Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

[Mr Bojangles]

That is true. The Historians are independent allies, so aren't beholden to Union law. They also didn't share tech with the Loroi until it clear that the Loroi couldn't hold out. Given how loath they appear to be to share their knowledge, I wouldn't think they'd be anymore willing to share with Humanity.

Of course, they are mysterious. Who knows what they may do?

[CrimsonFALKE]

The Historians don't seem pleased with the Loroi or at least the one seems displeased.

[RedDwarfIV]

On the matter of tech transfers, people here always say 'the Loroi need to give this or that' in order to have the Terrans be useful. But if I read the Insider correctly, most of the advanced tech the Loroi use comes from other races within the Loroi Union. So once Humanity's whereabouts goes round in the Union, how long would it take Barsam 'prophets', Neridi 'economists/managers', or even the Pipolsid, having their own trading and agreements with humans?

Good point. I hope to see some Heavy Cruisers doing some damage at some point in the comic.

@MrBojangles: Obviously the Loroi fighters aren't enough, or the missiles wouldn't need to be destroyed by ship-mounted PD lasers. The point of a Macross Missile Massacre is to overwhelm the enemy's PD with more missiles than can be destroyed. The counter to it is... having more PD. Redundancy is the point.

As to the 'sitting ducks' thing, they pretty much already are sitting ducks. Loroi and Umiak engine technology is far more advanced than humans'. In any case, they would probably be deployed out of the Umiak's effective weapons range (which they must have, or they wouldn't need missiles to pound the Loroi ships with first.)

[Zakharra]

Of course the Historians could trade freely with the humans they only need to get to the distance humans to trade. Although the loroi are stuck to raiding forces humans if upgraded could act as a the US did in the first World War.

The problem with that is the Historians need to know where the Human worlds are located. For now, it's very likely when the Loroi find out they will keep that a secret until they know what they intend to do with the Humans.

[Suederwind]

Hi RedDwarfIV!

As to the 'sitting ducks' thing, they pretty much already are sitting ducks. Loroi and Umiak engine technology is far more advanced than humans'. In any case, they would probably be deployed out of the Umiak's effective weapons range (which they must have, or they wouldn't need missiles to pound the Loroi ships with first.)

The Problem I see here is that the human ships are too slow to keep up with the Loroi fleet. The advantage the Loroi have over their Umiak Enemies is their superior maneuverability and long range weapons. If they would really use human made and designed PD-Ships, they would loose their first advantage, as they would need to stay in range of those ships. Or in other words, they would need to slow down, so that the humans could keep up and that would be bad, because those battles are not fought like a 18th century naval battle of the line and the enemies are under constant acceleration (at least I assume that).
Besides: the Loroi PD weapons are more than capable to stop a Umiak missile and gunboat attack. So why should they depend on a new, previously unknown ally with primitive technology and which minds are unreadable, to perform a crucial task in a battle? The only Loroi ally that performs a task for the Loroi fleet are the Barsam with their courier vessels. They are allied with the Loroi for a long time and even they don't fight with the Loroi fleet, at least as far as we know. And last, but not least: the Loroi are known to be a bit xenophobic.

[RedDwarfIV]

Hi RedDwarfIV!

Hey.

The Problem I see here is that the human ships are too slow to keep up with the Loroi fleet. The advantage the Loroi have over their Umiak Enemies is their superior maneuverability and long range weapons. If they would really use human made and designed PD-Ships, they would loose their first advantage, as they would need to stay in range of those ships. Or in other words, they would need to slow down, so that the humans could keep up and that would be bad, because those battles are not fought like a 18th century naval battle of the line and the enemies are under constant acceleration (at least I assume that).

Admittedly true. Though the human ships don't need to keep up with the Loroi, just stay between the Loroi and the Umiak. Since the Loroi enter a system from one side and the Umiak enter from the other, plus there's the Far-Seeing device, there shouldn't be too much confusion over which direction the Umiak will be coming from.

The Loroi PD weapons are more than capable to stop a Umiak missile and gunboat attack.

Their PD is sufficient to stop the missiles... but not fast enough to let them get on with firing their main weapons before the Umiak get their main weapons in range. To do that would mean they need more PD.

So why should they depend on a new, previously unknown ally with primitive technology and which minds are unreadable, to perform a crucial task in a battle?

Necessity? In any case, I'd imagine that the Loroi would probably only trust the humans with small assignments at first anyway, to see if they'll do what they're asked to do. Also, as you said, the Loroi can win battles without help, meaning it's not a critical task. The point is to lessen Loroi losses so they can do more damage to the Umiak.

