Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[novius]

Oooooh, intrigue!

A demotion or a reprimand for Conduct Unbecoming Of An Officer would come to my mind..... Definitely something disgraceful.

[icekatze]

hi hi

If you go looking around on the insider pages for "Semoset," especially in the two quotation compilation pages from the old forums, you'll find some very interesting information about the Semoset offensive. I suppose disgrace might be how some view it, but I think a more fitting description would be catastrophe.

[discord]

ice: if 3/4 or more of the cultures in history has one way of seeing things, that is the dominant view, from purely practical reasons that 'protect females' makes sense and for a more successful culture, same with men being the 'show how good we are to impress the ladies' makes for a more successful culture, because it meshes well with reality and human psyche.

men take chances and are less risk averse, take a interesting factoid, in Sweden deaths on the job, well I'll let the numbers talk for themselves. http://www.arbetarskydd.se/multimedia/b ... ckorna.jpg
the anomaly of '94 is due to a single sinking of a ship, almost twice as many women as men died there.

[Arioch]

Stillstorm sustained serious injuries when her command cruiser was shot out from under her during the battle for the Tasinei Ways at the end of the Semoset offensive. The Loroi had lost a third of their fleet, the cream of their officer corps, and any hope of a quick end to the war; Stillstorm had also lost most of her comrades and both of her adult daughters. At some point in her long recovery during which her mental fitness was in doubt, she cut off her own hair.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I would like to see a source for that 3/4 statistic. Also, even if I accept for the sake of argument that number, if more than 3/4 of the cultures in history believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth, does that make the belief practical?

The reality is that the relationship between men and women has been widely variable through time and location, although much more often than not, the relationship has not been favorable to women. Men have rarely needed to impress women throughout history, but rather have enjoyed long standing legal dominance over them as property. Take The Gentoo Code for example. It is an ancient legal code, originally written in Sanskrit, and widely used in Persia and India -no small percentage of the human population- prior to British occupation lists six definitive feminine traits: "...an inordinate desire for jewels and fine furniture and nice victuals; violent anger; deep resentment; another person's good appears even in their eyes; they commit bad actions." Hardly the demure, passive ideal.

The contemporary western tradition of trying to impress the ladies didn't really take off until the Victorian era in the 1800s, prior to which arranged marriage was vastly more commonplace worldwide. Broude and Greene (1983) found that out of 142 cultures worldwide, 130 had elements of arranged marriage.

When women are able to get jobs as easily as men in dangerous professions, such as fire fighting, logging, mining, and the military; then I will accept as unambiguous, message of such basic statistics. As it stands, women are routinely kept out of dangerous professions because those already in such professions don't want them there. This, I have personal experience with. (The statistics become even more ambiguous when you start looking at job fatalities from place to place, and notice that there are widely different statistics just in area alone, from 12.4 per 100k in North Dakota, to 1.2 per 100k in New Hampshire. Or that between 1970 and 2007, US workplace death rates dropped from an average of 18 per 100k to 3.8 per 100k, across genders.)

[novius]

Wonder if it was in a fictional setting or if this is an actual quote:

"The interesting things about meeting other cultures are the things we learn about ourselves."

Looks like there's a bit of navel-gazing on our part as the readers, might be the Loroi in the story itself will be forced to do so as well, since several lines already do hint towards them having to face some rather unpleasant facts...

[dragoongfa]

Something that has been bothering me for some time.

http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider042.html

At the first panel. Why are two Doranzers working on something with a blowtorch?

I thought that Doranzers are medics.

[JQBogus]

They're cross trained, and there was no current need for their Doranzer skills just then?

[Siber]

It also seems at least remotely possible they're Soroin in harshly colored lighting.

[Razor One]

The uniform is almost certainly different from a Doranzer one. Compare and contrast: http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider022.html Upper left panel to the example you linked.

I'm fairly sure it's a case of the lighting making the colours look off. Much like that infamous dress.

[novius]

Agreeing on that one. The uniforms depicted in http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider042.html look more similar to these of the two entering with Stillstorm, especially with the glowing parts (which are white/switched off in http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider022.html) rather to those of the Doranzer.

That would make them Teidar, right? Or it is just that their uniform is similar in cut to a Teidar one, but with different coloring/marks which we just don't see because of poor lighting.

[Arioch]

http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vie ... 645#p10645

[Game Theory]

Have far does Loroi telepathy facilitate communication?

Is it simply advanced talking with many details, or can it go further, for example, if a Loroi were blindfolded, could they "see" what was going on from the communications of other not blinded Loroi; furthermore, how much exactly can a receiver of a telepathic message read the sender?

