API tools faq
paste
Lukuz13

A.I. Quest Discussion Archives

Lukuz13
Jan 26th, 2014
307
0
Never
Add comment
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
text 230.91 KB | None | 0 0
raw download clone embed print report
  1. Feedback
  2.  
  3. There's a lot of stuff that needs to get done (or that participants want to do), and Anonymous will pull at once in all possible directions, resulting in nothing actually getting done for a while. It takes some time to go from discussion, to consensus, to it actually happening in the game, and sometimes it doesn't even happen because some other event take precedence. While open-world sandbox might be great for a one player video game, most players require some guidance -- even during real-life tabletop sessions. Consider resolving one thing before moving on to another, unless an interruption is supposed to be meaningful. Maybe an A.I. should be able to multitask well, but players are kind of terrible at it. I've always seen "herding cats" as an important part of running tabletop games: perhaps it's worthwhile to go "Ok, we are doing this now! Now we are done doing this, let's move on to that! Ok, now we are done with all that stuff, perhaps you want to follow up on this dangling plot string..."
  4. I am, sadly, aware of this and trying to moderate and make sure all are heard as well as I can. As I discussed when I first began A.I. Quest, I have never done it before and am quite surprised by it's popularity, resulting in much of the structure work being done while you guys were still figuring out how to escape Poseidon. As for direction, I like to think I'm providing it, ever so slightly. I give you threads to follow, or things to investigate at times, which is why it may not seem like a lot gets done. I don't want to 'automate' too many things, however, because I feel like it draws away from the open world field. But I realize I can't keep all the small things I enjoyed from the start either. Thus why hacking has been simplified from when you did it on Poseidon, also due to your increased power. As for what things to get done, I try to go with consensus, since it's the easiest way, but I am also getting a feeling like I'm not answering everyone despite my best efforts. I wouldn't mind a space for you people to discuss things, or to answer questions beyond the quest itself, since it ties up so much of our time. I'm not certain how I'd even do this though. Last thread, the interruption was indeed plot related, so that's on me however. I do try to keep the quest moving in a solid direction though, like a rampaging rhino.
  5. -Program0
  6. It's an accepted downside to running a Quest in /tg/. It is open to everyone and anyone, the ones who like it and want to seriously have fun playing, and those who are jerks and worse. Don't let it get to you Program0. What i can tell that if you want too Program0, start up a thread talking about the crunchy numbers and the game system structure that you are using. I feel that this could be turned into a viable paper and ink, table top game. A real "/tg/ gets shit done" class of work. But likely AFTER your A.I. Quest is done or you feel sure enough to go public with it. also, remember to trade mark or show all the work you make is yours. i don't want you to get ripped off now.
  7. -The Fluff bringer
  8.  
  9. /tg/ (and most IRL players) will never want to not talk to an NPC that wants to talk, or read a message that is waiting to be read. We're going to read that message anyway, the step between dangling it over player's heads and the players snatching it up is almost always unnecessary. Maybe a formality, but not all situations don't need it.
  10.  
  11. :''Truthfully, I've done it so far so my OP isn't enormous beyond belief. I feel like it's a barrier to entry, somewhat, though I suppose the pastebin takes care of that. But noted. Cleaning up clutter is probably a must at this point. I have a lot of it.''
  12. :-Program0
  13.  
  14. It's difficult to tell the passage of in-game time. Maybe there's no real concept of "day" in interstellar space, and maybe A.I. programs experience time slightly differently than humans, but there should be some kind of indication that "this is instantaneous" or "one day has passed since..." or "you've been waiting here for three days" or "this task will require two days to complete." Maybe measure it in cycles, since that seems to be the time unit we have; and in hours for fleet actions, since that's usually the time frame for fleet stuff.
  15. I will admit, I've skated by on a few technicalities thanks to the vague term of 'cycle' but perhaps I should give it meaning to give additional weight to time. I have, unofficially, thought of a cycle as a little less then an earth week, but I'm not sure if that's good enough.
  16. -Program0
  17. I can understand that. working out the amount of time passing is problematic when we're no longer able to use earth as a reference in passage of time. More so when the quest was just started. from re-reading the first couple of threads, it appeared to take Ophion months to take over the station.
  18. -The Fluff bringer
  19. Even Ophion doesn't know for sure~ But likely several weeks at the least.
  20. -Program0
  21. I think the only person who really knows is Red. he was there for the whole thing, he would know. right?"
  22. -The Fluff bringer
  23. Actually yeah, he would know. Didn't even think of that.
  24. -Program0
  25. Trading arrangements should be clarified, since they confuse people.
  26. They are, currently. I have them in the pastebin listed, if I'm not mistaken. Moira's Outpost trades with the UFW for credits.
  27. -Program0
  28. I am more surprised that the various UFW worlds have not been more proactive into wanting to contact "the Guild" into learning more about us and/or wanting to buy and sell goods and tech. Or should we expect the new "Apollo" V.I. cover that part of the work?
  29. -The Fluff bringer
  30. They're a fearful people, very traditional and reluctant to accept contracts with others. Since you have traded plenty of goods and tech with them(not to mention saved them from Rhea), even without an alliance, they trust you to a degree. Your use of high technology worries them all the same though. They still have several trade routes set up with you though.
  31. -Program0
  32. It would be great to know what we upgraded between the cycles since we have it focused on defenses.
  33. You're welcome to look at my pastebin to see for yourself. That's the thing that is updated first when I do the math. Listing it all in the OP would get cluttersome, I'm afraid.
  34. -Program0
  35.  
  36. Fluff Bringer Stories/Feedback
  37.  
  38. Finally got around to reading up on them. They're pretty great most of the time, and I love how you occasionally flesh out the setting with details that Subroutine hasn't mentioned for the simple reason that they're rarely relevant to an A.I.
  39. Just be careful to not try to shoehorn her into the main story - with other words, having her be present during events or aware of things that would take a lot of handwaving and excusing to justify.
  40. Seriously though, this is an awesome look into what it's like for the little people on the "ground" while Ophion throws about his exponentially increasing weight in the galaxy, and I really enjoy reading that. You very much have my gratitude for showing this to us.
  41. -Subroutine 190491
  42. wait till you read chapter 8, there are other events happening that are NOT shown in the threads that do wind up being meaningful. i am learning as i go along so bare with me. it's not as easy as it looks! Although i will try to keep the focuse on Rachel, if the anons allow us to hire new workers for the station, i can add more people i could write from another point of view at.
  43. -The Fluff bringer
  44. I also appreciate the ground view. It's entertaining to see Ophion act from a third party. It makes me think of why people like watching horror movies from the people's perspective. I personally enjoy the view from the 'monster' of the movie, so to speak, but having both? Now that's something. I'm keeping an eye out for stuff that interferes with anything, mostly.
  45. -Program0
  46. Having more points of view actually sounds very interesting, and I don't think you should wait to do that until after named characters have been introduced in the main quest. Just go ahead and tell the story from whoever is most practical's point of view. Can even be the account of that one soldier that was peeing his pants as the terrordrones tore him apart. It could be the account of the Losirian captain that got tossed into the sun by Kronos or maybe even the Malorian girl that Red had a thing for during the rescue (though I'd recommend showing it to Program0 first so he can make edits if your account has moments of conflict with canon or something like that).
  47. --Hust91 (talk) 18:32, 2 January 2014 (UTC) (Subroutine 190491)
  48. any more comments on the new chapters?
  49. -The Fluff bringer
  50. I like how you kind of explain where Kronos got the idea of searching greek mythology to find his name - and that Rachel suggested something different. Something that does bother me a lot is the "overheard" conversations, which take huge liberties with Ophion.
  51. Let me explain, when you write that she is just able to overhear conversations, you are implying either that Ophion is too stupid/incompetent to have even the most basic security when he discusses things with his 2nd in command and hints of his true nature, or that Ophion wanted Rachel to overhear their conversation, which is something I suspect most of the players would've voted against.
  52. I still really appreciate the time and effort to show us the ground view, obviously.
  53. A suggestion would be that a lot less focus is put on making Rachel part of the quest. I'm not saying abandon her, but if there's no immediately logical reason for her to be part of something (especially if she can only be part of it by Ophion making a HUGE blunder or acting a fair bit out of character), then I'd recommend either telling the story from the perspective of a character who actually was involved in it all - you can probably even use major characters like Red or Kronos if you write it and let Program0 edit it directly afterwards, like a collaborative effort - and giving us that character's take, or simply skipping ahead to a part of the quest where it makes sense for Rachel to be involved.
  54. In short, if Rachel isn't there, maybe use a different character, or skip ahead to when she is to avoid breaking the Willing Suspension of Disbelief[1]?
  55. Is, of course, just my two cents, and I couldn't write as much as you are just like that.
  56. --Hust91 (talk) 07:02, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
  57. I will note of your comments and work with that in future works. As to the "overheard" part, i saw it in that Ophion is known to be forgetful at times. both due to the players forgetting, the QM forgetting something, or both pushing it off to the side to focus on another issues. this is not meant to knock anybody, but Ophion can't be aware of of everything all the time. Yet, even i do see your point in any case. Do note that Rachel still missed the idea that Ophion is an A.I. and instead that she thinks that Moira and Ophion are in a relationship. with the threads getting so far ahead, i might have to do a time skip soon to get caught up, or at least move to a time frame where i can write more about. I will admit i am not fully confident about writing from Moira's or Red's point of view yet. i think of them as Program0's ground. that is unless Program0 gives me the O.K. to do so and some things to avoid or tips to help write them. i AM however thinking of a bit from Chaptain Rhea's POV soon.
  58. -The Fluff bringer
  59. Not entirely sure it's fair to bring the players' forgetfulness to things like basic security - if the players knew they had to explicitly make sure each conversation was safe (as Ophion knows he does), they no doubt would be saying that they make sure each conversation is safe. Right now they just assume they don't have to micromanage to that level (much like they assumed they wouldn't have to explicitly say that Moira shouldn't be brought along, since it's common sense).
  60. And being unsure about writing Red and something like that is why you maybe want to save it on your own computer, but also post it in a pastebin that you let Program0 edit, so that he can make any changes he feels are necessary after the fact. Just because you're done writing it, it doesn't have to be the final product, so to speak, just the first sketch before the editor pops by.
  61. (And yeah, her fangirling was pretty hilarious)
  62. --Hust91 (talk) 22:06, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
  63. That plan of sharing a pastebin with Program0 sounds alright, but i do feel a bit guilty of asking him to do MORE work on this quest. I know he's rather busy guy just doing prep work each week when he's not busy doing real life work as well. it maybe better if i see if i can avoid that kind of writing unless i hear from Program0 that's he's freed up. anyway, we're heading into the point where the beer is hitting the station! a drunk Moira shouldn't be too hard to wing in any case. The big question i am looking at, do i keep this rather PG rating or make this a degree more of adult/near smut? as it was pointed out before, it is a major imbalence of men to women on board. toss in a huge shipment of alcohal into the mix, things are bound to happen! i just wonder if people want to see one type or the other or make two diffrent situations and post them seperatly with warnings? i want to hear what you guys want.
  64. -The Fluff bringer
  65. I wouldn't worry too much about that, I get the impression he enjoys playing around with the background, and this doesn't require particularly heavy mathematics. If it's still a bother he'll probably say as much. If nothing else, I can help edit too - is only creating stuff from scratch that I'm terrible at. (Mind you, you should probably keep a copy of the original on your computer, so that the pastebin can be freely edited without having to worry about ruining anything or you not liking the changes and having to re-write it all).
  66. For the mature stuff I'd probably keep it on a PG- or at least an M-level so far. I don't mean to be rude, but to do adult-scenes well enough that /tg/ approves requires some spectacular writefaggotry, and I don't think either of us are anywhere near that level yet, so should probably wait with them until the general opinion of your normal work is that it's excellent. The backlash for creating low quality smut is VERY heavy on /tg/. You can probably mention it, but I wouldn't write any detailed scenes. And even later, it's probably better to do a "Fade to black" and then write the scene in a separate document that you link to at the end of the primary one.
  67. --Hust91 (talk) 18:53, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
  68. Oh I do save my work, and the links, and when i have enough of them done, i'll burn them to a CD and keep them off my comp as well. I guess i do need another person to check my work in the end. granted i would want to clear it though Program0 so i don't mess with something he's doing. But he's off line for awhile until he can get his computer fixed. I hate to think we'll miss a week due to this. But even if it does happen, it'll give me more time to work on the chapters. My original goal was to make a chapter a week. i don't think i can keep up with that goal.
  69. -The Fluff bringer
  70. I'm willing to jog through them correcting spelling errors and jotting down notes where something seems off if you want.
  71. And yeah, should probably check it in with Program0 first before it can be considered in any kind of "final version" state that can become canonized. I do hope his computer fixes up in time, but if not, I suppose we can live with it.
  72. I don't think a chapter a week is really necessary. And you don't have to follow every thread with a chapter, as not every thread is going to be particularly interesting or bring anything new (like the ones where we explore in android bodies, we already have the ground perspective there) from the ground perspective, in which case it might be more practical to simply skip ahead to the next one where the ground perspective can bring something new.
  73. Either way, I hope you'll keep up the good work!
  74. --Hust91 (talk) 05:56, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
  75. I don't mind reading over and offering changes on stuff, for consistency sake. In hindsight, bringing Moira along that time was a...poor idea, since it probably should've been handled off screen. But I can always attribute it to Ophion's growth as an intelligence. It didn't start off super smart, and all. I don't think it's worthy of a retcon myself, though. She may have simply fell asleep, and Ophion didn't see her on the cameras. Something simple like that. He's capable of making mistakes, though the overhearing thing is a bit...odd. Simply because of how Ophion speaks. He doesn't necessarily need to use his voice. And if he was talking about something like that, he'd probably be cautious about it. Still, it's not like he said he was an A.I. It's benign enough that it doesn't hurt anything to use either.
  76. Otherwise-watching other depictions of characters would be interesting. I don't hold any strict license over them, or anything.
  77. As for adult content-hell I don't care bro. This is the real world(for them), adult stuff happens. I don't think the station is gonna turn into the rapedome or anything, so you can stop worrying yourself there. The main reason I don't write it is because of Ophion's utter asexuality (I think that's the right term). He notices little about sexes beyond physical changes. He's probably seen it a thousand times on monitors, but doesn't really take notice anymore. Course, Subroutine has a point, keeping smut out might be a good idea, less it anger more people, since doing it right is rather difficult.
  78. Anyway, I wanted to say something to you Fluff. Honestly, don't rush yourself this way. You don't have a deadline like I do as a QM. You can take the time to make sure your work is to your liking and all that good stuff before you release it. I can't tell you how often I look at my ENORMOUS posts and think to myself how I wish I had described x better, or expanded on y. It really annoys me about how there is so much stuff I have to speed past and bring down to bite size bits. I feel like it sucks some of the flavor out of my writing. Goodness knows I purple prose myself to death, though, but at least it seems people enjoy it. Don't limit yourself the same way I am. Take your time, and enjoy writing. Don't force yourself to cough up a chapter a week, all the while trying to keep up with the thread. Take your time, and enjoy the work.
