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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 11:23 am
by folti
GeoModder wrote:Appearantly space can be found for extra crewmembers, since the Yorktown version comes with 95 crew.
I assume those extras are necessary for the added weapons.
Per the Insider, it lacks the extended fuel tanks of the original Bennet, which'd give you a bit of space for extra berthing and storage/magazines, along with the extra armor it got.

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 11:40 am
by GeoModder
folti wrote:
GeoModder wrote:Appearantly space can be found for extra crewmembers, since the Yorktown version comes with 95 crew.
I assume those extras are necessary for the added weapons.
Per the Insider, it lacks the extended fuel tanks of the original Bennet, which'd give you a bit of space for extra berthing and storage/magazines, along with the extra armor it got.
Imagine that, sleeping between explosive fuel tanks! :lol:
I reckon part of the existing storage space was converted to crew quarters, and the fuel tanks converted to (weapons)storage.

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 2:31 pm
by folti
GeoModder wrote:
folti wrote:
GeoModder wrote:Appearantly space can be found for extra crewmembers, since the Yorktown version comes with 95 crew.
I assume those extras are necessary for the added weapons.
Per the Insider, it lacks the extended fuel tanks of the original Bennet, which'd give you a bit of space for extra berthing and storage/magazines, along with the extra armor it got.
Imagine that, sleeping between explosive fuel tanks! :lol:
I reckon part of the existing storage space was converted to crew quarters, and the fuel tanks converted to (weapons)storage.
Depends on the amount of reshuffling done with all the new gear added, some existing gear being replaced by newer models (which could go from being smaller/lighter for similar performance to more powerful and more bulky), and some other design quirks, like maybe the original design had some empty, or half filled-in compartments reserved for future refits like this.

Or it's the usual case of wartime refits, they deleted some comfort enhancing rooms/compartments, as the new ships are not intended to spend as much time away from base on a single patrol as the old ones did.

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 10:51 pm
by danuis
Arioch wrote:
danuis wrote:The Bella had a crew around 160ish, right? Are these inflated numbers due to the special mission or very close to operating numbers? Why such a large number of crew in the first place - e.g, how low can a crew go?
No, the Bellarmine's crew was 80, which is normal for the class.
Whoops, my bad, how did that extra one get in there.

Related to this, earlier it was mentioned the Bella had prima-fide Diplomatic staff onboard; were they like, UN reps, TCA only? Did they have any protocol and plans in mind?

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:35 pm
by Arioch
danuis wrote:
Arioch wrote:
danuis wrote:The Bella had a crew around 160ish, right? Are these inflated numbers due to the special mission or very close to operating numbers? Why such a large number of crew in the first place - e.g, how low can a crew go?
No, the Bellarmine's crew was 80, which is normal for the class.
Whoops, my bad, how did that extra one get in there.
Perhaps you thought Alex was saying there were 80 unaccounted for (which is the question Tempo asked), which would have put the total at 137.
danuis wrote:Related to this, earlier it was mentioned the Bella had prima-fide Diplomatic staff onboard; were they like, UN reps, TCA only? Did they have any protocol and plans in mind?
There was a team of diplomatic specialists on board, drawn from a variety of sources, but Captain Hamilton was in overall command of the diplomatic mission. The TCA folks have watched enough Star Trek to know that you can't have diplomats trying to override the captain's authority in a crisis situation.

I'm sure they drew up all kind of potential scenarios and planned accordingly, but they had so little information (not even knowing which side they'd be talking to) that they knew any such plan would not survive contact with the enemy, so to speak.

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2019 8:12 pm
by Mr.Tucker
So... the Orgus mentioned that the Loroi were telepathic. Did they also mention that some Loroi were telekinetic?

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2019 9:24 pm
by Arioch
Mr.Tucker wrote:So... the Orgus mentioned that the Loroi were telepathic. Did they also mention that some Loroi were telekinetic?
I think it's unlikely that the Orgus refugees had any detailed knowledge of what specific psionic abilities the Loroi had or how common they were.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 11:24 am
by Werra
Who is Alex favourite commander from history?

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 5:11 pm
by Arioch
Werra wrote:Who is Alex favourite commander from history?
Julius Caesar.

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:47 pm
by Daegondrake
Is the terran plasma lance similar to the loroi pulse cannon ?

