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Author Topic: The Institute  (Read 1935 times)

Weirdsound

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Re: The Institute (A Sci-Fi corporate villainy SG)
« Reply #15 on: December 27, 2016, 04:00:27 pm »

I say we turn our facility into center for the repair and augmentation of important institute assets who have suffered too much physical or mental trauma to otherwise be of further use. Of course this means experimenting on countless other less valuable plebs as well.

Lets purchase some computer parts, parts for cybernetic augmentation, and hospital equipment/living quarters for patients.

Hire some nursing staff, additional security, and administrators. Attempt to hire a corporate insider with diplomatic experience to help us deal with the institute higher ups and other entities. Perhaps some robots for basic construction.

Try to secure a contract with some tyrannical local government to allow us a steady supply of test subjects.
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Tomasque

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Re: The Institute (A Sci-Fi corporate villainy SG)
« Reply #16 on: December 27, 2016, 08:28:19 pm »

I say we turn our facility into center for the repair and augmentation of important institute assets who have suffered too much physical or mental trauma to otherwise be of further use. Of course this means experimenting on countless other less valuable plebs as well.

Lets purchase some computer parts, parts for cybernetic augmentation, and hospital equipment/living quarters for patients.

Hire some nursing staff, additional security, and administrators. Attempt to hire a corporate insider with diplomatic experience to help us deal with the institute higher ups and other entities. Perhaps some robots for basic construction.

Try to secure a contract with some tyrannical local government to allow us a steady supply of test subjects.

Well you seem to know what you're doing. +1
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DolosusDoleus

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Re: The Institute (A Sci-Fi corporate villainy SG)
« Reply #17 on: December 27, 2016, 09:19:59 pm »

Ptw
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S34N1C

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Re: The Institute (A Sci-Fi corporate villainy SG)
« Reply #18 on: December 27, 2016, 10:23:24 pm »

I say we turn our facility into center for the repair and augmentation of important institute assets who have suffered too much physical or mental trauma to otherwise be of further use. Of course this means experimenting on countless other less valuable plebs as well.

Lets purchase some computer parts, parts for cybernetic augmentation, and hospital equipment/living quarters for patients.

Hire some nursing staff, additional security, and administrators. Attempt to hire a corporate insider with diplomatic experience to help us deal with the institute higher ups and other entities. Perhaps some robots for basic construction.

Try to secure a contract with some tyrannical local government to allow us a steady supply of test subjects.

Well you seem to know what you're doing. +1
+1
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Mlamlah

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Re: The Institute (A Sci-Fi corporate villainy SG)
« Reply #19 on: December 28, 2016, 11:04:01 pm »

Jack "Wacko" Ackerson
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"00327" Institute Model Corvette
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One of your largest pet projects was seeking methods of improving human beings. By your estimation creating a program for rehabilitating valuable Institution assets is well within your abilities. In fact, the secret you have smuggled away is proof of that. That however, is a matter for another time, better kept out of sight and mind for the moment, so you focus your thoughts on this next goal.

After some thought, and a review of the files that have been provided to you, you begin to settle on the materials and facilities you would need. The facility itself seems to be equipped with the basics of medical staff and equipment required for treating the thousands of people who have recently been relocated there, but little else. You are fortunately already bringing advanced surgical equipment, and a team for which the basics of such work would be trivial, but that does not mean there isn't more that you can gather.
So you have Captain Weaver set course to a suitably advanced world, a short detour before you make your way to the obscure reaches your facility is based in. You and your team easily constructs a list of supplies and equipment on the trip there, all of which you suspect will be readily available at the chosen world. Included in that list is a more robust variety of drugs than one might expect to find at a far-flung secret facility, cutting edge diagnostic equipment, and all of the necessary equipment for the basic models of cybernetic augmentation. It's a starting point from which you and your team could accomplish a great deal. You also include the parts for augmenting and repairing extensive computer systems in that list. The idea of arriving at the facility only to discover that its computer systems are in total disarray is not one that appeals to you, and even if they are in good repair such materials could be useful.

You also pay some thought to the idea of acquiring a steady supply of test subjects. You don't imagine that will be hard, the U.I.T.D has a variety of mechanisms in place to allow for the constant supply of human beings, though usually as employees or to be thrown into the meatgrinder of one warfront or another. However, you yourself are familiar with exploiting the peculiarities of many prison systems to allow for off the record individuals should your experiments require more discretion. And if you require an even greater exertion of control over your test subjects you could also establish the facilities for human cloning, though that itself may require an intense expenditure of resources.

