Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[icekatze]

hi hi

While Alex might not be large or muscle bound compared to human body builders, I think the point is that he is when compared to the average Loroi male.

While some people are attracted to tall, aggressive women, the statistics clearly show that is a minority of men. In a 2008 study of college students, only 23% of men reported being willing to date a taller women, and only 4% women reported being willing to date a shorter man. It might not be universal, but it does matter to a lot of people apparently. ((The actual results on successful pairings are less extreme, but it goes to show that other factors are taken into account as well.))

[RedDwarfIV]

Loroi can be attractive to humans. Given how likely it is that Loroi were patterned after humans by the Soia, I don't imagine its too far of a stretch to say that Loroi might find humans attractive. Especially given the sheer range of things that humans can be attracted to...

Also, Beryl seems to like Alex. This brought to you by Interstellar Shipping Ltd.

[UnoriginalUsername]

While Alex might not be large or muscle bound compared to human body builders, I think the point is that he is when compared to the average Loroi male.

Yes, icekatze hits the nail on the head with this one. It's not so much even that Alex shows exaggerated Loroi male features, his physical appearance and stature are the exact opposite of what the Loroi would expect for a male. I think (most) Loroi females would view Human males in much the same way that (most) Human females would probably see Loroi males. They aren't very alien in the grand scheme of things, but I really doubt most human women would be all that interested in the diminutive Loroi males.

Obviously, people have their own tastes, and if that GURPS sheet for Beryl is any indication, our intrepid ensign might still have hopes for some Captain Kirk shenanigans.

On an entirely unrelated note, since most Loroi communication is done via telepathy, did the Loroi have to redevelop spoken language, or did that remain with them from the Soia days? And if they did have to redevelop spoken language, what event prompted the development? First contact, or a technological development like the telephone?

[RedDwarfIV]

On an entirely unrelated note, since most Loroi communication is done via telepathy, did the Loroi have to redevelop spoken language, or did that remain with them from the Soia days? And if they did have to redevelop spoken language, what event prompted the development? First contact, or a technological development like the telephone?

Telephone would probably have happened first. I'd say that was most likely. First contact would have reinforced the need for language, but I don't think it would be the inception of it.

Then again, telepathy doesn't have much range anyway. They might need language just to shout to each other between hills or something.

[fredgiblet]

On an entirely unrelated note, since most Loroi communication is done via telepathy, did the Loroi have to redevelop spoken language, or did that remain with them from the Soia days? And if they did have to redevelop spoken language, what event prompted the development? First contact, or a technological development like the telephone?

Telepathy requires letting people inside your head (even if only a little bit), that's a bad thing if you're fighting and a worse thing if they are a better telepath than you. Spoken word is used for people you don't trust inside your head.

Additionally the only way to record telepathy is with a Listel, spoken word is useful for recording events when there's no Listel handy or when it's too important to risk to a person.

Thirdly I highly doubt that books were unknown to the Loroi, the utility of the written word is too great to be totally replaced by telepathy.

[Hālian]

I'm fairly sure the Loroi vessels have internal bridges somewhere near their centre of mass. Its why they have that massive battlespace projection overhead rather than windows. Not that you'd neccesarily need to be able to see outside given the ranges they'd be fighting at.

Where on a loroi battleship are the cameras/other frobnitzim that capture the image being projected? and what do if they break?

[NuclearIceCream]

I dont think it matters too much if they break, because you'd never fly a spaceship by the things you can see outside of it. You would pilot the ship based on sensor data.

[Arioch]

Where on a loroi battleship are the cameras/other frobnitzim that capture the image being projected? and what do if they break?

Today, a high-quality digital camera is a component that costs something like $20, and that can easily fit on a smartphone. I doubt that having hundreds or thousands of such devices on the hull of a starship would present a problem.

Also, while the video image is useful to the occupants for situational awareness, starships are surely flown by instruments and not by sight.

[Alexandr Koori]

I'll not to be surprised, if loroi girls will prefer intercourse with human mans because of similarity of interests and world outlook, like tomboy in boys bunch.

[Zakharra]

I'm not sure where this one would go, but what base for math do the other races use? humans use a base 10 math system, I believe the Loroi use a base 8 (is that right?) What do the other races use? The Barsam, the Neridi, Delrias, the Historians, Pipolsid and the rest, and the same with the Umiak client races. Do the Loroi enforce their math system on the Loroi Alliance? The Umiak on their Hierarchy? Or is the differing math systems automatically converted by computers or the client races just use the Loroi/Umiak ones by default when serving them?

