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[Kedly]

If the science hasnt been done yet, Vincent would indeed push for a clause informing scientists that they are making a sacrifice of their life to save mankind, and maybe also give theor family a bonus for their sacrifice. Respect for saving our asses and all that

[syvarris]

Can ER tech do perfect erasing of certain memories without outright lobotomizing its patients, while simultaneously giving absolutely perfect guarantee the information cannot in any way be retrieved? If yes, that's certainly a good option to consider.

Exactly my thoughts.  Remember STAN?  That was caused by contanination in Stacy's brain, which he got from witnessing the Eater Of Stars.  He had had his memories--a significant amount of them, I believe--completely wiped, to the extent he became a different person.  But the knowledge in his head wasn't removed.

@Kedly

None of that science has been done yet, and it's probably not going to happen until ER's conclusion.  I wonder how much we can actually incentivize the job; I believe we were aiming for semi-utopian societies where all the real work is done by the AI and robots, while sharkmist and haebi automatically manufacture anything which is desired.  That doesn't leave much room for rewarding people without harming others.

I suppose we can just lie to them, though.  That gets us workers without needing to create a class system just so we can promote people.

[spazyak]

So programmers and biochemists are the future, neat.
edit-fuck dyslexia

[Ozarck]

We've been assuming we could build more EUEs because, IIRC, PW said our current one was small and we'd have to make a bigger one.  Also, I believe we asked at some point, and PW said we can make more.  He did read through that quote, and didn't say we can't, at the least.

I don't think this would be kept secret from Dester or BLOPs so much as just not mentioned, because they weren't needed.  You actually could have joined in on the discussion but I'm guessing you didn't read the Tinker or Poke threads, where most of the discussion went on.  It probably would have been polite to post something in the M26 thread, though--sorry about that.

Sending the scientists through presents the risk that they probably know how the original machine was made, and thus a hostile entity could use their knowledge to attack the previous set of universes.  They're a liability regardless of which set of universes they stay in, so they die.  It's only a couple of lives to ensure the safety of trillions, so I think it's worth it.  If it really bugs you, we could warn all applicants about them being killed if they succeed, and allow them to rethink their decision.  It would probably slow things down, but we literally have infinite time.

Here is my issue: the scientists will know how the EUEs are made, but any intelligence capable of taking that information out of them is going to be capable of reverse engineering it from any existing EUE anyway. As long as a single EUE exists, it is useless to destroy the humans capable of operating them - you only deprive humanity of power, not any enemy powerful enough to be a threat. You think it's worth it? That is definitely something Saint would say, because he is a paranoid sociopath. I expect better ooc from you.

And yes, being left out of the discussion by omission feels inconsiderate to me. M26 was given directly to the team from m23. You, empiricist, and those who skipped in from m27 were welcomed in because I felt that it would be valuable to have other perspectives. It feel like that respect is one directional here. I also feel like you are taking advantage of grey areas and metagaming to get your project done to your satisfaction on this. This includes you R_C. Miya is on mission, neck deep in combat. Oh sure, handwavium and "different timescales" are powerful excuses. But, if you were doing the design while off mission or en route, it certainly would have been courteous to include m26 in the conversation. Besides, the timescales are being pushed pretty loose here, what with the several people pathing back and forth between heph and m27 like they are. there is a reason most missions to date have been kept pretty insular in terms of information available between mission teams.

No, people interested in the EUE topic are not going to naturally join into tinker, with it's thousand threads of conversations, and posts longer than syv's on mission posts. Some of us tend to stay in our IC threads and expect that information relevant primarily to our mission might be brought up there. And instead, it seems you've made syv the mouthpiece of M23 for interaction with pretty much everyone else, filtering literally everything through him and Saint. This also irritates me.

So yeah, to sum up. having syv and R_C call the shots on a project specific to m26,while syv is nominally on m26 and miya is nominally somewhere and somewhen else, on a completely different mission, was a little rude. And yes, colonization is part of m26's mandate - it is part of the plan of action made early on on that thread.

[syvarris]

Huh.  You seem rather... incensed.

Here is my issue: the scientists will know how the EUEs are made, but any intelligence capable of taking that information out of them is going to be capable of reverse engineering it from any existing EUE anyway. As long as a single EUE exists, it is useless to destroy the humans capable of operating them - you only deprive humanity of power, not any enemy powerful enough to be a threat.

You misunderstand, which is quite understandable because we haven't done a very good job of summarizing this.  We don't intend to kill the scientists because they understand how EUEs work--we intend to kill them because they understand how a specific variation works.  The EUE is supposed to be a highly complex machine designed to find universes specifically within the three axes we use in M26.  We intend to have scientists redesign it, but make it such that it accesses an entirely different set of axes.  Our current EUE accesses universes in the {x,y,z} set, and only those universes, while the second EUE would access universes in, say, the {a,b,c} set, and only those universes.  An {x,y,z} EUE wouldn't be able to access universes in {a,b,c}, and vice-versa.  So, as long as humans in {a,b,c} only have {a,b,c} EUEs, and none of them have knowledge of how an {x,y,z} EUE works, that would mean it is essentially impossible for an alien entity to ever discover human-infested universes in a set aside from the one it started in.

