, but what are the odds that an enemy
ship will use exactly this orbit? Most geosynchronous orbits are
not equatorial, and have a nearly infinite number of
permutations of angle, eccentricity and altitude. It doesn't
seem practical to try to mine them all, and even if you could,
you'd then start to have problems of the projectiles colliding
with each other (as these orbits cross). The more projectiles
that you use, the greater the chance that the enemy is going to
detect one. And the more you use, the more prohibitively
expensive it becomes.
The third major problem with the system is that it will really
only work once; after one enemy ship is hit (or even experiences
a near miss), the rest are going to figure out what's going on
and either leave orbit, or simply shift to an irregular orbit.
Finally, as you mention, these projectiles are nearly as
dangerous to the defenders as they are to the attackers. Even if
the projectiles are self-guided, carefully controlled (so you
can order them to take an atmospheric dive when you're done with
them), and kept in specific known orbits, the sheer number of
projectiles that you'd have to use means that some are going to
malfunction. So you're inevitably going to end up with rogue
projectiles zipping around your orbital lanes that are difficult
to detect and remove.
Overall, the benefits don't seem to justify the substantial
cost.
XII
I was already assuming that the projectile had some sort of
guidance... without it, a hit at range seems nearly impossible.
Assuming for the moment that the projectile can be guided but
still evade detection, the weapon is still mostly ballistic, and
you're still depending on the enemy to do exactly what you
expect him to do. A projectile fired retrograde to engage a
target in geostationary orbit on the other side of the planet
would take six hours to reach its target... that's a long time,
and if the target ship changes course at all during that time,
you have no hope of scoring a hit. And I think you have to
assume that it will. A ship in orbit around a hostile planet is
almost certainly going to have to expect some kind of attack,
and if the enemy has any kind of combat experience at all,
they're going to take preventative measures. Like a naval vessel
zig-zagging to deter torpedo attacks from U-boats, all an
orbiting vessel has to do to avoid long-range ballistic weapons
is change vectors at various intervals. If I were in command of
the ship, I would alternate between fast low orbits and high
looping orbits; doing so would not only throw off ballistic
projectiles, but would also most likely reveal the mass launcher
attempting to hide in the planet's shadow.
Any projectile drive system energetic enough to compensate for
major changes in orbit is probably going to be easily detectable
by the enemy, and will have to deal with the issues of the
conventional torpedo, chief among which is dealing with ship
defensive weaponry.
XIII
I think this has been mentioned, but it bears repeating -- if
you are engaging an enemy fleet around your own inhabited
planet, then you are in a very difficult situation. If enemy
starships have made it as close as Lunar orbit to your planet,
then there is very little you can do to stop them from
devastating the surface of the planet at pretty much any time
they want. One would hope that you would have already made your
defensive stand long before this point. If the goal of the enemy
is the destruction of your planet, then the battle is already
over. If the goal of the enemy is invasion, then the defense has
some difficult choices to make. If you care at all about the
civilian lives at stake, then you're either going to have to
just let the enemy have the system, or you're going to have to
plan your defense very carefully. If at any time your defense
really angers the enemy or it looks like they're not winning,
they can change their plan to destruction. In any case, it's not
a good situation, and employing wonky terror weapons at this
stage may not be the best plan.
XIV
The Loroi have three types of shipboard fighting forces. The
first are Soroin security forces, essentially part of the ship's
crew, but they are well trained and well equipped for fighting.
The second are the psionic Teidar, but these are very few in
number; even a ship as large as Tempest won't have more than 4
or 5, and they usually act as squad leaders. Third are infantry
ground forces (essentially the Loroi Army), but these will
generally only be found aboard carriers or embarkation craft.
XV
The problem with the Umiak strikes coming through Historian or
Tithric territory is not that they were a surprise or that they
bypassed some sort of fixed defenses, but rather that they hit
the flanks of an already thinly stretched and outnumbered
defense. Even with Farseers to direct them, Loroi ships cannot
be everywhere at once along a front that takes weeks to
traverse. The problem is compounded in that the non-hostile
populations serve to make enemy movements more difficult for the
Farseers to detect, and that your ability to interdict such
strikes in non-hostile territory is limited by political
restrictions.
XVI
Given the relatively long cooldowns for direct-fire weapons and
the very large ranges in Outsider, the only application of
"saturation" attacks are in the use of missiles or massed
numbers of ships themselves. Pattern fire, in which you use
something like the pulse cannon at very long range, with the
individual pulses spread out in a shotgun pattern to increase
the chance of a hit (with the trade-off that most of the pulses
will certainly miss) is an option, but I don't know that I would
call that saturation fire. It is very unlikely that pattern fire
will give you a chance to hit more than one ship, as even ships
in "tight" formation are going to be many kilometers apart.
Because of the need to impart visual information to the reader,
I am making it look in the comic like the ships are closer
together than they actually should be. I think this is probably
necessary in the static visual medium of comics to give the
impression of a fleet; otherwise it's just shots of individual
ships. This can be rationalized to a certain extent by noting
that Alex isn't looking out a window, but rather at an
artificial display in which things can be zoomed in or out... I
thought of putting zoom boxes around the images of the ships,
but didn't have time to do it.
Regarding formations: when forced to defend a point (which
usually means a v-matched head-on firefight), the Loroi
typically assume a box formation spread across several thousand
kilometers, with the heavy ships at the center of squadron
formations (to assist with point defense), and a line of smaller
vessels at the vanguard to screen them from the enemy.
Basically, the Loroi want to spread out as much as possible
while still allowing for overlapping spheres of point defense.
The Umiak want to swarm and close to point-blank range (<10,000
km) where the weapons on their gunboats and destroyer-sized
vessels are most effective, so it is not a good idea for the
Loroi to bunch up too much. The Loroi want to force the Umiak to
close on a particular point in the formation (preferably, the
van) while the whole Loroi formation pours fire on them from
range. The formation will roll left and right to try to keep the
enemy in this kill box.
There is no problem of formations restricting fields of fire,
because the positioning of ships is so diffuse that there's
really no chance of one ship blocking the field of fire of
another.
The tactical display image below shows the relative distribution
of the 27 ships currently forming the Tempest's strike group.
The formation would probably be about 40,000 km across.
I think point-defense missiles in space will have much longer
rangers than icekatze is suggesting. I expect them to be
effective out to 10-20,000 km.
A single torpedo hit can completely cripple a ship, so they are
very effective, even though actual hits are extremely rare,
because they must be given the highest priority as targets,
allowing other targets to close range unscathed. An odd analogy:
in the tabletop Warhammer Fantasy wargame, one of my armies --
the undead Tomb Kings -- has a static weapon called the Casket
of Souls. Basically the Casket can fire once a turn and has a
chance to kill every single enemy model that can see it. It can
be dispelled like any other spell, and so it almost never
successfully kills anyone... but it absolutely forces the enemy
to allocate a significant number of his dispel resources every
turn to make sure the Casket never goes off, allowing the Tomb
Kings to get other spells off that might otherwise be dispelled.
Since the Tomb Kings rely very heavily on these other spells to
get their otherwise slowly shambling skeletons to fight
effectively, the Casket becomes a very effective weapon, even
though it rarely actually kills anyone.
XVII
I was referring to a strategic rather than a tactical mode.
You're right that static defense, in a tactical sense, does not
favor the Loroi, which is why the Loroi try to defend by
counterattack whenever possible. However, being strategically on
defense favors the Loroi, as it allows them to make maximum use
of their Farseers, concentrate their forces, and diminish the
disadvantage of their fuel-hungry engines by operating close to
base, while at the same time diminish the advantage of the more
efficient Umiak engines by forcing them to operate far from
base. I did use the term "fixed defense" in the article, which
perhaps should be changed to something more descriptive and less
confusing.
XVIII
The main problem with the Loroi using fighters against the Umiak
is a question of numbers. Fighters are only useful on offense if
there aren't enough enemy guns to shoot them all down.
Maneuverability (with two engines instead of one, which allows
for better snap-turns) helps a fighter survive better than a
torpedo, but pattern fire (or "boxing" as someone else
mentioned) can reduce this advantage, if you have enough guns to
aim. In most engagements, the Umiak greatly outnumber the Loroi,
and have more than enough guns to blunt a conventional Loroi
torpedo or fighter attack.
Fighter beam weapons are essentially the same as the
point-defense weapons on larger ships -- good against missiles
and small craft, but not really effective against full-sized
ships. The Loroi use screen-piercing laser cannons on most of
their fighters, which allows them a chance at scratching a
destroyer-class vessel, but the real anti-ship capability of a
fighter is in launching short-range torpedoes. Torpedoes are
relatively expensive and also suffer from the problem of numbers
-- torpedoes can only be effective when they are used in
sufficient numbers to overwhelm enemy point defenses. The
interceptors deployed with Loroi fast-attack ships like Tempest
are optimized for interception, and have limited offensive
torpedo carrying ability. The Loroi do have strike fighters
designed for anti-ship duty, which can carry 8 torpedoes and
house sophisticated ECM suites to enhance their survivability,
but these are large and most operate from dedicated full-scale
carriers. The Loroi carriers, like their battleships, are
expensive and comparatively slow, and so are limited to action
in full-scale fleet battles. Carriers will not generally be
assigned to fast strike groups like that of the Tempest.
XIX
In space, building up a lot of velocity makes it harder to turn
completely around (or avoid large obstacles like Jovian
planets), but dodging a beam or a torpedo is just as easy no
matter what your velocity is. Newtonian physics allows a
targeting computer to calculate your current trajectory with the
same precision whether you're going 10 kps or 100,000 kps; the
only variable is your ability to change velocity, and this is
the same (within relativistic limits) no matter what your
current velocity is. 30G allows you to alter your vector by
294m/s and displace 147m in one second regardless of whether
your current velocity is 10 kps or 100,000 kps.
XX
The problem with a biological weapon is how to deliver it. Each
side does not generally have access to enemy planetary
populations and if they did, they would probably use more
straightforward planetary bombardments to eradicate a
population. Biological agents are slow, unpredictable and
dangerous. Matter-to-energy conversion warheads are quick,
reliable, and extremely effective, when all you want is your
enemy to be dead, dead, dead.
A biological agent might have been seriously considered by the
Umiak in the latter stages of the failed occupations of the
captured Loroi systems, but those systems have since either been
retaken or destroyed, and so no longer a problem to be
considered.
XXI
The best defense for a planet against enemy starships is,
generally, friendly starships. They are expensive but versatile.
Starships can move to intercept the enemy anywhere, not just in
weapons range of the planet and not even necessarily in the same
star system, and ships can also be used for offensive operations
themselves.
