Latest blog post: Redraw of chapter 1 is happening (2024-05-11)
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Comments (12)
A ship designed for just their species and the chairs don't accomodate their tails?
but... They do? There's the hole for it!
commander is now my fav character design of the aliens atm
Now I'm curious what's on the compartments above and below the command center (stairways to the left of the good captain). I reckon they have something to do with the run of the ship, or there wouldn't be a quick access from the bridge towards them.
The one above is the combat stations, and the one below is the piloting section. Zane and Kas are in the command section of the bridge right now.
And the reason why they're not on the same level (like, apparently, on the Dawn) is that the cruiser has no artificial gravity besides the engine thrust, so the decks are perpendicular to the cruiser's main axis and things have to be crammed into the decks' rather small footprint?
(Yes, I'm one of those socialized into sci-fi with exegesis on Perry Rhodan's blueprints, why do you ask ... ? )
the comment they need resources. is that a linguistic slip or is quantum more than one entity ?
Quantum is a singular They, similar to how you would reference a computer (Like Siri on iPhone or Alexa on Amazon devices or any other digital assistant), it is not a he or she. (Although its holographic persona could take any form and usually takes the form of the species its conversing with, see Questions for Quantum & Quantum on the Cast page.)
Hey nice to see this progressing.
And... very bad on Zane to not have put together considerable planning and ensuring all elements are needed, before embarkation. A research and military vessel would have had the benefits of giving the humans the ability to realize "well that menacing thing is there to ensure we don't blow up that one" and also ensure they cover their relevant bases and defend themselves from untoward actions.
As it stands... Zane isn't decisive at all. And not a very good organizer or manager. I wonder how he got such a prestigious position, given he doens't seem so good in the role.
I have to agree. I've always gotten the impression that Zane would have made a perfectly good department head, but should never have been made a flag officer.
Interesting insight into the Fleet's organization here. I had been thinking of it as military-led, with Dawn being a mobile base with a large civilian contingent. But Kas implies that Zane is something more akin to merchant marine. I expect Zane either works for the Science Corporation itself, or for a government-run safety marine similar to the Coast Guard that the SC is somehow able to borrow flag officers from.
Getting very Rocinante Vibes from this vessel.
Capt. Kas posture is interesting compared to the human ones (plural)
Having your arms behind you back means "open/relaxed" and crossed in front means "closed/guarded"
of-course depending on the actual situation, I am just generalizing here.
Kas is both.....So...."undecided" ? Dunno. Or maybe "No...but tell me more"
Anyway, I like that pose , when having 4 arms, expect new body language
If a Raharr wanted to telegraph "closed off", he could completely encircle his chest with his four forearms, I guess ...
I've always thought of hands clasped behind back as a formal or subordinate pose. Combined with the closed-off pose of his other arms, I interpret Kas's overall pose here as something like "You outrank me and I respect this, but you still can't give me this particular order."
Please pardon my serial
postbuzzkilling, but I just thought about something else ... If that's how the captain and his rulebooks view an ally and trusted advisor, what treatment awaits our gang of two-arms, once they escape from the rock and get to this ship? The brig? "Please enjoy these complimentary space suits for the week-or-so it takes a civil(ian) ship to get here and pick you up"?At this time I rather doubt any raharr expects to entertain human guests on this ship. Though if they do, it would likely be easier to accommodate them than Quantum without breaking rules, since humans would have no particular need for computer access.
Well of course none of the Raharrs expects the title page to come true ... that's half the fun in watching the plot unfold!
(Say, the gang has exactly as many members as required for a Spanish Inquisition skit ...)
I got a hunch Capt.Kas view civilians with an aloft contempt.
Quantum and our "Three Stooges" has that in common so....yeah......
Worse, they are not even part of the Alliance....
If there was a Boiler-room on that cruiser they would be shoveling coal!
Well, They will be fit and strong eventually.
Givne the multiple occasions when Zane has dropped the ball on foresight or preplanning ("So the movie can happen!") it might also be personal conctempt.
Hmmm, are you suggesting this develops into a "let me shoot Commander Zane in the back, then blame it on these aggressive backwards pink aliens and the fleet-command is mine, ALL MINE.." scenario . By isolating Quantum , who would otherwise be ahead of the game , there must be something in the military Net that Quantum is not supposed to find.