This plan also has a lot of mights and maybes in it.  For instance, if {a,b,c} overlaps with {x,y,z}, it's much less effective.  Or maybe there's only a couple of modifications which can be made, meaning an alien entity could reverse engineer all of them, making hiding impossible because there's only four doors instead of an infinity.  Or maybe alternate sets are just too likely to be inhospitable, so we're either limited to just the one, or a couple similar ones, leading to the same problem as before.

Still, if it works the way we hope, it is an unparalelled defense against existential annihilation.  Let's face it: Humans have already doomed their whole species twice, by accident, so they'll probably do it a couple more times.  The only reliable way to ensure they don't get completely wiped out the next time, is to make them forkbomb and isolate themselves from each other, so each time they fuckup only a small segment stands a chance of untter annihilation.  At least until we figure out how to accidentally destroy all possible and impossible realities simultanously, but I'm still working on a defense against that one.

You think it's worth it? That is definitely something Saint would say, because he is a paranoid sociopath. I expect better ooc from you.

You expect too much from me--I'm a rather poor roleplayer, and Saint is very much an escapist character for me, who acts in a way that I find enjoyable.  Saint's a monster because I enjoy playing monsters, not because his character development led him towards being something I'd rather avoid.

And yes, being left out of the discussion by omission feels inconsiderate to me. M26 was given directly to the team from m23. You, empiricist, and those who skipped in from m27 were welcomed in because I felt that it would be valuable to have other perspectives. It feel like that respect is one directional here. I also feel like you are taking advantage of grey areas and metagaming to get your project done to your satisfaction on this. This includes you R_C. Miya is on mission, neck deep in combat. Oh sure, handwavium and "different timescales" are powerful excuses. But, if you were doing the design while off mission or en route, it certainly would have been courteous to include m26 in the conversation. Besides, the timescales are being pushed pretty loose here, what with the several people pathing back and forth between heph and m27 like they are. there is a reason most missions to date have been kept pretty insular in terms of information available between mission teams.

No, people interested in the EUE topic are not going to naturally join into tinker, with it's thousand threads of conversations, and posts longer than syv's on mission posts. Some of us tend to stay in our IC threads and expect that information relevant primarily to our mission might be brought up there.

I do feel quite guilty about this, though.  I sincerely apologize, and I honestly didn't intend to leave you out.

Here, maybe some context will help you feel better.  For years, ER's tinkerers have kinda formed a bit of a clique, for lack of a better term.  Most other people would stay away from Heph, Heph OOC, and Tinker when not working on a pet project, but most of the chronic tinkerers would keep up pretty reliably.  Tanks, technology, space ships, backround battle tactics, all of that was sorta nebulously "Heph stuff", so it's always been discussed in Heph OOC and Tinker.  It also happens to almost exclusively attract the chronic tinkerers like Radio and I, so nobody was ever bugged that it stayed exclusively in those threads.

M26 provides a change to that tradition.  A bunch of non-tinkerers--the BLOPs team, you included--came to Heph, and started working on a Heph thing.  For us, it's business as usual, so we continued using the threads we've used for years to talk about it--Tinker and Heph OOC.  But for you guys, newbies to Heph stuff, you don't have the years of conditioning to think of it as Heph stuff, which we just... didn't consider.  We weren't excluding you, we were just thinking "If someone's interested in this nerdy stuff they'll come talk about it in the nerd thread, which all the nerds read!".  Pretty much literally, that's what we thought.

So... sorry.  Please don't be mad at us, we're just set in our ways and not very perceptive.

And instead, it seems you've made syv the mouthpiece of M23 for interaction with pretty much everyone else, filtering literally everything through him and Saint. This also irritates me.

I can understand why you're angry about this, but I think you're thinking about it slightly incorrectly.  Yes, IC, the information is being filtered through Saint, but it's supposed to be the exact information (except for one bit of information which is, frankly, idiotic to say IC) and any deviation from that is due to me summarizing things terribly (and I apologize for that).  OOC, Radio has freely offered to let all of you guys in on the conversation, not filtering information through me, and IC the information is being conveyed in a very logical manner--Miya talks to the Admin who he's experienced with, and the Admin talks to the Black Ops Team he's experienced with.

So yeah, to sum up. having syv and R_C call the shots on a project specific to m26,while syv is nominally on m26 and miya is nominally somewhere and somewhen else, on a completely different mission, was a little rude.

To be completely fair, it's a longstanding habit of Radio to butt in on Heph-related threads and do stuff, and especially to discuss stuff, despite his character ICly being busy with murdering things.  Nobody has ever complained about it before, except for PW, and PW stopped when Radio promised to make only one bolded post at a time.  Prior to that, he'd occasionally had bolded actions in three threads at a time, which was excessive.

But yeah, again, he's just a set-in-his-ways nerd who had an interest in a subject, and dealt with the subject in the same way he's done for years.

And also Miyamoto has significant IC authority over you guys, and if he wanted to say your mission objective was to buff his giant metal ass at all hours of the day, he could.  Not that that justifies anything, but it made me chuckle.

[Ozarck]

M26 is not a "heph thing" and Miya should be going through either the Black Ops organizer - Milno - or the current Black Ops lead to discuss plans of action for a Black Ops mission, which is what you are doing when you decide on how the EUEs will work in the other universes.

You let your cliqueishness override our team. you just stated that you are aware that other players stay out of these threads because of the cliqueishness.

I did not misunderstand about the scientists. I am aware of the idea of the variant configurations creating different sets of coordinates. I am uninterested in that reasoning. Again, there is Heph, and there is M26.

