Well of Souls Forums

New page... Holiday Surprise Attack! Que the Battle Music!!

https://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider225.html

Cyber-Attack!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wAKcUFp6p4

I do believe KRAK is the most accurate sound effect for an energy weapon like this. I imagine it sounds more like thunder than like the classic trope of a laser chirp.
Good thing the area has been repressurized, with no air to ionize I expect the shot would be invisible and soundless... Far less dramatic.

Behold the might of a hardtrooper I wonder where the brain in that thing is?

The right "arm" already seems to be damaged/missing?
And what threw Beryl back? A kick?
Also: Did she miss? I can´t see any effect?

Other than questions: Merry Xmas everyone!
And Yay! New Page!!

CrimsonFALKE wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 25, 2023 4:55 pm

I wonder where the brain in that thing is?

Hm, either bird brain, or perhaps some sort of "distributed" brain - like a Supraesophageal ganglion ?

D-503 wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 25, 2023 5:26 pm

Also: Did she miss? I can´t see any effect?

It could be that there are multiple Hardtroops breaching the compartment, and Beryl chose to shoot the one with a more dangerous weapon. The only one we see 'on camera' here is already missing an arm, and seems to have no weapon other than its single remaining claw (and sheer bulk). For the moment at least, I choose to assume that Beryl shot a second Hardtroop, one that had an actual energy weapon, and accepted getting rushed by the 'unarmed' Hardtroop as the price of getting two precise shots off.

Hm, can´t see a second one.
But at least Alex can earn some respect now - since male warriors are pretty much unheard of among Loroi/Loroi-lookalikes...

Seems to be their good fortune it doesn't have any ranged weapons (perhaps goes with the missing arm).

First thought was maybe he just got back up, given the missing arm. Doesn't seem to be any of the ones they passed (just a thought). Seems a little unlikely fireblade would leave any alive, since she should be able to psychically tell if a downed one is fully dead or not, I would think? If true, maybe this one suffered some battle damage wiping out one of the other teams, before coming to the magazines?

{Repost from Outsider-Discord channel}

Wait...! From the angle and action did the hardtrooper just body-check Beryl.. or attempt to trample her?

"Cyber - HEAD BUTT!"

Speaking of which... that "Head" does not look durable enough to actually be containing the brain... and such an obvious target too... just a sensor appendage maybe?

Looks pretty durable to me?

Yeah the human skull and many other mammalian analogues aren't exactly paragons of durability either; the best grey matter defense for them is avoiding trauma to that area to begin with. Unless you are one of the few species that have extra dense plating, extra shock absorbing tissue, and other features to keep the grey matter intact.

And that hard trooper looks like it could potentially retract its head to some degree to "harden" it against damage. Unsure if that's something specific to the nature of the cybernetic upgrades they go through or if it is simply replicating a feature of their baseline physiology.

D-503 wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 25, 2023 5:31 pm

CrimsonFALKE wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 25, 2023 4:55 pm

I wonder where the brain in that thing is?

Hm, either bird brain, or perhaps some sort of "distributed" brain - like a Supraesophageal ganglion ?

its not in the head that's for sure.

If this thing was designed for combat, the brain and other vital organs are likely in the center of mass, perhaps nearer to the back than the front, giving them maximum amount of protection.

However, that bit where the "neck" feeds into the body looks like a tempting target to me. Even if the shot doesn't penetrate deeper, the violent removal of its primary sensor cluster would probably leave it disoriented for a moment.

Again, there is a reason most animals have their brain inside the head: proximity to sensory apparatus and thus quicker response to stimulus.

Given that Umiak hardtroops are likely designed almost purely to fight Loroi (after 25 years of war and all that), one can argue that maybe they've accepted a lower reaction time in favor of possibly greater survivability. Given that Loroi have, essentially, permanent wallhacks, any Umiak is *not* likely to get the drop on her. The Umiak who designed the current generation of hardtroops may have accepted a fraction-of-a-second-slower reaction time if it meant that the brain of the soldier in question would have a better chance to survive the Loroi's weapons fire long enough to get its own shots off.

That said, it seems that the hardtroops we see here managed to surprise the Loroi, so maybe whatever farsense-blocking tool they have works intermittently even at such close range? But if we take Jardin's visions on Page-210 as being him peeking into the Loroi 'wallhack-o-vision', it appears that the Umiak on the shuttle *weren't* invisible to detection. *shrug*

Shoot the neck.

From Umiac Insider page:

the forward pair of legs can also be used to strike (in the manner of a rearing horse)

Looks like this one do exactly that.

I'd think that because they are cyborgs its pretty unlikely they moved the brain into the chest. Maybe it was already located there, but obviously nothing on earth is designed that way. You'd need a thick nervous cord carrying the various signals into the chest (which would only serve that purpose and nothing else), as an additional complication to the latency. You'd be better off putting a fair bit of signal processing into the head next to the eyes to cut down on the amount of nervous cord you'd need (you could send processed/abstracted information into the chest instead of separate signals from every rod and cone in the eye), and I would argue normally more and more responsibility will move into that area due to latency and complexity reasons.

Its also worth pointing out that in any case even if you survive having your head blown off, you are still de facto a mission-kill because you are blind, and can probably never be fixed. Maybe they can give back eyesight artificially, at which point yeah you may as well just give the thing full artificial 360 vision and keep the actual head and brain inside of the armor.

I don't think the Umiak half-step ANYTHING! Looking at the hard troopers they only vaguely resemble the natural Umiak form. We are using the term "cyborg"... but I think a closer terminology would be Full-Conversion Borg. The Hard Troopers don't 'seem' to have ANY flesh at all they are not cyborgs.. they are basically a brain-in-a-can inside a Mech. A "Ghost in the Shell"~Major Kusinagi full Borg body. To Weaken a full Umiak-morphic Borgform with biological parts in any load-bearing portion of the Borg's structure would be inefficient. Any biological organs... not for physical or manual dexterity or acuity would be unnecessary with far more efficient bio-mechanical or fully artificial organs to sustain brain functions. Again an inefficiency the Umiak would not find likely acceptable. The Hardtroopers are walking Tanks.. literally only vaguely resembling Umiak so they can fit in their ship's hallways!

I'm sure the Umiak may indeed have Heavy Hardtroopers who are more Battlefield war-vehicle than Umiak-form Borg. Its just efficient, and coldly effective. Why keep biological weakness in a solider unit when far more size-efficient and durable artificial parts could do the job... and be mass produced?

So I'm pretty sure the Umiak Brain-in-a-can in the chest is the standard for Hardtroopers for durability and efficiency.

It's also worth pointing out that (if one assumes that aliens such as the Umiak have nerves that work similarly to ours) 'upgrading' from biochemical/electric signal transmission via biological nerves to a pure-electric signal transmission via cables would significantly reduce their reaction time, even if the brain were moved further away from the optical sensors.

So if we assume that literally the only biological part left in a hardtroop is the brain itself, you can put that brain anywhere in the main body and *still* have at least as fast reaction times for visual processing as a 'normal' Umiak would.