The only Loroi ally that performs a task for the Loroi fleet are the Barsam with their courier vessels. They are allied with the Loroi for a long time and even they don't fight with the Loroi fleet, at least as far as we know.

I don't see an argument in this point, just information.

And last, but not least: the Loroi are known to be a bit xenophobic

I thought that was because they don't trust races who use speech rather than Sanzai to communicate? Sure, that means that they wouldn't trust humans at first, but it doesn't mean they'd reject help.

[Suederwind]

Admittedly true. Though the human ships don't need to keep up with the Loroi, just stay between the Loroi and the Umiak. Since the Loroi enter a system from one side and the Umiak enter from the other, plus there's the Far-Seeing device, there shouldn't be too much confusion over which direction the Umiak will be coming from.

They don't necessarily need to stay in front of the Loroi warships, just close bye to perform point defense roll. Just like the ships of our time, deployed in an anti-air role for a fleet, they just need to cover an area with their weapons big enough to cover the fleet and don't need to be in front of them.
And there is at least some kind of confusion where the Umiak are coming from, how big their numbers are, etc... because if you look at that battle scene again, it is clear that the Umiak have found a way to blind the Loroi farseeing ability and used it to set a trap for a number of their fast attack groups.

Their PD is sufficient to stop the missiles... but not fast enough to let them get on with firing their main weapons before the Umiak get their main weapons in range. To do that would mean they need more PD.

Then the Umiak would just counter that with more missiles they would fire and they most likely have the industrial resources to just do that. Otherwise the war would be over by now.

The point is to lessen Loroi losses so they can do more damage to the Umiak.

I can see your point here, but I don't think they will do that. They will be happy to have an new ally that will provide them with food, spare parts, raw materials, etc... so they can convert their own factories producing or refining those things to weapon production or other things.
It will take a long time till humanity will be able to provide useful military help (warships, weapons, crews, etc...).

[RedDwarfIV]

Well, okay.

I just thought it'd be nice if humanity could have something more action-based to do. If I'm wrong then I'm wrong, so I'll back down on this.

It likely wouldn't affect the main characters anyway besides news reports from the front - or, since Jardin is now an ambassador, they'd presumably talk to him about what the TCA can do for the Loroi.

[Arioch]

Could the technology used for Mjolnir be made smaller? Or is the Mjolnir as large as it is because anything smaller wouldn't have the power to cause damage to an enemy spacecraft? I noted that it was said that a destroyer-sized Mjolnir carrier would be unable to use its engines for a period of time after firing... what i'm wondering is if that would make any difference. No engines means no maneuvering, no maneuvering means no getting out of the way of enemy fire.

The Mjolnir is both physically large and requires a lot of power (I'm sure the humans would find ways to miniaturize it in the future, but that's not much help at present). A hypothetical Mjolnir Destroyer would need to spend several minutes charging the weapon before it could fire; the more it used its engine power to maneuver, the longer the charging time would be. It would also have to physically point the whole ship at the target (as does the cruiser with the spinal Mjolnir mount), during which time accelerating with the main engine would probably be useless anyway, so that might not be as much of a handicap as it sounds. As a heavy fire-support escort for the Mjolnir-refit cruisers, I think such a ship class makes sense. The whole formation is going to have very limited maneuverability (about 4G), so it would be mostly useful for close-in defense of a static asset like a planet.

in the webcomic I'm working on, there are 'Fleet Point Defence' spacecraft which tend to be corvette to frigate sized, require a battlecarrier to move them to a battlezone, buut have very large and high-output weapons for their size. They would be perfect against Umiak missile swarms, which in the battle we saw in-comic, was what allowed the Umiak ships to get close to the Loroi vessels. (....) so if humanity worked on Fleet Point Defence ships, wouldn't that free up Loroi ships to kick the Umiak's chitinous backsides? (....) Since FPD ships are deployed from battlecarriers, the Loroi would only need to supply drives for those. FPD ships don't go far from their carrier, because of fuel constraints. The FPD ships don't need to keep up with the fleet, just be placed between the LU and UE fleets, where the missiles will be.