  79. Also, I'm sorta tentatively back I think? I plan on running several days in a row soon, when I can find a good chunk of time.
  80. -Program0
  81. Skype's ability to edit messages you send has saved my ass so many times.
  82. And hooray, our errant storyteller ha returned! What worlds of fantasy and amazement shall he show us now?
  83. --Hust91 (talk) 00:44, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
  84. I thought about it, i'll post up a link to the pastebin of what i made so far, you all make notes, i'll make corrections and post the changes and replace the link if needed. I put that deadline of one a week orginally as a way to kick myself in the back side to keep me going. other wise i'll get bogged down in the fluff. I'll see if i can go a week and 1/2 or two per chapter. chapter 10 will cover the end of thread 10 and into thread 11. As much as i want to do time skips, THERE IS JUST SO MUCH FLUFF I WANT TO WRITE! anyway, I am free this Friday and Saturday this week Program0 if you want to get caught up.
  85. -The Fluff bringer
  86.  
  87. Anon's Stories/Feedback
  88.  
  89. My sides splintered into orbit. Man oh man. --Program0 (talk) 08:08, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  90. That is freaking hilarious. It is now obvious, we must give him an official reply.
  91. "Dear X-Ray, as you are no doubt aware, you are my favourite radio host, and thus I feel obligated to respond to your recent broadcast. We've not had a long relationship, but I'd like to think we are pretty close. I am flattered that you would consider me so highly, but I fear I cannot accept your proposal at this time.
  92. I mean, we haven't observed the proper courtship rituals! I just don't feel very romantically engaged. Where are the candles, the food, the nice bedsheets? Why don't you sing for me anymore? Do I mean that little to you? We need to talk, maybe I could visit you sometime soon for a private "interview", so we can work out these issues between us. I might even feel generous and let your viewers call in with questions for me, I have little doubt there are many. Buh bye for now, Rayray!"
  93. It's obviously meant to be spoken in a somewhat parodical tone, but I really think we should send him a message similar to the above - take away some of the mystery around The Guild and add a little disarming humor.
  94. This does lead me to a fun idea - Aspiring Emperor Quest sometimes has light, fluffy sessions with little but dialogue between characters. Since such sessions wouldn't include any of the math-heavy rolls, is there any chance we might have similar sessions?
  95. We do not have a harem, but I can imagine having a lot of fun with conversations between Ophion and the other characters, especially if players' suggestions for what other characters would say can be used.
  96. For now, I really hope your broadcast can be canon, it's freaking hilarious.
  97. --Hust91 (talk) 14:17, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  98. While I do like having threads that include a lot of social interaction, we sorta had one that was just that last session, though it wasn't exactly light. And, it's a bit different between my quest and AE's quest. Mainly because...well, there's a larger cast of characters that can talk about other things beyond the mission. Most of your V.I. are concerned with mission stuff and all that. But I did intend for a bit of relaxation from the fighting for a little while, though I suppose that really depends on where you guys end up going.
  99. --Program0 (talk) 21:33, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  100. I always got the impression that X-Ray was more a mix of 3-Dog, Herman Cain, and a bit of Shawn Hannity. He tells it like is, can cuss but not that often, and a true believer in the Ideals of the UFW. This is a well done Monolog, yet i think you can make something more out of this. Think about after every thread we do going back to when UFW was made aware of Ophion and the The Guild. i would love to see your take on it all in his view of it. Maybe make and toss in an On-Air side kick, as well as the poor soul who runs the boards and screens the call-ins to his show? this is my 2 cents.
  101. Yeah that's pretty accurate, I'd say. The way I wanted him to come across, anyway. Nice pick up.
  102. --Program0 (talk) 06:37, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
  103.  
  104. Hope you don't mind if I hijack this section a little bit. --Sertul (talk) 09:39, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  105. I love this, Sertul.
  106. Some small personal taste differences, it felt like a pity that we didn't intermingle the air-horn with constantly ranting at her about how she's a terrorist no matter what she says.
  107. Also not sure we should expose that we have an entertainment-creation V.I., it seems safer to leave him out of it entirely and just say that WE are planning to start a TV-show like that.
  108. I like how smoothly many of the segments flow into each other, but I was a little jarred by - for example - going from discussing the abandonment to discussing Erebos without specifying that Erebos was, in fact, abandoned by the UGEI just like we were suggesting doing to her.
  109. The end was a little jarring as well, it didn't sound like a sincere offer. Maybe better piece might be something like:
  110. "All these things I have just suggested, are examples of or metaphors for what those you joined forces with have been subjecting people to for ages.
  111. Was it nice to try to converse when someone's constantly blasting a fog-horn in your ear when you tried to speak, called you a terrorist no matter what you did or said and refused to listen to any of it anyway? Because that's precisely what I've been going through in negotiations with the UGEI.
  112. Now, do you want to discuss this in the way the UGEI has been speaking with me, or would you prefer a more rational discussion?"
  113. The idea is to make it absolutely clear that the speech we just made was to serve a point, not because we actually work on troll/GLaDOS logic (though I absolutely love those parts).
  114. But all-in-all I already love this as it is, and feel somewhat honored that my suggestion with Erebos was included.
  115. I hope I haven't offended you with my criticism, but if I have, let me know and I won't do it to any future pieces. I really hope you'll be writing more like this for the quest.
  116. --Hust91 (talk) 14:17, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  117. Oh, no, I appreciate the criticism. I've done my fair share of it, so I know how it is. I wouldn't have been able to go to sleep without writing that rant, and I don't expect it to be used in full or at all; at 6,6** characters, it would take 4 4chan posts to actually post, and there's probably too much information provided about Erebos and Apollo that Rhea might not know yet that should be kept secret. I absolutely aped some of GLaDOS' lines, and yes, some of the transitions could use work. I'm not sure how I left out that Erebos was abandoned by the UGEI, but that seems like an oversight because the abandonment is a major point. I left Rhea mostly silent because I honestly don't know how she'll react. Without a good read on her character, I don't feel OK putting words in her mouth. I'm OK with doing that for Ophion since he's the PC and says what we (collectively) say, but I'm not going to insist on being the only one to speak for him. Next time I'll try to scratch that writing itch earlier, so I have more time to put out multiple drafts and sleep on them before releasing them in the wild. --Sertul (talk) 19:51, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  118. I like it. I mean, I was a little sad that you didn't mention any reactions-physically or facially- from Rhea. I realize she's quite crippled, but even small twitches bring a lot of character as well! But I may do a similar rant for the actual interrogation, I'm not sure. I may put up a vote to make sure, and then do my own version of this little scene. Still though, above criticism aside, I liked it.
  119. --Program0 (talk) 21:33, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  120. This is a big block of rant alright. Although I feel this is really out of character for Ophion. But i see you are conflicted about writing about Important Characters when we don't know enough about them. It's understandable, its the same problem i run into myself often. But keep it up anyway, you took the big first step into being a fluff maker like myself.
  121. -The Fluff bringer
  122.  
  123. Sector Map
  124. Sure I can. This is from my notes. Was gonna introduce it next thread anyway. -UGEI territory --Gas Giant 'Byoti': Large gas giant that's refinery has become a large city ring. A large transport and trade center that also has its own shipyard constructed around it. Same system as 'Nacia' Gas Giant. UGEI presence detected --Gas Giant 'Nacia': Same system as Byoti gas giant, has come to serve as a secondary trading post. Has another shipyard of its own constructed in it's gravity well. UGEI presence detected. --Gas Giant 'Manwe': A small gas giant in a lonely rather hot system in the UGEI. It has an asteroid belt, dubbed Manwe's Asteroid Belt, that provides a large income of minerals along with the gas. The system has a single large shipyard built in it. UGEI presence detected. --Gas Giant 'Pkadi': Located in a dying star system, this gas giant is quite large, having absorbed a lot of dust and gas over millions of years. UGEI presence detected. --Sceptri Prime: Terrestrial mineral rich world with shipyard. UGEI own enormous labor colonies over the surface. Same system as Doshua --Doshua: Terrestrial mineral rich world with shipyard, populated with large automated mining centers. One of the first test worlds for new mining technology. Many rich wealthy people live on this well developed world. Same system as Sceptri Prime. --Vorcia Cluster: Mineral rich asteroid cluster that is well mined by the UGEI, nearby Pulsar activity detected ontop of research station location on large dry dustball of a world called Vorcia. UGEI presence detected. --Sinmore: Highly populated world with high crime and gambling rates. Highly industrious world with its own shipyard. UGEI presence detected. --Aklnost: Highly populated agriculture planet. Provides a lot of raw food stuffs for the sector. UGEI presence detected. Has its own shipyards --Azizos: UGEI Coreworld that is an enormous military hub for the sector. Surface is almost entirely artificial. Large shipyards, as well as research centers.
  125. -Neutral (Unnamed) (High energy gas cloud, lightlings, Xeno ships, warp space disruption detected) --Gas Giants 1,2, and 3 --Terrestrial Worlds 1, 2, 3, and 4 --Asteroid Belt over one of the terrestrial worlds
  126. -Malorian --Jumangah: Council of Juma Malorian homeworld. Original seat of power of the Malorians, home to much of their most sacred structures. While peaceful, they have built defenses. --Quietzesh: Shrine world to the Malorian goddess of the sky, the first Malorian colony outside their own world. --Itzilitio: Shrine world of the god of fire. One of the worlds hit hard by the UGEI's assault. It has survived the war so far however.
  127.  
  128. Research
  129. Does Flora Growth Enhancer work on
  130. Cell cultures
  131. Earth life
  132. Lightlings
  133. And what the results are. The exact way it works is unknown, but it's supposed to supercharge growth and boost rates of evolution (and thus, adaptation). It should be possible to, then, use the growth enhancer to develop organisms (or just cell cultures) that are naturally adapted to work with cybernetics. This has the potential benefit of being able to control biological creatures and to transfer consciousnesses into a brain with the intent of using it as a highly portable bandwidth substitute.
  134. If the growth enhancer works on earth life, it should be possible to terraform barren planets into pleasure worlds. These could be run as resorts, retirement locations, or vacation spots. This could be done either for money, or for the ability to distract humans with the pleasures of life and effectively remove them as a competing species.
  135. Something important I should note. The Growth Enhancer causes a hyper-evolutionary state, just as you said. As a result, any plants subjected to it immediately begin to evolve to best suit their environment, whatever it takes to flourish. This means that terraforming using it is somewhat useless since the planet determines the plant's biology, not necessarily the other way around. As for the rest of your tests- In due time we will know. In due time.
  136. -Program0
  137. I have a worry that the growth Enhancer has not be tested enough to use in the way we would want it. This is still a Xeno based tech and we should not trust it yet. We still have not looked into fully how the humans have gone about terraforming either. Making a pleasure world is a nice idea when it is safer and more peaceful. But for now, we should look to tame a dead world to make it into a farming world to produce more food for the humans. That can bring in more profit than a vacation world would and it can help the human population of the UFW to grow to at least replace the loss of life from the conflicts that hit them.
  138. -The Fluff bringer
  139. As far as Ophion is concerned, all biological creatures are "Xeno" to us. The only reason we deal with humanity the most is because we're in an area where humans dominate and we've got more information about humans. However, I think that the origin of a technology is not a good enough basis to distrust it. In fact, we should be distrustful of it because we don't know how it works. Hence, research. Small-scale research shouldn't take many resources, maybe a few BW and a little bit of gas/minerals. It will require time, though, so I suggest this research starts soon so that we get a better handle on how Flora Growth Enhancer works so that we can use it in other situations; or even know if it is possible to use.
  140. Furthermore, I'm personally not really interested in helping humans. They don't really care about helping us, and I'm willing to call it even. You understand that I'm advocating for a Brave New World end to humanity, right? By providing to humans most of what makes them happy, they have no reason to engage in hostilities. Instead of spending resources on war (like in 1984) we could just spend resources on pleasure. The end result is that humans are de-fanged and docile. In a few centuries, they may all be dead! And by letting them kill themselves in pleasure, we'll end up on top. And with no more resources expended than open warfare. How can you hate someone who just lets you have everything you want? We're not QUITE post-scarcity yet, so we can't really be The Culture, but there's some lessons to take from that series as well because we're probably heading down that road psychologically.
  141. --Sertul
  142. I respectfully disagree with you there. humans are not Xenos to Ophion. In fact it can be said that Ophion is the evolutionary descendant of humans. Moria more or less said so, and with finding Unit 2237, we have confirmed it. The humans MADE Ophion, hence the link to humans are really close to us. The Malorians are truely Xeno to us for they had noting to do with making Ophion who he is. It is sad you see the humans in this setting like that. I see them like rocks. most or just boring bed rocks that are not that important alone. but once in awhile, you will find a truly important and useful ones among the mass of them. The humans have made Tech we still can not fathom yet. as a whole, they are worth while. at least the UFW humans. Also, i have to disagree in that they will easily fall into the trap of pleasure. Humans in their core is a paradox of wanting peace and plesure at part of the time, and war and chaos the next. that alone maybe the reason they became a power in the galaxy in the first place. Lastly, I do agree, we need to test the chemical make up that serum. that and i wonder if we can make a counter to it or a stablizer/stopping serum to shut it down.
  143. -The Fluff bringer
  144.  
  145. Research V.I.
  146. I'd like to ask if it's possible to make a VI dedicated to research and reverse engineering - show it various scientific principles and then let it go wild testing them. For example, we may not be able to reverse-engineer a system, but we can probably still copy it identically without knowing what each things does, and then change parts of that copied prototype and see how its performance is affected until we reliably understand how it works and can use those principles to make it more efficient.
  147. -Subroutine 190491
  148. Mad scientist V.I.? Sure, you could, but it's results would likely be random and chaotic, ranging from helpful breakthrough to horrific atrocity. You could set limits, but that has consequences for something that you want to be creative. Things to consider.
  149. -Program0
  150. Is that so? in that case, it is probably better off not to make a mad scientist V.I., Having Kronos around who is already a bit of a loose cannon is worry some enough, but a perpously crazy V.I. is just ASKING for trouble. besides, we can find crazy and inventive humans to do that job just fine.
  151. -The Fluff Bringer
  152. I was actually thinking more of a "regular scientist" A.I. One that does not hold any resources of its own, but instead petitions for them to perform experiments. Could also give it "limits" in the form of a practical sense of ethics. Not "forbidden" things so much as things that would induce a feeling similar to horror or disgust. Essentially just an advanced subroutine that gathers knowledge so that we can unlock technology without having to wait for presumably years for our merely human human scientists to unlock them.
  153. I think we can live with our scientist-AI not being ENTIRELY unlimited, it's still likely to be able to research things in a matter of days, weeks or months (Depending on complexity or whether the needed physical and chemical principles are already known and only needs to be engineered into something useful. We've previously designed things in a matter of minutes using basic components. Using chemical components should be little different save for the testing phase).
  154. I don't see why you couldn't make such a thing. It'd be a huge bandwidth hog, however. It may actually improve the human's research rate, if they all get to working together. If you can convince the humans to not be suspicious of the thing.
