Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[MBehave]

Pusher plates are inefficient, beam the energy instead If each Torpedo/Missile has a solid metal core engine and the energy is beamed directly into the engine can easily give 1000g acceleration.

Loroi laser tech has effective range out to 120000 against enemy missiles, hitting a missile thats flying directly away from them would be far easier.
However macron cannons would be far better option then lasers. They are the only real world "beam" weapon that can deliver more energy to target then used to fire reducing the antimatter needed, lasers providing thrust are still using significant amounts of antimatter from the ship and while it increases missile/torpedo efficiency it doesn't counter the problem the Loroi have with the antimatter cost of torpedos by too much.

As for acceleration
50 seconds(distance to travel ~120000km from the firing ship, which is the max range Loroi point defences can hit a missile, I am assuming targeting efficiency based on this) gives 490km/s... thats around 2/5ths the speed the largest Loroi torpedo can reach and 4X the speed their small torpedoes can reach before exhausting all its fuel.

If the Loroi wanted to create a ship design that had mass Macron or laser pusher guns they could drop the antimatter required for fuel to 10% in the missiles and have a missile barge that can release a thousand torpedoes for the cost of 100 normal USR "Tolot" Torpedo while out performing it by 4X velocity and 16X the acceleration before kicking over to the second stage(original engine) and having the same performance from then on.

The downside is the missiles/torpedoes have to fly in a straight line while being accelerated and are far easier to target before they kick over to the original engine, lack of Umiak PD however would make it much less of a problem and matter of fact forcing the Umiak to use a main gun to target a missile would be a win anyways and your adding thousand missiles for them to target for the antimatter cost of a hundred.

Sometimes its not about having an effective weapon that your enemy cant counter, its about having a weapon system that requires your enemy to waste resources to counter.
Umiak would have to start producing PD on their ships reducing the number of main guns they can carry, or putting production and space into anti torpedo missiles meaning they bring less anti ship torpedoes to every fight. Either is a win for the Loroi even if they only produce a few missile barges, because the damage they could do to the Umiak if they didn't putresources into a counter is far worse then the damage done to their combat efficiency if they do.

I just wonder though, if that missile will make a lot of damage. The pusher plates need to be pretty massive (a lot less than a pusher plate for a ship which is intended to survive combat), and thus you're creating a kinetic missile more than an explosive missile.
What if that missile then misses?
It will be a lot less efficient at altering/adjusting its course than a conventional missile.
If pulses are left when hitting the enemy, these pulses can do some damage too if used as normal explosives.

But as mentioned before, those missiles will be VERY expensive, and difficult to handle.
For the same amount of space on a ship, and cost of manufacturing, it seems you'll get a lot more out of conventional missiles.
Which you can use to try to box in an enemy...



But yeah, war/is was seldom a time for cost-benefit analysis, but often for maximum impact weapons.
And in that regard, an Orion-type missile may sound great.

A,manned Orion is big because it has to be. AM, or it's equibalent, allows one to make a smaller version simply due to energy density.

A few grams of antimatter equal big boom.But we could easily.do more than that.


And massive won't need to be. A thin film of oil on solid metal balls that were basketball size at ground zero for a nuke detonation survived totally intact.

The oil layer vaporized, but the shock of the plasma was so hard the balls were found miles away.


Huge no, just large. enough for 60 b-balls. a plate, and whatever else.

Smaller than a blister or shuttle or fighter.

Expensive? Metal and bombs they know how to make.

It's arguably cheaper than making complex 30gr ocket torpedoes!


LATE EDIT: There is one major drawback....time. The moment the Umiak see the Loroi do this they would begin copying them, since they have much the same technology if the Loroi could not end the war before the Umiak managed to fully adopt Orion missile tech, the war is lost to the Loroi.

Since Umiak would use regular missile screens, and then spam 1000g orion missiles at closer ranges. Even the Loroi could not persevere against that indefinirely.


Also due to the sheer power of Type A orion propulsion, you must deploy it from the ship, then fly off a safe distance before it ignites the first bomb. Since at close range a Type A Orion missile would damage the ship that launched it from the blast of Type A in the first pulse bomb.

