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Topic: Some questions that need anwsering. (Read 8001 times)
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alatari
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The rule about only flying a ship with a native pilot had to be for plot control because logically humans should be able to fit proper control mechanisms to any captured ship. What sentient race worth a salt couldn't?
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Culture20
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Posts: 917
Thraddash Flower Child
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Humans. We're flying ships made out of recycled car parts designed in detroit, and our only powerful weapons are nukes and pitifully slow charging lasers.
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Death 999
Global Moderator
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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We can emulate their control panels... if their control is to raise the temperature by 3 degrees, which starts a chain reaction of some sort, then we can start the chain reaction some other way. At worst case, we can make a machine to raise the control's temperature by 3 degrees.
Now, it could be that all the ships are controlled by computers with neural interfaces. That would be too hard to emulate... except we see people manipulating controls. I think this is a good time to stop applying suspension of disbelief.
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Art
Frungy champion
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This hardly seems unrealistic at all. It doesn't need to be some statement about native captains having the biological ability to fly the ships -- all we need to say is that ships still require some skill to fly, and that the different ships -- which are shown to have very different structures and to behave in very different ways -- take a lot of training to learn to use. The relatively tiny Starbase in the game doesn't really have the resources to train people for a year in learning to effectively fly a strange alien vessel, and most of the ships don't have the advantage of having a hyperintelligent Precursor computer controlling them that can communicate with a genetic freak who has an unusual intuitive gift for talking to it.
In real life, if a less advanced civilization -- say, an Industrial Revolution-era England -- stole the plans for an F-22 fighter jet from the modern USA, and they had the resources to build one -- they'd taken over a modern factory, just like Hayes has taken control of an Ur-Quan Starbase -- they'd still have a big problem with finding someone who could effectively pilot one. Within the time scales of the game -- on the order of months -- training new captains would be effectively impossible, especially since you have to maintain secrecy and can't fly manuevers all over the solar system. The captains the aliens give you are just as important as the blueprints.
The exception here is the Shofixti, who are all born after the game starts and only have a few months to learn to pilot their vessels. But we might claim that no one but a Shofixti would *want* to learn to fly one of those dangerous Scouts.
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jack_cloudy
*Many bubbles*
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And even then, Shofixti don't have to learn much beyond: ,,Slam the throttle and point your nose at the enemy. When close, flip these three switches. Feel free to experiment, but don't flip the switches until you are in a real combat situation and flipping the switches has priority over everything else at that point."
But yeah, this sounds good. Maybe they have a simulator somewhere, but you can't simulate the entire ship accurately (if you try that, then why not just build a real one?) and nothing beats some real experience. It also explains why you can't build the Spathi ships after they cower behind their slaveshield. You can build them, but what is the point if you can't have an experienced captain, pilot and other vital crew transferred from Spathiwa's moon? (those lying bastards! Evacuating the moon didn't take that long!  )
I must say it is quite an achievement. No one seems to know any way of breaking the shield, exlcuding the Chenjesu who are supposed to be the most intelligent beings in the universe anyway. And breaking isn't the same as building one.
(I suppose you can get through with enough firepower, but there wouldn't be much left of the planet. The Kohr-Ah would love doing this.) Yet still, the Spathi manage to figure out how it works in just a few months and build one of their own. Then again, Fwiffo has been hanging around for a while. Maybe he is a genius who has figured out how to build slaveshields and told his fellow Spathi during a visit. I don't know, haven't asked him/her/it (anyone know what genders the Spathi have?).
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,,That was the worst and most boring movie I’ve ever seen. Lousy special effects.” Sergeant ironhead. The real reason why the alien brain on Cydonia was destroyed while in the middle of displaying a message telling the X-com operatives not to fire.
Hoe meer zielen, hoe meer vreugd! (yes I'm dutch)
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Megagun
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Moo
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Well, we have NO idea on what quality the Spathi's shield is, anyways. It could be a very cheapassed shield that's easy to break through, or something, but one that lets out enough for them to use it..
Also, I wonder if the Chenjesu are actually smarter than Ur-Quan (Kzer-Za). Sure, they've got their socienty built just the right way for them to completely utilize their "smartness", and they actually know quite a lot, but they seem to be kind of.. well... It seems as if they only know facts, and have practically no opinions on what they know (based on conversations with Chenjesu-Mmrnmhrm, before the Process was completed). This could ofcourse explain the uniqueness of their society... IMHO, opinions matter quite a lot, since they allow a race to develop in more ways than just one.
Now, you could ofcourse come up with the fact that their Avatars are probably the most powerful ships in the quadrant, but how much of it's design comes from the Mmrnmhrm? Where do the Mmrnmhrm come from? What do they know already? What is hidden deep inside their memory banks?
Heh. Sorry if this all doesn't make sense.. I'll likely edit this post later on.. Not much time left.. 
