Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

[Mithramuse]

Piloting anything requires thinking in Russian.

Nope, Chekov was the navigator, the pilot was Sulu.

Try this instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky-uzsw0kqw

[Ithekro]

After Humanity's/Alex's introduction to the Loroi and Umiak, what are the chances of they deciding that Humanity is not worth the effort to invade/ally with during the current war?

[GeoModder]

After Humanity's/Alex's introduction to the Loroi and Umiak, what are the chances of they deciding that Humanity is not worth the effort to invade/ally with during the current war?

I think somewhere between slim and none.

[inxsi]

Did anyone ever estimate roughly how long it would take humans with their current 5g or 6g acceleration limit to reach Loroi space? I was wondering what the time frame would be for trade missions launched by humanity.

[GeoModder]

It took the Bellarmine 58 days to reach Naam. The Strike Group up to a week to arrive at Leido Crossroads, right at the (contested) border of the Union. Add another couple of days to reach a planet in Azimol or Enedd.

[spunkgyu]

Are humans currently doing any terraforming projects?

[GeoModder]

Are humans currently doing any terraforming projects?

I believe on the colony worlds Mars and Esperanza.
Check out the Terran pages on the Insider section.

[Arioch]

Are humans currently doing any terraforming projects?

I believe on the colony worlds Mars and Esperanza.
Check out the Terran pages on the Insider section.

That's correct.

[Krzysztof]

Can Alex speak any foreign language, apart from english and trade?

Did the Orgus maps have any Umiak Worlds marked? I think i read somewhere, that they did trade after all. This brings me to the most important question, if Humanity knew the location of any umiak worlds (and certainly the location of umiak controlled orgus), then there would be no reason to use a scouting expedition to find them if they wanted to contact them. Can we assume from this that the TCA has already decided what side it wishes to support? ("this mission is not about making the safe choice", as captain Hamilton says)

Instructions from the TCA on what Alex can and can not do were mentioned and on page 177 Alex mentions security guidelines. Can you elaborate on these? What can Alex reveal to the loroi about humanity?

Did the umiak open the caskets containing the Bellarmine crew? Does the stray realize by now there are Loroi lookalikes, who are not loroi? You wrote that umiak crew are raised by the state and know very little about things that are not directly connected to their jobs, do they know of the template species theory?

[Arioch]

Can Alex speak any foreign language, apart from english and trade?

Alex has some knowledge of French and Latin.

Did the Orgus maps have any Umiak Worlds marked? I think i read somewhere, that they did trade after all. This brings me to the most important question, if Humanity knew the location of any umiak worlds (and certainly the location of umiak controlled orgus), then there would be no reason to use a scouting expedition to find them if they wanted to contact them. Can we assume from this that the TCA has already decided what side it wishes to support? ("this mission is not about making the safe choice", as captain Hamilton says)

The Orgus never visited Umiak territory, but they certainly know where it is, and there are obviously known systems where Umiak can be encountered (including the Orgus homeworld itself). Though they Orgus never had any contact with the Loroi, they certainly know the general location of Union territory.

Bellarmine was one of five scout ships sent to different locations. Alex does not know the specific targets or instructions of the other four ships, but his understanding is that the TCA intended to make a broad effort to contact both sides, engage them in talks (preferably at the Prabhu relay or even in Human territory), and try to negotiate the best deal. At present Alex has no knowledge of what became of the other four scouts, so I can't get much deeper into that.

Instructions from the TCA on what Alex can and can not do were mentioned and on page 177 Alex mentions security guidelines. Can you elaborate on these? What can Alex reveal to the loroi about humanity?

The scout crews were instructed to attempt to establish diplomatic contact while revealing as little sensitive information as possible, but with the understanding that this presented a difficult trade-off -- they would have to reveal at least something. Obviously sensitive national security information including specific military statistics would be undesirable to reveal (and most of the crewmen wouldn't have this information anyway), but what they were taught was to use judgment to choose under what circumstances what information was prudent to release.

Did the umiak open the caskets containing the Bellarmine crew? Does the stray realize by now there are Loroi lookalikes, who are not loroi? You wrote that umiak crew are raised by the state and know very little about things that are not directly connected to their jobs, do they know of the template species theory?