Damaging the surface an enemy planet is pretty easy from a
starship; if an enemy fleet can get within weapons range of your
planet, then they will probably be able to destroy it,
regardless of what defenses you have set up. There are plenty of
ways to do it, but the most straightforward (that doesn't
involve bringing tugs to lob asteroids) is simply to drop
antimatter-equivalent bombs... no need to use expensive anti-ship
torpedoes. The enemy doesn't really have to work hard to get
these missiles past your fixed defenses; they have only to
directly attack these fixed defenses themselves, using standard
direct-fire ship-to-ship weapons or specialized siege weapons
such as mass drivers, which, while useless against moving
targets, should be very effective against immobile or relatively
immobile orbital and ground facilities. In a slugging match
between mobile and immobile weapons platforms, the mobile ships
will have a very significant advantage. Once the planetary
defenses are eliminated (and the enemy can continue to test
whether there are any still active being held in reserve,
launching a few bombs at valuable ground assets such as
population centers to see if additional defensive sites will
give themselves away by attempting to intercept) then the enemy
can bomb the surface at their leisure.
However, terrestrial planets don't sit right next to jump
points. When enemy ships initially enter a system with a target
planet terrestrial planet, the defending ships are generally not
going to wait in orbit around the planet, but will rather move
to intercept the attackers before they can get into weapons
range of the planet. Terrestrial planets will be in the 1 AU
(~500 LS) distance range from the primary, whereas the inbound
attackers will be at the edge of the system at the 20-30 AU
(10,000-15,000 LS) range. That's a lot of space in which the
fleet battle for the system will take place, well away from the
target. If your defending fleet is insufficient to defeat the
attacking fleet, then it's very unlikely that any planetary
defenses, no matter how elaborate, will be able to withstand a
sustained attack by an enemy starship fleet.
Will anyone even bother to construct defensive installations,
then? Certainly. Battle stations, defense satellites and ground
weapon stations won't be able to protect a naked planet from an
assaulting fleet, but they may be able to protect a planet from
those one or two destroyer-class ships that slipped through
during the fleet battle, or against attempted hit-and-run raids
by smaller fleets.
XXII
Both the ground bases and the attacking ships in orbit will have
to contend with atmospheric interference when engaging each
other, but I agree with your overall point.
On the issue of using your planetary defenses to beef up your
fleet defenses, I'm not sure that inviting the enemy to take
shots at your population and infrastructure in order to enhance
your fleet's survival makes a lot of sense in the long term.
If you have defensive bases on largely uninhabited planets or
moons at the front line that are almost purely military (such as
the "Sentinel Moon" at Azimol or other similar Steppes line
systems), then you might be more apt to fall back on your
defenses -- but if the base does not shelter anything of
interest to the enemy, they are not obliged to attack you there.
If you turtle around your fixed defenses, you may encourage the
enemy to attempt to bypass you altogether and make a run for the
next system.
XXIII
What "normal operational accelerations" are you referring to?
Most high-efficiency piston and turbine engines such as you'll
find on board a modern naval vessel have "cruising" modes that
are very close to maximum output, because that's the most
efficient way to run them. Some military turbine engines do have
an afterburner that can greatly increase thrust by dumping fuel
into the exhaust, but these are for relatively small aircraft.
Rocket engines run pretty much at full throttle all the time.
It's my understanding that nuclear submarines can run at maximum
"flank speed" for days on end. If we believe The Hunt for Red
October, a nuclear vessel can squeeze a little more speed by
running the reactor at 105%... but this is "not recommended."
That's the kind of speed boost I imagine for an Outsider
starship engine.
With the exception of the military afterburning turbine engines,
most large engines systems don't have much in the way of
"sprint" capability... sustained maximum engine output is pretty
much the same as maximum output, period.
XXIV
Originally Posted by wortspiele
So... this is not a war of large battles in which in relation to
their total amount of available troops a significant amount of
personnel and ships is engaged in but rather a conflict that is
fought in small skirmishes? Or let me rephrase it: there are
generally only a few ships at most engaged in a battle. The big
battles with the numbers of participating ships in dozens to
hundreds are very few a decade (one to three) whereas the
aforementioned skirmishes take up most of the time.
There are still large fleet battles, but they are battles of
attrition where the goal is more to reduce enemy numbers than to
gain territory. A good WWI analogy would be the huge combined
battles at Verdun and the Somme which lasted nearly all of 1916
and cost some 2.5 million casualties, and yet resulted in no
significant change in the battle lines. Stalemate can still be
very bloody.
Even though the lines haven't moved much in the last few years,
there is a lot of fighting and both sides are taking heavy
losses. While the Loroi can use their Farseers to predict
attacks, the Umiak can't, so the Umiak must maintain large
defensive fleets spread across the border, and they are under
heavy pressure to stay on the offensive, to keep the Loroi in
their own territory and try to prevent them from building up
enough of a reserve to go on the offensive. So there are
regular, sometimes large Umiak attacks on Loroi positions that
are almost exclusively for the purpose of inflicting casualties
on the Loroi, even though this often means that the Umiak are
regularly taking even higher losses, because the Umiak feel that
they can replace them faster than the Loroi can.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Firewing
So how long can this war last? A even better question would be -
how exhausted are both sides? how close to collapsing?
The war can last all the way to the end of the story.
On the one hand, both sides have been increasing their reserve
forces (despite the regular losses), but on the other, there is
a limit to what a society can sustain, and the cracks are
starting to show. In the case of the Loroi, aside from the
strain of constantly being pressed to the limit (both in terms
of civilian infrastructure shortages and military losses),
morale is low and on the decline. The Loroi have been building
reserves by only committing the bare minimum to defend against
the Umiak attrition attacks, and this has taken its toll on the
front-line forces. Most of the best senior Loroi commanders are
dead, and the ones who remain are either young and unproven or
older and starting to come apart at the psychological seams. Intense political
pressure is building on the Emperor to seek a decisive battle,
and if the Loroi cannot find a way to move on the offensive
soon, they may begin to disintegrate from within. The Umiak have
similar though distinctive problems. And each side has a trick
up its sleeve that is waiting for the right moment to spring on
the enemy.
Essentially, the war has been building toward a massive,
decisive confrontation, and that is the setting for the story.
XXV
- Most battles take place in systems that do not have extensive
civilian populations or infrastructure. The Loroi defensive
nodes of Mosi, Seren, Golzos, Azimol, and Laget are systems that
previously were occupied by the Umiak and evacuated (or
depopulated), and though they have been built back up for use as
military bases, there is not a lot of production infrastructure
here accessible to an attacking Umiak fleet. Population and
production centers lie deeper in Loroi territory behind the
lines. The same is true for Umiak front-line systems... any
vulnerable infrastructure or population that can be reached by
Loroi raiders has long since been destroyed or moved. So, in
order to affect infrastructure in a meaningful way, an offensive
must push deep behind the existing lines into the enemy
heartland.
- The nature of supply makes deep strikes difficult. Even if you
can overwhelm a star system's defenses and push past to the next
one, you must still protect your supply lines from
counterattack. Deep salients risk being cut off, but broad
offensives can bog down easily. Obviously, if one side had
enough of an advantage to push the enemy back along a wide
front, they would already be doing so. The Umiak have tried
numerous massive all-out attacks that have failed and led to
Loroi counterattacks, so they have scaled this all-out mentality
back somewhat. The major Loroi Semoset offensive also ended
badly, resulting in a net gain of territory but also in a loss
of a large portion of the Loroi fleet.
- One way to accomplish deep strikes is to take along extensive
mobile supply in the form of transports and tankers; this is a
"crasher force" whose goal is to get as deep into enemy
territory as possible and attack infrastructure and populated
systems. The problem is being able to assemble a force large
enough to have a chance to break through the front lines, yet
small enough to be manageable in terms of being able to take
along enough supply. Loroi crasher forces can strike
unexpectedly but have extensive Umiak defenses to push through,
and Umiak crasher forces have the problem of inability to
achieve surprise.
- For the Umiak to pool all their forces, leaving nothing for
defense, and throw them at the Loroi would be a dangerous
gamble. They're not going to surprise the Loroi, so at best
they're forcing a decisive battle, but on terms favorable to the
Loroi, who will likely have enough warning to be able to
concentrate all their forces to meet the attack. If the Loroi
choose instead to avoid combat and abandon the front line
systems and look for opportunities to counterattack into
undefended Umiak territory, again the Loroi have the advantage
of being able to know where the Umiak forces are and what
they're doing. The Umiak could still win in either scenario, but
there's a substantial risk of failure that could mean the end of
the war and the extinction of the Umiak species. The Umiak
aren't desperate, and it's not in their nature to gamble on this
scale.
- From the Umiak point of view, the Loroi are representatives of
the ancient empire, the old order... whereas the Umiak see
themselves as the agents of bringing in a new order. The
primitive Umiak were originally a second-fiddle species to the
related but more sophisticated Tizik-tik (sort of a Neanderthal to
Cro-Magnon relationship), but the cataclysm of the fall of the
Soia empire eliminated Tizik-tik civilization and allowed the
barbarian Hal-tik Umiak to rise. The Umiak see this as evidence
of their manifest destiny to forge a new empire, but they also
have a neurotic inferiority complex that stretches back to the
days of being treated as retarded children by the Tizik-tik.
- The Umiak regard this war as one of defense; they immediately
recognized the Loroi as an inevitable threat to their manifest
destiny, and prepared accordingly. Though their inability to end
the war frustrates them, they have been dictating the pace of
the fighting for most of the war, and they feel in control. They
don't like risk, and in a manner of speaking, their aggression
is driven by fear.
- The Umiak forces along the line are somewhat decentralized,
and there is probably a good degree of local autonomy as to
launching raids against Loroi positions. The Umiak suffer from a
fair amount of group-think, and their focus on detail and
efficiency can border on the obsessive-compulsive. They have
been in this mode of perpetual assault for some years now, and
the crews are very gung-ho; it will probably require some effort
on the part of higher command to get them to stop. The ships
sent on such missions will often not be the top-of-the-line new
models, but more often the older ships that have been sitting on
defense for a while, and whose crews are starting to lose
morale.
XXVI
I don't think it's possible to know with that kind of certainty
that the war is lost until it's so far gone that you are well
beyond the kind of options you're talking about. If you still
have a significant fighting force and the will to fight, then
you still have the capacity to continue the war.
The Loroi spent about five years of this war deep in their own
territory, with things looking pretty bleak, hanging on by their
fingernails. If the Umiak had succeeded in breaking the Loroi
lines in 2140, the Loroi would probably have continued to fall
back, opposing the Umiak to the last with whatever forces they
still had, trying to buy more time for a last miracle, or even
perhaps just more time period. But even if the Loroi had a
notion to use their remaining forces in a vindictive last
suicide-strike, there is very little they could have done to
hurt Umiak territory, which would have been well beyond striking
range by that point.
REFITS
If Humanity joins into an alliance with one of the combatants,
and assuming the terms of the alliance allow for technology
exchange, then the Humans will need to do two things: plan for a
new generation of ships using the new technology, and see how
existing ships can be upgraded.
For the completely new classes using the new technology, this
will take some years for assimilation of the new concepts,
design and testing, and manufacture. This is beyond the scope of
the story, so it's not something we need to worry about.
