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[Sean Mirrsen]

If we really wanted to hide it, we'd just build a secret underground shipyard off the books.

...

Hmm.

[PyroDesu]

No, but it does make sense for an overseer to work like this when she alone has a whole planet to oversee. It's your call on how to decide how Simus does things, just thought that it was awfully convenient to suddenly mention Simus "should notice it due to the way she does things".

For comparison: Xan wants to currently roleplay being a nobody as to avoid suspicion. However, I could claim Miya follows up on every shipment from Hep (would make sense, if only so he knows what assets he has to work with) and thus knowing Xan arrived, and then pester Steve to know where he's hiding, and then call out and expose Xan (who has proven himself to be a potential danger). All of this I could do and would make sense, but would also be awfully convenient for me to claim, and would mostly serve to make life more difficult for another player.

But again, you can choose how to handle it, and then PW will decide what happens. Really, my original point was just 'if ARESTEVE wants to hide something, he totally could'.

A planet that's nearly 100% automated. We have, what, 304 known people on planet, plus one abomination and one AI (which takes care of the aforementioned near 100% automation)? 300 of them are going around doing their assigned work without need for interference until their assigned work is finished and they need more work. 3 of them go about their own business within their fields unless assigned a task, and when done, go back to minding their own business in their field. The abomination is frozen. Any people beyond that count don't even need any direction. And that leaves Simus with actually not much to do - the planet basically manages itself.

As for convenience - tell me, when have I ever had cause to mention it before? I've been considering that being the way Simus operates from the beginning, but when has it ever been relevant?

And yeah, you could. Miyamoto wouldn't, though (and in that situation, neither would Simus - she'd want to know who he is posing as, but stop there), it's not in his personality, from what I see of him (you'd know more).

And your original point is entirely true. My original point was that Simus might wonder about a few things, not that she would go paranoid and endlessly interrogate. She's easy to bluff by, as things stand now, but you have to expect a query if you don't do it upfront.

[Nikitian]

@Mk III troops
I kinda agree that a squad-attached MkIII trooper would be highly situational (and even then, probably only marginally useful as opposed to scouting drones, or something). I tend to think that Mk III-equipped troopers would be most useful (and reliably, regularly so) when organised into specialised units, with weapons backing their intended use. Mk III comes with an exoskeleton, after all (or, at least, so far - but I really hope that would not change), so it would be a waste not to make use of it - that way, they could even double as 'heavy support squads' when needed.

RC, could you elaborate on them being situational? Because nearly the only way I can see it is maybe with heavy in-doors combat, and even then the EMM mode and rocket-boosted movement speed could help with assault, not to mention the exoskeleton and other nifty things that come with it (or may come in future with Mk+ III).

[Radio Controlled]

A planet that's nearly 100% automated. We have, what, 304 known people on planet, plus one abomination and one AI (which takes care of the aforementioned near 100% automation)? 300 of them are going around doing their assigned work without need for interference until their assigned work is finished and they need more work. 3 of them go about their own business within their fields unless assigned a task, and when done, go back to minding their own business in their field. The abomination is frozen. Any people beyond that count don't even need any direction. And that leaves Simus with actually not much to do - the planet basically manages itself.

Sure, a good point, but then I do have a small question: does Simus have a vague idea on what is being produced and where stuff is being expanded and such on the whole of Hep? For example, do you think she has a broad idea how many sods/laser rifles/teddy bears are being made, and where the end up? And would she have a vague idea what and where ARESTEVE does things for expanding production and such?

If yes, doesn't she get that info from progress reports by ARESTEVE or one of the crew? Or does she inspect every sod to make sure said sod isn't secretly something else? This is what I meant with progress reports: even if everything is automated, Simus would need these to keep a modicum of track of things, unless she'd have no idea what's happening. Of course, it is entirely possible that for other matters (such as what comes in from the Sword) she does indeed take a more direct approach, but then I do think it'd be good if you took the time sometime to spell out what those things would be. If only so people know what they can expect (eg if someone wanted to sneak something to Hep on board a shuttle from the Sword) in certain situations.

@Mk III troops
I kinda agree that a squad-attached MkIII trooper would be highly situational (and even then, probably only marginally useful as opposed to scouting drones, or something). I tend to think that Mk III-equipped troopers would be most useful (and reliably, regularly so) when organised into specialised units, with weapons backing their intended use. Mk III comes with an exoskeleton, after all (or, at least, so far - but I really hope that would not change), so it would be a waste not to make use of it - that way, they could even double as 'heavy support squads' when needed.