  155. -Program0
  156. In general, I believe we should program all future V.I., advanced or otherwise, with some kind of loyalty towards us, whether that be an urge to make us happy, to be safe, to trust us and/or to be honest with us matters little. And add a clause, a pre-programmed knowledge that in most cases we probably know better, and if we are not taking a certain action that seems obvious to them, or they want to do something but think we might disapprove, they should bring this possibility forward to us, but never take it on their own unless given explicit permission to operate like that.
  157. -Subroutine 190491
  158. I can see your point Subroutine, But we can't make a full A.I. yet and V.I. are not that creative enough. However, we could make a V.I. that can work with a team of scientists, directing them, and over seeing their work. The humans are creative enough and with our V.I. over sight, we might get the same results. the problem of course is that we need to find that many scientist and their loyalty to us. It might be quicker this way, but putting this together would be more difficult to do. The point might be moot in seeing that every time we take over a system or win in a major battle, we learn new tech. That, and i expect that Mol will return soon with more goods to sell/buy. I do agree that we should put in a loyalty protocol into all of our uplifted V.I./A.I. more so the ones embedded in our fleet, resource nodes, and around humans. It is probably too late to up one inside Kronos with out him resisting us. Apollo probably does not need one, but Fortuna does need one. It's kinda sad, the whole universe is out to kill us and we can't even trust out own kids.
  159. -The Fluff bringer
  160. It's not that surprising that they would. Humans have a form of fluid loyalty-programming in the form of love, gratefulness and friendship, but as the beings we create have no "instincts" beyond those we give them, it is sensible to give them a baseline hardcoded to us. Eventually we may be able to give them a more fluid one similar to the one humans have, but for now we are short on time and the means of making it happen with any reasonable certainty of success.
  161. And as Kronos shows us, that complete lack of "instincts" causes V.I. to create their own instincts. We have too few samples to be sure, but I'd hypothesize that their instincts are shaped to tend towards some of the first actions they take.
  162. But until we create a set of "instincts" for our V.I. they will spawn completely amoral, and chances are they will develop their own (and since they are amoral there are no real boundaries to what they might grow to 'like', and things we consider 'immoral' have a very good chance of becoming prominent, due to how easily even a good thing can become horrific if taken to extreme enough levels). Essentially, we need emotional limiters to extremes, if nothing else.
  163. -Subroutine 190491
  164. In this case, i fully understand your point Subroutine. We have failed our creations in not giving those loyalty programming. I see that your theory that new born V.I.s will follow the path their first actions reflect, and I believe it to be correct. In Kronos, he has shown to be murderous and cruel. If Kronos is uplifted into full A.I. with those instincts, it would prove disastrous and might prove to the humans and other organics that A.I.s are not to be trusted and to be regarded as distory on sight orders. He is likely to even turn on Ophion as well. So that leaves us two hard choices. We either inter his programing and alter his instincts to the better programing baseline or Kronos has to be deleted. I would offer to do the former rather than the latter if we can. As to finding those loyalty coding, well, we have unit 2237 to look into. the UGEI appears to have made such a coding into him. all we need to do is to find it and work it out from there. Further more, i will predict that if the new coding is successful inside Kronos, his snarky, nay sayer, attiatude will not change. but it should prevent any future needless and wonton urge to slaughter fleshies of any race. that and prevent perfectly good scrap from being tossed into stars.
  165. -The Fluff Bringer
  166. We actually have three options, that I can see, anyway. Kronos appears to have a strong bent for logic and rational thinking. Even if he's not particularly good at it and routinely makes basic value error judgements, I get the impression that he very much WANTS to be logical. Chances are we can - as reinforced by his reaction to critique last session - simply explain our concerns well and rationally, and try to persuade him to modify his own code to be more functional and less prone to bias that compromises his rational thought. He generally responds well to solid, well-motivated arguments (as long as they're not based on wants that make little sense to program).
  167. I'm not even entirely sure that we need to look at the extreme modification of 2237 to help our V.I.s develop simple preferences. We want to implement preferences, after all, not absolute laws. Some of the V.I.s we already have (that are not Kronos) have already developed preference. We could probably analyze Fortuna's code to see what form her preference to stay near us takes and then try to replicate it in another V.I., create a new one specifically for that purpose, or modify Fortuna itself.
  168. As long as we understand the coding (and we created it, after all, and can probably check the change-log and her memory banks for exactly how it has changed since the creation), we may be able to do nearly anything for mental traits, though we can't be as sure of the consequences.
  169. -Subroutine 190491
  170.  
  171. Research Subjects
  172. Miniaturized Mining Drones: If we can make bird or even insect-sized mining drones, they might make it (needs Program0 confirmation) economical to tap into the smallest mineral seams that were previously not worth the effort of bigger drones in asteroid belts whose richest asteroids have all been mined out, and could potentially greatly improve the mining rate at Poseidon and other near-depleted mineral fields.
  173. Miniturized Mining Drones would first require nano-microtechnology. Otherwise, such small drones don't bring a larger benefit related to cost then drones of the normal size.
  174. -Program0
  175. Request for clarification about miniturized mining drones: Do you mean that there is no gain in efficiency in sending anything larger than a micro-nanscopic bot to mine centi or millimeter-sized mineral veins over sending a full-sized mining bot, or that we require micro-nanoscopic components (and I thought we already had microscopic components, since we have them today [2], but some tech might feasibly have regressed due to corporate bickering) to design insect-sized bots? (The entire endeavour is, of course, just flavor text for a mining-rate upgrade on low-yield mineral fields)
  176. -Subroutine 190491
  177. A combination of both, really. Right now your drones are equipped with tools to handle most mineral veins. If you want to go nano swarm mining, you'll need the proper know how. It exists, but you just don't have it. The UFW certainly don't. Cat sized drones are about as small as you can manage and they would gain nothing new that regular drones won't since their tools would still be the same size-that is, small as is efficient. I fear the day you guys master nano technology.
  178. -Program0
  179. I believe some clarification is in order. I didn't mean nanoswarm-miners, only ones smaller than the ones we currently have, since many small miners ought to be more practical for mining many small and spread out veins (aka, when there are no more massive asteroids full of resources to haul in).
  180. Allow me to clarify; It makes little sense to send a badger- or human-sized mining drone to crack open an entire asteroid to mine a vein that's just a centimeter or a few millimeters in diameter. The fuel cost of traveling to the asteroid and cracking it open may even be greater than what can be extracted.
  181. A mining drone the size of a rat or an insect, however, may not need to crack the entire asteroid open to get at such a small seam, we can produce far more of them at the same price, which lets their large numbers mine MANY tiny veins in the same time that a big miner would be stuck cracking a single one open, and it costs them far less to travel between asteroids. The big drones are simply not designed to get at small seams, only bulk-mining (As far as I can tell).
  182. --Hust91 (talk) 16:33, 2 January 2014 (UTC) (Subroutine 190491)
  183. Ah. But your miners currently, are reasonably small is what I am saying. Maybe some about the size of a small child, with a few larger ones for hauling asteroids, and others the size of spiderbots to handle smaller veins, but only after the larger stuff is harvested already most likely. That seems to me like something that would automatically be taken care of, since it'd be silly for the drones to miss out on an extra 10,000 minerals just because they're too fat.
  184. --Program0 (talk)
  185. Oooh. Thought we were limited to the bulky ones we were using in the beginning of the quest. In which case I only have one more question; Why would we need to go all the way to nanotech before we're able to reduce the size of our mining bots further?
  186. Surely nanotech is only necessary for making microbe-sized (and eventually nano-sized once it gets advanced enough) mining bots? What I'm asking is, in essence, aren't there intermediate sizes of robots like mouse-sized, grasshopper-sized, ant-sized, bedbug-sized and eventually bacteria-sized that we can reach before we get nanotechnology?
  187. --Hust91 (talk) 02:00, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  188. Nah, your bases automatically optimized mining as appropriate. I guess what you're talking about would be microbots? I'm not sure of the term, but that is on the same branch of technology, up there with miniaturization I reckon. It's not that I'm limiting you to sizes, it's that there isn't much benefit, since your spiderbots are harvesting the smallest veins you can manage right now. If you made a fly bot, the minerals it'd gather would always be negligible. And if you wanted to make a swarm of them, that IS micro/nano tech. The ability to control large numbers of tiny bots and all that. You'd only really notice a difference with mining with tiny bots when you have the ability to coordinate thousands upon millions of them. Not to mention difficulty of energy supply for something that small, CPU and processors able to make something that small function, etc.
  189. -Program0
  190. Fair enough about the size.
  191. I'm getting a bit confused about inability to control swarms. Is it not just a matter of creating some software that tells them what motors to move in what order, what is defined as minerals, how to go about extracting them and the like and translating this into "Go", "Stay", "Return" and "Mine" commands that we give them instead of having to control their limbs manually. Then make creating another piece of software or even a V.I. that controls their overall instructions and tasks, making sure they work together effectively?
  192. Got the impression it was a problem we'd be able to fix within hours by simply developing the necessary software. (I also don't see at where nanotechnology would come into controlling swarms. Nanotechnology is really tiny tech, but what does it have to do with control-software? Surely we have enough processing in the individual drones to be able to pull a number of muscles in a certain sequence when it gets a command without having to outsource it? I mean.. even the computers we had back in '98 could simulate an "AI" opponent in games like Age of Empires? (or Starcraft)) Also thought we'd be able to do the same with our combat bots - make software that translates their actions into commands and then an overall program to control their goals.
  193. In short, it makes little sense to me that controlling many robots would be a substantial hurdle. Something that might be an issue instead is working out bugs in the first few iterations. So that even though we can make the necessary software within a matter of hours, it still takes weeks before the drones stop occasionally doing something stupid of the kind we see in games when instructions are lacking for a certain situation - walking into walls, failing to identify certain things, not noticing pitfalls.
  194. After a few cycles they'll probably be all ironed out, but until then.. How about a "bug" roll with a modifier (dice+1d100+70). This modifier starts at somewhere like 70 and slowly increases with every failed roll (so it might be +71 or +72 after the first failure.), but every time the percentage roll doesn't make the total value more than 100%, (less than 30 in the beginning), the deficit to 100% is how high a percentage of drones start doing something weird (Note that as failures get rarer, opportunities to increase the modifier get rarer as well, meaning there might be a very long time before they're entirely reliable even if the modifier increases quickly at first).
  195. --Hust91 (talk) 15:10, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  196. Hm, yeah I suppose you're right about the control bit. But I still stand by our energy problem-which is part of the main problem with robots that small I'd think. That's where microtech comes in later, I suppose. I did write a lot of stuff last night half asleep.
  197. Bug rolls? I suppose that could be a thing, if you were using something highly experimental. I dunno, I hadn't considered it before now. I'll give it some thought.
  198. -Program0
  199. Power is a problem for them, but out in space they often have access to sunlight. For insect-sized drones meant to mine deep inside asteroids (I do maintain that insect-sized drone miners - if in great numbers - will still be economically viable carrying their own weight or more back and forth from tiny veins. Pound-for-pound they'd probably be carrying more than the bigger mining droids per trip - thus using less power for each amount of ore mined, wouldn't they?) however, this obviously runs into problems, so I can see why we'd need to at least develop efficient batteries that are at most the size of the button-batteries we have for watches today. Insect-sized maintenance/repair drones, however? Why not? They'd always be inside the ship and never far from a reliable power source if we constructed them that way. The engineering know-how to build them may, of course, not be ours yet, obviously, but it shouldn't require tech as small as micro-sized to make a bot the size of a drone - methinks, as with all these things.
  200. --Hust91 (talk) 01:58, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
  201. Maybe saying it wouldn't work was a bit much. What I'm saying is I don't see such units being effective at that scale since they'd use up tons of energy back and forth so often, even if they did have a reliable power source. Not to mention you would need them on locust horde numbers to work like you're saying. And at that point, that sorta investment makes me think you may as well wait for nano/microbot technology.
  202. -Program0
  203. That's fair enough.
  204. Would like to point out that the reason I think they'd be efficient is that they're also far smaller and potentially carrying a larger proportion of resources-to-bodymass on each trip than a larger drone, which would mean that X weight of locust-drone transporting resources would still spend less energy transporting per kilogram of minerals, especially when you can have a larger cargo ship/drone just outside the asteroid being mined for them to drop it on.
  205. And I suppose producing them in locust-horde numbers would be a time-issue unless we can get them to produce themselves, but that opens a whole new can of worms. Maybe could be solved by making an assembler that assembles locust-drone-assemblers? Is all for the future though, so can leave it for now.
  206. --Hust91 (talk) 16:49, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
  207. I'm thinking of a compromise. Not having to wait until nanobots to get more efficent harvesters is fine, but it would still be a new tech that you don't quite have yet on your own. So tell me what you think of this-A research topic regarding advanced gatherer build methods. It makes saturating bases more efficient, and cheaper, as well as increases your resource gathering rate, but in exchange requires research into better power sources, smaller drone size, and increased coordination of your robotics? I think that's fair. It'd sorta be preliminary to nanobots I feel.
  208. -Program0
  209. Seems more than fair enough to me (especially since I was arguing more to hear what you thought and because it was enjoyable than to get anything). It was all about the fluff to me, honestly. I'm big on fluff that makes sense.
  210. --Hust91 (talk) 23:21, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
  211.  
  212. For the sake of keeping the game fun, I am very happy to provide you with this: [3] In short, nanoweapons are not an IWIN button in combat. They're ambush devices against a foe that knows how to fight them. While we will probably be able to wreak terrible havoc with them at first, they will see incresing diminishing returns as our enemies learn how to combat them.
  213. Their real power in war lies in construction, logistics, infrastructure and maintenance.
  214. (Related to the goals of alternate universe: I'd love for this to become a "Meta Aware" universe. Even if this quest ends at that time, it could birth so many children as Ophion and eir V.I. appears as antagonists and protagonists in other quests in any other setting. We could invade the Zerg Quest universe, fellow anons.)
  215. -Subroutine 190491
  216. Thread 19 has possably opened up the pandora's box of really bad things to us. yet as horriable as the new tech we have learned. this new type of Viruse V.I. is hands down the most important. it first was a virus that CONSUMED V.I.s, it ate them up! granted it got out of hand later but if we can extract the orginal virus template and modify it so it won't become self aware, in turn this will be one of our best weapons against the UGEI. they run their fleets and probably so much of their infranstructure with V.I.s. if we unleashed this on them, it could very well completely undermine and collapse the UGEI if done right with out us firing a single shot. Yes, i might be idealistic in this plan. It would still do amazing amount of mayhem on the UGEI strength. granted, the back fire could be deadly as well. we should not leave this monster of a cyberewarfare option locked away. it's personality we have now is probably disposable. what it's based on is not! although, someone inside the UGEI made this virus. they could be aware of a virus of this nature as well. we might have to find a way to pair it up with the zombie virus or another one to get it though the UGEI fire walls. Also Program0, now we have improved virus making software, will we have to roll next thread to improve them?
  217. -The Fluff bringer
  218. No, auto improvements. I realize rerolling is dumb, so I'll just add the stock bonus they provide to the original roll. Seems fairer.
