No, there is absolutely no evidence that they can use time manipulation tech in this way. That is a completely baseless claim.
If you can speed up time for a billion year in several seconds than all you need to do is make a AI controlled that can handle it when you speed up time. We know they have AI, we know their technology can last a long time and we know they can speed up time all you need to do is put three together and you have faster reaction time.
That is complete bull. The only time we have seen time manipulation tech used was in very specific conditions when the victim was completely under their control. It has never been used in a ship-to-ship battle, and there is, I repeat, absolutely no evidence that it can be used to speed up reaction times to their benefit. That is a completely baseless claim. Provide evidence of them doing so, otherwise you claim is completely unsupportable.
Citation needed. The Culture takes this comparison easily, mind you, but there's no particular reason to accept time-manipulation or for that matter timetravel inside the Cultureverse would be impossible in a crossover, any more than there is reason to believe the Culture's technology would suddenly stop working in invading a different setting.
Time dilation is not time manipulation, stop pretending like it is. Anyone can do time dilation, including humanity TODAY.
It had time dilation effects, so they arrived at a location a few weeks early. It does not outright allow for time travel. Even so, there is no evidence that the Forerunners were using this as a battle tactic, and even if they can time travel there is also nothing to suggest that they could go back long enough, considering the Culture has been a spacefaring civilization for eleven thousand years.
I'm pretty sure it actually sent the Ascendant Justice back in time... but seeing as how I don't have a copy of the book, I could be wrong. Halopedia agrees with me though.
I do not recall any evidence that they actually travelled back in time, only that they arrived earlier than they should have due to time dilation effects. Cryptum and Primordium also, notably, do not make any mention of time travel being used in the Flood war at all, despite the fact that it would be incredibly useful.
Which is not at all relevant when the subject in question is capable of manipulating victims across thousands of light years at FTL, because as we know that is totally within the constraints of biology, as it is to weather a billion years of entropy, manipulate AI with no tangible network uplink and create multiple personalities across the gulf of time with distinct patterned memories from a non-existent network that had been physically eradicated. But no, the Gravemind is just a really smart parasite, a really smart parasite created by a race whose basic building material was utterly impervious to physical damage for millions of years and planned to manipulate the forced evolution of life throughout the universe. Are you guys too dense to grasp basic language? The Flood is the Primordial/Gravemind/Timeless One, they are one in the same entity, a being that spans multiple consciousnesses across a vast gulf of time whilst never truly inhabiting any single body. The Gravemind is merely the accumulation of enough Flood mass to allow the physical manifestation of the incorporeal gestalt intelligence (which would be odd if the Gravemind couldn't retain memories prior to his own existence - oh wait, he can). Jesus Christ, are you really this stupid or is acting stupid just a bizarre hobby? The Flood are the physical manifestation you dolt, that's kind of the point of what I've been trying to get across just in case my very second post on the first page of this thread wasn't obvious enough for you cretins. Now considering the Flood apparently sprung from a benign chemical with no viral, invasive or caustic properties it would seem that their capacity to simply forge their own evolution is not limited to amino based compounds but simply through the presence of organic life, but given they were also created by a civilization that naturally defies physical reality through the existence of their building material it would strike me that this was simply a ruse given their own impossible cellular conversion capabilities.
Simple question: Culture Mind gets pissed off and effectorizes the Gravemind/Primordial. What happens?
Assuming that actually happens, then I guess the Flood serves the Culture now. You'd have to provide evidence suggesting a Mind can do that though. Since we have no idea how mentally powerful the Primordial actually is, good luck with that.
The normal assumption in vs debates is that all technology will continue to function as they would normally, so the Culture would still have access to the grid, and the Forerunners would have access to their time manipulation abilities. Though based on what is being said about their time travel, it doesn't appear to be time travel in the conventional sense... Biological weapons (super or otherwise) are going to be quite ineffective, since the Culture can just take a person's mind-state out of their head, and grow a perfectly healthy new body for them and stick their mind-state into their new head (its a common treatment for people who suffer nearly instantaneously fatal injuries like falling into lava or decapitations). Assuming that the people don't just change their bodies to be naturally resistant. Making large scale biological changes is a common occurrence. Changing species is just unpopular rather than impossible, and none of that involves growing a clone alien body for them to inhabit for awhile.