The Umiak would certainly have done at least a cursory investigation of the contents of the shuttle, but it's not clear exactly what they made of it or what they would have been able to communicate to their chain of command, given their current location and the limits on communication. It's not clear whether they would even immediately recognize that the bodies were not Loroi, and they probably didn't have time for a thorough examination. They presumably reported that they recovered some enemy materials, but it's not clear how far that report went or what was made of it. I don't think the Umiak ship (KTKh-3827) was in the same star system as The Stray at any time during the period between the shuttle recovery and the current Loroi takeover action, and that ship was not directly under his command, so there's no guarantee that he was even aware that the shuttle was recovered.

[Gudo]

Are TCA mission planners anticipating having an advantage over either the Union or Hierarchy in any particular area? Production rates, niche tech, internal cohesion, geography, etc? Are the Orgus remaining in human space (and potentially contributing to human mobilization), and how is the TCA attempting to proactively adapt to anticipated conditions?

[Arioch]

Are TCA mission planners anticipating having an advantage over either the Union or Hierarchy in any particular area? Production rates, niche tech, internal cohesion, geography, etc? Are the Orgus remaining in human space (and potentially contributing to human mobilization), and how is the TCA attempting to proactively adapt to anticipated conditions?

One of the compelling priorities behind the scout mission was to collect information, since the TCA had so little. Prior to the scout mission they had only Orgus sources, and as mentioned above, the Orgus had very limited knowledge about the Hierarchy, and only rumor about the Union. Orgus had traded with Umiak and so had met individuals and handled Umiak goods, but the Orgus ship carried its merchant crew, a few traders, and the rest are random refugees; they have no direct knowledge of Orgus government intelligence on the Hierarchy, just random individuals who may have seen an Umiak or handled Umiak tech. And of course humanity has the Orgus ship itself, which is more advanced in terms of powerplant and drive technologies that humanity's current tech. Although the Orgus refugees have no direct knowledge of Umiak weapons systems, they know that they are reputed to be well ahead of what the Orgus had (though the engineering staff of the merchant ship have very little expertise in even Orgus weaponry).

All the TCA knows is that they are well behind the major combatants in technology, military size and number of planets. They have no way of knowing specifically how far behind or to what degree in which area.

Humanity has scientists and engineers examining and reverse-engineering the Orgus vessel, and they are utilizing volunteer Orgus advisors to assist in this and anywhere else they might be useful (Alex's class in Trade language included some Orgus assistants). The TCA has initiated crash building programs, including re-starting several ships that had been laid down but mothballed due to previous budget cuts (including two heavy cruisers), and accelerated previous planned upgrades (like the Mjolnir). But it has been less than a year since contact, and these things take time.

[Zorg56]

Some of the larger colonies at the moment of comic events are reaching 100+ mln people living there, assuming modern day logistics that would require goods movement between colonies and earth measured in hundreds of millions of tons per annum, espicially since colonies are fast growing and require a lot of heavy machinery.
Why TCA fleet is so tiny?
Why price of relocation to the colonies is unaccessible to most of the people? Cost of getting stuff into orbit should have massively decreased and thats like 90% of the whole deal.

[Arioch]

Some of the larger colonies at the moment of comic events are reaching 100+ mln people living there, assuming modern day logistics that would require goods movement between colonies and earth measured in hundreds of millions of tons per annum, espicially since colonies are fast growing and require a lot of heavy machinery.
Why TCA fleet is so tiny?
Why price of relocation to the colonies is unaccessible to most of the people? Cost of getting stuff into orbit should have massively decreased and thats like 90% of the whole deal.

Aldea is the only large extrasolar colony, and the majority of its population was born there over almost three generations. Because the Helium-3 trade is so valuable, there is a lot of traffic in people, materials and goods between Sol and Aldea, but that doesn't mean it's not expensive. The energy cost of jump drive and pushing starships around systems (on human-friendly timescales) is presumably much larger than the cost of lifting payload into orbit.

The TCA fleet is small because there hasn't been a need for a larger one. The Colonial Fleet was formed during a period of international tension when there was a threat of interstellar war between Earth interests and some of the Aldea colonies, but that tension was resolved and is not currently present. Local police and administration is mostly the responsibility of local governments, so aside from deterrence the only job that the TCA has is interstellar patrol/enforcement, exploration and international search & rescue. The small fleet of heavy starships the TCA built for the Aldea crisis is overkill for international patrol, which is why after tensions de-escalated they scaled back on the planned number of cruisers and the ones they completed spent most of their time in space dock.

Obviously with alien contact, the situation has changed.