Can you simply not lie using telepathy as the simplest fib has to now be crafted into the most elegant and lifelike narrative, a far greater reflection of reality that our greatest authors, perhaps even our senses, can emulate.

Or perhaps a Loroi can deduce things about you by the simple act of you communicating to them, and does the potency of these two acts vary by indivitual.

Also, do the Loroi life detectors tell anything about the state of the animal other than it's location?

Moving on, I remember you denying, though I can't remember exactly where so I admit I might be mistaken, any similarities between Loroi telepathy and the X men mind reading stuff we're used to; what then what were the Loroi attempting to do when they captured alex, and what would the lie detection abilities they have be considered?


I also seem to sense there being some inconsistency in your "no exoskeletons" rule, I remeber you saying that they don't have drone pilots for their ships because they could be hacked, again I don't remember where I got this from, although It could have been because they don't see drones as reliable but the argument still applies, wouldn't it be the same case for drones on the ground?

If there are automatons carrying heavy machinery, would not remote control of said machines be bad in a battlefield setting? Remote drones today are effective only because they can glide slowly and drop bombs in from the safety of the clouds. And If the computing technology is advanced enough that robots have battle field viability, why have ground troops at all?

Also exoskeletons are awesome, mostly because they give a reason to have humanoid metal things kung fu fighting through a battlefield.

“So what do you do when your opponent can literally think you to death?”

[Siber]

The Insider gives a range of about 100 meters for ordinary Loroi sending.

Based on past discussions and the information in the Insider, I think the difficulty of lying with psi can be well understood through analogy. Lying is far easier in text than in person, vocally. If you lie to someone's face, unless you are very practiced, then there will be inconsistencies. Your tone of voice, the rhythm of your speech, your posture, your expression, where you look, the words you choose to use, any or all of these could be inconsistent with what they would be if you were telling the truth. You may even flush or start to sweat. Worse, if you take time to decide exactly what to say in person that hesitation will be noticed, but in text any time spent carefully constructing a lie is generally hidden. If you imagine that telepathy contains even more unintentional information, and happens even faster, then lying with psi is to lying in person as lying in person is to lying in text.

The Insider also describes a level of mind reading, two Loroi in contact become aware of each other's surface thoughts. This contact can be resisted, resistance can be overpowered, and contact can be established at range or covertly depending on the relative skills and strengths of the people in question. From there, it seems to become a matter of provoking the target's mind into thinking about a topic so you can read that thought. Sounds pretty hard to resist to me.

[Arioch]

Is it simply advanced talking with many details, or can it go further, for example, if a Loroi were blindfolded, could they "see" what was going on from the communications of other not blinded Loroi; furthermore, how much exactly can a receiver of a telepathic message read the sender?

Can you simply not lie using telepathy as the simplest fib has to now be crafted into the most elegant and lifelike narrative, a far greater reflection of reality that our greatest authors, perhaps even our senses, can emulate.

Or perhaps a Loroi can deduce things about you by the simple act of you communicating to them, and does the potency of these two acts vary by indivitual.

Also, do the Loroi life detectors tell anything about the state of the animal other than it's location?

Sending is essentially talking with advanced details; the amount of data transmitted per second through a remote telepathic connection is about five times that of ordinary speech. A skin-to-skin contact connection has even more bandwidth, almost equaling the sharing of thoughts. While one does not literally transmit images via telepathy, the data rate is high enough to allow a very detailed description of an image. A sighted Loroi could very effectively direct a blind Loroi if the two were touching.

Siber's lying analogy is a good one; it takes a great deal of skill to lie convincingly to someone when you're looking them in the eye, especially if they know you very well, because there are many things in your expression and tone of voice that are unconscious to some degree. Lying via telepathy is that much harder; one has to have superb mental discipline. Still, though difficult, it is possible to lie via remote telepathy. It is nearly impossible to lie when connected via touch, as the other party can, to some extent, read your surface thoughts. One would have to have deluded oneself into believing the lie... in which case it's not really lying anymore.

Moving on, I remember you denying, though I can't remember exactly where so I admit I might be mistaken, any similarities between Loroi telepathy and the X men mind reading stuff we're used to; what then what were the Loroi attempting to do when they captured alex, and what would the lie detection abilities they have be considered?

I'm not sure which denial you're referring to. The Loroi were indeed trying to read Alex's mind, which is possible with Loroi telepathy (though it usually requires physical touch and is not always effective against aliens).

I also seem to sense there being some inconsistency in your "no exoskeletons" rule, I remeber you saying that they don't have drone pilots for their ships because they could be hacked, again I don't remember where I got this from, although It could have been because they don't see drones as reliable but the argument still applies, wouldn't it be the same case for drones on the ground?

