Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Arioch]

Do loroi have the equivalent of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers? If so, what is their method of landing? With drop pods? Stealth craft? In more extreme cases do the loroi still utilize parachutes? Or do they have personal gear that is more efficient than personal parachutes? Assuming the orbital drop loroi does not have telekineses to assist in slowing her descent.

They use dropships that are essentially shuttles. Individual armored fighting vehicles might have their own reentry systems, but it doesn't seem cost-effective to me to have individual reentry craft for each soldier, and I don't really see the combat value to it. Individual pods would make it harder to take out a whole squad with a single shot, but I think the enormous cost of the individual pods (which I presume must be disposable) negates that advantage. And I think there would be the significant risk of scattering your squad across an entire continent.

I don't think parachutes are functional high enough in the atmosphere to prevent the fatal part of heating during reentry. The guy who set the parachute jump record in a space suit wasn't decelerating from orbital velocity and he was only about 40 km up (low Earth orbit starts at about 300 km).

[Bamax]

Meh... when all else fails Fireblade could probably survive such a jump 300 kilometers up... parachute or not with her psychokinesis.

Would she want to? No.

Would it add to her PTSD? Likely lol.

Fireblade and Teidar are literally the answer to most problems average Loroi cannot solve... like a superhero among mortals.

[Bamax]

Do loroi have the equivalent of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers? If so, what is their method of landing? With drop pods? Stealth craft? In more extreme cases do the loroi still utilize parachutes? Or do they have personal gear that is more efficient than personal parachutes? Assuming the orbital drop loroi does not have telekineses to assist in slowing her descent.

They use dropships that are essentially shuttles. Individual armored fighting vehicles might have their own reentry systems, but it doesn't seem cost-effective to me to have individual reentry craft for each soldier, and I don't really see the combat value to it. Individual pods would make it harder to take out a whole squad with a single shot, but I think the enormous cost of the individual pods (which I presume must be disposable) negates that advantage. And I think there would be the significant risk of scattering your squad across an entire continent.

I don't think parachutes are functional high enough in the atmosphere to prevent the fatal part of heating during reentry. The guy who set the parachute jump record in a space suit wasn't decelerating from orbital velocity and he was only about 40 km up (low Earth orbit starts at about 300 km).

You would need either a gigantic parachute whuch would be impractical... or some kind of magnetic parachute that utilized ions in the upper atmosphere to slow down and used plasma from air friction to slow as well... which again would too be high tech to put on a disposable parachute and impractical for mass deployment/disposal.

[Arioch]

You would need either a gigantic parachute whuch would be in practical... or some kind of magnetic parachute that utilized ions in the upper atmosphere to slow down and used plasma from air friction to slow as well... which again would too be high tech to put on a disposable parachute and impractical for mass deployment/disposal.

If that worked, folks would be using it today.

[Bamax]

You would need either a gigantic parachute whuch would be in practical... or some kind of magnetic parachute that utilized ions in the upper atmosphere to slow down and used plasma from air friction to slow as well... which again would too be high tech to put on a disposable parachute and impractical for mass deployment/disposal.

If that worked, folks would be using it today.

You have a point... but I was supposing and leaning very hard on the fiction part of science fiction.

Loroi technology is already overpowered as far as the energy output is concerned... since they already have particle beam pistols and torch drives... and they have uber materials too (space elevators) which we do not no matter how good people claim graphene is.

Since it also has drawbacks besides the positives that average people do not know or hear about... meaning you really would need scifi materials to pull off the Great Lift from Seren.

So who is to say with their overpowered tech and supermaterials Loroi could not tech something out for slowing a person's fall 300 km up?

I can accept if they literally cannot since you are their creator and would know... but I also think the proposition is absurd from a Loroi standpoint since they already have better options.

[Arioch]

You have a point... but I was supposing and leaning very hard on the fiction part of science fiction.

I stopped reading at "gigantic parachute." My apologies.

There are a variety of ways of bringing individual soldiers down from orbit (the most straightforward of which is probably just a personal reentry pod), but I don't think that's a desirable capability, much less a practical one.

[gaerzi]

They use dropships that are essentially shuttles. Individual armored fighting vehicles might have their own reentry systems, but it doesn't seem cost-effective to me to have individual reentry craft for each soldier, and I don't really see the combat value to it. Individual pods would make it harder to take out a whole squad with a single shot, but I think the enormous cost of the individual pods (which I presume must be disposable) negates that advantage. And I think there would be the significant risk of scattering your squad across an entire continent.

That's the Quake II plot! Troopers dropped from a dropship in individual pods, they basically all get destroyed by enemy air defenses except for yours that only gets a glancing hit and is just damaged instead of destroyed but veers wildly off course.

[avatar576]

So who is to say with their overpowered tech and supermaterials Loroi could not tech something out for slowing a person's fall 300 km up?