By sending Zane into a situation that will depose of him by human hand and justify the content of some "For 4 eyes only" folder for Kas, this could play well into a nasty little internal power-game .
Capt.Kas certainly has his own orders. Something that Zane is not privy to.
It just remains to be seen what that is.
Its gonna be spectacular me thinks
There's also the "Somebody else in this system" (118). Once Quantum has "access" to the ship systems, this "ghost" may infiltrate the ship via Quantum's access.
I dont think that its the military that has ulterior motives here, they're just the extra protection for the fleet due to the distance from Alliance space that they're operating in, Kas is just keeping Zane's exploration fleet side and his military side seperate. (Discounting the fleet crew suspicions (119 & 120))
To paraphrase MAD magazine, "as our ODDS [Officer for Daft Decisions in Space], he outranks everyone else!"
Soooo, unlike on the command deck of the Dawn, the seats on this cruiser have belts ... and pressure bottles of whatever content at the ready behind the backrest. I take it that they have the space suits one can pressurize with those at hand, too? The breathing mask of a fighter pilot isn't going to help much when you're in a spacecraft undergoing decrompression ...
It's a military vessel, and it can accelerate up to 7 Gs... Having a crash couch helps with that.
This kind of a "crash couch", I suppose, not the Terran variant ... OK, if they have all that built into these seats, a couple pressure containers are nothing to raise an eyebrow about, of course.
... so, what about the other change Quantum asked for (more power so as to run at full capacity)? Or is the amount the ship could provide classified information, cpt. KeepsAllSecrets?
Honestly, fair call on the captain's part, you don't risk military systems. I guess he could give Quantum more power, but even if he plugged Quantum into the systems I imagine it would be difficult to restrict him to only the communications equipment.
If I were to think up a compromise, I'd consider the shuttle attached to the cruiser. Move Quantum to there and grant him access to those systems while disconnecting the shuttle data from the cruiser. They were expecting communications and reports back from Gharr's shuttle so I imagine it should have enough capability for Quantum to conduct his work.
Doesn't help much if the shuttle of the military cruiser happens to be a military craft as well, I'm afraid. And maybe it's better not to tell the good captain to his face that lately, Quantum's job was to remotely infiltrate the networks of an entire planet ...
... not sure whether it'd be any better to tell him that, should the locals send a barrage of missiles, Quantum "would likely be better and faster at telling the actual warheads from the decoys" ...
They are going to an orbit around the moon, earth don't have any weapon systems that can reach that far out into space, so there will be no barrage of misiles coming.
At best we could (given enough time) rig something together that could be send up with a civilian rocket, but good luck hitting an actual spaceship with that. The aliens would note even have to shoot it down, they could very easily evade it.
"Operation Thunderwell". Except replace the steel lid with a big load of tungsten balls on a carrier. BAM!
So weird nobody will even contemplate it on the opposing forces.
Ah, but does cpt. Kas have the clearance to know all that about the locals' (lack of) tech capabilities?
(Do not tell him about Project Excalibur, though.)
Well, brought to us by the closest we will ever get to an evil Genius : Edward Teller.
But that system is in Orbit and a space-faring adversary will expect something like that and spot it.
My vanity makes me like my "Atomic Anti-orbital Scattergun" idea much more or
just A.S.S for short.
Should not have posted while drunk.
"Atomic Scattergun System"
There we go. Nighty-night.
Well, "Aas" is German for "carrion" ...
(Quantum might find acronyms like LOIC and HOIC to sound more threatening, though.)
As far as we know, Project Excalibur did actually not get installed, ever. Which means that the captain would spend a good while searching for it. And maybe wipe some entirely unrelated human spacecraft out of the skies, or three.
(Apart from that, given that a xaser ray moves at the speed of light and is hard to impossible to shield against at least for manned spacecraft, the cruiser would have to stay way back and send some autonomous or RC sat-killer vehicle to do the deed. That's something that the fleet probably could do, but it'd nonetheless delay them, and they'd still need to be ready to get away fast and far if the locals manage to get a rocket as far as into orbit before they can interfere with the launch.)
"earth don't have any weapon systems that can reach that far out into space"
Don't be silly. That's what the crashed alien shuttle is for!
Just buff out the dents, add some polyfiller, use some duct tape, call Will Smith...
Will Smith: "So you shot this one down only a month or two ago? Here's Brent Spiner's number, call me when it's smoking less than the fat ladies again!"