Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

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Werra
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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by Werra »

The Umiak have pressed the Loroi hard for nearly the whole war. It's difficult to take the initiative while your enemy pushes you so. That the Umiak are willing to take horrendous losses in attrition assaults across a no mans land into farseer supported defenses means they're willing to spend this many lives and ships keeping the Loroi busy. They could take advantage of their industry and let the Loroi come charging their defensive lines. In theory the longer the war takes, the bigger the material advantage for the Umiak should be. So why are they so desperate to end it early?
Perhabs the Umiak are more akin to a locust swarm and running out of fresh green on their core worlds.

Witty_Username
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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by Witty_Username »

Didn't I read somewhere here on the forums or in the Insider pages that Humanities industrial capacity was a significant proportion of the Loroi's? Yes, most of it is involved in producing trinkety fluff but Humans have shown a great aptitude for shifting production capacity from civilian to military uses quickly in the past. And we have effectively limitless resources since we claim such a huge amount of space and it's uncontested.

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dragoongfa
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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by dragoongfa »

I think that you meant insignificant industrial capacity, the difference in size and tech level between Humanity and the Umiak/Loroi is like comparing a small WW1 era nation to modern China and the USA. The resources are also debatable, while the empty quarter/great wastelands is a vast territory both the Loroi and the Umiak have avoided expanding there because of the distinct lack of prime territory in the form of mineral rich star systems and habitable worlds in the surveys that had been sent there. Granted there is one proven oasis in the form of Sol and the few surrounding systems so there should be more but that's an issue to be solved after extensive surveying and cataloguing.

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Werra
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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by Werra »

Witty_Username wrote:Didn't I read somewhere here on the forums or in the Insider pages that Humanities industrial capacity was a significant proportion of the Loroi's? Yes, most of it is involved in producing trinkety fluff but Humans have shown a great aptitude for shifting production capacity from civilian to military uses quickly in the past. And we have effectively limitless resources since we claim such a huge amount of space and it's uncontested.
dragoongfa wrote:I think that you meant insignificant industrial capacity, the difference in size and tech level between Humanity and the Umiak/Loroi is like comparing a small WW1 era nation to modern China and the USA.
Honestly, even if we just produce shoes and uniforms and ship them over, that still frees up more valuable production capacity in Loroi systems.

folti
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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by folti »

saint of m wrote:With tankers, I can understand as ships are bound to run out of fuel sooner or later (and I am guessing with the Umiak likeing sending out older models until they go boom they probably don't have great gas mileage).

The transport ships leave me wondering if there is going to be any land force invasions or taking over a space station (its there, commandeer it for your own base of operations, and take any secrets within). If so, will we see Alex get into a fire fight?
Transports does not mean troop transports, at least not always. They can carry parts and equipment for quick fixing ships, or to build stations to hold territory on the off chance, that the assault is successful, and they can establish a bridgehead, with some repair and refuel capability.

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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by Arioch »

They're cargo transports, not troop transports, carrying non-fuel supplies (ordnance, parts, food, etc.).

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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by orion1836 »

Mr Bojangles wrote:And, things continue to get worse for our intrepid heroes. But, I have to give kudos to Beryl. In spite of the incoming enemy, the increasingly dire combat situation, and the fact that she and Alex really should make their way to a couple of crash seats, she just refuses to relinquish her spot on Alex's lap. She hasn't so much as budged her arm from his shoulders.

Science priorities, clearly! :P
Lap tracker: 10 pages and counting (or 7% of the entire comic).

Krulle
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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by Krulle »

orion1836 wrote:
Mr Bojangles wrote:And, things continue to get worse for our intrepid heroes. But, I have to give kudos to Beryl. In spite of the incoming enemy, the increasingly dire combat situation, and the fact that she and Alex really should make their way to a couple of crash seats, she just refuses to relinquish her spot on Alex's lap. She hasn't so much as budged her arm from his shoulders.

Science priorities, clearly! :P
Lap tracker: 10 pages and counting (or 7% of the entire comic).
Let's see if this quota holds up until Epilogue... ;)
Vote for Outsider on TWC: Image
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195

boldilocks
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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by boldilocks »

I imagine the logistics of the umiak must be a nightmare considering their favoured tactic is "launch all missiles".

