Speculation: What can Humaniti offer the Loroi?

[Arioch]

The Umiak have so many spacecraft because of the heavy materials taxation they place on their clients, and the huge amount of territory they have makes that a lot of materials. But their spacecraft are all built using discrete manufacturing - each one is different.

The Loroi meanwhile... I THINK they have human-like mass production techniques? All the spacecraft in the SG-51 fight were different because Arioch wanted to make it possible to differentiate between them, I know that. And the Loroi Ships page does list actual classes.

So at full manufacturing capability, the Loroi should have a faster, more efficient spacecraft production line.

Starships are not really things that you build on an assembly line. Even if they are all identical, each ship is assembled individually in its own berth. Naturally you build them out of standardized components as much as it possible, and there's a certain efficiency gained by building ships to the same template, but the Umiak are more efficient at building ships their own way than the Loroi (or anyone else) are at building them all the same. It's also true that the Umiak have more resources and a much larger population, but given a fixed amount of workers, resources and time, the Umiak can almost always produce more.

Umiak are exceptional workers, with excellent mathematical minds, unmatched attention to detail, little need for sleep, and a monomaniacal drive to achieve. And there are a lot of them; they are as mass-produced as their weapons are. By being given the leeway to customize the ship's design and construction, each shipbuilding team is able to use their substantial talents to utilize all available parts and materials, and every cubic meter of available shipyard space to build the best possible warship (within the given parameters and resource budget) that they can, each team trying to outdo the others nearby. The teams that build each ship are so large (and so devoted to the project) that some of them stay on permanently as part of the ship's crew.

[Cy83r]

Well shit, that's a big leg up, having the ship's wright as the chief engineer.

As for what humans space can offer the loroi? materials, a 'canyon-pass' the Umiak don't know about (unless they intercepted another human ship or any survivors from the bellarmine) and new outposts in that pass.

What can humans offer the umiak? political/religious leverage against Loroi clients and another client race for themselves.

What can humans offer the Historians? an interesting chapter in their next history book.

[dragoongfa]

Hello, I stumbled on the comic yesterday and I was pleasantly surprised. Great artwork and story, well done Arioch but don't let this get to your head

Now as to what can Humanity offer the Loroi...

The real question here is what have the Umiaks done in order to blind the Loroi Farseers and if they have managed to copy the farseeing ability to a degree? I think that I have read somewhere that the Telepathic abilities of the Loroi are not well understood even by the Loroi themselves, copying them with genetic modification is impossible.

However that doesn't mean that the Umiaks don't have Loroi muppets of their own, there are many ways for them to accomplish this but I believe that the most probable is cybernetic modification of Loroi captives (Iirc Umiaks have a knack for cybernetics), turning them into slaves. They had a nearly limitless amount of captives with the occupied Loroi colonies (now liberated) and the Umiak are ruthless and efficient; they would certainly experiment on those Loroi population and even ship a few millions deep into Umiak territory for studying.

I believe that they could certainly get farseers this way. They could even find a way to cloud farseeing with static (they are already somehow doing this) and even Sanzai telepathy could be put at risk.

EDIT: Hmm, if someone takes the three ambushes into consideration then the Umiak must have both an advanced warning method and a way to cloud the Loroi farseers. Two task groups are not easy to annihilate. Even if someone has the element of surprise a level of preparation before hand (ship positioning, advanced orders of battle and etc) is needed and that preparation is taken only with advanced warning.

Now where does humanity come into this? Since humanity is completely impervious to telepathy the advantages are overwhelmingly stacked in humanity's favor.

Depending on the level of Farseeing adaptation by the Umiak, they will be able to move fleets into trouble areas much like the Loroi do. With the superior numbers of the Umiaks this gives them a tremendous advantage and they would certainly push this advantage to the limit. A sizeable fleet of human crewed ships would be a nasty surprise to the Umiak who, like the Loroi do now, would leave openings in their battle lines because of their newly acquired farseeing abilities. Imagine Sherman's march to the sea on a galactic scale and since Humanity can become the definition of ruthlessness (especially if provoked) certain key Umiak worlds would become glassed smoldering ruins before the main Umiak fleets that would be occupied with the Loroi fleets realize what was happening.

