SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread III

[Simon_Jester]

Re: PeZook:

Well yes, but disaffected high-ranking officers aren't unheard of; there have to be measures in place for dealing with that too. In essence, the humane-logical thing to do is discharge them honorably on psychiatric grounds with a hefty disability pension and make it very well known in their circles that while it's not their fault, they are now a security risk.

[PeZook]

Yeah, pretty much. And of course come down like a tonne of bricks on everyone still in the service who's caught discussing anything remotely sensitive with him/her

Like in Soviet Russia Bragulan Star Empire! What were you doing having coffee with that disgraced officer? What do you mean you're his brother?! That doesn't relieve you of the need to be vigilant!

[Shroom Man 777]

They will be shunned! Like Amish people! Gulags of communities of disgraced officers. They earn a living by stamping license plates and building chairs, except when the government collects them, they end up throwing the license plates and chairs into a huge fire - for even the products manufactured by compromised and disgraced officers are not free of taint!

[Simon_Jester]

EDIT: Another post on the Hoffman-O'Connor conference is up. Ball's in your court now, LoC9.

They will be shunned! Like Amish people! Gulags of communities of disgraced officers. They earn a living by stamping license plates and building chairs, except when the government collects them, they end up throwing the license plates and chairs into a huge fire - for even the products manufactured by compromised and disgraced officers are not free of taint!

Or perhaps they are exiled. There are Bragulans wandering around outside the Empire, after all; maybe a fair fraction of them were just thrown out for some reason. You know, borderline cases who haven't done anything worth killing them (even by Bragulan standards), but who aren't worth keeping around.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh yes there are.

In the spring of 3380 the port at Tannhauser Gate was opened, and thousands set sail for the United Sovereignty. They came in search of the Solarian Dream. One of them found it on the sun washed avenues of Solaris... wealth, power and passion beyond his wildest dreams. He was Tony Bragtana but the world will remember him by another name... Bragface

[PeZook]

He needs a more sovietized Bragulanized name.

[Shroom Man 777]

Tovneniey Montsvagna

I never fucked anybody over in my life didn't have it coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my brags and my word and I don't break them for no one. Do you understand?

'Brags' is a euphemism for 'balls'!

Okay Hank; You wanna fuck with me? You fucking with the best! You wanna fuck with me? Okay. You little cockroaches... come on. You wanna play games? Okay, I play with you; come on. Okay. You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello to my enormous friend!

*pulls out K-bolter*

[PeZook]

Hmm...fucking with Sidney Hank using just a K-Bolter is probably not the best idea, though

[Shroom Man 777]

I didn't have any other names. Maybe Hank moonlights as Alejandro Sossa and hangs people off helicopters/RDA VTOLs.

Go ahead! I take your fucking plasma! You think you kill me with plasma? I take your fucking plasma! Go ahead!

*gets shotgunned in the back, falls into fountain*

[Tanasinn]

I wonder how these New Humanists are going to view the Commonwealth and the Commune, both of which using mechanical technology to accelerate human evolution?

Zor

When it comes strictly to posthumanist ideals, both parties are likely to get at least a thumbs-up, though other details of each state are bound to have their effects. The fact that the Commune exists at all is likely to give the Union's Communist Party a shot in the arm if/when Union citizens get a better grasp at what's been going on in other nations while they were busy killing each other.

[Siege]

Well, not without the equivalent of turning them into a Umerian "strange flower" like Agent Rose: an agent whose entire mind has pretty much been taken apart and put back together from the ground up for the purpose of making them a more efficient spy.

Of course. There's always ways around the problem: mind state storage for example. Agent potentially compromised? Restore from backup!

Then again there might be way to subvert even that process, but at some point you just gotta say "hey, it's the future!" and roll with whatever tech is declared to be available.

EDIT: As a total aside, I think Solarian diplomatic missions in nations that we don't have a lot of dealings with consist of only one of Olympic's cores. It just seems more efficient than stationing an actually sending people overseas to do the talking...

[Agent Sorchus]

I have a differing reason that Manchurianizing the catgirl probably won't work. Since so many people can do uploads and full brain scans it should be trivial to use this technology to be certain that your agents are really yours and haven't been tampered with by either psychers or using the upload tech either. Of course this doesn't prevent simple double agents that haven't had any tampering and are in their right mind when achieving their own agenda.

[Siege]

And how on Earth are you going to tell tampering just from the differences between mind-state 1 and mind-state 2? Any divergence could've been the result of anything: new memories, the subject could've changed their mind about something, new experiences altering one's perspective on life... or subterfuge by an outside agency. How will you tell the difference? To think that just these technologies existing will somehow make subversion impossible is hilariously silly.

[Force Lord]

I do believe Fisher will be thinking what the hell Kordis was smoking.

[Steve]

I do believe Fisher will be thinking what the hell Kordis was smoking.

Well, that, and he's basically given them a head's up to be on the alert for the Centrality secret service to attempt an assassination on persons under Imperial protection. It's looking more and more like the real reason Enduvos was overthrown was to keep him from provoking war with New Anglia....

[Simon_Jester]

Of course. There's always ways around the problem: mind state storage for example. Agent potentially compromised? Restore from backup!

Then again there might be way to subvert even that process, but at some point you just gotta say "hey, it's the future!" and roll with whatever tech is declared to be available.

Right. Some countries retire the agents; others try a cybernetic restore-from-backup, still others with unusually sophisticated esper-therapy techniques try to repair.

The Bragulans, of course, just beat the victim with sticks until any subtle esper-conditioning is overwhelmed by the brute force power of beating-stick-conditioning...

