Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

[saint of m]

PerhapThe Terrans could make their spacecraft look more insectile, paint them in Umiak camo, and masquerade as old spacecraft brought out of storage to shore up the war effort.

Then launch rocks.

And if they need to answer hales from the enemy, I'm sure the Historians can mimic Umiak speech to answer, while puppeteer will handle the visuals.

[Zakharra]

I'm sure the Umiak know where their ships/fleets are. As much as they are into disinformation and using disguised insurgents/spies, they would likely be looking for use of the same against the Loroi. They'd be suspicious about strange Umiak ships in areas they aren't supposed to be. Especially small fleets. Any warships are probably supposed to be heading to the front lines, fighting or in a expansion fleet. It's very unlikely there's any unregulated interstellar fleet/ship movements that aren't known/expected. A strange ship showing up is more likely to be shot than welcomed.

Also, as Icekatze mentions, any raider fleet has to pass through the fleets guarding the borders of Umiak space to reach the more vulnerable industrial centers.

[Arioch]

Umiak are not human; they're obsessive-compulsive. They would not miss the second "the" in the sentence about Paris, and they don't leave valuable assets undefended, even in the interior of their own territory. They don't have a large fleet at every system, but even their static system defenses would present a formidable challenge for the Terran fleet to overcome.

Neither Terran nor Loroi intelligence has much information about the interior of Umiak territory; so they wouldn't know which systems to target.

Terran ships are slower than even Umiak transports, and would not be able to catch or outrun anybody. Supply would also be a problem at these extreme ranges.

Terran vessels are not equipped for harvesting and throwing rocks.

Ship recognition at this tech level is done with electronic IFF signals, not by sight. Painting your ships yellow won't do the trick.

[Zakharra]

Hhhm.. That sounds like if the Umiak actually stripped half of their systems of the warships, they'd be able to literally throw an overwhelming number of fleets and ships into the assault, but even if they succeeded, the cost could literally cripple them for a time. Even if they won, it might very well be a Pyrrhic victory. Not that it would do the Loroi and their allies any good though.

[RedDwarfIV]

Fleet Point Defence: No
Rock flinging: No
Logistics disruption: No
Missile ships: No
Troop transports: No
Planetary defence forces: No

I'm running out of things to suggest for the Terrans to do. At this point I'm wondering if the Terrans will get their neutrality anyway by virtue of being too low tech for the Loroi to make use of, and too far away from the Umiak to bother annexing.

Plus, there's the fact that putting humans in the war would give the Umiak the opportunity to study them, and possibly make use of the fact that they are invisible to farseeing. Basically, what could have happened if the Umiak picked up Alex instead of the Loroi.

[wasp609]

how quickly does human technology advanced compared to other species in outsider.

[saint of m]

I beleive Isac Asonove or some other Sci Fi writer said that any technology at a high enough level becomes magic.

Translation: A Jew might think the superior weapon smithing of the Philistines was magic; the native peoples of the Americas would think guns and metal armor and weapons would be magic when they first saw them; and now a species that can out class us has magic. The question is how quickly can we revers engineer it.

But is there something humans by being curios little monkeys can say or do that might get a eureka moment? There has to be something the Umiak can overlook, or something that might distract them (legend has it you could escape a vampire by dumping rice on the ground, and the vampire being OCD by nature, would have to pick up every last one). Is there something that we could use against them like that?"

Terran infiltrates a ship:

Jardin: Oh shiny!
Umiak: Don't touch that...or that...or that...That was the fail safe system you idiot!

[Southern Cross]

You're probably thinking of Isaac Asimov, and it was Arthur. C Clarke who actually came up with that law....

[Voitan]

When humanity comes into full contact with the Loroi empire, will transhuman sentiments rise up in response to the disparity of power between them, and the Loroi empire species?

[GeoModder]

When humanity comes into full contact with the Loroi empire, will transhuman sentiments rise up in response to the disparity of power between them, and the Loroi empire species?

Looking at how 'sentiment' segments of humanity have always rocked the boat when they disagree with the state things are, it's a good possibility.
Of course, if the 'rise up' takes over the policy making regarding interstellar affairs, humanity might be in trouble.