[discord]

john ringo, through the looking glass series, optical mouse sensors....the damned things are pretty close to perfect for what you want in a distributed system on space ships.
how much are those? how big?

[Arioch]

I'm not sure where this one would go, but what base for math do the other races use? humans use a base 10 math system, I believe the Loroi use a base 8 (is that right?) What do the other races use? The Barsam, the Neridi, Delrias, the Historians, Pipolsid and the rest, and the same with the Umiak client races. Do the Loroi enforce their math system on the Loroi Alliance? The Umiak on their Hierarchy? Or is the differing math systems automatically converted by computers or the client races just use the Loroi/Umiak ones by default when serving them?

Most of the Alliance races use a base-8 system; it's not enforced on them, but the Soia-derived system is traditional in most places, and many of the species have 8 fingers anyway. The Umiak use a binary system.

But yes, all this is irrelevant to how numbers are represented inside the computer. Our computers do all calculations in binary; the base-10 system is just used for input and output so humans can recognize the values.

[Nemo]

Addendum, its only irrelevant until 1 of the 10 types of people in the world have to do some programming.

[Hālian]

Binary is only relevant for electrical engineering.

Programmers use either decimal or hexadecimal.

[Arioch]

Ten years ago it used to be more common to have to deal with binary or hex because you often had to use bitfields or individual bytes to try to save space, but nowadays memory is plentiful and there are so many layers of abstraction that you rarely deal with the actual binary representations of the numbers in memory, unless you happen to be working on a very low level or on the actual hardware. Fast forward that progression several hundred years, and ask yourself how often a programmer is going to interact with bits.

[Nemo]

Most likely so, but thats not near as funny. Which, considering how over used the particular joke is =p

[halftea]

Binary is only relevant for electrical engineering.

Programmers use either decimal or hexadecimal.

Not quite true, there is still relevance to Networking. I use the binary for teaching manually figuring subnet ranges. And when trying to explain what I mean when flags are set in a TCP header.

Although I will say in practical use, everyone just uses a subnet calculator or reads the wireshark/tcpdump. I have found that teaching the binary helps the students I tutor understand the root concept better than just teaching them to use the program. Although not long after that I've had to transition them all to hexadecimal. But there is that brief window where it shines!

[UnoriginalUsername]

So anyway, I'm certain this has been touched on in the forums before, and will most likely be addressed over the course of Outsider, but I'd still like to discuss it.

We all know the Loroi have an undercurrent of racial superiority in their outlook. It's fairly evident in some of their interactions with other aliens in the comic thus far, and quite explicit in the Insider articles. It seems that at least some Loroi, I'm thinking particularly of Stillstorm and Rune-Laurel, are antipathic towards Alex for reasons that I believe have more to do with humanity's apparent similarity to the Loroi than an alien being on a Loroi ship.

I was wondering what everyone's thoughts and speculations were on how the presence of Alex and Humanity would affect Loroi society and conceptions.

I personally think Humanity's obvious similarities to the Loroi would go a long way towards infuriating nationalist/supremacist elements in Loroi culture. I don't think that Humanity's presence is going to do anything concrete to weaken the Loroi hegemony, since it doesn't seem like any race outside of the Loroi take their doctrine all that seriously. As far as I know, only the Neridi officially hold to the Loroi theory on Soia inheritance, and even they don't take it too seriously. The worst I can predict is other species making fun of the Loroi behind their backs... safely away from their telepathy of course.

I do still worry about how some of the more extreme elements of Loroi society will react to Humanity. They've gone on genocidal rampages before now after all.

[Zakharra]

You touch on an interesting subject. I think a large part of some of the Loroi's disltrust of Alex is his resemblance to Loroi. Many will automatically measure him up to what they consider proper Loroi behavior. Male Loroi behavior... and he's going to fall very short of that. One of the other big possible reasons to dislike him (and the biggest I think) is that he cannot be probed telepathically. -All- they have to go on is his words and with Stillstorm's comments, we know how many Loroi regard the spoken word. All of humanity is going to share in this distrust by many Loroi I think.

[Grayhome]

I was thinking of ways to training control of one's psychokinetic abilities, and I've had a few ideas. Mainly in the form of children's games such as Jenga, Pick up Sticks, Rubik's cubes, old school Marbles and Jacks, or modern video games with a specially designed controller.

I was curious as to the ways the Loroi use to train their aspiring psychokinetic warriors. Can anyone think of any ways that you would train psychokinetic abilities to increase skill?