Jim nods in agreement. They haven't run into too many aquatic sentients, particularly not spacefaring civilizations, but the point is well taken. The question about clouds, however, makes him a pause a moment. Maybe Tamriel's understanding of astronomy is a little more primitive than he thought? (Oh, Jim, if only you knew.) "Well, there are sort of clouds in space, called nebulas. They're not terribly common, but you could use one to hide in, and they can mess up sensors so you might not be detected. I've also heard of ships putting a planet or moon between them and their opponent, then changing their orbit to be perpendicular for a faster intercept. There are rumors that the Romulans have developed a cloaking device recently too; that'd make their ships invisible."

"The psychological part of it's a little more minor, but it can be enough to momentarily throw someone off," he adds. "There's a reason it's common courtesy to adjust your ship's orientation to match whoever you're interacting with. Humans can find it weird to talk to someone that we perceive as upside-down, or fight someone while our belly's turned towards them." Whether it works the same for other species, of course, depends on the species, but maybe that's something the Saxhleel will have in common. They are bipeds developed for life in gravity, so that does tend to indicate a preference for physical orientation, usually.

The question about the warp core is a little more complicated to answer, and Jim takes a moment to decide how he wants to answer that. "It's... possible, but not really feasible. Are you familiar with radioactivity?" Something Jim does not like to think about, these days, but now that he's had a few months to adjust, it doesn't make him twitchy just by talking about it.