EDIT: As a total aside, I think Solarian diplomatic missions in nations that we don't have a lot of dealings with consist of only one of Olympic's cores. It just seems more efficient than stationing an actually sending people overseas to do the talking...

That might be a false economy.

The long-range interstellar bandwidth allotment needed for a functional Olympic core connected to the main Solarian network, along with the costs of installation and maintenance... it's not impossible, clearly not, but I doubt it saves money over at least having a few guys running a consulate.

Remember, most of the galaxy is run by humans, not CIs, and often not even heavily cyberneticized humans at that. An Olympic core could interact with them, but the one thing meatbags are fairly efficient at is interacting with other meatbags. There are considerable advantages to having at least a few flesh-and-bloods on station, and the costs aren't exactly staggering as long as you don't get ridiculously opulent.

I do believe Fisher will be thinking what the hell Kordis was smoking.

Well, that, and he's basically given them a head's up to be on the alert for the Centrality secret service to attempt an assassination on persons under Imperial protection. It's looking more and more like the real reason Enduvos was overthrown was to keep him from provoking war with New Anglia....

I'd guess that and other factors. Enduvos was so paranoid and excessive about his reaction to foreign powers that he was inevitably going to start a war with someone, somewhere. Anglia was just a likely candidate who'd be a particularly difficult fight.

[Siege]

The long-range interstellar bandwidth allotment needed for a functional Olympic core connected to the main Solarian network, along with the costs of installation and maintenance... it's not impossible, clearly not, but I doubt it saves money over at least having a few guys running a consulate.

A fair point. Still, I think a brain core that sends floaty holo-drones out to make the Solarian position on stuff known differentiates nicely from the usual embassies, so I'll probably stick with it. And besides, it's not as if the Sovereignty isn't known to indulge in impracticalities when it suits its whims...

Remember, most of the galaxy is run by humans, not CIs, and often not even heavily cyberneticized humans at that. An Olympic core could interact with them, but the one thing meatbags are fairly efficient at is interacting with other meatbags. There are considerable advantages to having at least a few flesh-and-bloods on station, and the costs aren't exactly staggering as long as you don't get ridiculously opulent.

As much sense as this may make in-universe, out-of-universe it just convinces me that sticking with the giant insufferably arrogant CI as my main ambassador to the galaxy is a great idea .

[Simon_Jester]

[Watches Olympic being an ass to half of known space]

[Geppetto points in direction of nearest Olympic holo-avatar]

"See, that is why I decided not to maneuver myself into position to run the Technocracy. I don't want to be him."

Well, that and the only sense in which he'd be having fun would be because of the massive opportunities for sociological experiments it would give him.

[KlavoHunter]

By the way, when it comes up Uploads and such; can an ESPer be uploaded, and still be an ESPer when they are cloned and reloaded after death?

[Beowulf]

By the way, when it comes up Uploads and such; can an ESPer be uploaded, and still be an ESPer when they are cloned and reloaded after death?

Unspecified. I'd be willing to say yes, or at least with Tian Guo upload/download technology. Nations with other technology might not, such as Zor's Commonwealth.

[Shroom Man 777]

Olympic would be a total STRAK to the other nations. He'd go "lol fatty meatbags" at everyone! Man, they'd (the rest of the universe) all wish Sidney Hank was there instead cutting devil deals, rather than having Olympic being a raving dick.

Chamarrans: "Why did you capture our prisoners?!"

Olympic: "Turns out trying to violate USS territory with spyship and failing miserably gets your catgirls interrogated by CEID, who knew?"

Chamarrans: "What you are doing to them is illegal!"

Olympic: "Just about as illegal as infiltrating USS space, am i rite?"

Chamarrans: "Urgh!"

[Simon_Jester]

This is a minor question, but how many battlecruisers are there in an Ascendancy squadron, given that they can have seventeen squadrons? Or does "17th Battlecruiser Squadron" in the Ascendancy navy not imply the existence of battlecruiser squadrons one through sixteen?

[RogueIce]

This is a minor question, but how many battlecruisers are there in an Ascendancy squadron, given that they can have seventeen squadrons? Or does "17th Battlecruiser Squadron" in the Ascendancy navy not imply the existence of battlecruiser squadrons one through sixteen?

They could do it like I am with my task forces: Task Force 33 does not imply I have at least 32 other Task Forces, after all.

Of course, they do have 60 BCs. At an even 20 squadrons that's three BCs per. Not really hugely unreasonable. Or they just picked numbers at random to keep people guessing. Or all "Squadrons" were numbered sequentially and the designations change (such as how the 82nd Airborne Division is really the 82nd Division of the US Army; 10th Mountain being the same, etc).

[Simon_Jester]

This is a minor question, but how many battlecruisers are there in an Ascendancy squadron, given that they can have seventeen squadrons? Or does "17th Battlecruiser Squadron" in the Ascendancy navy not imply the existence of battlecruiser squadrons one through sixteen?

They could do it like I am with my task forces: Task Force 33 does not imply I have at least 32 other Task Forces, after all.

Of course, they do have 60 BCs. At an even 20 squadrons that's three BCs per. Not really hugely unreasonable. Or they just picked numbers at random to keep people guessing. Or all "Squadrons" were numbered sequentially and the designations change (such as how the 82nd Airborne Division is really the 82nd Division of the US Army; 10th Mountain being the same, etc).

These are all viable guesses; I just wanted to know which one it was.

[Force Lord]

Not to sound overbearing, but Tanasinn already put up his grid map on his nation's page on the SDNW4 wiki, yet the galactic map itself hasn't been modified to reflect that. Just saying.