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Voitan
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Re: Page 85

Post by Voitan »

dfacto wrote:
1 decade to match the Loroi in "real life" may well be attainable.
This is obviously where I'm coming from, as are many of the arguments basing their assertions on [taking our experience with how humanity adapts and developes new technology]
dfacto wrote: 1 decade to match the Loroi "in story" sounds exactly like overzealous fanfiction.
That's overstating your case, if indeed my position sounds very credible as to be what we can imagine ourselves IRL.

Then this is not overzealous at all to imagine humanity achieving such a pace of development.
dfacto wrote: Having humanity go from zero to hero in ten years considering they are currently absolutely useless wouldn't fit well with the narrative being constructed so far. If this was a manga with HOTBLOOD and MANLINESS then sure, but it's not.
This is incorrect, we are merely behind 3 generations in tech development.

That is no where near being zero.

You and I have stated that it would be realistic for humanity to be on par with the Loroi within a decade.

dfacto
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Re: Page 85

Post by dfacto »

Um, you're missing my point.

One is a prospective projection of what I think will happen with humanity in the next 200 years. Of course we wouldn't meet the Orgus and we probably won't have FTL, but assuming some story-related elements are true, then the humanity of the future could develop advanced tech easily.

The other is a projection of what humanity in the Outsiderverse can do. And lets face it, they're not so hot. Read the Insider and you get a pretty clear cut case for total human technical inferiority. They can't even maintain a Heavy Cruiser fleet because it's so expensive; Does that seem like a situation where they can make a multi-generational jump in their whole tech in a matter of a decade? Nope.

The humanity you're imagining and the humanity in the Outsiderverse are two different things.

Voitan
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Re: Page 85

Post by Voitan »

dfacto wrote:The other is a projection of what humanity in the Outsiderverse can do. And lets face it, they're not so hot. Read the Insider and you get a pretty clear cut case for total human technical inferiority. They can't even maintain a Heavy Cruiser fleet because it's so expensive; Does that seem like a situation where they can make a multi-generational jump in their whole tech in a matter of a decade? Nope.
A three generational tech gap isn't big at all, 10 years of concentrated tech development and adding 150 years to our own technological pace, compared to ourselves now is realistic, and in no way "overzealous fanfiction" or "bullshit".

You'll have to admit that it is ridiculous to say such statements are overzealous fanfiction or bullshit.
dfacto wrote:The humanity you're imagining and the humanity in the Outsiderverse are two different things.
Can you be so certain that humanity in Outsider isn't based on us at all? That doesn't sound so "overzealous" at all. Sounds pretty darn reasonable to me.

dfacto
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Re: Page 85

Post by dfacto »

Voitan wrote:A three generational tech gap isn't big at all, 10 years of concentrated tech development and adding 150 years to our own technological pace, compared to ourselves now is realistic, and in no way "overzealous fanfiction" or "bullshit".
Remember that one of those generations involved the Historians just giving the Loroi advanced tech. I'll concede that ten years is possible if humanity gets a dedicated schooling on advanced tech, but with just reverse engineering? Nah. Ten years to understand the theory, ten to devise manufacturing methods, and another ten to make anything notable of it. Then another twenty to produce it in any significant quantity. And that's being generous
Can you be so certain that humanity in Outsider isn't based on us at all? That doesn't sound so "overzealous" at all. Sounds pretty darn reasonable to me.
Remember how Blade Runner was based on us, and there were flying cars, androids and space colonies in 2019? Yeah, not so much. Each universe has it's own timelines and technological realities, often far off the mark.

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Mjolnir
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Re: Page 85

Post by Mjolnir »

BattleRaptor wrote:Humans during peace time advance FAR slower then they do during war time, and the Loroi have been at war for 20 years and its been stated humans advance 10 times faster.

Cold war is an exception in part due to the vast ammounts of money Russia and the USA spent on weapons research.
However it could still be considered peace time as spending would go up if war broke out.