The puppet entity most likely dies, leaving behind an incorporeal gestalt intelligence that exists in the ether as a temporally dissociated, effectively immortal cohesion of thought untouched by the forces of our universe. For the slow people at the back this has been established in the first page, so why this needs to be asked again three pages in should be baffling to any rational person.
Effectors are basically magitech, but advanced ones equipped on modern Culture ships can easily subvert Minds in microseconds. Minds, as mentioned before, simulate entire universes in their free time. Literal universes, but with changed laws of physics.
Yes, I'm aware of what an Effector is. Unfortunately you're not attacking an organic pattern, or even physical one, you're assaulting a nebulous concept of underlying hyper-dimensional constructs. You're not simply extracting a mere human brain pattern, or even a Mind state (both of which allow for sustained entropic values), you're attempting to extract nebulous abstractions that in effect have no tangible link to our perception of time and space (given that the Primordial withstood millions of years of enforced entropy just fine). Like I said, wishing a mountain away with positive thoughts.
While impressive, that's still not solid proof. As Rama has stated, we have no idea exactly HOW hypersentient the Primordial actually is, just as we don't know how powerful the Flood would be if they decided to choke a bitch and not just "test" people. Not arguing for the Flood here, I'm convinced that there is nothing the Primordial, their strongest card, can do for them short of ROB intervention. We just don't know how mentally powerful it is, nor what it could do if it actually gave enough of a damn to do something besides just provide a setup for the Flood as its purpose seems to be, so we don't know if Effectors can work on it.
If it ever came down to total war, do you think the Gravemind would be enough to motivate some Culture folks to sublime? There's always that option, albeit very unpalatable.
Another point. If they Sublime, they'll become higher beings, unable to be harmed, and with control over things like the energy grid. Could the Gravemind do anything to them? Hell, looking more into it, it appears that Subliming makes a being literally omniscient.
Rama, question for you. Maybe I'm one of the slow people at the back (wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last), but are you saying the true Flood is something akin to a sapient meme like a Weeping Angel? Obviously its abilities are completely different, but the way you describe it as being able to exist formlessly without a body brings to mind how I've heard the Weeping Angels described when it's suggested to just destroy their stone bodies.
While I don't know where Rama got his "flood are hyper-dimensional space ghosts" theory from, he has a point about how the Flood seemed specifically designed to NEVER go away. At the end of Primordium, the Primordial basically tells the Didact that the Flood are eternal and choose when to "lose" or "win". It also suggests that it itself will be reincarnated upon death, and that the Flood are and have always been beyond the Forerunner's ability to destroy. It seemed to me that the Primordial hinted that the Flood are spread throughout the universe, and are a way to test powerful species for ownership of the Mantle of a particular galaxy. That's just my theory though.
Mimetic is the best way to describe it. The Flood cell that we see (the girbbly tentacle things) are basically horribly mutated meat puppets, and given the degree of degradation are unlikely to be individually sapient thanks in part to how the Flood violate the laws of thermodynamics. The actual Flood (Gravemind, Primordial, whatever you want to call it) is basically an experiment to rid the universe of stagnant lifeforms, a sort of universal choir composed trillions of voices, memories and individual consciousnesses all ascended into the manifold of space-time so that each Flood manifestation is just a reincarnation of a previous form (every Gravemind is the same entity at once, even if their bodies are destroyed over thousands of years according to the Encyclopedia). Thus every few cycles the Flood mind returns, put the recipient species through a test to assess their worthiness to the Mantle and handle the situation according to the response. If the civilization in question passes, the Flood leaves until the next cycle to start all over again. If they fail, the Flood add their "voice to the choir" and await for a new species to take their place. Where else does a single unified, collation of trillions of psychic memories capable of communicating at FTL speeds go when physically destroyed?
That idea makes sense. I thought you were saying they can just phase into existence Necron style from wherever it is they go, and I don't think that is true. My bad. Also sorry for not responding to you in that Thane goes to Halo thread a while back. By the time my internet came around again the thread had pretty much died out.