You really don't want Type A Orion missiles flying close to each other as they launch unless you can ensure none are behind each other, since they would incinerate them or blow them backward.

[Bamax]

Pusher plates are inefficient, beam the energy instead If each Torpedo/Missile has a solid metal core engine and the energy is beamed directly into the engine can easily give 1000g acceleration.

Loroi laser tech has effective range out to 120000 against enemy missiles, hitting a missile thats flying directly away from them would be far easier.
However macron cannons would be far better option then lasers. They are the only real world "beam" weapon that can deliver more energy to target then used to fire reducing the antimatter needed, lasers providing thrust are still using significant amounts of antimatter from the ship and while it increases missile/torpedo efficiency it doesn't counter the problem the Loroi have with the antimatter cost of torpedos by too much.

As for acceleration
50 seconds(distance to travel ~120000km from the firing ship, which is the max range Loroi point defences can hit a missile, I am assuming targeting efficiency based on this) gives 490km/s... thats around 2/5ths the speed the largest Loroi torpedo can reach and 4X the speed their small torpedoes can reach before exhausting all its fuel.

If the Loroi wanted to create a ship design that had mass Macron or laser pusher guns they could drop the antimatter required for fuel to 10% in the missiles and have a missile barge that can release a thousand torpedoes for the cost of 100 normal USR "Tolot" Torpedo while out performing it by 4X velocity and 16X the acceleration before kicking over to the second stage(original engine) and having the same performance from then on.

The downside is the missiles/torpedoes have to fly in a straight line while being accelerated and are far easier to target before they kick over to the original engine, lack of Umiak PD however would make it much less of a problem and matter of fact forcing the Umiak to use a main gun to target a missile would be a win anyways and your adding thousand missiles for them to target for the antimatter cost of a hundred.

Sometimes its not about having an effective weapon that your enemy cant counter, its about having a weapon system that requires your enemy to waste resources to counter.
Umiak would have to start producing PD on their ships reducing the number of main guns they can carry, or putting production and space into anti torpedo missiles meaning they bring less anti ship torpedoes to every fight. Either is a win for the Loroi even if they only produce a few missile barges, because the damage they could do to the Umiak if they didn't putresources into a counter is far worse then the damage done to their combat efficiency if they do.

I just wonder though, if that missile will make a lot of damage. The pusher plates need to be pretty massive (a lot less than a pusher plate for a ship which is intended to survive combat), and thus you're creating a kinetic missile more than an explosive missile.
What if that missile then misses?
It will be a lot less efficient at altering/adjusting its course than a conventional missile.
If pulses are left when hitting the enemy, these pulses can do some damage too if used as normal explosives.

But as mentioned before, those missiles will be VERY expensive, and difficult to handle.
For the same amount of space on a ship, and cost of manufacturing, it seems you'll get a lot more out of conventional missiles.
Which you can use to try to box in an enemy...



But yeah, war/is was seldom a time for cost-benefit analysis, but often for maximum impact weapons.
And in that regard, an Orion-type missile may sound great.

A,manned Orion is big because it has to be. AM, or it's equibalent, allows one to make a smaller version simply due to energy density.

A few grams of antimatter equal big boom.But we could easily.do more than that.


And massive won't need to be. A thin film of oil on solid metal balls that were basketball size at ground zero for a nuke detonation survived totally intact.

The oil layer vaporized, but the shock of the plasma was so hard the balls were found miles away.


Huge no, just large. enough for 60 b-balls. a plate, and whatever else.

Smaller than a blister or shuttle or fighter.

Expensive? Metal and bombs they know how to make.

It's arguably cheaper than making complex 30gr ocket torpedoes!


LATE EDIT: There is one major drawback....time. The moment the Umiak see the Loroi do this they would begin copying them, since they have much the same technology if the Loroi could not end the war before the Umiak managed to fully adopt Orion missile tech, the war is lost to the Loroi.

Since Umiak would use regular missile screens, and then spam 1000g orion missiles at closer ranges. Even the Loroi could not persevere against that indefinirely.


