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[syvarris]

I'm making two posts, one in Tinker, one in Heph.  I figured it makes sense in-universe, considering we're supposed to have massive amounts of time thanks to the jumps.  If that's not okay, ignore the tinker post, and just do this one.

Anyways, save my project and then log off of Tinker, go find Grate's corpse, and set up in the medbay.  If the medbay is off-limits while improvements are happening (oops), find a knife and take him to my room.

Once ready, use my dynamic MED bonus to dissect him, and then completely disassemble him.  I'm primarily searching for what caused his death, but I'm also searching for anything abnormal which could hint at why he's immortal.

Make sure the whole thing is recorded, and don't forget that I have finger cameras for looking at those hard to get at places.  I'm a walking endoscope!

Saint sends a private message to Simus before beginning the operation "Simus, I've just got around to dissecting Grate's latest corpse for an explanation to his death.  I will report my findings soon.  Also, I asked Aresteve to begin production of more advanced hospital equipment, including diagnostic machines.  I figured that it might become very important in the near future.  He says the facilities should be fully operational within fourteen nonstandard intervals."

[piecewise]

Otherwise we'd have to round all the sharp corners on the ship and make sure everyone wears a bike helmet at all times.

Actually, that's not such a bad idea.

[Upgrading Mk I:] It would really just take Simus and the AM's permission. We could to trade in services, trade in the old for the new, though keep in mind that you're probably gonna end up mass manufacturing these things for a while to build up a stock of them for the ship.
[Starter's Package:] Sure, though they might cost money, depending on how good they were. But if you just wanted to create like a basic "Welcome aboard" package that everyone could get exactly one of in their entire time here, then that would work.

That sounds...easier than anticipated.
What kind of things would the AM probably want in things designed to be in a Newbie Package? Obviously, not being highly destructive is important, and I shouldn't expect her to give out high- or even mid-tier gear for free, but aside from that, what guidelines would I follow?

Depends on how many you wanna make, really. If you're good with just having one, you only need one tube. If you want 100, you need 100 tubes. Or 50 and twice the time. OR 25 and four times the time, etc.

How many tubes, total, do we have? One tube is a pretty major cost for a test subject if we only have a dozen, but a hundred is minuscule if we have millions.

On top of the exoskeleton or on top of the MK I? Because one is gonna look like an ambulatory tent.

Outside both, as an external layer. Well, except maybe the heat fin things; seems like those would cause more problems than they'd solve by being covered.
Yes, it'll look silly, but with the protection a Civic Defender's Longcoat provides plus the toughness of a sub-exosuit should provide enough overall protection to outweigh that.
Thanks to Syv's reminder, I'm also going to stick a small generator in each of the two suits. Also see if I can't remove the heat-radiating fins entirely, replacing them with something less vulnerable and silly.

How much would the combined things I designed cost, in tokens and in material costs (compared to Mk I suits)? Are there, by chance, any secondary features I could cut out to reduce costs?

So, Pyro. Note what piecewise said about upgrades and newbie packs. What kinds of things would you/Simus require about them?

You guys think I should still answer this? In light of current events, I mean.

I'm making two posts, one in Tinker, one in Heph.  I figured it makes sense in-universe, considering we're supposed to have massive amounts of time thanks to the jumps.  If that's not okay, ignore the tinker post, and just do this one.

Anyways, save my project and then log off of Tinker, go find Grate's corpse, and set up in the medbay.  If the medbay is off-limits while improvements are happening (oops), find a knife and take him to my room.

Once ready, use my dynamic MED bonus to dissect him, and then completely disassemble him.  I'm primarily searching for what caused his death, but I'm also searching for anything abnormal which could hint at why he's immortal.

Make sure the whole thing is recorded, and don't forget that I have finger cameras for looking at those hard to get at places.  I'm a walking endoscope!

