Sally Manton wrote:
What are the limits of Orac's ability to control spacecraft? I know it showed that it could control Zen and the Liberator's computer systems, but I don't recall it ever doing the same for Slave and the Scorpio, or indeed many other ships (i e the ever-present pursuit ships).
I don't recall it either (but then my memory's not much lately); but I've always thought that if Orac could scramble the other DSV's launch systems, it ought to be able to seize the pursuit ships' flight controls and crash them into each other. OTOH,
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And - if it never happened *except* for the Liberator and the other DSV - can anyone explain it? (If of course it *did* happen, kindly disregard this question :-).
Orac spent a lot of time in Redemption studying Liberator and disconnecting it from the system; presumably that's why it could blow up the other DSV. But it also made Blake wait because it was going to take over an hour to clear its circuits, IIRC. Perhaps it dumped most of the information as not worth the storage space? So we could be talking about either not enough storage space, no opportunity/reason to study the other types of ships, or (most likely IMO) the time factor - there are several examples of Orac being slow at certain things.
Mistral