SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread II

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Since you're in an agreeable mood, can I borrow that blackhole generator for a couple days? There's a certain out-of-the-way planet that needs to disappear.

Having those perfidious albinos permanently caught in the crossfire of a Bragulan-Imperium territorial dispute is already a good enough punishment for them. The black hole generator would just end their suffering far too soon.

[KlavoHunter]

I can hardly wait until the Karlack start to deploy BANELINGS against their enemies.

[Shroom Man 777]

I know France's chief operative.



JEAN CLAUDE VAN-GUILE!

[DarthShady]

I can hardly wait until the Karlack start to deploy BANELINGS against their enemies.

*grins* We have a much more sinister version of them. Speaking of which I really should get around to updating my wiki stuff. Much of it is out of date and some revisions were made in my mind, which I should put there. So things don't become confusing.

Also: Nice post Paul. Fallus Boing. God I miss Shroomanians.

[Shroom Man 777]

Man. Fallus Boing. Better than the Falun Gong by any means!

[Steve]

Hey Shep, a question.

which have been created in light of the recent Collector assault on the Coalition Fleet near Pendleton several months ago.

So you're intending this occupation plan to take place when? April? May? When we're still in February ATM? I need to know so I can adjust my headings (or just outright delete the one post, since it presumes a February date).

[Magister Militum]

I know France's chief operative.

JEAN CLAUDE VAN-GUILE!

Maybe, but I was thinking of a certain French woman that the residents of Omniverse One know of. At least, those who participated in OZ Unlimited, anyways.

[Simon_Jester]

That finishes the Council of Technarchs posts; for those not interested in going through the whole thing, I also posted a list of gameplay effects.

[Darkevilme]

Either i've not been paying enough attention and more time as passed and it's now 3401 in game, or Zor decided to have a private review ahead of the agreed date. I haven't even asked Grif to let me transit the Pride of Chamarra through to the Commonwealth yet. Also apologies to anyone who was expecting me to do something interesting this past week or more, i've been having a weird lack of inspiration and motivation.

[Simon_Jester]

The Nova Atlanteans strike me as the type to stage massive naval reviews for their own benefit whether anyone else in the galaxy knows or cares what they are doing or not...

[Zor]

Sorry about jumping the gun.

Zor

[PeZook]

So...I drop my wife off at work, and go to a gas station to fuel up. Upon leaving, I see this:



GODDAMN BRAGULAN COPYRIGHT INFRINGERS!!!

[Siege]

What the hell? OrGazma!

[PeZook]

They even managed to misspel the Polish word for "Taurine"

So Eastern European!

[Steve]

LMAO.

And Stas, uh, is that robot going to try and look through the remains of ships lost in the Battle at Pendleton (Not the Bannerman Gap) while the fleet is still around to post a guard? Then again, I imagine they have a cloaking system of some sort.

[Siege]

I would imagine you'd take the remains of those ships with you, or at least retrieve the corpses of the crewmen and any sensitive technology like computers, ELINT equipment, etc. that might still be aboard. The families back home probably will want to give their relatives a proper burial, and intelligence guys like Mr. Bronson will want to keep sensitive technology and data out of the hands of any trespassers in order to prevent, well, pretty much exactly this from happening...

[Simon_Jester]

True. It's fair to assume that some bits got left behind for the Communards to pick through, but there won't be a massive treasure trove of advanced equipment and largely intact bodies for the robo-nano-vultures to pick over. Most of what gets left behind will be relatively small pieces (say, from Umerian cutters that took a direct hit from an antiship mass driver round ) and stuff that the search/rescue/cleanup crews couldn't spot (such as fighters that were disabled while moving at high velocity relative to the fleet and wound up millions of kilometers away by the time anyone had a chance to look for them).

Come to think of it, the Umerian casualties at Bannerman were suffered at a fairly random spot in deep interstellar space; without having been privy to communications during the battle, you'd have an extremely hard time finding it because it's light-months or more from the nearest star system. That goes for the wreck of the Magnolia and for the cutter debris alike, even leaving aside the fact that said debris field is probably expanding and dispersing at a rate of many kilometers per second.

Also, Stas, I hope you don't mind that I had my "AI specializing in general psychology" deduce the existence of the Core. Bear in mind that Umeria has no idea where the Core is, or of any of the details of its operations, but it has at least managed to infer that the Core or something like it exists, just by looking at the effects it's had on Commune policy of late.

[PeZook]

With the amount of casualties suffered, some wreckage could simply never be found: if a fighter was blown up while powering away from Jove, for example, it will simply drift forever on a solar orbit,and since it's completely cold, well...

