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[manticore7]

ah yes the handyman's secret weapon, duct tape!

[Trantor]

"Duct tape is like the force: It has a broad side and it has a dark side and it holds the universe together."

[dfacto]

You say that like its a bad thing, and what about it being a webcomic? That has nothing to do with my counter.

Any fiction can take anything as far as it wants, or be as close to reality if it desires, and mix it however they please.

Yes, any fiction can do whatever it wants, but only good fiction maintains internal consistency. Bad fiction (for example, bad fanfiction, ehem) throws consistency out the window and begins to go nuts. A great example is Japanese manga, especially the Shonen stories like Dragonball, Naruto, etc, which constantly increase power levels and pull powers out of this air in order to justify continued plot development. That's bad writing, something which I haven't noticed from Arioch yet, so I'm assuming he'll keep his narrative consistent and not start going from soft-sci-fi space opera into hardcore sci-fi/fan-wank.

Calling other people's ideas bullshit or overzealous fanfiction is simple trolling.

No, trolling is if I do it to get a rise out of you. If it's what I earnestly believe then it's my opinion, and I have explained why it's overzealous fanfiction. If you want I'll write you up a short thesis, I've got no short supply of venom to direct at crappy writing considering how abundant it is in film and TV in particular.

I think you know what you ought to do at this point.

Considering Arioch just told us it took several years for the Loroi to make a one generation jump in tech, and an incomplete jump at that, I think I'll assume I was right. Arioch remains a good writer and Outsiderverse is safe from crazy plot-breaking nonsense. Hooray!

[Rosen_Ritter_1]

I think a good analogy might be microprocessor technology. If I took a recent Intel CPU and took it back in time 20 years and gave it to Intel, they couldn't reproduce it. Even if they have all the schematics and understood perfectly well how it works, they're not going to be able to make a chip that requires a 32nm lithography process with fab plants that can only manage 800nm. Developing the 32nm lithography technology on their own will still take them 20 years... having the chip in hand won't help much. I will have to teach them how to make the tools to build the fabs, and it will still take time and a lot of resources.

By the time of the Historian technology transfer in 2140, the Loroi had been poring over captured Umiak versions of the plasma focus for nearly five years. The problem wasn't that the Loroi weren't smart enough to understand how it works, but rather that their tools weren't up to the task of reproducing it. So the Historians had to give them more than just a schematic and a working example; they also had to help them with tools and materials science and manufacturing techniques. But even the simplified plasma focus that the Historians gave them (which was much more sophisticated than the Umiak version) was still beyond the Loroi ability to reproduce, so they used their improved tools and understanding to design something that their technology could handle. But this process did take several years.

This is something that ALLOT of people have a very hard time understanding with regards to technology. Having access to a piece of technology generations ahead of what you have won't tell you how to make the piece of technology. Because that piece of technology required specialized and highly sophisticated tools that were also generations ahead to manufacture it. So while even just reverse engineering a random piece of advanced help will be a great help in advancing your own tech, it's going to take awhile before you can make anything comparable. Even with material/technical support from more advanced faction.


I'm getting a feeling that allot of the energy in this arguement is coming from people being uncomfortable with humanity being in a particularly vulnerable position in this scenario, and not really able to stand up by themselves. This results in people trying to grasp at straws to put humanity in a more favorable position. (such as on the previous board, trying to rationalize why humans with no telepathy or experiance with aliens, would be better suited as anti insurgency troops than Loroi infantry).

[bunnyboy]

So while even just reverse engineering a random piece of advanced help will be a great help in advancing your own tech, it's going to take awhile before you can make anything comparable.

Not, if it is too advanced, because then it is just a magic and it is no help at all.

[dfacto]

Eh, all this tech talk is pointless anyways. Most likely the Loroi will outsource their shoe manufacturing to us or something. We'll get paid next to nothing to make space Nikes.

[discord]

okey, on the subject of technological advances with help, i'll just say this.