If there are automatons carrying heavy machinery, would not remote control of said machines be bad in a battlefield setting? Remote drones today are effective only because they can glide slowly and drop bombs in from the safety of the clouds.

The self-propelled heavy weapons are usually not fully autonomous, by which I mean they are not usually permitted to fire on their own without the command of a living operator, who is usually nearby. They're smart enough to walk and navigate through rough terrain, and to acquire targets and accurately fire and hit them, but like today's drones, they are not usually trusted to choose targets in the heat of battle. The only major difference between a future self-propelled heavy weapon and today's heavy weapon teams is that the future operator doesn't have to actually carry the weapon or manually aim it. The operator doesn't necessarily have to be nearby, but if she is remote then there is a greater risk of being jammed.

Self-propelled weapons will have the capability to act and fire fully autonomously, but this using them in this mode would be equivalent to laying minefields -- only appropriate for a limited number of situations in which you can be sure that there will not be any friendlies or noncombatants in the area, and you're not worried about the enemy capturing an unattended weapon and using it for himself.

And If the computing technology is advanced enough that robots have battle field viability, why have ground troops at all?

Well, this is always the problem with sufficiently advanced scifi military technology; the higher the tech, the less viable fighting in person (or fighting at all) becomes. The main reasons for this setting are:
1) Neither the Loroi or Umiak trust their AI to make life-or-death decisions on the battlefield.
2) Both Loroi and Umiak societies accept that living casualties are acceptable and necessary for optimal combat effectiveness.
3) Combat robots are expensive.

Also exoskeletons are awesome, mostly because they give a reason to have humanoid metal things kung fu fighting through a battlefield.

I won't argue with that, but they're not my favorite cliche, and I would suggest that they're not the only kind of battlefield awesome. Instead we have psionic super-troopers and cyborg death troopers. But since the comic doesn't have any (major) ground combat engagements, it's kind of a minor point.

[Game Theory]

Buuuuutttt... shouldn't it be easy for an autonomous drone to tell the difference between a Loroi and Umaki and if not, could not all combatants wear electronic markers wearing transmitting a "friendly" tag. Again the drones don't have to be AI, but I assume they would be a thousand times more efficient in a ground war: I'm imagining knight riders that can use machine guns as sniper rifles. And If you have to evacuate a planet, just leave a bunch of factories pumping these robots out with the orders to destroy everything (or just to kill the enemy), in this scenario you would use up enemy resources and time at no loss to yourself.

And couldn't pilots have miniature robot ships, that can undergo higher accelerations being controlled remotely, I assume that 40 g's isn't the maximum their ships are capable of, and that they have "cockpits" inside the main ship that simulate what it would be like to be in the drone.

Also, what are Google and Elon Musk (assuming immortality tech) up to in 2160?

[Grayhome]

I've been checking through GURPS Exoskeletons and Robotics and I've found them to be very, very expensive and very, very weak (both offensively and defensively). Almost as if the powers that be were deliberately and artificially debuffing them to make dissuade the PCs from making armies of robots/battlesuits in their games.

With the advancements in engineering, chemistry and manufacturing becoming cheaper and more efficient every few years (just watched a TED episode in which an experimental add-fac printed out an HD design in about 7 mins, this add-fac is expensive but it is an early experimental model and I expect the price to decrease significantly) why is making robots for combat so expensive? I saw another MIT presentation in which some young engineers built a simple exoskeleton which was stronger than the TL 12 Battlesuits listed in GURPS, allowed the user to lift 400+lbs without effort. When I think more STR I think "Ok, it can carry heavier weapons load outs, more armor, more subsystems, faster and over longer distances." I'm sure I am oversimplifying it but I'm not an engineer. I would expect that as the TL rose the price of robots in all sectors, especially in the military sphere, would drop dramatically and the efficiency of their AI would rise dramatically. If they even needed AI, I would think teleprescent technology would be far more advanced and far harder to hack by 2160.

But why are combat robots so expensive? I would think with the way things are going irl that the higher TL level you got, the easier it is to make cheaper and better robots. We can already make robots that are cheaper and better at doing things many tasks which humans considered at one point to be safe from robotic infringement.

I apologies for using GURPS so much, it's just a convenient system for figuring things out for me.


