Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread
Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2019 6:29 pm
Something about "no sanzai broadcasting" may be?
https://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/
https://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=844
I tend to keep on the straight and narrow, so I haven't, but I just assumed a race of women wouldn't stand for a dirty cellArioch wrote:The texture is actually based on a photo of the rear of a garbage truck. I'm not sure what it says.boldilocks wrote:On this page:
http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider032.html
what do the prohibition signs actually signify?
I'm guessing the left-most one says "no knives", or "no weapons"?
Also, is it normal on loroi vessels to have cells in a completely different color / unpainted and dilapidated/dirty?
If you've ever seen the inside of a real jail cell (and unfortunately I have), they tend to be rather untidy.
I used to think the same about women because of how tidy my mother and my grandmothers are. My sister and all of my exes shattered that belief without even trying.boldilocks wrote:I tend to keep on the straight and narrow, so I haven't, but I just assumed a race of women wouldn't stand for a dirty cell
Ah, so that caused the hiatus in 06. :/Arioch wrote: If you've ever seen the inside of a real jail cell (and unfortunately I have), they tend to be rather untidy.
Decoration and customization should be kept to private spaces aboard a military vessel, I think.Werra wrote:The Loroi seem extremely orderly actually. There is not a single piece of decoration on all of Tempest (that we've seen) that wasn't an official installment. Where's all the clutter and graphic customization any (human) soldiers would fill their posting with in times of high stress? Not even Kilroy has been there.
Is that something Loroi don't do at all or do they just keep it out of the hallways?
I figured as much already. But you're pretty good at keeping those choices consistent with the setting. Fair point on Tempest being a military ship that Needs to be run tightly. I would love to see a Loroi commons area however.Arioch wrote:The backgrounds being relatively plain and free of clutter is a deliberate stylistic choice. It's partly to help fit the style of the hand-drawn foreground characters, and partly to save myself from having to sink even more time than I already do into building the background assets.
Fallschirmjäger, eh?Werra wrote:My question also extends to the Loroi themselves. SG51 is an elite unit in a high risk, high stress environment with an "innovative" supply situation. Under these conditions, any human unit would look like patchwork. An example of what I mean would be the mountaineers from my old unit, who, while wearing the same uniform, had a different kind of boots and the "Edelweiß" too. For such a vast empire, the Loroi seem to be remarkably uniform.
Do this go to equipment as well? Some alterations seem to be tolerated in that we see Stilstorm wearing a dagger and Fireblade usually omit her personal sidearm I am almost sure that she have been given one even if she rarely carries it. I also suspect that regional needs may force alterations but that isn't anything I can expect to see on a ship but special conditions on some planets may require that.Arioch wrote:The Loroi armored uniform is their badge of office; it's an emblem like the sword of a samurai, sacred even beyond military regulation. Custom alterations to the uniform are not tolerated except in the case of medals, and these are usually unit citations rather than individual honors, and generally seen only in infantry units and not usually in the fleet. Fleet unit citations are usually displayed on the ship itself (as with the special markings on Black Razor and Tsunami).
However, individuals can customize their hairstyles, and as we have seen, some have tattoos or other personalized decorations.
Does this lead to situations where a ship's crew are loathe to abandon a vessel that has been rendered dangerous to them if it bears such displays?Arioch wrote:Fleet unit citations are usually displayed on the ship itself (as with the special markings on Black Razor and Tsunami).
I don't think an army that required every soldier to ritually carry the exact same equipment would be a very effective army. As you observed, it should be evident that different Loroi carry different equipment.Sweforce wrote:Do this go to equipment as well? Some alterations seem to be tolerated in that we see Stilstorm wearing a dagger and Fireblade usually omit her personal sidearm I am almost sure that she have been given one even if she rarely carries it. I also suspect that regional needs may force alterations but that isn't anything I can expect to see on a ship but special conditions on some planets may require that.
There is no requirement that all Loroi be identical; you can see that there are quite a few variants of the uniform based on rank and title, and even what their current duty is (Fireblade changed from a dress/duty uniform into combat armor). All I meant was that personalized non-regulation alterations to uniform are not generally allowed (which, I think, is not unusual in the military world).Sweforce wrote:How do the loroi handle uniform alterations like a new model are taken into production, are both new and old variants use side by side for a while or would they go for a specific date when everyone in the entire union are expected to make a switch? It seem wasetful to me ig the change is minor, especially if it isn't really an upgrade but a modification done specifically to make them easier/cheaper to produce.
