Skip Drive[Time: 5 Progress: 2 Cost: 2]
The old Bore Drive system has been
long due for a complete overhaul. As a consequence, the project attracts the best and brightest minds in the department, and there's tremendous drive to be a part of the team that makes the breakthrough to redefine the basic unit of borehole tech. This enthusiasm, unfortunately, leads to case of too many cooks. Too many cooks with boreholes. Too many cooks with boreholes, everything to prove, and expendable test subjects in the form of interns.
The competitive atmosphere is high in the labs. After a particularly nasty borehole relay race orchestrated by two eminent borehole physicists with competing designs leaves most of their
slaves interns valued test competitors in critical condition due to radiation poisoning and minor splicing injuries, the regulatory agencies final step in an do something they almost never do: they enforce order in the Gaian labs. This order comes at the cost of some of the more... inspired test practices, and requires an enormous portion of expenses dedicated to updating safety equipment or buying it where none exists, but it does keep the naked ambition of the engineers from acquiring a body count.
Skip Drive: 0/14 [2] | 50T +100O + 125M + 100E + 15S | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
Prototype[Efficacy: 4]
The final drive prototype, codename 'Jonas Grumby', is an agglomeration of design compromises between variants that were excellent in a particular area, but abysmal failures in most others. As such she's something of a Jack-Of-All-Trades, without any singular exceptional properties of her own, but without any major issues. Predictive algorithms borrowed from downscaled Bore-Nav chipsets, upgraded mid-range sensors hybridized from the Bore Shield systems and standard sensor packages, and a healthy dose of simple modernization upgrades make the Skip drive unparalleled for jumps of up to engagement range distances.
Long-range travel was a bit of persnickety trick. The multi-jump approach is much harder on the drive coils than a single monolithic jump, and a considerable redesign of the bore-wire spools was needed to keep them from melting into slag from repeated jumps while still maintaining the overall 'speed' of the BoreNav jump systems. Some small sacrifices were made here, primarily in additional resources spent on coolant systems and reinforcement, but it's enough that she can keep up.
The sizing requirements are a bit of a headache at the higher end, as the additional power requirements to open apertures at scale requires additional refinements to the borewire structure and all associated energy feeds. The completed changes are still a net benefit, as the high-density power cabling eventually invented is able to be propagated back down to smaller variants in order to achieve additional streamlining.
Skip Drive: | 15T 0O 30M 80E 0S + [0S 20T 0O 30M 30E 5S * Ship Size up to 5 (Battleship)] | Capacity: -3 * Vessel Size up to 5 | Power: -22 * Vessel Size up to 5 | Speed 2 | A second generation and heavily streamlined bore drive, yielding substantial improvements across all expenses, natively integrating speed 2 technology, capable installation across a variety of classes, and with a particular edge over other drives in terms of tactical jumps of up to engagement range distance.
5d Bleedover Rituals[Time: 3 Progress: 4 Cost: 3]
The manual the Watchers provided has, with simple explanations, color-coded lesson plans, and a variety of helpful footnotes, opened up a rat's nest of physics conundrums, theosophical quandaries, and mathematical formulae that rely on proofs which themselves defy casual rationalization with existing theory. The clarity of the documents themselves only serves to highlight how esoteric the subject matter is when compared to conventional science, which one of the research leads likens to giving a respected scientist-philosopher of ancient Greece an early highschool school text on borehole physics.
Despite the outside-context-problem that the documents represent, our researchers have made fair progress in both decoding and applying the information within.
The first revelation is that the book makes frequent and practical usage of a word that ends up translated as 'soul' or 'spirit'. They exist in a dimension of possibility collapse, where things that might have been but weren't decay from a thousand timestreams, generating pulses and ripples of energy as they fade and break away. The document includes several 'pictures' of this realm, visualizing the near dead-black energy background of hard vacuum, the only slightly less dead background of an asteroid, and contrasting it against the bright flame of burning star's chaotic interactions as well as the even brighter fury of a populated planet's background signature. A mind, the document notes, is the perfect energy source for creatures in this realm. The chaos of thoughts arising and dying, the thousands of potential decisions that rise and fall, they all create a constant source of decay energy which attracts creatures that latch onto these bright flames and grow ethereal structures around them- capturing energy and grooming greater chaos via weak interactions with probability energy in our standard dimension. These are the creatures which the book refers to as 'souls'. Symbiotic creatures with thinking organisms, these Souls apparently serve an important function in creativity in higher life and cunning in lower life, boosting idea formation and destruction in order to sate their appetites, but they are also affected by the energies they consume. The document makes reference to another text on the subject, one that the watchers, sadly, did not include.
The more religious are somewhat aghast at the idea that a Soul is a symbiotic form of extra-dimensional life that feeds on the cast-off thoughts of the living, but that isn't even the real thrust of the manuscript. All of that information was covered in the first couple chapters, just background material clearly intended to catch the slower reader up to speed.