For the second thing, there's a very limited amount you can do
to upgrade the existing Terran ships given that you probably
can't afford to have your whole fleet laid up in the shipyards
for an extended period of time... let's say for the sake of
argument you have six months. What are some practical upgrades?
Your engine and energy transmission infrastructure is probably
too different from the alien engines to directly benefit from
the new technology without a complete refit, and you probably
don't have time for this. You might be able to add some alien
reactors as high-efficiency bolt-on auxiliary reactors.
Existing ships probably won't be able to handle the energy or
cooling requirements of alien beam weapons, and the alien
technology probably won't provide your existing lasers and mass
drivers with any improvements on a short schedule. You can,
however, carry alien-made torpedoes.
You may be able to add bolt-on defense screen generators, and in
some cases you may be able to weld on plates of improved armor.
You also might benefit from alien sensory and computing
packages... though I imagine that by 2160, our computers are as
fast as they need to be.
So that's probably the extent of short-term upgrades for the
existing ships. Now, if you just happened to have, say, a ship
that was still under construction, or one that had already been
laid down but was cancelled (but not yet scrapped), then you
might be able to use this partially-built hull as a test bed for
new technology that might be able to be completed in a short
amount of time... maybe less than a year if you really pushed it
and had a lot of help from your ally. Kind of in the way that
the hulls of the cancelled battlecruisers Lexington and Saratoga
became America's first full-fledged aircraft carriers.
II
In the same vein, the Loroi had similar experiences and lessons
with the performance of their Saber battlecruisers and Vortex
commands ships in the Semoset campaign, which gave me the notion
that they might want to call the Katana class something other
than a battlecruiser. But don't worry too much about it. I'm
not.
TECH TRANSFERS
The Orgus vessel was a civilian transport packed with refugees
that entered Human space. It would not have had weapons or
defensive screens, but the engines, infrastructure and materials
are ahead of what the Humans have, though not up to the standard
of the combatants. The Orgus refugees are still in Human space,
and their ship and personal items of technology have been
(politely) confiscated by Terran authorities. Certainly these
items are being fervently researched, but without better
technical advice than the Orgus crew can provide (as users but
not designers of the technology), this could be a long-term
effort.
Loroi engines would have been a pretty mature technology at the
start of the war, so I don't think engine output would have
increased much more than about 25% since that time. The
Historian technology transfer was limited to a few specific
items: weapons, better defensive screens and armor, none of
which was top of the line Historian stuff. A typical prewar
Loroi warship would have been a hybrid battlecruiser/carrier
armed with lasers and particle beams, capable of perhaps 25 G
with really big engines. A heavy battleship might have been
limited to 18-20 G.
CAN WE RUN?
Assuming that there is no contact from the scout mission, or
that such contact somehow does not accelerate the arrival of the
aliens, you have perhaps two years at the most until one of the
two sides finds you on their own. Setting up colonies takes
decades and is very expensive, and fledgling colonies require a
massive amount of support from the mother systems over a
significant period of time before they become self-sufficient.
Existing commercial transports have finite ranges; you can't
just loose them into the depths of space (a la Battlestar
Galactica). You could probably design and build long-range
super-colony vessels, but that takes time. And any new colonies
are just as likely to be found by the enemy as your existing
ones. Being a little bit farther away is unlikely to save them.
LANGUAGE
The idea is that the roots of the Trade Language are in the Soia
language, which existed before the Loroi lost starflight and
became splintered. The Loroi already knew a form of the language
at that time, and they were surrounded by Soia relics with
various forms of writing. The other Soia Liron races were also
splintered at that time, and also had a legacy of Soia culture.
Together with the persistent influence of the Historians, various forms of Soia became spread as trade
languages. The version sponsored by the Historians, which uses a
Historian version of the alphabet (which is more geometric
looking than the Loroi script) became the de-facto standard.
Unlike some of the other splintered races, the Loroi had no
native language of their own, and so the Loroi dialect of Trade
became a customized Loroi language, with Loroi-specific idiom
and a custom script. When the three Loroi splinter groups
reunited, the languages were merged (mostly standardizing on the
Deinar variety), but localized dialects still exist. Since the
rise of the Loroi to prominence, many other races now
standardize on the Loroi version of Trade rather than the
Historian version, but both are in common use, and are similar
enough that a clever speaker of one dialect could understand
some of the other, even though they use different alphabets. The
"Standard" or international version of Trade is still the
Historian version. This is the version that the Orgus would have
taught Humans.
Beryl has been trying to use the formal, Standard version of
Trade when speaking to Alex, but she frequently uses
Loroi-specific terms and idioms, some of which Alex doesn't
understand. Alex can't yet read the Loroi script, and when other
Loroi speak in the Loroi dialect, he will have trouble
understanding them, at least at first. Fortunately for Alex,
Beryl and Tempo both have a good command of the Standard version
of Trade.
II
Schwartz is correct that the base-8 numeric system is a holdover
from the Soia system. Most of the other Soia-Liron races have
four-fingered hands.
III
Vocal language (like written language) is a remnant of the Soia
era, and it survived the primitive period as a necessary tool
for warrior Loroi to be able to communicate with potentially
hostile Loroi (who might use a telepathic contact as an avenue
of attack). In the modern era it serves a similar purpose of
communicating with aliens, but since telepathic signals can't
currently be recorded or retransmitted, spoken language is also
used for radio communication and for making verbal records.
IV
I think it would have to be a mixture of both. I imagine
telepathy working on a number of levels simultaneously. Given
that Loroi telepaths can read alien minds, and even something as
simple as Alex's brain interpreting Fireblade's telepathic
presence as an image, there has to be a universal element to
telepathic communication. More complicated communication will
probably require some sort of structure that (however intuitive
it may be) must be learned, so this will probably lead to
telepathic dialects. More complicated forms of telepathic
communication (that is, higher-level than simply sending the
image or description of an item every time the item is
mentioned) can improve the efficiency of communication -- you
don't have to send the full description of "dog" if your
recipient already knows what a dog is, but rather a symbol
instead -- but when such symbols are not recognized, you can
fall back on more basic descriptions. Because of the speed and
two-way nature of telepathy, such interrogative back-and-forth
about what that "dog" you just mentioned is, might be a natural
and non-intrusive part of normal conversation. Also, a structure
and "grammar" to telepathy provides for an opportunity for
clever and artful telepaths to socially demonstrate their wit
and artfulness in communication.
V
Originally Posted by Blackbox
1. What is the Trade equivalent for the verb 'to have'?
2. What about interrogatives? How does one ask questions?
1. peilo.
2. I haven't figured that out yet. My idea was that there would
be a keyword either at the beginning or end of a clause to
indicate a question. However, looking at the comic, there are no
such keywords in Beryl's untranslated questions, so if we were
required to go on that, we would have to assume that she's using
some sort of tone inflection.
In English, a question is usually indicated by a keyword at the
beginning of the sentence (a form of the verb "be" or "do", as
in, "do you feel all right," or "are you feeling all right"),
but this is optional. The main indication of interrogative is
with a tonal inflection at the end, indicated in writing by the
question mark. Depending on your inflection, "You're okay" can
be a statement, or "You're okay?" can be a question. Japanese is
similar in that there is a suffix ("-ka") that indicates a
question, but that the same tonal inflection is also used, often
without the suffix. So, technically, Trade could rely on a tonal
inflection, but this seems against the character of a language
that is meant to offer clear communication between species. So,
I agree that the most clear and obvious solution is to add a
distinct keyword (preferably at the beginning of the sentence)
that signals an interrogative.
VI
Knowledge of a trade language wouldn't be very useful as a
medium of high-tech communication if there weren't also
established frequencies and a/v protocols on which to transmit.
We have to assume a whole list of standard communication
protocols, or the whole notion of an alien contact mission isn't
going to fly; you're not going to be able to safely approach a
combatant during wartime without having some kind of remote
communication. When Alex switches to the "open frequency" to
transmit his distress calls in Trade, he would be using such an
established frequency. The "friendship messages" transmitted by
Bellarmine to her attacker also would have used such protocols,
though likely a non-verbal version.
VII
That's correct, to be an effective Trade language, it will have
to include standard weights and measures based on universal
constants, which the Orgus will have taught to the human scouts.
Alex will have to do some work to make sure that these standards
are the same versions the Loroi are using, and he will have to
do some math on the fly, and when he tries to work out certain
numbers (for example, when Beryl tells him how old she is), he
may be reluctant to believe he's got the results right.
TIME
I haven't yet worked out what the length of the standard Loroi
day is, but I assume for simplicity it's similar to Earth's.
Almost all the planets in our solar system (that aren't
tidelocked) have rotational periods between .4 and 1.03 days
(Mars' day being 1.03 Earth days), so it's reasonable to expect
that many Earthlike planets will have a rotational period
similar to Earth's.
II
In the case of Taben and Perrein (and allied alien homeworlds)
that evolved their own local time/date systems, they will keep
these systems and refer to official time through conversions.
New colonies will probably adopt modified versions of official
time (which for the Loroi would be Deinar time).
HYPERSPACE
I tend to view hyperspace not as an extra dimension in
realspace, but rather as a parallel universe with dimensions of
its own. It's not clear how many dimensions our "normal"
universe has... some say 4, some 10, and some as many as 26...
what the difference is between the hypothetical "hidden" 23
dimensions of our own universe and a separate parallel universe
is, I'm afraid I don't know enough about theoretical physics to
say. But what I can say is that the whole point of hyperspace is
to be able to travel faster relative to realspace, so the
requirement for hyperspace is that the relationship of the
dimensions of time and space is different than it is in
realspace. I'm not sure that's possible if hyperspace is
actually just an additional dimension of realspace. But in any
case, resolving this question is not required to gain a basic
understanding of how hyperspace works. The primary thing to keep
in mind is that hyperspace has at least one more dimension than
we perceive here in realspace.
If we think of realspace as a flat two-dimensional plane, then
hyperspace is a three-dimensional volume that exists above it
(and probably below it as well, but let's forget about that for
a moment). So the direction that separates the plane of
realspace from hyperspace in this case is up and down.... let's
call it direction "T". When a ship makes a hyperjump, it is
popped "up" in the T direction from realspace into hyperspace.
It still retails its two-dimensional (X and Y) velocity, but now
it has a third velocity, in the direction of T. Gravity from
realspace continues to affect the ship in hyperspace, not only
pulling it along the X and Y directions, but also along the T
direction. Which is to say, gravity will begin to pull the ship
back "down" toward realspace. When the ship intersects the plane
of realspace again, it exits hyperspace and returns to
realspace.
Mass in realspace causes gravity that warps the plane of
realspace, causing dimples in the plane in the direction of T.
Since the volume of hyperspace follows the topography of
realspace and is also affected by gravity, hyperspace is also
distorted in similar ways. But since hyperspace is more complex
than realspace, it is distorted in ways that seem more chaotic
and harder to predict. This is the second factor that limits
jump distance (the first being intervening mass), the tendency
of error to rise with distance due to the chaotic nature of
hyperspace topography.
