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Re: Page 84

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 12:46 pm
by bunnyboy
Thanks Mjolnir. You got me think. :shock:

1. What if the reason for neglegting rescue are not because of improbability of survival, but condition of the patients.
They can't touch or help comatose patients, as frightened or berserked minds could shred them inside.
Then the loroi have a need for telepathically unwavering human medics.

2. And if the loroi didn't found any other survivors Bellarmine, because the Alexander was only one active.
It is easy to think, that unconscious and sanzai invisible human is dead (at least loroi standard) and they were neglected (maybe purposely if you look number 1) until they were out of help.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 1:17 pm
by Voitan
Ohhh... that has some uncomfortable implications for Jardin's crewmembers, but Loroi could use robots to search for survivors if their psychic thrashing is a concern.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 1:58 pm
by sunphoenix
Besides I'm sure the Loroi have other sensor systems besides their thought Detection. They found Jardin by his radio transmissions.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 3:33 pm
by Trantor
Mjolnir wrote:My point is just that it's not as certain the ship was totally destroyed as some are claiming, it's only confirmed that it's no longer functioning as a ship.
Sounds a bit Tepco-ish. SCNR. ;)

Re: Page 84

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 3:39 pm
by bunnyboy
@Voitan

I thought that loroi don't approve much of robots and AIs. Don't know why; and are historian constructs exception only because they aren't mobile?

@sunphoenix

http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider015.html
Radiosilence. He was conscious, capaple of making decisions, her hands were free and unharmed, and his radio were working (atleast sending).

But, he was lost lot of air, so if there was someone healthy and unconscious (consuming oxygen slower) in intact suit, he can be still living.
Not everyone were yet found.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 4:47 pm
by Voitan
They don't necessarily need AI's, it could simply be remotely piloted.

But the Loroi being distasteful of robots and AI is news to me.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 11:15 pm
by manticore7
no, not distrustful of A.I.s, just the Historians. The Historians are very secrative and private which to makes them seem very suspicious to the straight-forward Loroi. the fact that they waited till the Loroi were nearly defeated before helpping them with tech transfers didn't help their relations ether.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 12:12 am
by Karst45
bunnyboy wrote:@Voitan

I thought that loroi don't approve much of robots and AIs. Don't know why; and are historian constructs exception only because they aren't mobile?
It was stated (arioch may be more able to retell) that they use many robot so much that technician/engineer and medical staff are mostly "robot operator and supervisor" like it was said on previous post, they distrust the Historian who by the hasard of faith seem to be AI construct

Re: Page 84

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 12:21 am
by dex drako
osmium wrote:1) "heat" only matters if there is matter to conduct it. Radiation is likely to be the cause of death for the Loroi on the ship, not shrapnel or some sort of pressure wave.
The ship itself would conduct the heat and the ship is full of air so pressure waves would also happen. The blast it self would make a expending pressure waves strong enough to fight the vacuum of space and move into the rest of the ship.
2) It looks more like torpedo scale or smaller explosion to me so either it's the same thing as drawing the ships bigger because at scale they would be specks or it was a "small" loss of containment or whatever
again that small whit ball is only the start of the blast because Arioch showed as time goes on in the last panel on that line which so many people seem to over look.

The completely white panel after the static filled last communication shot from the winter tide. Remember Arioch has a very good grasp of positive and negative space on his pages so its not just some space he forgot to fill in. it’s a white panel surrounded by the normal black spacing. It was there to show the blast grew to a size larger then the ship or filled the horizon if you will.

There’s also the logistical problem of where the rest of the anti-matter fuel had to be kept. This stuff is hard to handle so he has to be kept near the two engines and the logical place would be the back which was completely destroyed in that blast.

So one way or the other all that anti-matter reacted.

That’s the problem with anti- matter power ship they either work or are completely destroyed it is the nature of the beast. The make a lot of power but blow up when something goes wrong.

