Culture/Idirian War

[Shrykull]

I wondered exactly how the Idirians could stand against the Culture and how the war could have gone go on almost a century.

Aren't minds capable of simulating the life and death of entire universes, this would make them deific and capable of winning the war very easily. Although there was that multi universal civilization they encountered in excession, even beyond that of the culture, but minds also exist in higher dimensions, beyond even what can be imagined by being of lower dimensions. For example, can you imagine another direction of space, other than length, width or height? Minds can and do, (even a fifth) I guess that civ was even beyond what minds could imagine, but the Idirians weren't.

All I can think of is perhaps since minds also have emotions that they might also have failings an organic mind would, such as lazyness. In the early stages of the war the Idirians overwhelmed the culture until the culture retreated, built up thier forces and counterattacked.

[NecronLord]

Aren't minds capable of simulating the life and death of entire universes,

So are we. There's a lot of talk about Infinite Fun, but basically it's a really advanced suite for running really good interactive alternate history simulations. Talk about it being able to 'simulate every atom' is not supported by the text, although it can predict how things would work with subtly (or grossly) changed physical laws.

this would make them deific and capable of winning the war very easily. Although there was that multi universal civilization they encountered in excession, even beyond that of the culture, but minds also exist in higher dimensions, beyond even what can be imagined by being of lower dimensions. For example, can you imagine another direction of space, other than length, width or height? Minds can and do, (even a fifth) I guess that civ was even beyond what minds could imagine, but the Idirians weren't.

My computer can imagine that quite nicely. There's no limits to the number of spatial dimensions a computer can simulate, in theory. But humans just aren't equipped to visualise it; we need three (or lower) dimensional projections.

All I can think of is perhaps since minds also have emotions that they might also have failings an organic mind would, such as lazyness. In the early stages of the war the Idirians overwhelmed the culture until the culture retreated, built up thier forces and counterattacked.

Idirans had their own near-Mind-level but not-free battle computers, and subtle aid from the Homomdans.

[andrewgpaul]

Also, IIRC a goodly portion of the war was ground combat. I think the Idirans were superior to the Culture in that respect, at least initially.

[Keevan_Colton]

There is also some evidence that the Culture took a while to "take the gloves off" as it were.

[NecronLord]

Yeah. The Culture wasn't mobilised for war, or even producing custom warships (m)GSVs aren't custom warships, after all, though they're the most formidable conventional warship we know of.

[NeoGoomba]

I thought the ROU's were their big guns, ship-wise?

[Starglider]

I thought the ROU's were their big guns, ship-wise?

The ROUs are their main warships, once switched over to war mode. But there's some stuff in Look To Windward about a 'fully militarised GSV' being a 'supremely powerful fighting unit', which isn't surprising as a GSV has somewhere between a thousand and a million times the internal volume of an ROU. The fleet deployment sequence in Excession also illustrated how a GSV can act as a very fast supercarrier that can build and then deploy a 50,000 ship fleet (ROUs of various sizes).

[Tasoth]

The fleet deployment sequence in Excession also illustrated how a GSV can act as a very fast supercarrier that can build and then deploy a 50,000 ship fleet (ROUs of various sizes).

Nitpick. They were Drones. But they were extremely powerful.

I think early on in the war, the Culture followed it's usual MO of fight wars on planets: Send in a Special Circumstance agent and have the planet sway towards the Culture. The opening of CP even shows something like that, with the girl who's name escapes me gloating to Horza right before the Idirans show up. And that probably highlights how the early portions of the war went: The Culture sways the society away from the Idirans. The Idirans, seeing that the option they gave the society of joining them peacefully has been decline, shrug their shoulders and show up with gun platforms and medjel, subjugating the planet by force. I don't even think the Culture operation to retrieve the lost Mind was planned to involve more then the SC agent and Horza. Which just shows the mindset of the Culture at that phase of the war.

[XaLEv]

Nitpick. They were Drones. But they were extremely powerful.

Dronish ships, more like.

I have been rather more constructively employed over the past few decades than might have been imagined. The following have been manufactured:

Type One Offensive Units (roughly equivalent to Abominator class prototype): 512.

Type Two Offensive Units (equivalent to Torturer class): 2048.

Type Three Offensive Units (equivalent to Inquisitor class prototype, upgraded): 2048.

Type Four Offensive Units (roughly equivalent to velocity-improved Killer class): 12 288.

Type Five Offensive Units (based on Thug class upgrade design study): 24 576.

Type Six Offensive Units (based on militarised Scree class LCU, various types): 49 152.