I would like to think that any proud crew would be reluctant to abandon a working vessel as long as there was a chance to save it, regardless of what special markings it carried. I think in a war situation like this you have to rate the operation of the ship higher than the survival of the crew. But in the case of a ship that's in imminent danger of exploding, just jumping out the airlock won't save you, so you're probably better off to stay at your post and try to work the problem. For Winter Tide, I don't think there was adequate time or a clear enough assessment of the problem to really consider evacuation.CF2 wrote:Does this lead to situations where a ship's crew are loathe to abandon a vessel that has been rendered dangerous to them if it bears such displays?Arioch wrote:Fleet unit citations are usually displayed on the ship itself (as with the special markings on Black Razor and Tsunami).
Or was the crew of Winter Tide simply unlucky rather than reluctant?
I came to think of those "almost never work" warp core dumping systems they have in Star Trek. The only time that I remember that it DID work it didn't explode but was stolen!Arioch wrote:I would like to think that any proud crew would be reluctant to abandon a working vessel as long as there was a chance to save it, regardless of what special markings it carried. I think in a war situation like this you have to rate the operation of the ship higher than the survival of the crew. But in the case of a ship that's in imminent danger of exploding, just jumping out the airlock won't save you, so you're probably better off to stay at your post and try to work the problem. For Winter Tide, I don't think there was adequate time or a clear enough assessment of the problem to really consider evacuation.
Taimat reactors do have an emergency measure in which you can vent the fuel into space, but since some of it will ignite in the process as it boils, this is a drastic measure that's likely to severely damage the ship.Sweforce wrote:I came to think of those "almost never work" warp core dumping systems they have in Star Trek. The only time that I remember that it DID work it didn't explode but was stolen!
Joke aside, regarding Star Trek, do you imagine that the powers in Outsiderverse have similar (but hopefully working) systems?
In addition to the martial nature of Loroi society which considers the risk of death to be just a necessary part of the job, one must consider the questionable value of turning your warship into an extremely expensive lifeboat when you are fighting an enemy that wants your species to stop existing, and is not obliged to observe rules of prisoner treatment.Sweforce wrote:Above lead to another problem, our tendency to apply our CURRENT rules of engagement on a fictional or historical situation. And also ignoring cultural differences. In ancient times it was perfectly fine to take slaves and massacre the defenders of a fortress/city that resisted for to long. This didn't mean that there wasn't rules of war, they where just different.
One of the concepts I have been working in my head in regards to 'ejecting' an unstable reactor/drive was to have them on protruding nacelles that would be cutoff when the drive was going critical. At first I expected that the Loroi would have a similar mechanism in place, their engines are ideally suited in this regard. The main problem would be to have a system that would be able to do that without sacrificing structural integrity. My 'handwave' was to have an 'inert' explosive placed in key areas, said explosive should be inert and stable even under extreme circumstances and would only act after a deliberate procedure is triggered by the crew.Arioch wrote:Taimat reactors do have an emergency measure in which you can vent the fuel into space, but since some of it will ignite in the process as it boils, this is a drastic measure that's likely to severely damage the ship.Sweforce wrote:I came to think of those "almost never work" warp core dumping systems they have in Star Trek. The only time that I remember that it DID work it didn't explode but was stolen!
Joke aside, regarding Star Trek, do you imagine that the powers in Outsiderverse have similar (but hopefully working) systems?
I don't think it would be practical to design a reactor, especially for a warship, that could be neatly ejected from a ship that would not immediately explode without its associated regulation and cooling infrastructure, much less one that could remain intact so that you can go back and pick it up later. Even if you had reactor technology that allowed you to design an ejectable core, on a warship do you really want to put your most critical and vulnerable system close to the surface of the hull behind a door that says "shoot here"? And given the likelihood that something dangerous is going on, how long will this ship survive without main power? This may be one of the dumber things that they've done in Star Trek; I don't think it was added until DS9.
So once you've cut your engines loose, how do you move the rest of the ship to a safe distance before they explode? Federation ships have powerful secondary engines, but Loroi ships would be limited to maneuvering thrusters, so this could only work in a case where you still had one working engine. Otherwise this would require the addition of secondary engines which would serve no purpose except for in this unlikely scenario.dragoongfa wrote:One of the concepts I have been working in my head in regards to 'ejecting' an unstable reactor/drive was to have them on protruding nacelles that would be cutoff when the drive was going critical. At first I expected that the Loroi would have a similar mechanism in place, their engines are ideally suited in this regard. The main problem would be to have a system that would be able to do that without sacrificing structural integrity. My 'handwave' was to have an 'inert' explosive placed in key areas, said explosive should be inert and stable even under extreme circumstances and would only act after a deliberate procedure is triggered by the crew.
