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cacambo43
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Re: Page: 118

Post by cacambo43 »

We, on this side of the fourth wall, just have to trust that although nothing can stop the Loroi from stamping out humanity, as a thinking, complex civilization, such an action would be seen as morally abhorrent in this case. As others have said, previous terrible actions were horrible "last resorts" and not universally celebrated.

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Walter
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Re: Page: 118

Post by Walter »

It makes a lot of sense that Alex is telling them where human colonies are. Honestly, now that we know what both sides look like it is hard to imagine that Humanity has any possibility of survival other than getting Loroi fleet protection as fast as possible. The Umiak aren't going to let what are basically pink Loroi just hang around unmolested.

Overkill Engine
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Re: Page: 118

Post by Overkill Engine »

Walter wrote:It makes a lot of sense that Alex is telling them where human colonies are. Honestly, now that we know what both sides look like it is hard to imagine that Humanity has any possibility of survival other than getting Loroi fleet protection as fast as possible. The Umiak aren't going to let what are basically pink Loroi just hang around unmolested.

And especially unexploited. The Umiak may or may not have another means to bypassing Farseers, but a species with that trait inherent and in a position of military weakness is ripe for enslavement and mass cloning.

And it is known how nicely the Umiak treat their allies/subjects/slaves.

dex drako
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Re: Page: 118

Post by dex drako »

novius wrote:
Following that thought it would even be more prudent to stay out of sight for as long as possible, or at least a little while longer. But I see the point... Earth has little to offer, and at that point rather little to lose. The Orgus painted a dark picture of the Loroi, but an even darker picture of the Umiak. Doing nothing or failing the mission would mean humanity is doomed.
i think you're forgetting the point of the whole story " there is no way for earth to say out of sight". humanity only has a few years before the umiak or the loroi stumbled upon them naturally. there is no way to hide or stay out of the fight so the only way for humanity to service was to pick a side as fast as possible.

i think the problem is you are looking for a position where humanity has some control over their fate but this is not that kind of story. humanity is meant to be totally out classed with our only hope being the kindness of the side we pick. so we live or die on the actions of Alex alone and how well he gets along with the loroi.
Last edited by dex drako on Tue Jun 13, 2017 5:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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CrimsonFALKE
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Re: Page: 118

Post by CrimsonFALKE »

Arioch wrote:Alex is now in charge of the diplomatic mission to the Loroi, but he's also without a ship or any way to contact home, and totally dependent on the goodwill of his captors. If he were to conclude that Loroi could not be trusted with the location of Earth, then the diplomatic mission has failed and his only recourse would be to commit suicide as quickly as possible. The higher he went up the diplomatic food chain, the more insulted the Loroi would be when he refused to answer the most basic questions about the nation he claimed to represent.

Enough people have mentioned this that I think it's clear that the narrator ideally should have said something about his decision to reveal this information, but I have been trying to avoid conspicuous walls of text.

This is true but he should have a bit of discretion given his previous treatment I would think that only say one or two of our colonies be pointed out specifically the furthest from Earth and Mars.

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GabrielGABFonseca
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Re: Page: 118

Post by GabrielGABFonseca »

While I would normally fall in the "Stay Quiet" camp, were I in Alex's comfortable, Lori-made green shoes, I do have to agree that seen through the lens of the technological gap between Humanity and the "Players" of the war, there is no point in hiding Earth. Extermination will come eventually, wether we tell them where Earth is or they find it themselves.

I would also like to point out, that due to the very fact that he was treated like some old rag by the Loroi, Alex just being completely open and forthcoming is the best possible move, diplomatically speaking, he could have taken. The sort of "give the other cheek" attitude he's taking only goes the further mile to show how willing and non-hostile his intentions are. And I can think of a certain non-hostile, technologically inferior movement that ended getting the upper hand against their tech-clad oppressors...

Despite all of what I just said, it will still make the Loroi see him with extreme suspicion - even being as forthcoming as he can possibly be, the fact that he cannot be read will make the Loroi think, even if at a subconscious level, that he is constantly omitting information.

So, all in all: Alex is in quite a shifty situation.
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dex drako
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Re: Page: 118

Post by dex drako »

the problem is people are still thinking of humans in this story like a first world nation when a better analogy would be humans are barely above a last Amazonian tribe crawling out of the jungle for the first time. we are at such a disadvantage that the best and only hope humans have is to go public big time and play to the other races empathy.

