SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread I

[loomer]

That works. Long story short, since the Arayna kicked the Acadians asses back and forth a few times and forced them into the Commissions as a vassal, they've been trying to get free, and a good part of the population think that calling for aid from their cultural cousins is the way to go. It'll be a while before they can make contact though.

Also, apparently I now border the Bragulans? Huh.

[Darkevilme]

And i thought I was being harsh on psychers with my checkpoints and paranoia...

[Lonestar]

And i thought I was being harsh on psychers with my checkpoints and paranoia...

Pyskers in both the Grand Dominion and Shepistani Federation are super-rare due to widespread application of HERV derivatives...which increase longetivity, strength, intelligence, etc. at the expense of psychic potential. As it is the Amplitur were a psychic race which is what drove the tech to be developed.

[PeZook]

And i thought I was being harsh on psychers with my checkpoints and paranoia...

Why not just deploy null-fields everywhere important? All Collector trade stations simply have giant nullfield generators all over the place

[Coyote]

And i thought I was being harsh on psychers with my checkpoints and paranoia...

Why not just deploy null-fields everywhere important? All Collector trade stations simply have giant nullfield generators all over the place

The Central Alliance may buy some off of you; we have no psi or magic of Force or any of that stuff; so my people will be extremely concerned about the spread of that.

[Darkevilme]

And i thought I was being harsh on psychers with my checkpoints and paranoia...

Why not just deploy null-fields everywhere important? All Collector trade stations simply have giant nullfield generators all over the place

We have psi static generators and psi activity sensors everywhere important instead as null field tech isnt native to the Hierarchy.
It works well enough, we look for those with a sudden headache in order to find inactive psychers and listen for the psi alarm to detect the other sort.

But yeah, we don't actually EXPLODE THEIR HEADS as our general policy so compared to some we're positively benign in our policy to psychers.

[MKSheppard]

And i thought I was being harsh on psychers with my checkpoints and paranoia...

We could reduce it to something more sensible like "block psyker powers" and "give headaches"; but then that could be nullified. So we simply pump enough power into our anti-psyker fields to nullify cute tricks like trying to cancel out the Blitzschlag Waveform, etc etc. As a side effect, psyker heads ASPLODE.

[Simon_Jester]

Shep's solutions to problems tend to be... extremely extreme. Remember the time he proposed to solve the Social Security crisis with nukes?

[Steve]

Everybody - sorry for not taking part in this so far. My spare time is currently eaten up by the world cup and work.

I'll try and get everything (including prologue etc) up until friday.

God damned World Cup is trying to ruin my game. Stupid boring soccer....

[Steve]

And i thought I was being harsh on psychers with my checkpoints and paranoia...

We could reduce it to something more sensible like "block psyker powers" and "give headaches"; but then that could be nullified. So we simply pump enough power into our anti-psyker fields to nullify cute tricks like trying to cancel out the Blitzschlag Waveform, etc etc. As a side effect, psyker heads ASPLODE.

Actually, it doesn't make their heads explode. The Blitzschlag Field Generators can function the same as Teleros' Null Fields but that's all. No exploding heads. This is my official ruling on the use of the technology.

And I now serve a warning. It's one thing for anti-telepathy or anti-ESP technology to be employed for protecting government buildings and the like. Security against an ESPer using telepathic suggestion on a lawmaker or official, etc. But the implied scope of some of these anti-ESP tech devices is starting to go beyond what I was considering appropriate, especially in terms of active defenses like the white noise generator or the proposed function of the Blitzschlag Fields being employed with combat troops as opposed to a passive defense (like protection from telepathic attack). I'm going to be keeping a close eye on any further implied anti-ESP technologies and will break out the nerf bat if needed.

[PeZook]

Well, Collector trade stations are the only places where meatbags are allowed without getting rended into constituent atoms by Monoliths, so there's a very good reason for making damn sure ESPers don't try anything (especially those guys who can control electronic circuits. Man.)

[MKSheppard]

I admit I was going for FALLOUT level CHEESE with the head ASPLODEY.

But if you're a high level teep and you run across a Blitzschlag Field, you're at severe risk from a massive brain aneurysm, followed by massive brain hemorrhaging which results in death rather quick.