Note though, that the T-warping of realspace gravity wells acts
as a sort of "ramp" that helps to boost you into hyperspace, as
well as "cushion" your fall back in. If a ship were to fall at a
steep T-angle with low lateral velocity into a flat section of
realspace without a gravity well, there's the possibility of it
punching right through realspace and going out the other side.
If a ship were to intersect realspace at too shallow a T-angle
and with high lateral velocity, it might skip off. There's a
very delicate "pitch and catch" that has to occur.
Originally Posted by aygardupinal
4. Why is failing to escape the gravity well of the current star
different from failing to escape the gravity well of the target
star?
The departure star's gravity is still pulling the ship laterally
toward it (say, in the X direction), in addition to pulling it
"down" back toward the plane of realspace. So I guess the answer
is that it's not any different... it's a bit like firing an
artillery shell at a very high angle against the wind... it will
land somewhere near where it was launched. In either case, the
idea is to maintain as flat a T trajectory as you can, to
minimize the chance that you will be pulled deep into the star's
well -- either on departure or arrival. A flat trajectory also
minimizes the chance of punching through realspace on reentry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aygardupinal
5. Why will greater mass of the target star cause a greater
chance of an 'overjump'?
A deeper gravity well requires a steeper T-angle for the falling
ship to be "caught" safely, which means a "higher" arc through
hyperspace, allowing the massive star more time to pull the ship
toward it. There is less margin for error.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aygardupinal
6. If a photon enters hyperspace what happens to it? Does it
have an infinite amount of hyperspace momentum?
The photon will continue on its own vector and go wherever that
takes it. The ship and the photon maintain the same relative
realspace velocities as they had before jump. Objects retain the
same momentum or energy in hyperspace, but the compression of
time in hyperspace causes them to move through it very quickly,
relative to realspace.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aygardupinal
7. Does the device that creates a jump drive field have to be in
the center of the created jump drive field?
I don't think so. More than likely, the jump field creates its
own "well" in realspace that is deep enough to puncture
spacetime and allow the ship to "pop" through into hyperspace.
This field is has a certain area of effect (which may or may not
be perfectly spherical), but there will not be a strict boundary
at the edge of the field, but rather a falloff. The farther a
long ship's antenna or vane, say, stuck outside the edge of the
field, the more force would be subjected to it as the ship
"dragged" into hyperspace; as long at the vane could withstand
that force, it would be dragged through with the ship. If a ship
with really long vanes had a very small jump field, the ends of
the vanes might be ripped off as the ship jumped, and left
behind in realspace.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aygardupinal
8. If you took a ship to a spot where there was no star within 3
light years. Pointed it at the closest star gave it zero
relative velocity to the target star and engaged the jump drive
field what would happen?
Because there was no gravity well to "ski jump" the ship into
hyperspace, it would have very little upward T velocity, and
might not even make the transition to hyperspace unless it had a
powerful jump drive generator. If it did make the transition, it
would pop into hyperspace with a little bit of positive T
velocity and just drift. The gravity from the star 3 light years
away would pull the ship towards it, but at that distance the
gravity from that star would not be significantly greater than
the gravity from the surrounding stars, so the ship would wander
in an indeterminate direction. Because this lateral wandering
would be very slow, the small initial positive T velocity would
take the ship higher and higher into hyperspace. Gravity might
eventually bring it near a star, but by that time the ship would
probably be too high in hyperspace to ever return to normal
space.
II
It's pretty much the same as a gravitational tide (and in all
likelihood, that's exactly what it is). The dimple created by
the jump drive is like a deep, localized gravity well. The mass
of the ship within the area of effect of the well is pulled into
it by a force (gravity or the T equivalent of gravity) that
causes acceleration in the direction of T... but as with
gravity, the ship within the area of effect of the jump field
does not feel this acceleration; it just "falls". Parts of the
ship outside of the area of effect will be affected by the force
less (or not at all), and inertia will act against the physical
stress of being dragged by the rest of the ship. This is the
same effect as a gravitational tide... the part of an object
closer to the gravity source is pulled harder than the part
farther away, resulting in tensile stress. If the force is high
enough, it will rip the object apart. Just like an object being
sucked into a black hole.
III
Originally Posted by Absalom
Arioch, have you considered just making the distance shorter by
way of non-Euclidean spaces? If you dealt with it that way, then
travelling through real space could be compared to the longer
leg of the great circle intersecting LA and San Francisco, while
hyperspace would be akin to the short leg: The difference in
travel time could come down solely to distance.
There must be some kind of time compression, because to the
hyperspace traveler the jump seems instantaneous. (This is
necessary to prevent people from trying to noodle around in
hyperspace.) Aside from that, whether the quickness of
hyperspace travel is due to time compression, non-Euclidean
geometry or a weird relationship between space and time, I don't
think really matters to those of us in realspace. Since
direction T very likely represents time, it shouldn't be
surprising that things behave very differently in hyperspace.
IV
Any photons in the vicinity of the jumping ship would be carried
with it into hyperspace. Because they would have a different
velocity than the ship, these photons would follow a different
path through hyperspace, and so would not reenter realspace at
the same time or space as the ship.
V
If you try to jump toward a distant mass and there are nearer
masses in the way, the nearer masses perturb your path through
hyperspace. This is the major factor that limits the range of
hyperspace jumps. It takes very careful calculations to be able
to drop out of hyperspace near to a star without actually flying
through it, so it is extremely unlikely that you would safely
arrive at one of the nearer masses in this case.
VI
The mass of a real-world object does not exist in hyperspace,
but the gravity from that mass does affect objects traveling
through hyperspace. This is necessary for a variety of in-story
mechanics (the ballistic jumping ship needs something to pull it
back into realspace), but it is suggested by real theoretical
physics. If you can call String Theory "real" physics. One of
the speculations of String Theory is the existence of parallel
universes (or "branes"), and this is further offered as a
potential explanation for why the gravitational force is so much
weaker than the electromagnetic and nuclear forces (even the
weak nuclear force is 10^25 times as strong as gravity): gravity
is weaker because its effect is not limited to this plane of
existence... the gravitons are free to cross the boundaries into
the parallel dimension(s). This results in a much weaker
gravitational force in realspace, and gravitational fields that
extend into hyperspace.
So, passing "through" a realspace object won't cause you to
collide with it in hyperspace, but it will bring you within that
object's gravitational well, which will more than likely pull
you out of hyperspace (and collide with the object in
realspace). It's theoretically possible to fly through a mass in
hyperspace and emerge into realspace on the other side, this
would probably only work for a low-mass body (say the size of a
planet) and would be very difficult to pull off. In practice, if
you "overshoot" a star by a small amount, you generally end up
plowing right into it. If you overshoot by a large amount, you
don't come out of hyperspace at that star at all. Gas, dust and
small masses don't generally have enough of a gravitational pull
to wrench a ship out of hyperspace, so there won't be a
collision in this case... though there may be slight
perturbations of the ship's arc through hyperspace.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quazel
So, how long does it take to calculate the relative velocity and
direction of a nearby unknown star? Wouldn't that be the biggest
largest hurdle to making unknown jumps? After all the star you
plan to jump too could be up to ten years out of place from
where you see it.
An accurate measurement would probably take years, but most of
this data will be collected by ground-based telescopes long in
advance of a jump attempt. And yes, of course you must allow for
the actual location of the star, and not where it appears to be.
ORGUS
The Orgus were a small nation located on the periphery of what
would eventually become the Umiak sphere of influence. As an
interstellar presence, the Orgus would probably have been just a
stop on the long ancient trade routes, sort of an oasis on the
dusty and largely disused “silk road” between distant
civilizations, and the nations that were soon to come under
Umiak hegemony. As the Umiak Empire began to grow, the Orgus
(and other nearby nations) would have been known to the Umiak,
but not of much interest to them. Even after the start of the
war and the resulting aggressive Umiak expansionism, it would
have been difficult for the Orgus to believe that one day there
would be Umiak warships knocking on their door. Even as late as
the Tithric incident in 2141, there may not have been much alarm
regarding the Umiak announcements of non-neutrality, partially
because the Orgus and their neighbors were not near the borders
with the Loroi, and partially because the Umiak were still then
a remote power whose threats were not taken seriously. It was
not clear at the time that the Umiak would take the
non-neutrality doctrine as license to annex their neighbors.
The Orgus now in Terran hands would have been a collection of
refugees gathered at a remote trade outpost. Some would have
been returning from abroad, and some fleeing interior areas.
What they would have in common is that none would have much
information on the diplomacy that preceded the military action,
nor many details about the invasion itself, once it had taken
place, as no information left a system once the Umiak had taken
control of it. The Orgus refugees did not know what the Umiak
had in store for them, be it genocide, reorganization, or merely
a very rigorously controlled tea party. Those Orgus still in
outlying areas who had decided not to submit to the Umiak fled
in what transport they could arrange.
In the case of the group that found our space, they chose a
freighter that had been returning to Orgus space from outlying
areas, removed the cargo and filled it with as many refugees as
it could sustain. Many such ships attempted to flee Umiak
dominion, mostly to destinations that were previously known,
along the existing trade routes. However, most of the nations
surrounding the Orgus had already agreed to some form of
affiliation with the Umiak, so some ships did not take the
direct routes through the silk road, but instead took detours
that they believed could eventually deliver them to the desired
destinations. Some detours required making jumps that had not
been tested for millennia. Some ships did not survive the
attempt. At least one Orgus ship found its detour taking it
through space now claimed by a previously unknown race,
Humanity. The Orgus refugees would have discovered Terran marker
buoys that led them to 82 Eridani, site of the human Esperanza
colony. Rather than continue the hazardous search for an
alternate route to the Silk Road, these Orgus surrendered
themselves to the Terran authorities at Esperanza, and their
flight ended. Several thousand Orgus offered their ship and
their combined knowledge in exchange for sanctuary.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mayhem
Where are the refugees now? (All on one planet? Spread out?)
The Terran Colonial Authority took custody of the Orgus ship,
crew and passengers, though the ship and most of the Orgus
remain at Esperanza due to issues of local sovereignty. Many of
the Orgus have been transported to other locations, mostly
Earth, to serve as experts and teachers, especially regarding
the Trade Language and the locations of the trade routes, on
which some Orgus individuals were aids in teaching classes at
the TCA Academy (which Alex attended).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mayhem
What is their status in Terran Society?
The Orgus are aliens who have requested sanctuary. The current
TCA charter does not recognize the rights of aliens, so the
status of an Orgus is dependent upon what human nation it
resides in, and what deals have been made. The existence of the
Orgus has not been kept a secret (as one can hardly expect to
place six planets on a war footing with no explanation), but
they have certainly been kept under the tightest security, for a
variety of reasons which I'm sure you can imagine. As you can
expect, each and every one of the Orgus expatriates has been
closely interviewed by the Terran authorities, and their
movements are carefully controlled.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mayhem
How did they react to the possibility of the humans allying with
the Umiak?
