Pages 121, 122: Followers

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Victor_D
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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by Victor_D »

Krulle wrote:While the Loroi seem to have good replenishing capabilities for their army, still, every pregnant Loroi will need a break of a few months at least.
I don't think manpower is an issue on either side of this war. Both are large interstellar empires with presumably tens of billions of citizens/subjects or more; they could probably easily crew 100 times the number of ships they actually operate. The issue is with war production, as presumably starships on this tech level are rather complex and expensive machines to build.

With Loroi, their main (wo)manpower issue is their caste system; since only warriors can crew starships, they would feel a large-scale loss of veterans. But generally speaking, they can't lose the war by running of warm bodies for their starships because unlike starships, there is plenty of Loroi to conscript if need be.

(Sorry for the gripe; I always cringe when some sci-fi universe with huge interstellar empires fighting makes a big deal about "running out of soldiers". These WW1/WW2 analogies really don't work in space wars, because space wars are mostly waged by ships. And no major WW2/WW1 naval power ever had any problem with manpower in the navy; their main problem was usually "not having enough ships of the right type" or "being outproduced by the enemy 20:1", like Japan).
Last edited by Victor_D on Thu Dec 07, 2017 11:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

Krulle
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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by Krulle »

the replenishing also goes for planets, machinery,....
Likely the mere body count will not impact much, but it can impact.
It causes war fatigue in a population.

And we know the Loroi alread lost complete planetary populations in this war.
Vote for Outsider on TWC: Image
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195

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Arioch
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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by Arioch »

The higher tech the military, the higher the skill and training level required to do each job competently. The danger is not in running out of warm bodies, but in running out of people with sufficient expertise. The Japanese navy in WWII did have crippling manpower shortages in skilled disciplines -- most notably aircraft pilots -- after losses in the early battles, and this had a significant impact on the force's performance in subsequent battles.

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by Krulle »

Which led to the Kamikaze tactics.
Un-/barely trained pilot and a cheap plane.
Seems like the Umiak tactic.

Take care of your own plane, use it until it falls apart and use the last run in a suicide run for your and the tenno's glory.
No retreat.

The Stray recognised that this tactic may be what his admirality wants, but brings little to no effect. So he prefers to bring news home, and possibly scavenge the other ships to improve his own. And come back in greater forces.
Vote for Outsider on TWC: Image
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195

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CF2
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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by CF2 »

Krulle wrote:The Stray recognised that this tactic may be what his admirality wants, but brings little to no effect. So he prefers to bring news home, and possibly scavenge the other ships to improve his own. And come back in greater forces.
If there is ever to be a more personal adversary for Alex then the vague random Umiak that toasted his ship, I'd wager it will be The Stray or others like them.
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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by Victor_D »

Everyone seems to believe it was the Umiak who blew Alex's ship. That's premature, I'd say. (My personal guess is it was the Historians).

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by cacambo43 »

CF2 wrote:
Krulle wrote:The Stray recognised that this tactic may be what his admirality wants, but brings little to no effect. So he prefers to bring news home, and possibly scavenge the other ships to improve his own. And come back in greater forces.
If there is ever to be a more personal adversary for Alex then the vague random Umiak that toasted his ship, I'd wager it will be The Stray or others like them.
I don't think its been established that the Umiak toasted Bellarmine, and I'd be fairly surprised if it was.

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by CF2 »

Victor_D wrote:Everyone seems to believe it was the Umiak who blew Alex's ship. That's premature, I'd say. (My personal guess is it was the Historians).
Why the Historians?
cacambo43 wrote:I don't think its been established that the Umiak toasted Bellarmine, and I'd be fairly surprised if it was.
Why the surprise?
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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by Victor_D »

CF2 wrote:
Victor_D wrote:Everyone seems to believe it was the Umiak who blew Alex's ship. That's premature, I'd say. (My personal guess is it was the Historians).
Why the Historians?
Blind guess, mostly. AFAIK only three races have plasma focus weapons: the Loroi, the Umiak and the Historians. Of them, the Historians are by far the most advanced, so a rudimentary "stealth" on their ship (allowing to escape detection by the fighting Loroi/Umiak fleets and Bellarmine herself) is not out of the question. If Beryl spoke the truth about what kind of a weapon destroyed the Bellarmine, then – given how the Loroi seem honestly baffled (and they are very bad liars to fake it) – this leaves the Umiak and the Historians. I fail to see how destroying unknown alien vessels would play into the Umiak's agenda, so I suspect the Historians, especially because they clearly have some ulterior motives. I wouldn't be surprised if it was them who somehow manipulated the Loroi and Umiak to start fighting each other, in an effort to weaken both their potential adversaries. Maybe the plan backfired when the Umiak invaded them, forcing them to play a more active role in the war rather than stand on the sidelines and watch as the Loroi/Umiak bleed each other white in their own little "WW1 in space".