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icekatze
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Re: Page: 118

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

Luckily for Alex and humanity, we can assume that the Loroi have empathy in the first place, and that it is roughly equivalent to human empathy, and that it will extend to things that are not members of their own race, and that they follow some formulation of the Golden Rule rather than something like the Nash Equilibrium.

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CrimsonFALKE
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Re: Page: 118

Post by CrimsonFALKE »

icekatze wrote:hi hi

Luckily for Alex and humanity, we can assume that the Loroi have empathy in the first place, and that it is roughly equivalent to human empathy, and that it will extend to things that are not members of their own race, and that they follow some formulation of the Golden Rule rather than something like the Nash Equilibrium.
So would think this empathy they have could also mean they feel guilt about what they did to him? I know they apologized but well a few seem to have forgotten the issue entirely.

Walter
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Re: Page: 118

Post by Walter »

Feels like presuming empathy is a big ask. Play to their enlightened self interest instead, bonus points if they decide to feel guilty It's in the Loroi's best interest to get humanity on their side, ditto the Umiak. It is in ALEX's best interest that we end up with the Loroi. He should be as cooperative as possible, try desperately to tie humanity to the Loroi at the hip, maybe they'll protect us like they do the Barsam/their other client races.

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Fireblade
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Re: Page: 118

Post by Fireblade »

Holding the entire Loroi species responsible for the actions of a single commander, and in particular holding a grudge against those Loroi who are obviously trying to help you, seems to me to be worse than wrong-headed.

novius
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Re: Page: 118

Post by novius »

Fireblade wrote:Holding the entire Loroi species responsible for the actions of a single commander, and in particular holding a grudge against those Loroi who are obviously trying to help you, seems to me to be worse than wrong-headed.
No second chance to make a good first impression.

While much of how he had been treated at first may be accounted to the usual wartime paranoia, it looks like only Beryl is willing to make amends for it... and as said, that could easily be a ploy in itself. Tempo does say that humanity is actually important to the Loroi and still she doesn't elaborate why. So, while we as a reader may be able to see that Alex's 'inner circle' may be intent on helping him, Alex himself could still be a bit suspicious of their intentions.

But both sides taking a 'wait and see' stance would have taken Alex nowhere, and neither us as well, story wise. So yes, someone had to move.

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Imbrooge
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Re: Page: 118

Post by Imbrooge »

Overkill Engine wrote:And especially unexploited. The Umiak may or may not have another means to bypassing Farseers, but a species with that trait inherent and in a position of military weakness is ripe for enslavement and mass cloning.

And it is known how nicely the Umiak treat their allies/subjects/slaves.
And how would the Umiak know?

dex drako
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Re: Page: 118

Post by dex drako »

Walter wrote:Feels like presuming empathy is a big ask. Play to their enlightened self interest instead, bonus points if they decide to feel guilty It's in the Loroi's best interest to get humanity on their side, ditto the Umiak. It is in ALEX's best interest that we end up with the Loroi. He should be as cooperative as possible, try desperately to tie humanity to the Loroi at the hip, maybe they'll protect us like they do the Barsam/their other client races.
enlightened self interest is a good way to get yourself stabbed in the back long term.

honestly its a far weather strategist at best as self interests change all the time. case in point here the short term self interest of the loroi is to keep the humans out of umiak ... pincers. but long term humans pose a threat to the loroi on many fronts which could best be dealt with with force. Empathy on the other hand is the driving force behind all social animals outside of the insects super specie approach where they treat members of the group like replaceable part of one larger animal.

enlightened self interest may help open the door but the long term partnership between the two species can't be based on that.

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Diodri
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Re: Page: 118

Post by Diodri »

To be fair, he never revealed it's exact location either, so the Loroi would have to actually find the right star, and couldn't use farsensing to find it. It would be a big hassle to travel into the wastelands to exterminate a barely FTL capable civilization, even if you weren't on the verge of being exterminated (which of course they are).

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Re: Page: 118

Post by Starne »

Alex is definitely making the right call in being cooperative and forthcoming. Being non-cooperative and not forthcoming in his situation would be a quick way to ensure that he and likely humanity would be treated with even more suspicion at best, and as hostile at worst. As Stillstorm demonstrated, Loroi already have reason to be suspicious of him and humanity, and giving them more reason to be so would put both him and humanity as whole in an even more precarious situation.