TO say "well, ooc he never prevented you from coming in" is a far cry from satisfying.

I am indeed irritated, perhaps even incensed, because you are pushing BlOps into irrelevance and using your ooc role as head of tinker, and your IC role as head of Heph - a position originally to be pretty much isolated from missions entirely - to do so.

If we are at a point where the BlOps team is no longer necessary for the functioning of this mission, then the mission should be ended, called a success, paid out, and the characters shipped to places they can be of use, and have fun, as PW did when he found that m25 was bogged down and uninteresting, with only robot overlord and pilot minions having any effect.

And to say "well, me and R_C basically control the game IC, so live with it (via being heph admin and general, respectively)" plays right into some longstanding complaints form other players about power structures here. And that complaint I address strait to the gm for allowing the overlap to get so severe. Several long term characters are already being segregated from the rest of the teams to address power apartheid, and you seem to be practically actively working to exclude people from power within their own missions.

[syvarris]

I am becoming increasingly dissatisfied with your handling of m26. Your roles as tinker overseer, heph head, and auxilliary to m26 are beginning to conflict, and it seems to me that you are taking advantage of that situation to control the course of m26.

It's one thing for tinker to develop systems. it is another thing for tinker to develop the plan of action which m26 is to follow. That is neither tinker, nor Heph's responsibility. I think you overstepped your bounds on this one, and I think you did so with little to no regard of myself as a player, or the other members of this team - the players themselves, who you seem to have more or less neglected in all your plans and actions. M26 is not an extension of tinker or of Heph.

Wow, seriously?  Now you're just flat out making stuff up.  You name three roles, and say they're starting to conflict, but what have I done that abused even a single role?

Tinker?  I never used my position as Tinkermaster to change anything.  Literally, I never said "X works like this"--I always said things like "PW would probably do this", or "PW wouldn't want this" etc.  But don't take my word for it:

I'm not even sure why we're doing this like tinker, this is mostly the same as our discussions of old on various technical topics, except I get a nice little stamp whenever we reach a conclusion.

You know how Dester mentioned that having AI have control over the colonies would be dangerous?  That's something I pointed out to Radio.  I didn't say "Well, the AI is definitely going to go crazy", I said "PW is probably gonna make the AI go crazy in some instances".  I used a lot more words than Dester did, but I made the same statement, and it carried equal weight.  I never got to decide how something work.  I could only say how I though it would work, just from my years of watching PW.  Nothing more.

How about my position as Heph Head?  You said that's starting to conflict, yeah?  Where did I abuse my Heph head powers?  Was it when I didn't use my Heph head powers to take control of M26 from you?  Even if M26 was consider a BLOPs mission (it isn't, see below), I could certainly have talked to Milno, and pointed out how a newbie shouldn't be in charge of something of this scale.  Sure, I might not have succeeded, but I damn sure could have tried.  The only reason I didn't is because I didn't want to degrade the game for others.

A similar instance is where, after several people complained that I handled orgyverse poorly (Not even holyverse!), citing reasons I disagreed with, I willingly agreed to never make first contact with another alien species.  Was that an abuse of power, or was it willingly limiting myself to make the game better for others, despite not being in my own interest?

The only abuse of power I've made is the initial one, to place Saint in equivalent standing to Dester, rather than below or above him.  Firstly, I think this was damn smart; Who stopped both apocalypses that were accidentally summoned?  I did, because I've been playing this game for years and realize how valuable paranoia is.  Not you.  Should I have had my character be subservient to yours, just because you like having complete power over your personal little mission, despite it being dangerous, and extremely OOC?

Furthermore, when have I abused that equivalence in power?  If you hadn't noticed, Saint has never given orders to Dester, or even Dester's subordinates.  He's always made suggestions, usually smart suggestions like "If you stay inside warships you're less likely to die."  On the other hand, he's actually followed orders, despite not needing to.  This is an abuse of power to you?

And finally, you said "control the course of M26".  I guess you just haven't paid attention, but I never gave you a single damn order in relation to the colonies.  I did not say you have to use the colony modules Radio made.  Looking back, Saint did say "the colony modules we will be sending to other universes", which I fully admit was a bad choice of words.  I apologize for that--you are not being forced by me to use those colony modules, and you can just say "we're not using those".  Though at this point, if Radio forced you to, I think it'd be perfectly justified by your massive overreaction.  I know he won't, which disappoints me, but I certainly wouldn't complain if he did.

Now for the actual post.

M26 is not a "heph thing"

This is a pretty core part of your argument, and IMO it's very incorrect.  M26 has been handled like Heph stuff always has been; everyone has infinite resources and supplies, is running scientific experiments in isolation from the experients, is fiddling with new and poorly understood tech in an attempt to understand it, and we have a very open ended and vauge goal.  These are the core gameplay traits of Hephaestus play.

In contrast, BLOPs is very different.  BLOPs missions are interpersonal, done with minimal resources, place a high emphasis on dealing with things in person, and always have a very defined goal.  The only BLOPs mission which doesn't completely fit these standard was the nukeship mission, which was still much closer to BLOPs than Heph.