Also due to the sheer power of Type A orion propulsion, you must deploy it from the ship, then fly off a safe distance before it ignites the first bomb. Since at close range a Type A Orion missile would damage the ship that launched it from the blast of Type A in the first pulse bomb.

You really don't want Type A Orion missiles flying close to each other as they launch unless you can ensure none are behind each other, since they would incinerate them or blow them backward.

You have reasoned on this and have somw good ideas.

Yet Project Orion is all about trading max efficiency for max performance.

I can only presume that Loroi vessels have a limit to how much waste heat they generate from weapons/engines. In fact I know they do, because the more heat an engine can tolerate without melting the more efficient it becomes. And their best missiles don't go far beyond 300g so this must be a limit they either cannot surpass or simply do not want to.

That is why project Orion was developed. I can assure you that if you use the uber long range Loroi beams to heat a missile for 1000g efficiency you are far more likely to blow it up.

Energy is is energy, and more equals more heat.



By the way, when I say Orion missile, I envision one with a standard Loroi missile rocket engine at one end for less thrust, and a pusher plate supported by pistons at the other. It would also have RCS thrusters of course.

When ready the missile flips over to engage the pusher plate drive, and flips back over to the rocket end to maneuver as needed to go beyond just traveling linear.

Wondering how the missile can see or sense anything flying pusher plate or nozzle head first?

Simple. Retractable side wall sensors/cameras, which retract into the missile when not used on either end.

[MBehave]

Both ORION drives and Solid Metal Core Drives work in the exact same manner, though pulsed plasma propulsion.
The limits to both engines are that each pulses energy cannot reach a level that induces thermal shock in the metal used.

The differences is that the Solid metal core engine can receive thousands of pulses of energy in the amount of time it takes to release and detonate one pulse for an Orion engine, secondly the pulses power can be increased to a point they would induce thermal shock but are fired before the previous plasma has fully dissipated causing it to absorb some of the energy and increasing the efficiency/thrust of the engine further without causing damage.

Their is a minimum headspace limit between a nuclear explosion and the pusher plate, which also pushes a minimum limit to the size of the pusher plate. turning a 8 ton missile into a 1000 ton missile is not efficient in terms of carrying between systems, even if they are rather cheap to make.
Due to the size of ORION engines what the LOROI/UMIAK cannot do is carry them between systems in any worthwhile amount, at least not put together.

Pusher plates are inefficient, beam the energy instead If each Torpedo/Missile has a solid metal core engine and the energy is beamed directly into the engine can easily give 1000g acceleration.

Loroi laser tech has effective range out to 120000 against enemy missiles, hitting a missile thats flying directly away from them would be far easier.
However macron cannons would be far better option then lasers. They are the only real world "beam" weapon that can deliver more energy to target then used to fire reducing the antimatter needed, lasers providing thrust are still using significant amounts of antimatter from the ship and while it increases missile/torpedo efficiency it doesn't counter the problem the Loroi have with the antimatter cost of torpedos by too much.

As for acceleration
50 seconds(distance to travel ~120000km from the firing ship, which is the max range Loroi point defences can hit a missile, I am assuming targeting efficiency based on this) gives 490km/s... thats around 2/5ths the speed the largest Loroi torpedo can reach and 4X the speed their small torpedoes can reach before exhausting all its fuel.

If the Loroi wanted to create a ship design that had mass Macron or laser pusher guns they could drop the antimatter required for fuel to 10% in the missiles and have a missile barge that can release a thousand torpedoes for the cost of 100 normal USR "Tolot" Torpedo while out performing it by 4X velocity and 16X the acceleration before kicking over to the second stage(original engine) and having the same performance from then on.

The downside is the missiles/torpedoes have to fly in a straight line while being accelerated and are far easier to target before they kick over to the original engine, lack of Umiak PD however would make it much less of a problem and matter of fact forcing the Umiak to use a main gun to target a missile would be a win anyways and your adding thousand missiles for them to target for the antimatter cost of a hundred.

