How can the Loroi win?

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SaintofM
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by SaintofM »

At Arioch: I didn't mean to say the M-16 wasa deal breaker for Vietnam when it came to victory and other faults, bad communication on my part. I was trying to give some examples of how not the right headspace the powers to be were.

So would you say the Lora keep trying to reinvent the hammer with their tech or an over reliance on it.

It would also seem the Umiak are then using resources like they were constantly spamming Star Craft's Show me the money cheat. Does that mean they will run out or get more desperate sooner or later?

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Arioch
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by Arioch »

SaintofM wrote:So would you say the Lora keep trying to reinvent the hammer with their tech or an over reliance on it.
The Loroi aren't obsessed at all with technology -- rather the reverse. Aside from the newer plasma weapons based on the Historian technology exchange, the Loroi are behind the Umiak in most technological fields. That the Loroi ships are usually faster than the Umiak ships is due to design philosophy rather than technology; Umiak engines are more efficient, and they build for endurance rather than speed.
SaintofM wrote:It would also seem the Umiak are then using resources like they were constantly spamming Star Craft's Show me the money cheat. Does that mean they will run out or get more desperate sooner or later?
Aside from true limited resources like fossil fuels or exceptionally rare minerals like fissionables or rare earths, I'm not sure it's practically possible to "run out" of the elements necessary for making most TL10+ war materials; planets and asteroids are made out of them, after all. I think it's rather a question of increasing or even maintaining rate of production as the most lucrative deposits are exhausted and industry must turn to ever less cost-effective sources.

But whether the Umiak are close to industrial collapse or not even breaking a sweat is information that's not common knowledge and also rather important to the story, and so not something I'm going to tell you here. :D

kiwi
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by kiwi »

It’s not helping the discussion, but at high tech levels, one could make essential elements if necessary. It’d be aggravating and produce radioactive waste, and have to be done at large scale, but I expect it could be done.

After all, that’s how we get plutonium.

asaenvolk
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by asaenvolk »

Producing PUE (Post Uranium Elements) in mass would be HIGHLY energy expensive, but if you could get into range of the island of stability the properties of some of these elements could be truly unique.

Needless to say this level of precision and power production are well beyond our means at this time.

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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by kiwi »

Yah. Lots of energy. And some truly horrible nuclear waste lovingly laid down for us in the 50s by people who apparently never thought someone would have to deal with it.. (See Sellafield MOX silos. Hundreds of tons of fuel in decomposing concrete silos that must be kept underwater so the magnesium doesn’t catch fire, and also generates hydrogen gas as it reacts with that water to form highly radioactive waste. And the silos were never designed to be opened. What were they THINKING?)

In terms of superheavy elements, I believe we’re currently chucking calcium nuclei at heavy metal targets and seeing what happens. Hardly elegant...

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icekatze
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

You can get a lot of energy from a big solar array in orbit around a star. Or a cluster of fusion reactors around a small gas giant.

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Ithekro
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by Ithekro »

Both faction are using some kind of Antimatter substitute, or something that is antimatter, but not (I'm not sure why it is not just antimatter...maybe its more stable and doesn't need the extensive magnetic containment setups of Star Trek like starships.)

Krulle
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by Krulle »

Indeed, once you put manufacturing in intersolar systems, you can "ship" (or construct) an energy station around/close to an star in an uninhibited system, and just chuck the waste at the closest planetary body in-system (or if you're not afraid it could do something to the sun, at the sun itself).
Why bother with it in such cases?

That's the nice thing about Sci-Fi. You don't need to explain yourself in much detail, as it's simply unknown.

However unlikely that is with our current knowledge.
But any sufficiently advanced technology will look like magic.

And in this case, it's the author's magic...
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: How can the Loroi win?

Post by Arioch »

Ithekro wrote:Both faction are using some kind of Antimatter substitute, or something that is antimatter, but not (I'm not sure why it is not just antimatter...maybe its more stable and doesn't need the extensive magnetic containment setups of Star Trek like starships.)
Creating antimatter requires more energy than you get from annihilating it, so it's not an energy source, but rather an energy storage and delivery medium. Which means it leaves open the question of where all that energy to create the antimatter comes from.