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

There is another thread from a while back where people discussed their skepticism about who the attacker was. The Vessel That Destroyed The Bellarmine

A quick read through suggests that most people think that there is more to the Bellarmine's destruction than we currently know. Some unidentified third party, possibly the Historians, is a possibility though.

While the Umiak might have decided to engage in random actions to throw off their enemies, their behavior does not make a great deal of sense, if they were the ones who destroyed the Bellarmine.

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by CrimsonFALKE »

They said a new enemy does that mean its a new force or a new foe altogether?

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by cacambo43 »

CF2 wrote:
cacambo43 wrote:I don't think its been established that the Umiak toasted Bellarmine, and I'd be fairly surprised if it was.
Why the surprise?
Because it wouldn't make for a compelling story, in my opinion. I have more faith in Arioch than that. I am also hedging toward the Historians, but maybe not as strongly as some. In my opinion, I/We don't know enough about the Loroi to rule out a faction or some other ally being responsible.

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by boldilocks »

Victor_D wrote:Blind guess, mostly. AFAIK only three races have plasma focus weapons: the Loroi, the Umiak and the Historians. Of them, the Historians are by far the most advanced, so a rudimentary "stealth" on their ship (allowing to escape detection by the fighting Loroi/Umiak fleets and Bellarmine herself) is not out of the question. If Beryl spoke the truth about what kind of a weapon destroyed the Bellarmine, then – given how the Loroi seem honestly baffled (and they are very bad liars to fake it) – this leaves the Umiak and the Historians. I fail to see how destroying unknown alien vessels would play into the Umiak's agenda, so I suspect the Historians, especially because they clearly have some ulterior motives. I wouldn't be surprised if it was them who somehow manipulated the Loroi and Umiak to start fighting each other, in an effort to weaken both their potential adversaries. Maybe the plan backfired when the Umiak invaded them, forcing them to play a more active role in the war rather than stand on the sidelines and watch as the Loroi/Umiak bleed each other white in their own little "WW1 in space".
The attack on the bellarmine was an inside job. There was no plasma lance attack, those are false memories implanted in alex' mind as part of a manchurian infiltration effort disguised as a 'first-contact' mission. Plasma beams can't melt steel fuel tanks; humanity is the patsy, space-google "loose credits" and "intergalactic orgus banking cartel conspiracy kelvin 761.483"!

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by boldilocks »

cacambo43 wrote:Because it wouldn't make for a compelling story, in my opinion. I have more faith in Arioch than that. I am also hedging toward the Historians, but maybe not as strongly as some. In my opinion, I/We don't know enough about the Loroi to rule out a faction or some other ally being responsible.
CJSF
The on-ship conflict going on behind the scenes in part one could have been due to the either accidental or willful destruction of the bellarmine, for example.

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by boldilocks »

Do the loroi actually have any 300m vessels with plasma beams? Seems to be a lot more of those among the umiak.

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

The puzzle pieces don't quite add up. Though it could all be part of some Umiak master plan, it seems highly unlikely that they had some intricate machinations involving the Bellarmine, which they almost certainly couldn't have known about.

Maybe another scout ship made contact with the Umiak somewhere else in their territory, but the chances of them making contact, interrogating the crew, coming up with a plan, and then beating the Bellarmine to the steppes; when they had such a big head start already, seems unlikely.

Klicky-27 must have had a plan when they came to the Steppes with all those sneaky fleets. I can't think of a plausible goal for them to try to negotiate for the Bellarmine's wreckage, that they couldn't have achieved an easier way, if they were the ones to destroy it in the first place. The best I can come up with is that it was an unexpected opportunity to spread disinformation in a believable way, but if the initial operation was so flimsy that they didn't have confidence in its success to begin with, it seems like an odd way to reveal a secret weapon to the enemy.