As others (including, in-story, Alex's own superiors) have observed, the massive technological disparity and the nature of the conflict mean that trying to remain hidden and effectively neutral isn't an option. While yes, humanity might be able to remain hidden until the war is concluded one way or another, it's just as likely that humanity would be stumbled upon by one combatant or the other in the same way that human space was stumbled upon by the Orgus. If the Umiak were to stumble across humanity's home space, a swift and very one-sided conquest would be the only result, and if the war were still ongoing, humanity would almost certainly be pressed into service as anti-Loroi shock troops as soon as humanity's highly psychic resistant nature became apparent. If the Loroi were to stumble across humanity, conquest would also be a likely outcome, particularly if the war were still raging, and humanity's fate would be very uncertain. Given that in such a scenario, we would likely appear to be a sophisticated artifice of the Umiak tailor-made to inflict maximum damage on the Loroi empire, right down to our location on a vulnerable flank.

As for the whole "Alex just doomed humanity to being exterminated by the blue Nazi space elves" thing, that's based on some shaky assumptions, and completely discards the tangible benefits and intangible factors that humanity can offer the Loroi, many or even most of which are contingent on us being alive.

The tangible factors: On the most basic level, the simple geographic location of human space gives the Loroi the opportunity to launch flanking attacks on the Umiak empire, and eventually open up a second front entirely. That this strategic location already comes with some basic infrastructure to support a fairly quick build up is a nice bonus. In addition, the Loroi are very clearly losing the numbers game, and this pre-existing infrastructure comes with a workforce to maintain and expand on it, a clear benefit that would be lost if the Loroi were to just roll in and exterminate the monkeys, plus said extermination would likely entail a level of force commitment that the Loroi might not really be able to afford right now. Even better, humanity's morphological similarity to the Loroi means that our value as an auxiliary workforce or even military force is greatly enhanced because human equipment and assets could be fairly easily adapted to suit Loroi and vice-versa. Everything from small arms and uniforms to spacecraft would be either fully compatible or easily adapted to either species, and retrofitting human manufacturing and maintenance facilities to Loroi standards would be much easier than it would be to do the same for a morphologically different species.

Of course, the intangibles aren't really the most pressing in the current situation, but it would be disingenuous to discount them completely. Culture and curiosity are important factors here. In addition to bookish and/or xenophillic Loroi like Beryl being fascinated by humanity, average joe types like Talon seem intrigued by Alex and humanity, even Stillstorm seemed to raise a proverbial eyebrow in response to some of Alex's statements on the bridge of the Tempest, notably his "Oath of Vengeance" bit, which is a non-zero factor in their disposition to us. On a more broad level, humanity represents the possibility for something that the Loroi might not be too concerned with now, but will definitely be interested in when/if they win the war: Answers. Why are humans and Loroi so similar yet so different? What's the real story there? Who are they, really? Who are humanity, really? These are the kind of questions they'll never have an answer to if they just wipe humanity out or allow humanity to be wiped out, and if what little we've seen of their culture is representative of the whole, then those are questions they'll likely want answers to, at least at some point.

Wow, that was a really long, rambling post, especially for my first on this forum.

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Re: Page: 118

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

If the Loroi don't have the fleet strength to wipe out humanity, then they certainly don't have the fleet strength to defend humanity from the Umiak. Even a tiny Umiak expeditionary force could almost certainly wipe out all of the TCA warships, assuming they tried to put up a fight instead of immediately surrendering.

I don't know if Alex already thinks that the Umiak destroyed the Bellarmine, based on the limited evidence available, but it's kind of looking like siding with the Loroi is a losing proposition. Even if we assume that the Umiak's boasting was a lie, Tempo herself confirmed that they've been at a stalemate, and that their critical farsensing ability is now becoming obsolete.

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RedDwarfIV
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Re: Page: 118

Post by RedDwarfIV »

I think any help the Loroi would be giving to humanity would come in the form of technology, probably in exchange for raw materials carried from human space by human cargo vessels. The idea being to bring humanity to a point where it can defend itself, and presumably start sending warships of its own into the fight. It would be a long term project with many difficulties, but I don't really see an alternative.

