Print

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

Count me in!

13 (61.9%)

No, but maybe I'll watch

8 (38.1%)

Total Members Voted: 20

[Harry Baldman]

I think we agreed on it.

Well, three or four people agreed on it if I remember it right, and that's the closest we can possibly get to consensus anyway.

[Dorsidwarf]

Oh yeah.

I kinda forgot. This is taking a really, really long time, what with all the arguing and people vanishing.

[Harry Baldman]

Oh yeah.

I kinda forgot. This is taking a really, really long time, what with all the arguing and people vanishing.

I suspect there may be a slight deadlock at work here. Hugo's waiting on Kevak to post the AI and related stuff, Kevak won't post the AI until the ship's fully designed, nobody can be bothered to fully design the ship (and rightly so, since it doesn't matter at all for RP purposes). So here we are, waiting for a resolution.

I think the ship should be bullshat together, really, with the assumption that it's as big as it needs to be (a box the size of a cruise liner and all that with some leeway) and that we've got all the needed areas plus space guns of some sort, and then elaborate on things in the course of play, because conventional attempts at topology and play-by-post RPs don't go together at all.

[kj1225]

Oh yeah.

I kinda forgot. This is taking a really, really long time, what with all the arguing and people vanishing.

I suspect there may be a slight deadlock at work here. Hugo's waiting on Kevak to post the AI and related stuff, Kevak won't post the AI until the ship's fully designed, nobody can be bothered to fully design the ship (and rightly so, since it doesn't matter at all for RP purposes). So here we are, waiting for a resolution.

I think the ship should be bullshat together, really, with the assumption that it's as big as it needs to be (a box the size of a cruise liner and all that with some leeway) and that we've got all the needed areas plus space guns of some sort, and then elaborate on things in the course of play, because conventional attempts at topology and play-by-post RPs don't go together at all.

+1

[Tiruin]

I think we should give the majority of detail-to-ship to the GM ._.
The AI is capable of handling the minutiae, with the GM.

And the rest of us can party and decorate our own tiny bits of room and corridor, with the GM's note.

[heydude6]

Oh yeah.

I kinda forgot. This is taking a really, really long time, what with all the arguing and people vanishing.

I suspect there may be a slight deadlock at work here. Hugo's waiting on Kevak to post the AI and related stuff, Kevak won't post the AI until the ship's fully designed, nobody can be bothered to fully design the ship (and rightly so, since it doesn't matter at all for RP purposes). So here we are, waiting for a resolution.

I think the ship should be bullshat together, really, with the assumption that it's as big as it needs to be (a box the size of a cruise liner and all that with some leeway) and that we've got all the needed areas plus space guns of some sort, and then elaborate on things in the course of play, because conventional attempts at topology and play-by-post RPs don't go together at all.

+1

+1

[~Neri]

P sure we decided on an industrial/science ship earlier. Just lacked details.

As a warning, a clusterfuck ship won't result in a stable AI, you suuuuuure you want a clusterfuck~?

[WillowLuman]

SEVERAL NINJAS

The exact layout of the ship isn't important, but what it has is. What you have on the ship determines what you can do: e.g. you can't shoot stuff if you don't have weapons, you can't do science if you don't have the proper equipment/space, you're blind if you don't have sensors, and so on. I'll allow some level of abstraction (I'll assume a chem lab has all the tools and chemicals it needs, for instance, you don't have to list them) but I won't allow "Ship has everything we need and/or didn't think of."

Whether or want you want rotational gravity is important, too, because that means some part of the ship is going to be spinning in some way.

And for the love of glob, if you say "we need something big/small," say how big or small. A 10x4x4m computer bank stuffed with advanced quantum computer should provide a vast amount of memory/brainpower.

Consensus seems to be for a size comparable to an ocean-liner, so 300-400m should be fine. That's easily enough room for industrial facilities, reactors, etc.

[heydude6]

Well I personally prefer the magnet boots style of artificial gravity

[WillowLuman]

Well I personally prefer the magnet boots style of artificial gravity

It's fine for keeping you from floating away, but it doesn't provide the health benefits. Though another alternative is to give the crew "centrifuge beds" that allow them to sleep in simulated gravity similar to their homeworlds. And since they're all aliens, they might not have quite the same physiological needs as humans. The floating one probably would do fine without artificial gravity, for instance.

[~Neri]

AI doesn't need gravity, however the crew does need it. Outer rings of gravity?

[Harry Baldman]

P sure we decided on an industrial/science ship earlier. Just lacked details.

As a warning, a clusterfuck ship won't result in a stable AI, you suuuuuure you want a clusterfuck~?

An AI confused by clusterfucks really shouldn't sign up for an interspecies space expedition. Not that this'll stop the buggers, obviously. Maybe we'll get one of them low-rent Delta class AIs. Or a dolled-up Epsilon. Or a Tacitus three-block life support algorithm (oxygen levels satisfactory? Y/N) or something. Something the collective wouldn't mind losing on a suicide mission.

SEVERAL NINJAS

The exact layout of the ship isn't important, but what it has is. What you have on the ship determines what you can do: e.g. you can't shoot stuff if you don't have weapons, you can't do science if you don't have the proper equipment/space, you're blind if you don't have sensors, and so on. I'll allow some level of abstraction (I'll assume a chem lab has all the tools and chemicals it needs, for instance, you don't have to list them) but I won't allow "Ship has everything we need and/or didn't think of."