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:51 pm
by Arioch
Daegondrake wrote:Is the terran plasma lance similar to the loroi pulse cannon ?
SpoilerShow
It's sort of a middle ground between a pulse cannon and a plasma focus.

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 1:35 am
by RedDwarfIV
Are the Terrans building a Dyson swarm, or would that get in the way of the standard sci-fi trope of most people living on planets?

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 3:20 am
by Arioch
RedDwarfIV wrote:Are the Terrans building a Dyson swarm, or would that get in the way of the standard sci-fi trope of most people living on planets?
I'm not sure what the one thing has to do with the other... but I think in order to have an actual need for a large percentage of a star's energy output, you have to have a level of superscience which would probably offer much more efficient ways to convert mass into energy.

So, no.

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 11:47 pm
by RedDwarfIV
Arioch wrote:
RedDwarfIV wrote:Are the Terrans building a Dyson swarm, or would that get in the way of the standard sci-fi trope of most people living on planets?
I'm not sure what the one thing has to do with the other... but I think in order to have an actual need for a large percentage of a star's energy output, you have to have a level of superscience which would probably offer much more efficient ways to convert mass into energy.

So, no.
Ah, maybe I've just been watching too many Isaac Arthur videos.

Dyson swarms don't just have to be power collection, they can be habitats too. They're also scalable, so you can have a small one, to collect a small percentage of a star's energy output.

And hey, the Terrans may have a lower tech level, but when you've got access to a huge amount of energy, you can afford to brute force things. Things like antimatter production. Not as good as Taimat, but could maybe get Terran ships useful acceleration. (I'm aware that the story is not about the Terrans sailing in to save the day, but I do like thinking about how they could do that.)

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 8:49 am
by asaenvolk
A common issue with many a Sci-fiction series when dealing with a "we want it to be in the future and humans have future tech, but we want the aliens to be more advanced than the humans", is that humans then often don't have advancements that we will likely have even in the near future.

I am not saying a Dyson Swarm is one of those techs, but realistically it should be within the tech level of the humans in the setting. The thing about such a Swarm is that it doesn't need to start out all encompassing, it starts very very small and builds over time.

The one that kind of surprises me, is the lack of implanted human neural interfaces.

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 10:05 am
by Arioch
Just because something becomes technologically possible doesn't necessarily mean that there's any compelling reason to do it.

It's true that I'm going to resist a lot of transhuman technology for humanity in Outsider because that's not what the story is about, but also because I find a lot of it personally repellant. Just because it may soon be possible for humans to transform themselves into posthuman monstrosities doesn't necessarily mean that most or even many people will. Society won't always bend for every new invention; sometimes one or the other has to break. We don't all have household atomic reactors or flying cars today, not because they're not technically feasible, but because they not a good idea.

But Dyson Swarms are a non-starter, because humanity has literally no use for such a thing. I don't think you start building even a partial version of something on the off chance that you might someday find a use for it. Especially when building that something involves cannibalizing entire planets and takes hundreds if not thousands of years.

Is humanity building solar collectors? Sure, in convenient locations near to where the power will be used and closer to the Sun to improve efficiency. Is this the same thing as starting a Dyson Swarm? No, it isn't.

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 11:52 am
by asaenvolk
a neural interface isn't in an of itself monsterous

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 12:23 pm
by boldilocks
Arioch wrote:We don't all have household atomic reactors or flying cars today, not because they're not technically feasible, but because they not a good idea.
You can have it when you take it from my suspiciously warm boron-lined garage!

Anyway, surely building a ring world would be done for the exact situation Alex is in.
"What's humanity about, you ask? Oh, let's go to these co-ordinates and I'll show you."
Basically it's like having a really sweet ride to help get you into Beryl's pants.
Or more seriously, prestige projects. I think if you had the capacity to build a ring world you'd have the capacity to just move the planets you'd have to cannibalize to build it into an earth-like orbit and then terraform them.

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 9:07 pm
by Zorg56
Pluses of having nuclear reactor at home at best questionable, pluses from hard cybernetics is obvious.

You will choose worker that works faster if you have a company, arent you?

Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 9:19 pm
by Werra
Not if the costs and difficulties aren't worth the output of the worker. That's why the Romans never implemented the steam engine. Even though Slaves were just ubiquitous and more convenient.