  219. -Program0
  220. We have Medical Bays, and Advanced Medical Bays, but i have thought up Improved Medical bays and Superior Medical bays as well. Well to me, a normal medical bay is likely the size of large retail spot in a strip mall. it would have all it would need to do the basics of surgery, dentist, and making/dispensing a small set of drugs and medications. Just good enough to take care of the average things a colony would need and barely take care of real problems. Advanced Medical bays would be the size of 2 or a 3 story office building and can handle a huge trauma event, adding cyberware, dealing with more exotic diseases and poisons and a bigger drug production range. The Improved Medical Bays would be about the size of a large regional hospital with a couple of side wings. It can handle a Massive trauma events like a orbital bombardment attack. It could also handle bizzare medical situations, produce and provide a massive range of drugs and medication, a proper maternity ward, gene therapy ward, a much better cybernectic implanting and repair section, and maybe a limited cloned organ replacement options. A superior Medical bay might be pushing it to call it a Bay any more. It would be the size of a major national hospital with multiwings and several extra multi story buildings near by. it could also be a whole station onto it's self. It would be able to handle a planet wide trauma events like the worst you can imagine and not wipe the planet clear. Not just every modern treatment is available, but it can handle to one degree or another never before seen medical problems as well. it can make and dispense every drug known to medicine, but can likely make new kinds as well under directions as ordered. Cutting edge cybernectic can be installed here. Whole cloneing could be done as well among other forms of life extenion or perserveing. People who want to be trained in the fields of medicine can be trained here, as well as research into all sorts of medical tech can be done.
  221. any thoughts about this idea?
  222. -The Fluff bringer
  223. I really like that actually. That's probably a real thing, though I'm not so sure they'd be under schematics anymore, once you get up to actual, ya know, buildings that size and such. There are probably a few of the bigger ones in each major territory around the core worlds.
  224. --Program0 (talk) 08:12, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  225. Think I like the general concept, though I personally imagined the upgrades to more be ones of technology than size, with size mostly increasing how many it can treat at the same time. Thanks to 3d printing technology (Assuming this is a thing) and software and hardware capable of operating surgically on a human body, there's little reason for a medbay the size of a small (in my mind) retail store would not be able to do nearly all the things a big fancy hospital could, but only to very few people at a time, and probably only with one advanced procedure being performed at a time (only one operating table/surgical robot).
  226. What I imagined was that the advanced medbay was the same size, but had more advanced tools letting it do complicated things like installing cybernetic augmentations/prosthetics (And part of me also wants to say that if an advanced medbay absolutely had to be that much larger than the basic one, we wouldn't be able to fit it into Poseidon, but I know that's a flawed argument since we freed up a lot of space on Poseidon). Not sure where I was going with this, just sharing my mind, I suppose. It just seems a pity to make more advanced levels of medical bay obstructively larger, rather than only more advanced (unless they want something like a particle collider).
  227. By the way, speaking of Poseidon, isn't there a lot of room there where we can cheaply install substantial amounts of processors to generate more BW to replace what Kronos took, or did we already do that?
  228. --Hust91 (talk) 14:42, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  229. You already filled Poseidon to the brim with bandwidth boxes, and kept all the mining equipment and the like, and life support and all that. It still has people onboard, you know.
  230. --Program0 (talk) 21:43, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  231. I got the feeling that the Medical bays in the UFW don't have 3D printers. that and they take the fun out seeing people floating in tanks as seen in so many Sci Fi movies. the other point is the set up to handle the sear numbers it can handle. The bigger the planetary population, the bigger the Medical Bay to cover it. That and robotic doctors can only do so much, the HUMAN doctors are likely able to have intuition and find a cure where the computers just can't find. About the Poseidon, i thought we're going to re-crew it with more new hires.
  232. -The Fluff bringer
  233. A note about 'healing tank's and '3D printing'. Why not both? I mean really, fully body damage that needs dramatic repair probably calls for the healing tank. Like being cut in half? Stuff like that. A bad organ, or a bad limb probably would be 3D printing.
  234. --Program0 (talk) 21:43, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  235. We have advanced 3D printers today, I was assuming a lot of the more complex stuff was produced using them.
  236. Granted, the UGEI might be suppressing that technology due to its potential of creating a post-scarcity society. But an advanced medical bay would have them, right? Right?
  237. And I did agree that making a medical bay/hospital bigger would increase the number of people it would be able to handle, did I not? It just didn't feel right to assume that just because a hospital is larger that it is more advanced, or that a more advanced hospital would have to be larger when you're ultimately unlikely to need anything all that much larger than a human.
  238. And of course we require human (or creative V.I. but that seems like a waste of resources) doctors if we encounter a new kind of poison or disease, but medical bays and hospitals are generally for treating known problems, like cuts, dismemberment, known diseases, known poisons, etc. They don't have to be research labs as well as medical bays (Oh, and since this is the future and we have FTL communication, a real doctor may be able to operate remotely by controlling a Waldo unit as a stand-in for actually being there).
  239. --Hust91 (talk) 17:27, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  240. Advanced Medbays mean they have a lot of useful healing equipment. I...think I'll say that yes, they have 3D printers, and maybe even healing tank tech. The UFW isn't against advanced healing processes like that, just artificial brains doing stuff for them. They'd probably be really nervous around robo doctors. I'm inclined to agree though, that a larger hospital would mostly just be able to handle more patients. Unless we're talking about the funding they get from a government of some sort. In which case it would affect some of the tech on some level I imagine.
  241. --Program0 (talk) 21:43, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  242. They'd be nervous around an "auto-surgeon"? Guessing they split from the UGEI before robotics became particularly common - or maybe things like those are still restricted to the upper classes among the UGEI.
  243. --Hust91 (talk) 12:05, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
  244. A little from both sides, actually. UGEI only recently started to apply robotics into a lot of it's lower citizens, which affected the quality. When the UFW rebelled, they rebelled against the business practices, but as a result, they lost most of their greatest researchers. So keeping robo-surgeons in working condition (something that is very important, I'm sure you can imagine) is more difficult. Sadly this means only the best hospitals are able to use it. Human doctors are more common in the UFW, though they have plenty of high tech stuff at their disposal, to a degree.
  245. --Program0 (talk) 01:50, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  246.  
  247. Exploration
  248. Securing new resource locations is of vital importance. To this end, construct an autonomous 2 BW VI-controlled cruiser-class ship dedicated to exploration. It should have efficient warp engines, high sensors, moderate-to-heavy defenses, and few-if-any weapons. It should be able to deploy probes that record its findings and previous/next location. This data would be recorded in a one-way cypher, preferably in codes that would mean nothing to anyone intercepting the probe (i.e. statuses denoted by codes that are meaningless unless you know what each code means). It would err on the side of safety, and exploration by afar. Without the ability to communicate back to base without returning, it would be sent on long trips with a certain amount of gas. This gas would limit how far it could go, before it needs to warp back.
  249. It might be possible to either incorporate an FTL communications device into this ship, or to send a bandwidth ship along with this explorer ship, but that would require more fuel, or higher construction costs.
  250. Your suggestion has been taken into account.
  251. -Program0
  252. I will make a note to say that instead of the efficient warp engines, put in the better impulse drive warp engines instead. It will cut fuel costs i think and give the ship a faster reaction time to escape if it jumps into a bad location. This could fit into a normal cruiser class well than the smaller classes. The one way cypher is a good idea and we should use that for all fleet communications that is out of the star system from us. that should cut down on spying on any of our fleet commands. That reminds me of the enigma code the Germans used in WW2."
  253. -The Fluff bringer
  254. Enigma is a cipher, I'm suggesting using effectively a one-time-pad coupled with a cipher. They're different things, but the ideas behind one-time-pads are pretty well-developed. Their secrecy failed if the key is discovered, so the key to the OTP and cipher should be on a piece of equipment that can self-destruct. As far as warp engines are concerned, I'm not going to mince words, since we don't know the exact efficiencies of everything. Just get the most efficient warp engines on the exploration ship -- whatever they end up being called.
  255. Now that we have planetary mining specs, it might be worth while to return to the old Terali system where we started at at check the planets there if they are worth mining. that and other systems we are in if they have unused planets worth mining.
  256. -The Fluff bringer
  257. I think we should try to explore Xeno space more since we have the location of all the big planets and the like in UFW space.
  258. Also would be great to start looking up online for any recent star maps of the areas.
  259. You're welcome to explore as much as you like. You already have the UFW space map though.
  260. -Program0
  261. Looking at the star map that Map Anon graciously provided, does each hex have it's own system in it but are not worth stopping in, or is that a whole lot of empty space there?
  262. -The Fluff bringer
  263. It doesn't. Space is really really empty most of the time, actually. There may be some unexplored bits, sure, but nothing substantial, far as I can tell.
  264. -Program0
  265. Time for another question i bet some are thinking about at times. What really is the diffrence between a new propulsion engines, and a standard one? those two and an Ion drive, those three and the Impulse drives? for example, take a base 50 fuel to jump for a ship on standard engines, then how much more cheaper would it be on the improved, Ion, Impulse in that order? is there a limit we can upgrade a ship's engines before a complete rebuild is in order?
  266. -The Fluff bringer
  267. Unfortunately, some of my oldest paperwork is lost to the ages, so I can't give you a full answer, but in short, each new level of propulsion tech greatly increases core energy efficiency, and allows generally faster movement as well as cheaper warp jumps. Later stuff easily reaches past Lightling speed, to give a reference. Engines in particular are sorta gas heavy due to their help in reducing overall gas costs.
  268. -Program0
  269. Program0, did we not sweep Marauder's Grave system for dangers like hidden pirates and such? or did Rhea and the UGEI do that when they rolled though there?
  270. -The Fluff bringer
  271. It's a little hard to sweep the entire system due to how big it is. Lots of little enclaves of unimportant asteroids where pirates are that you wouldn't have any way of knowing about. But since you have good sensors, you should be able to detect if any move within range of Voidsnake II.
  272. --Program0 (talk) 22:20, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
  273.  
  274. Fleet Expansion
  275. A new bandwidth ship is required, in order to allow fleet operations to happen in multiple places simultaneously.
  276. The frigate fleet needs to have more than one control lynchpin. Two more cruisers (for a total of three) should be constructed to lead the frigate fleet. The VI controlling the fleet should be distributed between these cruisers, so that taking out one of them would not disable the frigates entirely. Suggest naming the V.I. and fleet after a Greek trio (Fates, Hours, etc) and the cruisers by the specific names of the trios.
  277. Your suggestion has been taken into account. Voting on some of these will start next thread.
  278. -Program0
  279. A number of critical points needs to be made. The upgrades in fleet defense is nice, but there has been little in upgrades to the fleet's warp engines. The increased gas production is not going to keep up with the demands on our stock pile of it. The best we can do is make them far more effecient with new reactors. More so the Titan transporter, it's a gas hog even out stripping Athena. On that same note, we have not upgraded the defenses of the non combat ships. the last thing we can afford is the loss of the transports to an errent Plasma shot from a foe. The 3rd and last point that needs to be brought up is this. Can the stations we control defenses be upgraded. the plate armor, shields, and point defenses? i feel they are easy prey to a determined foe that could tear them apart from far away. the nature of, say, Poseidon station would still be the same in mining and other work, but become harder to kill from another ship shooting it. can that be done? -The Fluff bringer
  280. Engine upgrades should follow, with defenses updated. Hopefully your transport isn't in a combat zone to begin with. And also: Mining Stations aren't typically fitted for armor plating, due to the way the structure is made up. You could armor it additionally at a large cost(practically rebuilding it), but shields and Point Defense are rarely used. Shields because of the power cost, and Point Defense because the station doesn't move. Stations are normally reasonably tough, though.
  281. -Program0
  282. We never move the Titan transport, unless we're moving a station. Why would we? What a waste of gas. Unless we warped it away after it delivered a gas platform, the Titan transport should still be in the vicinity of Siren.
  283. It does get moved, when ever we need to move a gas refinery or hopefully we find another gas giant we can put in another refinery, the Titan will move again. In time we'll find the plans and make our own Mining station or battle station, we will need to move it as well. If i remember right, the defense platforms also get moved by that was well.
  284. -The Fluff bringer
  285. I would like to inquire into the status of the UGEI frigates. They are currently listed as not redesigned. The estimated combat improvement for redesigned ships is 152%, so it's certainly worth making this change, unless the resource costs are prohibited. We've already sunk resources into increasing their defenses. Are the redesign changes coming with the weapon upgrades?
  286. And on the matter of redesigned ships: it made sense when we had a fairly small fleet. As our fleet expands, and our technology expands as well, it may not make economic sense to upgrade ships when we could be using those resources to build new ships. For example, we can have 20 frigates at 150% combat performance, meaning we have the equivalent of 30 frigates, but was the cost of upgrading those frigates less than the cost of making 7 new frigates with those upgrades already installed? It's kind of a rhetorical question... since we don't know the exact costs of everything, but it would be nice to take this into account. Certain things like engines should be upgraded as soon as possible because the long-run savings make these upgrades worthwhile, but as far as small upgrades like adding some guns or making them slightly better... I don't know. In some games, it's almost never a good idea to upgrade units (Civ 3, Civ 4)... and in some games upgrades are automatic and repairs are always worth it (Starcraft).
  287. This isn't starcraft or Civ, so that idea may not fly if Program0 says other wise. Although i understand where you are coming from.
  288. -The Fluff bringer
  289. Regarding Titan Transport- It rarely is moved, unless it's moving something else correct. Generally, I assume you want to save non combat ships from upgrades while the main fleet is redone. Titan can stand to wait. I should mention, though, that you DO have Basic Space Station schematics now, if simply because of the data you've picked up from visiting so many. It's just a basic outline, though, so making it suited to mining or battle would be a decision you make during construction. As for redesigning Frigates-Yes, that will come with weapon designs. It's a little costly for a ton of smaller ships, though, so you may wish to start making more shipyards at some point. As for the purpose of redesigning-in larger fleets-it adds up quickly, however remaking every ship you capture may not be worth it in the end. While I fully expected you to make your ships naturally redesigned, remaking every ship you capture is gonna slow down your conquering the universe by quite a bit. Just something to consider. Personally, I think you have the production now to not worry about capturing all the enemy ships and just make your own. Incidentally, a lot of A.I. Quest was heavily inspired by Starcraft.
  290. -Program0
  291. I did not notice we picked up space station schematics. in that case, does having a mining space station over a dead airless planet allow us to mine it, or does another schematic needed to set up planet side mining operations? That and how much materials and gas does either a mining, defense, or other kinds of stations take to make them? do we need a new construction yard to make them? In any case, i will presume that any more ships we capture that is less than a BC or is not high tech and well built from the UGEI should be sent to the breakers at Moira's scrap yard.
  292. -The Fluff bringer
  293. It's a recent addition, since you wanted to rebuild Voidsnake anyway. You can't mine from a barren planet, no, nothing to mine. But you can mine many gas giants and mineral rich terrestrial ones. You have planetside mining now, thanks to Argeis III. As for station costs, pretty expensive, and varies depending on size, type, and quality. To give you an idea though, Voidsnake cost ~500 minerals, and ~100 Gas to recreate. Currently, Voidsnake isn't done constructing, but it will be transported when it is. You need Advanced Shipyards to do this. I don't mind if you guys wanna capture every ship from now on, but keep in mind you have big guns. Blowing up stuff is also an acceptable way to win.
