Grayhome wrote:
I believe Arioch has already stated that psychokinetics can use their telekinetic abilities to "feel around" for targets to use their abilities upon; or that the Loroi in the room can simply triangulate to the Loroi in the hall where the humans are in relation to herself but if that's the way you want to take the story, ok.
That would be wasting time in a combat situation, I imagine something like a blind person snooping around with their hands; just a little bit quicker. In a combat environment with lots of chaotic movement it wouldn't mean much. Maybe it would be of use in a search and destroy mission where the opposition is in hiding.
I didn't say it wouldn't be difficult dragoonfa. I'm just saying that the humans depicted so far are diplomat wizards.
They are the best of the Scout corps, trained for first contact situations while they were drilled non stop in order to know what to do and what the stakes are.
EDIT2: Still just humans though.
I see little evidence supporting the theory that the Loroi treat their friends well (by any widely accepted definition of the of the word "well"). I would define the relationships that the Loroi enjoy with their non-Loroi allies as parasitic. The Loroi use aliens to do things that they are too lazy, too stupid, or too arrogant to do themselves and offer a certain degree of incompetent protection to their alien "friends" for those reasons and those reasons only. I refuse to qualify that as "friendship" of any kind. That the Umiak treat their "friends" worse by comparison is not particularly endearing the Loroi to me as it seems to be to other members of the forum.
The Neridi, Barsam and Pipolsid are expanding on new planets, they are represented on the Assembly and have a lot of Loroi industrial capability outsourced to them. The Golim are under a weird position, nominally independent/union members but they are telepathically mesmerized when close to Loroi; the Loroi have taken measures to limit this. The Delrias attacked the Loroi early on and lost. Although occupied they have been left to tend their own internal affairs as long as they don't cause trouble to the Loroi, they have been so cooperative that they are allowed to send delegates to the assembly even if they don't have official power. The Arekka were at war with the Loroi and although a faction is still nominally independent they are considered friendly to the Loroi. The Mannadi wars started when the Mannadi attacked the Pipolsid and the Neridi who were Loroi allies and the Loroi came to their rescue. They Mannadi ended with them being occupied by the Loroi but highly uncooperative with a widespread terrorist actions against the Loroi. The Loroi killed most of them and quarantined the rest.
Out of all of the above the Loroi have never started a war, they or their allies were attacked and the Loroi won the war (with the exception of the 3rd Mannadi war which the Loroi started in order to knock out a proven hostile power). Out of all the species they conquered, the Loroi have left one with nominal autonomy, the other is split like Ireland and the third constantly pissed off the Loroi until they snapped.
Compare and contrast the above with how the Umiak overtax their allies, failing to protect them and their Umiak supremacist attitudes.
That the Loroi lowered their guard before the current war and allowed the Umiak to catch them by surprise really screams at me that they are not capable of, nor are they interested in, protecting anyone. They're far too busy admiring their own reflections in the mirror and playing with their hair. They have supremely failed in their duties and they own that now, and all of the deaths and destruction that failure has resulted in.
The USSR was attacked by the Germans by a surprise attack that the Soviets didn't want to see coming. The Germans crushed all Soviet armies in their wake, taking millions as prisoners, they raped and pillaged at will, they were lauded as heroes in the Baltics and East Ukraine and ended up with surrounding Leningrad and being a few dozen kilometers away from Moscow.
The USA miscalculated Japanese intentions and didn't expect that the Japs will choose war. They ended up with the attack of Pearl Harbor, losing the Philippines (a US protectorate with US troops occupying it) and seeing the Japs win battle after battle.
With your logic the safe bet for a small Latin American or African nation would be to ally itself with the Axis. We know how WW2 ended and we know that German and Japanese propaganda painted their adversaries as degenerate cowards who preferred an easy life over war and they would be overrun quickly.
I see little evidence that the Loroi have any real friends, even amongst their own species. From what I gather from the fluff, in early Loroi history one Loroi faction made an expedition off world, nabbed some advanced psi-tech from a dead civilization and started murder/enslaving every other Loroi faction it could find. Then, once all opposing Loroi factions were murder/enslaved, they started expanding that outwards. There is a lot of bad blood boiling around in the pointy ear's empire stew, and the only thing keeping the lid on it is the threat of violence and fear; also the "promotion" of political undesirables to the frontline in rickety old tubs that haven't seen upgrades or refits in ages (see the Tempest for examples of this).
See above for how the Loroi treated aliens and the murder/enslaving of fellow Loroi part is a misunderstanding from your part. The Loroi loathe slavery and they didn't massacre their subdued Loroi adversaries, the Loroi to Loroi wars were 'honorable' with armies fighting each other on the open field, the loser accepted defeat and the winner didn't massacre civilians for sport. As for Stillstorm and Tempest, I don't think that Stillstorm ever wanted to be anywhere else than the front lines and I don't think that Tempest hasn't received refits.
I think that you are basing all of the above in misunderstanding the Insider and the miscellaneous Loroi questions thread.
I strongly assume that humanity will exploit all of these points later on in the comic to devastating effect. I don't really expect the current Loroi empire to survive it's contact with humanity or that even that it deserves too. I also don't expect that the Loroi will long remain the sole wielders of psionic abilities.
If they even are at the time of me writing this.
There are only bad option and worse options here, that I can see.
We shall see what we shall see in the story.
EDIT: Damn, wrong formating
EDIT2: Need to stop writing stuff after hours with barely any sleep.