Video explaining the advancement of robotic AI and the dramatic decrease in their cost to mass produce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S55 ... PE&index=2

New HD add-fac which can print higher resolution items faster than previous 3d printers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihR9SX7dgRo

I cannot find the video demonstration of the exosuit that could add 400lbs to the user's STR, I will continue looking for it off and on and edit this post when I come across it. In way of apology, have a video about the hoverbike! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpko3CPHonQ

[Grayhome]

Buuuuut... shouldn't it be easy for an autonomous drone to tell the difference between a Loroi and Umaki and if not, could not all combatants wear electronic markers wearing transmitting a "friendly" tag.

By TL 9 I would expect they would have auto-locking mechanisms in guns that prevent firing when a target displays a friendly signature via an electronic badge. For example if you pointed a loaded gun with the "smart" upgrade at a friendly that was five feet away from you and pulled the trigger the gun would be "smart" enough to read the friend or foe badge being transmitted from the friendly and not fire.

Would be a problem if a hostile got access to the friend or foe codes though, hoo-boy.

[JQBogus]

Got a hold of the codes, or just stripped the IFF badges off of the killed or the captured.

[dragoongfa]

Buuuuut... shouldn't it be easy for an autonomous drone to tell the difference between a Loroi and Umaki and if not, could not all combatants wear electronic markers wearing transmitting a "friendly" tag.

By TL 9 I would expect they would have auto-locking mechanisms in guns that prevent firing when a target displays a friendly signature via an electronic badge. For example if you pointed a loaded gun with the "smart" upgrade at a friendly that was five feet away from you and pulled the trigger the gun would be "smart" enough to read the friend or foe badge being transmitted from the friendly and not fire.

Would be a problem if a hostile got access to the friend or foe codes though, hoo-boy.

Image recognition is ones best bet, totally passive and no need for IFF since the odds of two different armies having the exact same kind of equipment are near nil even today.

Then add the differences between two distinct species.

EDIT:

snip stuff with overly expensive robots becoming cheaper

To put a long story short, the cheap and easily mass produced tech is always the horribly obsolete one.

Let me put it like this:

Most modern nations (with a semblance of industry) can easily design and mass produce a tank that could be considered state of the art in the WW2 era. The tech has advanced so much that designing it and building an equivalent to WW2 tanks is very easy. The expense would be miniscule, hundreds of thousands of dollars perhaps half a million at the most without the extras.

Modern tanks are an other story, few nations can build modern tanks that are worth a damn. Currently only the USA, Russia and Germany have families of successful mass produced MBTs (China, Japan, Korea and others also produce their own tanks but they all failed to sell them in the international market). With costs that are around 5 mil per unit without any extras.

The problem is that modern tanks have electronic systems, armor and weaponry that horribly outclass anything of the WW2 era. Even outnumbered twenty to one a modern MBT will emerge victorious. Only in ratios of around 30 to 1, one could hope to defeat a modern tank with WW2 tanks. Not only one would have to spend more money to buy more obsolete tanks but the human price to consider is also horrifying.

How does this apply to 'future robots and exoskeletons'?

Simply put when the technology becomes so cheap and easy to mass produce in order to be able to exchange infantry with robots then your robots are already obsolete by the more expensive but harder to produce robots, exoskeletons and tanks. Even if you manage to arm the cheap robots with modern weaponry, robots and automated systems have already fallen into the obsolete due to ECM niche and thus the robots are already useless when faced with the future equivalent of the tank which will carry its own ECM suite. The deciding factor in this case won't be the capability of the robots to move autonomously but the capability of the robots to defend themselves from ever evolving ECM techs.

ECM tech is cheap and ever evolving, currently tech that was brand new an year ago is already obsolete and bypassed. The only escape from the ECM trap is the cheap flesh and blood alternative, flesh and blood cannot be turned off and become inoperable (that's what ECM does, it does not take over something it turns it off or makes it impossible to operate). Regular infantry under a very cheap ECM umbrella (and it is cheap even now) will have an overwhelming advantage against robots. Exoskeletons that rely only on hydraulics are immune to ECM but the problem there is an other thing.

Currently what the armed forces are looking for is not an exoskeleton combat suit that will give super human strength in order to carry the ever increasing combat weight of modern equipment; what armed forces are desperately looking for is a way to either make the soldiers themselves stronger or to provide all terrain robotic helpers that will carry the heaviest equipment until it is needed. By far the cheapest of the two approaches and also the one which provides the best combat capable soldier is the first approach.

The future combat soldier as I see him is very muscular (a mix of diet, training and muscle growth hormones), will be clad in hydraulically assisted armor that merely eases his weight (cheaper than fully self moving exoskeleton and without the issues that come with it) while providing a steady stream of combat drugs (mix of adrenaline and other hormones) directly into his system in order to enhance his strength and reflexes.