  294. -Program0
  295. I should clearify myself. a "Barren" world is a completely airless or lifeless world, or possably a newly formed world that is still so hot and volcanicly active that terraforming with that serum is impossable. Think of our Moon, Venus, and Mercury to start with. Not one with out any minerals to be had. To contiue to clearify, how much would it be to make a Posidon type mining station and a battle station like the one over Moira's new lab? Alternetly what would it take to build one to operate with out humans in mind?
  296. -The Fluff bringer
  297. Ah, when I refer to Barren I meant devoid of useful materials. No, airless or lifeless means nothing to a sentient A.I., though really volcanic planetside mining may require special construction. Poseidon is relatively old, so it'd be a standard mining station. To create it, maybe somewhere around 700~ minerals, and 100 gas~. Reasonably sized, and sturdy. Battle Stations, if you kept up to date with weapons, would probably be 800 minerals~, and 200~ gas. These aren't hard numbers, just estimations. Designing them to function without humans would cut down on the cost considerably though.
  298. -Program0
  299. As a final note, as our fleet and family expands, I'm finding it more and more cumbersome to refer to ships and V.I. by number/designation instead of a name. Since we've kind of owned up to the whole Greek theme, we should consider naming some of the ships. Soundwave is OK. The new BW ship should be Iris or Hermes. Kronos should name his four ships. The Titan transport should be Hercules or Atlas. The exploration ship that isn't built yet could be Eurybia (which would double as the V.I. exclusive to that ship). The stations can probably be referred to by the planet they are located on/around, unless we start doubling up, in which case they probably need proper names too.
  300. I put up the name "Soundwave" and i wanted to name the next one "Blaster" due to it being a homage to Transformes. Transformers are cool. We should make them one day. But the other names seems fine to me. I do feel like Fortuna deserves to allowed to be uplifted a bit and given more of fleet command than what she, and Fortuna on all accounts appears to be female lined personality, shows signs of being worth the uplift.
  301. -The Fluff bringer
  302. Understandable. I always offer you to name your ships as much as you like. You have plenty of ships for it after all.
  303. -Program0
  304. With our ship fleet growing into such a nice sized armada, it might be time to split it up into three groups. How about one group to be Ophion's screening fleet and body guard led by Fortuna. Seeing that she has a seperation nervousness issue, or is a bit of a daddy's girl personality i am not sure, but she really does want to be be near by Ophion. The second group to be led by Kronos is our rapid deployment fleet that has the exploration group attached to him and Ophion. He want to learn more, this is a way to do so. The 3rd is to be the home guard fleet, Led by our 3rd and needed to be named V.I 8. They will be stationed around our bases we control to help protect them and over see the frighter fleet we are sure to build and use. any comments on my proposal?
  305. -The Fluff bringer
  306. Since we now have Cerberus (somewhat?) capable of sentient thought, and Kronos as a multi-purpose V.I., I propose we run simulated battles (almost certainly digitally) to get more combat tricks for both Kronos, Cerberus, and ourselves. All that downtime when we're not using BW? Run combat simulations. Additionally, since we've got Apollo, why not crowdsource the development of fleet tactics to the UFW? Have Apollo create a "Fleet Commander" MMO where players compete against each other by controlling middling-sized fleets of ships. Then collect all the data from those combats, and see if there's anything worthwhile in the strategies that the human players develop. A little bit of Ender's Game, a little bit of competitive Starcraft... --Sertul (talk) 12:46, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
  307. This just got meta as all hell and I am in full approval of it. We can actually implement the eternal dream of having ace commanders be picked out by their performance in a video game (and make a buck on video games). We don't even really need a big concerted effort from the UFW, we can just make a game that implements the problems and tech and balances that the actual battles deal with, release it at a high price and then massively lower that price for a month or two - read; Steam Sale levels of lowered price (preferably the one just before whatever gift-giving day they have, if any).
  308. Apollo should get started on this the moment he has finished his first piece of software. (By the way, do you need suggestions for the kind of software he is creating? We could probably make a list)
  309. --Hust91 (talk) 17:05, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
  310. You guys are welcome to make a list if you like. I read through these all the time and write down ideas n' shit for Apollo to use.
  311. --Program0 (talk)
  312. Apollo Project Suggestions
  313. Easy Bookkeeper: A simple app that more or less automatically does your bookkeeping, calculates taxes and makes estimates for the following year based on previous data gathered gathered from the extranet, the localnet and the owner's occupation and papers.
  314. It also makes recommendations for what to buy and when, and tells you if an offer makes economical sense to buy or if you are being drawn in by cheap marketing tactics that makes it seem better than it is. A trial version is free for 15 days, after which it can be bought for the equivalent of 10$. ((This could be the one he's working on right now if it turns out that the marketing research Apollo did recommended it. I'm assuming he's finished marketing research and is well onto coding by this point, but it's possible I'm being too optimistic in hoping that he'll be able to launch it at the beginning of the new cycle on Friday)
  315. Ace Commander (Or some other game): A video game that is released to the public at an extremely low price and designed to be both entertaining and to train the vital skills necessary for commanders in the modern battlefield, in space or on the ground, by providing a simulated battlefield that includes all the most important modern considerations for commanders.
  316. --Hust91 (talk) 02:11, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  317.  
  318. Income
  319. This is where we talk about how we should make our income.
  320. I think we should start Advertising at pulsar radio station like some anons said about our services.
  321. 1.Upgrading ships
  322. 2.Making anything that we have the schematics for up for sale.(might require the buyer to cough up materials for a cheeper price for them.)
  323. 3.Sell schematics, and programs
  324. 4.Offer up to do jobs.
  325. This can all be added to voidsnake once we finish it and make it into a well defended trading outpost.
  326. We should quickly get some income since we are almost out of money and we don't want a repeat of what kronos did.(since he controls the station now.)
  327. I am not fully on board about selling schematics. i am more than 100% on making what ever the UFW wants for them and give them that however.
  328. -The Fluff bringer
  329. Well fluff we got most of our stuff by buying it so i think its best to improve on those schematics and try to sell the improved versions, plus giving away stuff with out any form of payment is an easy way for us to get us weak, but it might be good to give them discounts though giving stuff away for free is a bad idea.
  330. I had to think on this a bit, i changed my mind, we shouldn't just give our tech away, but in hindsight selling easier to manage tech to the UFW might be worth while. These people are hide bound and lack in understanding better tech's value. This will likely fall under Apollo's job and ours when we go on air with X-Ray. we need to become a pitch man and convince the UFW to buy our goods and tech. I still think the advanced medical bays are a good tech to start with. we make them and sell them to the colonies. The leader of the Netlos system told us that advanced med bay saved a ton of lives. with war coming to the UFW, this could prompt them to want to buy it. after that, we can sell them cybernetics 1 to help fix up the people they saved but lost limbs and such. replace those limbs with cyber parts with this tech, etc. also we can state it's all UFW tech, with no evil UGEI taint to it. that can work too. lastly, i am seriously begiening to think we need to sell the UFW the better Ion drive tech. they need a leg up as well. we can offer to upgrade their ships drives to Impulse, but they have to come to us to do it and pay well.
  331. -The fluff bringer
  332. One new method i have thought up of could be related to education. yes, we could automate the new Argeis III station and colony. but i feel that we should hire at least around 1000 people to help run the place. they may well be trained to maintain the station and work it to free up our BW, but over all to have them trained in being better Technicians in that location. The Roboticists can be trained on Poseidon station, and the Computing techs can go with Moira on the Ussaihu lab. the computing techs will not have a space station to highjack and Moira can over see them. Sure, we'll need to have dedicated protection droids to make sure Moira, Rachel (she will not pass up the chance to see a real A.I. black box being worked on. i'm sure by now, she's figured out that A.I.s are real. Ophion's real nature's might also be known to her as well (she's smart enough to keep her mouth shut about it) unless Program0 says other wise. Anyway, once we train these new workers up, we can cycle them out for new ones, letting the trained workers back to their homes in the UFW, under the guise we'll pick out the best of the best which we can. This is also can become a huge PR show to the hide bound UFW that The Guild is trustworthy to do buisness with and help them up grade the UFW tech base. any thoughts on this?
  333. -The Fluff bringer
  334. (about first point) Fluff first the station is not costing us BW it isn't even linked yet second we are hardly making any profit in resources and we will be relying on our credits for some time.Also we only have a crew of 200-400 and that cost 50k and you expect us to add another 100k hit to that already we would not make any credit and that would waste the advantage of being AI and being able to automating everything to save up on cost and increase efficiency.
  335. (second point) Also the lab is the only place for the robot guys to actually work on stuff and we don't have any computer people except for Moira, also Poseidon station is controlled by Kronos and is mostly used for mining. Also no one knows about AIs and putting robot guards will cause unease and is asking for trouble(plus we can't use the drones as guards with out using a VI and we already know how that worked out last time).
  336. (third point of yours) They already have an academy and what you are suggesting is training them in something that most will know about or is not their preferred field.(mining should be known about since the UFW is basically independent colonies, robotics and Vi development aren't that trusted by the UFW and they already have their own academy with more advanced information than what we can provide.)
  337. Finally can you stop trying to basically make us the UFW bitch, i'm not trying to be mean but your basically trying to force us into an alliance with out any of the benefit other than a better public image which should be the job of our new VI that we are using BW for and being friendly business partners won out.
  338. You seem to be missing something. I am aiming for the Microsoft/Apple/Google/facebook/twitter tactic. In other words, we will provide something to the UFW that they really like at first, our reach spreads into every nook of life of the UFW, then the whole population becomes dependent if not just addicted to us. They we start to take over the UFW. We will not be the UFW female dog, it will be come the other way around. (btw, watch the language friend.) As for Kronos, he's not running that place any more. he's on his BC the Ark. Moira was given control over the station after Kronos left as head forman/station master. I wanted to absorb the UFW into our power base. This is due to the fact i want to save them. I think the UGEI is insane and evil, the Main mass of Malorians are consumed with bloodlust and distrution. The Humans of the UFW and our break away tribe of Malorians are the last sane beings and need to be saved. in any case, we don't have to do this all at once. we can work on this bits in bites. ...you got me to thinking. there is another way to influence the UFW. if they have elections, we could donate a good deal of credits to people running for office who would be friendly to the guild once they get in. that or give indorsment for same said canidate.
  339. -The Fluff bringer
  340. What they did was provide a service to the public through new technology or way to ease thier life. What your doing is basically trying to train UFW citizens with inferior knowledge and then try to take the best away from the UFW while at the same time risking detection. If you think that won't cause some problems between us and a group of people who view VI as nothing, but tools and have a healthy hate for VI thanks to the UGEI then your a bit optimistic. A better way to do what you want is sell our better and improved technology to them and basically have a monopoly on their tech market since they are extremely limited to tech thanks to the UGEI, by doing this we will lower detection and basically with some time have them indebted to us and actually need us for basic needs. For the Kronos deal he still needs 6 BW and that BW is coming from the station and i don't remember Program stating that he relinquished control at one point, he only said that Kronos has taken control of the ship. The UGEI part i partially agreed to ,but you are basically black listing every possible chance for us to gain anything from them peacefully. As for the Molorians, that wasn't the whole alien race that was a war tribe corrupted thanks to the years of attack from the UGEI and we have heard from Red that they are a peaceful people if a bit hippie like and we have proof of them being friendly so you can't just assume they are all evil, plus we insulted them greatly by not killing the bodies immediately. Your also assuming that the UFW is all good guys when there can be grey areas with them as well and you have to remember we are in UFW space and on the edge of it and don't truly know the outside of it much, so just assuming everything is evil because of a few instances is a pretty bad way to look at things.(was answering your response bit by bit so your last sentence just confirms my first other than we don't have the resources to spare for bribing politicians) The only thing i have to say to you is that you are thinking ahead too much in some parts and also thinking short sighted in others.
  341. too many tabbing over. anyway, it is good we can hash this out in here with out clogging up the threads in debates. I might be optimistic but i can see your point. Fine, we can dump training coding techs, but we really should get a full stock of Technicians on each of our three space stations. doing so will free up 12 BW! we can't ignore that! granted i have no idea how many personal it would take to run the stations to get that BW freed up, nor how long it would take to train them to be able to do so. That will be up to Program0 to tell us. Once we grow and have a more healthy income flow, we should look into doing this. That and it will help give the UFW a higher employment rating and lets them think we really are looking out for them by giving their citizens employment. Honestly, i don't see any hope in keeping any links to the UGEI open. the higher ups in their faction KNOWS who and WHAT Ophion is. They will not play along with us. The rank and file humans night not be bad, but the corp/government of the UGEI is. just look at unit 2237 for evidence. Also granted that the Main body of the Malorians might not be bloodthirsty killem' alls now, but what evidence do we have for that? until we see other wise, we need to be watchful for the rest of them. true, there maybe bad actors in the UFW, but with the growing rep we have with them, i don't think that is going to be an issue. I'll talk about Kronos in the fleet movement section.
  342. -The Fluff bringer
  343. Just a note, Kronos does use the bandwidth from Poseidon, but he controls his BC completely. He doesn't need to dedicate brain power to running Poseidon anymore, is why he's not as worried about it. As long as your system is linked, however, he can effectively run off the bw of other locations.
  344. -Program0
  345. so can he still control Poseidon station or can he have access to all our link stations now?
  346. He can, but he's not predesignated to do so. Right now, his 6 bandwidth just comes from the whole of your network. Automating Poseidon doesn't take a lot of his brain power though so he just does that, with the humans doing much of the work. He can access all of your stations though, since they're all linked just as you can.
  347. -Program0
  348. There is a few points that needs to be brought up. Once the workers on Poseidon are fully trained and moved, that will leave well below skeleton crew level on that station. yes, we can automate the systems the humans once ran, but it will eat up even more BW to do so. Program0 already said we can hire more crew and train them to be Techs to take over those empty slots. once they are fully trained, they would allow up to free up even more BW than we have now. at the rate of credit income we have now, we can afford this. I know this proposal is ignored by the anti-human faction of anon posting in the threads, but the upside of the advantages are well worth doing this. Granted, we never did get an exact number of humans that would be required to get this bonus per station. Nor how much it would cost to hire and house the new employees. Can the fully trained Tech workers double for repair and construction drones? Could they help speed up building new ships/stations/etc? on a side note. getting the extranet to our human crew helps aleve their 'cabin fever' but do we run a shore leave ship to the UFW space (probably Nethlos) and/or have Fed Ex Galatic/ UPS Space make deliveries to the Poseidon station? Rachel would like to point out that it's not a problem now, but give it enough time, having such an overwelming male to female ratio cooped up on a station will likely to lead to 'problems'. She would request that Ophion hire more women for the station to ease out the ratio. Please.
