SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread V

[doom3607]

“Locrians: predating all other space travelers we know of. Also gathered information during their sleep. Both records ancient and relatively recent would be incredibly valuable. Fantastic opportunity. Example: could have knowledge of unknown dangers in these regions of space. Or confirmation on Earth-Nova Terra connection.

I'm assuming that we don't actually know, as that would probably have to violate oh-so-many backstory bits? Unless, of course, the Locrians actually do know because it's all right for that to be resolved. Which seems unlikely. Hmm... maybe I can have the Locrians think they might be responsible for it? Maybe they found a species in the area, and made a second "homeworld" for them around a nearby star, then mixed them up with the humans after a 17,000 year nap?

[Simon_Jester]

I think that'd be pushing it too far, Doomy.

But "Crap, maybe we're responsible for that!" is a potentially amusing idea; this just isn't the time or place to use it.

[doom3607]

Damn. Well, as long as we can still use it with the Collectors and Karlack. Those would be, I think, rogue Von Neumann probes (that actually ate each other) and a ship carrying Breeders that went missing from one of our colony fleets (actually suffered from a hyperdrive failure and smacked into a planetoid). Sound reasonable?

[Siege]

Actually no, but it could of course be something the Locrians believe to be true, whilst in fact not actually being the case.

Looks like the only thing missing is the Solarians.

Too far away for us to be involved directly and officially, though that of course doesn't mean that certain individuals cannot take an interest.

[Simon_Jester]

Actually no, but it could of course be something the Locrians believe to be true, whilst in fact not actually being the case.

Exactly. Doomy and I have already discussed this. The Locrians believe that it could be true, but have no idea. The idea that they're responsible is just plausible enough that they can't dismiss it out of hand.

Thus, they can imagine that the Collectors might be berserk von Neumann probes (which they lost control over, but which actually ate themselves 16000 years ago), and the Karlacks might be a colony fleet (which they lost contact with, and which actually smacked into a planetoid 18000 years ago).

This creates hilarious possibilities for someone to hit them up for compensation. Or possibly child support. I'm not sure which.

[doom3607]

I can just see the Karlacks or Collectors coming up and asking us for 17,000 years of allowance. We'd give them the allowance, of course, only in the form of our standard ship-to-ship bomb-pumped X-ray laser missiles, as delivered by fastest possible means, i.e. from our missile racks.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

I can just see the Karlacks or Collectors coming up and asking us for 17,000 years of allowance. We'd give them the allowance, of course, only in the form of our standard ship-to-ship bomb-pumped X-ray laser missiles, as delivered by fastest possible means, i.e. from our missile racks.

And then you'll watch as your missiles do nothing but scratch the paint job on the Collector Monoliths or tickle the Karlack World Eaters that have been sent to, well, collect the allowance.

[doom3607]

Ahem. A planetary fleet is (by the numbers, at least) able to take two world eaters, and (again, in theory) a sector fleet could take out a Monolith. Fricking Necro- err, Collectors.

[Shroom Man 777]

Mmm... little action IC, lots of OOC hurfing. I am getting deja vu. Doom, do the reproductive strains of Locri insects have giant ovipositors that consequently also make them grotesquely fat? Just curious.

[Simon_Jester]

Shroom, give the guy a damn break; he's been in for two weeks.

[Shroom Man 777]

Sorries. I just miss CN.

[doom3607]

The only reason I haven't done much IC is I have no idea what to do next. The Locrians are awake, yes, but they still know next-to-nothing about the state of the universe. The only stuff I could do is a little internal discusion, but how much factionalisation could there be in a race that, not so long ago as it remembers, nearly exterminated itself?

Seriously- anything I could/should do I'm missing?

And that would be no, shroom, although the Breeders aren't small. They may even be bigger than the MEHites . Also, hey, I put a good bit of stuff onto my (very new) wiki page, which is more than CN did I think? There'd be more, I just haven't added my history stuff yet.

[Shroom Man 777]

Actually CN spent more time making his wiki stuff as munchkiny as possible. Blah.

Seeing the inner workings of your Lorcans would be good though.

