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Topic: Kohr - Ah Crew (Read 16877 times)
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2Bad
Zebranky food
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Also its pretty well documented that the ur-quan were collectively brown before the Dynarri split them into green and black factions. The melnorme tell the story in historical data.
I still vote for 42 kohr-ah squashed into a sub-marine type designed ship, rather than robotic crew, that kohr-ah wouldn't trust. Otherwise the kzer-ze would have them too...more reliable than stupid battle thralls.
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Draxas
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Despite the fact that they started with very similar (probably identical) technology during the first Doctrinal War, look at how the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah ships have diverged over the millennia that they've traveled around the galaxy. Why would robotic crew be any different? The Kohr-Ah would have needed some way to grow their ranks while keeping away from each other, and sub-sentient robots seems like a prefectly logical solution to that problem. The Kzer-Za, on the other hand, would have needed no such technology, since they would have a practically limitless reserve of slaves to fill their ranks instead. Despite reliability issues, it is said (by Talana during the game) that the Ur-Quan waste nothing. So why doubly waste the resources they have? They would have to expend a great deal of time, effort, and materials developing and constructing robotic crew, and they would also be wasting their slave labor by letting them sit fallow instead of doing work. It runs totally counter to the Ur-Quan's nature.
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Culture20
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I'm surprised that no one else has brought up the point that the Kzer-Za must have a harder time being around their slaves (interlopers -and- food) than Khor-Ah would have around each other. Thus, it doesn't seem unlikely that the Khor-Ah might be able to fight their instincts too.
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Draxas
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The Ur-Quan treat all other races with fear and disdain, true. However, slaves are just that: cowed to the will of the Ur-Quan, and obedient under pain of death. I imagine that this alleviates the Kzer-Za's fear (though I'm sure it only increases their disdain). However, another Ur-Quan, of either sub-species, is a thing to not only be feared, but also respected. It is a free being, not simply trash to be bent to their will or wiped from the galaxy, and as such is far more a threat to that individual Ur-Quan than any other race could ever be.
Or at least, that's how I imagine the Ur-Qan perspective to be, anyway. Draw your own conclusions, though, since that's what wild speculation is all about. 
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Arne
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Yak!
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Well, everyone knows where I stand on the issue.
Re: Urq numbers, here's an old post of mine.
Yehat:
When the Ur-Quan were entering our home star system at Gamma Serpentis we had a thousand starships prepared to defend our home, BRAK!!
A million tongues of fusion fire spread through the star system devastating the inner system planets, but incinerating ALL the Ur-Quan vessels! In that moment, the Hierarchy's war fleet was reduced by almost thirty percent.
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Shofixti:
Or at least, they caused it to flare like a nova, destroying the many hundreds of Hierarchy vessels that had invaded our system to enslave us Shofixti.
Melnorme:
The resulting storm of solar flares cooked the life off the Shofixti homeworld and incinerated over a hundred Ur-Quan Dreadnoughts which had just entered the system to conquer the Shofixti.
Spathi:
the Shofixti caused their sun to explode in a colossal supernova destroying the entire planetary system, and not incidentally dozens of Ur-Quan Dreadnoughts! (Snork-snork-snork!)
(So 'almost 30%' is many 'hundreds' (over 300?), or 'over a hundred' (lower than 150) or 'dozens' (24-48 maybe?)) I think the 'Quans were pretty even before the nova bomb incident.
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Supox:
[...] however we did eventually develop tactics in conjunction with the Utwig that were effective against them. We destroyed dozens of their battleships!
(This was enough to tilt the balance, but is it just the Supox alone or both the species?)
I don't think it actually says anywhere that the Syreen call only affects sentient/organic life. The Slylandro probe crew (cpu cores?) could be mounted inside the probe, it sort of looks like they're crystal lightbulbs in sockets. If they are indeed mounted, it wouldn't matter if they were highly organic and sentient, or just dumb 6502's. They could also be sentient, but strictly governed by some sort of behaviour 'DRM', like Asimov's 3 (4) laws.
The Dnyarris could possibly have been relatively small toads originally (although not in my interptetation). If they were the size of a bathing ball an Urq would be maybe 200-400 times larger (volume). The size of an old Urq scout ship is undefined. It could simply mean long distance space exploration ship, not small WW2 scout airplane.