So infact I underestimated just how much quicker the humans could advance now they are going from peace time to war time research.
Yes, they've been at war for 25 years, and have achieved a great deal more in those 25 years than in similar periods during peacetime. This is why comparing their historical rate of advancement with that of humans is invalid! Your claim is that overall largely-peacetime rates of development mean that humans will progress 10x as fast as Loroi in all situations, which is just absurd.

The Loroi are not stupid. They're just slow to adopt new things without a good need, and not as culturally driven to compete on a basis of technological innovation. A group of humans trained in Loroi technology would likely have taken just as long to reverse engineer the technology behind those blaster weapons. Perhaps somewhat faster, but they wouldn't have done it in a matter of months.

BattleRaptor wrote:You are right about the magnets HOWEVER, and I was wrong, I was damn sure Some loadstone deposits contained neodymium in Europe disproving the idea that they cant be found naturally, however I cant find a valid source to put forward to prove the point.

Yet you were wrong about them NOT being able to create an Electric motor.
Are you saying that a copper wire core with loadstone as the Field magnet will not function at all either to rotate or generate current if rotated?
I said exactly what I said, stop trying to put words in my mouth: bronze age man wouldn't have the materials needed even if they were given the know-how. Lodestone is a weakly magnetic material and will not produce electric motors useful for much other than toys. If they had soft iron, they'd be better off building AC motors and generators that don't need permanent magnets, but you specified bronze age man. Later greeks and romans could do those, but designing powerful motors and generators takes a lot of EM theory and math, and even materials that seem similar can perform in very different ways, so their motors would still be underpowered and bulky until they got the theory and materials science down. And even those would still be complex, high-maintenance devices full of semiprecious metals, not common mass produced pieces of equipment.

BattleRaptor wrote:HP developed a "working" memsistor in 2008 not 2006, in 2010 they even have it arrayed and increased its speed.
Hp stated that they only expect to have a FULLY WORKING version that can be mass produced by 2013.
Did I miss something?
Got an article for current fully working memsistors that dont decay lose state, or otherwise have problems?
I just found that HP did at the end of 2010 develop working memsistors that doesnt have any problems and can be used for actually making memsistor devices.
Once they work out how to produce it on mass and obviously stack and array it
Yes, you apparently missed something. There's a difference between having a working memristor in the lab, and having memory chips based on memristors in production. Why is this so hard for you to understand?

BattleRaptor wrote:You have also FAILED to answer a question repeatedly.
So I will put it simply

Do you claim copying something is just as difficult and time consuming as developing it from theory to mass production?

Yes/No
No I haven't, I've made my position extremely clear. Difficulty of copying something depends on the situation. Alexander Bell would get no benefit at all from studying a passive optical network switch. While it might lead to earlier adoption of fiberoptic technologies decades later, it would only distract him from approaches he could actually implement, and it would be a long time until the field of optics was developed sufficiently to understand how it worked and reproduce it. And bronze age man would be essentially completely unable to reproduce an electric motor due to lack of materials and basic knowledge.

BattleRaptor wrote:Also
Are you claiming Humans with a full working Loroi ship WILL advance NO faster not one bit not even a single day faster, then if they didnt have access to it.
Again, I've made it quite clear what my position is. Do everyone a favor and actually read the posts you're responding to.

BattleRaptor wrote:You have also ignored a very important point with the Loroi vs human advancement.

The loroi have had help, though there entire advacement..
Even now they with mutiple of races, helping them, with tech also gained from there enemy who also has mutiple races.

Humans who only recently made first contact are only 3 generations behind.
The Loroi and Umiak use a fundamentally different power system for their drives, using matter to energy conversion instead of fusion as humans do. They fire weapons that blast straight through human vessels. We're not a few years away from replicating their work.

BattleRaptor wrote:Arioch has stated thats humans "THING" we advance far faster then other races.
No he hasn't. He's stated that humans and Umiak advance unusually quickly. It's not "our thing", it's just one of our notable characteristics. And the Loroi have largely been keeping pace with the Umiak, holding them in a stalemate. They've had help in doing so, but they're not the idiots you make them out to be.