...

It doesn't take long for you to arrive at the planet in question. Your ship runs smoothly and without complaint, and the Captain seems eager to impress. He's a young man, and apparently this posting represents a rather large promotion for him. He was the First Lieutenant aboard a frigate only a few months ago, and he's quite taken with expressing thanks for the opportunity he is being offered with this posting. He doesn't know that being associated with this project may very likely guarantee that he will never receive the prestige he seems to crave, at least depending on the lengths you go to to guarantee its secrecy.

Once your ship enters orbit, it doesn't take long for you to begin making inquiries with the various distributors and medical facilities on the planet. You have all the clearance you need, and acquiring the equipment and medicine seems likely to be as easy as drawing up the lists for them. Personnel however, are expensive to entice away from their lives on such short notice. Your files indicate that your facilities are already staffed with the minimum requirement of administrative and security staff, but you can't know exactly how secure the facility is and you will likely require additional medical staff at least eventually if you plan a large scale rehabilitation and enhancement program. All of this is gearing up to be a little more expensive than you had planned.
The equipment, and the medicine? That's easy. But hiring on potentially hundreds of nursing staff, potentially contracting with a security branch, and requisitioning construction drones is a little more difficult, so you spend some time reviewing your personnel files, and considering.

The facility itself is currently manned by roughly forty-thousand people, none of whom were involved in the reclamation of the facility or its original administration. A relatively clean slate, with most of those currently at the facility knowing almost nothing of what happened there. A fresh security team consisting of a tenth of the current population currently guards the facility, though even they know only that there was a containment breach. In the meantime, all lower levels of the facility have been locked down pending your arrival, with each level currently maintained through the use of drones and robots, which double as an additional containment measure. Large portions of information are missing from these files, but it does give you a little more context to decide what you might need.

You could spend all of your current funds to acquire the drugs, and equipment you had planned for, and in addition to that a robust medical staff to complement your team and those currently at the facility. Or you could borrow against your own promised budget, and hire and acquire more.

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Weirdsound

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Re: The Institute (A Sci-Fi corporate villainy SG)
« Reply #20 on: December 29, 2016, 01:41:03 am »

Spend what we have. Borrowing is okay, but I'd rather know more about the facility before going that route.
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Mlamlah

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Re: The Institute (A Sci-Fi corporate villainy SG)
« Reply #21 on: January 02, 2017, 03:13:45 am »

Jack "Wacko" Ackerson
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"00327" Institute Model Corvette
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You spend almost the entirety of your advance on medical equipment, supplies, and staff. When they've all been safely transported to your ship by shuttlecraft you might be over 200 million credits poorer, but you altogether have all you would need to run a planetary hospital if that's what you wanted. On top of that, you also have the supplies to either improve, maintain or build an entire computer network. It's certainly a strong start.
Once that business is finished you send your orders to Captain Weaver, it's time to get out of here.

...

It's a rather long and somewhat boring trip, as far as such things go. The facility is far outside traditional shipping lanes, where contact with a vessel is as likely to turn out to be a demand from pirates as from a friendly crew. If any outlaws detect your vessel in its traversal of disused routes however they don't pay it any mind. It's certainly not surprising, Corvettes are escorts generally assigned to the protection of other ships, and rarely transport anything of real worth themselves, they just don't have the cargo space to be reliable shipping vessels.
You consider that. You suppose it might make it difficult to send for further supplies and personnel without a dedicated transport vessel, though you're still fortunate in being provided with such a vessel to begin with. It's suited to a broad range of tasks, and can easily be customised to suit your whim. It's certainly not utilising the extent of it's power reserves for one. Pushing the Omega Drive to it's limits can be dangerous, but currently you are utilizing only a sliver of its power. If you were of a mind to, you could even build facilities on the ship itself which utilize that power source, or outfit it with much more powerful weapons and shields. It's at least something to keep in mind, as is the fact the ship doesn't really have a name. In fact, the facility you are being put in charge of has had its old designation stricken from Institute records. Perhaps you'll think of a code name yourself.

...

When you arrive in the system, you are greeted by another ship. It's a "System-locked" locked vessel by the name of Seven-Trees, without an omega drive, dedicated primarily to the defence of the system. The Lieutenant commanding the ship immediately yields command to you, and you have it escort your ship into orbit.