Just having Loroi inertial compensators would allow human vessels to be more effective in battle, as I remember Arioch explaining that acceleration is currently limited by what human inertial compensators are capable of, not what thrust their engines can put out.
If every cloud had a silver lining, there would be a lot more plane crashes.

Starne
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Re: Page: 118

Post by Starne »

Alex isn't exactly in a position to make the Umiak an offer, is he? Likewise, actually defending Humanity against the Umiak isn't a factor because the Umiak don't know where humanity is, and aren't likely to know until one of three things happen:

1: Humanity aligns with the Loroi and the Loroi start operating out of human space, at which point human space will not only become strategically important enough that the Loroi can't afford to cede it to the Umiak, and the Loroi will have a significant enough military presence in human space to make a simple smash-and-grab by the Umiak a costly proposition.

2: One of the other scout ships runs into the Umiak and leads them to humanity, in which case it won't matter because the tide of the war will have turned so far in the Umiak's favor that the Loroi are done for, and humanity's only concern is resigning ourselves to being enslaved by the Umiak for the forseeable future.

3: The Umiak stumble upon humanity on their own, in which case they quickly conquer humanity and use human space as a springboard to open a second front against the Loroi, after which see #2.

Besides this, the Loroi conquering humanity and defending humanity against the Umiak are two very different propositions.

If the Loroi are as hard pressed as they seem, they can't afford to just send the size of force they'd need to quickly conquer or exterminate humanity a significant distance away from their core worlds and the battlefront on what may well be a wild goose chase anyway. However, establishing relations with and securing the allegiance of humanity is a much lower cost proposition in the short and medium term, as humanity's location is (as far as we know) unknown to the Umiak, and it would just be a matter of sending a small force to conduct recon and lay the groundwork for human space to become a base for further operations. Even with the absolute minimum investment of just a few ships, advisors, and science-nerds, the Loroi could raise a raiding force in human space (Human built ships crewed by humans and retrofitted with enough Loroi technology to make them useful) and start hitting targets of opportunity in Umiak space on a reasonable timetable, provided they can survive the current Umiak assault on the Loroi empire. Once this raiding force is raised and put into action, the Umiak have to reposition forces to counter these raiders and try to chase them down, giving the bulk of the Loroi fleets the opportunity to launch a counter offensive and start pushing back.

If the Loroi aren't as hard-pressed as they seem, then it's still more cost-effective in the short, medium, and longer term for them to dedicate a relatively modest amount of resources into making humanity useful than it would be to dedicate resources to either conquering or exterminating humanity. In this scenario, the Loroi could follow much the same tack as in the other, but they'd be able to wring even more advantage out of their new erstwhile allies than before by being able to more effectively take advantage of humanity's strategic position.

Again, conquering or exterminating humanity represents a modest to significant investment of resources, which depending on the Loroi's situation, they may not be able to afford. On the other hand, integrating humanity into the Loroi Union represents a much smaller initial outlay of resources with significant dividends later on. Attacking humanity now could cost them the war, depending on how dire their situation is. Letting humanity fall into the claws of the Umiak would certainly cost them the war. Winning humanity over and bringing them into the war on the Union's side could turn the war around. Option one represents the greatest cost and the second greatest risk. Option two costs the Loroi nothing but represents the greatest risk. Option three carries a relatively low cost and the lowest risk, not to mention the chance for a significant payoff.

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Re: Page: 118

Post by novius »

Humanity is screwed, one way or another.

Either it would be the Umiak with their direct approach, or the Loroi who I wouldn't put it past that they could wipe out humanity just as a preemptive measure or because they pose an inherent danger to the stability of the Union. Or maybe wipe out humans later if it becomes evident that Earth or its colonies would inevitably fall into Umiak hands, providing them with undetectable troops as same as if they did side with the Umiak from the very start.

Yes, Loroi may be curious about humans in general. But if they have to decide between satisfying their curiosity and gaining a much needed advantage in the war - or withholding the Umiak one - what would they choose? Remember, Loroi are a practical people, too, and definitely embittered by how the war progressed.

I'll admit. Siding with the Umiak means certain doom, siding with the Loroi means a high probability that humans will be doomed, staying silent and trying to keep out of it would only delay the inevitable.

So yes. The Loroi would be the best of all bets, which is saying lttle, since all of them are pretty rotten from the start.

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