Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

SaintofM wrote:WHen you say they change personas, is it like with the Dr. In Doctor Who in a bit?

While in that example the body the regeneration changes the Doctor into a completely difference person both body and mind but in this case would it just Change the mind? Like Goofball previous life to ultra serious the next?
I'm not up to date on the latest, but I never got the impression that the Doctor's personality changed much, aside from being played by a different actor.

It's kind of like a mid-life crisis, except in reverse. Instead of selling his station wagon to buy a corvette, and changing his name from Ed to Wildfire and moving to Los Angeles to start a film acting career, a Neridi male might wake up one morning after a lengthy career as a traveling performer, and suddenly feel that all that sex and wild living amounted to nothing... and change his name from Cousin Wildfire to Brother Copperfinder, quit his job and enroll in school to study geology.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by SaintofM »

Do any of the races/factions use "cone art."

for those that do not know what the term is, painting designs or pictures on a military vehicle, most notably airplanes such as the shark's mouth on warthog airplane.

Or the pinups and cartoons on the liberty bell bombers.

Or even kill counts on the side of dog fighters


If so are there any regulations to this like nothing too scandalous or sexual on modern vehicles.

Some examples past and present.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

SaintofM wrote:Do any of the races/factions use "cone art."
I thought I had answered this, but I suppose I must have started and then got distracted. It was a busy holiday season. The family has multiple birthdays in December.

Anyway, Loroi have rules about customized vehicle markings: they are normally allowed only as a sort of unit citation (such as the special markings on Tsunami or Black Razor). But I think as you get down to the level of individual fighters or tanks, there is probably a lot more leeway for customization (especially as combat situations get more dire and troops care less about arbitrary rules.)

I can easily imagine Loroi painting custom designs on munitions. No one's going to complain about that.

Umiak paint jobs are all custom (though most follow a theme), and frequently feature written slogans or messages. A common one (as seen on the missile cruiser in the third panel of page 75) is "k-k-k-z" which means "do!" Another is a double- or triple-downward-pointing chevron ("cht-cht-cht"), which is an expression of bemusement, sort of the Umiak equivalent of painting a yellow smiley face on your ship.

I imagine Umiak art (at least as regards ship decoration) as being analogous to Arabesque art: it features abstract patterns and stylized lettering, but generally not pictoral representations of people or most real-world objects.

Fenrias/Delrias/Morat culture seems like it might go into something like "Flying Tiger" adornments, and maybe we'll see something like this on Morat ships. These designs are still in flux; I think I know what they look like, but I haven't yet drawn a satisfactory representation of it.


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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Daegondrake »

How do the umiak point defense blasters compare to the lorois because it looks like they have very few, is it because the loroi don't field the amount of torpedoes to warrant such an investment.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

Daegondrake wrote:How do the umiak point defense blasters compare to the lorois because it looks like they have very few, is it because the loroi don't field the amount of torpedoes to warrant such an investment.
By doctrine, the Umiak mostly engage enemy torpedoes and fighters with their main batteries. Because they outnumber the Loroi in most engagements, and the Loroi usually don't conduct massed torpedo attacks, the Umiak have mostly been able to get away with this, though individual ships can be overwhelmed by large numbers of torpedoes (hence the Loroi use of tolot blisters). Some of the larger Umiak vessels do mount additional dedicated point defense weaponry, but for the most part the Umiak counter is to simply build more vessels. If an Umiak commander is particularly concerned about Loroi torpedo attacks, it can reserve some of the unit's gunboats for defense.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by SaintofM »

On the odd chance one of the shells has to go into close combat or a firefight, say a boarding operation or a raid of a key location they want, would those bred for this task have their armor augmented (genetically to cybernetically) for blows to glans of of them like medieval plate armor or a shield? Would they also have many interwoven layers built in to act a as a natural bullet resistant vest (I say bullet resistant because bullet proof technically doesn't exist).

I am assuming energy based weapons, but also thinking of bullets as well.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Ithekro »

Hopefully not bullets. Things that can make holes in a starship are not something you want to be using if you want to keep it. Energy weapons that won't put a hole in the bulkhead are ideal. Melee weapons maybe also be useful in such close quarters, though the Loroi ships appear to have large hallways and rooms.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

An ordinary Umiak has only its own natural carapace for protection, which is reasonably tough (it's the consistency of bone with a slightly harder surface), but is not proof against high-tech weaponry.