Sometimes its not about having an effective weapon that your enemy cant counter, its about having a weapon system that requires your enemy to waste resources to counter.
Umiak would have to start producing PD on their ships reducing the number of main guns they can carry, or putting production and space into anti torpedo missiles meaning they bring less anti ship torpedoes to every fight. Either is a win for the Loroi even if they only produce a few missile barges, because the damage they could do to the Umiak if they didn't putresources into a counter is far worse then the damage done to their combat efficiency if they do.

A,manned Orion is big because it has to be. AM, or it's equibalent, allows one to make a smaller version simply due to energy density.

A few grams of antimatter equal big boom.But we could easily.do more than that.


And massive won't need to be. A thin film of oil on solid metal balls that were basketball size at ground zero for a nuke detonation survived totally intact.

The oil layer vaporized, but the shock of the plasma was so hard the balls were found miles away.


Huge no, just large. enough for 60 b-balls. a plate, and whatever else.

Smaller than a blister or shuttle or fighter.

Expensive? Metal and bombs they know how to make.

It's arguably cheaper than making complex 30gr ocket torpedoes!


LATE EDIT: There is one major drawback....time. The moment the Umiak see the Loroi do this they would begin copying them, since they have much the same technology if the Loroi could not end the war before the Umiak managed to fully adopt Orion missile tech, the war is lost to the Loroi.

Since Umiak would use regular missile screens, and then spam 1000g orion missiles at closer ranges. Even the Loroi could not persevere against that indefinirely.


Also due to the sheer power of Type A orion propulsion, you must deploy it from the ship, then fly off a safe distance before it ignites the first bomb. Since at close range a Type A Orion missile would damage the ship that launched it from the blast of Type A in the first pulse bomb.

You really don't want Type A Orion missiles flying close to each other as they launch unless you can ensure none are behind each other, since they would incinerate them or blow them backward.

You have reasoned on this and have somw good ideas.

Yet Project Orion is all about trading max efficiency for max performance.

I can only presume that Loroi vessels have a limit to how much waste heat they generate from weapons/engines. In fact I know they do, because the more heat an engine can tolerate without melting the more efficient it becomes. And their best missiles don't go far beyond 300g so this must be a limit they either cannot surpass or simply do not want to.

That is why project Orion was developed. I can assure you that if you use the uber long range Loroi beams to heat a missile for 1000g efficiency you are far more likely to blow it up.

Energy is is energy, and more equals more heat.



By the way, when I say Orion missile, I envision one with a standard Loroi missile rocket engine at one end for less thrust, and a pusher plate supported by pistons at the other. It would also have RCS thrusters of course.

When ready the missile flips over to engage the pusher plate drive, and flips back over to the rocket end to maneuver as needed to go beyond just traveling linear.

Wondering how the missile can see or sense anything flying pusher plate or nozzle head first?

Simple. Retractable side wall sensors/cameras, which retract into the missile when not used on either end.

[Cthulhu]

The amplifiers are made from metals and ceramics. Loroi didn't invent them; rather, they discovered examples in the Soia ruins on Mezan and copied them.

Yes, I've read that they found precursor tech samples of those. My question was, if they didn't, what are the chances of inventing them? Maybe they have similarities with other technologies or have a pattern that is used somewhere else? Do the Loroi even understand how and why the amplifiers work, since they can tune them?

[Arioch]

The amplifiers are made from metals and ceramics. Loroi didn't invent them; rather, they discovered examples in the Soia ruins on Mezan and copied them.

Yes, I've read that they found precursor tech samples of those. My question was, if they didn't, what are the chances of inventing them? Maybe they have similarities with other technologies or have a pattern that is used somewhere else? Do the Loroi even understand how and why the amplifiers work, since they can tune them?

I think that if you don't know something exists or is even possible, it's hard to invent it.

[Cthulhu]

Actually, many inventions were made by pure chance, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin. The inventor experimented with various substances, forgot to wash his hands afterwards and went off to eat only to wonder why his food was now too sweet! Fortunately for him he merely produced a sweetener and not some kind of sweet tasting poison.
Anyway, you mean that those amplifiers would be impossible or at least improbable to develop without a precursor tech sample.

