nemo: remember here, ships are NOT cubes, at least if they are any good ships.
Quite right. But getting exacting figures would require more precise information than we have available and several flavors of calculus. If you have that at hand, I'd love to see the exact numbers. The shape of the ships below the waterline would differ, but only slightly. As they taper off towards the bottom both figures are over estimates of the actual volume, but they both err the same way so the comparison is valid enough for our purposes. The rough numbers above are to show just how deceitful the comparison between the classes is at first glance. The Nimitz is not only slightly larger, as it would seem to the eyeball, but substantially larger.
I was thinking fuel for the aircraft would be considered part of munitions & stores, not ship's fuel, and thus be included in the 'standard displacement'
I don't actually know how they measure displacement for carriers. For instance, does it include the weight of the air wing?
nemo: remember here, ships are NOT cubes, at least if they are any good ships.
Quite right. But getting exacting figures would require more precise information than we have available and several flavors of calculus. If you have that at hand, I'd love to see the exact numbers. The shape of the ships below the waterline would differ, but only slightly. As they taper off towards the bottom both figures are over estimates of the actual volume, but they both err the same way so the comparison is valid enough for our purposes. The rough numbers above are to show just how deceitful the comparison between the classes is at first glance. The Nimitz is not only slightly larger, as it would seem to the eyeball, but substantially larger.
I was thinking fuel for the aircraft would be considered part of munitions & stores, not ship's fuel, and thus be included in the 'standard displacement'
I don't actually know how they measure displacement for carriers. For instance, does it include the weight of the air wing?
when talking about carriers, the displacement when empty is called light displacement and when loaded it is load displacement.
Depending on the reference I check I get figures from 89k tons to 105k tons for a Nimitz class carrier. I wonder if its differences rising from changes in the ships as they were built, refits and modernization, how they're measuring "loaded", or just faulty info.
I'm sure the data is good. Over the life of the carrier, its weight will change with missions, refits, etc. A single number can only describe the vessel at a given point in time.
Well, the only reason I put it out there as a possibility is that some of my references are Cold War era. So yes its badly dated, but I know we had a habit of generalizing approximating and/or fabricating specifications for our hardware. I can't tell you how many books I have that list F-14/15 speeds at Mach 2+, subs dive to 400+ feet, and our ships do 28+ or 30+ knots that sort of thing. I don't see much benefit from deceiving people about the precise displacement, but it seems like an easy enough thing to hide that I don't see a reason not to fudge things just a bit.
The answer seems to be not much. But, we don't know much about the enemy either. Perhaps the Umiak have some psychic abilities different from the Loroi that humans are also immune to. For example, what if the Umiak are into mental slavery? Human ships could operate in Umiak space without getting snared/enslaved. Perhaps there is subject race that is human-like that the Umiak absorbed and we could infiltrate their colonies undetected? Pure speculation, of course, but I bet the answer is in the cards that have not been revealed to the reader yet.
I'm still waiting for the other 'Outsider' to show up in the story so that we get a different perspective.
tucker: cubs.com commonly used when switching topic at a strange time in sitcoms and the like.
zircher: I find it unlikely that the umiak have any such ability, it might crimp their style or something...
but yes, if the umiak got slave loroi as farseers humans could offer a rather nifty game ender.
Well, there is that little tidbit that Ellen Kirkland was talking after the Bellarmine lit up. I can so see a parallel story arc with her in it as an Outsider.
Nah, Alex has been confirmed as the only human more than once IIRC.
That being said there's also been statements to the effect that some of the Loroi (like Fireblade) are effectively outsiders in their own species as well.
Slapstick comedy. It turns out that old Three Stooges and Charley Chapman, Abbot and Costello and comedy like that outs the Umiak into a neurological state that makes them very passive and it spreads like wildfire as each ship that ties into the imagery gets hooked. Unable to resist and unable to do anything but watch, the Umiak are easy meat for the Loroi.
However the Loroi don't understand that type of comedy at all, it makes them scratch their heads in puzzlement. So they need humanity to elaborate on that comedy and make more of it as their secret weapon against the Umiak.
