Pre-Q, subs used “Modules”…bits and pieces that would help skew the overall aim of the sub. Emperor had a ton of them. As did Khan.
Now, Q/QV2 and ESPECIALLY ZP gets away from using modules. Where those older modules got the Emperor archetype by doing whatever modules do, ZP is doing the same but without using MODULES. ZP is using a totally different methodology.
So yeah, the assumptions from the pre-Q days of “X has Y in it”…those days are done and dusted.
EDIT: The way I see/envision it, the subs of ye olden days would have a ton of modules, each module doing stuff like the questions. So the overall result was being “Emperor-like” to use the Emperor example.
Now, the tech just asks “What does it mean to be an Emperor?”
It’s hard to fully articulate what I mean. So I’ll use another example (a dream I had once).
I dreamed I got married to a friend of mine. She and I were together for 50 years in the dream before I finally woke up. Total sleep time was 4.5 hours.
And it took me a full hour before I could reliably say which “reality” was the real one. I went to sleep, lived out 50 years’ worth of time with my friend…woke back up in my bed. Think Picard and how he got his little flute thing.
I realized in going back over the dream that it was all really just different anniversary parties over the years. No real content in between. But the implied time between the parties (being a year apart), my brain “filled in the gaps” to create that subjective experience of how much time had elapsed.
So, to bring it back… Imagine it like the old subs were loaded with information for us to process. Hence why we needed 250-500 HOURS of run time before we could say we we “had” the Emperor mindset.
Now, imagine ZP gives us JUST ENOUGH info for our brains to take over and hit the ground running, filling in the gaps with our own information.
Fun Fact: The words “Educate” and “Education” come froma root word meaning to “draw out” understanding. Not fill our heads with trivia.
Palpatine Over and Out