Hunting Contest: Homeworld Plotholes (v0.2)

[Jake]

The previous thread being both moribund and very, very long, it's probably time to start afresh.

So, to open the batting, here's one from the second mission in Cataclysm. The Kuun-Lan's commanding officer mentions 'a dual signal on the emergency channel' that turns out to be from a drifting disaster beacon. Now, I can just about believe that it could stay mostly functional for a million years straight -with radio-electric decay by something with an extremely long half-life for a power source and really good workmanship it's just about possible- but doesn't it strike you as slightly unlikely that the Galactic Council has retained the same Interstellar Distress Frequency since before most of its current members left the oceans?

[Robbannn]

Galactic council? Wasn't the Naggarok from outside the galaxy? And launched way before the galactic council was even formed? But the point still stands that they have the exact same emergency channel as the naggaroks creators. Maybe the beast organism infecting the probe was "listening to the electromagnetic chatter of your tiny self/worlds." and configured it to send out signals on that frequency to get someone to come and pick it up.

[Jake]

That's a point actually; what did happen to the Naggarok's crew in the end? If they had time to trash the engines and radio transmitter badly enough that the Beast couldn't fix them without outside assistance, they could certainly have run like buggery for the lifeboats.

[Starblade]

They had time to trash the navigation and engines but not get out afterwards.

[Jake]

Maybe, but I can't help wondering whether some of them got off the ship in time, and what happened to them if they did.

[CommissarRezail]

I die in the void out side of the galaxy, most likely getting void madness and killing everyone else on board. Then end for them... Most likely they didnt make it to a planet at all.

[Captain Elson]

Also, if the beast DID infect them it'd know how to jury rig a solution to repair its drives.

[Starblade]

Maybe, but I can't help wondering whether some of them got off the ship in time, and what happened to them if they did.

I'm pretty sure they made a point not to leave as not to completely ruin the point of stranding the infection in space in case any got on the escape ship too.

Also, if the beast DID infect them it'd know how to jury rig a solution to repair its drives.

It can know how, but with no way of building or repairing and I assume no resources since those launch tubes looked like they worked but they never built anything (and presumably all the mutations and warping of the Beast Mothership's hull didn't come out of thin air) those parts it's out of luck until something comes along and repairs it for them.

[Stingra]

I'll be of little help *gasp shock horror* since this is Cataclysm territory and I never made it past the 'sneak through the dust clouds next to the Imperialist base' mission (and I don't have a working disc), so...

I know that when the crew of the Naggarock disabled the engines, the hsip automatically jettisoned a distress beacon pod. Does it say in-game that the Naggarock even has escape pods? If not, to avoid infection they could have just killed themselves by opening an airlock into space.

[Jake]

Does it say in-game that the Naggarock even has escape pods?

Not explicitly, no, but it's a reasonable supposition that they would possess some way of escaping the ship in the event of a catastrophe.

[Stingra]

Is there any mention of escape pods on any ships in the Homeworld universe? Also, what's to say they didn't jettison any of these supposed pods around the same time they disabled the engine and ruined the com-arrays?

Space is also BIG. I don't know how large the Naggarock is in comparison to any of the other Homeworld ships, but the likelihood of someone picking up a Beast infected escape capsule that isn't functioning or transmitting a signal after a million years of stellar drift is impossibly low. Especially in a planetary system where the gravitational pull of planets could send the said pods into the crushing depths of a gas giant.

Ah, SCIENCE!, let us never part.

[Elukka]

I think it'd be a good idea to copy the first post of the old thread (along with the links) so that we wouldn't go through resolved things all over again. A moderator could 'Edit' it and copy it, so that you wouldn't have to relink everything, right?

[Aesaar]

If someone has an hour or so to spend doing that and linking the solved plotholes not linked in the other thread. If no one does it by Monday, I'm pretty sure I could do it.

[Starblade]

Is there any mention of escape pods on any ships in the Homeworld universe?

Frigates do at least; in the Cata manual it mentions a technician getting shoved into one right before the rest of the ship got infected.

[Stingra]

In the ships section? I just read through it and didn't see any mention of that.

[Jake]

From the Cataclysm manual via HWShipyards:

"The Beast Cruise Missile was first seen in Seera Tel system, when a Kiith Manaan frigate squadron sent a frantic message that it was under attack by unknown drone craft. When no further word was received, Manaan Fleet Command sent in a full Carrier group to investigate, but initially all that was found was the wreckage of one Assault Frigate; the remaining four Ion Beam Frigates were nowhere to be found.

Eventually a lone escape pod was found with one alive-but-nearly-insane Manaani bridge officer aboard. When an psi-tech was finally able to piece her psyche back together again, the mystery was finally solved.