It is unlikely that the Terran authorities discussed any of
their plans for the survival of humanity with alien refugees.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mayhem
Do we know where their home territory was?
The refugees eagerly supplied Terran intelligence with detailed
information on Orgus space and the trade routes known to them.
In this sense, Humanity may know as much or more about some of
the peripheral races and the ancient trade routes through that
sector as the Umiak do. This information is they only way that
Terran scouts could have arrived along the axis of Loroi/Umiak
conflict.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mayhem
How long ago did the Umiak attack?
Many details of the Umiak attack are unknown even to the Orgus
that fled the aftermath. The flight of the Orgus refugee
freighter would have begun earlier in 2158.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mayhem
Did the Loroi know of / meet the Orgus prior to the Umiak
attack?
The Loroi were relative newcomers to what they now call the
Seren sector. Even before the outbreak of war, the Umiak did not
permit unauthorized vessels to pass through their borders, so
knowledge of the territory and races cut off from the Loroi by
the Umiak “iron curtain” is very limited. Knowledge of the
region beyond the Umiak domain would be limited to ancient
legend perpetuated by the Historians, and what Loroi
intelligence could obtain through "non-traditional" methods. But
those Loroi that Alex is likely to bump into would probably
never have heard of the Orgus. The Orgus refugees, never having
met a Loroi, certainly know them by reputation and
(Umiak-supplied) propaganda.
II
The group of refugees that made it to Human territory were not
on the homeworld at the time of the attack, so they do not know
what their own government knew about or prepared for prior to
the invasion, to what extent their military resisted (or
continue to resist) the invasion, or what the fate of those on
the homeworld was, or what other groups of Orgus might have
escaped. You appear to be assuming that genocide took place, but
there's nothing to indicate that. The Umiak policy regarding
neutrality has nothing to do with genocide, and I would point
out that it is the Loroi, not the Umiak, who are known to have
committed genocide. What the Umiak want is your strategic
location and your industrial capacity, and that includes people.
Destroying your own infrastructure (and thereby cutting the
throats of the majority of your own people who depend on that
infrastructure) and waging a bitter insurgency to deny resources
to the invader seems to me to be the best possible possible way
to convince the Umiak that they should just glass your planet.
TITHRIC GENOCIDE
If you're referring to the Tithric incident, it was a little bit
like the current situation between Israel and Lebanon, where an
enemy is using splinter groups within a neighboring country as a
proxy to conduct raids against your home territory, and the
government of that nation is either unwilling or unable to
control these groups. In the case of the Tithric, there were
regional factions that were actually allowing the Umiak to use
their ports as bases from which to strike into Loroi territory
while the Tithric federal government claimed neutrality. The
Loroi action against the Tithric began as raids targeting
infrastructure that was being used by the Umiak, but of course
these raids only pushed the Tithric government to formally side
with the Umiak, and it soon became clear that the only way to
stop the raids was either to occupy Tithric territory or
basically destroy it. The former not being a practical
possibility, the Loroi chose the latter, and targets expanded to
include civilian infrastructure and population centers. By the
end of the battle, all of the Tithric systems had been
completely devastated. As in the earlier case with the Mannadi,
Loroi anger heated by six years of bloody war probably resulted
in a lot more destruction than was strictly necessary to
accomplish the goal. Not every single Tithric was killed, and
the Loroi made no effort to pursue individual Tithric, but the
Tithric were effectively destroyed as a civilization.
I don't think that genocide is synonymous with extinction. I
don't think it's practical to hunt down and kill every single
member of a ethnic, cultural or a political group (I don't know
of a single example in our history when this was ever
successfully done), so it seems to me that a "successful"
genocide has to be viewed as a case where so many individuals of
a race have been killed or displaced and so much of their
civilization destroyed that they effectively cease to exist as a
group.
RELIGION
Each alien race will have (much as humans do) a variety of
traditions, philosophies, and myth systems that we might call
religion. The unusual quality of the Barsam religion is that it
is state-sponsored and that the Barsam make active attempts to
spread it to non-Barsam. As a pluralistic faith that preaches
peace and the brotherhood of all beings, I'm sure the Barsam
church would appeal to some humans (particularly those those
crystal-hugging new-age congregations you see here in Northern
California), but I doubt there's much danger in Barsam religion
being "taken over" by devout humans, any more than there's much
danger of Arabian Islam being taken over by the NOI.
II
There is no official state religion of the Loroi. Most Loroi
would claim that they are not a religious people, though as with
humanity, Loroi of different sub-cultures have very different
ideas about spirituality.
The current Loroi civilization arose amid the obvious wreckage
of an older civilization, and with the telepathically remembered
tales of a previous age of galactic warfare, which have evolved
into a sort of heroic-ancestor mythology. This mythology takes
different forms in different Loroi sub-cultures, running the
full gamut between science, philosophy and religion.
The most popular form of the Loroi philosophy centers around the
telepathic sharing and retelling of the heroic myths, and
discussion of the meanings of these stories and how they apply
to modern life, and the example of heroism they provide for
modern Loroi. The reliving of these heroic deeds provides a
measure of immortality for the ancient ancestor heroes, and the
hope of living a life worthy of retelling suggests a means of a
similar legacy to the living. Many adherents of this philosophy
believe that the ancient Soia whose empire now lies ruined were
Loroi ancestors, and that the Loroi are the rightful heirs to
mastery over the local region.
The state religion of the Barsam does have some Loroi adherents.
According to Barsam doctrine, the Soia were angelic creatures
that established a holy empire in this universe, and were
responsible for the creation of the various blue-skinned Soia-Liron
races. Special religious significance is assigned to the Well of
Souls stellar remnant, the collapse of which the Barsam believe
was responsible for the disappearance of the Soia and the fall
of their empire. The Barsam church preaches that all intelligent
creatures are brothers and share the same "soul", and so should
live together in peace (though some sects of the church,
particularly those that have taken hold among the Loroi, limit
that brotherhood to the Soia-Liron). Like many Earth religions,
however, this philosophy of peace belies a long history of
violence under the banner of religion. Though they espouse
peace, the Barsam are fierce, powerful fighters, many of whom do
not hesitate to use force when the occasion calls for it.
III
The Loroi don't have the concept of a hell in terms of a place
of suffering and punishment. The real world has been tough
enough for them.
Some Loroi sects have traditions of an underworld in terms of
the land of the dead, sort of a cross between a Greek Hades and
a Norse Valhalla. But most modern Loroi believe that the only
afterlife is for one's deeds to make one immortal in the
memories of fellow Loroi; to become a part of the heroic myths.
The Barsam church claims that the spirits of deceased beings go
to a heaven-like dimension that is the home of the Soia. The
Barsam also do not have the tradition of a hell, but rather
regard the real world as a sort of purgatory; to blaspheme is to
be denied admission to the Soia heaven.
Reincarnation doesn't seem like characteristically Loroi
concept. Reincarnation implies balance and suggests tolerance
for other creatures (who may be reincarnations of your
ancestors).
IV
The bulk of the heroic myths are very old, and unified rule
under the Emperor is a relatively modern concept to the Loroi,
the coronation of the first Loroi Emperor being some 500 years
after the rediscovery of starflight. Prior to that point, Loroi
rule had been under regional warlords, and most of the myths
deal with heroes of regional conflicts between Loroi. A few of
the truly ancient myths date back to the Soia-era Loroi
pre-civilization, but these are highly abstracted, dealing with
concepts of galactic warfare in terms of medieval weaponry and
politics. Currently the "priesthood" of the heroic mythology is
embodied in the philosopher caste, similar in function to the
Listel but which is instead a civilian institution (some of the
members of which are male) outside the direct control of the
warrior castes and the Emperor. So though the philosophers
espouse the virtues of the warrior path, they are not themselves
warriors and the heroic mythology does not perform the role of
an Imperial Cult of the Emperor such as was created and spread
by the Romans. Modern heroes are added to the mythos, but more
on the merit of their deeds than in regard to their political
influence, and most frequently as a result of resembling the
deeds of an already known, ancient hero. Mythologizing the deeds
of former Emperors would probably be discouraged, since the
discussion of the hero often focuses as much on her errors and
faults as on her perfections.
COMBAT BALANCE
I don’t have time to answer this fully… as the only way to fully
answer it is to lay out a complete simulation… but I’ll try to
briefly lay out what the issues with balancing are.
Special effects like ablation and splash are of secondary
importance. Armor is also of secondary importance… it helps to
mitigate damage, but it’s not an adequate defense against heavy
weapons (like current infantry body armor). The main balancing
issue is beam weapons vs. defensive screens.
I didn’t want to have a Star Trek system where you have
“shields” that are themselves knocked down by damage, until they
“buckle” and the ship is unshielded; the ship takes no damage
until the shields fail, and then it’s basically defenseless.
There’s nothing wrong with such a system (and it has advantages
of being relatively simple), but I just wanted something
different. I preferred instead the idea of a defensive “screen”
that absorbs or deflects some damage, the rest penetrating to
damage the ship, but the screen still there for the next strike,
though perhaps with reduced effectiveness. In other words, I
wanted it to behave somewhat like armor in WWII-era surface ship
combat. Because energy weapons are so powerful, screens have to
be powerful too… so a ship has screens that are rated to stop a
certain amount of damage, and this has to be balanced against
the amount of damage that weapons for a ship of that size class
can do. This means that destroyer guns won't be able to scratch
a battleship's screens, but that follows the model. You also
want to have a way to reduce the effectiveness of screens that
are taking damage, and so I seized upon the idea that it’s the
penetration of the shields (as opposed to just being hit) that
causes overloads and gradually reduces screen effectiveness over
time. Again, very much like armor being reduced in effectiveness
when it is penetrated by a shell.
The thing that had me confused for a while was the idea of
volley fire, and combining multiple shots fired at the same time
to be counted as a single shot for the purposes of penetrating
screens. This is really problematic for balance, because if you
have an individual weapon mount that’s capable of penetrating
screens, then if you allow volley fire of multiple such weapons,
you’re going to overwhelm the target. On the other hand, if you
set screen strength to handle volley fire, then there’s no way a
single ship is ever going to be able to damage a target on its
own. The conclusion I’ve come to is that volley fire doesn’t
work in this model. Aside from the balancing issues, I don’t
think it makes sense from a practical point of view. The idea of
volley fire is that you focus multiple beams on the same spot
and at the same time so that it has the effect of being a single
strike. But is it really feasible to so precisely focus the fire
from multiple turrets, even from the same ship, on a target
200,000 km away? I’m beginning to think not. Maybe the fire from
multiple weapon mounts within a turret could be focused in a
volley, but even then only for certain kinds of beam weapons… I
get the feeling that plasma pulses aren’t something you can time
to this kind of accuracy at these distances.
