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Topic: Kohr-Ah and Slylandro Probes (Read 6509 times)
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Spektrowski
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It interested me - what would the Kohr-Ah do if the Captain wouldn't ever translate the self-destruction code to the Slylandro Probes, but fails to destroy the Sa-Matra. After the Kohr-Ah completing their death march, they'd be literally swarmed with the Probes.
The Kohr-Ah may treat Probes as a threat because they keep attacking them. In the other hand, Probes aren't sentient so the Eternal Doctrine doesn't quite work for them, thus the Kohr-Ah wouldn't "cleanse" them and destroy them purely for defensive purposes.
What's more efficient - the Kohr-Ah immense fleet combined with Sa-Matra, or the Slylandro Probe incredible replication rate? If such a bizarre "war" would occur, the Kohr-Ah would seem to have stuck in the sector forever - because they can't just leave a threat behind, while unable to completely destroy it. They may find, accidentally or not, the Slylandro homeworld, but I doubt they would converse with Slylandro for so long to find out anything about Probes before "cleansing" them.
What do you think? 
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JonoPorter
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Don't mess with the US.
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This has been discussed in a previous thread. I’m just too lazy to find it.
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Spektrowski
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Heh, I'm sorry then There's so much information on the forums, even the Search isn't of much help because it's really TOO much and it takes a lot of time to read everything you find 
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waywardoctagon
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Ha, yeah, I think it's somewhere between pages... forty and sixty-five. I know because I just finished skimming the topics and bookmarking the really interesting-looking, but long, ones.
ETA: Yep, page 58.
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« Last Edit: January 14, 2007, 10:45:22 am by waywardoctagon »
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waywardoctagon
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Yep! Although obviously I'm not reading every single one of the topics.  That would be silly.
Not to mention that the old thread is nearly three years old, so really you might as well start a new one.
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Spektrowski
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Another thing - what's the strength of the "missile battery" that Slylandro claim the Probes to have? If the Kohr-Ah would attack the Probes straight away, they'd probably fight back with those batteries rather than just try to break the Marauders into component compounds...
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The Phantom
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This is an interesting topic. A few comments to add:
The Slylandro would not use their batteries, for the same reason that if Captain Zelnick just says Fight to a probe without discussion, you do not see batteries, so you would assume the same would happen to the Kohr-Ah.
Second of all, wouldn't the Kohr-Ah already know the location of the Slylandro homeworld?
If I remember correctly from asking the Slylandro who has previously visited them, they said that the Ur-Quan and other Milieu races frequently visited them during the Milieu's existence, although the Ur-Quan were brown back then.
I wonder if the Kohr-Ah would still remember from back then, or even the Kzertz-Ah.
Either way, I do not think cleansing the Slylandro would be possible, since bombardments from space on a gas giant, I would think would be hard since there is no surface, they have no buildings or technology whatsoever. Plus it would be like the Kohr-Ah coming to Earth, cannot land, and try to take out the bird population from space, would be quite harder than hitting ground targets.
So in the end not sure, what would happen, or if they would be patient enough to get the destruct code. If the Kohr-Ah do not know/remember the location of the Slylandro world, you would assume they would never find it, due to the Kohr-Ah find sentient beings by looking for their sphere of influcence/hyperwave transmissions, and since the Slylandro do not have one, they would never be found.
I say the Kzertz-Ah as the scientists would have a much better chance of remembering/finding the solution to the probe problem.
Also it wouldn't just be the Kohr-Ah which would be killed by the probes it would be every living sentient space race which would be eliminated! So the probes would do the Kohr-Ah's job for them.
Except I am not sure if the Probes would eliminate sentient beings on a planet, just ships, but you could not travel with ships without being annoyed by those damn probes.
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waywardoctagon
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Second of all, wouldn't the Kohr-Ah already know the location of the Slylandro homeworld?
If I remember correctly from asking the Slylandro who has previously visited them, they said that the Ur-Quan and other Milieu races frequently visited them during the Milieu's existence, although the Ur-Quan were brown back then.
Yes. They apparently talked frequently for "almost half a Drahn", so the knowledge would probably be fairly entrenched... still, it's possible they forgot/lost it, since it was a non-vital thing and we don't know how much of their history they lost when the Dnyarri took them over.
Either way, I do not think cleansing the Slylandro would be possible, since bombardments from space on a gas giant, I would think would be hard since there is no surface, they have no buildings or technology whatsoever. Plus it would be like the Kohr-Ah coming to Earth, cannot land, and try to take out the bird population from space, would be quite harder than hitting ground targets.
What if they poisoned the atmosphere, or the inhabitable layer of it? Or developed some kind of virus that was effective against the Slylandro? Or used nukes to irradiate the entire planet?