Saint sends a private message to Simus before beginning the operation "Simus, I've just got around to dissecting Grate's latest corpse for an explanation to his death.  I will report my findings soon.  Also, I asked Aresteve to begin production of more advanced hospital equipment, including diagnostic machines.  I figured that it might become very important in the near future.  He says the facilities should be fully operational within fourteen nonstandard intervals."

"find a knife and take him to my room" Eh? Getting into faith territory here.

The dissection, which you undertake on top of your desk and which fills your room with blood and the smell of offal and stomach acid, is successful. The cause of death seems to be damage to the brain, specifically a pattern that resembles an electrical burn which has made most of his gray matter rather crispy. Other then that, there's nothing in terms of abnormalities. He seems to have been a perfectly healthy, normal, young man. All organs show no abnormalities, normal weights, no sign of degeneration or damage, nothing strange with his bones, muscles or nerves, nothing. You do, however, notice that he has no shock implant, at least none that you can see.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Anton Chernozorov

Anton, thank you. I'm not sure what you mean by implosion bomb, though - and attempting to electrocute it could burn out all the electrical cables anywhere near it rather than kill it. And one more thing - if you're making a nuclear kamikaze drone, please make another with a neutron warhead - we'll use that kind first. Just remove the neutron reflector from the normal NK drone.

"By implosion I mean... agh, wrong word. It's not really implosion... a vacuum bomb? Fill space up with mixture of air and fuel, ignite, air burns up and creates pressure differential. There's a term for it that I can't remember, but it should work pretty well in an enclosed space.

And I'll make the neutron-bomb design, but the paranoid side of me says we better get a sample of what's down there and see how it reacts to neutron bombardment first. Last time we took action without prior testing, I ended up almost making good on my promise to personally haunt you."

Settle on these designs then:

> Laser rifle
> "Red Eye" small electrolaser
> ClF₃ canisters
> 10Kt nuke
> 10Kt neutron bomb
> 10Kt fusion bomb

Hold off on manufacturing until we have intel, because I've no idea how large an area we'll have to destroy.

His movement library might work then.

Sneak an attempt at making the telepresence system working by plugging Saint's movement libraries into the AI and seeing if, and how well, it works. (Saint's made his research available to Anton).

[syvarris]

((The primary difference between Saint and Faith is that he doesn't care if it's a child.  He just likes looking at how people work.  Also, he can't smell.))

Immediately after he finishes Grate's dissassembly, Saint happily begins privately speaking to Simus "I've completed the autopsy.  The cause of death seems to be damage to his brain, specifically a pattern that resembles an electrical burn which has rendered most of the important bits quite dead.  Completely unrecoverable.  As you've seen, there's no outward signs of any damage- both his skull and skin are completely pristine. 

Interestingly, Grate also seems to lack a shock implant entirely.  I wonder why Steve never told us.  In any case, as soon as the medical facilities are back online, I recommend giving him a new one; he may be a child, but he's proven to be quite capable of very bad and dangerous ideas.

Lastly, in every other respect Grate is perfectly normal.  I found no signs of his immortality whatsoever.  If you would like to review the autopsy yourself, I can send you the recording.  Unless you want to keep his flesh for some reason, I'm going to dispose of it."

Provide Simus with the recording if she asks for it.

Ask Aresteve if dumping Grate's remains in the fleshpits would be safe for me, and helpful for the pit.  If so, and we have any ARM-aligned workers (not the UWM indents), tell one to clean my room and dump the remains in the fleshpits.  Otherwise, just dispose of them myself.  If tossing him in he fleshpits would be bad or unsafe, just dump him in a trash can or something.

Saint then speaks into open comms "Simus, as I remember, our primary reason for delaying the production of fully flesh sods was because of the risk of a rogue Urban Executor.  You searched for one yourself, and didn't find anything, so why don't we start producing them now?  It means we'd already have a reserve of sods to convert once the conversion facilities are online, and they'd be useful in the meantime."

Reenter Tinker, and pull up a robotic body, MK.III, and rocket drone (step up from scout eye).  For the body, I want to remove all life support and braincase stuff, and replace it with powerful communications equipment.

