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...In a hind sight, probably that message could be viewed as a little aggressive...


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Regular
Silence

Ohhhhh man, I'm looking forward to this!

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Senior
Wouter215

By the way, how mobile is Quantum actually? Can it just move about on Alliance systems or is it stuck inside a special "quantum computer" that has to be physically moved between ships?

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Senior
Darth_Biomech

His body is basically a large quantum computer, yes.

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Senior

Honestly, that message carries so many possible nuances and undertones that I'm almost questioning of Quantum has missed something in his interpretation... or if he's doing this on purpose. Third option is that the "Ghosts" are somehow responsible for altering the signal/translation as it arrived. I wonder if Nea would be capable of lip reading what he's saying and confirm.

Never-the-less he makes it pretty clear that there's nothing to "discuss" with the transfer of crew. He's taking them back. The note on "consequences of your actions" just seems unnecessarily hostile. In that sense, Earth was much more tame with a calling it a tragic incident and showing desire to eliminate misunderstandings... but maybe "before they get out of hand" came across as stronger.

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Darth_Biomech

If there was any tampering it'd happened right at the message's recordings. The cerebral implants work their translation program magic by intercepting and changing the signals that the brain's language center sends to the vocal cords, making them shift in ways necessary to produce (or approximate) the required sounds to speak out the intended message with the intended tone.

It didn't really show up in the comic yet (Aside from one panel with Insectoid speaking through a bonafide TTS generator), but not every species are equally legible in the Alliance Standard, often due to their vocal cords being too different that even approximation of a sound sounds not close enough. Sashli for example talk with a heavily pronounced slurp.

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Senior

Ahh, so no there isn't some overlayed translation in English within the video but rather he is vocally saying exactly whats in the video. So no lip reading possible from Nea and if there is manipulation or misinterpretation then it's by Quantum's application... Of course, the other possibility is that he's playing this up because he believes the "Ghosts" are listening and wants to make them believe a certain narrative.

Lunar orbit would mean Earth has nothing that could reach them in a military sense. There are weapons for taking out other satellites in low Earth orbit but mankind does not build anything to take out something as far away as the moon on short notice. The most they have are maybe 10 satellites in orbit.

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Regular
Lord Eric

hang on, his implants are physically controlling his body and substituting his speech? I thought the Alliance never allowed cyberware that level of control over the user.

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Senior
Darth_Biomech

No, the restrictions are regarding wireless connections mostly.

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Regular
ANTIcarrot

Putting a cruiser into orbit of Luna. I fear that is not going to be quite as stealthy as they may intend. Assuming they intend to be stealthy at all.

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New
Borg

When negotiating from a position of power, it doesn't hurt to provide a reminder that you're doing this the nice way because you want to, not because you have to.

Though I suppose that implication is a bit of a bluff, since I imagine that Zane is going to need to defend everything he does here to his superiors when he gets home, and I don't think he would expect them to approve of metaphorically beating up a baby.

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Wouter215

Love the face on the Lab coat guy in panel 4

So what size is a Small Cruiser? ISS sized or bigger?

And is that hallway always zero-G? Is that outside of the habitation cilinder?

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Darth_Biomech

The small cruiser is about twice as big as the ISS. But, ISS spreads its solar panels to look bigger and scare away predators!

Yeah, they're in the forward section near the hangars in this scene.

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Senior

they're in the forward section near the hangars in this scene.

Nothing says "we have reliable long-distance comms built right into our bodies" as well as seeing a commander of an entire fleet tell someone "I'll be right over (in a week or so)" and then walking from bridge straight onto shuttle, giving what apparently are his first orders for the time of his absence literally over his shoulder as he zooms off.

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Senior
Darth_Biomech

Well, nothing particularly prevents him from commanding the Fleet (which isn't doing much of activity ATM anyway) remotely, having ships in a fleet be light minutes and light hours apart is nothing unusual for the Alliance.

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Regular
Siquod

But isn't Quantum needed to manage systems on the fleet ships in a more real-time way?

Great comic, btw.

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Regular
Lord Eric

iirc managing fleet systems isn't what Quantum does anyway, e's more of a civilian consultant.






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TRIVIA
The names of every species of the Alliance (besides Insectoids) are words taken directly from their respective native languages that they use to refer to themselves. They all have the same translation:
"a human".