WITH working prototypes to tinker with, schematics, science manuals to examine, teachers/advisors to speed up the introduction AND a surplus industrial module(over sized multipurpose workshop, which in this case is basically a 'lab' that is one/two generation ahead and a industrial production plant two or three ahead.) the following would be my projection.

one year for tinkering and figuring out what CAN we do with all this stuff, it's information overload basically.
another year to finish up prototypes for some things we should be able to make.
two years to build the tools and the first factory for mass production.
another year to find all the glitches and problems with this process.
two more years to FIX the plants.

so about five to seven years before limited impact on the 'market', that would be things like new type of thruster system(assembly, control systems and fuel needed.), room temperature superconductors(which would be a requirement for many other advances), more powerful CPU's/memory for the computers, new 3D projectors....etc.
probably NOT weapons, main drive, power, armor or screen systems....too damned advanced for 'quick' fixes, and will probably take another 10-20 years to get into any production worth talking about.
and this is ALL 'primitive' recreations with lower efficiency and performance, actually catching up to the loroi....i'd say fifty to a hundred years(at which point we would probably be ahead in some areas, specifically computers and telecommunication) to get our infrastructure and design/engineers up to speed, this is still VERY fast, and the reason it would be possible would be the industrial module building the tools we need, without that, add another hundred years to the estimate.

[BattleRaptor]

Arioch brought up cpu's so I will focus on this.

After the Pentium Intell started work on a new memory and bus interface for there chips, they spent 15 years attempting to improve this design and then in around 2007 ended up droping it completely.. it was a DEAD END in design and performance.
They went back to the ORiGINAL Pentium Controller and worked on modenizing that and put that in there current gen chips.. and got a big boost out of it.

There are 3 VERY distinct parts of Technology.
Theory
Practice(working models based on theory)
Design(improving the practical models)

In 1980 they couldnt COPY a current gen chip, they however could copy many of the improved designs about how the diffrent parts of the chip interface with each other, and immedately put it into effect on a 1980s CPU die.

Even if dies did not shrink any faster, the Performance of CPU's from the 80s onwards would enjoy a marked increase in speed due to using more advanced and efficent design implementaions.
Ontop of that over the next 30 years they would be improving the Design implementation so by present day even if the CPU were infact no smaller or faster would still perform better.


Lets really go with a extreme Example.
Moden Day motorbike sent back to the Early Bronze age.
Could Bronze age man reverse engineer the bike to make fundermental and large scale changes to Early Bronze Age Civilizations?

Yes he could.....

The bike has a "SEAT" and mankind was just starting to ride horses, seeing this seat would have most likely prompted adaption of saddles over 1500 years faster.

The Bike has spoked Wheels, Early Bronze age man hadnt yet invented spokes and were still using Solid wood.
Mankind has just gone a thousand years ahead in wheel technology.

The Wheel has a rubber outer section that is soft and protects the hard rim.
Attempt to copy it results in the invention of metal rimmed wheels 1000 years faster then otherwise.

The fact the bike has foot holds... well that could result in the invention of stirups on horses thousands of years ahead of its original invention over 3000-4000 years faster.

SOme of the most important technological breakthoughs are in DESIGN.

I maintain that in a real world situation(Har har its a webcomic )
That Terran Ships would with in a year or 2 start to incorporate Loroi Technology in its design and to a degree they would be a marked increase in non Loroi improved designs.

That said since Arioch has implied humans cant.. we cant.
Humans are dumb, end of decussion.

[Voitan]

I'm assuming he'll keep his narrative consistent and not start going from soft-sci-fi space opera into hardcore sci-fi/fan-wank.

We're just not going to see eye to eye on this.

Look, what I think is just my impression of "what could be", but you're just going to talk yourself into a corner if Outsider should ever turn out to be what you consider "hardcore sci-fi".

However, if it were, given your terms, I wouldn't see anything about it inconsistent, or bad, everything I've read in Outsider can suggests such possibilities.