EDIT 2:

Starships are not really things that you build on an assembly line. Even if they are all identical, each ship is assembled individually in its own berth. Naturally you build them out of standardized components as much as it possible, and there's a certain efficiency gained by building ships to the same template, but the Umiak are more efficient at building ships their own way than the Loroi (or anyone else) are at building them all the same. It's also true that the Umiak have more resources and a much larger population, but given a fixed amount of workers, resources and time, the Umiak can almost always produce more.

Umiak are exceptional workers, with excellent mathematical minds, unmatched attention to detail, little need for sleep, and a monomaniacal drive to achieve. And there are a lot of them; they are as mass-produced as their weapons are. By being given the leeway to customize the ship's design and construction, each shipbuilding team is able to use their substantial talents to utilize all available parts and materials, and every cubic meter of available shipyard space to build the best possible warship (within the given parameters and resource budget) that they can, each team trying to outdo the others nearby. The teams that build each ship are so large (and so devoted to the project) that some of them stay on permanently as part of the ship's crew.

The problem I see with the above approach is with repairing battle damage, advanced maintenance and ease of retrofitting. The reason as to why modern warships have standardization as a priority is that in case of damage to the ship and it's systems, the repair/maintenance/retrofitting crew will know the ship's design in and out (except of course the unique quirks of each ship). This expedites everything in regards to the above and even allows for the cannibalization of ship systems between ships of the same class in case of an emergency.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Considering that the Umiak don't retrofit their ships, and they don't spend much effort repairing them, it doesn't seem like a problem for them. They just crank out a bunch of new ships, and if an old ship is too damaged to be useful, they basically melt it down and start over.

See: Umiak Economy

[dragoongfa]

I haven't reached that far in the Insider yet

[icekatze]

hi hi

No worries, there's plenty of stuff in the insider to read.

When you're dealing with space travel especially, using disposable munitions is oftentimes a very economically sound strategy, especially if your units don't have a very high survival rate to begin with. The Umiak and the Loroi have some very high fuel efficiencies in their space craft, but they also end up covering phenomenal distances. Building a craft that comes back is going to mean packing at least two to four times the fuel that you would have otherwise spent on a craft that only goes one way. If your craft are being blown up along the way, that is even more fuel that is completely wasted.

If you only give the majority of your ships a one way ticket to their destination, then you can end up building more of them. And in the event that you should happen to succeed, you can always send a tanker to refuel them later.

If you have expectations that many of your craft will survive combat, then it may make more sense to recover and retrofit them. Crew considerations seem to be a bigger factor for the Loroi, who are apparently less able to sustain casualties, compared to the Umiak who seem to treat crew as a building component just like any other system.

[Arioch]

When a new Umiak warship is commissioned, it's most often assigned to one of the bivouac divisions, which are the large defensive fleets spread across the frontier. Once there, ships spend most of their time sitting out in formation on a high state of alert, waiting for attacks that never come, occasionally running drills and exercises when the supplies permit. While on defensive duty, ships are kept on a tight supply and parts budget, and the crews compete with each other to see who can do more with less. Umiak crews are very good at improvising and repurposing mechanical objects; not quite Motie Engineer good, but close. A portion of the crew are engineers who helped build the ship. Any broken system is usually fixed without request for new parts; any system that can't be fixed is cannibalized to fix something else. Any ship that becomes non-functional will be cannibalized to repair other ships. Eventually over years, ships will inevitably deteriorate, but the Umiak crews do a remarkable job at keeping their ships in fighting form with very little outside technical support. The resources saved in reduced maintenance costs go into producing more new ships.

However, over very long tours of bivouac duty, the crew's morale eventually begins to suffer. Umiak can maintain a fever-pitch of focus and activity for extended periods -- years if necessary -- but not indefinitely. They rotate ships on and off duty, but there's often little to do during off-hours that's different from what one does on alert; the frontier systems are usually far from Umiak population centers, and there's not much recreation to be found in an empty system, or on a heavy-gravity alien world whose occupants are often less than happy to see an Umiak. Also, the majority of these young Umiak are overflowing with patriotic zeal; they're itching to fight. So, when a deployment becomes extended -- sometimes five or six years -- some of the crews start to go a little bonkers. So, periodically an assault force commander shows up, collects an assault force (often concentrating on ships that are in danger of losing effectiveness ratings due to mechanical deterioration or sagging morale) and takes them to attack the Loroi lines. Most are eager to get a taste of combat. If they survive, they'll have earned coveted veteran status (along with the expectation of transfer of the unit to greener pastures), and chances are there will be plenty of spare parts to be had from their less-fortunate fellow vessels.