But anyhow, I’ve come to the conclusion that what’s missing from
the current model is the ability of defensive screens to
deflect, and not just absorb, damage. The GURPS system has a
nice mechanism for representing the ability of armor to deflect
as well as absorb damage… in GURPS, armor is rated for both DR
(Damage Resistance, the value of damage that is absorbed), and
PD (Passive Defense… the potential for the damage to be
deflected altogether). Once a target is “hit”, that target gets
a defensive action… to attempt to block, parry or dodge… and the
PD is added to that defense probability. If the defense roll
succeeds, then the target takes no damage at all; if it fails,
then the DR is subtracted and the remaining damage is applied to
the target. Even if the target has no active defense -- if the
attack was not seen, for example -- the target still gets the
passive defense… the PD value.
So I think defensive screens should have both a PD and a DR.
Other things like ECM and evasive maneuvering can add to PD.
Reflective armor could also conceivably add to PD. Using the PD,
the target gets a defensive “roll”, and if successful the shot
is deflected. If it fails, then the DR is subtracted, and damage
is allocated against the armor and internal systems. DR of
screens would still be reduced when penetrated (and perhaps PD
as well).
The problem there is that if screens only stop a percentage of
damage, then every weapon, even the tiniest fighter laser, can
penetrate even the best screens and do some damage, which is not
what I'm looking for.
If we resolve each weapon attack against screens separately, and
allow twin-mounted blasters or lasers to count as a single
attack (plasma weapons would have to fire each barrel as a
separate attack), the current damage and screen values work
reasonably well. The current screen values for Loroi ships are
DD:7, CA:9, BC/GCS: 12, BB:16. A twin medium-blaster turret can
penetrate the screens of a destroyer at about 50,000 km; a twin
heavy blaster can penetrate cruiser screens at 60,000 km, and a
single pulse-cannon strike can penetrate even battleship screens
at a range of 150,000 km (.5 LS). If we add a Passive Defense
(or "Armor Save", depending on how you want to look at it) of
about 3 or 4 on a 2D6 (or 1-2 on 1D6), and allow for bonuses
like ECM or evasive maneuver, then a target might have as much
as a 17-28% chance to deflect the shot. Given the current Umiak
plasma weapon numbers, at very close range (~15,000 km), even
the smallest Umiak gunboat has a chance to pierce Loroi cruiser
shields, which is correct. Considering the number of weapon
mounts on each ship, this seems like it might work reasonably
well, and helps to explain why blasters have twin mounts and
Umiak plasma cannon use single mounts. Add the screen generators
as destroyable components in the ship SSD; for each one
destroyed, screen DR drops by one. I still think damage that
penetrates screens should reduce screen effectiveness (or at
least have a chance to do so), as this certainly represents an
overload of the system. For the Loroi the main screen generators
would be housed in the armored forward prongs... which is fine,
since I changed the "subsystem" hit location system to a
"section" system -- foward/aft/right/left/center/core, and each
section can have its own armor rating. For most ships, screen
strength would probably be reduced in the rear part of the
ship... but one does not want to choke one's self with too many
variables when starting out balancing a system.
UMIAK
Umiak gunboats vary in size and role, and some larger ones do
have FTL drives, but most depend on being towed through
hyperspace by a larger vessel. All gunboats are limited in
endurance (fuel/life support capacity), and so are dependent on
tenders, whether they have FTL drives or not. The Umiak have
some dedicated tenders, and additionally many "normal" warships,
especially cruiser sized and up, have tethers for servicing
gunboats.
Gunboats are basically stripped-down corvette-class warships,
with beefed up armaments and engines, but minimal fuel storage
or crew facilities, giving up endurance for increased speed and
firepower, and relying on larger ships for refuel,
service/repair and to rest (or change) crews. Gunboats come in a
variety of sizes and with a range of armaments, but they are
mostly intended for the anti-ship role. Even the small plasma
focus weaponry carried on a gunboat is capable of damaging a
Loroi capital ship at close range.
A typical medium gunboat is about 75 meters long, without FTL
drive. It might be armed with 4 short-range Type 2 plasma
cannons, or a single medium-range Type-5 plasma and a
point-defense particle beam weapon. Maximum acceleration 30-35G.
Crews might be as small as 10-20, and cramped as if aboard a
WWII bomber.
Heavy gunboats range from 80-120m, with larger specimens having
an FTL drive so that they can jump independently of the mother
vessel (usually so that they are ready to fight immediately upon
arrival, in the event of enemy defenses at the inbound jump
zone). Typical armament might be twin Type-5 MR plasma and 2
point-defense weapons, or a combination of SR and MR plasma
weapons. Max acceleration ~30G.
A light gunboat might be as small as 60m, typically armed with 2
SR Type-2, and built for speed, with max acceleration around
35G.
Perhaps ironically, the Umiak gunboats usually don’t carry
torpedoes. The gunships themselves, like the torpedoes, are
primarily intended to be separate targets in the attempt to
saturate and overwhelm Loroi defense fire.
Even the dedicated tenders are still destroyer-class combat
vessels and generally follow the rest of the fleet into the
fighting. Such vessels are usually in the 200-300m size class
and can tow 4-8 gunboats. A third to half of regular warships in
a fleet, cruiser sized and larger, may also have tow points for
gunboats. A typical cruiser might have 2 tow points, and a
larger battleship might have as many as 6.
The Umiak don’t have formal ship class designations, but
gunboats (like torpedoes) are mass-produced to the degree that
they are much more uniform than larger Umiak vessels. Gunboats
are referred to by their general type (e.g. heavy medium-range
armament), and boats of a given type from the same factory will
look the same, but in the field, a swarm of gunboats will
usually be a motley assortment of shapes and sizes.
Key to understanding the Umiak reluctance to spend a lot of
resources on upgrades or spare parts for existing vessels is the
very short lifespan of Umiak vessels in combat. Umiak warships,
particularly the smaller ones, rarely live long enough to become
outdated. It is not at all unusual for an Umiak assault force
attacking a Loroi system to suffer 100% casualties. The Umiak do
repair damaged ships, but this is usually left to the resources
of the crew. With such loss rates, those ships that do survive a
battle usually won’t have to look far to find spare parts.
I don’t think it’s a case of planning, but rather a question of
raw industrial output that allows the Umiak to use relatively
expensive units as expendable munitions. This applies both to
torpedoes and gunboats.
II
Yes, the Loroi generally use twin high-output engines, and the
Umiak tend to use multiple lower-output engines, which are more
efficient but have a lower total maximum thrust, so an Umiak
vessel is typically ~5g slower than the Loroi counterpart.
III
A fair amount. Both sides maintain extensive surface military
forces on many allied planets, and the Umiak in particular are
known for using their troops to acquire new client states (as in
the case of the Orgus). The Umiak have launched large-scale
ground invasions to take control of a number of Loroi planets,
and the Loroi have done the same to take some of them back,
though the last Loroi operation of this nature would have been
almost 15 years ago.
IV
The Umiak have two general classes of shipboard fighters: crew
security forces and dedicated Umiak cyborg hardtroopers.
V
The Umiak certainly do maintain and repair their ships, but it
is not their highest priority; if there is a resource conflict
between support and new production, the new production will
usually win. This is part philosophy and obsession with raw unit
numbers, but it is also part pragmatism: in the attrition raids
that the Umiak regularly conduct against Loroi positions, it is
expected that a large percentage of the ships in an Umiak assault
force will not return. A ship that is damaged badly enough to
require drydock for repair will likely be cannibalized on the
spot for much-needed parts to help repair other less-damaged
ships. And if a ship survives long enough to become outdated
(for example, if it has been stuck on defensive duty), it will
usually be left that way. It is, however, rare to encounter a
really old Umiak warship.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Karst45
It is always cheaper to melt old metal than to produce new one with
raw material.
Perhaps, but it is very likely that the amount of energy a
spacecraft would have to expend to go out, collect, and bring
the stuff back would far exceed any energy savings compared with
ore smelting. Unless there is some ultra-rare macguffin material
or component that is so expensive that it makes salvage
attractive, like a dilithium or vizorium or pasha, but I don't
think we have any of those in Outsider. It would be comparable
to dredging a sunken ship off the ocean bottom and trying to
salvage it... it's possible, but the economics don't make a lot
of sense.
The main value of space wreckage would be in intelligence. If a
vessel were found somehow nearly intact, it would certainly be
put to some use... but this is rare.
BARSAM
Originally Posted by Quazel
Anyhow, are the little horns on the head fixed or do they have a
small degree of movement?
I imagine them being rooted to the skull, so I don't think
there'd be much movement.
HYOO-MANS
Some human nations will inevitably disagree over how the
Colonial Authority conducts the treaty, but it's not clear to me
that this would necessarily lead to civil war. The disaffected
nation might instead simply withhold its support in terms of
finances, resources and manpower. The Terran Colonial Authority
is not a federal government per se, and has limited jurisdiction
to force member nations to do anything they don't want to do,
but since it controls the only significant human military
starfleet, there's not a lot that a potential rebel force can do
in strategic terms. it's not as if rogue nations go and join the
other side... I doubt if the Loroi would really care whether or
not Zimbabwe refuses to formally ratify the treaty and declares
its support for the Umiak. Even if a large block of nations
became so enraged with the treaty that they wanted to overthrow
the Colonial Authority (say, in the case of a particularly
oppressive treaty), I think starting a civil war in the midst of
such a species-threatening crisis would be a remarkably foolish
thing to do. Both those for and against the treaty must realize
that any loss of central control will almost certainly mean an
alien intervention that will, at best, result in permanent loss
of human sovereignty.
How will the rebels get word to the Umiak? Assuming they had
access to starships to carry a message, how would they even know
where to send them?
It's hard to imagine a situation in which Loroi and Umiak ground
troops would be fighting each other on Earth. Any occupation
force is going to be accompanied by a fleet that would prevent
the other side from landing troops. If the other side brought a
fleet sufficient to displace the one guarding human space, let's
just say that this would be a very dangerous situation for the
locals.
Terran worlds will already have a variety of orbital and
ground-based defensive installations. Current missiles and
warheads (which are already in many cases nearing end of life
cycle) will not be operational 150 years from now, but there
will no doubt be much more effective future equivalents that are
much better suited to engaging orbital targets.
II
The Scout Corps doesn't have "enlisted" ranks -- even the most
menial position aboard an exploratory starship requires
Academy-level training -- so there are two grades of the lowest
"officer" rank, Ensign. Otherwise it is the same as the modern
US Naval rank structure: two grades each of Lieutenant,
Commander, then to Captain and so forth.
No, I hadn't really thought about it... the Scout Corps duty
uniforms don't have any rank insignia on them. The only
noticeable difference relating to rank is that the staff
officers have blue rather than orange jumpsuits, and the captain
wears service ribbons below his name tag. Scout duty uniforms
are instead adorned with emblems of their ship, the Corps, and
the TCA. The Scout Corps are highly professional and observe
strict discipline, but I think at heart they consider themselves
an egalitarian, civilian organization... even the most junior
plebe is a highly educated, highly motivated individual. This
was mostly an unconscious decision on my part, probably
influenced by the fact that I don't recall seeing rank insignia
on NASA astronaut jumpsuits... if they are there, they are
overwhelmed by the colorful mission patches, NASA logo, and
American flag.