Sure, we could turn down the power to just block the effects of telepathy and to give high level teeps splitting headaches; but I am not risking my men's lives from psychic attack due to someone developing some sort of cute trick that cancels out the blitzschlag field -- a nullifier of a nullifier -- so I am simply going the brute force route of putting out the psychic equivalent of pumping four megawatts of power down a radar jammer so it can't be countered by mere megawatt radars.

[PeZook]

The Central Alliance may buy some off of you; we have no psi or magic of Force or any of that stuff; so my people will be extremely concerned about the spread of that.

You're literally on the other side of the map from us...it will be a while before we even hear of your little Outside Context Nation.

[Steve]

Well, Collector trade stations are the only places where meatbags are allowed without getting rended into constituent atoms by Monoliths, so there's a very good reason for making damn sure ESPers don't try anything (especially those guys who can control electronic circuits. Man.)

Not entirely opposed to it, as I said, there are viable needs for the tech.

[MKSheppard]

And I now serve a warning. It's one thing for anti-telepathy or anti-ESP technology to be employed for protecting government buildings and the like. Security against an ESPer using telepathic suggestion on a lawmaker or official, etc.

How is telepathically suggesting to a lawmaker that he reveal state secrets any different from telepathically suggesting to a soldier on the front lines to pull the pin on the grenade and toss it into the middle of his squad? Or teepsuggesting to a gunnery officer on one of my battlestars that the friendly battlestars are really enemy ships, so lets fire on them!

My troops MUST be protected against that.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Juggernaught probably mounts around 3-4 beams for covering the flanks and redundancy same way the rampant does. But Imperial warp guns seem typically mounted in batteries of 4 or so and mounted on ships that weigh half the tonnage. I think the award for biggest single military beam weapon in known space goes to the Klavostani space fortress though.

So the scale goes probably something like this:
imperial warp guns
Juggernaut mega beamcannons
union of four star's monitor main cannon.
the klavostan space fortress's doomsday ray.
edit: i suspect pezook's monolith guns might go on this list somewhere. All we know is there's 20 of them and that means they could be $2000 each.

There are 4 Warp guns on the Battle Barge or Battleship. 4, so that in case if required, all power can be divered to either one turret, or one gun. The redundant and high capacity power conduits ensure our weapons can scale up if required.

[Steve]

I admit I was going for FALLOUT level CHEESE with the head ASPLODEY.

But if you're a high level teep and you run across a Blitzschlag Field, you're at severe risk from a massive brain aneurysm, followed by massive brain hemorrhaging which results in death rather quick.

Sure, we could turn down the power to just block the effects of telepathy and to give high level teeps splitting headaches; but I am not risking my men's lives from psychic attack due to someone developing some sort of cute trick that cancels out the blitzschlag field -- a nullifier of a nullifier -- so I am simply going the brute force route of putting out the psychic equivalent of pumping four megawatts of power down a radar jammer so it can't be countered by mere megawatt radars.

You're not understanding me. I'm saying your technology cannot inflict that feedback. It can block ESP telepathy but unless the ESPer himself/herself tries to overwhelm the field, it will not cause a "massive brain aneurysm" followed by hemorrhage. If you want to say your nation pumps excessive amounts of energy into its fields to make it impossible for even the most powerful ESPer to overwhelm them, suit yourself. But so long as they don't try to resist the fields they will not be killed or subjected to excessive brain injury by them.

And Shep?

being employed with combat troops as opposed to a passive defense (like protection from telepathic attack).

I am perfectly fine with troops having small field generators in their armor to ensure they can't be telepathically controlled. I'm against those fields being immediately dangerous or fatal to an ESPer as opposed to being dangerous or fatal to try and "overpower".

[Steve]

Addendum: I do not oppose the concept of the White Noise Generator tech being used to give a momentary feedback that can cause an unprepared ESPer to reveal themselves in a crowd.

[PeZook]

So...as promised, Legion's adventure continues, and we find out why he thinks organics are sleazy and disgusting

[MKSheppard]

I'm saying your technology cannot inflict that feedback.