The planet -Temporarily dubbed "Experimentia Primus" by your briefing file- is one of three major orbiting bodies in the system, and the smallest of them. It's an arid, slightly cold planet that has had only the very first stages of planetary terraforming performed on it, seeding the planet with genetically modified life friendly to its atmosphere, which has been seeded there to change the atmosphere with little effort. At the current rate it will apparently take an upwards of half a century before the air itself is breathable by unadapted humans. By appearances an artificial moon has been towed into steady orbit around the planet, but you can't find any records to determine why this was done. A small facility has even been erected on the moon, though again, there are no records as to why this was done.

The facility on Primus however, is the focus of your attention, being also the focus of the Institute. It is a sprawling complex on the planet's surface, in which your records suggest about 40'000 people currently live. An atmospheric dome covers the largest portion of the facility above-ground, which consists of three levels built atop eachother, idealized for living and work spaces, and for localised commercial enterprise. These parts of the facility, as far as you know, are identical to what you might find in any other U.I.T.D installation, though you won't know for sure until you review them for yourself.
In the centre of this structure, piercing above and escaping the atmospheric dome, is a control tower about ten stories tall. It is to your understanding that this section of the facility formerly housed the executive staff, as well as the central computers and the control system for the entire facility. You suppose that wether that remains true this time around will be up to you.
You are also aware that there are five additional levels underneath, which are currently sealed off pending your order. The records of what exist in those bowels are incomplete, though you at least know that the Mark II Omega Reactor and the portal into the other realm are both down there, likely on the bottom level. The Reactor however, should be switched off unless something has gone horribly wrong.
Just to be sure, you check with your bridge crew, who confirm that there are not impossibly powerful waves of Omega radiation emitting from the planet. Well, good then.

Once you've made contact with the surface, everything is confirmed to be going more or less as planned. Each of the department heads of the facility is requesting to personally and privately meet with you in order to review and plan your next course of action. They also wonder if you will want to be moving into your office immediately. You suppose they expect you to take the top floor of the control tower as your executive office, but there's nothing stopping you from holding off, or choosing to command operations from your ship until further notice. More importantly however, are the Department Heads. You will need to decide how to approach each, first impressions and all that. It may be tedious, but it is necessary.
Though you could decide to snub one or two if you feel particularly petty or pressed for time. Who is to say that all of them are owed a chance to meet you privately before the first monthly review? You, that's who.

The Department Heads

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Weirdsound

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Re: The Institute (A Sci-Fi corporate villainy SG)
« Reply #22 on: January 02, 2017, 04:37:39 pm »

Before we do individual meetings, we need to know more about what we are dealing with, so we know exactly what our agenda will be. Lets request a tour of the facility guided by Dr. Suzuki (Who should be smart enough to talk to us on our own level), and Captain Wright, who as security should know the whole place as well as anybody.  Invite the other department heads to tag along if they wish so it doesn't seem that we are blowing them off. Once the tour is done, we can start planning the individual meetings.

Review files on our own personal team to find some candidates for the R&D Position. We want somebody with experience in biochemistry and pharmaceuticals who is also loyal and trustworthy.
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Mlamlah

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Re: The Institute (A Sci-Fi corporate villainy SG)
« Reply #23 on: January 03, 2017, 03:36:24 am »

Things have been inching along, so i'm going to try to push out another update tonight. Just a little bump to give a last chance for suggestions.
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Mlamlah

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Re: The Institute (A Sci-Fi corporate villainy SG)
« Reply #24 on: January 03, 2017, 09:27:00 am »

Jack "Wacko" Ackerson
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"00327" Institute Model Corvette
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You decline all requests for meetings in lieu of taking a tour of the facility. Regardless, the heads of both Finance and Human Resources forward various records and files towards you. Not all of them mean much to you on a cursory examination, but they have nonetheless been labelled as essential.
You can't help but admit to yourself that it feels good to decline the requests of corporate bureaucrats that under other circumstances you would have been under the mercy of. Nontheless, you doubt that they will react well to having to wait at your pleasure to proceed. Save of course for Doctor Suzuki and Captain Wright, only the head of HR, Mark Tate, accept your invitation to join your tour of the facility.