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by Jayngfet »

There are a few variables one needs to consider. The first is that this would need to be a second ship the Loroi couldn't know about, and the reasons for the first are unique to the species crewing it(but could theoretically be replicated by a sterile ship and robotic crew). The second is that the other ship would either need to have gotten into position before any other ships picked it up, or it would have had to moved without being noticed to get into position at that moment to fire. The third is that whoever shot the Bellarmine had to have some knowledge of who or what it was, since they'd have understood fairly quickly it wasn't actually involved in the war and wasn't armed or hostile, but fired on it anyway.

Occams razor suggests that it was another Terran ship that somehow had non Terran weapons, since the colonial authorities are the only ones that had knowledge of the Bellarmine's route, purpose, and origin. The why's and hows would obviously have to be implausible, but it's the only one with a faction that fits most of the pieces.

The next most likley scenario is the historians, since they have artificial intelligences and weapons that could do that ...but then the historian A.I. on deck doesn't seem aware of what's going on, and there's no reasonable way the historians could know as a larger group since the two civilizations are on different ends of Loroi space and there's no way for them to know about each other.

From there I'd go so far as to say it'd need to be the Soia before the Umiak, since they'd logically need to have known Earths location. But any theoretical modern Soia would be so unpredictable to be a useless guess.

If the Umiak knew the Bellarmine was there but did nothing, but wanted it's crew dead for unspecified reasons, and sacrificed their chance at victory by firing on the Loroi from a surprise flank, they'd essentially need to view destroying that ship as a higher priority than fighting the fight they were already in the middle of.

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

Occam's Razor is not a method of choosing between different results, it is a heuristic for simplifying hypothesis that provide the same results, with the intent of testing as few variables as possible in any given experiment. Simpler hypothesis are easier to test and harder to confuse.

Now, if we're going by some kind of law of simplicity, another Terran ship seems like the least likely possibility. We know from the narrator that the TCA does not have anything remotely like that ship, there's no reason for them to shoot themselves, and there is no necessity for having prior knowledge of their route, purpose, and origin. While the attacking ship was stealthy, the only stealth that the Bellarmine employed was that the Loroi were focused on other things at the time. Anyone in the system could have seen them and boosted in their direction.

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by DevilDalek »

I think that the ship that destroyed the Bellarmine was probably not from Tricky-Klicky's fleet, although I do think they are connected, my personal feelings is the new 'stealth' technology is something that has been give to them as part of a deal from an insider race within the Loroi Union (looking at you here Historians) and the ship that plasma kebabed the Bellarmine was an observer vessel checking the effects of the device or was monitoring the Loroi fleet or even affecting them through the Historians data-construct (although the Loroi hosts are unwilling to permit any access to anymore resources than the one the Historian had onboard the Tempest, that doesn't mean a hidden nearby vessel cant supply more).
To be honest, I do wonder at why they felt the need to destroy the Bellarmine and risk giving away their position if they were already hidden. I mean, the Tempest managed to filter out and recognise the plasma discharges at a later time, so it wouldn't take much more output for them to have been picked up by the Loroi ships who sensors were probably on high alert to detect just such weapon discharges in the Combat theatre. So there must have been some absolute need to eradicate the Bellarmine.

Or it could be something totally different.

I however am waiting for Alex to use the remains of the Bellarmine that were put on board the transport to build a giant killer mecha called the Bellar-Magnum, or X-Mine, then after much pathos, angst and drama, punch Mr Klicky in the face so hard his home world detonates into a small sun, then retire to a tropical world with a harem of Loroi worshipers for a life of luxury.
The end

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Re: Pages 121, 122: Followers

Post by Jayngfet »

icekatze wrote:hi hi

Occam's Razor is not a method of choosing between different results, it is a heuristic for simplifying hypothesis that provide the same results, with the intent of testing as few variables as possible in any given experiment. Simpler hypothesis are easier to test and harder to confuse.

Now, if we're going by some kind of law of simplicity, another Terran ship seems like the least likely possibility. We know from the narrator that the TCA does not have anything remotely like that ship, there's no reason for them to shoot themselves, and there is no necessity for having prior knowledge of their route, purpose, and origin. While the attacking ship was stealthy, the only stealth that the Bellarmine employed was that the Loroi were focused on other things at the time. Anyone in the system could have seen them and boosted in their direction.
That's the point, there's no one group that could both have the knowledge, produce a ship, and have the effects necessary, let alone all three while also having the motivation. Of those four things no group, including it being an inside job, has more than two. But to me it's more reasonable to assume that a group that had the knowledge found the weapon, than it is to say that a group that had the weapon found the knowledge, simply because nobody but a human vessel and maybe these new stealth ships could actually blend in AND get there first.

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