Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Just installing that vent bumped up our hive's visiblity status by a letter-grade. How would they tell they're under close scrutiny?

Here's the quotes for reference:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Think a cross between a Dune Spicecrawler and a Jawa ship, yes. If I had to pick any one word or phrase to describe it, I would have to say "Janky piece of shit."
 
The infiltration is because they're pirates. They have disabled anything and everything that would reveal them to the Administration, and are actively and deliberately jamming Administration satellites to hide their presence. Pretty much the only reason they would ever try to gain contact is if they're terrified of death, and it'd take time to restore communication.

As it stands, the Scouts can indeed disable the ship and communication methods with good use of their firepower. They may even be able to get away with it, too, if luck is with them and stealth is used.

You order the Scouts to eat, and then send them out towards the Hiveship. Given the difficulty in tracking their signal, both from the increasing distance and the countermeasures taken to prevent Human detection, You estimate that it will take at least a day and a half for them to approach. [...]

[...]
About the middle of the third day, the system is online, and almost immediately picks up Human signals. Several come from space, although assorted stations appear to be sending out automated test results. Some signals appear to be mobile, with a rough correlation between signal strength and vehicle speed. All of these return to a Hive Vehicle of some sort, which appears to be heavily reinforced and very noisy. A careful inspection of the satellite network shows that it is apparently designed to harvest minerals, make noise, repair vehicles, and spew a trail of greenhouse gas. Despite this, however, it is only through careful searching and serendipity that You actually manage to have it located. Clearly, the ship is a rouge Hive of rebel humans; otherwise, it would be registered. [...]

I'm pretty sure whatever they're doing, it's constant.

[Noxes]

This mission won't necessarily end with the ship being disabled or seized, if it seems unlikely that we would be able to take control of the ship without rendering it visible or useless I would say it would be preferable for the drones to grab stuff (books and other highly lose-able things) and bugout with a minimum of fuss. We have nothing to gain from this craft being disabled if we can't use it or salvage it without drawing more attention than We would like.

[Morrigi]

Since we have access to their satellite network, we could probably hack or disable the given area enough to make a clean getaway. And again, this is a janky scrapbox to begin with. Even if they do notice it, they probably won't care due to, as said before, its perceived lack of value to the government. We could probably pull some horror movie shit like making them disappear one by one while collecting as much technical data as we can with the power of the Hive within the scouts.

We should probably have the tech drone(s) pay particular attention to what the scouts are seeing to help identify systems and potentially useful pieces of information and equipment.

Question: Can the scout Kai see in the dark via natural ability or functionality integrated into their suits?

[QuakeIV]

I'd suppose dark is a relative thing at this point.

[10ebbor10]

We have acces? Also, we're a body queen, we can't have our tech drones tell the scouts what to do, and have them shut down the network. Which will get a lot of attention btw.

[Ross Vernal]

We can pick up signals being sent, and that's about as far as it goes.

[Ross Vernal]

Scout 1: After probing the room, you carefully enter and search the room for anything that would appear to be of use. After crawling over a soft surface, you spot a group of shelves with some sort of manuals on them. Considering, you grab the thickest and deposit it in the ventshaft, then grab a few others, based mostly on how bright the colors are. Clearly, things easy to see must be more important.

Scout 2: You remain to observe the bridge area, relaying every word back to the Hivemind. If the language is broken, then the ship can possibly be taken over. At the moment, one Human - presumably the Queen - is seated on a large chair in front of an obsured monitor, while three of the large computers are taken up. There are several other monitors, but they remain unoccupied. Various members of the crew are relaying messages and periodically checking printouts against some of the computer stations.

Scout 3: You look around for things to sabotage, and after a while, come up with three possibilities relayed back to you by the Hivemind.

1. Blast one of the batteries to cause power issues
2. Loosen assorted plugs and await chaos.
3. Return to the Engine Room and look for cables to loosen, hoses to pierce, so on.

[Aklyon]

Loosen things. Random assorted problems can be far more easily discarded than something that seems directed, like cuting things in the engine room. And we'll gain some knowledge about what is considered more important this way.

[Noxes]

Loosen things. Random assorted problems can be far more easily discarded than something that seems directed, like cuting things in the engine room. And we'll gain some knowledge about what is considered more important this way.

True. Hmm, go ahead and loosen some plugs and then take a safe position to listen in on the maintenance crews when the eventually come to remedy it, perhaps it will be a good chance to collect some solid examples of technical terms. Don't go too nuts with loosening things though, We want it to stay reasonable that it happened 'naturally'.

Also, keep observing the Queen's interactions with the ship and crew, especially after the loosening. Scout two should continue with a careful acquisition of research materials.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

And again, this is a janky scrapbox to begin with. Even if they do notice it, they probably won't care due to, as said before, its perceived lack of value to the government.

Why they could pay attention to low-level pirates: pirates decrease profits. Therefore, eliminating pirates = increased profits. Question is where they draw the line for cost effectiveness in their anti-piracy efforts. Are they the train-owners from Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, or are they notch?
Seeing as how the pirates are running quiet/jamming satellites, they obviously aren't notch.
However, since the rig is 'janky', this implies piracy isn't exceptionally profitable, which also infers either 1. A profligate market or 2. An exceptionally small market. There's either an ass-load of low-level pirates about or no one wants to touch pirated goods. I'm personally inclined to go with the former, but that might be cultural bias and is still, at best, just a guess. The Admin very well could be the train owner, (millions for defense, not one cent for tribute!), and the pirates are beggared because no one wants to buy their products & call down the Administration's draconian wrath..

The infiltration is because they're pirates. They have disabled anything and everything that would reveal them to the Administration, and are actively and deliberately jamming Administration satellites to hide their presence. Pretty much the only reason they would ever try to gain contact is if they're terrified of death, and it'd take time to restore communication.

I wouldn't dismiss the Administration being interested in it quite so easily.

Loosen things. Random assorted problems can be far more easily discarded than something that seems directed, like cuting things in the engine room. And we'll gain some knowledge about what is considered more important this way.

inb4 we roll a 1 & disable the sat-jammer.
-edit: If they freak out, plug the most-recently-loosened wire back in.

I'm also of the opinion our gains won't be exactly stellar, (by god if there was a picture-audiolog-dictionary in that stack of books, I will eat my foot).

[~Neri]

Loosen assorted plugs, press assorted unlabeled buttons.

[10ebbor10]

I'd say we wait a moment before pushing random buttons.

Besides, we did shoot a security droid. It's quite likely that they willfind it if we draw them to the engine.

[wer6]

Press the big red button maybe? 

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Hey Ross, are there any rails lurking around here?

[Ukrainian Ranger]

I say get trophies ( I am mostly interested in their computers...) and get out, maybe doing slight sabotage before leaving