It seems like fairly reasonable guesses to me and others, and if you were to dismiss it as fan wank, or bad fan fiction, I'll be sure to say you're wrong.

[Trantor]

Lets really go with a extreme Example.
Moden Day motorbike sent back to the Early Bronze age.
Could Bronze age man reverse engineer the bike to make fundermental and large scale changes to Early Bronze Age Civilizations?

Yes he could.....

No way.
The heart of a motorbike is - the motor.
It takes so much backgroundknowledge of chemistry and physics (and more) for materials in an abrasive environment (pistons and cylinders) that those bronze-age men couldn´t even start to understand it all.
Then forged steel for crankshafts and hardened surfaces for camshafts. You need a whole industry just to make this possible.
Cast iron? In masses and feasible quality over the whole production- and lifespan? It takes millions of manyears to achieve a decent level.
Metallurgy is a wide field. And it´s only a fraction of all the tasks.

Then oil: You can´t use let´s say fat as a substitute So you need a whole refinery-industry.
Then something as simple as wires: Where do you get practicable insulation from?
Then tires: You have to import natural rubber from far away, how do you do that? How do you secure production- and qualitystandards? Where do all the testbeds come from?
Spark plugs? Ceramics - a whole industry again!
Seals. Where do the advanced plastics come from?

And so on and on and on and on.

Even the only metal bronze-age men know: Valve Guides. Made of bronze. But hardened bronze. Not possible back then.

Technology is connected and dependend on each other.
It´s a matter of culture, of communication also.

[bunnyboy]

Trantor, did you read the whole message?
BattleRaptor never said that they could copy all the whole bike, only how they get some ideas from it.
They could get this 1000 years earlier.

[Trantor]

Trantor, did you read the whole message?
BattleRaptor never said that they could copy all the whole bike, only how they get some ideas from it.

Ah. You´re right.
Maybe they get inspiration.
But maybe they just develop cargo cult.
As i said before: Evolution is a matter of culture.

They could get this 1000 years earlier.

Yes. And then? So they maybe get saddles a bit earlier, but IMHO this is not a breakthrough. Especially if nothing else follows.

A breakthrough would be a leap that brings you ahead of your bronze-age enemies. Better weapons or medicine e.g.

[osmium]

I will just note to be slightly contrary BattleRaptor that in your example there were pieces of information that were novel (i.e. spoked wheels), some that would require synthesis of what they see with what they can do (seats -> saddle) and that all of the examples in question ASSUME that with the older technology there are improvements you can capitalize on without increases in production technology. Back to the micro processor example. There are two design considerations (broadly) that companies would take in their production methods. One is to squeeze out additional efficiency from what you have (better heat sinks, more high temperature tolerant design, better layout etc in the case of chips) and the other is to increase your technological abilities (smaller wires = more transistors, new materials -> memresistors = new design possibilities, new processes -> better wire conduction = better wires). Many companies took the short term approach i.e. designing better systems with current technology because they needed to provide increased performance to maintain market share(esp. while waiting for technological improvements to come out of research). It is sometimes difficult to tease out the actual technological progress from companies progress. A much much better standard would be scientific progress and then estimating how quickly research breakthroughs make it into the commercial pipeline.

We can't really make assumptions about what the technolgical breakthroughs are that the Loroi would provide. It could be the case that we just need better production technology, which to me means we're probably a decade out from producing anything Loroi-tech scale, probably 15 years at least to produce the best of what they produce IF we have free access to Loroi scientists / knowledge base and maybe some prototypes to play with. If we're lucky (which I think would be sort of unlikely) we already have the production capabilities, but there is just some quirk of science we've missed somehow and we just need to be told what's actually going on we could quickly realign production, in which case we'd be looking at at least 3 probably more like 5-7 years.