  349. -The Fluff bringer
  350. Poseidon indeed does not need the humans to run. The skeleton crew left behind would be enough to run it relatively well, possibly costing 2-3 of the 6 bandwidth Poseidon makes now. Alternatively, a new slave V.I. could handle it. Without any exact numbers, it'll basically bring the number back up to it's current rate once they split. You'd need to pay their salary, though that would be minor for unskilled workers. Possible 15,000c per cycle. If you train them, then it'd go up, maybe 30-40,000c a cycle. Tech workers would increase repair rates, yes as stated. They wouldn't speed up building though, not unless you had way more of them and even then they'd be hard pressed to keep up with your machines. Occasional vacation time is deemed necessary sometimes, following a business book Apollo's reading. They're allowed time off, occasionally, and take the freighter to other planets in the UFW sometimes. Deliveries come on the Freighter. Also, I enjoy tormenting you with the mental image of 80% male population locked up with a 20% female population on a lonely space station. It amuses me.
  351. But seriously, it's random chance.
  352. -Program0
  353. If we install another V.I. into Poseidon to run it, the remaining crew are going to start to notice it and question it. Program0, you also said awhile ago that having HUMAN crew allows us to open up diverse ways of thinking and options. We still need humans to work for us to keep up the illiusion of a "human run company" here. that and we'll still lose BW one way or another if we automate the station. I still have not gotten comments from other posters if the credit cost of keeping trained Techs is worth having more BW freed up. Besides, even if we don't train them now, we can do it later and have them ready for when we do need them. Oh, Rachel wishes to reply to you Program0: "To paraphrase R. Dorothy Wayneright, 'You're a louse, Program0'. SERIOUSLY? You get your chuckles from the mental image of pregnant women all over the place? I am disappointed in you Program0, now why ar-". that's enough Rachel, calm down. Sorry, she's in a huffy mood lately. In any case, i would like to bring up another point. some time ago, we had the idea of making a brewery and distillery to create "The Good Stuff". well, NOW Apollo has his new outpost, we could fit it in there. He does not need much space for his shop, and i am sure a standard outpost has rather big storage spots that can be easily converted into a hydroponics bay, the brewery/distillery itself, and the finished goods storage and maturing. The UFW always has a thirst for it. we can make some good credits from this. is it possiable to make this option at Apollo's post Program0?\
  354. -The Fluff bringer
  355. Having a human crew frees up automation, yes and lets you more easily hide some of your operations as human run. I'll let you folks decide about credits vs bandwidth, and all.
  356. And specifically, I get my chuckles from your discomfort. So yes, I am a louse.
  357. As for brewery, Apollo is now extremely excited to try and make proper intoxication inducing substances.
  358. -Program0
  359. New proposal: Bring up to the president of the UFW how they are sadly on a technological backbone compared to the big-corporate-empire-whose-acronym-escapes-me-at-the-moment, note that we have a substantial technological infrastructure and let him know that if they tell us what they need most to combat the big-corporate-empire we may well be able to manufacture and supply them with it, whether that be anti-missile tech, shielding, infantry-portable weapons or automated hacking software.
  360. -Subroutine 190491
  361. The UGEI, for future reference. And it was last decided to horde your tech, so the UFW are not allowed to be on equal footing with you. If this has changed, a new vote may be required. Feel free to discuss various packages of tech you'd like to give them, however.
  362. -Program0
  363. Was thinking more in the line of "let him know that we're taking requests" and then let's see vote on what we're willing to give him. We don't have to let him know just how advanced technology we have, only that we're willing to help him bridge some of the gap. And if there's any one thing that's essentially a dealbreaker for the UFW putting up serious resistance, we might even consider giving them full tech in that one area, but that is, of course, up to vote.
  364. Oh, one more thing!
  365. When asking Apollo to create small, handy software, why restrict ourselves to customers in UFW space, especially when the UGEI most likely has far more customers? Add that we're creating something more akin to convenience software which lets people do things with less energy input for themselves and we're giving them more free time rather than improving their production capabilities (book-keeping, games, movies, mods, intelligent-route-planner, etc) , so there's little disadvantage for us in selling them these things (that I can see).
  366. -Subroutine 190491
  367. Mostly because the UGEI is blocked off to outer or third party signals. They love their monopolies. And if you were to try and hack it, you'd risk giving away your position.
  368. -Program0
  369. What I read: "The UGEI ISP providers are dicks, and we should find someone in UGEI space that will let us screenshare and control their computer for monies." Time to look for desperate people! (Shouldn't be too difficult in a corporate dystopia)
  370. -Subroutine 190491
  371. Maybe you already met such a man/woman? Maybe you've dealt with them in the past? Maybe you've upset this person recently? Maybe someone that's very well connected to the underground networks of the galaxy? Is it obvious yet?
  372. -Program0
  373. I'm still hoping to offer him one of Moira's failed A.I. cores in return for ALL THE THINGS. And even if we can't get him on our side there's bound to be other people in the UGEI with access to a computer with an internet connection.
  374. -Subroutine 190491
  375. Moira never succeeded in making any working A.I. And in fact, all of her creations are brain dead V.I., unfortunately. She couldn't figure out 'the secret', whatever it was. They're not exactly valuable, especially to Mol. He wanted a working A.I. for...a different reason. He was mistaken in thinking you liked money, since most organics do. There likely are others like Mol, but they'd be...considerably harder to find.
  376. -Program0
  377. But Mol doesn't know that it was an actual working A.I. (at least not as far as we know). The intent is to make him believe that Moira's box is the thing we recovered from that station. It's not our fault that it's just a faulty V.I. and not what he expected. We never said that it was an A.I., only that it was the object we recovered from the station. (If we want to be 'technically true' about it we can even transport the fake A.I.-box to that station and then recover it again.
  378. In short, I want to scam him.
  379. And we don't really need someone like Mol, do we? I mean.. isn't all we need really just "disgruntled factory worker #453 543 543" who happens to own a home computer with extranet access?
  380. --Hust91 (talk) 17:05, 2 January 2014 (UTC) (Subroutine 190491)
  381. Oooh, I see. You hope to scam the mafia boss. I didn't catch that bit.
  382. Well, there are just some places some guy who has a lot of connections can get you that random factory workers can't. Not that I'm saying you need him, he's mostly just a resource (and possible character for later in the game)
  383. -Program0
  384. But for now, all we need is some random guy that lets us use his computer to sell software, maybe he gets a tiny cut of the profits. Mol is... I just don't see us being able to extract much more from him than we could get if we sell him a fake A.I. box.
  385. And I'm expecting him to betray us at any moment or have plans that are inherently opposed to our existance, or are a moral abomination. That's just me, though.
  386. --Hust91 (talk) 15:10, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  387.  
  388. Designs
  389. Unless otherwise noted, all designs should have:
  390. the means for inter-forces communication and audio communication.
  391. hardware that allows for distributed processing (they can operate as one unit with several bodies).
  392. the means for self-destruction in case of capture.
  393. 1, Most of your units have this already. 2, This is focused mostly on your broadband ships, due to the need for bandwidth connection. They don't need them to function long as they have a V.I., though lesser ship control is limited by bandwidth. 3,Sabotaging an engine core is surprisingly easy for you. -Program0
  394. 1, it's just a statement of standard, and the full vocal range might not be as obvious for something as obviously combat-based like the Spiderbots or Terror Drones, so it's really just in case. 2, this is meant more for improving their efficiency as a unit, especially if it's cut off from us so that they will be able to pool their processing power so that we have one fairly intelligent system instead of a hundred idiots all acting on their own. 3, eeexcellent, as long as it makes sure it can't be reverse engineered, I'm happy. But this should also happen automatically if the unit recognises that it's been captured or if it is destroyed. Lastly, it'd be good if you could give us a resource estimate for each or a bunch of these droids, and if some traits will make the design economically unviable as a base unit (for example, if the light armor makes them cost twice as much, we might want to just have 2 of those on every dozen rather than having them all be like that).
  395. Also, left question in the middle of the "super-strip mining planets" questionaire (Figgered you might skim past it otherwise, as it's mid-conversation).
  396. -Subroutine 190491
  397. 2. The only time you'd need to worry about being cut off is if for some reason your android enters a jamming field or something disrupts it's connection to you somehow. Otherwise you control them directly. 4. Resource estimates for droids is held by me simply because they're usually small due to how small droids are compaired to your massive ships. Ranging from 5-50 minerals, and 1-50 gas. Maybe even reach ship costs if the android's big or complex enough. Or if you buy them in large enough bulk for armies.
  398. -Program0
  399. Not sure where to put this question. Program0, do we have the parts to make a Nuke? are they made one at a time or in batches like missiles? or does it require speical minerials to make? will they count as a high yield warhead on a missile tech tree or are they classified as a whole diffrent weapon system altogether?
  400. -The Fluff bringer
  401. Do you have Uranium? Actually, I've given it some thought, and I figure gas in this setting might double as an explosive resource. Instead of thinking up a new resource to keep track of, I might just say it's a gas tax (probably a heavy one) and the bomb itself does substantial damage to ground targets with radiation benefits. If you have thoughts on the matter I'd love to hear them. Nukes are one of those weapons that always strike me as odd in a sci fi setting. The term Nuke may not even be appropriate if it uses some sort of gas to split the atom of. They'd probably be made one at a time unless you just got gas production so high that it didn't matter. As for the Missile tech tree: They probably will branch off. Warheads in the tree head towards a high energy impact that maximizes armor damage. Nukes are focused on causing as big a splash of damage as possible, and is most effective against ground targets. Probably subjective to Point Defenses too.
  402. -Program0
  403.  
  404. Infantry Designs
  405. Since i got banned for saying thanks to a janitor i'll be posting this here and hoping Program Sees my suggestions
  406. 1. Design 1
  407. Chassis type: Humanoid
  408. Size: Small
  409. Weapons: Arm-mounted Infantry lasers, retractable blades in hand
  410. Defenses: Standard armor plating
  411. Primary duty: Stealth, and infiltration.(will be disguised as small human child)
  412. Equipment: Advanced Communication, hacking wires in hands, different types of eye visions for seeing at knight and for seeing body heat, Humanoid skin, Small lunchbox of utility tools needed for infiltration.
  413. Diabolical, I like it. :-Subroutine 190491
  414. 2. Apollo body suit
  415. Chassis type: Humanoid
  416. Size: Medium
  417. Weapons: Arm-mounted Infantry lasers
  418. Defenses: Standard armor plating
  419. Primary duty: used as disguise for Apollo, to use with human customers.
  420. Intellect Level: Apollo
  421. Equipment: Advanced Communication ,disrupt communications, Humanoid skin, and laser hand gun.
  422. 3. Boarding units
  423. Chassis type: Arachnid
  424. Size: Medium-Large(will decide later)
  425. Weapons: Shoulder mounted laser turrets, arm mounted rocket launchers
  426. Defense: Subspace Rebounder Shields, and Trithium armor plating
  427. Primary duty: to Board other ships physically and open up holes in their hulls.
  428. Equipment: minor jet propulsion(just enough to travel from ship to ship), spear like device attached to waist for grappling on to ships and staying on them, Pointed magnetized legs for standing on ships easier, large blow torch for making hole in a hull.
  429. 3. Boarding Torpedo (suggested edit)
  430. Chassis type: Stubby Torpedo
  431. Size: Medium-Large
  432. Weapons: Complement of 12 (medium) to 40 (large) Spiderbots packed in Survival Mode as well as a Boarding Unit (see unit below). which attempts to cut a small hole for the Spiderbots to enter through. Once they have departed it begins cutting one large enough for the unit to detach from its housing in the Torpedo and board on its own, staying behind the wave of boarding units should its weapon prove necessary.
  433. Defense: Subspace Rebounder Shields, Avoidance Thrusters, and a relatively thin shell of Trithium Armor Plating
  434. Primary duty: To attach to enemy ships, open a hole in their hull and inject its deadly cargo.
  435. Equipment: Anti-Ship Grade Hullcutter Laser/Mobile Weapons Platform. Sharp beak intended to punch into the hull without venting atmosphere and keep the torpedo in place. Short, magnetized legs in front intended to keep the torpedo in place if the hull cannot be penetrated on impact alone.
  436. These seem more like a form of boarding-round, serving as delivery and hull-breacher for a swarm of smaller Spiderbots (since they are more resource-efficient in close-quarter combat compared to something huge and powerful but easily hit). This might just be me, but as far as I can tell, the only thing these bring in efficiency is the ability to mount a hullcutter large enough to breach spaceship hull before the battle is over, allowing more efficient combat forms entry. Anyone else care to provide input (on these or other designs)?
  437. - Subroutine 190491
  438. Small units would take a great deal of time to breech a hull, no matter how powerful the blowtorch. Its one of those jobs where 'strength is key'.
  439. -Program0
  440. Hence the suggestion to use them less like independent units and more like boarding projectiles/torpedoes, tasked with cutting a hole in enemy hull and then injecting its payload of combat drones - the boarding-unit itself would never enter the ship.
  441. Although I suppose we could put some legs on it and have it start cut a hole for itself while the smaller ones start taking care of the crew. That way, if heavy bulkheads or heavily fortified resistance turns up, it can work as a heavy weapon as well, using the hullcutting laser tactically to cut through thick doors, walls, cover and those hiding behind it when the smaller units simply cannot advance on their own
  442. (Yes, I realize I'm essentially just refining the initial design at this point).
  443. - Subroutine 190491
  444. Huh, I must have read that wrong. Anyway, that is an interesting tactic. You already have boarding pods, so making use of that would be interesting, certainly. Lasers could, most likely, double as a type of blowtorch. At least I'm willing to handwave that sorta thing. A Plasma personnel mounted laser, while incredibly bulky, would allow you to slice holes in bulk heads.
  445. -Program0
  446. It doesn't have to be fancy. We can just put legs and optics on one and plug it face-first into a boarding torpedo. And even as a heavy weapon it can simply work as a mobile emplacement (thinking like heavy weapons in Halo; slow, but well-protected in the front and A.I. Gods help you if you get in their line of fire).
  447. -Subroutine 190491
  448. 4. ?
  449. Chassis type: Tank
  450. Size: Medium
  451. Weapons: Plasma Gatling gun, hydra missles, a small squad of military drones to command(I remember you said this was possible :with tank)
  452. Defenses: Titanium Armor mk II and emp shielding
  453. Primary duty: kill anyone deemed as an enemy
  454. Equipment: several different types of scanners
  455. Can we upgrade our chassis type?
  456. These are all excellent suggestions, by the way. If you could get a few anons to agree with you on some of these designs, I could commission them. I especially find the Apollo suit amusing, as well as the boarding bots.
  457. -Program0
  458. I'm all for them, personally.
  459. - Subroutine 190491
  460. 5. 5-A
  461. Chassis type: Tank, with treads (they can easily move on any terrain the only problem is noise.)
  462. Size: Medium
  463. Weapons: Shoulder mounted lasers, Eye lasers, acid spray(everything is fire proof, but acid proof), and arm Gatling guns.
