飞向星空55 新视野2（个人翻译）注：前文可搜索B站专栏“ 风若兮未”(5)

"We face an interesting conundrum[6]," Chang commented, clasping his hands on the table. "Like all things in this war, this alien build‐up is massive, so massive that it is difficult to imagine we can ever slow it with pinpricks. But, given how difficult it is to score knockout blows, we must ask ourselves whether it is possible, and if so, how many pinpricks do we need? Which approach is better? Our problem is that even a Cephalopod AI with full access to their logistics databanks might struggle to answer that question, so what hope do we have?"

“我们面对着一个有趣的难题，”常司令在桌上握紧了双手，评论道。“正如这场战争发生的所有事，外星军力的集结规模庞大，大到我们甚至很难想象怎么用某些小花招去拖延。但是，考虑到打出决定性一击的困难，我们必须自问这是否可能，如果可能，我们需要玩弄多少花招？哪个途径是更好的？我们的问题是，即使头足类AI可以完全访问其后勤数据库，也很难回答这个问题，所以我们还有什么希望呢？”
The table was silent for about ten seconds, as they interpreted what Chang had said and thought about the question.
沉默降临了大约十秒，他们都能领会到常所说的以及他对这个问题的思考。
"I would say that with no other information, it would still be better to go for knockout blows[7]," Anand said. "After all, we're good at incredible one‐time feats, as Sualem mentioned. That is the specific advantage MagOps grants us. If we allow ourselves to be drawn into a long grind [8]of mission after mission, then our performance will trend towards the average, an average the aliens will be able to estimate. The last thing we want is predictable outcomes, because they can almost certainly calculate those better than we can."