Even that ENTIRE line of thought though relies on the Loroi simply needing more production, lasting long enough for us to ramp up and assumes that despite our relative long distance from the front lines our logistical support would be useful. We're unlikely to be able to provide significant utility in manpower either as they have a significantly larger population and faster reproduction rate. Unless there is some niche utility that we could provide that the Loroi are naturally less good at, such as perhaps augmenting their scientific efforts by providing outside the box thinking and help the collective science effort more than historian constructs have thus far been able to provide, I don't see the humans making a huge dent in the war efforts. Just to note, there is also some oddball chance that we have some theories in math or something that could be applied to the pulse cannon problem and help speed up that effort, in other words out natural "talent" could be that our theories vastly outpace our actual technological capabilities and that other races are just simply more grounded in reality and unable to maintain that sort of juvenile "what if" mindset that so much of theoretical science is based on.

To note a relevant concept here is also relative utility if one thing is worth more to us than another and the opposite is true for the Loroi working together could be beneficial. Perhaps we need technology and they need easily developed lands far away from Umiak attack fleets. We have land they have technology -> mutually beneficial arrangement.

-O

[Trantor]

Preliminary conclusion to this discussion: I´m curious to see what mankind can contribute. Arioch, surprise us!

[Majincarne]

Humans contribution to the war wont be through warships or technology. At least for the first 10 - 15 years or so. If the war last longer than that things may change alot.

What I have picked up so far is that outsider humans are fairly different that real humans. They seem a bit more peaceful. The entire combat fleet that outsider humanity as a whole fields is probably comparable to maybe one and a half possibly two supercarrier fleets that the USA employs now. And the USA is one county on one world where as humanity in outsider apparently has a few colonies; none of witch have anything space born worth talking about. Normal for outsider humans very peculiar if you reference then to the real thing.
There are no large automated deployment systems to increase the amount of force you can bring to the fight times your flesh and bones count. Its all very counter to how we are building up atm. Real humans fight a bit like the lorodi in combat and manufacture a bit like the Umak in war time.

So I dont expect to see humanity rushing to bridge the gap in tech or producing new systems in the comic, doesn't seem to be their thing in outsider.
What the Outsider humans strength is I cant quite peg yet as all we have to guess at for the whole is one recently field promoted human. He seems rather more level headed and planning than would be expected of you average crewmember in the situation though. Perhaps your average outsider human ends up being the equivalent of a rather good lorodi ships captain or the like.

[Aygar]

What the Outsider humans strength is I cant quite peg yet as all we have to guess at for the whole is one recently field promoted human. He seems rather more level headed and planning than would be expected of you average crewmember in the situation though. Perhaps your average outsider human ends up being the equivalent of a rather good lorodi ships captain or the like.

Members of the crew of the scout ships, cannot be considered a representative sample of Outsider humanity. IIRC, Arioch has stated that crews of the scout ships have been very carefully selected.

--Aygar

[Tash]

I could see humankind acting as auxiliaries, which is to say, filling spaces on ships. The problem is whether the Loroi would need that; I kind of doubt they have the industry to crank out a bunch of new ships or to hand out obsolete ones, and they're pretty paranoid about handing out tech to people they don't trust.

Maybe mankind's contribution is being very good at bluffing?

[Mjolnir]

Members of the crew of the scout ships, cannot be considered a representative sample of Outsider humanity. IIRC, Arioch has stated that crews of the scout ships have been very carefully selected.

Indeed, it was not a typical mission and not a standard crew. They were selected to not screw up first contact with an alien civilization known to be presently or very recently at war and likely to be encountered in a war zone. Alex might not have been intended to take a major part in that himself, but he was a commissioned officer and it was quite conceivable he'd end up having some direct contact.

[Trantor]

Maybe mankind's contribution is being very good at bluffing?

Now i got it: Pesticides! We have pesticides! Yay, win!

[Voitan]

Humanity contributions in the scope of the story is more than likely a cultural exchange with the Loroi at least, many other suggestions sound plausible, such as filling out ship crews.

The Loroi will probably want to finely comb through their cousin's culture, history, and biology.