If not... problem solved.

When you're dealing with space travel especially, using disposable munitions is oftentimes a very economically sound strategy, especially if your units don't have a very high survival rate to begin with. The Umiak and the Loroi have some very high fuel efficiencies in their space craft, but they also end up covering phenomenal distances. Building a craft that comes back is going to mean packing at least two to four times the fuel that you would have otherwise spent on a craft that only goes one way. If your craft are being blown up along the way, that is even more fuel that is completely wasted.

If you only give the majority of your ships a one way ticket to their destination, then you can end up building more of them. And in the event that you should happen to succeed, you can always send a tanker to refuel them later.

Fuel is expensive, but it's surely a tiny fraction as expensive as the starship it fuels. I doubt that all the fuel in an entire fleet costs as much as a single destroyer. Umiak assault fleets go out fully fueled, even if it's an attrition attack with little chance of survival; I don't think you risk having even a single ship not be able to complete its mission or have to fight at reduced effectiveness because it ran low on fuel. The more fuel you have, the harder you can accelerate and for longer, and that often translates directly into combat performance. If there's an advantage to be had in knowing it's probably a one-way trip, it's in being able to expend all your fuel in combat, and not having to worry about maintaining a reserve for the return trip.

[icekatze]

hi hi

If fuel is cheap, that is certainly different than our own current reality. Space shuttle endeavour cost 1.7 billion dollars to build, and at least 200 million dollars on fuel for each launch. (not counting the cost of the tank or the solid rocket boosters, which didn't have a market value, but were probably a couple million in fuel.) I would imagine that highly refined Spaceship Fuel A, would be even more expensive than liquid fuel and oxidizer mixtures, just like the rest of the more high tech ship is probably more expensive.

But it isn't just monetary value that is being lost. Like you already said, you don't want to risk having a ship be unable to complete its mission because it runs low on fuel. Presumably an Umiak ship's mission is going to be to reach a Loroi controlled system and destroy any important targets there. Destroying lots of targets, some of which will probably include other spaceships, is going to take a lot of Delta v boosting around all over the place.

Even if their fuel is highly efficient. It is still rather volitile at high temperatures, and needs tanks to contain it. Carrying around a big tank full of fuel for the return voyage is dead weight that is not going to be devoted to plasma cannons, heavier armor, or fuel to help it boost around in the target system and accomplish its mission. Every ton of performance is going to necessitate that much more fuel for the return trip.

In the event of a successful invasion, I would imagine they would have some method of sending a courier back to relay news of the success, and prompt the advance of some heavier, more vulnerable, fleet tending craft. Assuming the invasion is successful enough that they are not immediately repelled by reinforcements anyways. Bivouac duty should be familiar to them, even if they are bivouacking a freshly invaded system. And I'd be surprised if they successfully captured a system, and then immediately turned around and went home, but I guess that could happen.

But I suppose that may not be how the Umiak roll. They do get their butts handed to them on a regular basis anyways, so it is hard to say one way or another what is effective for them.

[Mr.Tucker]

That actually makes me wonder: why are they called ''bivouac'' divisions? (sorry if this sounds like a stupid question )

[Siber]

Icekatze, everything I've been hearing about the current reusable rocket attempts these days presents fuel as the smallest part of a launch cost. I did some digging, and the NASA official line is that the average shuttle launch cost $450 million. I haven't been able to find information direct from NASA about the total fuel cost of a launch, but I have found some credible looking math putting the total liquid fuel cost at around $1.4 million. I've also found some breakdowns of the organizational and infrastructure costs of a launch that would eat most if not all of that $450 million without once mentioning fuel costs.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I stand corrected on the fuel costs, in terms of monetary value. After doing some cross checking of my own, it would seem that my first source was unreliable.