[Arioch]

Actually, many inventions were made by pure chance, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin. The inventor experimented with various substances, forgot to wash his hands afterwards and went off to eat only to wonder why his food was now too sweet! Fortunately for him he merely produced a sweetener and not some kind of sweet tasting poison.
Anyway, you mean that those amplifiers would be impossible or at least improbable to develop without a precursor tech sample.

Well, somebody obviously invented them, so it's not impossible. But even though the Loroi now know how to manufacture and even tailor amps, they do so only through trial and error. They still don't fully understand the principle that the amplifiers operate on.

[Cthulhu]

Well, somebody obviously invented them, so it's not impossible. But even though the Loroi now know how to manufacture and even tailor amps, they do so only through trial and error. They still don't fully understand the principle that the amplifiers operate on.

Ah, yes, that's what I was asking about. So basically it's impossible at the tech level the Loroi are at and improbable by chance due to its complexity and having no similar applications.

Sorry for the repeated questions, but I was thinking about writing something and the story idea required such an (or a similar) invention. I guess now I need a completely different approach for that particular breakthrough.

[Bamax]

Both ORION drives and Solid Metal Core Drives work in the exact same manner, though pulsed plasma propulsion.
The limits to both engines are that each pulses energy cannot reach a level that induces thermal shock in the metal used.

The differences is that the Solid metal core engine can receive thousands of pulses of energy in the amount of time it takes to release and detonate one pulse for an Orion engine, secondly the pulses power can be increased to a point they would induce thermal shock but are fired before the previous plasma has fully dissipated causing it to absorb some of the energy and increasing the efficiency/thrust of the engine further without causing damage.

Their is a minimum headspace limit between a nuclear explosion and the pusher plate, which also pushes a minimum limit to the size of the pusher plate. turning a 8 ton missile into a 1000 ton missile is not efficient in terms of carrying between systems, even if they are rather cheap to make.
Due to the size of ORION engines what the LOROI/UMIAK cannot do is carry them between systems in any worthwhile amount, at least not put together.

Pusher plates are inefficient, beam the energy instead If each Torpedo/Missile has a solid metal core engine and the energy is beamed directly into the engine can easily give 1000g acceleration.

Loroi laser tech has effective range out to 120000 against enemy missiles, hitting a missile thats flying directly away from them would be far easier.
However macron cannons would be far better option then lasers. They are the only real world "beam" weapon that can deliver more energy to target then used to fire reducing the antimatter needed, lasers providing thrust are still using significant amounts of antimatter from the ship and while it increases missile/torpedo efficiency it doesn't counter the problem the Loroi have with the antimatter cost of torpedos by too much.

As for acceleration
50 seconds(distance to travel ~120000km from the firing ship, which is the max range Loroi point defences can hit a missile, I am assuming targeting efficiency based on this) gives 490km/s... thats around 2/5ths the speed the largest Loroi torpedo can reach and 4X the speed their small torpedoes can reach before exhausting all its fuel.

If the Loroi wanted to create a ship design that had mass Macron or laser pusher guns they could drop the antimatter required for fuel to 10% in the missiles and have a missile barge that can release a thousand torpedoes for the cost of 100 normal USR "Tolot" Torpedo while out performing it by 4X velocity and 16X the acceleration before kicking over to the second stage(original engine) and having the same performance from then on.

The downside is the missiles/torpedoes have to fly in a straight line while being accelerated and are far easier to target before they kick over to the original engine, lack of Umiak PD however would make it much less of a problem and matter of fact forcing the Umiak to use a main gun to target a missile would be a win anyways and your adding thousand missiles for them to target for the antimatter cost of a hundred.

Sometimes its not about having an effective weapon that your enemy cant counter, its about having a weapon system that requires your enemy to waste resources to counter.
Umiak would have to start producing PD on their ships reducing the number of main guns they can carry, or putting production and space into anti torpedo missiles meaning they bring less anti ship torpedoes to every fight. Either is a win for the Loroi even if they only produce a few missile barges, because the damage they could do to the Umiak if they didn't putresources into a counter is far worse then the damage done to their combat efficiency if they do.

You have reasoned on this and have somw good ideas.

Yet Project Orion is all about trading max efficiency for max performance.