Voitan
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Re: Page 85

Post by Voitan »

dfacto wrote:
Can you be so certain that humanity in Outsider isn't based on us at all? That doesn't sound so "overzealous" at all. Sounds pretty darn reasonable to me.
Remember how Blade Runner was based on us, and there were flying cars, androids and space colonies in 2019? Yeah, not so much. Each universe has it's own timelines and technological realities, often far off the mark.
The works of fiction that assume a certain development at a specific date, does not change realistic human development pace.

Your example, isn't an example at all to argue your case.

dfacto
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Re: Page 85

Post by dfacto »

Come on man, seriously.
Voitan wrote:The works of fiction that assume a certain development at a specific date, does not change realistic human development pace.

Your example, isn't an example at all to argue your case.
Realistic is realistic. A webcomic story is a webcomic story.

The two are only related if the writer makes it so, and currently Outsider does not appear to be realistic at all, which entirely dismantles your argument.

Voitan
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Re: Page 85

Post by Voitan »

dfacto wrote:Come on man, seriously.
Voitan wrote:The works of fiction that assume a certain development at a specific date, does not change realistic human development pace.

Your example, isn't an example at all to argue your case.
Realistic is realistic. A webcomic story is a webcomic story..
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.
dfacto wrote:The two are only related if the writer makes it so, and currently Outsider does not appear to be realistic at all, which entirely dismantles your argument.
However, neither of us can prove anything really, since neither of us publishes anything in Outsider, and as I said above for fiction, can mix however realistic, or not, it wishes to be. All of it was fun conjecture, however...

Calling other people's ideas bullshit or overzealous fanfiction is simple trolling. You take your positions as though you were the author of Outsider, my posts are simple guesses, based on what we could be capable of in 150 years.

All of the ideas presented are idle "what if's", and taking a bit of reality, I will argue, is a very reasonable idea to take in a work of fiction.

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

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Re: Page 85

Post by BattleRaptor »

Since snipping apparently isnt frowned upon on these forums(cutting posts up with quotes and spamming the forum) IM going to do so too, except remove my own posts for the sake of not blowing out posts into mutipage responses with just a few words of new material.
Mjolnir wrote:Yes, they've been at war for 25 years, and have achieved a great deal more in those 25 years than in similar periods during peacetime. This is why comparing their historical rate of advancement with that of humans is invalid! Your claim is that overall largely-peacetime rates of development mean that humans will progress 10x as fast as Loroi in all situations, which is just absurd.

The Loroi are not stupid. They're just slow to adopt new things without a good need, and not as culturally driven to compete on a basis of technological innovation. A group of humans trained in Loroi technology would likely have taken just as long to reverse engineer the technology behind those blaster weapons. Perhaps somewhat faster, but they wouldn't have done it in a matter of months.
I never said they were stupid, so how about you dont put words into my mouth.. ok?
Also they are a military based civilization with 70% of there population in the military.
This suggests that even during peace time great ammount of resources is spent on IMPROVING weapon related tech.


Mjolnir wrote: I said exactly what I said, stop trying to put words in my mouth: bronze age man wouldn't have the materials needed even if they were given the know-how. Lodestone is a weakly magnetic material and will not produce electric motors useful for much other than toys. If they had soft iron, they'd be better off building AC motors and generators that don't need permanent magnets, but you specified bronze age man. Later greeks and romans could do those, but designing powerful motors and generators takes a lot of EM theory and math, and even materials that seem similar can perform in very different ways, so their motors would still be underpowered and bulky until they got the theory and materials science down. And even those would still be complex, high-maintenance devices full of semiprecious metals, not common mass produced pieces of equipment.
I said humans could copy it, I NEVER said it would be as effective.. INFACT I said the reverse.. you are bullshitting along once again putting words in MY mouth.

