posted
I was just wondering, why didn't they control the ships with a modified ansible and simulators? Then people wouldn't die when the fighters were destroyed.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
I doubt the computers of even that time could follow orders like a human can. The jeesh controlled large groups of fighters, and probably could not spend any time on individual fighters, and as such they would be less efficient compared to human controlled fighters.
Posts: 883 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I think that It would have been just as easy to wright it to have almost no deaths the human side. i believe it was done that way to help us all understand sacrifice of good soldiers following orders or maybe just as simple as it was one of the things that hurt ender the most I believe that if he knew he would have killed the fleet he would not have acted in the way he did and the battle would have turned a different direction. It was the act of self preservation that the hive queens were counting on and that is why the ships got close enough to us the M.D. Device because in ever other fight the humans left a way out.
Posts: 10 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Well, basically, the writer gets to set the rules. Ansibles may have limited bandwidth; voice communication is one thing, the full spectrum of sensors and controls may be another. Alternatively, you need to have crews along to do maintenance.
But yes, it's a good question, actually.
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quote:Originally posted by RunningBear: I doubt the computers of even that time could follow orders like a human can. The jeesh controlled large groups of fighters, and probably could not spend any time on individual fighters, and as such they would be less efficient compared to human controlled fighters.
Well, duh. What are the other graduates of Battle School for? It doesn't have to be the jeesh controlling the individual fighters.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Well, basically, the writer gets to set the rules.
Exactly.
*spoiler's possibly*
That being said -- The ansible and all of it's glory was basically controlled by Jane. If Jane was busy controlling all the single crafts then it would be HER killing the hive queen not Ender... and assuming Ender actually finds Jane he'd then grow a tremendous hate for her/it/them? and the story would be very different.
Posts: 28 | Registered: Jul 2006
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Are you suggesting that Ender hated the pilots and crew who followed his orders? How about his Jeesh for helping him command? He didn't even hate Graff and Mazer, who knew it was real all along and tricked him into it. I don't see how the ships being ansible controlled would have allowed Ender to place the blame somewhere other than on himself. Besides, Jane wasn't even fully conscious or self aware during the third invasion. She certainly wasn't in control of the ansibles then.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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You're postulating computers that could perform as well as trained human pilots, ships that could be run without a crew, and cheap ansible communication. If all these existed, then remote, ansible controlled fleets makes sense, but I don't see that these conditions were necessarily true.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Keep in mind, when that fleet was launced, humans use of the Ansible was still new, they were concerned with getting that fleet off ASAP, they probably didn't have time to work out tatcics, let alone refitting the existing fleet to be controled in a whole new way.
At least that's how I picture it.
Posts: 26 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Jane was born of the ansible, no? I don't mean it so simply as that - just that without it's inception who knows where she'd be...
IMHO - when Ender was doing his thing the ansible was too new for people to really understand/grasp what it was capable of. The mere fact that they could communicate so quickly blind sighted them to experimenting beyond that?
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quote:You're postulating computers that could perform as well as trained human pilots, ships that could be run without a crew, and cheap ansible communication. If all these existed, then remote, ansible controlled fleets makes sense, but I don't see that these conditions were necessarily true.
I don't think the first condition is necessary. Assuming the ships are fly by wire, then all that's needed is a zero-latency interface between the ansible and the fly by wire system. A simulated cockpit would allow a trained pilot to control as well from Eros as the formics' systems, especially if they used gravity manipulation to simulate the kinetic sensations.
I think the other two reasons are overwhelmingly strong enough to justify humans on board, though, and I find the bandwidth question perfectly reasonable.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: No it wasn't. Jane didn't exist yet.
Since this entire thread is about speculation why not consider the idea of Jane existing even at the time of Ender's Game... just not in all of her self awareness.
Once again. This book and series are fiction Posts: 28 | Registered: Jul 2006
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If we're playing by those rules, why didn't Ender just use his magic powers to beat the Buggers. I mean, seeing as how they were all actually just hanging out in a cabana on the French Riveria.
Hey, it's fiction. That means anything goes.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I think you're all just playing devil's advocate. It's perfectly reasonable to have the ships controled by ansible. I can't see how the inefficienty of it would be worth all those deaths -- and not only deaths, but entire lives spent in space ships.
The only reason not to do it is how hurried they were when they sent the fleet out, and the technology might not have been advanced enough. But considering the twists of reality that already exist in this book/series, getting over that problem would have been easy. I think OSC just didn't think of it -- or if he did, it just fell through the cracks in the planning stages.
The direction of blame wouldn't have changed at all. Ender would never have blamed anyone but himself, no matter what.
Posts: 464 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Soara, They were convinced that they were in a fight for their very existence against a foe that superior in quite a few important ways. From the perspective of the people in charge of the fight against the Buggers, if their desperate attacks on the Buggers failed, the next phase would be Bugger fleets annihilating the human race.
In a situation like that, you don't go with the weaker option, unless there's a really, really good reason to do so. Adding risk to the entirety of the human species in order to not send the, let's say at most a couple of hundred thousand military personnel into harm's way would not, at least for me, meet this level.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Soara, I think maintenance concerns are an overwhelming reason why people would be sent. And, once sending people, then the economy of human piloting is compelling.
Besides, they know the buggers used the philotic connection to communicate. What if they could take over philotically controlled fighters?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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You're also forgetting the fact that these ships were both military and colonial(these people would be needed to populate planets). Also, since no one knew (for sure) about the hive queens at the time, they would defenitly have been anticipating ground fighting.
Posts: 33 | Registered: Feb 2005
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What JimmyCooper said is very true and also just because we could send messages by ansible who's to say the ansible was soffisticated enough to send messages to remote control multiple space fleets.
Also strategically you want real people on the ships incase something severed the connection or to repair any problems with the ships. There are these and a thousand other advantages to having real people on board.
Posts: 832 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:Originally posted by 0range7Penguin: What JimmyCooper said is very true and also just because we could send messages by ansible who's to say the ansible was soffisticated enough to send messages to remote control multiple space fleets.
It was sophisticated enough to broadcast the entire battle, which I am sure took alot of bandwidth as well.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
Nah, for that you just need to update the positions of your own and known enemy ships every few milliseconds. You could do that in Morse code, if required.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Well... but what about colonizing? Wasn't that a big part of the mission, so that if we one the human race would be so spread out it couldn't be wiped out easily. Even if we won only a few of the planets, having the colonists there was sorta a "safety net"
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