[saint of m]

This is coming from me just thinking of an old Farscape episode. Long story short, the human character Criton, is the only one who can save the day as his senses are not as developed as the other crew members so won't be effected by the alien passenger's hypnotic abilities (granted its one of those times the ex soldier character says "We are all going to die" but what can you expect?).

While we may not be as advance in tech or biology as the blue space elves, is there a way to exploit this, or will our monkey brains come up with something so crazy it might work because neither the space bugs or space elves would have thought of that with their own tech levels?

[Grayhome]

So what technologies does humanity have that the Loroi would be willing to trade for and what would the humans be willing to trade? Any ideas?

[Mr.Tucker]

Terraforming technologies (or rather techniques). Most of their worlds were already habitable, so it's plausible they may not have as much experience in this field. Social studies, economic studies (their telepathic society may lack in these sciences compared to the other races). Of course, that's IF they're interested...

Just off the top of my head.

[Arioch]

There are variety of cultural or societal elements which humans practice but Loroi do not (such as ballot initiatives, reality TV, and singing), but I'm not sure those could be described as technologies.

[Username]

So what technologies does humanity have that the Loroi would be willing to trade for and what would the humans be willing to trade? Any ideas?

Besides our possible knowledge of a back door into Umiak space humanity doesn't have a lot to offer to the Loroi. I think technology-wise the trade would be pretty one-sided with the Loroi gifting us some of their more primitive particle tech and maybe a dumbed down anti-matter drive. You have to consider that we are a whole tech level below them, our ships can only handle 6g acceleration for pete's sake. They have scouts zipping around at 34g!!

On the flip side i think we can do quite a bit for them culturally and logistically, If i recall our capacity to tech up is astronomical, and our different methods in that regard could be a great asset for Union scientists. Humans would make great bean counters as well, put in a support capacity we could shoulder a great brunt of the supplies and transport necessary for some of the fast attack groups. I'm not saying we could make a huge difference right away, but in time...

[Zakharra]

Yes. As large as the Umiak Hegemony is, even if the Lorie do get into their internal areas, it's going to take decades to finish them off because of the round about way they'd have to take to get ships to the new front, and the years of fighting to get into the newer systems and reduce the Umiak worlds to ruin. During this time, Humanity could upgrade itself to an impressive degree. It might make Humans a considerable secondary Power in the Lorie Union since the Humans worlds would be the only really developed area in our region of space and having developed areas that can repair, s7upply and eventually build warships for the Union's war effort in the new front might be a distinct advantage.

[Username]

yes, but that is if the Loroi don't sweep us under the rug for political reasons.

[saint of m]

Using Earth's history as a basis, it seems when a superior force arrives it can be defeated by a local population if they use then unconventional methods. American Revaluation, Vietnam, Afghanistan during the cold war to today, and even Israiel.


Using the enemy's style of warfare head on will only aid the enemy, but using unorthodox and using several smaller excursions with bigger ones here and there to whittle down resolve and you could make it too uncomfortable for the invader to stay.


Using a simalar principle to Terrans in this setting, would they have to relly on unorthodox tactics against either empire to survive this war?

[icekatze]

hi hi

I think part of the problem of a guerilla war is that the invaders might just decide that keeping the population alive is not worth the effort. Orbital bombardment with relativistic weapons is a scary, scary thing.

[discord]

saint: the thing about space warfare is that basically you want to keep your ships together, not in penny packets, there are exactly two situations when as a aggressor you want to split up your fleet, harassing raids that avoids actual engagements and only nibbles, and if you have overwhelming superiority to make the war end faster.

as a defender splitting up your fleets too much makes them mere speed bumps, slowing the attacking fleet down because it has to be more careful on approach, or if you can pull it off a small force can be detached and just hang around in the outskirts of the system, forcing the enemy to slow down, either hunt you down or detach a group to hunt you down, which is splitting up your forces and inviting defeat by a thousand paper cuts.....again, speed bumps.

on the ground guerrilla warfare works much better, lower infrastructure requirements for one, but orbital bombardment might happen if you are too annoying, and in this war it seems they might not even bother with ground invasion, just start off with bombardment of most infrastructure, and then quarantine the damn planet for later decision. makes guerrilla warfare kinda pointless.