[PeZook]

You could always invade someone because of a misunderstanding about the valuation of life of individual drones.

As in "Oh this colony has only 1000 people on it, it's not even sentient, they won't mind if be blow it up."

And then go "OH SHIT"

[doom3607]

Maybe, but a) why would we want a tiny colony and b) that's a rip-off of what the Ender's Game bugs did to start the war. Dissecting (alive) a few humans on the assumption we wouldn't mind since they're only drones.

Will try to come up with "inner workings". If you mean the government structure, it's a direct democracy. Somebody, anybody, suggests something to do, they decide. Once again- only forty of them!

[PeZook]

Well I could give you a reason to become more involved if you'd like, but it could take a while due to stuff being done in other matters

[Mayabird]

You could have the Locrians reviewing the seventeen or so thousand years of data that were collected by the automated drones and going increasingly "WTF is this and how did this happen?" An awful lot of little primitive species suddenly went space-faring in a very short (cosmically speaking) span of time. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd expected to hibernate much longer before things got interesting for them.

[Akhlut]

Some ideas for you, Doom.

1. Sending a small group to nearby inhabited systems (need not be a fellow PC if you're worried about starting a war with another major power; could be a minor NPC nation that you make up) to help get a hang of what humans are like.

2. Meet up with an indepedent merchant of the nation of your choice and interact with him (trade negotiations of some sort).

3. Upon reviewing your shitload of data, try to find someone in a similar spot to yourself to interact with more fully (the Lost, the Refuge, probably not the MEH, though).

Good luck, always good to see a new player who actually wants to play the game.

[Shroom Man 777]

Have some stuff for you at the GoogelDoc, Akhlut.

[Simon_Jester]

The Hawks, emerging from their launch tubes from the bowels of the carriers, began executing their flight plan. One of the quirks of the Centrality's squadrons was that every pilot was trained to accept coordination from an ESPer pilot. This "Battle-Meld", as it was called, gave the squadrons unprecedented coordination, even when considering technological aids. The only serious disadvantage was the possibility the ESPer pilots would be distracted or killed during a dogfight, breaking their squadron's coheshion. While the pilots were trained for unaugmented combat, the loss of Battle-Meld could be fatally jarring.

Ahah. I'd never thought of that trick. Good one.

Will try to come up with "inner workings". If you mean the government structure, it's a direct democracy. Somebody, anybody, suggests something to do, they decide. Once again- only forty of them!

Sure. So what you do is, you establish 'personalities' for some of these planet or fleet minds. Some of them may specialize, or think differently due to different conditions: the hive mind that grew colonizing the equivalent of Mars may not be the same as the one that grew on a paradise planet; as you yourself have noted, neither will be the same as a battlefleet.

Force Lord already landed his embassy group on your soil, you can work with that. You can work with the Locrians disputing about the Byzantines' posturing. And so on.

[Akhlut]

I'll get to it after work, Shroom. The work computers have ancient browsers that can't figure out how googledocs work.

I like what I'm seeing so far, though.

[Zor]

The Hawks, emerging from their launch tubes from the bowels of the carriers, began executing their flight plan. One of the quirks of the Centrality's squadrons was that every pilot was trained to accept coordination from an ESPer pilot. This "Battle-Meld", as it was called, gave the squadrons unprecedented coordination, even when considering technological aids. The only serious disadvantage was the possibility the ESPer pilots would be distracted or killed during a dogfight, breaking their squadron's coheshion. While the pilots were trained for unaugmented combat, the loss of Battle-Meld could be fatally jarring.

Ahah. I'd never thought of that trick. Good one.

I am going to interpret this as a counter to the Nova Atlantean way of giving fighters an edge (IE plug a Posthuman Cyberbrain into the spacecraft, thus saving space onboard for more equipment onboard).

Zor

[Shroom Man 777]

Siege, Fin, that was a fucking goldmine. I love Decius.

[Ryan Thunder]

I just use bot swarms. Why would we needlessly risk a human life when we can build a machine that does a better job anyway?

[PeZook]

I just use bot swarms. Why would we needlessly risk a human life when we can build a machine that does a better job anyway?

Our sentiment exactly