Vong biowank rationalization.

[EvilleJedi]

Random ideas trying to rationalize vong bio wank (please feel free to tear it apart as it represents partial ideas and some just plain concessions to in universe stupidity)

 

The vong really bug me in principal, they are included in the mod simply because it is another thing to shoot at and the singularity shielding looks cool

 

Given that the Vong heirarchy is commonly hiding things from lower castes I thought it would be interesting to make a out of universe assumption that the last codex was actually the fact that the vong only hated machine intelligence, droids or majority cybernetic beings. This fits with the canon description of thier hatred so far.

 

so we have a few things that simply defy explaination and are readily dismissable as biowank

 

Hull armor: it's coral?

Hyperspace travel: somehow related to dovin basils

Subspace manuverability: again gravitational manipulation by basils?

Shielding (gravity manipulation in general): more basils?

Power generation: umm no idea?

Plasma weaponry: volcano cannons? omg lame

communication and computation: yammosks, okay this is fine, highly refined organic supercomputers with a limited telepathic ability.

 

Yorik Coral: okay this one gets a good rationalization. Nanoscale organic constructors(viruses sized molecular machines) build ultra-dense crystal strutures with similar properties to 'neutronium' laced durasteel. They also provide the ability for the vessel to maintain fields and cooling through its hull (some form of superfluid conductor flows in the 'crystalline' coral) The constructors remain in the material so that when exposed to minerals they can deconstruct and 'heal' The constructors exist at all levels of the armor and therefore when ablated are exposed. This method should form the basis of all 'shaping' This would also apply to the crab armor and any other bulk material...

 

Dovin basils: okay serious biowank here, Black hole shitting turnips. I pretty much have to write this off as magical scifi. Once you make that leap then the issue is the energy requirements of creating a singularity and the problem of there not being appreciable gravity in open space you get some interesting problems with how they would operate and what they could do. My guess is that something from the above process could be used that would have this functionality. (it being a shaped natural creature is a bed-time story for young vong) Gravity warping could explain the hyperspace effects or movement in planetary orbit (functioning like repulsors)

 

plasma guns could be more like ion cannons or they could simply be shape charged kinetic penetrators, either could be an issue for shields (causing localized collapse of fields or simply jarring the vessels) personally it would make more sense to project the singularities onto the enemy hulls but range seems to prohibit this. The idea here is that the vong weapons aren't 'more powerful' simply effective vs GFFA universe tech and in this conjecture fundamentally the same thing, the shaping is really just nanolathing (for lack of a better term)

 

as for power generation I have no idea, the ability to generate black holes is definately tied to the gravitational properties of the dovin basil construct and the plasma weapons will need some enormous power source to make them effective vs GFFA craft and there is really no explaination of thier realspace movement capabilities. (unless the ships basically have ion engine analogues that are generated from the modified version of shaping mentioned here and feeding them is just the same as fueling a normal space craft)

 

 

the main idea here is that vong hate artifical intelligence, they use nanolathing of some sort to 'shape' and they are focused on gravitational technology

 

unanswered: gruchins (autonomous molecular furnaces?) thud/razor bugs/ amphistaffs?

 

confused: power gen, weaponry, realspace manuvering.

 

discuss...

[shadowlegion421]

as for power generation, they dont require any. they just have to keep their organisms fed. living things generate their own power so long as they are sustained.

 

as for realspace movement, its described (although not in much detail) in one of the books, dont remember which. basically, the dovin basals "grab" on to a stellar object larger than the ship, or repel from an object larger than the ship. apparently, there is no limit to the range of this ability. i would wholeheartedly agree, however, that this sort of gravity manipulation is completely fantastic in every respect. way beyond the idea of hyperspace travel.

 

for the weapons, the plasma cannons are NOT the volcano guns. they are differentiated sporadically in the books, but they are separate. the plasma is used as a laser analogue, no mass, just energy, while the volcano gun thing is a missile analogue, and is in fact just superheated rock. i think the reason they dont use dovin basals for weaponry in most cases is highlighted in the numerous accounts of tech. ships tiring them when all they have to do is provide shielding and maneuvering. adding more stress to their regular workout would be downright stupid.

 

as for the organisms, i dont really see how they could have possibly begun any sort of genetic engineering without starting with technology to engineer their original bio-tools.

[EvilleJedi]

Hence my stance that they aren't anti technology, just anti machine intelligence. They probably drifted from mechanical tools as their biotic tools became more flexible. The concept is that 'shaping' is really biological manufactured micro-nano machines.

[shadowlegion421]

its not just intelligence i think, its any machine that mimics life, which would be any machine that moved on its own. they dont ever seem to find clothing, simple tools, or buildings to be abominations, but as soon as a non-organic material moves, its all hellfire and brimstone upon thee.

[Lord Shonus]

I haven't finished the series (I just finished Force Heritic 01), but you have to remember that the Vong are fundamentalist religious fanatics. Their hatred of machines is no different, and no less rational, than that of certain modern-day Fundamentalist Christians toward medical research.

 

As for personal equipment, Amphistaves and Crab armour were extremely well defined in Traitor, where as the bugs were defined elsewhere in the series. The only thing that is truly illogical is the dovin basal, and that is inconciveable only if you insist that gravity generation is neccesarily power consumptive.

[shadowlegion421]

at this point, judging how power hungry gravity manipulation would be is nothing less than ridiculous, because even in this era of quantum physics and budding teleportation technology, we have no idea what gravity actually is. all we have is a completely unproven theory about sub-atomic particles called gravitons, that we cant even prove exist. and its quite apparent that generating gravity requires no electrical power, since a completely uncharged and inert piece of space rock has its own gravitational pull.

 

at this point, conjecture about plausible gravitational manipulation is about as accurate and informed as Viking shipwrights engineering a nuclear submarine.

[Master_Vel422]

From what ive read the vong have mastered genetic manipulation and cloning on a scale which seems to be "impossible"  i've read the entire NJO series as well

as every book after that and everything ive read points to the fact that they are from zonoma sekot and when the planet

exiled them they were forced to re create and clone aswell as cross breed to survive the trip through dark space. In short they had to "re-make"

all of the "tech" from there homeworld and sekot is a living sentient planet. use your imagination.No offense to anyone