For the MK.III, I want to remove ALL medical systems, and cut down the exoskeleton to 2/3rds power.  Attach a better communications system, like the body.

For the drone, remove the laser and any armor.  Replace them with stronger communications equipment, so that it can serve as a signal relay.  Make sure it can still fly.

If all those work, ask Aresteve to produce 3 bodies, 3 MK.IIIs, and a small fleet of signal drones.  Also, 3 flamethowers that won't burn through steel, and enough repair tools to outfit all three bodies.

Lastly, charge an AUX bonus.

[piecewise]

Anton Chernozorov

Anton, thank you. I'm not sure what you mean by implosion bomb, though - and attempting to electrocute it could burn out all the electrical cables anywhere near it rather than kill it. And one more thing - if you're making a nuclear kamikaze drone, please make another with a neutron warhead - we'll use that kind first. Just remove the neutron reflector from the normal NK drone.

"By implosion I mean... agh, wrong word. It's not really implosion... a vacuum bomb? Fill space up with mixture of air and fuel, ignite, air burns up and creates pressure differential. There's a term for it that I can't remember, but it should work pretty well in an enclosed space.

And I'll make the neutron-bomb design, but the paranoid side of me says we better get a sample of what's down there and see how it reacts to neutron bombardment first. Last time we took action without prior testing, I ended up almost making good on my promise to personally haunt you."

Settle on these designs then:

> Laser rifle
> "Red Eye" small electrolaser
> ClF₃ canisters
> 10Kt nuke
> 10Kt neutron bomb
> 10Kt fusion bomb

Hold off on manufacturing until we have intel, because I've no idea how large an area we'll have to destroy.

His movement library might work then.

Sneak an attempt at making the telepresence system working by plugging Saint's movement libraries into the AI and seeing if, and how well, it works. (Saint's made his research available to Anton).

Alright, those designs are fairly simple, just a heavier duty drone with a weapon or bomb attached. Simple enough.

With his movement libraries it functions fairly well. On flat terrain and using recoilless or limited recoil weapons it's perfectly acceptable. However, it still has trouble navigating more complex terrain and using weapons that significantly throw it off balance.

((The primary difference between Saint and Faith is that he doesn't care if it's a child.  He just likes looking at how people work.  Also, he can't smell.))

Immediately after he finishes Grate's dissassembly, Saint happily begins privately speaking to Simus "I've completed the autopsy.  The cause of death seems to be damage to his brain, specifically a pattern that resembles an electrical burn which has rendered most of the important bits quite dead.  Completely unrecoverable.  As you've seen, there's no outward signs of any damage- both his skull and skin are completely pristine. 

Interestingly, Grate also seems to lack a shock implant entirely.  I wonder why Steve never told us.  In any case, as soon as the medical facilities are back online, I recommend giving him a new one; he may be a child, but he's proven to be quite capable of very bad and dangerous ideas.

Lastly, in every other respect Grate is perfectly normal.  I found no signs of his immortality whatsoever.  If you would like to review the autopsy yourself, I can send you the recording.  Unless you want to keep his flesh for some reason, I'm going to dispose of it."

Provide Simus with the recording if she asks for it.

Ask Aresteve if dumping Grate's remains in the fleshpits would be safe for me, and helpful for the pit.  If so, and we have any ARM-aligned workers (not the UWM indents), tell one to clean my room and dump the remains in the fleshpits.  Otherwise, just dispose of them myself.  If tossing him in he fleshpits would be bad or unsafe, just dump him in a trash can or something.

Saint then speaks into open comms "Simus, as I remember, our primary reason for delaying the production of fully flesh sods was because of the risk of a rogue Urban Executor.  You searched for one yourself, and didn't find anything, so why don't we start producing them now?  It means we'd already have a reserve of sods to convert once the conversion facilities are online, and they'd be useful in the meantime."

Reenter Tinker, and pull up a robotic body, MK.III, and rocket drone (step up from scout eye).  For the body, I want to remove all life support and braincase stuff, and replace it with powerful communications equipment.