I can only presume that Loroi vessels have a limit to how much waste heat they generate from weapons/engines. In fact I know they do, because the more heat an engine can tolerate without melting the more efficient it becomes. And their best missiles don't go far beyond 300g so this must be a limit they either cannot surpass or simply do not want to.

That is why project Orion was developed. I can assure you that if you use the uber long range Loroi beams to heat a missile for 1000g efficiency you are far more likely to blow it up.

Energy is is energy, and more equals more heat.



By the way, when I say Orion missile, I envision one with a standard Loroi missile rocket engine at one end for less thrust, and a pusher plate supported by pistons at the other. It would also have RCS thrusters of course.

When ready the missile flips over to engage the pusher plate drive, and flips back over to the rocket end to maneuver as needed to go beyond just traveling linear.

Wondering how the missile can see or sense anything flying pusher plate or nozzle head first?

Simple. Retractable side wall sensors/cameras, which retract into the missile when not used on either end.

I stand corrected.

You are right that Orion pusher plate size does matter, as the smaller it is the less thrust it will receive from the plasma blast.

So that would precluding making missiles unless you are desperately throwing ship size Orion missiles at massive Umiak battlestations/supply depots.

What do you mean by a solid core engine? A solid thermal reactor?

Or hitting metal with lasers via ablation?

Nonethelesd I am still skeptical about the heat not destroying the missile outright, and no doubt a small orion's top speed would be reduced because of the blast distance required to survive coupled with the small reaction pusher plate.

Orion scales up well but does not scale down well.

[Bamax]

Wow...just figured out that Loroi eyes are not only a bit wider with bigger irises, but the shape is slightly different than human too.

With Loroi eyes, they slightly curve more downward, the general border near the nose. So do humans, but with Loroi it is more pronounced.

The interesting thing about Loroi eyes is the effect is so subtle one may not even notice it, but it is there if you focus upon it.

Really, Loroi irsises are only slightly bigger than human ones and it is not obvious because the whites of their eyes scale up for width to match them.

Neat effect though. Gives them both a cartoonish cute look while also kind of definitely marking them as not us.

Strangely it also makes the ladies more attractive. But the guys? Somehow the Loroi guy drawings have seen tend to look...effeminate, mainly because with guys the Loroi eyes REALLY stand out. Possibly because men associate big beautiful eyes with women...not men.

[Arioch]

"Slanted" eyes are kind of a standard feature of elves.

[kfcroc18]

Do the Loroi use camo uniforms?

[Arioch]

Do the Loroi use camo uniforms?

Sure.

[Quickdraw101]

I'm loving the thought of Flint and Reed trekking through a forest while wearing Marpat or Flecktarn.

[Arioch]

I'm having a discussion with the readers at the Russian translation of the comic about psionics and amplifiers, but it's difficult for me to "think in Russian," so I hope you don't mind if I work out my thoughts here in English first.

You cannot copy technology without understanding the principles of its work.

Consider a lens as an example. It doesn't require any energy to work, it only needs to be made of a suitable material and shaped in a specific way that anyone with the technology to accurately measure and process glass can copy. They don't need to understand anything about optics, the nature of light, or refraction; it will work for everyone.

You can determine "how" something works by simply watching it in action. But that may not tell you “why” it works. Scientists as early as in the Middle Ages had good theories of "how" lenses affect light, but we didn't understand "why" light is refracted until the 20th century, because it's a quantum effect. If the only thing you could observe about light is how it interacts with lenses (and you didn't know how light is created, and could not create it or even detect it artificially), then it would be very difficult to learn about the fundamental quantum nature of light.

It seems to me that Laura's interstellar union, after in some strange way was able to copy the technologies of a higher civilization for (how much time has passed there .. 500 years 1000 years?) Could have figured it out. Moreover, for sure the number of scientists who are dealing with this issue is greater than that of humanity in general there are scientists. If not more than the number of people.