It's true that Terran weapons would be well suited to point defense, but the problem (as others have mentioned) is even if it's deployed from a carrier, such as ship has to be at least as fast as the ships its meant to protect in order to keep up with them. Most engagements involve a great deal of maneuvering as the two fleets jockey for position; the Naam battle in the comic was an unusual case of the static defense of a fixed point. More often one fleet is trying to avoid the other, but even if that's not the case, they will rarely accelerate directly towards each other, because that would just result in a brief pass and an overshoot, after which both sides would have to spend time and fuel looping back towards one another. Even in the case of the relatively static Naam battle, both sides did a lot of maneuvering that Terran vessels would not have been able to keep up with.

Let's imagine a hypothetical Terran-built point-defense "rider" corvette that can accelerate at about 10G, and has medium laser weapons with 30,000 kilometer effective range. The first problem is that the moment they are kicked loose from the mothership, they are slower than the fleet they are meant to protect, and so either the whole fleet will have to slow down to 10G, or the riders will be left behind. Because they're slower, they would not be able to get or stay in front of their fleet, or to keep in relative position as the opposing fleets accelerated obliquely relative to one another; nor would the riders be able to return to the fleet to be recovered, unless the fleet came back to get them, which is not a very attractive option either for a Loroi fleet making a hit-and-run attack, or for an Umiak fleet trying to transit through contested territory as quickly and with as much fuel-efficiency as possible.

The second problem is that even if it were possible to get your riders in between you and the enemy, 40-60G torpedoes would not have much trouble avoiding the 10G PD riders and their very small weapons envelope.

[RedDwarfIV]

Thanks Arioch. It clears up a few misconceptions I had, because yeah, I was basing my thoughts on the Naam battle. I must return to my dark corner and think up others things the Terrans could do.

[discord]

dwarf: logistics, both internal and forward would be of great use, as would production of simple materials(food, fuel, simple munitions).
might not sound glorious but it is very useful during a war.

[GeoModder]

Would the Loroi allow that type of trade with humans? I mean they treat us condescendingly like children mostly I doubt they'd want their subordinates giving us equal footing.

Other members of the Loroi Union appearantly can. How else could the Barsam possess ships capable of exceeding Loroi military drive performance? If they had developed such a superior drive system themself, the Loroi would use Barsam drives, not Pipolsid drives.

[Username]

Arioch, I know the Orgus ship was moderately advanced compared to the Terran tech when they first arrived. Specifically that it didn't have weapons or screens. But did the Orgus know enough about the Umiak tech to vaguely describe screens ?

I guess the point of the question is can the TCA research towards defensive screens without Loroi help or stealing Umiak derelicts ?

My reasoning being that even if we aren't the fastest kids on the block we could at least be the toughest. Using heavy screens we could tank a lot of the fire for the Loroi. Or is talk like this far beyond the scope of Outsider?

[Arioch]

Whether or not the Orgus may have mentioned defensive screens, there's no way humans could have developed and deployed one so soon. The time frame of this story is relatively short; it doesn't stretch into the decades that would be required for humanity to catch up with Loroi/Umiak technology, much less surpass it.

[JasonAW3]

In other words, for the purposes of this particular story, humanity will be, at best, observers?

Boy, that's gonna rankle more than a few people groundside Earth.

BTW; Don't mean to be pushy, but do you have a timeframe as to when you will be putting out the next comic? I know you're busy with real life and such, but it has been a while since the last one.

Jason

[fredgiblet]

For the purposes of the comic humanity is Alex.

[JasonAW3]

The question is, will Humanity, other than Alex, be a factor in this story, or better yet, in tis war?

[fredgiblet]

The question is, will Humanity, other than Alex, be a factor in this story,

No.

or better yet, in tis war?

Maybe, but outside the scope of the comic most likely.

[Arioch]

This is not especially spoilerific, but it's spoilerified to protect the pure of heart:

SpoilerShow

As fred alludes to, the hero of the story is Alex (and his companions), not Humanity. It wouldn't be precisely correct to say that Humanity plays "no" role in the story, but Alex is almost completely isolated from his chain of command, and that is by design. Those who are expecting Humanity to develop a superweapon and come charging to the rescue are likely to be disappointed.

BTW; Don't mean to be pushy, but do you have a timeframe as to when you will be putting out the next comic? I know you're busy with real life and such, but it has been a while since the last one.

I expect that it will be soon, but I have been wrong before. The water is over my head at the moment.

[RedDwarfIV]

In response to spoiler, I shall spoiler in kind:

SpoilerShow

So we aren't going to see Jardin and his Loroi entourage meeting with the refuel vehicle any time soon then? That would have been interesting, though I'd assume a Loroi transport would reach TCA space much faster. What with FTL being the fast part, and cross-system trips being slow, and Loroi STL drives being much more capable.