RC, could you elaborate on them being situational? Because nearly the only way I can see it is maybe with heavy in-doors combat, and even then the EMM mode and rocket-boosted movement speed could help with assault, not to mention the exoskeleton and other nifty things that come with it (or may come in future with Mk+ III).

Gotta leave for class now, will try to elaborate later. But spoiler alert: shit is expensive, so if we can't afford to give one to every one that could potentially use it and have that be an optimally cost-benefit solution, then we need to restrict it to cases and uses where we can get the most out of it.

EDIT: to expand upon this a bit, I think we can consider two situations: A) where mobility isn't really a boon, and B) where it would potentially be good to have, but isn't used enough to warrant its cost.

As an example of A, when defending a base mobility is of less importance compare to other situations. Could it help? Perhaps yes, but when you have either good cover to choose from or the flight ability of a Mk.III, then ducking might be the better option. Especially if you are fighting other perfect-aim sods. But if you are, for example, fighting over a city and are employing defense in depth, then giving them would surely make sense.

For B, there's a chance we'll sometimes have to leave sods to guard some place or provide an ARM presence for extended periods of time. Giving them all Mk.III suits means a whole lot of resources sitting there being wasted.

[Nikitian]

Sure, now I can get behind it. And while we are at it, why not make some upgraded sods to be used as dedicated aerial infantry? By using flesh-sods, we would be able to use Mk III bonuses to their fullest (including Mk II medical system, for what it's worth), we can genecrank them up to eleven, and then so far flesh-sods vat-growing has been far outpaced by mecha-sods manufacturing, so their actual scarcity due to time constraints would fit the Mk III scarcity due to high resource cost (in other words, we won't be able to make too many of them for scarcity of Mk IIIs to kick in).
Perhaps not so much increasing physical stats (if we buff them too much that way, exoskeleton bonus might not apply anymore, like it happens with synthflesh), but potentially boosting mental ones - perhaps giving them a lesser variant of 'bullet time' reflexes (to make most use of superior manoeuvrability), maybe increased intelligence, or whatever additional brainpowers might be needed to become savant flyers, even better snipers than they currently are or whatever role we would prefer them to fill.

And I can get behind equipping all troops with Mk IIIs, but that would probably make them needlessly expensive (decreasing returns on percentage of troops equipped with Mk IIIs) and, while potentially marginally useful, is anyway best used on offensive.

[PyroDesu]

From what you can tell, it appears as though the bot was corroded internally, most seriously around areas with large concentrations of the fiberoptic cables used in lieu of nerves. The corrosion looks almost electrical in nature: Fine spiderweb patterns are etched into the metal, discoloring it and leaving behind a chalky, powdery residue. The damage seems most concentrated around the arms and upper body, maybe because those were the nerves most used? Hm.

Potentially related to the burnout amps? You should examine the brain specifically.

[Empiricist]

For some reason, it feels so fundamentally wrong to me to speech roll. It feels really cheap, even though Charles was statted specifically to speech roll as well as possible at the cost of pretty much everything else.

[Radio Controlled]

((I'm really rather at a loss of what to do at the moment. I could try just tacking together more random inventions, but I think it's in-character for Anton to just go and assist the shipyard construction anyway. Let's do that. I doubt I'll be productive in the meantime anyway.))

Such saddening lack of vision of what is supposed to be among our best and brightest.

@Empiricist: I love your latest turn, full of serious analysis for such a ridiculous purpose, I'm curious to see what pw will make of it.


Random idea popped into head today: there have been a lot of artifacts that mess with one's mind one way or another. We might be able to learn from these how to most effectively mess with someone's mind, or how to attain certain effects.
We have automanips that can have a rather large range or a big effect (see: lugging massive shells around and allowing FTL), and do not require a roll, only careful programming.
We have amps that can influence a target's head and mess with his brain directly, making it feel anger, confusion, or implanting ideas. Perhaps even forceful persuasion?


I think you can see where I'm going with this.

[Toaster]

Make the UWM soldiers act like us in combat?  That way they will be good at blowing each other up.

[PyroDesu]

Make the UWM soldiers act like us in combat?  That way they will be good at blowing each other up.

I think Radio was implying forced conversion.

[Radio Controlled]

Make the UWM soldiers act like us in combat?  That way they will be good at blowing each other up.

I think Radio was implying forced conversion.

Ten floppy disks for the man in the labcoat.

Though really, there are several options we could consider, depending on how potent it could be. For example, if control is too difficult, we could go for simply brain scrambling in order to kill, and get a weapon that kills enemies but leaves infrastructure intact. And that can't be blocked by a spacesuit, unlike most conventional chemical or bioweapons (though I do have some ideas in that direction, potentially involving modified sharkmist nano organisms). Really, quite some potential still untapped.