Engineless 300m+ warships are not as easy to transport as a tank. Battles rarely take place in systems with shipyards, so the hulk would have to be transported by a jump-capable tug. And since the engines nacelles are surely the most expensive part of the ship (including the main armament as well as the reactors and drives), would this really be worth it? Such a hulk seems like it would be a more valuable prize for the enemy than for your own side.dragoongfa wrote:They key reason as to why a space navy would elect to follow such a procedure was to not only save the crew but to also salvage the rest of the ship if they maintain control of the battlefield. Spaceships should be considered more like tanks rather than seaborn ships. As a natural insulator space allows for the reclamation of any equipment left drifting and just like how thousands of tanks that were knocked out were reclaimed and sent back to the fray after battlefield reclamation so too could warships be reclaimed and repaired if given the opportunity.
Sure, you design a fighting vehicle to be able to resist as much damage as is practical, but you may notice that tanks aren't designed to eject their fuel or ammo or engines.dragoongfa wrote:On modern tank designs it is common practice to place the ammo racks in compartments where the blast from their destruction wouldn't transfer to the fighting compartment or the engine itself while the engine and fuel tanks are in separate compartments as well that would allow for the survival of the crew and the rest of the equipment should they be hit.
I think that the perhaps more glaring problem is that there's no reason why an antimatter reactor should be in imminent danger of "going critical" in the first place; since there's no chain reaction, cut from a supply of fuel, the reactor should quit cold. I recall several instances where in TNG they had to invent crises in which the antimatter injectors got "stuck open" causing a runaway reaction... as if there were no failsafes to simply cut the fuel supply. But at least at that point the writers seemed to have understood the basic nature of an antimatter reactor. Fast forward to DS9 in freefall down the technobabble wormhole, and the writers don't even know what to call it anymore (when did the antimatter reactor become a "warp core"? It's got nothing to do with the warp drive).icekatze wrote:Obviously it isn't going to do much good to eject your antimatter when you're in a pitched battle, but since the ships in Star Trek were more multi-purpose, there are lots of situations where they could reasonably expect a tow.
Although to be honest, given the tiny amount of antimatter in the core at any one time, they probably could have just ejected the fuel instead. (And maybe prosecute whoever designed the flow valves that never closed.)
At least they got one thing right IF it is even possible to fold space (probably unlikely) it will require a LOT of energy and even if you just accelerate to a good fraction of the speed of light you will have a massive energy potential built up in the ship in the form of momentum. You could cause a cataclysm on a planet just by ramming into it.Arioch wrote:I think that the perhaps more glaring problem is that there's no reason why an antimatter reactor should be in imminent danger of "going critical" in the first place; since there's no chain reaction, cut from a supply of fuel, the reactor should quit cold. I recall several instances where in TNG they had to invent crises in which the antimatter injectors got "stuck open" causing a runaway reaction... as if there were no failsafes to simply cut the fuel supply. But at least at that point the writers seemed to have understood the basic nature of an antimatter reactor. Fast forward to DS9 in freefall down the technobabble wormhole, and the writers don't even know what to call it anymore (when did the antimatter reactor become a "warp core"? It's got nothing to do with the warp drive).icekatze wrote:Obviously it isn't going to do much good to eject your antimatter when you're in a pitched battle, but since the ships in Star Trek were more multi-purpose, there are lots of situations where they could reasonably expect a tow.
Although to be honest, given the tiny amount of antimatter in the core at any one time, they probably could have just ejected the fuel instead. (And maybe prosecute whoever designed the flow valves that never closed.)
(I guess there could be a problem if the antimatter fuel is losing containment, but presumably the majority of the fuel is not stored in the reactor anyhow, so ejecting the reactor core would not solve this problem.)
At the speeds involved even when 'stationary' the maneuvering thrusters should be enough to be able to move away from the ejected nacelle. The distance that should be covered would be depended on the yield of the explosion but I think that 1000 kilometers should be more than sufficient for a safety distance.Arioch wrote: So once you've cut your engines loose, how do you move the rest of the ship to a safe distance before they explode? Federation ships have powerful secondary engines, but Loroi ships would be limited to maneuvering thrusters, so this could only work in a case where you still had one working engine. Otherwise this would require the addition of secondary engines which would serve no purpose except for in this unlikely scenario.
I never said it would be easy, dedicated salvaging should be part of the operational and procurement doctrine of the navy in question. Such a doctrine would have to involve the following:Engineless 300m+ warships are not as easy to transport as a tank. Battles rarely take place in systems with shipyards, so the hulk would have to be transported by a jump-capable tug. And since the engines nacelles are surely the most expensive part of the ship (including the main armament as well as the reactors and drives), would this really be worth it? Such a hulk seems like it would be a more valuable prize for the enemy than for your own side.
They are designed to be easily replaced and restocked in a timely manner without the need of dedicated facilities, replacing the engine for example is something that can be done in a matter of hours with a heavy duty winch and a replacement engine.Sure, you design a fighting vehicle to be able to resist as much damage as is practical, but you may notice that tanks aren't designed to eject their fuel or ammo or engines.