You arrive planet-side by shuttlecraft, and are greeted at the landing pad by an escort of armed Security Personnel. Your first impression of the facility is that of emptiness. There is a great deal of un-utilised space, and the lack of activity at the facility's primary landing pad is itself evidence of a lack of industry. You suppose it's not surprising, given that save for the ships in orbit this is the only manned facility in the system, so there isn't much need to transport anything. Still, it's jarring to see a location which would normally be buzzing with activity so quiet.
After your identity is confirmed to the exactitude of Institution protocol, you are escorted directly through the airlock and pedestrian access into the facility. The lobby, normally where people might wait to be processed into the facility, is as empty as the landing pad, though you are greeted by the Trio you had expected.

Doctor Marcus Suzuki appears middle-aged, his hair beginning to grey, and he possesses the exact kind of self-assured demeanour one might expect of someone with his record of competence. He's also clearly the proud owner of a few high-end bionic enhancements, including a distinctive ocular implant. He is the first to welcome you to the facility, and he does so with a seemingly genuine level of professional respect.
Captain Lucas Wright has chosen a U.I.T.D Security uniform in favor of an equally valid Military uniform. Wether he's making a point or simply prefers to remain uniform with those under his command is hard to say. He offers a vaguely fake seeming smile and a firm handshake in welcome.
Mr. Mark Tate seems a little on the young side for someone in such an executive position, but otherwise seems quite unremarkable at a glance. He takes the liberty of handing you your facility key-card, already keyed in to your biometrics, before suggesting they get right to it. Neither of your companions seem averse to this idea, and you've never really been one for small talk anyway, so you agree.

Your tour predominantly takes place in the first three ground levels of the facility. Currently they are utilized primarily as residential spaces for the roughly Thirty-Six-Thousand non combat personnel, at the facility, as well as office and storage spaces. Despite the fact they are the most heavily utilized, there is a great deal of usable space on these levels that is currently used for little of importance. Suzuki suggests that it would be prudent to establish various levels of manufacturing on these levels, though Mr. Tate tastefully interjects to point out that all needs of the facility are currently met, so such would be better undertaken with some goal in particular in mind. Captain Wright's contribution is mostly to lay out and explain the facility's security protocol, which mostly is fairly standard. Currently, security checkpoints have been established between all accessible sections of the facility. These checkpoints are heavily defended by both personnel and automated systems, and can easily be locked down, dividing entire sections of the facility rather efficiently if done in a timely fashion. Currently however, the numbers of security personnel far outstrip their duties, and he adds that he'd like to open and clear the first level of the underground portions of the facility as soon as possible. Each underground level is seperated from adjacent levels by rail line, all of which are currently closed airtight and further secured by Spectre field generators.
Doctor Suzuki explains that as of now, his department are the only ones who have any kind of access to the lower levels. The only assets down there which are currently activated are Institute Maintenance and Security drones. He adds that he'd like to speak to you about that soon, at your leisure of course.
It occurs to you that this means he may not only have an inkling of what is down there, but possibly has information about the more restricted aspects of this operation. Wether that is a problem or not remains to be seen.

The control tower is exactly what you might have expected. The facility's computer servers are housed on the fourth, fifth and sixth floors of the tower, taking up about half of the space of each floor. Meanwhile the facility's power generators (The conventional power generators that is.) Take up nearly all of the space on the First second and third floors of the tower. Above all that is mostly un-utilised space, and on the very top level is the master control system, as well as a very cushy office, living space, and personal landing pad. You're fairly certain it's where you're expected to settle into, but you havn't decided that for certain quite yet.

...

Once all that is behind you decide to break for lunch and think. The facility cafeteria you settle into is one of the few places that feels bustling, filled with people who are either hungry or bored. It occurs to you that as of now there is in fact very little for any of these people to do, though you don't plan that to be the state of affairs for very long.
Over some overprocessed food, you consider filling the R&D position. That's normally your field of expertise, but it might be helpful to have a number two with some authority when it comes to such things. Given your current goal of medically enhancing human beings you decide it may be helpful to have someone with something approaching a medical background. Three examples come to mind. You could choose a capable individual from your personal research team, which would come with the advantage of a level of familiarity and perhaps even loyalty. They wouldn't have the most... human touch, so to speak, and you would have to expect high mortality rates in your experiments, but you could also be assured that you would get results.
Alternatively, you could choose one of the senior hospital staff from your recent hires, who are still awaiting in orbit on your ship. You hired experienced staff with good records, who you can be reasonably sure will be very good at actually keeping your subjects alive. Such a doctor might not be quite so experienced at pushing the envelope as far as it can go, but that's also an advantage in some regards, as a more conservative methodology might contrast well with your own... skillset.
Or, lastly, you could promote within the medical staff who have already been serving in the facility. You don't currently have a good grasp of their competence, but it's possible that promoting someone who might be seen as an "outsider" into such a senior position could engender some kind of irrational resentment, and it may be better to avoid that. More importantly however, you doubt that the senior executives who made the initial round of hires to post people to the facility hire anyone incompetent, but neither would they have been likely to hire those who might be considered a little too ethically burdened for such a secretive facility. So, promoting from within established staff might land you with someone who represents a balance between the two alternatives, of course it's hard to say.
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Weirdsound