That goes against every fucking way a sensor/communications system behaves -- your eyes behave like a optical sensor, and they can be blinded temporarily to permanently from too bright a light source -- your ears are a sound sensor and you can be permanently deafened by too loud a sound source. Radars are a electromagnetic sensor, and can be burned out by receiving too much energy; etc.

[Simon_Jester]

I submit that it should at least be permissible to keep up passive psi defenses (that grant immunity if not active defense) in areas where control over WMD, high level state secrets, and such.

I also submit that a good compromise solution is as follows:

Define two forms of anti-psychic technology- passive and active. Purely passive anti-psi fields are utterly harmless to psychics, but restrict their psychic abilities, much in the same sense that a wall is opaque to the senses. You can't see through a brick wall, and you can't psi through a passive anti-psi barrier.

Active anti-psi fields do in fact interfere with the esper's psychic abilities themselves, but can only affect the target's mind, not the body, because they operate purely on the psychic level. At modest power levels, you get something like the Chamarran White Noise generators- unpleasant and annoying, but something a psychic can ignore with enough mental discipline. Crank it up to ridiculous power levels and... well, you damn sure don't cause permanent damage. At best you've got a ludicrously energy-inefficient form of stun weapon, to the point where you'd be better off using a damn taser.

EDIT: Thus, any headaches, disorientation, or other symptoms experienced by the psychic while under the influence of an active anti-psi field are purely psychosomatic, and the pun is totally intended.

[Simon_Jester]

Also, to Shep:

There's an obvious problem with the idea that telepathy should work like radar, where you can burn out a radar antenna by overloading it.

Psi already doesn't work like radar. To put a megawatt into radar, you have to actually generate a megawatt of power. A psychic can lift stuff without feeling corresponding forces on their brain, can throw electrical bolts and where is the power for that coming from?

So if you pour power into a psychic's brain and try to "jam" their mental abilities until it blows up their brain and kills them... what's to stop the power you're pouring in from getting shunted off into whatever magic realm the power to feed those abilites came from?

[MKSheppard]

At modest power levels, you get something like the Chamarran White Noise generators- unpleasant and annoying, but something a psychic can ignore with enough mental discipline. Crank it up to ridiculous power levels and... well, you damn sure don't cause permanent damage.

Yeah, you mean like how people can withstand absurd sound levels indefinitely without severe physical damage?

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah, you mean like how people can withstand absurd sound levels indefinitely without severe physical damage?

Sound is physical- it can knock down walls and shit if there's enough of it.

An active anti-psi device can't knock down walls, or even melt normal people's brains. It doesn't even interact with normal people's brains. So the real question is the underlying physics of how psi abilities work. And there are ways for psi to work other than "my head is a special-radio antenna and you can fry it with special-radios."

Psi as normally written is a one-way interaction: my mind affects the universe (by picking things up, for example). Now, we can logically extend this principle and say that the universe affects my mind (grabbing an object that I am using telekinesis to hold on to might have consequences in my mind). But we cannot go on to say that the universe affects my body. Because if that were true, then my telekinetic power to lift a rock should exert an equal and opposite downward force on my brain- it would obey conservation of momentum.

But it doesn't, or at least doesn't if we include only stuff we can observe directly. The telekineticist can lift the rock without being pushed down. Therefore, accessing whatever force allows him to do that and firing it back at him won't push him down either, because there is no interaction transferring momentum between the brain of the psychic and the objects he manipulates.

You might be able to suppress his mind (rendering him unconscious) with sufficient application of your anti-telekinetic force. But you can't harm his brain, because if you could, then his brain would be physically affected by the exercise of his own abilities, and he'd have bashed his own brains out trying to do other stuff.

So I think we can very reasonably argue that psychic abilities don't work in a way that allows active anti-psi jamming to cause physical (as opposed to psychic) injury. Of course, if that's true, then psychic combat shouldn't cause psychic injury either- no getting a nosebleed because you overexerted your psi powers, or because someone else is using aggressive telepathy on you.

[Simon_Jester]

So, now that the diplomatic communique thread is up... what do we do about diplomatic notes that are a matter of public record? I presume that there are cases of such- for example, certain correspondence might be published deliberately by one power or the other, as a way to keep things above board.