The biggest difficulty in any type of invasion is getting your soldiers from their carriers and into a position where they can engage the enemy. It's a problem because while they are traversing that distance, they are at their most vulnerable. Whether they're storming a beach from amphibious landing ships, jumping out of a plane, or dropping out of orbit, they will be encountering defense systems that are specifically designed to target them while they're least able to fight back.

The solution, therefore, is two-fold: You need to get your carriers (who can provide some measure of protection) as close to the target as possible to shorten the distance your vulnerable invaders have to travel before they can engage the enemy, and you need sufficient numbers to overcome the inevitable casualties that will happen no matter how good your delivery system is.

Dropping your troops from 300 km altitude and slowing them down enough so they won't incinerate would be like launching the D-Day invasion of Normandy from Birmingham against German fortifications with guns that could reach Manchester.

[gaerzi]

The solution, therefore, is two-fold: You need to get your carriers (who can provide some measure of protection) as close to the target as possible

Doing that, it is the carriers that you risk losing, along with everyone and everything on board all at once.

So what you need to do is a thorough campaign of suppression of enemy space defenses (SESD), probably via saturation attacks, basically mass more missiles than they can possibly shoot. Then your invaders can advance "screened" by the wall of missiles.

If we compare to real-world equivalent, you'll notice that the increased range of anti-ship missiles (e.g. the Chinese Dongfeng-21D) results in carriers being pushed back further away from the frontline, and therefore needing extended range for their aircraft (e.g. the US Navy MQ Stingray, originally planned as a stealth strike drone, ending up being developed as a stealth tanker drone).

[Keklas Rekobah]

This is off the current topic of discussion. Pasensya na.

I recently relocated to the Philippines for retirement.  There is a sense of deja vu whenever I am with my wife's relatives, and I see them communicating only with facial expressions, gestures, and body language. This reminds me of the "meaningful glances" cast at Alex by Tempo and Fireblade while they are still in the alcove.

@ARIOCH: Is a similar experience on your part your inspiration for at least some of those "meaningful glances"?

Thank you.

[Arioch]

@ARIOCH: Is a similar experience on your part your inspiration for at least some of those "meaningful

I was referring to the sort of situation in which two people are having a discussion in a language you don't understand, but the fact that they periodically look in your direction gives you a pretty good idea that they're talking about you.

[Keklas Rekobah]

I only know for sure they are talking about me when they say something like "guapo" or "pogi".

[avatar576]

The solution, therefore, is two-fold: You need to get your carriers (who can provide some measure of protection) as close to the target as possible

Doing that, it is the carriers that you risk losing, along with everyone and everything on board all at once.

So what you need to do is a thorough campaign of suppression of enemy space defenses (SESD), probably via saturation attacks, basically mass more missiles than they can possibly shoot. Then your invaders can advance "screened" by the wall of missiles.

If we compare to real-world equivalent, you'll notice that the increased range of anti-ship missiles (e.g. the Chinese Dongfeng-21D) results in carriers being pushed back further away from the frontline, and therefore needing extended range for their aircraft (e.g. the US Navy MQ Stingray, originally planned as a stealth strike drone, ending up being developed as a stealth tanker drone).

The carriers will be able to provide some measure of protection for the troops. However limited it may be, it provides more protection than a gently-falling parachute-borne target in the sky has. Much in the same way that an amphibious lander like a Higgins boat, while undoubtedly exposed to enemy attack, is still orders of magnitude better than making your troops swim 5 miles to shore from the transport ship.

An orbital insertion would imply that the invaders have already breached any space-based defenses, but there will still be planet-based, atmospheric defenses. Leaving out the fact that jumping from an altitude of 300 km will spread your invaders across an entire continent (and there's a distinct possibility some will land in the middle of an ocean as well), 300 km is a long, long time to be falling with a parachute. Consider Alan Eustace's record-setting jump from 41km. The entire descent took about 15 minutes. If we scale that up to 300 km, then we'd be talking about a nearly 2-hour descent to the ground. That's a very long time to spend as a defenseless skeet-shooting target at the mercy of jet streams and so forth.

If I were going to storm a planet with ground troops, I'd want to get them on the ground from orbit as fast as possible. I'd probably go with ballistic drop ships and a whole lot of ablative armor. Parachutes wouldn't be my first choice.

[wolf329]

Question about Fireblade's time on Seren. Apologies if it's been asked before, but in terms of appearance, what would Fireblade look like towards the end of her time going "feral" during the occupation (unless she didn't, I may be conflating fanfic with Insider canon)? Ragged, loose long hair without access to cutting implements, or a rough shorn but shorter cut?

[Bamax]

I was curious if this has not already been answered.

Per thousand Loroi how many are Teidar? One? Zero?

Are Teidar more likely in a population of 10,000 than 1,000?