No doubt the scouts have dress uniforms with more traditional
insignia. The true military arm of the TCA, the Colonial Fleet,
would also have much more traditional military insignia.
III
There is a fifth ship. In addition to the four scouts, there is
also a long-range transport, the Gopal Prabhu, that serves as a
command vessel for the mission. Prabhu maintains station at a
predetermined rendezvous point, and the other scouts are
supposed to report back to this location. The scout captains
have a great degree of leeway to negotiate with the aliens, but
they don't have the authority to sign a treaty. A scout must
bring any proposed agreement (preferably, with an alien
representative) back to the Prabhu, and from there it can be
relayed back to Terran space (again, preferably along with alien
diplomats for further discussion). Even if the scout captains
end up negotiating with both sides at the same time, and it
becomes a race to get to the rendezvous point first, there's no
danger of a double-agreement. Whichever side loses the race
might not be happy about it, but themselves not having FTL comm,
they will be accustomed to the idea of all diplomatic agreements
being subject to distant approval, and in any case they will
only have the location of the rendezvous point, and not the
location of Earth itself.
IV
The Terran Colonial Authority is not envisioned as any kind of
unified Human government, nor any future version of the United
Nations. The authority of the TCA does not supersede the
sovereignty (for most purposes) of its member nations. Rather,
the TCA is more like a military alliance, such as NATO, created
in response to problems encountered in the early days of
colonization. Without any single dominant superpower to manage
the first steps of Humanity into interstellar space, the first
colonization efforts were no doubt plagued with problems of
conflicting claims, lack of legal jurisdiction, if not outright
piracy. I can easily imagine that it was one of several
competing entities that were created to deal with the problems
of colonial administration, each supported by different
coalitions of Earth nations, that emerged during that period,
but the TCA eventually emerged as the dominant player -- in a
vaguely similar way that the early 21st Century saw former
Warsaw Pact nations applying for NATO membership. Certainly the
TCA has become a powerful entity, but like NATO, it is at the
mercy of the funding whims of its member nations (hence the
cutbacks that resulted in the cancellation of planned TCA
warships). Since the alien contact, the responsibilities (and
funding) heaped on the TCA have ballooned, but this is a very
recent occurrence.
V
Birth Name: Alexander Horatio Jardin
ID Number: 230-023894-39823684-02
Date of Birth: December 17, 2140 CE
Place of Birth: Redding, California (USNA, Earth, Sol System)
Ethnicity: Caucasian (unspecified)
Hair Color: sandy brown
Eye Color: brown
Height: 175 cm (5’9”)
Weight: 68 kg (150 lbs.)
Gender: Male
Education:
Foothill High School (Redding, California): 2155 (valedictorian)
Terran Colonial Authority Aerospace Academy (Hellas Planitia,
Mars): 2159 (salutatorian)
Current Citizenship: USNA
Current Rank: Ensign Second Class (2), Terran Colonial Scout
Corps
Current Assignment: TCSC Long-range Scout ECS-154 Bellarmine;
C.O. Capt. Hamilton
Current Status: Killed In Action / Body Not Recovered
Service Record and Decorations:
5 June 2159: TCA Academy Salutatorian Citation
5 June 2159: Commissioned Ensign Second-Class, TCSC
6 December 2159: Awarded Scout Corps Training Medal
6 December 2159: Awarded Scout Corps Good Conduct Medal
8 February 2160: Assigned ECS-154 Bellarmine (Sol)
17 May 2160: Bellarmine assigned to TF-32, Alien Contact Mission
(82 Eri)
27 September 2160: Bellarmine designated as overdue
26 December 2160: Bellarmine designated as lost with all hands
26 December 2160: Awarded Scout Corps Deep Space Mission Ribbon
26 December 2160: Awarded Purple Heart (posthumous)
26 December 2160: Awarded Scout Corps Distinguished Service
Medal (posthumous)
VI
Alex and Ellen got in trouble over some off-duty antics, the
details of which are revealed later in the story. Neither would
ever be careless on duty -- they're both early graduates of the
academy with top honors, chosen for a critical mission over
millions of other candidates. However, they're both still very
young -- Ellen just turned 21, and Alex is not yet 20. The
second chapter opens with a flashback of Alex standing in the
captain's office, and reveals some of the issues surrounding
Alex's education and induction into the Scout Corps.
VII
The red patch is the Bellarmine unit patch; I think the clearest
view of it is on page 46. It has a white head-on silhouette of
the ship, text across the top that reads "ECS-154 Bellarmine,"
and the ship's motto across the bottom, "Never Behind." The blue
patch is the TCA logo, which is a UN-style globe and laurel with
the text "Terran Colonial Authority" underneath.
VIII
The idea was that the Scout Corps ship names would be like the
U.S. Coast Guard -- not easily recognizable names that are
presumably taken from famous former members of the service. So
we assume that there was someone in the space service (some time
between now and 2160) named Bellarmine who distinguished his or
her self.
The specific origin of the Bellarmine name was a character named
"Aya Bellarmine" from a short comic that Andrea L. Peterson and
I were working on at the time.
IX
I think that anyone with any knowledge of the layout of the
stars in Terran space would not have much trouble picking them
out from a Loroi star map. Even I could probably do it. So the
notion of compartmentalized navigation data doesn't seem
practical. More to the point, the whole purpose of the contact
mission is to bring alien representatives back to the rendezvous
point. If Alex doesn't know how to get to that location, the
mission is now a failure. Attempting to keep your people in the
dark for a mission of this nature is counter-productive.
X
I hear this one mentioned a lot: the assumption that a huge
stockpile of Cold War era nuclear warheads will still be around
in 2160. This doesn't seem likely; in addition to continued
reductions due to treaty, nuclear warheads have limited
operational lifetimes. Many have already been dismantled due to
age, and the ones still in use have to undergo regular, costly
refurbishment at ~20 year intervals.
In any event, I imagine that the 2160 Terrans have much more
effective modern warheads available. The challenge is delivering
one on target, when said target is maneuvering at 30G and firing
back at you.
A Loroi or Umiak torpedo doesn't need a nuclear warhead; the
drive itself is the warhead, and it puts out far more power than
any present-day thermonuclear weapon.
XI
Bellarmine's computer system probably consists of a dozen or so
nodes networked together across the ship, with redundant data
storage that's also distributed, like a RAID. There is certainly
data here about the attack, and there might even be a removable
archive node, but the problem is that you'd have to know exactly
what you're looking for, both in terms of physical devices and
in terms of software and data. The computer is not a Trade
standard, and the information is in Human language and almost
certainly encrypted. If the system was still powered, Alex could
probably call up the data, as he knows how to use the system and
probably still has valid access codes. However, the Loroi
currently searching the vessel will not have any idea how to
access the computer. They or their allies might be able to
figure it out given enough time, but that's time the Umiak are
not going to give them.
The idea of an ejectable black box seems like a notion for a
civilian passenger liner -- it expects that your own people are
likely to be in a position to recover the box. In the case of an
exploration vessel that meets with an accident far from home, or
a military vessel that's destroyed by an enemy, it's unlikely
that such a black box is going to fall into the right hands. In
order to be found by anyone at all, it's going to have to have a
radio beacon, and in this case that would mean it would surely
have already been destroyed or recovered by the Bellarmine's
attacker.
Loroi salvage teams have been searching the hulk and the
surrounding debris for between 24-48 hours. They will be making
detailed recordings of everything, and grabbing everything that
isn't nailed down, but they are aware that a comprehensive
investigation will require that the hulk be towed back to Loroi
lines, and that is almost certainly not going to be possible.
XII
I believe I have said that the Loroi were a thousand years ahead
of the humans, but by that I meant that the Loroi reached the
human level of technology a thousand years ahead of us. I expect
that, given the right circumstances, humans could catch up very
quickly.
I think that human culture's relatively recent rapid advance in
technology will be unusual, and not just in comparison to the
Loroi.
GENERIC TECH
At one extreme you could have control that is entirely virtual,
with the pilot "jacked in", so to speak. At the other end, you
could have conventional controls and give the pilot a "power
suit" with boosted abilities to move a regular stick. In this
case though, the latter seems extraneous... if you can only
wiggle your fingers, which makes more sense... having that
wiggle translate into commands, or trying to make the wiggle
translate into powered motion of a cybernetic arm that moves a
joystick that translates into commands? It's kind of like the
Anime-style powered armor that has hands that hold giant
humanoid-looking weapons with triggers that have to be pulled by
giant robot hands instead of a simple electronic linkage... it's
a bit silly. You're building in extra points of failure that
don't buy you anything except looking cool.
II
An inertial dampening (or amplifying) system changes the degree
to which matter experiences the effects of force -- it probably
doesn't create any force itself. A force generator of the type
that pulls your crewmembers towards the floor certainly does
generate force, but it's not necessarily reactionless -- it
could just be a field acting between the crewman and the floor,
causing attraction. Pointing such a force generator out the back
of the ship and switching it to repel won't do anything...
there's nothing behind the ship to "push" against.
If you have a true reactionless drive system, in which you can
convert energy directly into motion without having to rely on
reaction mass, then your drive and your artificial gravity
system are probably the same thing. You probably won't have any
kind of visible external engine outlet, and your ship can
probably accelerate in any direction without having to rotate.
That's a little bit too high-tech for the main combatants of
Outsider, however.
The fuel requirements for a "realistic" reaction-mass drive, in
which the vast majority of the ship's volume would have to be
dedicated to fuel storage, also precludes the kind of sleek ship
designs that are in Outsider. However, I think there's some
middle ground between a real reaction drive and an ultra-tech
true reactionless drive.
Assuming you have an inertial damper that can reduce the effects
of acceleration on your crew (and likely on the structure of
your ship itself), then it's not unreasonable to infer that the
reverse principle could work -- an inertial amplifier might be
able to increase the effect of acceleration on reaction mass
exiting the drive outlet, allowing for much higher acceleration
to the ship with a much smaller reaction mass than would
normally be required. This is the best justification I can think
of for how a "semi-reactionless" drive might work.
III
While it's true that information gathering increases at an
exponential level, science itself does not -- it seems that the
amount of information required to inform the next advance also
increases at a similar rate. Those last few key discoveries may
require so much information that it's nearly infinite and almost
impossible to gather within the lifetime of the universe. It's
also important to note the distinction between science and
technology -- you can know a great deal about the workings of
black holes for a very, very long time before you are able to
develop the tools and techniques to actually be able to
manipulate them. Outsider assumes that technological curves
flatten out a bit after the steep climb following the
information age and early space exploration phase, so that it's
possible for a civilization like the Loroi to have starflight
for thousands of years but experience only relatively minor
technological advancement during that time.