But obviously Arioch is keeping quiet on this front for a reason which my guess would be to have a dramatic reveal on some later page.
3) foundered means sunk, many ships that were sunk have been dredged up and repaired. So I'm leaning toward Mjolnir's side of it meaning no propulsion. Granted there are maneuvering thrusters so to have complete lack of propulsion there needs to be some catastrophic failure of said system, extensive damage, or perhaps the ship has lost main engines and due to time spent maneuvering has no backup method of moving the ship under its own power.
a ship without mobility would not be a foundered ship it would be a ship adrift.

A foundered ship has a specific meaning it’s a ship that has completely disappeared from the surface of the water, completely disappeared from sight. In the 2d world of navel warfare that meaning sinking and yeah it can be brought back up from under water back on to that 2d playing field. But in the 3d world of space warfare the only way to completely disappear from sight would be to fall into subspace or be completely be destroyed.

And they did not fall into subspace.
Mjolnir wrote: Even small objects can survive direct exposure to a thermonuclear fireball from a device set off in atmosphere, leading to a denser, longer lasting fireball than would be produced in space. Large parts of the ship were armored with material meant to resist laser and plasma weapons and nearby torpedo detonations (which may well involve larger amounts of fuel than was in the reactor at the time, though at a greater distance), and the explosion was a very brief event with little time for heat transfer to large objects before the blast became transparent to radiation and most of the heat was lost to space. Radiation and blast effect are the items of concern, not direct heating...this was a partially internal explosion that vaporized a good chunk of the ship around one reactor, producing plasma that would be violently driven into other parts of the ship, causing widespread damage and pushing any surviving portions at accelerations the intact ship was likely not designed to tolerate.
But The heat made from a matter anti matter reaction would be far worse then that made by a thermonuclear device it may even be worse then touching to the sun. This reaction could form a quark–gluon plasma that is so hot it starts to braking down the fundamental forces of nature. It doesn’t matter how much of that heat was lost to space because the amount hitting the ship would be more then enough.

All that plasma even you said could have rushed into the main body where the main tanks of anti matter would have been held.
Radiation might not be an issue if this isn't antimatter, but rather some exotic material that's superficially similar but more suitable for spacecraft power source...this may mean things like energy release in longer wavelength EM or lower energy charged particles for easier conversion to useful power, and not losing half of it to neutrinos. The physical violence of the event is another matter...maybe the gravity control systems can do the job of an Orion's shock absorbers for one shot, but it's also very possible the ship was broken apart by the explosion. My point is just that it's not as certain the ship was totally destroyed as some are claiming, it's only confirmed that it's no longer functioning as a ship.
sorry Arioch has said it was anti-matter not some other form of exotic material.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 1:37 am
by Arioch
dex drako wrote:But obviously Arioch is keeping quiet on this front for a reason which my guess would be to have a dramatic reveal on some later page.

Particularly when the subject is clarity of the comic panels, I want to hear as many different views as I can before I interject, because the feedback is useful (I don't have a proofreader).

Science fiction lacks a definitive terminology for the destruction of a space vessel. I've never cared for "blown" or "spaced", and things like "shot down" or "sunk" are both tied to terrestrial examples and are imperfect binary-state analogies; a boat is either floating or it's sunk, and an aircraft is either flying or it isn't. Whereas for a spacecraft, unless it is literally vaporized, there is always something still there. "Founder" does literally mean to sink "to the bottom" (L. fundorare), but it's a little more nuanced, as it is also used to mean to collapse, fail, or be disabled.

In this case "foundered" is used to mean "catastrophic failure," with the implication of a total loss. Dex is correct in his analysis of my intent in the panel sequence; the white-out panel is meant to convey a massive explosion that is unlikely to have left any survivors. It's okay if that's not absolutely clear; some ambiguity in an alien play-by-play is to be expected.
dex drako wrote:sorry Arioch has said it was anti-matter not some other form of exotic material.
Actually I think I said the opposite: that it's not antimatter but probably some exotic alternative. But you can treat it as antimatter for all intents and purposes, as one matter-annihilation reaction is pretty much the same as another.
Karst45 wrote:It was stated (arioch may be more able to retell) that they use many robot so much that technician/engineer and medical staff are mostly "robot operator and supervisor" like it was said on previous post, they distrust the Historian who by the hasard of faith seem to be AI construct
That's true, the Loroi do make extensive use of non-humanoid robots, especially in service disciplines like maintenance. Bunnyboy's recollection may have been regarding my dismissive attitude toward concepts like AI-controlled automated fleets. I think I have also said that warrior cultures prefer to do their own fighting where it is practical to do so, rather than delegating it do machines... but I doubt that many Loroi object to torpedoes and other munitions being unmanned.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 2:27 am
by fredgiblet
Might as well put it here, part 2 of the scrape of the old forums is complete.