Now, M26 being Heph stuff doesn't mean I have control over it, any more than I have control over whether another player makes a new gun or new armor (I've never had control over that, FYI, since you seem to have no understanding of how Tinkermastery worked).  It just means it sits within the category of nerdy things which Heph people enjoy, and normal non-autistic people don't.  Hell, I'd even go so far as to say M26 itself isn't really Heph stuff, but the exact details of colony modules sure as hell are.  I mean, what details have you thought up about how colonies would work?  Did you put hours of thought into deciding exactly what we'd do as PW reauested Radio do?  Maybe, I can't read your mind.  Have you posted those ideas to discuss them with other people, to ensure there were no massive flaws, in the places people have discussed those ideas for years?  Hell no, you didn't even post in the M26 thread!

I'll say it again, it was truly a mistake for the colony discussion to not be mentioned in the M26 thread until now.  We made a mistake.  We're trying to correct it, by linking you into the discussion now, and offering you the chance to alter how things are happening, but you're being a whiny little brat who hates how one small aspect of his pet mission has been significantly discussed by other players before you even started considering it.

and Miya should be going through either the Black Ops organizer - Milno - or the current Black Ops lead to discuss plans of action for a Black Ops mission, which is what you are doing when you decide on how the EUEs will work in the other universes.

This mission has never involved Milno.  He wasn't asked if he was okay with his BLOPs team doing a different BLOPs mission.  Rather, Steve saw that a team of people (who happened to be BLOPs) had performed well, doing far better than ARM teams normally do, and decided "Hey, these guys would probably be competent enough to handle the universe exploration, and they're already right in Hephaestus!  I'll offer the job to them."

But, you know what?  I'll send a PM to PW asking him if M26 is a BLOPs mission (CC'ing you, of course).  I'll admit it is ambiguous.

You let your cliqueishness override our team. you just stated that you are aware that other players stay out of these threads because of the cliqueishness.

No, people stay out of those threads because it's a bunch of twenty-paragraph dissertations on subjects most people couldn't care less about.  Normally, we're actually pretty nice to newcomers--I'm just being a prick to you now, because you've consistently been being a prick to me about how I'm abusing my power, despite me doing the exact opposite to improve your enjoyment.

I did not misunderstand about the scientists. I am aware of the idea of the variant configurations creating different sets of coordinates. I am uninterested in that reasoning. Again, there is Heph, and there is M26.

What, since you're the commander of M26, we're not allowed to play?  You've gotta be the guy who calls the shots, and we're not allowed to talk about what we should do?  Fuck that.  I try to accomodate other people when I play, but I'm not quitting just because you dislike the fact that I play the game.

TO say "well, ooc he never prevented you from coming in" is a far cry from satisfying.

It's hard to be sure what you're replying to, since you're not using quotes, but I'm pretty sure you meant this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

OOC, Radio has freely offered to let all of you guys in on the conversation, not filtering information through me,

That wasn't in reference to him being fine with you joining in on the Tinker conversation.  That was in reference to his post in M26 which brought you here.

I am indeed irritated, perhaps even incensed, because you are pushing BlOps into irrelevance and using your ooc role as head of tinker, and your IC role as head of Heph - a position originally to be pretty much isolated from missions entirely - to do so.

Excellent use of "irrelevance".  On one topic which you haven't shown an interest in before, we forgot to drag you into the conversation.  Furthermore, I must have maliciously planned this forgetfulness, because I used both my OOC role as Tinkermaster and IC role as Admin to do it.[/sarcasm]

If Saint were busy on M27, everything would have gone down identically, with the sole exception that you wouldn't have gotten a text from Saint.

Also, yeah, Admins were originally supposed to be isolated from missions.  That didn't work so well, so PW let admins actually start being involved in missions.  Should I just go back to being completely uninvolved in the game, not getting to interact with anything, because I'm spoiling all your fun by being here?

If we are at a point where the BlOps team is no longer necessary for the functioning of this mission, then the mission should be ended

We're either not there now, or we started there, depending on your definition of "necessary".  No, M26 isn't done, and someone needs to do the remaining work.  No, BLOPs never needed to be that someone--but they're an okay choice for being that someone.  They still are, it's just BLOPs plus a few, now.

the characters shipped to places they can be of use, and have fun, as PW did when he found that m25 was bogged down and uninteresting, with only robot overlord and pilot minions having any effect.

See, this is what I mean by "Heph Stuff".  Obviously you aren't enjoying playing with the spiders, searching the glassphereverse, and colonizing the fleshverse.  If you don't enjoy doing this stuff, I agree, you shouldn't be here.  Just don't blame us for not letting you enjoy it, because nobody's posted a bolded action saying you  can't colonize the fleshverse.

And to say "well, me and R_C basically control the game IC, so live with it (via being heph admin and general, respectively)" plays right into some longstanding complaints form other players about power structures here.

Here's what those complaints have always meant, and therefore why I've always ignored them: "The Leaderguy did something I dislike, and I hate it so much I can't enjoy the game!  He's corrupt and a dick!"

Radio's actually a damn good leader, far better than is reasonable.  He bends over backwards to make the game enjoyable for people.  You know the Wiki?  He made that.  You know how M25 was abstracted and skipped?  Radio argued for that, because while he was having a lot of fun, he saw other people weren't.  He argued in favor of stopping his own fun so that other people could do stuff.

What'd Ozark do, as Grand Leader of Mission 26?  Did he ever make any sacrifices to his own gameplay, so that other people could have fun?  Not to my knowledge.  Actually, when he perceived somebody else to be taking over a single aspect of his mission (a valid misunderstanding, which I've apologized for) he went completely ballistic and said the whole damn thing was absolutely ruined (a complete overreaction, even if your perception was correct).