For the MK.III, I want to remove ALL medical systems, and cut down the exoskeleton to 2/3rds power.  Attach a better communications system, like the body.

For the drone, remove the laser and any armor.  Replace them with stronger communications equipment, so that it can serve as a signal relay.  Make sure it can still fly.

If all those work, ask Aresteve to produce 3 bodies, 3 MK.IIIs, and a small fleet of signal drones.  Also, 3 flamethowers that won't burn through steel, and enough repair tools to outfit all three bodies.

Lastly, charge an AUX bonus.

Putting it up on the server.

>Unknown. Too many variables.

Uh...what that would produce for you is a body, suit and drone with most of their parts replaced with radio equipment.
You're trying to remote pilot these things, right?

[Sean Mirrsen]

((Saint's going to try and field-assemble the remotes from the parts, with his movement libraries and our navigation AI making it go, plus the relay drones for deeper spelunking. At least, that's what I think he wants. Also.))

Anton Chernozorov

"Hmm. Well, that's certainly better. We can use direct control if we want to climb something... or we can do something silly."

Silly time! Plug the Artee's quadruped movement libraries back into the AI, as fallback for rough terrain movement! Perform adjustments as necessary for different limb proportions. The idea is to have the remotes being able to move at least, putting away their weapons and crawling across rough terrain that the biped AI can't reliably navigate.

Message Saint. Cryptically.

"You need to climb more mountains in the future."

See if Aresteve's scout drones have reached the affected area yet.

[syvarris]

((Bluh.  I was thinking in terms of 'remove anything that isn't useful to make it cheaper' even though that's silly on Heph.  The idea is mostly to make deeper spelunking easier.  Your movement stuff is useful, but we don't want to have to rely on it.))

1.Check if we have ARM-aligned workers, that aren't the UWM indents. 

2.Regardless of the answer to that, go dump Grate's remains.

3.For the drones, I want to remove all extraneous weight that isn't necessary to flying around, and attach a more powerful radio to it.  Make sure the thing can still fly around well.

4. Instead of directly modifying the suits or bot bodies, just search for some sort of large communications backpack, so that it's easier to receive a signal.  If none exists, design one.

5. Manufacture three normal bodies, three normal MK.IIIs, three backpacks, three flamethrowers, three sets of repair tools, and a fleet of communications drones.

6. Ask Aresteve to start production of, oh, thirty sods.  Also check if we have the facilities to transplant brains, although that isn't necesssary.

7. Can we retcon that Charles has been spending time recording a good speech to convert the UWM indents to ARM's ideals?  If so, have him start converting them over the intercoms.  Otherwise, have him start to charge a speech bonus.

8. Lastly, use that AUX bonus to finish the remote control program for robot bodies.

Saint momentarily stops what he's doing when he gets Anton's message, and responds over the radio with a bemused tone "Was that a jab at my exercise habits?  I haven't really needed exercise since I got this body.  Maybe you should go climbing instead, if you're dead set on sticking with that fleshy, body of yours."

[piecewise]

((Saint's going to try and field-assemble the remotes from the parts, with his movement libraries and our navigation AI making it go, plus the relay drones for deeper spelunking. At least, that's what I think he wants. Also.))

Anton Chernozorov

"Hmm. Well, that's certainly better. We can use direct control if we want to climb something... or we can do something silly."

Silly time! Plug the Artee's quadruped movement libraries back into the AI, as fallback for rough terrain movement! Perform adjustments as necessary for different limb proportions. The idea is to have the remotes being able to move at least, putting away their weapons and crawling across rough terrain that the biped AI can't reliably navigate.

Message Saint. Cryptically.

"You need to climb more mountains in the future."

See if Aresteve's scout drones have reached the affected area yet.

Ever seen one of those videos where they take a fighting game character and give it another character's move set? Yeah, it's kinda like that. It's funny as hell to see a humanoid attempt to use quadruped movements, especially when the joints don't line up, but it's not really effective. mostly because  the second the thing starts to trip it will drop into pony mode, drop everything it's carrying and then flail its limbs about.