https://rapidshare.com/files/458440410/ ... aid....txt

There might be some overlap or a few that fell between the cracks, but combine this with the old one and you've got a pretty comprehensive collection (minus the posts that were purged).

Re: Page 84

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 3:19 am
by Arioch
Thanks, fredge. Here's a locally hosted version:

http://www.well-of-souls.com/temp/fredg ... ns_mk2.txt

Re: Page 84

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 4:36 am
by Mjolnir
dex drako wrote:The ship itself would conduct the heat and the ship is full of air so pressure waves would also happen. The blast it self would make a expending pressure waves strong enough to fight the vacuum of space and move into the rest of the ship.
The thermal conductivity of the ship's materials is finite. Only the surface participates in direct conduction, and the fireball just doesn't last long enough for that to do much. The depth of radiant heating depends on the penetration of the radiation, which might not be nearly as high as that from a matter-antimatter reaction. And vacuum isn't something that has to be fought by a pressure wave, it's just an absence of matter to transmit a pressure wave.

Anything approaching complete vaporization requires sustained heat or pulverization of the ship by blast effect first. There'd be a large blast effect in this case because of the large amount of vaporized material from the reactor and surrounding structure, but given the weapons these ship are protected against, it's not a certainty that nothing survived.

dex drako wrote:again that small whit ball is only the start of the blast because Arioch showed as time goes on in the last panel on that line which so many people seem to over look.
I'm not overlooking that. Fireballs in vacuum expand. It means the fireball filled the panel, nothing more.

dex drako wrote:There’s also the logistical problem of where the rest of the anti-matter fuel had to be kept. This stuff is hard to handle so he has to be kept near the two engines and the logical place would be the back which was completely destroyed in that blast.
The volatility of the fuel means they would protect it well, and they carry enough for an extended voyage. They needn't have more than a small fraction of their total fuel in the engines at any time, and given that the ship isn't almost entirely fuel tank, the rate of transfer is low, so they could have the main store of propellant extremely well protected from any incidents happening in the reactors, which would be highly desirable specifically because of the damage that can be done by an exploding reactor.

dex drako wrote:So one way or the other all that anti-matter reacted.
Again, you simply do not know that from the information given.

dex drako wrote:But The heat made from a matter anti matter reaction would be far worse then that made by a thermonuclear device it may even be worse then touching to the sun. This reaction could form a quark–gluon plasma that is so hot it starts to braking down the fundamental forces of nature. It doesn’t matter how much of that heat was lost to space because the amount hitting the ship would be more then enough.
Thermonuclear devices...even plain old fission devices already achieve temperatures far greater than the surface of the sun. Even antimatter explosions won't get around the fact that most of the heat just won't have time to conduct into the interior of the ship through the vaporized and rapidly expanding material that was in contact with the fireball. And no, antimatter's not going to make a quark-gluon plasma, at worst it may induce some photodisintegration, and that only in the portion of the ship the high-energy, high-power gamma radiation actually reaches...if it's there to begin with.

dex drako wrote:All that plasma even you said could have rushed into the main body where the main tanks of anti matter would have been held.
It would have been forced in that direction, but the designers would have been able to anticipate that this might occur. It's not a given that the main fuel tanks were destroyed.

dex drako wrote:sorry Arioch has said it was anti-matter not some other form of exotic material.
It's described in the Insider as being some exotic material like antimatter, and I recall discussions on the forums where it was said that it was probably something different but similar in energy density. I do not recall that it was ever specifically stated that it was in fact antimatter.

edit: I see I was a bit late...and we have Word of God on the fate of Winter Tide and her crew.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 7:13 am
by osmium
Yeah my unclarity on the explosion was is this a sensor reading from another ship, or is the viewer floating in space. If it was a sensor, the explosion might not need to get that big to cause it to white out, just think about home movies that pan towards the sun for a bit.