...There's a few more lines, but I'm actually starting to get tired of this.  Good job Ozark, you're now in an esteemed group of people which only included GreatWyrmGold before now.

[Radio Controlled]

Ok, first up, if you wanna blame anyone, it should probably be directed at me. Even though syv has helped the most out of all the other players (doing some dang good work as well), in the end it was still my project, so if you weren't adequately warned that's on me.

Now, for the scientists, as I said earlier we aren't even sure yet if we'll need any human scientists to make the alternative universe set EUE, so don't go pinning down on that issue until we are sure it will actually be an issue. This whole project is still a work in progress, but for now we're far enough that we should be able to set up regular colonies in the current universe set should we want to, and worry about the alternative EUE set when we get there.

Now, as for being 'left out', again this wasn't an attempt to shut you (or anyone) out of it, I really hadn't expected you had somehow missed it completely. I mean, it's been a thing almost 3 RL months now, it's come up in at least 3 threads, including regular OOC, and pw referred to the autocolonies multiple times when ERORO (and ERbeyond) were being discussed. And it's not like you were mostly lurking the whole time, you were reasonably active afaik, or I probably would have considered it more likely you missed it and shot a quick pm just in case.

It's not like I haven't send pm's to people before when I thought it was needed (remember when you got one to ask to vote on the wiki?) and if we were trying to keep it a secret club activity we would've done it in pm or whatever, not in a thread while asking multiple times if other people had input or ideas. It's true, I didn't specifically come into the m26 thread to point out it existed, and I apologize for that oversight. But it's not like we're trying to 'old boys club' this, or else we wouldn't be doing it the way we do.

So now that you are aware, and since very little is irrevocably set in stone, you (and everybody else) are again welcomed to discuss the project with the rest of us. It's not like anything has progressed past a point of no return or that you're being forced to make use of these things without having any say in the matter, or as if we're gonna take away a whole part of the mission (setting up colonies) just like that. Hell, an explicit part of the project was that some universes would be colonized the old fashioned way (to ensure that if there's a fundamental long term flaw in the AI we couldn't find that not all colonies would be doomed) so people can keep setting up things manually if they want.

Miya is on mission, neck deep in combat. Oh sure, handwavium and "different timescales" are powerful excuses.
[...]
Besides, the timescales are being pushed pretty loose here, what with the several people pathing back and forth between heph and m27 like they are. there is a reason most missions to date have been kept pretty insular in terms of information available between mission teams.

I explicitly asked pw for permission before going through with it, which I always do when it comes to things like this. And when there's even the slightest indication that he's bothered by it, I stop immediately. That said, if it's a big problem for you, we could freeze the whole IC part of this right now and wait until the mission is over before continuing. It'd cost us a lot of RL time, but if that feels better to you we can do that. And yes, I also explicitly asked pw if I could go through with the project myself.

EDIT: ninja'd by syv. Huh. And by mere seconds to. And he basically predicted my reaction as well! Such ninja, much textwalls, wow 

[syvarris]

Of course I predicted you.  You always give the same boring bog-standard response of apologizing and trying to defuse things, and then you usually accept the blame.  Do you even get angry?  You've certainly never showed it on this subforum.

[Radio Controlled]

Ah, such disgrace, having become so predictable. Clearly, the time is ripe to randomly torch a few people in the streets, to keep you all on your toes and prevent the world from discovering my hidden robot zen identity (Techno Buddha is my secret alter ego).

Hmm, maybe we can create a Markov chain program and get it to write my responses for me. Outsourcing spinelessness is the way of the future, you know!

[Ozarck]

-sigh- thank you both for responding and taking my complaint seriously. Syv, I think a few of the personal attacks were a little harsh. Radio, I have said it before that you deserve a lot of credit for trying to make the game enjoyable for others. You too, syv.

Allow me to clarify a couple things:
1) I feel that the various parts of the game are overlapping pretty extensively in a way they hadn't been before, and that most directly affects M26.
2) this puts long term players who have been granted authority in multiple spheres in a position to - intentional or not - pretty much override or supersede anything other players can do. there have been several instances where some players have had no input into a mission except to hide behind a shiny metal ass or two.

Spoiler:  Massive wall of text. Not for the faint of heart. (click to show/hide)

-snip-

I sent you this pm shortly after I posted my initial concerns, and long before you responded in thread. My intention was to take this out of the thread and discuss it privately - do give you and I an opportunity to clarify the problem - and decide if there was a real problem or not, before publicly addressing it. I meant that asa courtesy, and did so because we have been able to discuss things in the past like this, and I felt that we could clear this up without more than a couple pms. It was, I think, partly because I recognized that I was reacting against your summary of the project, and you had made a disclaimer concerning that. I wish you would have responded there before here, rather than brought what I said there to here.

Wow, seriously?  Now you're just flat out making stuff up.  You name three roles, and say they're starting to conflict, but what have I done that abused even a single role? you established a plan of action for how m26 was to make use of the colony project. this was the conflation of power I was addressing. Well, that and how Saint uses his Heph power to lock out information and act independently, and with fundamentally different methods and attitudes than all of the BLOPS team. A part of what made the M23 team effective, and why we got this assignment, was because we meshed as a team. and Saint ... Saint sees everyone on M26 like - well you say it below, at least in regards to Dester.