You gave Memsistors as a example of why humans wouldnt beable to reverse engineer any loroi tech in a reasonble time frame... stating that its taken 40+ years and we still dont have commerical product.
You fail to grasp that most of the 40+ years was spent attempting to find materials that could CREATE it(this isnt even true infact because no real research was done into it that I can find untill the last 10 or so years it remained only a theory).
Mjolnir wrote: Yes, you apparently missed something. There's a difference between having a working memristor in the lab, and having memory chips based on memristors in production. Why is this so hard for you to understand?
Do tell whats the time expected time lapse between a working practical Memsistor and a commerical product...
Apparently so far it looks like 5 years.. so from 40+ years we have knocked off 35 years simply by knowing what materials to make it out of.
You seem to have failed to notice this.

Mjolnir wrote:No I haven't, I've made my position extremely clear. Difficulty of copying something depends on the situation. Alexander Bell would get no benefit at all from studying a passive optical network switch. While it might lead to earlier adoption of fiberoptic technologies decades later, it would only distract him from approaches he could actually implement, and it would be a long time until the field of optics was developed sufficiently to understand how it worked and reproduce it. And bronze age man would be essentially completely unable to reproduce an electric motor due to lack of materials and basic knowledge.
I never claimed Humans could understand and instantly start using EVERYTHING, infact IF you go back and read my posts you will see I actually said there would be things humans WOULDNT understand untill Human tech had advanced.
Since you are arguing the point then you are arguing the point........unless you aint arguing that point.. which leaves me wondering what the hell you are arguing.
Mjolnir wrote:Again, I've made it quite clear what my position is. Do everyone a favor and actually read the posts you're responding to.
Yes you are arguing that humans couldnt reverse engineer a working starship and start using parts of the technogly is a short ammount of time 1-2 years.

Mjolnir wrote:The Loroi and Umiak use a fundamentally different power system for their drives, using matter to energy conversion instead of fusion as humans do.
You are arguing with the creator of the comic who has stated humans are only 3 generations behind.
Pulse detonation engines are fundamentally diffrent to anything used during ww1 or 2 for aircraft propulsion yet they could understand the concept completely, they couldnt replicate it but they could understand it and know what direction they need to go towards TO replicate it.
Mjolnir wrote: They fire weapons that blast straight through human vessels. We're not a few years away from replicating their work.
Im sorry what now?
where did this data come from?

1.The Bell had LIGHT armor, infact there is a Satistics of Terran ships
http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/fleet_terran.html
The Bell was effectivey what a armored Jeep is to a Main battletank in regards to armor.

2.The bell isnt a warship, it was lightly armored and a race develops weapons that can kill its own. The bell would have fared no better agasint a Human heavy cruiser that was camping the jump point and opened fire immedately after the Bell appeared.

3.The Owner of the ship that fired on the bell isnt known, but we do know at least one race has far more powerful weapons then the Umiak and Loroi.. the Historians.

4.We have been told Terran Ships have heavier armor then Umiak/Loroi due to lack of screens for size.

5. We have been told Terran weapons are more then capable of ruining a Loroi or Umiaks day if they get in range. Since Larger terran ships have heavier armor, and to date the only weapons terrans know they need to defend agasint are there own.. and those weapons are powerful enough to penetrate Loroi and Umiak defenses. then a good chance Exists that Terran armor can offer protection agasint Loroi and Umiak weapons.

So unless we have been told specificly any human ship gets holed by a single shot from umiak and Loroi weapons we cant come to any conclusion but I would love to hear how you did.
You apparently are also a expert on outsider tech, knowing the advacement path of Outsider Terran level tech to Outsider Loroi level tech.
Mjolnir wrote: No he hasn't. He's stated that humans and Umiak advance unusually quickly. It's not "our thing", it's just one of our notable characteristics. And the Loroi have largely been keeping pace with the Umiak, holding them in a stalemate. They've had help in doing so, but they're not the idiots you make them out to be.
Once again words in my mouth. I never once called the Loroi stupid or made them out to be so, you have failed to answer questions you snip and respond to what you wish and ignore anything that disagrees with you.
Lets put this another way..
So a peakcocks tail feathers.. which is a Characteristic of Peacocks isnt infact the peacocks "THING".
I really think you are arguing now just to argue.
However do feel free to explain how you took "our thing" to mean and how that was different to your wording of "notable characteristic"

Also the Loroi HAVNT been keeping pace with the Umiak, there engines and weapons come from other species.
Of course we dont know what tech the Umiak got from there own allies so its a bit of a stretch to argue.