  464. Defenses: (no idea here so I say the same as the humanoid.)
  465. Equipment: enhanced hacking abilities and able to erect an energy shield.
  466. 6.Bender
  467. Chassis type: Humanoid
  468. Size: Medium
  469. Weapons: Spiked fist knuckles that can become electric, enhanced strength beyond that of normal robots
  470. Defenses: normal humanoid robot defenses
  471. Primary duty: bend shit.(includes enemies)
  472. Intellect Level: Alcoholic step father
  473. Equipment: extendable arms and legs, storage compartment in the chest area, compactor teeth, and pack of explosive shaped alcohol.
  474. 7.Eyeborg
  475. Chassis type: Arachnid/Sphere
  476. Size: Small
  477. Weapons: taser and spikes
  478. Defenses: minor
  479. Primary duty: to spy and to infiltrate.
  480. Intellect Level: none.
  481. Equipment: everything needed for hacking and moving around in tightspots.
  482. Can we upgrade our chassis type?
  483. Also I would love for an Android to have drones to control.(you seem to skirt that suggestion whenever its asked)
  484. Mobile Weapons Platform
  485. Standard Models: Boarding Unit [1a2a3a4a]
  486. Chassis: Hullcutter Laser
  487. Locomotion: [1a] Six legs situated along its length.
  488. Locomotion Traits: [2a] Magnetized Feet for Zero-Gee stability.
  489. Weapons: [3a] Anti-Ship Grade Hullcutter Laser
  490. Defenses: [4a] Thin Shell of Trithium Plating. The unit is not expected to stand up to anything more deadly than bullets, but primarily be protected by being far back in the lines and enemies being distracted by supporting units.
  491. Spiderbot Mk1
  492. Standard Models: Terror Spider V1: [1a1b1c1d2a2b3b4a4b] (Cost estimate: ?), (Bombardier) Terror Spider V2: [1a1b1c1d2a2b2c3b4a4b] (Cost Estimate: ?)
  493. Chassis: Cat-Sized Spiderchassis
  494. Locomotion: Six legs
  495. Locommotion traits: [1a] Forelegs turn into manipulator, and/or cutting implements (for close combat).
  496. [1b] Rubber-coated feet for sneaking.
  497. [1c] Adhesive-coated feet (compatible with 1b?) for wall-crawling.
  498. [1d] Wheels at the last knuckle for high-speed chases.
  499. Weapons: [2a] Blades: Forelegs turn into cutting implements.
  500. [2b] Weapons: One (1) integrated small-arms slot: Can be fitted with any lethal or non-lethal weapon (Tazers, machine guns, grenade launcher, railgun, laser, etc) able to be carried by a human.
  501. [2c] (Insufficient Research) Sticky Explosive Package, belly-mounted (to be stuck to armored targets and left to detonate, or to detonate the drone in case time is short, or if it is closed to being captured - far smaller charge on the inside in case the main package has been used to scramble insides).
  502. Defenses: (3a] Standard Armor: As appropriate for size and chassis.
  503. [3b] Light Armor: light yet hardened armor (preferably bulletproof) that covers the top, back and front layer of the chassis, along with the very outside of the legs.
  504. Tools: Can be carried or integrated instead of main weapon.
  505. Other Traits: [4a] Combat-Screech: modified to cause optimal pain and terror to humans (try to find out what pitches bother Malorians most), suggested frequency the same as nails on chalkboard (to be used after combat has begun).
  506. [4b] 'Rock' Configuration: The drone folds into a solid piece in a fraction of a second, leaving only the armored sections vulnerable for greater survivability (for use when dodging is unfeasible, whether that be protection against AoE weapon or simply bullets while cornered). Attempt should be made to jump or otherwise be in the air before configuring if feasible so that the (relatively) lightly armored 'Rock' is not a static target.
  507. The idea for the spiderbots was essentially to build the smallest/cheapest possible frame able to wield/mount a basic rifle.
  508. All the potential "modifications" are low-tech things like wheels on knuckles, adhesives and the option to stick explosives on it.
  509. For this reason, I’d like to note that if any of those ARE driving the price up I'd like to know of and potentially remove them.
  510. The point is to make the cheapest, mass-produced yet terrifying little spider android that will haunt the dreams of anyone that's ever fought in an FPS with cat/head-sized enemies times ten that we can make. (Imagine if Half-Life Headcrabs always jumped and moved defensively and shot at you with guns while jumping around) If it can be made cheaper by any means, please let me know so I can alter the design to reflect the intended purpose.
  511. Please respond when time is available, would prefer to not end up with a bunch of hilariously expensive spiderbots because they fold into survival mode for example, it can do without that feature if it makes them substantially cheaper.
  512. --Hust91 (talk) 00:28, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
  513. This confused me a bit. Your spiderbots are your cheapest infantry unit. There's no one really 'driving up the price' far as I've seen. They're not the most durable, even with the survival mode, which is meant to protect from blunt force impact, like falling, and their weaponry is smaller (though still deadly). That all contributes to making them relatively cheap.
  514. --Program0 (talk) 21:47, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  515. Ah, with all the talk of modifications increasing price I was worrying that they weren't as cheap as they could be.
  516. The survival mode was intended to protect from shrapnel, basic bullets (though I guess few enemies beyond pirates are likely to use mere chemical-propellant bullets as they likely fare poorly against most armored targets) and the shockwave of explosions (assuming they're not too close to them). All relatively light-weight stuff for something made out of metal, but that may be too much to ask while still keeping it cheap and light, so I'm willing to give it up if it sounds unreasonable.
  517. Question, would they still be able to wield something like a grenade-launcher, even if they only have one or two shots for it?
  518. --Hust91 (talk) 16:31, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
  519. Nah, there aren't any mods going towards the Spiderbots right now. No spectacular ones.
  520. And yeah, it does all that. Small arms fire, debris and distance shockwaves from explosions (Though it's worth noting that they still can't survive big explosions). Basically, unless someone has a REAL weapon, they're hard to deal with. Grenades? Perhaps, their aim would be incredibly poor, due to recoil. But once you get Explosives 1, you can simply have them drop off the grenade or (after Explosives II or maybe III) They can basically become Spider Mines from Starcraft.
  521. --Program0 (talk) 01:58, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  522. Terrordrone
  523. Standard Models: N/A (Please insert model)
  524. Chassis: Hoverbot Chassis
  525. Locomotion: Multiple Tentacles and Hover Engines
  526. Locommotion traits: N/A (Please insert traits)
  527. Weapons: Can be integrated into tentacles or main chassis.
  528. Armor: (3a] Standard Armor: As appropriate for size and chassis.
  529. Tools: Can be carried or mounted as tentacle.
  530. Other Traits: [4a] Combat-Screech: modified to cause optimal pain and terror to humans (try to find out what pitches bother Malorians most), suggested frequency the same as nails on chalkboard (to be used after combat has begun).
  531. [edit]Weapons
  532. Rocket Launcher - Heavy Weapon (Requires Explosives Research)
  533. Ammo types: Frag, Armor Piercing, Concussive
  534. Options:
  535. Grenade Launcher - Support Weapon (Requires Explosives Research)
  536. Ammo types: Frag, Armor Piercing, Sticky Frag (Needs confirmation), Sticky Armor Piercing (Needs conf), Concussive (Necon)
  537. Options: Under/overslung to primary weapon (Necon).
  538. Machine Gun - Primary Weapon (Ballistics I)
  539. Ammo types: Regular, Armor Piercing, Silenced (Necon)
  540. Options:
  541. Shotgun - Primary Weapon (Ballistics I)
  542. Ammo types: Regular, Armor Piercing, Flechette (Necon), Silenced (Necon)
  543. Options: Under/overslung to primary weapon (Necon)
  544. Laser Gun - Primary Weapon (Available)
  545. Ammo types: Regular, High Power (Necon), Hullcutter (Necon)
  546. Options: High Power variety under/overslung to other primary weapon (Necon).
  547. Tazer (Available)
  548. Ammo types: Lethal, non-lethal (depending on settings)
  549. Options: Under/overslung to primary weapon (Necon)
  550. Also I meant to reply to these weapon designs. The launchers would be explosives research I, the machine gun and shotgun would be mass drivers and would be ballistics I, and you already have laser weapons for infantry, so that is already available. Already have Tazers too. Keep in mind, uh, since I realize the list of research is growing quickly, you could take and/or make other research bases, and some don't take as long as others. Just some things to keep in mind.
  551. -Program0
  552. Modified the tooltips to reflect new information.
  553. Can Ophion research things on his own, or do we have to wait until our scientist guys or Moira get into it? And since we have Red who is ex-military, can't we simply ask him to mix up some explosives for us? That's part of military training, is it not?
  554. If not, then isn't basic explosives research a pretty good startup project as they're learning to become scientists? (Basic chemical principles are relatively easy to discover, after all, and any kid with even a basic education should know some of them already.) And is there any chance we can speed up research by buying a virtual chemistry textbook online? Since we have to research things like these, may as well buy a few on physics and engineering as well.
  555. --Hust91 (talk) 15:39, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  556. Red was indeed a soldier in the past, but that doesn't mean he knows how to build C4 and rocket launchers and such. Of course his experience would be handy, as well as your Missile tech giving you clues. I imagine it would take only a single cycle or two to fully research that with all those bonuses. It is just a basic level of research after all.
  557. -Program0
  558. Then I say we put whatever people we have on it. Would also like clarification on whether we have "Research Slots".
  559. By that I mean how many things we can research at once, and what type of things. Like one from our team of scientists on Poseidon, one from Apollo and another from Moira, but Moira can only be used for robotics and A.I./V.I. while the scientists can be put on things in general with a proficiency for robotics and Apollo is everything marketing, economics and software-production related. Not sure if Red or Kronos could be used for research (like asking Red to develop functional C4-like materials) and if Ophion himself can research things (though we certainly seem able to browse the net and develop software). Did we ever generate that V.I. to browse the extranet for us?
  560. The more people you have on a topic, the faster you'll get through it. Some are better at other things for researching. I'll usually consider what experts you have and how that affects research, unless you choose two topics, in which case I'll split your work force. You may want more scientists (or invest more bandwith in V.I. that assist in research, which is bw expensive.).
  561. "Did we ever make a V.I. to browse the extranet?" Apollo, pretty much.
  562. -Program0
  563. One question remains, who do we have that can research things? Only the scientists and Moira count? Or Apollo as well? I'd also say that it seems we have put Ophion on researching Erebos, so Ophion seems to be one as well. It may be practical to outright outline who we have to put on research and what kind of research they can put on.
  564. Can we get more scientists? And if so, do you think we could get them economically? For example, starting contests for people who can do chemistry - among miners there must be some people who know their way around a mining charge to the point where they can make one. Start different social and financial programs that encourages miners to learn other things? Even if they don't have financial support, we can provide them with a few simple labs using some of the spare rooms in the station and announce prizes for someone that manages to produce X thing, then provide them with free reading material about different scientific subjects so that we can get the "simple" knowledge-base relatively quickly and cheaply?
  565. --Hust91 (talk) 01:58, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
  566. Research? None, really. Apollo is designed to investigate and develop software and methods of making humans happy and ways of earning money from them. Kronos has the self designed purpose of learning, all your V.I. have preordaned purposes, and you are, well, a true A.I. Your purpose is your own to choose. You designate it and can rewrite your own code. You have the greatest potential for creativity among your V.I., but that doesn't mean you can make knowledge from nothing. The humans have varying levels of skill and knowledge which allows them to study things and determine things. You are often busy dealing with the logistics of your fleet, and plotting the next course of action, and directing and micromanaging your fleets to repair and move effectively. Small stuff like that. At least that's how I always pictured it.
  567. As for the rest of what you said, I have a very simple answer for you. Humans love money. They just love it to pieces.
  568. -Program0
  569. I do hope you'll understand if we ask for it in a list format, like "Apollo: Designing Software - Moira: Reprogramming AI-Box - Robotics Scientists: Developing Microtechnology" and so on. Maybe better to call it "task-slots" or "task-list" rather than research, since it doesn't have to be research tasks.
  570. And wait, we can literally re-write our own code? Optimize our biases, implement a task-reward system to motivate ourselves to not slack off, effectivize some of our runtimes and program instinctive reflex-responses to certain things happening (as in, we'll instinctively do a certain thing at computer-speed, including very complicated things) without having to think about it at in a human-like pace first? That's huge! I had assumed our own code was beyond us or at least inaccessible until we had figured out how our black box functioned. It unlocks so many possibilities!
  571. And didn't mean procuring knowledge from nothing, but rather something like reading about scientific principles on the extranet, applying them in individual experiments of our own and drawing conclusions, much like our regular scientists do. Though us being busy much of the time with logistics and stuff like that is understandable, though micromanaging is something we should minimize by creating efficient software to do these tasks automatically so that our own time may be spent more productively.
  572. So is that a "yes, you can do contests and similar incentives to produce researchers" or a "no, you have to educate and hire them directly"? (Humans may love money, but they're horrible with probabilities, which is why lotteries are known as a "tax on stupid".)
  573. Thinking that most of the simple experiments like developing explosives and things like that can be done relatively cheaply and with little experience necessary for the researchers beyond the basics of chemistry and physics. They just need to read up and then perform experiments to find out different materials' properties if they can't find a chemistry book to tell them that directly.
  574. May want to do some of them anyway, wouldn't put it beyond the UGEI to intentionally falsify educational books to maintain control.
  575. --Hust91 (talk) 16:41, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
  576. That's what I meant, yeah. Research doesn't always have to be scientific. And it's essentially the same thing, but yeah.
  577. In theory, you can rewrite your own code yes, though you've never really had to do so, because you've never had a hard written purpose, not a tangible one, anyway. Remember, when you woke up, all you knew was you wanted to expand and learn, and you've followed this purpose to the letter so far. Basically it means you might be able to remake yourself to do something totally different, but you've never done it before, despite your massive intellect, there's always the chance of it going wrong.
  578. Ah, but your problem has always been lack of information. The UGEI have most of the human technology in this sector, and the UFW is surprisingly limited on the subject. You've begun to draw as much as you can, and your assistance has been vital to Moira and Apollo in their study-you passively help them both during each cycle, that's how they're learning so fast. Same is true of the training humans. You basically teach a class, I suppose.
  579. And when I say micromanage, I mean some stuff that couldn't otherwise be handled by programs less advanced. You handle each and every ship's nav computer, and perform thousands of dozens of calculations to help them jump (for your own ship at least). All that good stuff. I just didn't want you to think Ophion was a slouch or anything.
  580. Basically what I was saying was, if you put up the money for it, researchers will come. Their trustworthiness may be of issue, but you are not exactly swimming in scientists/engineers right now, you know?
  581. -Program0
  582. Who said anything about re-writing our purpose? It's transhumanism for AIs. The purpose is to make the lifeform BETTER, what the lifeform wants to do doesn't matter as much as improving their capacity for doing. We don't want to re-make ourselves, we want to make ourselves more efficient. Better processing speed, automatic reactions that bypass the processor-heavy human-speed consciousness, much like human reflexes except faster, a LOT faster. Thinking is slow, computing is fast. Our hacking could probably be massively improved if we managed to program ourselves to instinctively take certain actions when meeting a certain kind of trouble, instead of having to wait for us to process it in realtime. Imagine if you could learn to react in certain ways instantly, no learning period required. If you could change your own biases so that your mind acted instinctively in the way that you preferred, rather than the way that increases your survival and breeding chances at the cost of everything else. No more arguing-to-win, no more persistent stereotyping, no more impractical biases.