They'll be there next turn.

((Bluh.  I was thinking in terms of 'remove anything that isn't useful to make it cheaper' even though that's silly on Heph.  The idea is mostly to make deeper spelunking easier.  Your movement stuff is useful, but we don't want to have to rely on it.))

1.Check if we have ARM-aligned workers, that aren't the UWM indents. 

2.Regardless of the answer to that, go dump Grate's remains.

3.For the drones, I want to remove all extraneous weight that isn't necessary to flying around, and attach a more powerful radio to it.  Make sure the thing can still fly around well.

4. Instead of directly modifying the suits or bot bodies, just search for some sort of large communications backpack, so that it's easier to receive a signal.  If none exists, design one.

5. Manufacture three normal bodies, three normal MK.IIIs, three backpacks, three flamethrowers, three sets of repair tools, and a fleet of communications drones.

6. Ask Aresteve to start production of, oh, thirty sods.  Also check if we have the facilities to transplant brains, although that isn't necesssary.

7. Can we retcon that Charles has been spending time recording a good speech to convert the UWM indents to ARM's ideals?  If so, have him start converting them over the intercoms.  Otherwise, have him start to charge a speech bonus.

8. Lastly, use that AUX bonus to finish the remote control program for robot bodies.

Saint momentarily stops what he's doing when he gets Anton's message, and responds over the radio with a bemused tone "Was that a jab at my exercise habits?  I haven't really needed exercise since I got this body.  Maybe you should go climbing instead, if you're dead set on sticking with that fleshy, body of yours."

1. Most don't care about the UWM so much as they care about wanting to get to where they want to go with their whole "indentured servitude" thing.

2.Dumped in the garbage.

3.Ok.

4.ALright

5.Ok.

6. Thats gonna take a while, but ok.

7. He could just start doing it now. No reason to retcon that.

8. Isn't that what Anton was working on? Because the problems for that haven't been solved as far as I know.

[syvarris]

8. Isn't that what Anton was working on? Because the problems for that haven't been solved as far as I know.

No.  Anton is working on automated movements, so that the thing can move without a connection to the controller.  I'm talking about a computer system that links someone's robotic body control systems to the remote body, over a radio connection, while simultaneously recieving all the camera and sensory feeds from the remote body.  I already have the sending and everything set up, I just don't have a program that actually collects the things I want to send.

Alright. Really, like you said, the program is gonna be very unfinished on the receiving end. The sending and server work is fine, but the intigration into other systems is basically unwritten.

I want to do that now.  This is all in reference to a user in a robotic body.

1. Make sure that when the program is activated, it locks the user's robotic body from recieving movement commands.  Also make sure that it unlocks the user's body when the program is deactivated.

2. While the program is active, block the normal sensory signals that the user's robobody sends to it, and replace them with the incoming signals from the remote body.

3. Collect the movement signals that the user's brain is creating, and send them to the remote body.  Make sure the remote body acts on them, as if it recieved the signal from a brain that's actually inside of it.

3. Put on one of the MK.III suits myself.  Order another one from Aresteve.

4. Are we taking far longer to solve this than you thought we would?

5. Idly wonder if Simus is suffering from a stasis-dementia induced coma.

[Xantalos]

So piecewise, a few questions regarding my reincarnation:
How long until the message about my demise would reach Hephaestus? I'm fine to wait any amount of time.
What should I treat my character sheet as? I had ... 2 missions done when I made the clone,so should I treat it as that?
Could I do a minor respec?

A chill wind races through the facilities to find the copy of Xan embedded in a vault. A sense of a sigh echoes in the chamber.

Do better than me, kid. I failed to learn one lesson: if another person asks you for help, kill them instead.
And thus Xan fades away, leaving the brain in the chamber, waiting for release.
This'll go well.