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« Last Edit: July 02, 2006, 04:52:34 pm by Arne »
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Terrell
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Here's what I think. The Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah use Dnyarri as their crew. When the Ur-Quan defeated the Dnyarri in their slave revolt they decided that the Dnyarri would not be allowed to die, instead their minds would be castrated. They would be lowered to sub-sentience and would have to serve the Ur-Quan for all eternity (both Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah mostly for interspecies translation, the most demeaning task that the Ur-Quan could think of.
Since the Kohr-Ah would still need crew for balance with the Ur-Quan, but wouldn't really need the Dnyarri to actually do anything to control the ship (as the captain would actually do this) why not have a few around sould the current talking pet anger it's master for whatever reason. Perhaps other Dynarri could wait on the Kohr-Ah hand and foot so to speak when he's not out committing genocide.
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pendell
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Hello, Newbie here.
Won't stay long, but I wanted to propose an alternate theory ...
Item: Ur-quan are 1 per dreadnaught. Assume Territorial Kohr-Ah are the same.
Item: Nonetheless, there are 41 additional crew aboard a Kohr-ah ship. They are green,
indicating living creatures rather than mechanicals. They also respond to the Syreen call.
item: There *is* at least one other creature alive onboard a Kohr-Ah Marauder ... a Talking Pet. You'll notice the Kohr-ah captain speaks to you through the sub-sentient pet.
So evidently the Kohr-ah don't have a problem with sub-sentient creatures on their ships.
Therefore I propose the following hypothesis:
-- the other 41 crew members on a Kohr-ah marauder are NOT mechanical and are NOT Kohr-ah. They are sub-sentient creatures specially bred and trained to handle the tasks normally handled by sapient crew.
After all, their genetic engineering skills are sufficient to degrade Dnyarri to sub-sentients. Perhaps they have also upgraded common animals to near-sentient status like Chimpanzees or what not. They have sub-sentients serving as their translators -- why not also as low-level labor, or as "idiot savants" -- say, a creature that knows absolutely everything there is to know about interstellar navigation but is otherwise non-functional.
This allows the Kohr-ah ships to be inhabited by "crew" which can be captured by the Syreen but still respects the Kohr-ah's territoriality.
Who knows ... perhaps some of the semi-sentients were originally sentient creatures who accepted degradation as an alternative to the extermination of their species...
Respectfully,
Brian P.
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Lukipela
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The Ancient One
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Since the Kohr-Ah would still need crew for balance with the Ur-Quan, but wouldn't really need the Dnyarri to actually do anything to control the ship (as the captain would actually do this) why not have a few around sould the current talking pet anger it's master for whatever reason. Perhaps other Dynarri could wait on the Kohr-Ah hand and foot so to speak when he's not out committing genocide.
On what do you base the idea that there is nothing aboard the ship for them to do? I'd assume that crew have other responsibilites than just sitting around, otherwise they would not be needed. On a interstellar ship, I'd assume maintenance, preparation of food loading of supplies and other such duties would require a wee bit more physical strenght (and hands) than those toads have.
Of course, the Kohr-Ah may have built exoskeletons for them, but that seeems unlikely, why would they put their former enemy, however helpless into something that enhanced his strength?
Hello, Newbie here.
Won't stay long, but I wanted to propose an alternate theory ...
Hello. Do stay. I'm not sure we technically have newbies though. We just have posters and lurkers.
Therefore I propose the following hypothesis:
-- the other 41 crew members on a Kohr-ah marauder are NOT mechanical and are NOT Kohr-ah. They are sub-sentient creatures specially bred and trained to handle the tasks normally handled by sapient crew.
After all, their genetic engineering skills are sufficient to degrade Dnyarri to sub-sentients. Perhaps they have also upgraded common animals to near-sentient status like Chimpanzees or what not. They have sub-sentients serving as their translators -- why not also as low-level labor, or as "idiot savants" -- say, a creature that knows absolutely everything there is to know about interstellar navigation but is otherwise non-functional.
This allows the Kohr-ah ships to be inhabited by "crew" which can be captured by the Syreen but still respects the Kohr-ah's territoriality.
I like this. If we assume that the Kohr-Ah did not in fact have their territorial instinct bred out of them whilst serving as soldiers and laborers, this would be a rather nice explanation. Even a low level of sentience (or subsentience or whatever you wish to call it) might be enough for the Syreen to work with.
And if they did have the instinct bred out of them, well this would still be more practical than cramming 42 giant caterpillars into one ship.
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« Last Edit: July 07, 2006, 08:06:24 am by Lukipela »
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What's up doc?
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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Do the Kohr-Ah have little Talking-pet popups in the corner when you converse, like the Ur-Quan?
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