Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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Zakharra
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Zakharra »

Carl Miller wrote:Speaking of loroi uniforms: Are they designed to be washed? if so, how? if not, how are they kept clean?
Off hand I'd say they are cleaned much like any other uniform/suit of armor. Nothing too difficult or hard, just maybe time consuming if done by hand, but most likely done by a machine for efficiency and to keep the number of non combatants down aboard ship.

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icekatze
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

There are some pretty cool artificial fabrics today that prevent oils and other nasty things from sticking to them as much. Given the ubiquity of their uniforms, being uniforms and all, they probably don't need to do anything fancier than usual to wash them. If there are electronic inserts, it probably wouldn't be hard to waterproof them or make them removable.

((Forum opened the wrong page, the following is a response to something said a long time ago, without me realizing it: I got the impression that clothing would help mute the physical contact connection. Still, do you suppose the Loroi have clearly marked lanes for walking in crowded areas to prevent accidental contact? Perhaps Loroi don't bunch up so much in crowds, just as a matter of habit. Give everyone a few feet of stopping distance.))

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Karst45 »

Arioch wrote:I haven't given much thought to Loroi washing technology (and I don't plan to), but the armored suits are washable.
Please do not tumble dry

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by GeoModder »

Karst45 wrote:
Arioch wrote:I haven't given much thought to Loroi washing technology (and I don't plan to), but the armored suits are washable.
Please do not tumble dry
Not even in zero-g? With the suit's owner still 'attached'? :P
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Zakharra
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Zakharra »

icekatze wrote:hi hi

((Forum opened the wrong page, the following is a response to something said a long time ago, without me realizing it: I got the impression that clothing would help mute the physical contact connection. Still, do you suppose the Loroi have clearly marked lanes for walking in crowded areas to prevent accidental contact? Perhaps Loroi don't bunch up so much in crowds, just as a matter of habit. Give everyone a few feet of stopping distance.))

Bwahahhaa. Thanks for that icekatz. Hehehe. I read that and got an image of Lorio having a beeper on their suits that activated when they get to close to each other in a 'crowd'. Kind of like a warning beeper large trucks have when backing up.

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icekatze
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

And those lights on their shoulder pads, those can double as headlights. ;)

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by RedDwarfIV »

GeoModder wrote:
Karst45 wrote:
Arioch wrote:I haven't given much thought to Loroi washing technology (and I don't plan to), but the armored suits are washable.
Please do not tumble dry
Not even in zero-g? With the suit's owner still 'attached'? :P
We call that a 'centrifuge', mister
If every cloud had a silver lining, there would be a lot more plane crashes.

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dragoongfa
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

So I have been thinking about this since reading the comic for the first time, about a week or so. I am certain that this discussion has been had before but hear me out on this one.

Human vs Loroi reproduction in a total war EDIT: Clarification, this takes into account complete mobilization with no deviance from the planning and that the population and tech levels are the same.

A few assumptions are taken here, pregnancy times are 9months for both species, the human females who are able to give birth are those between the ages of 15 to 45 and that thanks to medicine there is no mental deterioration on human elderly.

Let's begin with the Loroi, 1 out of 10 births are male and they are generally leading a safe and secluded life. That means little to no menial labor and certainly no front line combat duty. So that means that 10% of the population are out of the industry and are not serving any other purpose than fertilizing females (lucky bastards).

Of the rest, 50% of the population are warriors and 40% are civilians (according to the insider). The civilians are responsible for the manual labor and heavy industry while the warriors are all out there fighting or are on active reserve duty.

Out of the above how many can stay relatively idle for 9 months in order to carry a pregnancy to term?

Let's say that half of the civilians have soft jobs (pregnancy friendly) and 1 out of 5 warriors is rotated away from combat duty for nine months in order to give birth to a child. That gives us 30% of the active population on child bearing/caring duties. Of course I am pulling these numbers out of thin air but it all depends on how the Loroi would organize themselves. Arioch can provide some answers for the details but I am using the 30% of the population on female reproduction duty, 20% on heavy industry and 40% on combat duties, with the last 10% being fertilizing males.

Now on the humans (remember that this is a total war exercise, everything is done for the cause).