Just how common or rare are Teidar in the population?

[Arioch]

Question about Fireblade's time on Seren. Apologies if it's been asked before, but in terms of appearance, what would Fireblade look like towards the end of her time going "feral" during the occupation (unless she didn't, I may be conflating fanfic with Insider canon)? Ragged, loose long hair without access to cutting implements, or a rough shorn but shorter cut?

The lawyer raises his hand. "Objection, your honor! Question assumes facts not in evidence!"

Per thousand Loroi how many are Teidar? One? Zero?

I don't have detailed demographic numbers for Loroi population, but I would say that Teidar are less common than 1 in 1000, but more common than 1 in 1000. Tempest has 3 Teidar in a crew of roughly 800, which is not an unusual ratio.

If instead your question is meant to be how many psychokinetics are there per thousand Loroi, that number is higher. Most Loroi PK's don't have the power level to become Teidar; some with the correct qualifications become Mizol, but most probably don't have the qualifications for either caste, and stay in their birth castes.

PK occurrence rates differ in different populations; though no one has identified sequences of genes tied to PK, the offspring of a PK is more likely to exhibit PK than the offspring of a Loroi who didn't have PK. Among the Sister Worlds, Deinar has the highest occurrence rate, and Taben the lowest.

Are Teidar more likely in a population of 10,000 than 1,000?

I'm not sure what this question is driving at, because I can't imagine a scenario in which the answer would be "no."

[Bamax]

Question about Fireblade's time on Seren. Apologies if it's been asked before, but in terms of appearance, what would Fireblade look like towards the end of her time going "feral" during the occupation (unless she didn't, I may be conflating fanfic with Insider canon)? Ragged, loose long hair without access to cutting implements, or a rough shorn but shorter cut?

The lawyer raises his hand. "Objection, your honor! Question assumes facts not in evidence!"

Per thousand Loroi how many are Teidar? One? Zero?

I don't have detailed demographic numbers for Loroi population, but I would say that Teidar are less common than 1 in 1000, but more common than 1 in 1000. Tempest has 3 Teidar in a crew of roughly 800, which is not an unusual ratio.

If instead your question is meant to be how many psychokinetics are there per thousand Loroi, that number is higher. Most Loroi PK's don't have the power level to become Teidar; some with the correct qualifications become Mizol, but most probably don't have the qualifications for either caste, and stay in their birth castes.

PK occurrence rates differ in different populations; though no one has identified sequences of genes tied to PK, the offspring of a PK is more likely to exhibit PK than the offspring of a Loroi who didn't have PK. Among the Sister Worlds, Deinar has the highest occurrence rate, and Taben the lowest.

Are Teidar more likely in a population of 10,000 than 1,000?

I'm not sure what this question is driving at, because I can't imagine a scenario in which the answer would be "no."

I am just gauging at what rate of Loroi numbers do Umiak tend to freak out.

I can only presume the Umiak realize not every Loroi is an uber Teidar but they have no real way of knowing so I can only assume they assume any of them could be and take as many precautions as possible... especialky during the occupation of Seren.

All I know is that humans have trouble with mere human prisoners escaping.

With super powers in the mix and coordination they have zero control over... Loroi would truly be a prison guards worse nightmare.

I am a bit surprised tge Umiak even did not start with genoicde as a first option purely because there is no way to prevent a cmmunication via sanzai and that is all you need for massive coordinated attacks.

How many battles have been lost because of miscommunication or confusion?

Loroi have far less of a problem in that regard.

I presuke the only way to counter sll the tactical advantages Loroi have is to lie and use deception and traps as much as possible on the ground... and make them redundant or hard to detect.

In other words... if I were a prison warden, I would make literally install hidden pop up automated turrets and trip lasers to trigger them just to guard every place I saw fit... since I presume Umiak are going to get killed anyway so I may as well have back up.

[Moon Moth]

Most official representatives of the Union (especially those involving the military or the Loroi administration) bear the symbol of the Loroi military:

it's called the minnir, and it's a stylized representation of a mythical creature that symbolizes strength, ferocity and relentlessness. It's more or less like having a dragon as your signet.

Is the main design on the imperial crest tapestry a slightly less-stylized version of the minnir?

[Arioch]

Most official representatives of the Union (especially those involving the military or the Loroi administration) bear the symbol of the Loroi military:

it's called the minnir, and it's a stylized representation of a mythical creature that symbolizes strength, ferocity and relentlessness. It's more or less like having a dragon as your signet.

Is the main design on the imperial crest tapestry a slightly less-stylized version of the minnir?

Neither of these representations look much like the actual organism native to Armis, which was probably named after the mythological creature rather than the other way around. The Armis minnir has membrane wings that are more like a pterosaur than a bird, while some of the mythological minnir representations depict scale- or feather-like elements on the wings.

[DevilDalek]

Its an angelic cone head!