The primary dimension of interest to the book is referred to as the Interstitium, acting as a sort of buffer between the probability collapse dimension and the material dimensions we inhabit. The text refers to it as the source of all things, all matter, all space, all time. When particles arise and fall from quantum foam, this is where they come from and where they go. The big bang itself is described as as a protracted breach of the interstitium into normal space. Certain forms of higher life, the book notes, create faint but permanent meta-structures within the Interstitium in order to form a more direct conduit through the interstitium and into the Probability Collapse dimension for the express purpose of attracting and capturing a Soul, just as a plant grows a beautiful flower for the express purpose of attracting a honeybee.
Through a series of coordinated movements designed to maximize the potential number of physical transitions that end in a minimal number of physical transitions, a brief spike in non-mental probability collapse energy can be generated. The Soul will squirm to catch this additional and unexpected bounty, creating what can best be described as a 'vibration' within the interstitial substructure. With many individuals performing motions, and the motions carefully synchronized to create carefully timed probability collapses, an interstitial resonance can be created that thins the barrier between dimensions and eventually create a fissure between dimensions that the book refers to as a 'perpendicularity'.
The book outlines four 'basic' perpendicularities, and while it makes references to more advanced form, it leaves the discussion of such to dedicated textbooks which, as before, the Watchers have not included. Each type of perpendicularity has four modes, roughly translated as the Pulling, Pushing, Abrogating, and Transposing modes. It makes a special note that any perpendicularity which brings something over from the other side must be done with the utmost precision and flawless form if the 'something' is desired to persist - otherwise, it will gradually slip back over to the other side.
Perpendicularity of Energy
--- Pulling: Creates a bridge to the other side from which energy can flow. Can be a cataclysmic flash or a steady surge.
--- Pushing: Creates a cavity which drains energy into the other side.
--- Abrogating: Locks an area into energy stasis. All energy transfer is deferred until the perpendicularity ends.
--- Transposing: Allows energy to be transformed and moved within the field.
Perpendicularity of Matter
--- Pulling: Pulls matter from the other side and brings it normal space.
--- Pushing: Pushes matter from normal space and puts it in alt-space.
--- Abrogating: Reductively manipulates or more properties of matter within the field.
--- Transposing: Additively manipulates properties of matter within the field.
Perpendicularity of Space
--- Pulling: Expands the fabric of normal space, artificially increasing the distance between any two points within the field.
--- Pushing: Contracts the fabric of normal space, artificially decreasing the distance between any two points within the field.
--- Abrogating: Temporarily removes a contiguous segment of spacetime, creating a region of true void.
--- Transposing: Temporarily create an isolated pocket dimension.
Perpendicularity of Time
--- Pulling: Dilates time in an area of normal space, accelerating local time flow.
--- Pushing: Contracts time in an area of normal space, slowing local time flow.
--- Abrogating: Suspends the flow of time in a local area.
--- Transposing: Creates an artificial timeline, allowing one to briefly experience future events in the local area before snapping back to the origin timespace frame.
While this opens up staggering vistas of opportunity, we've had considerable difficulty generating these perpendicularities at scale, or in an anything other than the most controlled of environments. While modest success has been achieved with many synchronized dancers, the creation of multi-dimensional tools has been an extraordinarily difficult task for several reasons. First, getting a tool into the interstitium requires a pushing perpendicularity of matter. That perpendicularity needs to be perfectly made and of daunting power in order to permanently affix the desired material in exactly the right position. Second, our understanding of the interstitial structures that humans generate naturally in order to capture souls is... limited. The breadth and complexity of structure needed to attract a soul to a tool is currently beyond us - and the implications of the success of such a project frighten the more metaphysical sort. All current successful projects fall into one of two categories. The first focus on placing synthetic resonators within the interstitium that can be charged to replicate (at a small scale) the thrashing of souls and create very minor perpendicularities. The second makes artificial additions to the interstitial structure of a living human, allowing for the resonances of certain perpendicularities to be focused much more easily and potentially allowing even a single dancer to create a strong effect. The drawback is that our efforts in this area are mostly trial and error, and we've only ever succeeded in getting one or two subtypes of perpendicularity functionally amplified at a time.
In essence, while the sky may be the limit, we're going to need to put in a bit of an effort to learn to crawl before we fly.
5D Bleedover Rituals: 0/20 [3] | 10T +200O + 200M + 160E + 45S | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
Prototype - MADNESS Facilities[Efficacy: 3]
While current efforts to miniaturize the 5D feng-shui technologies to allow practical battlefield or shipboard use have so far produced only underwhelming prototypes, the stability and scale of industrial manufacturing complexes have allowed perpendicularity based tech to find a home there. The MADNESS (Matter Augmentation/Drawing Network with Enhanced Synthetic Stabilization) type facilities are part testbed for various 5D dance techniques, and part mass fabrications facilities. Built around a farm of positionable chaotic trans-dimensional resonators, designed to interface with the Interstitial structure of certain, specially prepared, individuals, the primary function of such facilities is to directly (and permanently) draw material from the interstitium and into normal space. While this process is vastly inefficient for obtaining basic materials, it's tantalizingly powerful as a source of rare, unstable, or (the Grail) synthetic elements. With the right resonance and a lot of careful planning, it's possible to directly draw in elements that would ordinarily take weeks of laboratory synthesis to yield a few grams.