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Mr.Tucker
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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by Mr.Tucker »

Werra wrote: Honestly, even if we just produce shoes and uniforms and ship them over, that still frees up more valuable production capacity in Loroi systems.
Nope, the tech difference probably means that we'd be producing them in craftmen's shops, whereas the Loroi would be making them on assembly lines. So the impact would be small.
Also, consider that the Loroi already have 3 species that do no fighting (Barsam, Pipolsid, Delrias) and one that does little fighting (Neridi). Those guys probably make most of the war material the Loroi use (we know the Delrias make those particle beams, and the Pipolsid make the drives). They have no shortage of workers, what they lack is experienced soldiers and a way out of the stalemate.

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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by boldilocks »

Mr.Tucker wrote: They have no shortage of workers, what they lack is experienced soldiers and a way out of the stalemate.
Humanity doesn't have any experience soldiers to offer, they're a fledgling space-faring species with no real experience in large scale space-based warfare, whereas the loroi are a huge empire with a huge and experienced stellar navy. I doubt humanity could offer enough of what would be cannon-fodder, lets be honest, to tip the scales in any meaningful way.

Krulle
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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by Krulle »

Just re-read Kikitik-25's speech, and noticed he actuall announced that a Gatecrasher attack is imminent, and his task in Naam was binding the forces.
Kikitik-27 on [url=http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider088.html]page 88[/url] wrote:However by now our [Khalkha Divisions] have penetrated deeply into the enemy territory and will soon have bypassed the azimol citadel
Seems Kikitik-27 may have been off by a minor amount of days, but still. Also puts the question on me whether the Umiak have started similar Gatecrasher attacks at other points along the frontline.
But back then we simply did not know what "Khalkha Divisions" were...
Vote for Outsider on TWC: Image
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195

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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by Witty_Username »

dragoongfa wrote:I think that you meant insignificant industrial capacity, the difference in size and tech level between Humanity and the Umiak/Loroi is like comparing a small WW1 era nation to modern China and the USA.
I meant industrial capacity by volume of production, not tech level. As in Humanity produces Y billion tonnes of 'stuff' every month and the Loroi produce Y*X billion tonnes.
What 'significant' means I don't know but I'd guess somewhere between 5% and 20%, but probably on the low end.
Of course, I may be remembering something that doesn't exist anyway. :)

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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by Krulle »

The Loroi have several fully industrialized planets.
The Union much more than that.

The war effort surely requires much more than one ship to be taken into service EVERY SINGLE MONTH.

I cannot fathom humanity as described in outsider to be able to produce much more than 1 or 2 ships every year, when the will is tehre to pay for them.

I assume the spaceship output alone (tonnage of space ships) of one of the Loroi union planets will surpass all of Humanity production when measured in tonnes. And that already excludes the agriculture and industrial output of those planets to sustain an economy able to produce war ships for space.

Humanity will be procutionwise <<<<1% of Loroi output, let alone Union output.
I fear all of Humanity produces less than 1% of Loroi-colonised Maia.
But I don't think we will get stats on that anyway.
Vote for Outsider on TWC: Image
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195

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GeoModder
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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by GeoModder »

Don't know about that production capacity, Krulle. The TCA/Scout corps alone had roughly 200 ships constructed for them in roughly half a century, and that number doesn't include civilian/private ships necessary for interstellar trade -and transportation needs.
I wouldn't be surprised if Humanity's civilian fleet well exceeded a thousand ships. After all, we're talking about the needs of roughly 200 million people living off-Earth, in what should be conditions that exceed the standard of living of the inhabitants of South-Korea and Japan combined (probably the most technically advanced societies on Earth today).

I do wonder how much of the Tinza Sector Fleet is engaged at Sala 128 though. It depends on whether the whole Sector Fleet participates in the incursion at that star, or if for this enemy force the Farseers were unable to provide reliable data too like in Naam, meaning the Loroi Sector Commander might not have committed her whole battle fleet yet.

In any case, we're talking about 30 known Umiak divisions in this assault alone, divided over 5 fleets. I kinda doubt the Tellai -and Tinza Sector Fleet alone would be able to defeat that many divisions head on.
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entity2636
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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by entity2636 »

It's kind of hard to guesstimate the overall tonnage of the Loroi Navy, but Alex himself said on Page 074, that while SG51 was "small and under-strength", it's 28 ships were more than the entire Terran Colonial Fleet and Scout Corps combined. This and what Arioch said somewhere that each new Terran starship hull built gets the next in line ECS- registry number assigned, leads me to think that there are less than 200 starships in total belonging to the TCA, military and commercial, minus the ones having been lost as their registry numbers don't get reassigned.