Tinker?  I never used my position as Tinkermaster to change anything.  Literally, I never said "X works like this"--I always said things like "PW would probably do this", or "PW wouldn't want this" etc.  But don't take my word for it:

I'm not even sure why we're doing this like tinker, this is mostly the same as our discussions of old on various technical topics, except I get a nice little stamp whenever we reach a conclusion.

conceded

You know how Dester mentioned that having AI have control over the colonies would be dangerous?  That's something I pointed out to Radio.  I didn't say "Well, the AI is definitely going to go crazy", I said "PW is probably gonna make the AI go crazy in some instances".  I used a lot more words than Dester did, but I made the same statement, and it carried equal weight. a) I was unaware - and this is again a result of the "cliqueshness" of tinker - a word that you introduced into the conversation, and I merely parroted.

I do feel quite guilty about this, though.  I sincerely apologize, and I honestly didn't intend to leave you out.

Here, maybe some context will help you feel better.  For years, ER's tinkerers have kinda formed a bit of a clique, for lack of a better term.  Most other people would stay away from Heph, Heph OOC, and Tinker when not working on a pet project, but most of the chronic tinkerers would keep up pretty reliably.

[/color]  That quote brings up another issue I'll address at the end of this post
How about my position as Heph Head?  You said that's starting to conflict, yeah? starting to ... starting to. As in, with the colony plan. Where did I abuse my Heph head powers?  -snipped examples of restraint- All of the examples mentioned are things I have noticed and appreciated. I believe i have even done so in thread. Not that Saint would care, being wholly selfish and manipulative, but the appreciation from Dester was genuine, as was (and is) mine to you.

And finally, you said "control the course of M26".  I guess you just haven't paid attention, but I never gave you a single damn order in relation to the colonies.  I did not say you have to use the colony modules Radio made.  Looking back, Saint did say "the colony modules we will be sending to other universes", which I fully admit was a bad choice of words.  I apologize for that--you are not being forced by me to use those colony modules, and you can just say "we're not using those".  Though at this point, if Radio forced you to, I think it'd be perfectly justified by your massive overreaction.  I know he won't, which disappoints me, but I certainly wouldn't complain if he did. it was that choice of words, combined with Saint's general ideals, your tendency to be very meticulous in your actions, but very noncommunicative of those actions, that raised red flags for me. If R_C did order the use of the colonies, if ARM did, or if Steve did, Dester'd shrug it off and get on with life. He'll do the same with this. But he, or at least I, am allowed to be a bit miffed by it. People usually are a bit miffed by ham handed authoritarianism, and Dester would consider ARM's use of it rather hypocritical, given a) Steve's rather lackadaisical attitude toward the Characters' actions, and b) the fact that this approach is essentially the core of the UWM attitude that Steve has so carefully fought against for a millenium, in order to prepare to fight our larger enemies.

Now for the actual post.

M26 is not a "heph thing"

This is a pretty core part of your argument, and IMO it's very incorrect.  -snipped: m26 gameplay is like heph more than like BLOPS.- to be honest, I expected we'd be required a more hands on approach, with the entire team, or at least a significant part of it, needing to physically enter each universe and return. I expected the universes to have been selected in abstract so that only those with the potential to be human hospitable would be available to us (PW said before we started that the EUE would "probably" not telefrag us on entry - so I assumed a certain amount of prepreparation and preselection)

However - I only call this team the BLOPS team because we were designated that before M23, and never had that been changed. the point is not the gameplay, the point is the team.


I mean, what details have you thought up about how colonies would work?  Did you put hours of thought into deciding exactly what we'd do as PW reauested Radio do?  Maybe, I can't read your mind.  Have you posted those ideas to discuss them with other people, to ensure there were no massive flaws, in the places people have discussed those ideas for years?  Hell no, you didn't even post in the M26 thread! I and several others in M26 have sent materials and personnel over to other universes in an attempt to develop colonies within the mission. Several times those actions went ignored in thread by the GM. I chalked that up to abstraction, and would have been happy leaving it at that. But yes, in the m26 thread, in three different universes so far, we have built colonies. that PW went to another thread, not known for being visited by most of our team, to hand that aspect of our mission off to you guys, without a heads up to the team such as "hey, I'm sending colony construction to tinker and letting that gang work out step six of m26's plan" was unknown to me.

I'll say it again, it was truly a mistake for the colony discussion to not be mentioned in the M26 thread until now.  We made a mistake.  We're trying to correct it, by linking you into the discussion now, and offering you the chance to alter how things are happening, but you're being a whiny little brat who hates how one small aspect of his pet mission has been significantly discussed by other players before you even started considering it.

-snip for space. I feel I am respnding to too many details as it is, and this one is being discussed elsewhere-

-snip because it's at least three different conversations-

-snip R_C's invitation to join the tinker discussion of the colonies. clarification noted-

I am indeed irritated, perhaps even incensed, because you are pushing BlOps into irrelevance and using your ooc role as head of tinker, and your IC role as head of Heph - a position originally to be pretty much isolated from missions entirely - to do so.

Excellent use of "irrelevance".  On one topic which you haven't shown an interest in before, we forgot to drag you into the conversation.  Furthermore, I must have maliciously planned this forgetfulness, because I used both my OOC role as Tinkermaster and IC role as Admin to do it.[/sarcasm]Saint is a malicious and manipulative sociopath, by your own admission. and you yourself claim that he plays the way he does because you like it. tht said, I did not, and do not, make the claim that you acted maliciously. Only that your actions override our team's role in hunting down universes, developing a plan of attack, and preparing colonies and how those colonies will be used. You've addressed this to an extent. My complaint needed to be made, though. this needed to be aired, whatever the outcome.