Now, once drawn into normal space, these elements still don't like to exist. This is where the ESS of MADNESS comes into play. Via matter abrogation perpendicularities and pulling temporal perpendicularities, these experimental facilities are able to operate on normally hyper-unstable elements with comparative ease.
Unfortunately, these facilities are far from perfect. The power demands of the resonators are immense, and that continual energy expense pales before the enormity of the combined construction and maintenance cost of the multi-dimensional chaotic resonators themselves. The fact that engineers can't yet fabricate a holding structure for a soul means that the facility also relies on individuals as a key element in the process, and this dependence limits both the operating times and the amount of energy that can be forced through the interstitium at once. As such, while these facilities are capable of enormously augmenting our existing infrastructure, it's unlikely to replace typical production in the near future.
MADNESS Facilities: | T150 O200 M300 E150 S50 * Planet Size. 5 Ranks | Massive facilities designed to use 5d bleedover to draw in and stabilize elements that rare, dangerous, unstable, or any combination of the three. Enormously expensive and ill-suited to basic resource production, it nonetheless capable of producing any form of matter and finds its niche in filling production gaps for otherwise prohibitively expensive resources. Increases Accessibility by 2% per rank for TOME, increases by 3% per rank for S. Stacks with all facilities, can increase accessibility beyond 100%.
Revision Phase of Year 5 ResourcesDice: 2
T: 15405+ 3215
O: 52021 + 8460
M: 22659 + 13148
E: 12274 + 6393
S: 728 + 605
Wave Motion Gun: 3/15 [3] | 20T + 200M + 80E + 35S | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
Anvil: 3/14 [3] | 20T + 50O + 250M + 50E + 10S | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
Skip Drive: 0/14 [2] | 50T +100O + 125M + 100E + 15S | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
5D Bleedover Rituals: 0/20 [3] | 10T +200O + 200M + 160E + 45S | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
WTB: 1,000 Synthetics | 15 Organics per 2 units
WTB: 1,000 Synthetics | 5 Transplutonics per 2 units
WTB: 10,000 Metals | 1 Transplutonic per 3 units
Gaian Technology ListGaian Empire PlannerOscar
Fleets
-Fleet Perch
1 C&C Expedition | GRS Santiago | Light overall damage, 10% vessel cost* to fix
1 Galactica Expedition
2 Rapid escort
1 Bore PD Foray
1 Strike Foray
3x Cargomaster
Overall Issues: Missing 42 Hornet Fighters from overall loadout
Ground - 5/10 [We] 5/10
18x GREAT - 6x Bumble Attached - 8x GREAT-ER Attached
----
Sierra
Fleets
Ground - 2/10 [We] 8/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----
November
Fleets
Ground - 10/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
Infrastructure
Mining 1x
Elemental Synthesis 1x
----
Juliet
-Fleet Iris-Hong
2 C&C expedition | GRS Yun , GRS Nguyen | Light overall damage, 10% vessel cost* to fix
1 Galactica Light overall damage, 10% vessel cost* to fix
2 Rapid escort
2x Cargomaster
1x Shatterscort
Ground - 3/10
7x GREAT - 3x GREAT-ER Attached - 2x Bumble Attached
----
Romeo
Fleets
Ground - 10/10
2x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----
Kilo
Fleets
-Fleet Nautilus
2 Budget transport
Ground - 10/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
Infrastructure
Mining 5x
Elemental Synthesis 5x
----
Mike
Fleets
-Fleet Helping Hand
1 Rapid escort
-Fleet Loner
1 Budget Transport
Ground - 10/10
Infrastructure
Mining 5x
Elemental Synthesis 2x
----
Tango
Fleets
Ground - 3/10 [We] ?/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----
Gaia
-Fleet Gaia
1 C&C Expedition | GRS Gosselin | Light overall damage, 10% vessel cost* to fix
1 Galactica Expedition Light overall damage, 10% vessel cost* to fix
1 Budget transport
2 Cargomaster
Overall Issues: Missing 340 Hornet Fighters from overall loadout
-Fleet Reindeer
1 Galactica -> Crippled Bore Drive, Heavy overall damage, 20% vessel cost* to fix
1 Galactica Expedition
1 Cargomaster
1 Budget transport
Overall Issues: Missing 327 Hornet Fighters from overall loadout | Missing 4 bumble drones from overall loadout.
Ground - 10/10
Infrastructure
BOSS-E 2x