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Re: The Institute (A Sci-Fi corporate villainy SG)
« Reply #25 on: January 03, 2017, 01:48:12 pm »

Okay. Lets have our meetings. Lets visit each department head in their office, hear their input, and brief them of the following goals:

1: (Short Term) Establish a research/holding clinic that can house tens of thousands when at capacity. Each housing unit must be comfortable, but built securely under the assumption that any resident will likely be there against their will.
2: (Short Term) Establish a smaller clinic on a lower level facility. This clinic will be under our direct control, and will eventually house vital but damaged institute assets to receive experimental treatments from us. In the short run, we will simply draw interesting cases from the upper clinic to experiment upon as we please.
3: (Mid Term) Invent/Establish a quarantined living quarters into which we can open small portals that will hopefully expose the subjects within to alien microorganisms.
4: (Mid/Longer Term) Heavily militarize the floor with the existing portal, turning it into a controlled environment to receive, store, and study larger forms of alien life.

In addition, call Samantha Beverly and Mark Tate to a second meeting at our quarters on the ship. Explain to them that once we see that construction has begun to our liking, we will be traveling to establish a supply of test subjects and bringing them along. One of our main stops will be the institute's headquarters, where we would like to propose the creation of an infrastructure that will allow us to seize interesting and non-vital human and alien resources from less important institute locations for us to experiment upon. Tate and Beverly, being the corporate types, are to draft and present this proposal for us, and will also help us evaluate and negotiate with other potential sources of subjects, such as hospitals and prisons we encounter along the way. Tell them to ensure that their duties at the facility will be carried out while they are traveling with us.

Lastly, arrange a heavy security escort, and personally inspect both the portal and the experimental reactor with some of your better minds in those fields.

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Mlamlah

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Re: The Institute (A Sci-Fi corporate villainy SG)
« Reply #26 on: January 12, 2017, 05:18:10 pm »

So after some thought, i've realized i wasn't totally sure what i wanted out of this game, and that's not really a strong foundation to build a good experience on. My attempts to come out the gate with management sim style games tend to get bogged down with my own focus, and i've started to realize that my games have been stronger when i've started with a solid charachter focus and built up from there.

So i'm trying to figure out what to do next. If you were excited by the concept of this game you can feel free to tell me, and i might put a little more work into the next step. If you think i should come out with a new game instead, let me know, and feel free to tell me if you think there's a kind of game that has been lacking in the bay12 roster lately. As stated, my strengths tend to be in charachter focused/political games. However, i've also been considering bringing back an old game, or at least starting something similiar to it. Seeker of Spellcraft has a strong base for me to work of of, and was decently developed before life drained my enthusiasm and generally got in the way of creative pursuits for a time. I've been considering bringing that back.
I know there are a couple people who liked Prince enough that they'd want to see its return, but i think it's a little too far in the past for a strong revival. Feel free to tell me if you think i'm wrong though, or if you would simply like me to come up with something new, but similiar.
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TheBiggerFish

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Re: The Institute (Potentially Discontinued. Accepting input on next game.)
« Reply #27 on: January 13, 2017, 12:21:15 am »

Go for it.  Just post here if you do.
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Mlamlah

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Re: The Institute (Potentially Discontinued. Accepting input on next game.)
« Reply #28 on: January 13, 2017, 10:41:53 am »

After giving it a reread, i do think that i might bring back Seeker of Spellcraft, which was linked in my last post. If anybody thinks that's a dumb idea, or would rather see me do something else, now is pretty much your last chance.
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Mlamlah

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Re: The Institute (Potentially Discontinued. Accepting input on next game.)
« Reply #29 on: January 15, 2017, 05:19:24 pm »

As requested, i'm posting here to acknowledge for one last time that i'm aborting this newer game in favor of restarting Seeker of Spellcraft. The new post is up, and i'm definitely not updating the institute any longer.
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