But
We do have facts
Humans are 3 generations behind, the webcomic is written by a human from the modern world, so its logical to assume generation will match modern examples.
Maybe you have a better match for what was meant by generation, do feel free to actually provide it.

Also if you want to IMPLY anything, you have constantly implied humans would gain no benifit from having a working Loroi Ship.
Which one could take that you are implying ALL HUMANS ARE STUPID.. as this is the mirror of your own assessment that if Humans can understand and start replicating Loroi Level technogly that it must imply Loroi are stupid.

This is what you are arguing because the Orginal argument was humans would benifit greatly from having alien hardware to study.

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Trantor
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Re: Page 85

Post by Trantor »

dfacto wrote:Realistic is realistic. A webcomic story is a webcomic story.

The two are only related if the writer makes it so, and currently Outsider does not appear to be realistic at all...
The patterns and models behind Outsider are well thought and balanced.
Which fortunately makes it positively very different from >99% of the other SF-Stuff.
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bunnyboy
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Re: Page 85

Post by bunnyboy »

I did little research. Difference of 3 generation means this much!
ImageImage
Vacuum tubes (1940-1956), Transistors (1956-1963), Integrated Circuits (1964-1971), Microprosessors (1971-Present)
Interesting thing is that first integrated circuit was made 1950, so it took 16 years before it could be mass produced.
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Trantor
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Re: Page 85

Post by Trantor »

bunnyboy wrote:Edit
As for development system, any new innovations comes a slowly to excistence, then they have fast booming and after that development is slover.
That´s correct.
bunnyboy wrote:As for cars, the fast phase was around 1940-1960. Any new model has some new innovation which has huge effect, like first car with brakes etc. Now biggest innovation in long time is self parking car, and knightrider is how old?
Well, i´d say a waaaay more prolific era was the dawn of electronics and computerization in the 70s, and this on many levels:
Tech like anti-lock brake systems and electronic fuel injections, and also new methods of development like CAD/CAM and virtual simulation.

BTW with funny side-effects like Engineers distrusting computersimulations (in 1973) and by that accidently creating (by stopping cutting corners as the program suggested) one of the most succesful middle-sized engines in history in terms of effectivity, longevity, racing, productioncost and -time: The 5-Cylinder, developed by Audi in dire times.
Still produced today and recently - again! - punished with penalties from our national sports car racing authority because of vast superiority not only in it´s class, but in overall competition (Audi TTRS, VLN-Racingseries).
Last edited by Trantor on Sun May 01, 2011 11:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Trantor
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Re: Page 85

Post by Trantor »

bunnyboy wrote:I did little research. Difference of 3 generation means this much!

Vacuum tubes (1940-1956), Transistors (1956-1963), Integrated Circuits (1964-1971), Microprosessors (1971-Present)
That makes it four. :P

Well, at the dawn of each new generation the already existing and well-developed preceding generation still could match in terms of performance (not in cost and size, though).
And that could make a practicable bridge or work-around in the early stages of adopting loroitech.
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Re: Page 85

Post by bunnyboy »

Of course there has been lot of innovations later, but they didn't have as much effect on to driving.
Like, did you know that T-Ford works on/off and can be driven only on full speed or not-at-all.
Can you say any one step of development after 60, which weigh as much as getting adjustable speed.

The first generation is where it starts. Add three generations so you get to fourth.
1 + 3 = 4

Frith! Even I can count that much. ;)
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Re: Page 85

Post by Mjolnir »

BattleRaptor wrote:I never said they were stupid, so how about you dont put words into my mouth.. ok?
Also they are a military based civilization with 70% of there population in the military.
This suggests that even during peace time great ammount of resources is spent on IMPROVING weapon related tech.
That's not putting words in your mouth, that's taking your words and following them to their logical conclusion. You're claiming that at their best, they can only grasp and implement new technology at 1/10th the rate that humans can in a similar situation. Arioch has said that the difference is mainly cultural, not one of inherent capability. The pressure of an enemy with improving weaponry and defenses will do much to break that disinterest in technological development and bring their rate of advancement up closer to parity with humans. They've historically advanced at a slower pace than humans and perhaps still couldn't match us, but the rates of development will be much closer when they're driven by war with the Umiak.