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Art
Frungy champion
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And even then, Shofixti don't have to learn much beyond: ,,Slam the throttle and point your nose at the enemy. When close, flip these three switches. Feel free to experiment, but don't flip the switches until you are in a real combat situation and flipping the switches has priority over everything else at that point." But yeah, this sounds good. Maybe they have a simulator somewhere, but you can't simulate the entire ship accurately (if you try that, then why not just build a real one?) and nothing beats some real experience. It also explains why you can't build the Spathi ships after they cower behind their slaveshield. You can build them, but what is the point if you can't have an experienced captain, pilot and other vital crew transferred from Spathiwa's moon? (those lying bastards! Evacuating the moon didn't take that long! )]/quote] Well, the simple pick-a-ship-and-fight-it-against-another-one mode in SC1 was supposed to be an ship simulator programmed by the Alliance. Of course, there's no reason the Ur-Quan maintenance Starbase would be equipped with any such thing -- remember that your SC2 Starbase is a glorified gas station with jury-rigged equipment, *not* a genuine Alliance military base. I must say it is quite an achievement. No one seems to know any way of breaking the shield, exlcuding the Chenjesu who are supposed to be the most intelligent beings in the universe anyway. And breaking isn't the same as building one. Most intelligent in our neck of the woods, sure. But surely not most intelligent in the universe -- or at least not the most knowledgeable. The Ur-Quan are definitely far superior in what they know to the Chenjesu. The Melnorme probably are, too, along with, in their way, the Arilou, and even maybe the Pkunk (depending on the kind of intelligence you mean). The Utwig, once they're empowered by the Ultron, might even be smarter, or at least as smart. In any case: I'd dispute that breaking is always easier than building. With something like the slave shield that might not actually be true at all. It's easier to fry an egg than to unfry it, to lock a door than to unlock it, and so on. (I suppose you can get through with enough firepower, but there wouldn't be much left of the planet. The Kohr-Ah would love doing this.) Yet still, the Spathi manage to figure out how it works in just a few months and build one of their own. Then again, Fwiffo has been hanging around for a while. Maybe he is a genius who has figured out how to build slaveshields and told his fellow Spathi during a visit. I don't know, haven't asked him/her/it (anyone know what genders the Spathi have?).
The Spathi seem to be two-sexed just like us -- Fwiffo talks about his "male parent" and his "female parent", who even seem to have traditional human gender roles -- the male goes out and works and the female takes care of the kids. They also, of course, seem incredibly intelligent in their way -- Bronze Age to Atomic Age in a century -- which was always a very appealing part of the joke to me. They have ships that can clearly take on several Ur-Quan Dreadnoughts with ease, and yet their whole personality keeps them from ever becoming a dominant power. |
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Edgewood
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I never thought of the Chenjeshu as superior intelligences, just cooler heads. If my xenobiology is correct, the Chenjeshu's nervous system equivalent consists of microscopic hyperwave caster arrays rearranging the silicate crystalline structure... er... they're sort of like sentient calculators.
What -I- want to know is: if Earthlings are too similar to the Syreen for it to be a coincidence, why are the Arilou interested only in Earthlings? Syreen & us human people would seem to be the only twin species in this part of space, and presumably humans came to be like the Syreen through Arilou modifications. Though we may have all been seeded from the same source, genetic drift would surely stop species from different planets from reproducing together!
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Novus
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Fot or not?
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The Arilou admit to having manipulated humanity for thousands of years. My theory is that the Syreen are some sort of control group for the Arilou; what Humans would be without Arilou manipulation. The (weak) psionic ability the Syreen have (as evidenced by their secondary weapon) may be one of the things eliminated by the Arilou to protect us from being *smelled* (by the Orz?).
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Art
Frungy champion
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I never thought of the Chenjeshu as superior intelligences, just cooler heads. If my xenobiology is correct, the Chenjeshu's nervous system equivalent consists of microscopic hyperwave caster arrays rearranging the silicate crystalline structure... er... they're sort of like sentient calculators.
What -I- want to know is: if Earthlings are too similar to the Syreen for it to be a coincidence, why are the Arilou interested only in Earthlings? Syreen & us human people would seem to be the only twin species in this part of space, and presumably humans came to be like the Syreen through Arilou modifications. Though we may have all been seeded from the same source, genetic drift would surely stop species from different planets from reproducing together!
Not if the species weren't separated until very recently (in terms of evolution). If they were separated six to ten thousand years ago, for instance, they would probably evolve to look somewhat different but still be genetically close enough to be cross-fertile.
Interestingly that seems to be the timeframe in which the Arilou started manipulation of human destiny, or at least as far back as evidence of their intervention (in the person of gods and faeries and such) goes -- the beginnings of human civilization and recorded history, the start of the transition from hominids to true Humans. Take that plus the idea that humans seem to regard Syreen society as like their idea of "Eden", and you start to get a picture.
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Newman
Zebranky food
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Another question..
How can you get the ilwrath off the Chmmr homeworld?
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Captain_Smith
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Another question..
How can you get the ilwrath off the Chmmr homeworld?
Caster, Dogar, Kazon. You can fill in the rest of the blanks.
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