In terms of tonnage devoted to fuel capacity, I suppose that is a matter that would require a more complete understanding of the technology. Contemporary space craft have to devote a significant percentage of their total mass to fuel, but that may not be the case for the Umiak ships.

[Arioch]

That actually makes me wonder: why are they called ''bivouac'' divisions?

A bivouac is guard camp.

In the event of a successful invasion, I would imagine they would have some method of sending a courier back to relay news of the success, and prompt the advance of some heavier, more vulnerable, fleet tending craft. Assuming the invasion is successful enough that they are not immediately repelled by reinforcements anyways. Bivouac duty should be familiar to them, even if they are bivouacking a freshly invaded system. And I'd be surprised if they successfully captured a system, and then immediately turned around and went home, but I guess that could happen.

Having no FTL communication, the Umiak must plan logistics in advance. The Steppes takes about two weeks to transit, so if the Umiak sent a courier to request additional supplies, it would be almost a month before any could arrive. The Loroi are not going to wait that long to counterattack.

However, the mission of Umiak assault fleets is not invasion or occupation; it's destruction. The ultimate goal of an Umiak assault would be to defeat the Loroi defenders, and then break through into undefended Loroi territory, and trash every system and support vessel they came across. This almost never happens, but if it does, you certainly don't want to be in a situation where you didn't bring enough fuel. Fuel is expensive and it's costly to contain and transport, but that doesn't matter, because it's a critical resource to getting the mission done.

[icekatze]

hi hi

My original point was that fuel to get home is tonnage that is not spent in furtherance of wrecking the enemy. I had assumed that monetary cost of fuel for tonnage lifted was roughly equivalent to opportunity cost of tonnage lifted, and was treating them as equivalent problems. While that assumption about monetary cost may have been mistaken, there is still the matter of the extra tonnage being a liability for a fighting vessel, in terms of carrying something other than what is used for fighting. When planning a mission, someone can say, "We need X to get there, and Y for fighting," Or they can say, "We need X to get there, Y for fighting, and Z to return." Regardless of what the first two values are, the second option is necessarily going to involve more tonnage.

If the Umiak successfully broke through a Loroi defense line, entered an undefended system, and wrecked everything they could, would they turn around and go home, or would they press on and try wrecking the next system over?

Do the Umiak bother with tankers for refueling their warships? If not, that might have a hand in why they have poorer acceleration than the Loroi warships.

[Arioch]

Don't look at it as "fuel to get home." X fuel does not equal X kilometers; X fuel equal X amount of acceleration, weapons fire, and any other sort of energy that is expended in combat. Each ship is rated to carry a certain amount of fuel, which is critical to both fighting and travel. There's no reason not to carry a full load of fuel when embarking on a combat mission. There's no way of knowing exactly how much you'll need.

If the Umiak successfully broke through a Loroi defense line, entered an undefended system, and wrecked everything they could, would they turn around and go home, or would they press on and try wrecking the next system over?

It would depend on the situation, but most likely they would try to get as deep into Loroi territory as they could and do as much damage as possible.

Do the Umiak bother with tankers for refueling their warships? If not, that might have a hand in why they have poorer acceleration than the Loroi warships.

Sure they have tankers, but they probably don't bring them with the assault force unless they think they will be needed. Tankers are vulnerable.

Umiak ships usually have lower maximum acceleration because the Umiak engines are smaller and have a lower thrust, but are more efficient than the Loroi engines. The Umiak ships also tend to be heavier, better armored and more ruggedly reinforced.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I would be curious to know what sort of parameters the designers of Umiak warships use to determine their various weight ratios. I'm assuming that fuel tanks need to be armored in hopes of preventing the same fate that the Winter Tide faced, which would probably also prevent them from being able to just strap on extra tanks on an exposed girder.

I'm also now curious to know what the cost of building the space shuttle is, minus labor and bureaucracy, to see how the components costs compare to the fuel costs, but I can't find anything.

[Mr.Tucker]

hi hi
I'm also now curious to know what the cost of building the space shuttle is, minus labor and bureaucracy, to see how the components costs compare to the fuel costs, but I can't find anything.

Off NASA's site : ''The Space Shuttle Endeavour, the orbiter built to replace the Space Shuttle Challenger, cost approximately $1.7 billion''.