Umiak dedicated to fighting are known as Hardtroops, and they are extensively modified for the job, usually having their carapaces replaced by armored exoskeletons. More on them here: https://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vi ... 315#p19315

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Entity325 »

I have a question. I apologize if it's been asked already, but given the nature, I'm fairly sure it hasn't. Also, in case my assumptions are right, I'll enclose it in spoiler tags.
SpoilerShow
How long have the Umiak had active human forces in their fleet?
I was catching up today, and a couple of the pages from mid-late last year almost have it in neon lights that they do. Honestly I'm mostly asking because it frustrates me to no end when characters in a work are required to not make jarringly obvious realizations just because it's convenient to the plot.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

Entity325 wrote:How long have the Umiak had active human forces in their fleet?
If humanity had already made contact with the Umiak (which one supposes to be a requirement for the Umiak to have human forces in their fleet), why would they be sending out an alien contact expedition? Why put human scout crews in the path of an Umiak offensive if they're part of it?

I'm not a huge fan of the "everything you have been told is a lie" storytelling trick... it can work, but I think that story "twists" work best when they fit within the facts as they've been presented. Exposition in science fiction is difficult enough without making the reader wonder when he's being lied to, especially when it's by the narrator.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by SaintofM »

This is going to sound a little RoboTechy, but have anyone in the main story's conflict or soon to be a part of it have used music as psycological warfair?

Durring the Iraq Wars, soldiers would have speakers blasting Gangster Rap and Heavy Metal to demoralize the enemy. ANd I can only imagin having the Barny Song playing on max in an enemy ship could count as a war crime.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Entity325 »

Interesting. I assumed the profusion of cases where it's mentioned that the Farseers are having trouble detecting Umiak forces in the Steppes were building up to something in particular, but re-reading from the beginning again suggests that phenomenon is older than the Bellarmine's mission. I was considering that the Umiak may have been abducting humans unknown for some time.

That, plus the fact that really, the only thing Humanity have to offer the Loroi in the conflict is the critical objective of keeping Human operatives out of Umiak hands at any cost, but I believe that's a discussion for a different thread.

As for narrators, I strongly considered the possibility that Ensign Jardin can't tell the reader something he doesn't know himself. Honestly, he doesn't come off as very smart. I sincerely hope that's deliberate.

[edit]
Beryl being a researcher assigned to finding some way to defeat humans' telepathic "stealth" field also strikes me as somewhat more directed and viable a motivation than just being insatiably curious, but again, discussion for a different thread.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Werra »

Are there enough Soia-Liron species to form a viable, diverse eco-system on their own? If not, what types are missing?

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

Werra wrote:Are there enough Soia-Liron species to form a viable, diverse eco-system on their own? If not, what types are missing?
Viable, but not very diverse. To begin with, they seem to have represented a selection of terraforming and farming organisms -- kind of a subset of an ecosystem -- and so there are many niches that are not filled (notably pests and large-scale predators). The majority of these species did not survive the bombardments at the end of the Soia era, so there are definitely gaps. But most of the surviving organisms do not require symbiotic relationships to survive (for example, misesa and nagen and sibreg can acquire the nutrients they need without the help of soil symbionts (like endophytic fungi or bacteria, or earthworm-like creatures to enrich the soil).

There are many worlds with Soia-Liron organisms, and the situation on each one is different. Since the development of starflight, some of these gaps have been filled with imported organisms from other planets (some Soia-Liron, some not). Deinar, for example, was missing large herbivores and most of the small organisms that would help with decomposition of plant matter, so the dead plant matter was building up in a situation similar to Earth's Carboniferous era, in large-scale peat bogs.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Daegondrake »

I've been rereading the insider page about the umiak hierarchy and it says the orgus, wanted to keep there contracts exclusive up arm. Does that mean there territory reaches up to and possibly through the Orion arm.I

That'd make there territory substantially bigger than the known players, it could explain there industrial/infrastructure advantages.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

Daegondrake wrote:I've been rereading the insider page about the umiak hierarchy and it says the orgus, wanted to keep there contracts exclusive up arm. Does that mean there territory reaches up to and possibly through the Orion arm.I

That'd make there territory substantially bigger than the known players, it could explain there industrial/infrastructure advantages.
The contacts they're trading with up-arm are outside their own territory, which is relatively small.

"The Periphery" region, marked on the map below, is made up of a number of independent nations, of which the Orgus are just one. The "up arm" trading contacts refer to civilizations farther up the arm, outside the Local Bubble (in the direction indicated by the arrow labeled "Up Orion Arm").

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Daegondrake »

My bad I must've been looking at an older version to that map.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by RBA-Wintrow »

Can we see a full body image of a Golim? I read one was planned to be shown as Alexander was brought to the bridge, but it was scrapped as distracting. It doesn't seem like we'll be seeing one anytime soon.

Edit: How have I not noticed you have a patreon? I've followed Outsider for almost two decades!

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