[Siege]

One might indeed run across the occasional erratically orbiting wreckage of some random fighter that got blowed up but good, but I can't help wondering about the integrity of the onboard systems considering said blowed-upness, much less that of the squishy organic pilot. I've been told that brains and bodies in general don't take very well to being located in the center of a thing that's blowing up.

[PeZook]

One might indeed run across the occasional erratically orbiting wreckage of some random fighter that got blowed up but good, but I can't help wondering about the integrity of the onboard systems considering said blowed-upness, much less that of the squishy organic pilot. I've been told that brains and bodies in general don't take very well to being located in the center of a thing that's blowing up.

It's not out of the question, especially with a glancing hit,like being too close to a nuke, or even pieces of shrapnel killing the pilot. If nBSG can have a random asteroid make the pilot press a button to launch nukes at a Cylon colony, we can have a mostly intact fighter on a high orbit

[Shroom Man 777]

Maybe those weren't Anglian ships or Coalition ships, but Pendletonian ones? While nobody actually did warcrimes on them (except the Sheppos), still after they shot at escape pods, I doubt people would care enough to properly dispose of floating Pendletonian corpses or do any proper treatment of Pendletonian space wrecks.

I'd imagine the Coalition might even, possibly, just move the Pendletonian ships away from space lanes to prevent collisions, but otherwise do nothing about the wrecks and just leave them be - a space graveyard, if you will, to serve as an eternal reminder to the Pendletonian populace about the evil of their ways and shit.

[Siege]

They could train Space Spotlights and Space Magnifying Glasses on the grave yard so it's visible from the planetary surface at night. And then have probes transmit something along the lines of "remember the price of defiance!" to Pendleton 24/7.

It sounds like something Governor Tarkington would be prone to do .

[Steve]

Indeed.

[Simon_Jester]

Posted a summary of the instructions given to Dr. Bowinger as she heads out for the Commune to negotiate a defense agreement. Note that she has plenipotentiary authority and can go beyond these instructions, but will be held accountable by the Council if she does so, so any deal that goes significantly beyond the bounds of the instructions will have to strike her as rather favorable.

Bowinger is fairly tough-minded; in terms of her background one can imagine her being sort of like Condoleeza Rice (no, she does not look like Rice; she just has a similar background of rising mostly through academia and the more security-oriented aspects of the foreign service).

Umeria is offering the Commune a very close relationship potentially: access to all but the most sensitive technical and intelligence information, cooperation on certain intelligence operations, the support of Umerian diplomatic personnel, and so on... in exchange for Commune cooperation in kind. Sort of like the "special relationship" between the US and Britain, but on a more equal, bilateral level, and moderated by the great distance between the two powers.

This is meant in lieu of a conventional military alliance, which Umeria has major misgivings about both on the diplomatic and military fronts- Umeria is poorly placed to support the other prospective members of the alliance, and has considerable misgivings about the Commune getting the rest of the alliance into unnecessary wars.

In general, the Technocracy is not happy with the lack of transparency in the Commune's decision-making progress. Much power within the Commune seems to fall into the hands of bodies whose very existence is a state secret, and that Umeria had to outright guess by intelligence-analysis methods equivalent to those of Moscow-watchers during the Cold War.

The Umerians find this a bit annoying for the same reason they're frustrated with Prussia. In Prussia, they do not feel they can rely on the official representatives of the Prussian government to speak for their nation. In the Commune, they can never be sure whether they've got the measure of the Commune's decision-makers, which creates many of the same problems.

In general, Umeria prefers to deal with nations that have a well-organized government with a definite, concrete structure, and which have representatives who can be relied on to accurately represent their nation's goals, interests, and attitude. They are on good terms with the Commune in spite of its troubles in this area, mostly because they have considerable respect for its accomplishments and value the existing economic and scientific agreements between the two states.

[K. A. Pital]

I didn't specify which ship they were scavenging, because yeah - some folks might take care and bury their dead. However, the Pendletonian ships can very well still be there. The drone is just a small autonomous machine. It might alert others to its presence... then again, it's a game. If someone wants to react to the scavenging, he can do it.

Also, Stas, I hope you don't mind that I had my "AI specializing in general psychology" deduce the existence of the Core. Bear in mind that Umeria has no idea where the Core is, or of any of the details of its operations, but it has at least managed to infer that the Core or something like it exists, just by looking at the effects it's had on Commune policy of late.

Obviously not. There's probably a good deal of folks who know that the Core exists. Siege mentioned his CI discussing it, anyway )))