I'm guessing there's slight variation between each craft, but the ballpark seems right.

[Arioch]

hi hi

I would be curious to know what sort of parameters the designers of Umiak warships use to determine their various weight ratios. I'm assuming that fuel tanks need to be armored in hopes of preventing the same fate that the Winter Tide faced, which would probably also prevent them from being able to just strap on extra tanks on an exposed girder.

I'm also now curious to know what the cost of building the space shuttle is, minus labor and bureaucracy, to see how the components costs compare to the fuel costs, but I can't find anything.

I think the fuel mass ratio you choose for a ship is based on how long the unit needs to operate between refuelings to be effective; a scout will have a much higher fuel ratio than a battleship. My estimate is that a combat vessel needs 100 hours of full-burn acceleration to be effective. Fuel consumption is not determined by how far you go, but by how hard you work at it. A warship in combat might burn up 100 hours of fuel in less than a week, while a scout might make the same 100 hours last for many months (because it isn't constantly under acceleration).

The space shuttle may not be a good analogue; on the one hand, fuel accounts for 90% of its mass... but on the other, it's just liquid hydrogen and oxygen, which is comparatively inexpensive (ignoring for a moment the solid rocket boosters).

In naval vessels, the difference between deadweight (empty) mass and full-loaded mass tends to be 15% for WWII-era battleships & heavy cruisers, 20% for modern warships, and 30% for WWII-era destroyers. This mass also includes ammunition and supplies, but I'm guessing that the vast majority of it is fuel. So for the comparatively heavy Outsider starships, my estimate is that fuel accounts for no more than 15% of the total mass of the ship; this is sufficient (within a reasonable engine efficiency) to allow a cruiser to accelerate at 30g for the required 100 hours. Umiak have more efficient engines, but their ships are heavier, so their endurance is longer but probably in the same ballpark.

I'm not sure that the cost of the fuel is terribly relevant (unless it's exceptionally rare and expensive) to how much you carry; the designer sets a limit on the carrying capacity of the ship based on performance attributes, and in practice you carry as much as you can. Torpedoes are also very expensive, but that doesn't stop the Umiak from using a lot of them.

Antimatter is going to be incredibly expensive to produce, so its use is probably reserved for certain types of weapons. The idea behind the Taimat fuel is that it's not only easier to store than antimatter, but also cheaper to produce; presumably there is some process that you can put normal matter through that converts it into the excited state that allows for spontaneous annihilation. This might be something akin to an industrial-scale supercollider, or something as mundane as a catalytic reaction. It still requires significant infrastructure and energy to produce, and must be carefully stored and protected (it must be kept supercooled), but it shoudn't be prohibitively expensive.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Mr. Tucker, that figure also includes labor and bureaucracy, just like the 450 million per launch figure. It is beginning to look like some of the Umiak's greatest industrial achievements may have been in cutting down the costs of labor and bureaucracy.

At least the Umiak don't build torpedoes that go out, drop a payload, then come back to pick up another. (I know their engine is their payload, but still...)

15% and 30% does seem like a pretty significant difference. Perhaps that is also part of why the Loroi don't see very many Umiak super-heavies on the offensive?

[Mr.Tucker]

True, but I'm not sure if taking out the labor costs is a good way of looking at things. After all, you need people to work the smelter if you're gonna shape aluminium into a fuel tank .
I tend to look at the Umiak as a combination of WWII soviet industrial capacity (though their manufacturing process is more akin to how cars were built pre-Henry Ford), and a ''live light'' mentality akin to the ''horse peoples'' of ancient times (mostly space-based, living in their antimatter-powered wagons ).. Just given the size of their territory, I'm not surprised they can churn out ships on a grand scale. The more I think of it, the more the Loroi seem outmatched...

Also need to remember that Umiak are better adapted to working in 0G (and working in general). Their overhead labor costs might be significantly smaller. (what do these guys even eat?)

[GeoModder]

15% and 30% does seem like a pretty significant difference. Perhaps that is also part of why the Loroi don't see very many Umiak super-heavies on the offensive?

That's because WWII battleships 'carried' a significant percentage of their mass as armor, whereas WWII destroyers didn't even have that.