-snip. no response-

Also, yeah, Admins were originally supposed to be isolated from missions.  That didn't work so well, so PW let admins actually start being involved in missions.  Should I just go back to being completely uninvolved in the game, not getting to interact with anything, because I'm spoiling all your fun by being here?no, but you've carried much of the baggage from the nonfunctional situation over. The reason, as I understand it, that certain characters were given theauthority they were was because that authority didn't directly affect the other teams. Now it does, but you still have that authority. that authority was designed to be used over npcs and abstracted development of weaponry and armor and equipment, and has since evolved. Did you ever intend for Saint to be a commanding officer, in charge of player teams and carrying the authority of ARM as a General? I am curious here, because that strikes me as a completely different role than that which I think you intended - but like you, I am no mind reader.

If we are at a point where the BlOps team is no longer necessary for the functioning of this mission, then the mission should be ended

We're either not there now, or we started there, depending on your definition of "necessary".  No, M26 isn't done, and someone needs to do the remaining work.  No, BLOPs never needed to be that someone--but they're an okay choice for being that someone.  They still are, it's just BLOPs plus a few, now.the issue is, either some group of player characters need to be directly active in this with a low level of abstraction and actual individual actions made by individual team members, or can the whole thing be automated and abstracted? Not "were these specific people each specifically called by the gods for this purpose?" if no player character need act, then the mission is over and can be automated.

the characters shipped to places they can be of use, and have fun, as PW did when he found that m25 was bogged down and uninteresting, with only robot overlord and pilot minions having any effect.

See, this is what I mean by "Heph Stuff".  Obviously you aren't enjoying playing with the spiders, searching the glassphereverse, and colonizing the fleshverse.  If you don't enjoy doing this stuff, I agree, you shouldn't be here.  Just don't blame us for not letting you enjoy it, because nobody's posted a bolded action saying you  can't colonize the fleshverse. I consider Dester to be one of the "robot overlord" analogies in this case. I could play with these universes ad nauseum - but I too am concerned for the enjoyment of other players - notably the people who came with Dester from M23 and were handed this mission from the start. And if they should not be here, then the fault is not theirs, but the GM's (no offense intended, PW) for creating a Heph mission and giving it to an action team. they are not to be blamed for trying their best (and at times struggling to find viable actions) in a mission that was designed with the knowledge that they would be the participants.

-snip for time. honestly I'd like to respond-

What'd Ozark do, as Grand Leader of Mission 26?  Did he ever make any sacrifices to his own gameplay, so that other people could have fun?  Not to my knowledge.  Actually, when he perceived somebody else to be taking over a single aspect of his mission (a valid misunderstanding, which I've apologized for) he went completely ballistic and said the whole damn thing was absolutely ruined (a complete overreaction, even if your perception was correct).I think this is an exaggeration of my reaction. yes, there was some heat in my words, but I don't believe I went that far. I want you to note a couple things here though. 1) you have called this my "pet" mission. It is the only mission I have been involved with for four months. And I have one mission before that, which lasted about five and a half months or so. Missions used to last a fraction of that, and the game was much wider for most people than a single mission. For myself, Dester hasn't even gotten to return to the Sword since he set out. This mission is pretty much the game for me. Especially since the game is ending and I won't be able to participate in more missions. get that? When I joined I expected - well, a lot of things that turned out way differently than they did.


...There's a few more lines, but I'm actually starting to get tired of this.  Good job Ozark, you're now in an esteemed group of people which only included GreatWyrmGold before now. I've made three posts and one pm, and only in this one relied much on quotes. What did I do that's so rough that you put me into such an exclusive club?

Spoiler: in response to R_C's post (click to show/hide)

Ok, first up, if you wanna blame anyone, it should probably be directed at me. Even though syv has helped the most out of all the other players (doing some dang good work as well), in the end it was still my project, so if you weren't adequately warned that's on me.

Now, for the scientists, as I said earlier we aren't even sure yet if we'll need any human scientists to make the alternative universe set EUE, so don't go pinning down on that issue until we are sure it will actually be an issue. This whole project is still a work in progress, but for now we're far enough that we should be able to set up regular colonies in the current universe set should we want to, and worry about the alternative EUE set when we get there.

Now, as for being 'left out', again this wasn't an attempt to shut you (or anyone) out of it, I really hadn't expected you had somehow missed it completely. I mean, it's been a thing almost 3 RL months now, it's come up in at least 3 threads, including regular OOC, and pw referred to the autocolonies multiple times when ERORO (and ERbeyond) were being discussed. And it's not like you were mostly lurking the whole time, you were reasonably active afaik, or I probably would have considered it more likely you missed it and shot a quick pm just in case.

It's not like I haven't send pm's to people before when I thought it was needed (remember when you got one to ask to vote on the wiki?) and if we were trying to keep it a secret club activity we would've done it in pm or whatever, not in a thread while asking multiple times if other people had input or ideas. It's true, I didn't specifically come into the m26 thread to point out it existed, and I apologize for that oversight. But it's not like we're trying to 'old boys club' this, or else we wouldn't be doing it the way we do.