Whereas most of the races experienced a "global reset" of
technology in the cataclysm of the fall of Soia empire, the
Historians represent an analogue of the European monastic orders
that managed to keep some of the Roman knowledge out of the
hands of the plundering barbarians, and have squirreled it away
for their own purposes. Although they are at a significantly
higher level of technology than their neighbors, they are still
far from the goal of universal knowledge, and can still be
threatened by sufficient numbers of lower-tech units.
IV
The primary Loroi conversion-engine fuel -- let's call it
"Type-A" fuel (I really liked in the old Omnitrend Universe
games how they referred to their fuels/ores with monikers... so
even though you were pretty sure you were using hydrogen, there
was some comfort-level of ambiguity) -- is similar to antimatter
in that you can induce it, under the proper conditions, to
convert almost completely to energy. Hopefully it is more
economical to create than antimatter, and easier to store;
however, it still requires a terrific amount of energy to
create. The technology of producing the fuel could probably be
picked up relatively quickly, especially if supplied with the
necessary equipment, but I'm not sure that the Human planets
will have the surplus energy capacity to be able to create more
than a small amount of fuel.
V
Warships would have both passive and active EM sensors on a wide
variety of wavelengths. Gravimetric sensors might be too large
to fit on a warship, but I can't think of much that would create
a detectable gravity wave except perhaps FTL system entry, and
that is usually detectable by other means. No doubt larger
"fixed" installations would have such detectors, however.
I would think, though, that even if detectors were sensitive
enough to detect a target ship's artificial gravity or drive
system, and small enough to be mounted on a warship, the
warship's own artificial gravity and drive system would probably
blind the sensor. You might have to mount it on a specialized
vessel or probe, or stick to ground-based or orbital detection
platforms. But, given how gravity wave detection works (it
depends on ultra-precise measurement of the distance between two
points), it's hard to imagine one operating accurately on an
accelerating warship.
Since your vector needs to be precise, measurement will be
important. Inhabited systems will no doubt have the systemwide
equivalent of GPS transmitters to aid in measurement; in an
uninhabited system, ships will have to depend on internal
computed navigation systems supplemented by external observation
of planetary landmarks. I'm not sure how one could "damp" such
observations, but even if you could completely blind a target,
it would still have its own calculated position. This calculated
position would stray from its actual position the longer the
ship was blinded, of course. A ship could theoretically jump
during combat, but jumping while under acceleration would
decrease the certainly of one's vector, as would weapons fire or
weapons hits, or other activities that might alter a ship's
vector slightly. Also, there is the issue of the power
requirements for the jump drive; the idea is that a ship must
divert power over a period of time into accumulators to build up
the (assumed) large amount of energy necessary to punch through
the fabric of spacetime, but given enough power and/or power
management, this would be possible to do during combat. The
ideal jump situation would be one in which the ship has time to
coast, verify its vector through last-minute observation, and
divert energy to the jump accumulators. A less-than ideal
situation for jump just increases the risk.
VI
The Loroi defensive screens are envisioned as electromagnetic
fields, without any plasma or particle element. Screens are
designed primarily to deflect or deter charged particles, such
as particle beam or plasma weapon fire, but would also offer
some protection against neutral particles, various frequencies
of light energy, and probably least of all kinetic weapons. The
generators are concentrated in the forward prongs, the visual
idea being that the beefier the prongs, the heavier the
protection... and another good reason to keep the nose pointed
at the enemy. The orientation of the fields could be optimized
to coincide with the "flatness" of the prongs and the Loroi
ships in general when viewed head-on, to increase the angle of
deflection. Sort of in a similar way as a stealth aircraft is
shaped to deflect radar beams.
I haven't come up with a satisfactory mathematical model to
represent the defensive capabilities of the Loroi screens, but
the general idea is that depending on the angle of attack and a
bit of luck, the screens may either deflect most of an attack or
may pass a good deal of it through. The GURPS system has an
interesting dual PD/DR system for representing damage
mitigation, where the "Passive Defense" value helps to avoid
damage altogether, and the "Damage Resistance" value subtracts
directly from damage that strikes the target. In the case of
Outsider, screens would have high PD but low DR, and armor would
have low PD but higher DR.
I don't think screens would be "knocked down" by damage the way
that Star Trek shields are, but an attack that penetrates the
screens might be expected to cause overloads from
electromagnetic feedback, and of course direct damage that
penetrates the armored prongs could damage the individual
generators.
THE STORY
The script is a strange beast... it has a high-level synopsis, a
fairly detailed breakdown of the chapters (sometimes containing
rough versions of dialogue), and then a conventional script
complete with actual dialogue. The rough script covers the whole
story, but the "real" script with dialogue (and sometimes, panel
direction) rarely gets more than about 10-20 pages ahead of the
current page... mainly because I do panel layout page by page,
and a lot of the dialogue gets tweaked or rewritten as I draw
each panel so that it flows correctly. I also have a copious
amount of notes that contain plot, dialogue, and everything in
between. So when I say that something has been "scripted," I
usually mean that I've written it down somewhere. But yes, I do
have a very detailed layout of what happens in the second
chapter.
II
Thanks. There's more to do of course, but I'm happy with the
basic design; Greywind is one design that has given me trouble
for a long time. She is a significant character in the comic,
first appearing in chapter 3.
MISC
The narrator (Alex) is translating Trade dialogue into English
for the reader. The speech bubbles are not meant to be word for
word literal translations of the actual Trade words Alex would
be speaking. When there is an issue of language misunderstanding
between Alex and the Loroi, I will make it as clear as possible
so you shouldn't have to guess. Such as in cases there is a word
that (at the time) he doesn't understand, it is left
untranslated, and in other cases such as the Loroi use of the
word "seems" or the confusion over Alex saying "uh", the
characters or the narrator will bring it up specifically.
As for the reactions of surprise from the Loroi, it's not
complicated... Alex is an alien they've never seen before, who
happens to look like a pink male Loroi. The purple-haired Teidar
is the same one who was involved in the earlier "interrogation,"
so her reaction is not surprise, but something less positive.
II
A plot convenience perhaps, but hardly hand-waving.
A proto-planetary disk is a solar system that's in the process
of forming. It's a large object, and not all one uniform
temperature. Most of the disk material is relatively cool, but
it's certainly hotter at the nodes where planetoids are
coalescing, hotter near the center where it's being heated by
the star, and hottest of all nearest the star, where there are
often superheated jets coming out of the poles, produced by
material falling into the star. Certainly not an ideal sensor
environment.
The action in question is happening at the edge of the system,
where the material is thinnest and coolest. Ships that aren't
moving can probably hide pretty well in this material, and even
when they do move, it might be difficult to tell exactly how
many there are and exactly where.
III
A ship would have a wide variety of sensors positioned all over
the hull for a wide range of input, but not all of these sensors
would be wide-field 360 degree deals. In particular, very
sensitive telescopes and EM sensors designed for detection at
extreme range will probably have very restricted fields of view,
and so the question becomes where you happen to have the things
pointed at any given moment.
The other question is one of data analysis; even if you're
receiving detection data, unless you know what you're looking
for, it may not be immediately obvious. Computer automation is
going to help you a lot here, but even so I still think a
typical warship will need a whole office full of data analysis
people sifting through sensor returns real-time, and depending
on what they're expecting, some things may escape notice.
For example, both the Bellarmine's system entry from hyperspace
and the weapons fire that destroyed her would have been events
that the Tempest's passive sensors would have detected, and no
doubt that data is still in the sensor logs when they went back
to look for it, several days later. At the moment these events
occurred, however, the Loroi sensor teams were a bit preoccupied
(as the ship was engaged in combat), and it would not be
surprising for them to miss or outright ignore events happening
outside their momentary sphere of interest.
Certainly, if you detect a system entry, command is going to be
informed immediately. My point was that sensor and analysis
resources are not infinite, and you have to allocate them as
they are most needed at the moment. During a pitched battle, I'm
not sure allocating sensors and personnel to watch the jump
zones is always going to be the best use of your resources.
Especially in this case, when there are enemy ships mucking
around under the partial cover of the proplyd, and your
detection capabilities are being stretched to their limits.
There is also the issue of physical limitations of sensors
during battle; distant, faint signals may be difficult to detect
when there is terawatt weapons fire and torpedo explosions all
around you.
IV
Tempo is 54.
V
Originally Posted by osmium
One mobile ship yards are for producing ships.
I don't think so. The mobile shipyards in question would be
analogous to the mobile drydocks/transporters that are used to
repair or service ships in the field today. In theory you could
use such a drydock to build a ship, but the logistics of getting
the needed materials on site as needed would be very difficult,
and I have never heard of anyone attempting this. Production is
as much about supply and infrastructure as it is about the
actual facility that you use to physically assemble the product.
You need warehousing and some pretty heavy infrastructure around
the factory itself.
VI
In a war of attrition, you can bet that both sides are working
hard to build up their industrial infrastructure and expand to
new territory as much as possible... though there's a limit to
how far you can bring along a new colony even in a 30-year
timeframe. Which makes established worlds that much more
attractive. Both sides continue to annex inhabited territory as
the opportunity presents itself, the most recent example being
the Umiak occupation of Orgus worlds.
I don't think a planet can "run out" of minerals -- at least not
on the time scales we're talking about -- they just become
harder and more expensive to get at. Iron, for example, makes up
something like 35% the mass of the Earth... it's hard to use it
all up. Especially with a starfaring civilization's access to
metal-rich asteroid fields and the like, there won't be an "end"
to production of a raw material, but production may fall off
over time and there may well be critical shortages, especially
of rarer elements. In this case the Umiak may have an advantage;
although they use more materials than the Loroi, they are
willing to go farther in terms of ecological damage to get at
them. This may be a bigger problem in the long term, but in the
scope of a 30 year war, long term ecological damage will
probably not have a direct impact on production.
Limited resources like fossil fuels can be depleted, but such
low-energy fuels will probably be obsolete at this level of
technology (and I suspect will have already been mostly depleted
in the rise to the starfaring stage). Fissionables are probably
in a similar class. Biologicals are a limited but renewable
resource.
The only power source for starships that makes sense is some
sort of matter annihilation reactor, using matter/antimatter or
some other exotic form of matter than can be made to efficiently
convert to energy (I have been referring to the Loroi version as
"Type-A" fuel). However, this doesn't explain where the
antimatter or Type-A fuel comes from. It will take a lot of
energy to produce such fuels... some candidates might be nuclear
fusion, solar collection, or deep geothermal. I like to imagine
that there might be some ingenious process where by a relatively
common material, such as hydrogen, could be excited through some
sort of catalyst and a modest amount of energy into this exotic
state that allows it to essentially self-annihilate on demand.
However the fuel is created, the source of the energy behind it
has to be functionally unlimited, but the rate at which such
energy can be converted into fuel is limited by your
infrastructure. So, you're not going to "run out" of energy for
your fuel any time soon, but the amount of fuel you can produce
in a given period is limited.
VI
I am assuming that most bath facilities on a military vessel
will be communal.
Loroi males do not grow facial hair.
Barsam are hairless. |