Charles, with the assistance of ARESTEVE/STEVE (mainly for getting the statistics and probabilities as accurate as possible and to help determine what sort of delivery would be best) creates the following diagrammatic video:
Circular diagram. Sectors represent a specific fields of technology. The radius of each sector is proportional to how advanced that field is overall. The diagram starts off with each field in their current overall stage of development.
Diagram splits into two identical ones. One labelled UWM, the other, ARM. Smaller diagrams appear in semi-circular arrangement around each one. A small proportion of each array is labelled "Government and Government Affiliated" and possesses significantly higher radii than the others and the main diagrams.
As time passes, the UWM diagram's G&GA diagrams rise, whilst the other sub-diagrams barely move at all and the main diagram increments at a pathetically slow rate. The ARM diagram's G&GA rise at a similar rate, however the other sub-diagrams also rise, slowly at first but at an accelerating rate, thus the main diagram rises significantly faster.
When one field of a sub-diagram rises enough for the "incident chance" to reach 25% it turns red and a warning sign appears at the center of its diagram. This represents the probability that some sort of catastrophic incident will have occurred by that stage, taking into consideration the rate of development.
The ARM diagram encounters that problem earlier with the diagram paused with a comparison between the incident radius and the overall technology radius. The UWM diagram encounters the issue significantly later. However, whilst the ARM's overall radius is close to, or even greater than the incident radius, the UWM's overall radius is far smaller than the incident radius. Thus indicating that the ARM would fare better.
Then, he creates a suitable and convincing voice-over for it using truthful arguments and statistics whilst still keeping it in understandable layman's terms (use last turn's dynamic bonus to Speech Roll).
As for the conversion kit, use the same specifications as the "Pawn" Suppressive Fire Entity, however, modify the units so that the camera, tripod, servos and transmitters can be easily (and relatively economically) replaced with superior ones at the armory should it be needed. Get a price estimate. Then enhance the tripod and servos as much as possible whilst still keeping it at that price. (So if it costs 3 token because it's just over the 2 token mark, upgrade it until it gets the 3 tokens worth of value).
Then, get a price estimate for the possible upgrade options.
Finally, Charles uses a VR sim to check would would happen if a sodbrain was exposed to a constant supply of the active ingredients of bluesmokes and used to give someone tactical advice.
Ok video done.
This new kit will cost 1-2 tokens more then the existing one. As per "Better" stuff, I dunno.
Nothing really at least nothing positive. Sods are already basically stripped of emotion, and enhanced intuition doesn't help too much for entities that do things by rote 99% of the time.
Miyamoto started a research project on armor with Science Team α; said project is complete. Can we get a report? As well, get them working on testing and general QA for the newly-built Oslaov Spears.
Speaking of, Construction Crew 1 can begin prefabricating parts for the ship we'll need for the compaction manipulator. Which should be ordered in with the next shipment, if Steve can get one and we don't already have one.
Oh, and has the Council determined anything about the Brisant?
Miyamoto's armor project was just about the creation of new materials to be used in armor, if I remember correctly, right?
Beginning prefab.
Thats the grenade launcher right? If I remember correctly, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, they basically shrugged and said it looked good to them. In more words then that but still.
((BLAME RADIO.))
1.When invading most planets, how will we be fighting? Will we mostly just not outright invade planets, just allying with the local government, and clearing a few pockets of UWM resistance?
2.Will real invasions on UWM core worlds be done similarly, or are we gonna need to invade an entire world? How will that work? Will there be tactical decisions, or just stuff like "Throw three thousand sods at it, leave tactics to the NPC commanders"?
3.Will the majority of our troops be recruited from ally worlds, leaving sods to be specialist elite groups? Or will it be the other way around? Something in between?
4.QECs: Would it be (financially) practical to have our sods commanded by commanders who are on the other side of a QEC? I.E. shipping a big QEC box with every platoon (fifty sods), and having it transmit tactical information back and forth from the sods and their commander(s)? With enough QEC medium to last a medium deployment, of course.