Let's split the population equally 50% men and 50% women, the humans are also split in these age groups:
25% between 0 to 20
25% between 20 to 40
25% between 40 to 60
25% above 60

The men until the age of 60 are all draftable, i.e. trained and in reserve. Half of the men are on active duty with the other half being used in the workforce, in an emergency all of the men in the ages between 15 and 60 can be put on active duty. With crude math that's 65% of the male population which put's us to 35% of the total human population on combat duty and that's on a pinch, if it's not an emergency that number falls down to 17,5% and the rest are used for heavy industry. Males above 60 are used on heavy industry (12,5% of the population).

The women are all put in the workforce (the exception are those younger than 15), pregnant women are given soft desk jobs and those above 45 are able to be used in heavy industry until the age of 60 (8% to 9% of the population), beyond that they are on child caring and soft job duty.

With the above assumptions 37% of the population is on female reproduction duty, heavy industry duty is 20,5% (on full draft) and 37,5% on normal conditions and combat personnel is 35% on full draft and at 17,5% on normal conditions.

Hmm...

If the Loroi numbers are accurate then Humans have both a higher reproduction rate and a bigger heavy industry potential but the combat personnel are outnumbered more than 2 to 1 on normal conditions and roughly equal on full mobilization. Depending on casualty rates the Loroi could be forced to stop rotating combat personnel for reproduction duties as well.

The humans would also face two onslaughts as well, the first initial onslaught and one after 8 years (when the first mass produced Loroi would mature), the Loroi on the other hand would face a bigger industrial output and after 15 years they would slowly begin to find themselves outnumbered due to the higher reproduction rate.

So are we better at a Marathon than the Loroi?
Last edited by Guest on Sat Jan 31, 2015 10:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Zakharra
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Zakharra »

You're forgetting that the humans have females in their military. Given the percentage we saw on the prologue, it could be something like 30-40% of the human space forces are female. Unless you remove all females from military duty. you also don't seem to be taking into account that Lorio are physically mature at age 8. So they can have 2 generations born and raised to adulthood by the time one human woman reaches age 16. That is a noticeable difference and it would have an impact on the population number growth curve. I believe there are also a lot more Lorio than human. humans have something like, what? 21-26 billion people spread out across their systems? The Lorio have to have several hundred billion just to keep within shouting range of surviving a war with the Umiak.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

That's why I said it's a Total War, full mobilization with nothing and no one allowed to deviate from the plan (which means that men are expendable and expected to die by the droves to keep child bearing women safe), also forgot to add that this is a completely theoretical exercise, taking for granted that the tech level and the total population is the same (which is obviously not the case in the Outsider universe).

Zakharra
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Zakharra »

dragoongfa wrote:That's why I said it's a Total War, full mobilization with nothing and no one allowed to deviate from the plan (which means that men are expendable and expected to die by the droves to keep child bearing women safe), also forgot to add that this is a completely theoretical exercise, taking for granted that the tech level and the total population is the same (which is obviously not the case in the Outsider universe).

Total war on an interstellar scale would be putting -all- combat capable adults into the battlefield and keeping the rest back for making equipment for the war. You don't segregate half your population just for reproduction purposes. Women are just as capable of fighting in starships as men, so there's little reason to keep them off of ship/space duty when they can pull their weight just as well as any man.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Females (of either species) aren't idle for nine months just because they're pregnant. Pregnancy only becomes a physical limitation in the last three months, and unless she has some kind of hard physical job, most women can work right up to a few weeks before delivery. Even in the military, most jobs at this tech level involve sitting in a chair and pressing buttons. Also at this tech level, a mother can have the fetus removed to an incubator a few months early if she can't take time off or doesn't want to be encumbered. It's not unusual at all for babies to be born aboard ship (Beryl was delivered aboard a cruiser during the battle of the Tasinei Ways).

Human families are expected to raise the children themselves; the most time a human mother takes off from work is after the birth. Loroi children are primarily raised in communal creches; the mother usually goes right back to work.

Out of every ten Loroi, nine are female and can potentially all be pregnant at the same time. Out of every ten humans, the most that can be pregnant at once is five, because the other half are male.

Humans are physically mature more or less at age 16; Loroi are mature at age 8. For every new generation that the humans can produce, the Loroi can produce two.