Whether or want you want rotational gravity is important, too, because that means some part of the ship is going to be spinning in some way.

And for the love of glob, if you say "we need something big/small," say how big or small. A 10x4x4m computer bank stuffed with advanced quantum computer should provide a vast amount of memory/brainpower.

Consensus seems to be for a size comparable to an ocean-liner, so 300-400m should be fine. That's easily enough room for industrial facilities, reactors, etc.

It's not important what it has, either, because it has what you say it has. The crew shouldn't even get to decide what goes on the ship, the people who are financing it should, with some finagling possible for whoever's arguing for the financing. This isn't some independent expedition where a motley crew cobble together something out of available stuff, this is a multi-government groundbreaking project that's presumably been worked on by fricking scientists. Let the PCs design their own personal quarters and leave it at that.

Furthermore, do you really need us to tell you every basic necessity of a space expedition when it's your setting (and, by extension, your technology and spaceship design principles)? You decide how big a quantum computer needs to be to work properly, you decide what sort of far-future magic provides the power, how life support works and so on. Why even bother arguing with players over how big stuff needs to be or asking them for ballpark estimates when it's up to you how everything's going to actually frickin' work? And if the gravity's not perfect, can you honestly tell me you intend to simulate the nuances of what effect it's going to have on each alien creature (such as the giant amoeba or the floating bag of gas)? Are you going to remember to do it and work out the complexities of the individual effects? Attention to detail is good and all, but man, some basic sense has to be employed in relation to all this planning or this is never going to get off the ground in the first place.

[~Neri]

It's more of the body results in personality. If you had a stunted body, feet where your ears should be, a flashlight growing out of your nose, your head's on your butt and your butt's on your left nipple, your right leg growing from your neck, and your left big toe replacing your mouth, I'm sure you would get quite unstable mentalky as well.

[Harry Baldman]

It's more of the body results in personality. If you had a stunted body, feet where your ears should be, a flashlight growing out of your nose, your head's on your butt and your butt's on your left nipple, your right leg growing from your neck, and your left big toe replacing your mouth, I'm sure you would get quite unstable mentalky as well.

Well, that's just more fun if you want to play it that way, though I'd say that would mean a terrible inflexibility on the AI's part if it's only compatible with one specific kind of ship layout. Not that that's necessarily a problem.

Once again, here's the issue at hand: introducing interesting shortcomings to an AI in play in relation to perceived problems is a good thing. Saying "oh, my AI wouldn't go near a ship this small" or "no, no, no, my AI would go insane unless we put the water cooler here and only here, but all the lore is in my head so you're ("you" being the hypothetical gestalt entity of all the other players who'll surely see no reason not to go along with this idea and draw you up an exhaustive list of functions through a group effort involving 32 man-hours of careful design) going to have to run the finished design by me and I'll figure out if it works and what you should fix and how many ship functions we'll need in triplicate and if the AI Collective thinks it's good enough for the big leagues" is not a good idea. It is being needlessly difficult about things.

Similarly, making shortage of means and resources a game mechanic can potentially play out in an interesting way and is a good idea. Saying "oh, you players will need to tabulate the entire ship's means, but you sort that out amongst yourselves democratically, I'm sure it'll work out peachy, oh and this doesn't work that way, and surely this is too much space for the AI core, and you'll need to give me the exact distance from the reactor to the bathroom, because there might be a plot to be had later out of that detail" is also not a good idea. It is also being needlessly difficult about things.

[WillowLuman]

-snip-

Because the point of this game is to have people prepare for a sci-fi expedition into the unknown. As this is the planning thread, and not IC, you designing a ship is not the same as your characters (the crew) designing the ship. If you want to be IC about it, then right now you are the entities putting it together. You can have whatever you agree on and is (reasonably) physically possible, however wise. If multiple entities for whatever reason make a SNAFU (as sometimes happens) then they make a SNAFU. Since the current direction of design isn't an absolute trainwreck of nonsense, I don't need to intervene and redesign it for you, but as I said in the OP, I will participate. I say "keep it mostly hard-sci-fi" because that gives a common realm of possibility from which to argue, so it's not so much arbitrary space-magic. I want to argue sci-fi and design, and will only put my foot down if things start going in circles. Which they have on some things.

Basically, if someone says their character needs artificial gravity to stay healthy, then they'll suffer if they don't have access to it. This kind of detail is important for RP. People are free to say that their character can go without, too. So far I'm also assuming that everyone who needs to breathe, breathes the same gas.

I want to know how large the ship is. I want to know what it's equipped with. I want to know how people get around the ship (whether they can walk due to gravity, or have to float/climb around). I don't need to know how long corridor 3B is, or how many rivets are on the coffee maker.

The quantum computer thing comes form Kevak vaguely saying "we need a huge computer bank to do anything." Since he didn't say what he meant by huge, I'm putting my foot down here because no one had suggestions on how big it ought to be, and because of the following logic. We can assume that more advanced tech will use space more efficiently, so more computer power in a smaller space. Quantum computers, by nature, are far more compact. So, 10m of advanced quantum computer should be enough computer for pretty much anything. This is to stem potential "We need 500m of computer to even support something equivalent to a human."