5.Renen type bodies + the specially conditioned sod brain: How 'expensive' are these, compared to, say, a Stevebot? Would we be able to afford one for every fifty sods?
6.Would it be reasonable to not have any ground based artillery deployed with our sod forces, instead using orbital bombardment/lasers in that role? Radio brought up the problem of weather. Would a ship specially designed for this role be able to circumvent that problem?
7.We know sods are capable of general emercency medical stuff. Are they capable of performing basic repairs on vehicles and equipment?
8.Radio wants to have a nebulously defined "Ass Pull" platoon, which basically consists of whatever stuff that we might have forgotten to define, or minor things that a platoon would have in small quantities, like nukes, chemical weapons, repair supplies, mortars, bombs, medecine, whatever. Is this a good idea? Should we just have the supply portion of this be backround abstraction, and have the major vehicles/troops defined?
9.We know sods have basic tactical manuevers that they know. How complex do these get? Will a pair of sods automatically clear a room in an efficient manner? Will a squad automatically clear a building efficiently? Can several squads, working in concert, work together to take a section of a city efficiently, without babysitting? Basically, how much involvement does a commander need to have when commanding sods?
((@Pyro: We actually already have the compaction AM, although it might be on the Sword. Piecewise's wording is somewhat ambiguous.
On an unrelated note, do you think you could order/authorize the construction of another biochemical forge, and the expansion of the fleshpits? Neither requires a construction crew or anything, just time. More sods is never a bad idea.
Lastly, SS sent you a thing with all the data he learned from the gun interrogation. He also admitted that he thinks artifact exploration is a poor project for him, at least if the research crews are willing to do it. He suggests that the gun, if the crews could manage to understand how it works, could provide us with very useful weapons.
I'd write something up explaining all that IC, but I'm tired. Sorry.))
1. Yeah, for now it will be less invasions and more allying and targeted attacks. When we do get to the invasion phase it's probably gonna involve some targeted orbital bombardment and then on the ground clean up. By then, hopefully, we'll have upgraded shuttles, and flights of steve bots to do sweeps for us in many cases.
2.That is something we still need to work out. We're a bit too early in this thing to start planning that; mostly because we'll be getting more allies so we're not sure what we'll have access to.
3.Probably the majority of our troops and equipment will be manufactured/recruited off of Hephaestus; from ally worlds. Hephestus will end up more R&D than pure manufacturing. Sods will play an odd part: They're elite in terms of on mission but also the lowest in the hierarchy
4.It's possible, you'd just have to keep that in mind during planning and logistics. And of course remember that if that box gets destroyed, they're basically screwed.
5.In universe, no one should know because no one except the doctor knows HOW he's made and what of.
6. A ship designed to circumvent that problem would be able to circumvent it, I would say. You might need to make a custom ship to get it to work exactly as you want, but it's not like we don't already have gunships (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_AC-130) in the modern day. I don't see why it wouldn't work if properly set up.
7. As long as they're trained in the workings of a machine, they can repair it. What they lack is ingenuity, so they may not be able to fix things as well as a tech, but given tools and parts they can definitely repair things.
8.What is probably a better idea is setting up all the materials you want the sods to have access to. If you can set up an armory of sorts, a list of stuff they have access to, we can abstract it and say that every sod is able to use everything in that list with at least an adequate level of competency. That way we can just use stuff as it comes and not have to worry about getting hugely specific in squad make up and such.
9.Sods are very good at their job. If you tell them to clear a building, they'll know how to do it quick and efficiently. If they have a commander they may ask about specifics, where things diverge from normal, but without one they'll do everything by the book. The commander doesn't need to micro manage, he can issue broad commands and the sods will follow them, though I would recommend having someone there to keep at least an occasional eye on how things are going. See, the strength of them being able to do things by the book is also a weakness, because they can be predictable. Knowledgeable enemies can use that to their advantage.
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Topic: Hephaestus No Longer Exists: Crater thread. (Read 188119 times)