So now that you are aware, and since very little is irrevocably set in stone, you (and everybody else) are again welcomed to discuss the project with the rest of us. It's not like anything has progressed past a point of no return or that you're being forced to make use of these things without having any say in the matter, or as if we're gonna take away a whole part of the mission (setting up colonies) just like that. Hell, an explicit part of the project was that some universes would be colonized the old fashioned way (to ensure that if there's a fundamental long term flaw in the AI we couldn't find that not all colonies would be doomed) so people can keep setting up things manually if they want.

Miya is on mission, neck deep in combat. Oh sure, handwavium and "different timescales" are powerful excuses.
[...]
Besides, the timescales are being pushed pretty loose here, what with the several people pathing back and forth between heph and m27 like they are. there is a reason most missions to date have been kept pretty insular in terms of information available between mission teams.

I explicitly asked pw for permission before going through with it, which I always do when it comes to things like this. And when there's even the slightest indication that he's bothered by it, I stop immediately. That said, if it's a big problem for you, we could freeze the whole IC part of this right now and wait until the mission is over before continuing. It'd cost us a lot of RL time, but if that feels better to you we can do that. And yes, I also explicitly asked pw if I could go through with the project myself.

I don't know how I missed it in regular ooc, unless it got buried in a) a wall of text post carrying numerous other tinker related things, or b) a slew of other unrelated conversations. Both are certainly possible. as for ORORO and the mentions there - hving had no context for the autocolonies beforehand, I thought those were post game things, not something being specifically worked on now.

as for the scientists, Dester is willing to do what is necessary, and that has been demonstrated several times on both missions we have been on. But by the workd of Saint alone, he is being kept in the dark about this and called "naive." I argue again that it is an unnecessary method and one I would expect Miya to be uncomfortable with, that tere are more humane methods of keeping that information secret, and that, in the event that some threat strong enough to invade threads of human universes was encountered, eliminating the scientists involved would be far too little to matter. For all the above reasons I brought it up, and they all remain valid concerns.

as for being included here - I misunderstood the degree of completion of the project - as well as the degree of access I had IC to it, since several posts suggested that the project was near completion and that that was the appropriate time to brief Dester and M26 on it. You asked at one point how I wanted to work out Dester's introduction to it, but stated that you had homework to do and it would take time to make a summary. My initial "what am I looking at  here" was an attempt to get a very brief synopsis without bothering you while you had work to do. Sifting through reams of tinker to discover the nature, progress, and details of the project and how much Dester would be in the know felt like more work than it was worth. Had I time or energy to do so, it would have been the better choice. But I don't this post has taken two hours of my time, and i could only put this much effort in since i had four glorious nights off work in a row, thanks to the holiday.

Please look here, even if you don't read the rest of the massive conversation above.
Syv, I have failed to acknowledge verbally or in any way that you could reasonably be expected to catch that you have apologized for a number of things and sought to make the situation more positive. I am sorry. I accept your apologies and your corrections and will try my best to act in accordance.

I didn't expect my complaint here to be seen as carrying so much venom. I apologize for the tone. I let my guard down and allowed some emotion to come through. It is hard to keep the walls up, sometimes. I am very sorry.

I reiterate my appreciation for R_C and many others' hard work in making hte game enjoyable for all. it's a difficult task, and sometimes things fall through the gaps.

[Devastator]

Can ER tech do perfect erasing of certain memories without outright lobotomizing its patients, while simultaneously giving absolutely perfect guarantee the information cannot in any way be retrieved? If yes, that's certainly a good option to consider.

Exactly my thoughts.  Remember STAN?  That was caused by contanination in Stacy's brain, which he got from witnessing the Eater Of Stars.  He had had his memories--a significant amount of them, I believe--completely wiped, to the extent he became a different person.  But the knowledge in his head wasn't removed.

That sounds an awful lot like lobotomizing.

None of that science has been done yet, and it's probably not going to happen until ER's conclusion.  I wonder how much we can actually incentivize the job; I believe we were aiming for semi-utopian societies where all the real work is done by the AI and robots, while sharkmist and haebi automatically manufacture anything which is desired.  That doesn't leave much room for rewarding people without harming others.

Once again, I am glad I got Leo to die while it was still possible.

[Kedly]

Dang, missed my chance to attempt defusal =P. Anyways, I can see why Oz's irritated, autocolonies IS pretty closely linked with M26's goals, and a lot of us hadn't started on working out the deatils of the colonies because we hadn't found a suitable universe yet. And yes I heard you guys talking about autocolonies for ER beyond, but I hadn't put 2 and 2 together either that that meant players had been working out the details on them. it WASNT very clear that this had been worked on for the last 3 months. That being said. I definitely believe you RC and SYV that it wasn't intentional and was merely an oversight. I would also like to point out that OZ had a decent part to play in our current testing order for universes, it doesn't look like he is scared away by detailed plans. (Also, syv, I didn't mean to cause you any "unfun" with the orgyverse fiasco. I Vincent piledrived you about the orgyverse because I like to roleplay and saw it as an opportunity to do so because of the ethics clash)

[Parisbre56]

I don't know if you have seen it (not much time to read everything) but a good description of the project is here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=155799.msg6872997#msg6872997

Also, it's nice seeing everyone being nice and civil.

[Ozarck]

Kedley, you, DocMcTaalik, and the fact that i'd like to be there when we turn out the lights on the universe and end this game are the three biggest reasons I have for continuing playing.