I'd say that a normal Loroi Navy Strike Group has at least 30 ships. Depending on how many such groups are currently active and how large the sector fleets are, I would carefully put the strength of the entire Loroi Navy somewhere in the high hundreds to low thousands of vessels. Also we need to remember that in the failure of the Semoset offensive a couple of years ago the Loroi Navy lost most (?) of their assets including most of their high tonnage capital ships and were able to at least somewhat recover, so the Union's production capacity can't even be compared to the Terran one.

I'd also very much like to know what happens in Sala-128 and Sala-101. As to how much of the Tinza fleet is engaged - my first thought is "all of it" because the Umiak got the jump on them.

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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by GeoModder »

entity2636 wrote:It's kind of hard to guesstimate the overall tonnage of the Loroi Navy, but Alex himself said on Page 074, that while SG51 was "small and under-strength", it's 28 ships were more than the entire Terran Colonial Fleet and Scout Corps combined. This and what Arioch said somewhere that each new Terran starship hull built gets the next in line ECS- registry number assigned, leads me to think that there are less than 200 starships in total belonging to the TCA, military and commercial, minus the ones having been lost as their registry numbers don't get reassigned.
The Insider page on Terran warships specifically states they're the vessels built for the TCA. As far as I understand it this excludes vessels constructed for/by other entities within Human space.
Besides, the TCA only came into existence because the ships of entities were made ready for armed conflict. Also note that appearantly the oldest dedicated military ships of the Colonial Fleet, the Centaur class of light cruisers, are still used extensively.
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Krulle
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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by Krulle »

Actually, those armed ships became the foundation of the TCA:
http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/forum_terrans.html wrote: When both sides [Aldean colonies and the Martian colonies under the lead of Yinghuo] began arming their transports, escalation seemed inevitable, and the TCA charter was amended to allow for the formation of the Terran Colonial Fleet. Under the terms of the agreement, the Aldean Self-Defense Force surrendered its armed ships to the new Colonial Fleet, and all of the Aldean colonies (including the Yinghuo proxies) agreed to form a global federated government, which is a full member of the TCA and persists to the present as the only planetwide government in Human space.
Vote for Outsider on TWC: Image
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195

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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by Zarya »

GeoModder wrote:
In any case, we're talking about 30 known Umiak divisions in this assault alone, divided over 5 fleets. I kinda doubt the Tellai -and Tinza Sector Fleet alone would be able to defeat that many divisions head on.
curious how you got to the count of 30 for the douchebags. Rounding up I’m counting only 27 ;)

Courier message via Leido Sala post reporting 6 divisions active in Sala 128 (calling for assistance)
Strikegroup 20 at Sala 101 reporting 3/4 divisions incoming from Peze 1 (possibly Kikitik-27 following from Naam).
In the Leido system initially 8 divisions from Rallis splitting into groups, And 3 additional “groups” (Gota Relay later mentions 2 divisions) deep jumping into the system. Then followed by the 6 Khalka divisions, also from Rallis.


According to Beryl 8 divisions equals approximately 600 vessels, that’s about 75 per division.
As far as we currently know a fleet of at least 2025 is involved in this entire action, of which 1275 (63%) are in the Leido system.

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Re: Page 136: When the douchebags crash the party

Post by Witty_Username »

GeoModder wrote:Don't know about that production capacity, Krulle. The TCA/Scout corps alone had roughly 200 ships constructed for them in roughly half a century, and that number doesn't include civilian/private ships necessary for interstellar trade -and transportation needs.
entity2636 wrote:...leads me to think that there are less than 200 starships in total belonging to the TCA, military and commercial, minus the ones having been lost as their registry numbers don't get reassigned.
The http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/fleet_terran.html page lists 58 active (ex Freeman) TCA ships, not including McCracken classe.
Additionally, the TCA fleet was built without any external threats (although probably with an eye towards the potential) and has been built basically to keep the colonies at arms length from each other when necessary. So this fleet construction speed was mostly in peacetime.
In WW2 the USA produced three Liberty Ships a day (peak production, 18 shipyards) taking ~42 days per ship, plus military ships, aircraft, tanks an all the other assorted paraphenalia that come with going to war, so Humanity can certainly increase ship production rates several times over. In a modern context the Emma Maersk Triple-E class container ship takes about three months to build (which blows my mind).
Building a ship in zero-g is probably a lot harder than doing so in a drydock, however, although we do have artifical gravity, so maybe that could be scaled up if deemed necessary.
Our ships will continue to be significantly inferior to Loroi Union ships unless they decide that having an isolated shipyard in a location completely unknown to the Umiak is valuable enough to start giving us access to some of their technology (shields would be a nice start).

In retrospect this entire line of discussion should have been in the 'misc Human' thread. Sorry.

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