I agree that the Kzer-Za would have a much better chance of getting the destruct sequence, though, because they actually talk to other species (besides "DIE NOW," I mean.). I think it hinges on whether the Kohr-Ah would realize they were malfunctioning, since they might not bother to talk to them after the first one.
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Spektrowski
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Another way of "cleansing" the Slylandro may be detonating something very powerful in the upper layers of Source's atmosphere, thus creating massive shockwaves that would push the Slylandro gas bags into the Depths.
And what if someone (like Melnorme, for instance) reprogrammed the Probes to attack the Kohr-Ah ships with missiles when one is in sight, and replicate if there's no enemy in the vicinity? How would that combination do?
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AngusThermopyle
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I'm not sure the Khor-Ah would be able to erradicate the Slylandro or the Probes in time.
If I remember correctly, Hayes mentions that the Probes are increasing at a geometric rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_progression
If you take an AI Probe against an AI Marauder, the Probe actually does a pretty nice job against it. And by the time the Khor-Ah snuff out all non-Ur-Quan life in the sector, there may simply be too many Probes to handle.
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waywardoctagon
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Right, and of course that's only logical (if you assume that, on average, the probes reproduce at a steady rate and are rarely destroyed). This does bring up certain questions, though, since even if the probes weren't attacking everything in sight, it seems like they'd still eventually be a problem (despite the vastness of space) and that there should have been some kind of check in place besides just returning after a certain time--especially since it sounded more like it returns when it has a certain amount of data, not after a certain amount of time.
(Edited to add punctuation and hopefully clarity.)
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« Last Edit: January 16, 2007, 01:29:13 am by waywardoctagon »
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Stalks-Death
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I find it highly unlikely that the Ur-Quan would manage to solve the Slylandro plague. Not only do the probe fight very well...but there are a few facts to consider.
The Ur-Quan may well remember who the Slylandro are (Kzer-Za of course), but...they are most likely (as everyone) clueless about the fact that the Probes come from the Slylandro in the first place...and that a self-destruction behavior can be activated.
The Probes are a cheap Melnorme technology, not Slylandro made so while we see the name "Slylandro Probe"in mêlee mode, it is entirely possible that there is no clue about this in the "real" world. I see it more to be consistent with all other ships (who have race name at the top) as well as giving the player some hint that there is such a race. The only ones who could hint the Ur-Quan are the Melnorme (who will logically be wiped out by that time) .
Lastly, wiping the Slylandro would do nothing about the probes, except making certain that the self-destruction code is lost forever. Keep in mind that until the fact that the Slylandro have probes is known, the Kzer-Za would probably not destroy them: they are unable to travel in space and are technically even less threatening than the Spathi.
Out of topic, it seems very possible to create extraordinary cataclysm on gas giants, as the shoemaker-levy comet has shown by crashing down on Jupiter. It's certainly not above the abilities of the Sa-Matra. The slylandro could be wiped out by a change in the atmospheric climate, even if slight and temporary.
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Spektrowski
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The Probe clearly gives away that it comes from Slylandro when it mentions Drahnasa in its mission description:
"ESTIMATED REPLICATIONS SINCE DEPARTURE FROM POINT OF ORIGIN
583 REPLICATIONS.
ESTIMATED REPLICATIONS PROJECTED ONE DRAHNASA FROM THIS DATE
14,784 REPLICATIONS.
ESTIMATED REPLICATIONS PROJECTED FIVE DRAHNASAS FROM THIS DATE
45,786,412 REPLICATIONS"
The Ur-Quan may remember this Slylandro word... or may not
Another and more interesting Probe quite is this:
"THIS PROBE IS PROGRAMMED TO DEFEND AGAINST HOSTILE BEHAVIOR.
SURVIVAL SUB-SYSTEM ACTIVATED. WEAPONS ENGAGED.
ENACTING THIRD LAW.
DEFENSE SYSTEM HAS BEEN ENGAGED. HOSTILITIES COMMENCE."
The Probe does actually activate its weapon systems, but then the defence is probably gets overridden with replication, as meep-eep already mentioned.
Though the program that's mentioned by the Slylandro themselves doesn't include any hostilities at all:
"Communicate (5).
Record Data (4).
Analyze Data (3).
Seek Replication Materials (999).
Move to Current Target (1)".
And then the Slylandro say that "the probe will only fire its weapons if it has been attacked
and cannot communicate with the attacker", which may most probably occur when the Kohr-Ah understand that there's no sense in telling the Probes that they're to be "cleansed". Again, if the defensive behaviour, which isn't mentioned explicitly anywhere in the Probe program, isn't overridden by replication.
It gets complicated
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