I wasn't entirely complete, I was saying that I thought radiation was the major problem mostly because I'd expect there to be some sort of relief valve as well as extensive isolation between the living/ working quarters of the ship and the engineering sections (to borrow various sci fi parlance a la star trek et al). I would expect a loss of containment (or whatever they mean to imply) as being an event that is designed against, somewhat like a car impact or roll-over is designed for, not necessarily desired. Although this case of containment loss is certainly of significantly larger magnitude. Not sure it would be worth the weight to have significant armour there, or if engine hits usually cause only large explosions (or not enough damage) and that small explosions are unlikely (and hence there is little reason to spend that many resources on such a small probability event).

The difficulty in terminology to me is that disabled in naval terms means easily towed as it's still floating, whereas foundered means you need to dredge it up (unless it's in deep waters and then for most intents and purposes it's not coming back). In space there is no such thing as the surface of the water that neatly divides these two statuses. In my mind I think foundered has some conditional information carried with it. Almost like an order or proclamation from a leader that this vessel is disabled beyond means of recovery at the present time. Sure you *could* piece it together but any recovery or rescue is not a tactically sound idea (or perhaps you do not have the resources to pull off said operation due to acquired velocity). I sort of think that any Loroi can say a ship is disabled or decimated (powdered, whatever is the term for say direct kinetic hits by a multitude of torpedoes that turn a ship into a few million shards of shrapnel) but that someone in command needs to designate a ship foundered as it, to me, carries the further implication of recovering said vessel being too much effort (certainly to carry out on the tactical timescale) where in space it is hard to determine exactly what "too much effort" is but in naval combat the waterline conveniently does it for us, if a ship isn't sinking too fast you can tow it, tie it to another ship or two etc and it's pretty clear when a ship is easily recoverable or not. It's pretty simple to get to a ship in any condition (as noted by the Loroi now easily picking apart the Bellarmine and the Umiak coming along for the ride without specialized equipment (like say deep sea submarines as you might need in the ocean to root around in a foundered ship).

-O

Re: Page 84

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 9:43 am
by anticarrot
Mjolnir wrote:edit: I see I was a bit late...and we have Word of God on the fate of Winter Tide and her crew.
Out of interest, would it be fair to say that Winter Tide was built with the possibility of surviving such a critical failure?

*The engine is in an armored pod outside the main hull. That come with a significant penelty of additional armor weight, and off axis thrust problems. Enhanced surival woudl seem a good reason. (Unless like NERVA, the reactors can only operate so close to each other.)
*In addition antimatter (as an example) only explodes when it encounters matter. It might not be too complex to build a blow-out panel system that ensures that 99% of the fuel doesn't contact anything reactive on the way out of the ship.
*Antimatter radiation largely pions, which are unreactive with matter for several dozen meters, and decay into 60% neutrinos, which are completely unreactive with normal mater. A more exotic material might produce even less reactive radiation. IIRC, the Winter Tide is relatively small, and large pieces of it might be inside a (relative) safety zone.

Yes she ship is toast, but is there a chance in similar circumstances some of the crew might have survived?

Re: Page 84

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 4:26 pm
by icekatze
hi hi

If you look at the schematic of the Tempest, you'll see that a lot of the fuel is stored in the pylons that connect the engine to the primary hull.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 9:33 pm
by fredgiblet
anticarrot wrote:Out of interest, would it be fair to say that Winter Tide was built with the possibility of surviving such a critical failure?