These craft do not represent a hegemonistic threat as they are not independent Mind-supporting entities; they are Al-core controlled, semi-slaved to me and therefore only capable of being used effectively as a single unit, not as a distributed war machine. All are currently deployed in the volume of space around the Excession.

Xenophobe was a Torturer.

[Shrykull]

I think also the Idirians had gridfire, there's a place in consider phlebas where they destroy an orbital, if it was one of thiers.

I just thought minds are way more advanced than anything the Idirians have, like some uber chess computer than overwhelms any human or organic being, and knows the appropriate moves to counter any of thiers. This is the impression I got when they said the minds can simulate the life and death of entire universes.

However, I don't think even the culture is a true Type III civilization, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale and neither is the galactic empire/republic, as they don't harness the whole galaxy, don't have spheres of satelittes around and mine every star, gas giant, nebulae, asteroid, comet and everything else. Unless, they are taking the energy grid into account which could possibly provide more than a galaxy's worth of energy.

[Starglider]

I think also the Idirians had gridfire, there's a place in consider phlebas where they destroy an orbital, if it was one of thiers.

That was actually a Culture ship (GSV Irregular Apocalypse I think) destroying the orbital (with the greatest of regret...) to prevent its use by the enemy (if only they would see reason...). But I expect the Idirians do have gridfire inductors as well.

[OmegaGuy]

Gridfire impellers *nitpick*

[SCVN 2812]

GE probably isn't type III, their best effort at power generation is a 900 km ball with a core equal to a couple hundred suns, further down the line their 19 km ship of the line is just 1 sun and there probably aren't a couple hundred billion of them.

Culture is..difficult to calc because they tend to rely on things that are difficult to quantify like grid fire for mass destruction and their ship to ship combat is more like rock - paper - scissors written very large and on crack, what with their missiles being teleported into the enemy's hull and their opponent trying to keep said missiles from materializing, rather than your typical sci-fi energy/matter weapon slugfests. Or at least that's my take on the combat in Look to Windward and Excession. (Note to self, find online Canadian bookstore with rest of the novels)

[Surlethe]

I get the impression that another reason it took a while for the Culture to defeat the Idirans is the FTL speeds. IIRC, it would have taken several months for the Culture to bring the always-right-by-coincidence person in CP across the arm of the galaxy to be nearer the fighting.

[Sriad]

Depending on how you run your Kardashev scale the Culture would clock in around 2.6 or so. Most ships can sling around stellar level energy (though yes, tricky to calc), flooding light-minutes of space with energies powerful enough to vaporise ships with the misfortune to find themselves coincidental to said energies.

The war took a long time because the Culture took a long time to get philosophically in line with the idea of total war, and a long time again to get a war footing fully developed and mobilized, and a final long time between when they turned back the Idirian offensive and the Idirians were reduced to a shattered remnant willing to swallow their pride and surrender to an enemy they didn't believe was willing to employ genocidal measures against them.

Other than socially and IT-wise, they started from rough technological parity; anything the Culture had pre- to mid- war, the Idirians probably had an equivalent.

[Sriad]

I get the impression that another reason it took a while for the Culture to defeat the Idirans is the FTL speeds. IIRC, it would have taken several months for the Culture to bring the always-right-by-coincidence person in CP across the arm of the galaxy to be nearer the fighting.

...but I also agree with Surlethe to an extent; the field of conflict was months across; transport time from end to end would be hundreds of times what modern Earth military engagements are like, even though the actual conflicts were ferociously quick.

[Keevan_Colton]

I'd still say the Culture were technologically superior to the Idirians, mainly because it seems even in the early engagements, against ships not geared up for war (GSV's and so on rather than the various OU's) the Idirians still needed numerical superiority with dedicated warships. At least if I recall correctly, someone has a loan of my copy of CP right now.

[Winston Blake]

However, I don't think even the culture is a true Type III civilization, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale and neither is the galactic empire/republic, as they don't harness the whole galaxy, don't have spheres of satelittes around and mine every star, gas giant, nebulae, asteroid, comet and everything else. Unless, they are taking the energy grid into account which could possibly provide more than a galaxy's worth of energy.

The Kardashev scale isn't about literally 'harnessing' all the resources of something. It's about how much power a civilisation consumes. The planet/star/galaxy examples were just convenient places to make the distinctions. That's why you can get decimals on the scale. Even a one-planet civilisation could be Type III if it had high enough (technowank) power generation and heat dissipation.

[Big Orange]

, and subtle aid from the Homomdans.