[PyroDesu]

I don't see much point in a thermobaric bomb, Anton - from what I know they act just like conventional bombs, but with a more compact warhead and a more sustained blastwave. And they can suck all the oxygen out of an enclosed space, killing anyone unlucky enough to live through the blast.

That's interesting news, Saint - no damage beyond the brain... Well, it's enough for me to declare that particular artefact a high-level hazard. Nobody enters the room I have it contained in, for the time being, especially not any of us. As for Grate's lack of an implant, I'm not surprised - it could be a side-effect of his 'immortality' that his body always comes back without implants or other augments. That's just a theory, though, and one I'd rather not tested, 'immortality' or not. We'll get him fitted when we can, along with the rest of the workers, if we're going to keep them.

Pull up all the different levels of decompensators and see how they work, exactly, and what facilities would be needed to make new kinds.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I don't see much point in a thermobaric bomb, Anton - from what I know they act just like conventional bombs, but with a more compact warhead and a more sustained blastwave. And they can suck all the oxygen out of an enclosed space, killing anyone unlucky enough to live through the blast.

"Isn't that sort of the point, though? If what's down there is a living organism, then the vacuum bomb would be quite effective at killing it, as opposed to robotic units we'd have down there that are resistant to overpressure. Not to mention that it'd be also effective at damaging anything that's rooted itself in a network of tunnels that we can't efficiently explore."

[Sean Mirrsen]

Anton Chernozorov

Ever seen one of those videos where they take a fighting game character and give it another character's move set? Yeah, it's kinda like that. It's funny as hell to see a humanoid attempt to use quadruped movements, especially when the joints don't line up, but it's not really effective. mostly because  the second the thing starts to trip it will drop into pony mode, drop everything it's carrying and then flail its limbs about.

"Pfffft..."

Send footage of experiment to Saint, with commentary.

<Attachment: Biped_Motion_Test_Footage.vrf>
Commentary: "This. This is why you need to climb more mountains in the future."

"Yeah, pretty much as expected. These won't be any help. Hmm."

Save and close the scene. Open up a copy of the Artee design, replace brainbox with comms equipment similarly to previous remote project. Replace weapon-carrier arms with proper handed arms. Test viability of drone-like control and direct control of arms and head via VR.

If unit can navigate reliably on its own and can be used to interact directly, continue. Strip all superfluous equipment like medifoam and kinamp, leave the grenade launchers and the tail laser. Load grenade launchers with ClF₃. Fit harness for carrying and resupplying scout eyes and larger drones on the back. Save project as "Support RT Remote Variant". Ask Aresteve if existing production lines can manufacture the resulting unit.

Check the scout drone data that should be becoming available about now.

[syvarris]

We'll get him fitted when we can, along with the rest of the workers, if we're going to keep them.

"I believe Charles is currently... converting the indents over the intercoms.  But we should probably figure out what to do with them soon; I doubt they enjoy being quarantined, and we currently don't have the capability to get them where they want to go.  And even if we did- should we?  The UWM would likely try to capture them and interrogate them for information about our tech.

By the way, you weren't responding to my suggestion about sods, so I ordered a batch of thirty of them.  Hopefully they'll be ready before our medical facilities are back online, so that I can begin robotizing them immediately."

"Isn't that sort of the point, though? If what's down there is a living organism, then the vacuum bomb would be quite effective at killing it, as opposed to robotic units we'd have down there that are resistant to overpressure. Not to mention that it'd be also effective at damaging anything that's rooted itself in a network of tunnels that we can't efficiently explore."

"I doubt that would be very effective against the fleshhorror.  I know Xan can survive in a vacuum unharmed, so I doubt simply removing oxygen can kill a creature which has powers similar to him.  Pumping Chlorine Triflouride gas down there would be more effective against the creature, and probably less damaging to the stucture too.   Not that that's a good idea either.

Also, thanks for that video.  I've needed a good laugh."

[Xantalos]

I know Xan can survive in a vacuum unharmed

I was never told this. How happen?
Exposure to vacuum was one of my fatal weaknesses IIRC; it's the only reason I kept my spacesuit.