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Akhlut wrote:That's not an infinitely elastic ability and the enemy psykers are going to have government-sponsored bypass technology for such passive blocks.

It doesn't need to be infinitely elastic anymore than airbags need to be. It lets you survive the initial crash and get to help. As to enemy psykers, I said resistant, not immune, but the high level authority would be alerted to the attack, again, having the chance to find help.

Akhlut wrote: There's also the question of how much your government can afford to actually purchase a sufficient number of amplifiers or null fields, given that populations are hundreds of billions to low trillions per nation. There's a difference between providing mass-produced technological goods and highly personalized psyker-equipment that must be customized for everyone so that it doesn't backfire and put a large percentage of your citizens into irreversible comas due to a wrongly calibrated nullifier or cause them to unleash psychic hellfire on cities because of a fucked up amplifier.

Fortunately for me, robots are ~95% of the population, but even still, the need for such items will be greatly reduced due to strict genetic engineering and training programs, making the only changes caused by chance.

If cost is a problem, they could always be applied to the extreme cases only.

Master_Baerne wrote:

Chaotic Neutral wrote:What does it matter if I'm open or not? Shepistan isn't getting invaded, nor are the Bragulans or The Centrality.

Umm... Every time the Shepistanis twitch, someone thinks they're about to declare war and seriously considers doing it preemptively, the Bragulans are at war with the entire Koprulu Zone, and the Centrality doesn't experiment on humans, as far as I know.

You, on the other hand, just sent an admission to one worst war crimes there is, the kind of thing that gets people hung after Space Nuremburg, as part of your standard greeting.

The Centrality does experiment on humans, but very discreetly, and even then only on ESPers to find out ways to improve their powers.

Yeah, and the US tortures people, but they wouldn't be so foolish as to admit that over official diplomatic channels

Honesty is the best policy.

Chaotic Neutral wrote:Honesty is the best policy.

Much to learn you still have, my young padawan.

The Union did experiments on volunteers centuries ago to figure out how to manage it harmlessly. We see no need to continue experimentation, despite the military's snivelling.

Did they do experiments on people attempting to make them into an esper? Did they try to change their entire populations DNA to make them an esper?

No, lol. We just keep tabs on their whereabouts and make sure they're educated as to responsible use of their power.

Oh, and graft a remotely-activated null-field generator into their skull in case they get the bright idea to try and mindfuck the police.

CEID did it all: from experiments on psions and regular people to advanced gengineering in order to manufacture its own human-alien hybrid psions. Of course this was over a century ago, but the Directorate still habitually manufactures its top psion operatives -- it's just better for operational security, 'cause regular recruits might get second thoughts about the stuff they're supposed to do and then where'd we be? Control their programming from birth, and chances of anyone going rogue decline enormously.

It's one thing to do those experiments on the sly. Heck you can even send them through (supposedly) secure diplomatic channels, so long as you're reasonably confident that the other parties won't care, or are actively supporting you.

The problem, CN, is that you did this as your greeting to nations you knew nothing about and could have no way of knowing how they would react. That just doesn't seem very smart. And considering that your government sees this as a long term ambition, it probably would not have hurt to wait and interact with the other states, to try and see how they might react to your proposal, before just blanketly announcing it to anyone who said 'Hello' to you.

To further the earlier analogy, if somebody says 'Hello' to the new kid and they respond with 'Yeah I'd like to cut up people's brains and experiment on them!' they will be looked at oddly, even if the guy who said hello might agree with you. It would make more sense for the new kid to get to know the other kids to see who might respond favorably to his ideas.

Ah, so this is why you laughed when I said "but I like to hear myself talk" the other night, Maya...

Nice.

Haha, Epaulette would make a good Bragulan speecher.

PS, sending cute birdies all over the galaxy and being seemingly innocuous is totally the way to do first contact in new galaxies right.

Whats everyone's opinion of having an IRC channel for the game? Also does anyone have good info on the space vampires on world2?

What is this IRC you speak of?

Master_Baerne wrote:What is this IRC you speak of?

A very very old type of chat system. I think it's not as old as the older ICQ system if I am not wrong.

A lot of us converse in AIM or use MSN messenger.

Yeah it is one of the older systems for chat, but it is simple and doesn't require any signing up for anything to use. There are even in browser clients so you don't have to download anything. Like I say it is really simple to use.

EDIT here is a browser client for a server that I have setup a channel on for Worlds. http://webchat.nightstar.net/
Just enter a screen name and in the channel box enter #worldsintro #SDNWorldChat

Hey guys, regarding the ESP Tournament, we should agree on the match-ups, who goes against whom in who knows what, if you know what I mean.

I could get with an IRC channel, but then, I already use IRC and uninstalled my AIM long ago, so I may be biased.

Yes. (Join us in the IRC. /Vader voice)

Oh yeah totally agree with force lord. Need to have a good idea of where the ESPlimpics goes.

I'm content no matter what happens at the Esper Olympics.

Above and beyond that, I'm happy if Deepak gets one of the medals for Precision Electromagnetics, because I like him.

Simon_Jester wrote:I'm content no matter what happens at the Esper Olympics.

Above and beyond that, I'm happy if Deepak gets one of the medals for Precision Electromagnetics, because I like him.

Likewise. My only request is to have an Ascendant of some description medal in saber fencing... Let's make it a Formic, because why not?

So, am I doing something wrong, or is every single diplomatic communication intercepted and decoded?

The first three times were okay, but by the fifth it gets a little irritating.

I don't think any of you communications have been intercepted and decrypted except for the two by Cryptic HInt and the one by New Anglia. Hiigara just shared their copies with some of our friends.

I don't think most factions are trying very hard to keep your messages from being intercepted and pretty much every intelligence service in the galaxy is probably working overtime wondering just who the fuck these crazy sons of bitches who just appeared are and what they want.