BattleRaptor wrote:I said humans could copy it, I NEVER said it would be as effective.. INFACT I said the reverse.. you are bullshitting along once again putting words in MY mouth.
If that's not your claim, then why do you keep arguing against what I've said?

BattleRaptor wrote:You gave Memsistors as a example of why humans wouldnt beable to reverse engineer any loroi tech in a reasonble time frame... stating that its taken 40+ years and we still dont have commerical product.
You fail to grasp that most of the 40+ years was spent attempting to find materials that could CREATE it(this isnt even true infact because no real research was done into it that I can find untill the last 10 or so years it remained only a theory).
It wasn't the material alone. A huge part of it was waiting for thin film processes to develop to the needed level so that layers just molecules thick with sufficiently controllable characteristics could be deposited, masked, and etched to form the needed structures. A researcher of a half century ago might have a hard time even recognizing that the device contained actual structures of titanium dioxide.

BattleRaptor wrote:Do tell whats the time expected time lapse between a working practical Memsistor and a commerical product...
Apparently so far it looks like 5 years.. so from 40+ years we have knocked off 35 years simply by knowing what materials to make it out of.
You seem to have failed to notice this.
Yes, 5 years assuming all goes well, and it's notable as being an unusually fast technology to market. It builds upon decades of development in manufacturing processes, rather than requiring all new ones to be developed completely from scratch, and it is still expected to take 5 years at best.

BattleRaptor wrote:I never claimed Humans could understand and instantly start using EVERYTHING, infact IF you go back and read my posts you will see I actually said there would be things humans WOULDNT understand untill Human tech had advanced.
Since you are arguing the point then you are arguing the point........unless you aint arguing that point.. which leaves me wondering what the hell you are arguing.
If you're not arguing that, then why did you post even your first response? This started with me pointing out that humans wouldn't necessarily be able to go into production of war-winning pieces of alien technology in three years as Voitan said, to which you objected with arguments that essentially boil down to "having a physical example makes everything easy".

BattleRaptor wrote:Yes you are arguing that humans couldnt reverse engineer a working starship and start using parts of the technogly is a short ammount of time 1-2 years.
No, I am not. What can I do to hammer that through your thick skull? I have repeatedly said specifically, in detail, what my actual position is.

BattleRaptor wrote:You are arguing with the creator of the comic who has stated humans are only 3 generations behind.
No, I am not. Arioch has given details of the technological basis of both human and Loroi/Umiak ships, and the three generations number. That is what 3 generations means in Outsider.

BattleRaptor wrote:Once again words in my mouth. I never once called the Loroi stupid or made them out to be so, you have failed to answer questions you snip and respond to what you wish and ignore anything that disagrees with you.
Lets put this another way..
So a peakcocks tail feathers.. which is a Characteristic of Peacocks isnt infact the peacocks "THING".
I really think you are arguing now just to argue.
However do feel free to explain how you took "our thing" to mean and how that was different to your wording of "notable characteristic"
A notable characteristic. Arioch's a better writer than to base an entire species around "they develop really fast". It's not "our thing", it's a detail of our culture and history and may not even prove particularly relevant to the story.

BattleRaptor wrote:Also the Loroi HAVNT been keeping pace with the Umiak, there engines and weapons come from other species.
I mentioned that myself. However, if the war-time disparity were what you claim, they would have already lost the war to Umiak advancing 10x as fast as them.

BattleRaptor wrote:Also if you want to IMPLY anything, you have constantly implied humans would gain no benifit from having a working Loroi Ship.
No, I have never implied that. There's just no way you can actually get that from what I've written. Quit trolling.