Human females are reproductively viable for about 25 years; Loroi females are reproductively viable for more than 100 years. But even if each mother only has one or two children, the Loroi will still exponentially outpace humans in population growth because of the shorter generation length and larger percentage of females.

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dragoongfa
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

Zakharra wrote: Total war on an interstellar scale would be putting -all- combat capable adults into the battlefield and keeping the rest back for making equipment for the war. You don't segregate half your population just for reproduction purposes. Women are just as capable of fighting in starships as men, so there's little reason to keep them off of ship/space duty when they can pull their weight just as well as any man.
Then you risk extinction as a species since the one thing that really matters in such a scenario is to be able to replenish your loses in an attrition war that would make WW1 and the Eastern campaign look like drunken street fights, all this in the hopes that in the future you will be able to replenish your loses faster than your opponent, on a timescale that could range to decade if not centuries. The 'Forever war' novel plays with this subject in a war that lasts for centuries (or millennia, I forget) the solution they found was to turn human reproduction away from the natural process and into genetically engineered mass cloning, turning both men and women into supermasculine soldiers in the process (that were also genetically ordered to be homosexual in order not to fuck with the genetic planning).

@Arioch.

Figured as such, although in a total war setting raising the human children into a militarized communal setting would be the only way.

So in general the Loroi are Over Powered and the only ones more OP than them are the Orks from 40K?

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

dragoongfa wrote:So in general the Loroi are Over Powered and the only ones more OP than them are the Orks from 40K?
Since the Umiak reproduce artificially at essentially any rate they choose, I don't think so.

Not that I really understand what is meant by "overpowered" in the context of a fictional story. Outsider isn't a strategy game in which every faction has to have equal balance with all the others.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

Arioch wrote:
dragoongfa wrote:So in general the Loroi are Over Powered and the only ones more OP than them are the Orks from 40K?
Since the Umiak reproduce artificially at essentially any rate they choose, I don't think so.
Where is the 'fun' in that? ;)
Not that I really understand what is meant by "overpowered" in the context of a fictional story. Outsider isn't a strategy game in which every faction has to have equal balance with all the others.
Well, how can I put it without sounding childish :oops:

It's a hobby of mine to overthink everything in a sci-fi/fantasy setting like a war game :P, it also helps in giving me ideas for the various stories I am writing.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by JQBogus »

The problem the Loroi have isn't producing enough bodies. It is (I think) training them, and building enough ships to fit them in.

Even if your estimate that only 10% of the overall population or 50 billion Loroi can give birth to a new warrior in any given year, that means they could be producing 5 billion new warriors a year, who, after 8 years, will begin reaching maturity, 5 billion per year.

Even if only 25%* of them are actually assigned to shipboard duty (the rest being shore establishment, spare crews, etc) then that's 1.25 billion new crew per year.

A Loroi war cruiser has a complement of 450. To assign those 1.25 billion new Loroi warriors to ships as crews would require that the Union build ~2.75 million war cruisers per year.

I am pretty sure the fleets aren't that big, so the Loroi reproduction isn't really much of a factor in this kind of war, I think.



*The US Navy and Marine Corps combined have shipboard berths for about 30% of their total personnel.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by GeoModder »

JQBogus wrote: *The US Navy and Marine Corps combined have shipboard berths for about 30% of their total personnel.
Given that officers and likely noncoms as well have their own cabin/berth, 30% isn't enough to accomodate all personnel.
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

GeoModder wrote:
JQBogus wrote: *The US Navy and Marine Corps combined have shipboard berths for about 30% of their total personnel.
Given that officers and likely noncoms as well have their own cabin/berth, 30% isn't enough to accomodate all personnel.
I think he meant that 70% of all sailors and Marines don't actually serve aboard ship, but instead on shore.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by GeoModder »

Arioch wrote:
GeoModder wrote:
JQBogus wrote: *The US Navy and Marine Corps combined have shipboard berths for about 30% of their total personnel.
Given that officers and likely noncoms as well have their own cabin/berth, 30% isn't enough to accomodate all personnel.
I think he meant that 70% of all sailors and Marines don't actually serve aboard ship, but instead on shore.
That'd make sense. :)
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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Eureka: http://www.nbos.com/products/astro/astro-features.htm . Only took me about 9 months.....

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