My view of psionics in Outsider is that it's an emergent property of consciousness, or "the mind." An analogy to think about is human psychology; it is an emergent property of the mind, and has large effects on human interactions and behavior, but it does not have any physical properties, and it can only be measured through the subjective experience of humans. There is no "psychology particle" or "psychology field" for instruments to measure objectively. Psychology is transmitted through sight, sound and touch, but it only exists within the mind; measuring the light and sound around a human subject will not reveal to you what psychology he is experiencing. Psychologists can create theories about rules that govern psychology, but they cannot be proven or disproven in the same way that a theory in physical sciences can, because the data collected is always subjective. We can only determine a person's mental state by asking him, and humans are not reliable witnesses, even about their own feelings. We can create artificial intelligences, but we can't know for sure whether they experience the same psychology as humans do, because the only way to find out is to ask them subjective questions.

Where the analogy breaks down is that the Outsider plot requires that telepathy can be effected by physical objects; specifically, amplifiers and dampeners. This means that telepathy must interact with the real universe in predictable ways, even though the objects that telepathy interacts with do not experience any measurable interaction. The medium that transmits telepathy is not known (if there is such a medium at all), and the only way to study telepathy is to ask a telepath what she is experiencing. The only way that the Loroi discovered what amplifiers do was through trial and error, and the only way that they can study the effects of amplifiers is to ask the subject what she experiences. Under these circumstances, scientists can create good theories on how telepathy works, but still know nothing about why it works. In science today, there are some good theories of how Dark Matter behaves based on observations, but there is no accepted theory on what causes these effects. So the Loroi are smart enough to tinker with amplifiers and dampeners based on observed effects, and they have good theories that allow them to construct amplifiers which they know will work, but a thousand years of study hasn't given them any proof on "why" telepathy works, and it still cannot be artificially recorded or reproduced.

If that sounds like fantasy, well, it is. It's fundamental to the nature of the story and plot, so I rationalize it the best I can.

Psychokinesis operates on a similar principle, except that it can have measurable effects on real objects. However, only the effect on the object can be measured by instruments, not the cause.

[Bamax]

"Slanted" eyes are kind of a standard feature of elves.

No reply expected but appreciated nonetheless!


So you are saying that what you did is basically customize a well known trope for the Loroi? So still kind of original.

Even the Elerians do not look quite like the Loroi, as the Elerians look more...human with pointy ears.


You should know that Outsider is LITERALLY the most experience I have with elves period.

I was raised up on scifi shows like DS9 mostly, and what superhero cartoons that came along in the 90's through the early 2000's.

Elves are very foreign to me. Never really delved into fantasy but always liked scifi.

Your work is scifi that just so happens to have space elves...if it were fantasy like LOTR I probably would have avoided it as I prefer scifi over medieval fantasy.

Since I like that at least it seems like there is less up to chance in scifi....and that means acomplishment, victory, seems a lot more....earned.

Winning does not rely totally on fantastic powers like magic in scifi...except for Star Wars anyway.

[kfcroc18]

Do the Loroi have medals. Like the bronze star, purple heart, etc.

[spacewhale]

Do the Loroi have medals. Like the bronze star, purple heart, etc.

Seems like they could just transmit their service record telepathically. Fireblade does it all the time.

[Bamax]

Do the Loroi have medals. Like the bronze star, purple heart, etc.

Seems like they could just transmit their service record telepathically. Fireblade does it all the time.

Wow...being Loroi has it's perks.

No photo ID needed. Everyone knows it's you.

The only downside? Little privacy. In fact Loroi don't literally read thoughts via Sanzai, but if a Loroi is ALREADY mulling over something while sending it likely to slip out.

So one can telepathically keep silent, but then other Loroi will become suspicious and think you're hiding something.

There are high powered and trained Loroi that can force information out whether a a Loroi wants to or not though.

So yeah...virtually zero privacy.

I actually think in hindsight that Loroi tell the truth more often than not, as lying is hard where they are from.

Tempo I think has being totalky honest in hindsight. It's what Loroi Mizol do not say or reveal that you really probably should know.

But Mizol are the embodiment of the Loroi government, they will never reveal anything that puts the Loroi at a disadvantage, even if it gives an ally an advantage....unless it helps the Loroi too.

[Krin]

So have the Loroi developed psychic dampeners / containers as well? I'm thinking for suppression usages for something like prisoners, or for those that might be too acutely aware of their surroundings.