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Re: Page 85

Post by Trantor »

bunnyboy wrote:Of course there has been lot of innovations later, but they didn't have as much effect on to driving.
Like, did you know that T-Ford works on/off and can be driven only on full speed or not-at-all.
Huh? :)
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Re: Page 85

Post by bunnyboy »

Okay. Mistake in my part. Ford Model T can drive in 3 different speed, if you count reverse.
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Re: Page 85

Post by osmium »

I'm going to only make few points in the whole technology debate.

1) alchemy / medieval fireworks. Sometimes you can get lucky and use stuff you don't *really* understand. This *could* be the Loroi Pulse cannon being a sort of bastardized version of the Historian's, but more likely it's mostly a problem with accurate manufacturing and the high power of the device being beyond mass production that they *could* make a better prototype doesn't really justify the cost if it doesn't help them actually make said guns in large numbers.

2) Working examples can make copying technology easier, but only if a) you can understand what's actually going on in the device and b) you have a grasp on the theories in question.
going back to alchemy. You can make explosions. Can you understand and produce polymers? the answer is likely not, your theories are just plain wrong, but somehow allow you to in certain cases produce the desired results. You do not understand condensation reactions, or free radicals or even the structure of molecules really. So if the Loroi / historian Pulse cannons are just that many generations ahead of humanti's it depends on the specifics of what physics are being used, do we understand them, can out technology characterize the materials such that we can figure out what's actually going on, apply that knowledge with the theory and make or adjust our manufacturing technologies to accomplish said task?

3) sometimes even if you know what to do, you still can't do it well. Take Mjolnir's point of memresistors and the etching / masking etc stuff. Sure you can with technology from 20 years ago appreciate *what* an ion mill is, you can conceptually understand that you could use a variety of materials applied to the surface of another material to protect said stuff from a process by which you remove material (etching of one variety or another) and that you can then remove leftover material and have thus etched out various little pits and shapes in the surface of the original material (similar methods can be used to deposit material such as conductors to draw circuits or whatever). The imaging technology (SEM) was there. But if you handed them some of today's MEMS devices while they could see (mostly) what was going on, they would have no hope of being able to reproduce the devices we make easily today. In this case even *knowing* what that goal was (i.e. modern MEMS devices) wouldn't speed things up at all (over not knowing specifically) because they already *knew* what could be possible and that finer control over etching, masking etc would increase computer speeds etc.

There is a case to be made for a variety of the above to be true, but it depends on what your goal is. If the point is to have some Loroi ship come by and help us set up shop and pump out their parts using their technology that may help us advance faster, but still we're likely talking decades here, not years. This is abundantly clear when you consider that it takes people year/s to knock off a device. Look at iPhone vs Droid. Touch screen + phone, not a very foreign concept, nor very difficult to reproduce given that it's mostly off the shelf hardware, how many years did it take them to come out with their response? Now imaging this is a foreign technology that is thought of and explained by a race that has like base 8 math and they aren't particularly amazing at said math (or at least they think significantly differently). How does a race that thinks like that explain and bring over and have us assimilate technology that is nowhere near as similar as in the iPhone / Droid, when we think very differently, in a very short time frame? The answer is not very well.

4) I won't delve into it, but we're also assuming that the Loroi and humans can "speak the same language". That is to say that off the bat Loroi and human scientists can relatively easily communicate their thoughts to each other. I have a feeling that it will take some time for both sides to acclimate to each other and also given that Loroi's brains are likely small groups of Loroi that telepathically connect to solve problems and think on things there is a logistical component of how humans can communicate with what are essentially math/science genius communes that likely won't be moved out of the middle of Loroi space...

-O

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Arioch
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Re: Page 85

Post by Arioch »

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.

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Re: Page 85

Post by bunnyboy »

And this debate started by someone asking "How humans can help loroi end the war, fastly"?

Giving them sexually transmitted disease, in which case we help them to lose. :?
But I don't think this is the idea of comic.

The idea / gadget for win don't need to be supersciense, it may be idea so simple that nobody has them before.
This is our key to win. Cheap maintenance.
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