If we instead use some kind of exotic matter that decays on command but can be created using common elements like hydrogen or helium in a process involving some kind of catalyst or clever field generation that requires much less energy, then we have something that's much more practical than antimatter. And we can make it easier to store and transport for good measure.
Krulle wrote:Indeed, once you put manufacturing in intersolar systems, you can "ship" (or construct) an energy station around/close to an star in an uninhibited system, and just chuck the waste at the closest planetary body in-system (or if you're not afraid it could do something to the sun, at the sun itself).
Well, dropping an orbiting mass into a gravity well can be quite expensive, especially if your target is the system primary, because that's a lot of velocity that has to be counteracted. I suppose with the acceleration available at TL10 it's not such a big deal, but there may be more efficient ways of dealing with waste. Especially since such waste may be useful in some way (like plutonium), and if you're talking about a manufacturing colony or stations, you can probably just store it somewhere nearby... it's not like you have to worry about poisoning the ecosystem.

One of the things that makes it relatively easy to drop objects from Earth orbit is the braking effect of the atmosphere... so I suppose that if you had an industrial station near to a gas giant, it wouldn't take too much of a boost to send a package on an orbit that would interact with the gas giant's outer atmosphere, and eventually decay and make planetfall.

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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by Murph »

The Loroi are going to have to adopt the Nathan Bedford Forrest mantra of getting there firstest with the mostest. I don't see them being able to win otherwise. So that dictates fast, well armed hard hitting ships, that can get in, do max damage, and then run. Sort of like the original battle cruiser concept.

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SaintofM
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by SaintofM »

I just thought of something: Are the Loroi too comfortable in their fighting tactics and need to change something to move this conflict along past a shoving match?

What would be a key major difference between Loroi fighting style over humans if our tech levels evened out?

And what would that be of their allied races? About the same, relying on more fast attack and hit and run?

Any acting as tanks in the RPG sense?

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Ithekro
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by Ithekro »

Judging by the ships in their fleet and when they were designed, it seems like the Loroi started with heavier ships armed with blasters. They were on the defensive from the starts, and couldn't gain much back in the early part of the war. Early war designs fitted the new pulse cannons and some had wave looms. These ships were designed to be fast and strike at range since they needed to cover a lot of space to make an effective offensive. This seems to have partly worked as it pushed the lines back almost to the original borders. However the early war designs were a bit thin on armor and the heavy and superheavy enemy ships eventually took out the main Semoset fleet.

Since then it seems that he Loroi have been designing fast strike ships, but also building them with more armor. Even there newer battleships aren't fast, but are heavily armed and better shielded than the earlier model of battleship.

Tactics wise, it seems they are using their normal tactics because they worked until very, very recently (and even then the 51st still managed to be effective). However I imagine this is partly because they are using the older fast ships to lead the strike groups on the borders to constantly keep the enemy guessing how many fleets they have out there. Meanwhile the newer fleets get built inside the Union and trained up, looking for a chance to mount a new offensive. Their crews and sometimes ships get sent to the strike groups for experience, but the main body waited the call of the Emperor.

Murph
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by Murph »

Ithekro wrote:Judging by the ships in their fleet and when they were designed, it seems like the Loroi started with heavier ships armed with blasters. They were on the defensive from the starts, and couldn't gain much back in the early part of the war. Early war designs fitted the new pulse cannons and some had wave looms. These ships were designed to be fast and strike at range since they needed to cover a lot of space to make an effective offensive. This seems to have partly worked as it pushed the lines back almost to the original borders. However the early war designs were a bit thin on armor and the heavy and superheavy enemy ships eventually took out the main Semoset fleet.

Since then it seems that he Loroi have been designing fast strike ships, but also building them with more armor. Even there newer battleships aren't fast, but are heavily armed and better shielded than the earlier model of battleship.

Tactics wise, it seems they are using their normal tactics because they worked until very, very recently (and even then the 51st still managed to be effective). However I imagine this is partly because they are using the older fast ships to lead the strike groups on the borders to constantly keep the enemy guessing how many fleets they have out there. Meanwhile the newer fleets get built inside the Union and trained up, looking for a chance to mount a new offensive. Their crews and sometimes ships get sent to the strike groups for experience, but the main body waited the call of the Emperor.
Hope so. I don't think the Loroi can afford to adopt a "crust" defense, they have to move major fleets where they are needed, so they have to adopt a "fire Brigade" tactical and strategic stance. Sort of like the Roman Empire in the late 3rd and 4th Centuries.