Sure. If an Abrams gets hit in the ammo storage it's designed to blow out in a way that won't kill the crew. It's entirely possible that the ship is designed with an eye towards surviving a reactor failure. However the amount of energy that appears to have been released is likely more than can be reasonably handled. There may be survivors in the front or the opposite pylon, or perhaps in the CIC (since it's typically in an extra armored subsection). I'm not holding my breath for more than a couple survivors though.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 11:13 pm
by Mjolnir
fredgiblet wrote:Sure. If an Abrams gets hit in the ammo storage it's designed to blow out in a way that won't kill the crew. It's entirely possible that the ship is designed with an eye towards surviving a reactor failure. However the amount of energy that appears to have been released is likely more than can be reasonably handled. There may be survivors in the front or the opposite pylon, or perhaps in the CIC (since it's typically in an extra armored subsection). I'm not holding my breath for more than a couple survivors though.
In this case, it'd be more a matter of building things to deflect blast so it doesn't blow *in*. An armored wedge to deflect the blast away from the main fuel storage, for example. Best case, though, large chunks of the ship are just gone...it's no longer a functioning ship, it's wreckage. This was my interpretation of "foundered"...a catastrophic event that rendered the vessel completely non-functional as a spacecraft. Equating "foundered" with "completely destroyed as a solid object" by making an analogy with a ship going under the water still seems a stretch to me...to reference another example from the comic, I would say Bellarmine foundered after the first strike. Even if there were a friendly, secure shipyard in the system to tow her to, she'd be scrap. By this definition, Bellarmine hasn't foundered yet...and she's nothing but a collection of bits and pieces the Loroi ships have been picking over.

Given that they were being shaken around by the plasma weapon hits, I didn't really expect survivors...but there's recovery of the bodies if that is customary, and parts of the ship might still be worth salvage. Including the fuel itself...stuff with that energy content is probably valuable, and there may be equipment for doing a ship-to-ship transfer that would allow it to be recovered quickly.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2011 5:34 am
by Arioch
anticarrot wrote: Out of interest, would it be fair to say that Winter Tide was built with the possibility of surviving such a critical failure?
Was the ship itself built to survive a reactor failure? Not really. In most combat situations, any damage that causes unrecoverable loss of main power is usually going to mean loss of the ship, unless one happens to be in friendly territory, or there are salvage assets nearby and there is a means of calling for them. Note that Stillstorm approved the request to scuttle the crippled Thunderbolt without questions. So warships are engineered around preventing such a failure in the first place, as much as is practical.

Was the ship built so that the crew could survive such failures? As much as is practical, but crew safety is a secondary concern to combat effectiveness. Features like ejectable reactor cores or blow-out fuel storage seem to me to be incompatible with protecting the reactor from external damage in the first place. However, most of the features designed to protect the ship from weapons fire will also be useful in protecting the crew from minor reactor mishaps.

I have the engines out in nacelles because I figure you want these reactors as far away from your crew as possible, just to reduce radiation exposure from normal operation. Putting them at the end of a long linear stalk makes your ship longer and harder to turn, whereas moving them out on both sides of the centerline can actually increase turn rate by allowing for differential thrust. And it looks cooler.

The fact that the Umiak have their engines within the body of the ship suggests that a) the Umiak reactors are better shielded, which follows to a degree with ships that have heavier armor and more extensive compartmentalization, and/or b) the Umiak just don't care as much about long-term health effects of radiation on their crews.
icekatze wrote:If you look at the schematic of the Tempest, you'll see that a lot of the fuel is stored in the pylons that connect the engine to the primary hull.
I think those would be propellant rather than reactor fuel (even a "mostly" reactionless drive still requires reaction mass, and a matter-annihilation reactor probably doesn't produce any on its own); the struts seem too vulnerable a place to store reactor fuel. I have a notion that the propellant tanks and the engine struts operate as part of the ship's cooling system, which might explain why they seem to be relatively unprotected, and why some ships seem to have redundant struts adjacent to each other.
anticarrot wrote:Yes she ship is toast, but is there a chance in similar circumstances some of the crew might have survived?
I don't see why not.

Re: Page 84

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2011 5:59 am
by Trantor
Arioch wrote:The fact that the Umiak have their engines within the body of the ship suggests that a) the Umiak reactors are better shielded, which follows to a degree with ships that have heavier armor and more extensive compartmentalization, and/or b) the Umiak just don't care as much about long-term health effects of radiation on their crews.
...or c) since they´re kinda insectoid, they can take far more radiation. See Cockroaches or Wasps. ;)