It seems that soon after issuing the report, the incoming drones closed at ramming speed too fast for the Ion Beam Frigates to track. As the drones impacted, it became obvious they were huge missiles carrying a warhead of Beast plasma; the missiles blew through the frigate's hull, the plasma warhead burst, and the infection spread through the ship in seconds, subverting the ship and dissolving her crew.

The battle took less than two minutes, as the three infected Ion Frigates turned on the one assault frigate that had managed to destroy the cruise missile targeted on it before impact. The lone surviving officer had been shoved into an escape pod by her captain, along with the battle telemetry; she was ejected moments before the last frigate was cut to pieces..."

[Stingra]

You could have just said 'it's under the Beast cruise missile page, not any of the frigates'.

EDIT To keep this going in the vein of Cataclysm plotholes...

What were the Star Metal scroll the Somtaaw kept hidden in their holiest temple near the top of the Lungma-Jin mountain?

[tehashi]

That does not sound much like a plothole Stingra, sounds more like a question about the fluff. Could you clarify some?

[Stingra]

It's just something to keep the conversation going. We've talked about less in the past.

The Star-Metal scrolls were of deep religious significane to the Somtaaw, supposedly written by Jakuul (whoever that is) himself in a language no living man could read. It wasn't until the discovery of the Khar-Toba and the Guidestone that the scholars of Kharak started to be interested in the Scrolls, and other mythological artifacts (the Sobanni sword Caaliburnos, the Flaming Spear of Gaalsi and the Somtaaw's Chalice of Life) from the early days of Kharakian history. But, due to politics, they were never looked at by researchers and historians due to the Burning.

So what are the Star Metal Scrolls? What did they actually say? Maybe they were ancient Hiigaran data-pads and contained the true history of what happened to the Hiigarans? If they had been looked at and translated, what would have happened? Maybe the Kushan would have better prepared themselves against the Taiidan Empire and waited another decade or two and stockpiled the population in cryo-trays, or put more research into capital ship technology and turned the Mothership into a warship, or build up a stronger defense fleet.

It's obvious that they were important, but to think that if the Somtaaw hadn't been stubborn and put the world before themselves, the entire Homeworld War could have been avoided or at least made much less painful.

Here's another one, if that's not suited enough to your liking.

Which is more powerful: Hyperspace, or Slipgates? They both open into hyperspace, but one is naturally occuring while the other is generated. However, only the Cores had the capabilities to jump the great distances that the Slipgates were said to do. And then there's the overcharged Bentusi Slipgate that they try to run away in.

The way Slipgates sound like they work is a hole in reality between two points, enter one end, get shot out the other. The Bentusi Slipgate had a natural exit vector outside of the galaxy and was artificially enhanced to shoot them far past that exit and into another galaxy. That makes the Eye of Arran look like a toy in comparison, which could only transport ships through a system of gates.

And, one could go even further and say that Balcora was a overcharged Slipgate, with an exit hole at the Lagrange point between the supermassive black holes.

So, which is more powerful?

[Captain Elson]

Natural phenemenon are more powerful than what beings can create. However, the downside to this is that you can build a jumpgate anywhere that you want almost. Slipgates stable and large enough are few and far between. Also, there is the problem of finding where they lead.

Slipgates= more power
hypergates= more usefull.

[Starblade]

So what are the Star Metal Scrolls? What did they actually say? Maybe they were ancient Hiigaran data-pads and contained the true history of what happened to the Hiigarans? If they had been looked at and translated, what would have happened? Maybe the Kushan would have better prepared themselves against the Taiidan Empire and waited another decade or two and stockpiled the population in cryo-trays, or put more research into capital ship technology and turned the Mothership into a warship, or build up a stronger defense fleet.

Alternatively they could've just been scrolls that had been written and had nothing to do with the Khar-Toba or earlier, but no one knows because no one looked. That's not a plothole, though, just a mystery.

[Stingra]

It keeps the conversation going, doesn't it?

[NeroNameless]

I haven't fully read the thread but on the subject of the Crew of the Naggarok escaping. They probably figured that if the ship was infected so were any of the escape pods, vehicles, and other space-borne craft they may be able to use to escape with. That's my two cents there

[Vulgar_Monkey]

Aye, I believe it was supposed to be an act of sacrifice for the greater good (tau?).

I have a thought on....well, not really a plot-hole, more something that I'm surprised has never been addressed in fan-fic.

Using PDA's for mining and construction seems to be a method popular among the more savvy races, if not being the norm galaxywide. Far as we've been led to understand, they build up and break down target objects atom by atom.

Now, given that quite a few capital ships have been stolen by most races at some point or another, what is to stop a thieving navy from using a PDA to create a bunch of copies to be used for false flag ops?

OK, it'd be very illegal. But that doesn't always stop us in the real world, hmm?

[Jake]

Not much point really; to achieve complete tactical surprise they'd have to crack the enemy's IFF codes ahead of time, and reconfigure the assembly line to fabricate a whole bunch of non-standard components and bolt them together.