Philly
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by Philly »

I just rather see the Umiak and Loroi get blown back to the Stone Age.

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orion1836
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by orion1836 »

Philly wrote:I just rather see the Umiak and Loroi get blown back to the Stone Age.
...again.

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sunphoenix
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by sunphoenix »

I'd rather Not see any civilization blown up.

In the Cosmic ALL the most precious thing so rare among the stars is consciousness... the sentience that can look upon the grand Cosmos and wonder its place in the grand design! So sentience in all its variety is precious beyond all measure.

I'd never wish oblivion or ignorance upon ANY sentient species.

I'd like to see the Loroi try to help the Umiak learn to control their consumption of resources to conserve the worlds they colonize to live in harmony with the Universe rather then be forced by their practices to plunder and despoil the cosmos out of a mad rush for survival due to their own wasteful and destructive policies.
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Krulle
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by Krulle »

I agree with you, sunphoenix.
From my own idealistic viewpoint.

But we have to accept, that other intelligent life may think so differently, that we would be unable to force out point of view upon them.

Have you ever read the Antares trilogy by Michael McCollum?
There, Humanity is in a genocide war with an alien race, that is mindbent on destroying Humanity.
In the last book we get to learn why the aliens see the destruction of other intelligent life paramount for the future safety of their own children and their own race as a whole, due to evolutionary lections they had.
Similar to the Outsider universe, there is no FTL in the Gaussian/Einstein dimensions, but a kind of jumping is available, although the explanation there is different (no HyperSpace, and the jumppoints are even more limited than in the Outsider universe).

Book 3 is about the pitfalls of anthropomorphism (projecting Human values, morality, reasoning, logical thinking, character traits, ... on non-Human beings), and is for me a reminder to not say that your idea will work, but that we should give it a try, bearing in mind that other long-term measures might be necessary for long-term survival of the Human race, and to have plans ready for implementation while trying to teach them our views.
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

wedgekree
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by wedgekree »

The Umiak can -probably- get most resources they need from asteroids/stars for ores and energy. I'm guessing in zero gravity that making industrial infrastructure is viable for mass production.

They seem to be created through mass cloning so they do not have issues replacing losses. The Umiak (so far) do not seem to have issues with morale nor thier normal tactics of throwing away craft in frontal assaults.

If a lot of their civilization other than client species is in space or has sufficient infrastructure, so long as they can maintain a sufficient workforce/industry they can last a very long time. They won't have population issues thanks to being able to 'clone' themselves (which may not be accurate) and can over time build up more infrastructure and industry to replace losses and make new fleets. Jump points are chokepoints - even if their fleets are weakened they can still hold out large defense forces there to limit any ability to advance forwards deeper to their 'home' space. For any of folks who have done a lot of Wing Commander, they basically worked strategically like that.

If the Loroi have to commit their strategic reserves to blunt the Umiak offensive, that still benefits the Umiak as the Loroi no longer -have- said strategic reserves available in sufficient quantity. THe Umiak have been said to have very large forces behind their front lines and significant reserves - even if their forward groups are annihilated it seems likely to be able to stop any counterattack cold.

All thsi is of course presumptive of the Umiak really not -needing- planets for the msot part and being able to put most of thier industrial infrastructure in space without issue.

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orion1836
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Re: How can the Loroi win?

Post by orion1836 »

sunphoenix wrote:I'd rather Not see any civilization blown up.

In the Cosmic ALL the most precious thing so rare among the stars is consciousness... the sentience that can look upon the grand Cosmos and wonder its place in the grand design! So sentience in all its variety is precious beyond all measure.

I'd never wish oblivion or ignorance upon ANY sentient species.

I'd like to see the Loroi try to help the Umiak learn to control their consumption of resources to conserve the worlds they colonize to live in harmony with the Universe rather then be forced by their practices to plunder and despoil the cosmos out of a mad rush for survival due to their own wasteful and destructive policies.
After this much war, I think there's only one option.

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