I can see the Homomdans intiating a wartime lend lease with their close Idiran clients, but at the same it was implied in Consider Phlebas' appendices, Excession and Look to Windward that the Homomdan Empire deployed a small number of their best warships to prop up the Idiran fleetgroups against the Culture - concentrated numbers of Idiran warships could feasibly defeat outnumbered GCUs, ROUs or even GSVs, but the Idirans likely needed the token Homomdan warships to give them a slight tactical edge over Culture opposition in some engagements.

It was also implied that the Idiran-Culture war heated up after the Idirans were starting to invade the Culture's client races, so that could explain why the slightly less advanced Idirans initially overwhelmed Special Circumstance forces, civilian Culture enclaves and lone Culture ships that were widely dispersed over the galaxy (the relatively slow FTL and the Culture not being on a war footing at the time is explanation enough for their gradual retreat from encroaching Idiran battlegroups, then building up a more impressive warfleet and launching a counterattack against the Idirans over many decades).

And I don't think the early Idiran/Culture disparity was that wide: gunplatforms seemed like Idiran drones (but without annoying personalities), Idiran warriors perhaps had similar infantry gear to most SC agents of the day, Idiran warships likely had effectors and displacers (or cruder equivalents at least), with Idiran battle computers that were nearly as effective in raw processing power as Culture Minds (but without a "soul" or real free will).

[andrewgpaul]

I'd still say the Culture were technologically superior to the Idirians, mainly because it seems even in the early engagements, against ships not geared up for war (GSV's and so on rather than the various OU's) the Idirians still needed numerical superiority with dedicated warships. At least if I recall correctly, someone has a loan of my copy of CP right now.

... General Contact Units: not designed as warships, but suffiently well armed and more than fast enough to be a match for the average Idiran ship. In addition, the Culture's field technology had always been ahead of the Idirans', giving the GCUs a decisive advatnage in terms of damage avoidance and resistance. ... even if the Culture craft themselves were never quite a match for the better Homomdan ships.

The course of the Idiran War roughly parallels WW2 in the Pacific, although without the major turning points like Midway. The Homomdans also confuse matters slightly.

[NecronLord]

I can see the Homomdans intiating a wartime lend lease with their close Idiran clients, but at the same it was implied in Consider Phlebas' appendices, Excession and Look to Windward that the Homomdan Empire deployed a small number of their best warships to prop up the Idiran fleetgroups against the Culture - concentrated numbers of Idiran warships could feasibly defeat outnumbered GCUs, ROUs or even GSVs, but the Idirans likely needed the token Homomdan warships to give them a slight tactical edge over Culture opposition in some engagements.

Yes. At that stage, the Homomdans were supposedly more advanced and powerful than the Culture. At the "present" the Culture appears to have progressed - at some point, also, some Homomdan warships defected to the Culture, which might explain the overtaking. One such convertcraft is mentioned in Excession.

[Shrykull]

However, I don't think even the culture is a true Type III civilization, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale and neither is the galactic empire/republic, as they don't harness the whole galaxy, don't have spheres of satelittes around and mine every star, gas giant, nebulae, asteroid, comet and everything else. Unless, they are taking the energy grid into account which could possibly provide more than a galaxy's worth of energy.

The Kardashev scale isn't about literally 'harnessing' all the resources of something. It's about how much power a civilisation consumes. The planet/star/galaxy examples were just convenient places to make the distinctions. That's why you can get decimals on the scale. Even a one-planet civilisation could be Type III if it had high enough (technowank) power generation and heat dissipation.

It is about harnessing all the energy of something according to wikipedia, and other stuff I read, Michio Kaku's hyperspace. Of course, you couldn't make a death star with any fuel we know of that could generate that much energy.

[Keevan_Colton]

Harnessing power equivalent to...

[Winston Blake]

It is about harnessing all the energy of something according to wikipedia, and other stuff I read, Michio Kaku's hyperspace. Of course, you couldn't make a death star with any fuel we know of that could generate that much energy.

Besides the fact that the Wikipedia article repeatedly confuses power and energy, it's obvious that the planet/star/galaxy progression is an illustration that uses our particular situation to distinguish 'Types'. There's such a great variety of planets and stars out there that stuff like 'Have they built a Dyson Sphere yet' is hopelessly simplistic.

My point is that the Kardashev scale doesn't imply enclosing and mining every celestial body (where did the mining thing come from?) like you suggested. For example, if modern humanity spread to thousands of star systems, we might not need any Dyson Spheres at all to be a Type II civilisation.

[Shrykull]

Well, also I thought it doesn't take fictional energy sources into account. There's no fuel we know of that you could use for a reactor, like the death star's that would generate that much energy.

Perhaps the whole section on examples of Type 1, 2 and 3 civilizations should be taken out, because the only one we know of is our Type 0 civ, we don't know of any real life beyond type 0 ones.