[Radio Controlled]

Us Heph people wouldn't mind being able to set up NPC missions, I suspect. And we have rather little use for items or artifacts.

You can research artifacts, that's kind of a big reason you guys are there, no?

Nyars artifacts have already been researched by our science division, and left available for purchase because all (safely) recoverable data had already been extracted from them. We could just place orders for those artifacts if we needed to - mostly they tend to be non-replicable anyway.

Staging missions to gain new artifacts, however, is an entirely different ball game. We have stupendous quantities of clone troops. If/when negotiations on Q'Baha(sp?) succeed, we'll have a source of fresh able bodies and/or brains to toss at our cause. With those, and some FTL-capable ships acting as operating bases, we could stage Hazardous Materials Recovery missions the same way we give tasks to science crews. And any new artifacts gained that way would be actually new, not previously pored over and discarded.

Nope, some haven't been fully analysed yet. I asked PW if we could still research Nyartifacts, he said that we could, but we can't use science crews for them. If you want an explanation, say that the sword crew didn't have time yet to fully analyse them beyond a quick examination to determine its code. Or that they didn't have the facilities or resources or whatever to do it (safely), something that isn't an issue on Hep.

Also, no, we don't have enough sods. We don't have nearly enough. For a war on this scale, we'd need millions at least. And that is incorporating the overall strategy of employing allies whenever we can. Just a general sentiment.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Us Heph people wouldn't mind being able to set up NPC missions, I suspect. And we have rather little use for items or artifacts.

You can research artifacts, that's kind of a big reason you guys are there, no?

Nyars artifacts have already been researched by our science division, and left available for purchase because all (safely) recoverable data had already been extracted from them. We could just place orders for those artifacts if we needed to - mostly they tend to be non-replicable anyway.

Staging missions to gain new artifacts, however, is an entirely different ball game. We have stupendous quantities of clone troops. If/when negotiations on Q'Baha(sp?) succeed, we'll have a source of fresh able bodies and/or brains to toss at our cause. With those, and some FTL-capable ships acting as operating bases, we could stage Hazardous Materials Recovery missions the same way we give tasks to science crews. And any new artifacts gained that way would be actually new, not previously pored over and discarded.

Nope, some haven't been fully analysed yet. I asked PW if we could still research Nyartifacts, he said that we could, but we can't use science crews for them. If you want an explanation, say that the sword crew didn't have time yet to fully analyse them beyond a quick examination to determine its code. Or that they didn't have the facilities or resources or whatever to do it (safely), something that isn't an issue on Hep.

I did say the "safely" thing. The science crews on the Sword aren't going to risk their lives poking inside the guts of a mysterious murderbox. Yes, they can still be researched "manually", but that takes time and determination.

Also, no, we don't have enough sods. We don't have nearly enough. For a war on this scale, we'd need millions at least. And that is incorporating the overall strategy of employing allies whenever we can. Just a general sentiment.

Not enough sods for a war, but enough sods for missions. A research and recovery mission ship could set out with a human crew and a complement of some 100 sods, do whatever is needed, then return. The measure of success would be determined by some rolls, and the result would be seen by whether anything was brought back, and how many sods (and away team crewmembers) survived.

[Nikitian]

I might be wrong, but I believe it is more likely that we cannot 'explore' the Nyartifacts with science-crews only - i.e. they are for players to discover and explore - but, once fairly explored, science crews could be put to 'engineer' design specifics for the new (likely player-designed) projects based on those (more or less explored) artifacts (taking away the need to delve into too much detail tinkering those).
So, humans still have all the most juicy and interesting bits to work on (and Nyartifacts, as opposed to mission ones, are on-player-demand, after all, rather than on GM's schedule), yet not forced to deal with the more boring and tedious stuff (and not taxing GM in that regard). Well, at least that seems like a nice logical way to deal with the issue.

[syvarris]

I'm pretty sure the sod divisions discussion is pretty much done.  Radio, if there's something in your last spoiler that you want me to reply to, just say so.

As far as the mind control automanip is concerned, I doubt that would be practical.  Automanips are extremely rigidly defined in what they do, and where they do it, so manipulating neurochemistry in such a precise way would be... about impossible.  Conceivably, we might be able to do it if we discovered some weird 'anger field' aspect of alien physics, which doesn't need to specifically do anything aside from be around a person to affect them.  I just doubt any such thing exists.

Also, I updated the Heph page.  Sorry for basically disappearing for so long.