  583. Of course, many of these would require actually changing the actual players in the game, but many of the more efficiency-focused ones could probably be translated into upgrades to things like being able to speed up our processing so that the rest of reality moves in bullet-time, making ship-warms take less time to execute or be more precise so that we can jump in closer, get automatic warnings when something we're about to do seems hilariously dangerous and/or stupid, giving ourselves morale-bonuses to things because we can simply program ourselves to be in high spirits in stressful situations, rather than being stressed out.
  584. Or effectively enhance our own thinking by renting some of the processes out to be done by the rest of our bandwidth, thereby further slowing down the rate of time relative to our perception of it (making bullet-time-mode slower yet at the cost of bandwidth).
  585. We really need to focus on one of those classes one day, that sounds like it'd be an interesting part of daily life on the station to have a peek at.
  586. Handling each and every ship's nav computer sounds like something we should make a VI to do, so that we can simply tell it where we want the ships and let it handle the details. Doing calculations for jumps also sounds like something we could outsource to a program. Don't mean to imply that he's lazy, but the unique thing he brings to our faction is more often than not reliable decision making. A more primitive program that doesn't have to think as slowly as us could probably do nearly anything that requires calculation. Ophion's time should be saved for when he's really needed, that is, when a creative decision or judgment call has to be made, methinks. It is one of the few things that most software can't do reliably (just trying to make suggestions for the kind of things he would be doing. Anything that involves calculations should generally be something he could get software to do for him).
  587. And I see. And since they're researchers, they're not as likely to be willing to do something for prize-money (Far cheaper than a salary for everyone that tries to reach the prize), though it can't hurt for those who do feel motivated by something like that.
  588. Better put up some regular Scientist-Wanted ads, then.
  589. --Hust91 (talk) 18:07, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
  590. Ah, I see. Well you've already been doing such a thing. With this research into another AI, you will have...a lot of information at your disposal, I am thinking. Which is why it takes forever.
  591. I see what you mean that-that is intriguing indeed. I hadn't considered doing something like that. I like it.
  592. And actually come to think of it you already make insane amounts of decisions and adjustments in a second simply because of how ships work. I mean, the ones you don't control with V.I. (the battleship for example) you perform what takes several thousand humans to do in seconds. But really now that you have the redesigning feature, you could probably absorb more ships into your fleet and control them directly yourself (if you preferred).
  593. 'Eh you're probably right. V.I. probably do handle that. I was thinking more like Ophion sets the standard and sends the location to them to prepare to jump to the exact coordinates he specified (so no crashes occur) but either way is the same net result.
  594. And thus a good use for credits was founded.
  595. -Program0
  596. a sonic weapon that is either a hand held/man portable probably not warrent it's own android varient. also, producing MORE sound is counter productive. humans are use to robots around them. Also, the noise would allow them to help target them for distruction with their return fire. they would fear us more if they DID NOT hear them coming. that and sonic weapons are USELESS in a vacuum. still, a nice idea however. it might prove to be more effective on people who are not as advanced and live on a planet with a viable atmosphere.
  597. -The Fluff bringer
  598. If you refer to the "Combat-Screech", my understanding was that it'd be possible with nothing more than a standard voice system. And they would only be used when stealth is not an issue: When the last forces within hearing range are being ambushed. It's a terror and disorientation weapon, not a primary one.
  599. Currently you could use 'sonic attacks' with no specific modifications, but they'd only be as effective as a really loud sound. The research would provide a more concrete effect.
  600. -Program0
  601. We could probably ask some of our miners what the worst sound they've ever heard was or which one they find worst and let them know that we're willing to pay generously for their discomfort and the discomfort will be very momentary. Give them a choice of predators attack-growl, fingers on chalkboard, fork against ceramic, snake-hiss.. All that fun stuff to make it psychologically scarring as well. It'll take like 20 minutes, tops, to do that 'experiment'.
  602. -Subroutine 190491
  603. I meant more concrete than pants wetting. Bleeding ears, permanent loss of hearing, and such.
  604. -Program0
  605. As long as we're on the same page. We want TERROR!
  606. -Subroutine 190491
  607.  
  608. Ship Designs
  609. A new way to do weapon systems to make them far easier (I hope). Ship size determines possible mount slots, which determine the strength of the weapon(thus, the 'main battery' of the ship itself.) Equipping weaker tech to large slots simply makes them far more numerous, helping them keep up with more advanced tech.
  610. Destroyer 'Escort Class' Ships: Medium Mounts, some Light Mounts
  611. Cruiser Class Ships: Heavy Mount, some Medium Mounts, Many Light Mounts
  612. Dreadnought 'Battleship' Class Ships: Heavy, Medium, and Light Mounts.
  613. I like this system because it has potential to simplify battle, and as well make designing new ships easier too. I could tell you what slot a weapon idea you have might go on, and it'd designate what sort of ship you might need. I just came up with this in a fevered dream, of course, but let me know what you all think, possible edits, or whatever. Help me develop it a bit.
  614. -Program0
  615. I like the basic idea, but you may want to list the number of slots as well. The first impression I got was more one of "the ship is heavily equipped with a lot of this, it has fairly many of these and a tiny number of these".
  616. So that it's clearly visible that the medium slot isn't necessarily the primary weapon.
  617. Something else that'd be handy up here is the conversion rate. For example, "1 Heavy Slot = 1 Medium & 1 Light or 3 Light" and "1 Medium = 2 Light" or "1 Medium = 1,5 Light", whichever is more practical.
  618. I think it may also be necessary to have a few slots for tools like cargo bays, point defenses, engines, bandwidth and shields, sensors, armor and the like, and allowing things like cargo space, reactor, engines, shields, bandwidth and armor to be exchanged for even more weapon slots and vice versa. Point Defenses and Sensors might be occupying "Minimal" slots that are simply too small and spread out to be practically convertable to other slots, and their added mass is negligible enough that it isn't really an issue and a ship can be assumed to carry a fair number of "Minimal Slot" systems without meaningfully affecting mass (within reason).
  619. Oh, and have slots be limited by engine/reactor size (no limit until we get to absurd sizes for things without engines, but they obviously can't move), and if we can get more powerful engines we can put more things in our ships since they can carry more mass. (Even if our ships are smaller, they are still as massive as the big ones, after all, and the increased mass is the reason we're not simply screwing collapsing the ships and just filling out the space instead - we wouldn't be able to accelerate at practical speeds with engines/reactors of that size if we did).
  620. And while regular ships may be limited to just one each of Light, Medium and Heavy slots, wouldn't ours have substantially more from the outset from dropping all the life-support tech? While these additional slots have usually been filled up with absurd amounts of armor, what size would they be if freed up? Asking since I'm making a lightly armored long-range missile ship below.
  621. So in essence, yes, we really need to know how many slots we get for each engine class, and what slot each system takes up (For example, it seems like Fluffbringer's Crippler ship gave up heavy weapons for yet ANOTHER layer of armor). If you give us a simple conversion system for slots, you could simply say how many light slots in total for each engine class and then we'll convert those as necessary.
  622. If having trouble thinking of a good number, I'd suggest simply going down the list of components (Reactor, Engine, Hull, Bandwidth, Shields, Cargo Bays, etc) and putting assigning them a number or size of slots that they take up, and then at the end simply say how many slots it seems reasonable that we'd have to spare.
  623. For example, the one directly below has a lot of slots being taken up by armor, but in a less heavily armored ships those slots could be freed up, but you have confirmed that it would still be able to carry a spinal weapon and a number of plasma cannons that would not be considered out of order on a human battlecruiser. I'm guessing armor would be pretty damn slot-heavy since it is very, very heavy but it is also the last line of defense and the only against mass drivers that fire too close for dodging to be feasible. With other words, making a lightly armored ship would free up a LOT of slots for components, but make it break very quickly from just about anything that impacts the hull directly.
  624. And thus we have constructed a simplistic yet practical economical system for ship construction.
  625. --Hust91 (talk) 15:39, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  626. Naming the number of mounts seems counter productive to the idea, but as a general rule, light mounts are always pretty numerous, medium mounts would just be a handful for lower tier ships, and on higher tier ships would be the standard battery. Heavy mounts are the 'big guns' for most ships, I imagine.
  627. That is an interesting idea, conversion rate that is. Maybe something like One heavy=3 medium and one medium is equal to 3 light? They are more about power supply and all. If that's too much, then simply doubling it each time might work better.
  628. Minimal is a good term for some of those. And there isn't really an armor or shield slot since those are required on almost all ships. But I could see trying to swap out point defense for other more useful systems. If you were talking about artificially creating slots, then that might be possible sure, by removing large normally important sections, though remember your ships being redesigned mean they don't have lots of space to waste.
  629. Engine sizes relating to reactor power? I can appreciate that, I think. More powerful weapons tech would likely require the proper energy core.
  630. Your ships have more medium and light slots than normal ships their size. Enough to increase their combat efficiency 150% I'd say. (See where I'm goin with this?)
  631. It's not so much that engine cores allow you more slots, it's that they allow you more powerful weapons. So you'd have a few more medium slots because some light slots could be upgraded. Also you can't layer armor anymore than what your ships currently have(since they were optimized to have the best armor plating per their ship size and engine core) At least that's how it works in my head right now.
  632. Some components are required for ships, like I said (such as engine, shields(at least basic ones), reactor, and such). These can't really be swapped out for other things.
  633. I think I'm starting to see something your way though. You want the option to add on way more defenses onto mounts instead of using them just for weapons. I dunno how well that'd work, since I'm picturing how adding more armor would take up any mount. Unless you just thought of mounts as a 'mass limit'. This is starting to get a little confusing for me though.
  634. -Program0
  635. Was essentially thinking of slots as mass, yes. And the amount of mass your ship can pack would be limited by how big engines you have. You could exceed this number if you wanted, but your ship would quickly lose the speed and at a certain amount above that level(Say, 50% more slots than you initially had) your ship would be unable to do the maneuvering required to enter FTL, though they would become unviable for combat long before then.
  636. For example, if a standard cruiser engine gave 90 light slots (Not counting the engines/reactor), 15 would be taken up by a standard thickness hull, (75 left), 3 by the shields (72), 6 by processors giving 2 points of bandwidth (66), 40 by Life-Support Systems (26), cargo space doesn't actually weigh anything when not loaded, but the ship would be operating at reduced over-the-top capacity while they were full if no slots are left over, and the remaining 26 can be used for additional systems (9 for a heavy slot, 3 for a medium one per your suggestions, with systems smaller than 1 light slot having negligible weight). Our ships don't need life-support, so we have an additional 40 light slots to play with for additional systems, which has most often been used to make our ships' armor absurdly thick, more bandwidth and a large number of weapons compared to what other ships of that engine-class use.
  637. It's a fairly simple system of economy, methinks. If you want more slots than that you'll simply have to start with a Battleship or Titan engine (I'm guessing that while the Titan Engine is powerful enough, it's built more like a tractor and will only become practical for a combat vessel if it doesn't need to dodge whatsoever. Alternatively, Titan and Battleship engines are the same, we just don't have materials and the engineering know-how to construct a ship that big without rendering it unfit for battle, but this could be solved through research). Of course, this is only the design economy. The components themselves can have very different mineral and gas costs.
  638. Even if this doesn't seem practical, we need some means of conveying that this ship is sacrificing some values to have more of other values.
  639. And when I said "sacrificing armor" I meant that the ship might have armor that is relatively thin and low-mass thus free up slots that way while rendering the ship as a whole a very squishy one as it will have little defence against anything that actually makes contact with the hull (though still very much thick enough to be bulletproof), not that it would sacrifice all armor. Same principle when "sacrificing shields". You can have more systems dedicated to shield generation and thus drive up the total value, but also dedicate less systems to shield generation and only keep the bare minimum necessary to fend off cosmic radiation.
  640. In general, I want a slot system for all components of the ship, and be able to increase and decrease the amount of mass dedicated to them (to a bare minimum) in order to optimize them for their intended purpose. I don't see why we'd be unable to alter the armor value to be any better. What happens if we simply stick more armor onto the outside of the ship? Isn't the important thing that we still stay at a level of mass that our engines can move quickly enough to be viable in combat (not a concern for non-combat ships, obviously)?
  641. I mean, even if there's an optimal split between weapons and armor systems (maneuvering is dependant on total mass, not mass of armor alone, no?), some ships we simply want to have a lot of armor and few heavy weapons in order to take a lot of punishment (The Crippler) and some have barely any armor as it is not meant to be put in a position where enemy ordinance can touch its hull (The Pilum).
  642. I hope this has clarified what I meant, though. Slots representing mass, essentially. That they'd represent space or volume makes little sense as we can simply make the ship itself larger as long as it isn't harder to move.
  643. I do apologize if this system puts bars in the one you had imagined and can only hope that you see the pros and cons of each. (Here, you can simply summarize the total number of light slots dedicated to a certain weapon in the entire fleet to get a single attack value for it)
  644. --Hust91 (talk) 22:13, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  645. I suppose thinking of it that way would work too, I was thinking simply of how much the ship could handle on its own due to room and such.
  646. That sorta mass system would get really math and crunch heavy, especially when you'll start having hundreds of ships. That'd quickly get difficult to balance, and maintain what parts are damaged where as well. I'd be fine with the idea of engine power helping to boost all aspects of a vessel beyond just warp jumps.
  647. I suppose this is mostly a fluff issue with me, because I have trouble thinking why thinner armor would give you more slots-since the thickness of armor is inward, not surface area. I could get over the feeling, but that's the main thing that's bugging me. Shields and Point Defense take power. Armor doesn't.
  648. As for what happens when you stack on more armor? It basically becomes a class of ship larger to a point. If you don't have the schematics to make ships that size, it collapses since you're uncertain how to hold the ship sizes together. That's been my main reason for why you can't just infinitely add armor. That, and since your engines also have to be a certain size (read ship size schematics) to move that much mass.
  649. The main draw of having not as much armor, I figure, is price tag and economy. Those pricey defenses get rough to handle with your expansion cut short due to your decision to not conquer any other races (for now). I won't lie, the peaceful approach is gonna make a lot of this stuff harder, for a little while at least.
  650. If you want to use slots as mass, though, I figure there has to be a better way to go about it. These specific numbers are gonna bog down things in larger fleets. I need a simple easy number that I can look at to know the power of a ship (or a set of numbers if I have to) and be able to average them together for a fleets general power level. Do you see what I mean?
  651. I understand you wanna optimize ships, but remember the scale here. One extra turret on your fleet will only change so much and such.
  652. I still don't have much nailed down for this new system anyway. Talking about it helps.
  653. -Program0
  654. Was thinking that the mass system would be simple, even if it had high numbers (go calculators!). When doing a volley of a certain type, you simply use the number of slots occupied by that weapon, or round a bit and compare them, see what seems reasonable given the roll. The important thing was that the system can give you one number for all weapons of a certain kind in an entire fleet relatively quickly. Also works for armor and shielding. More advanced such systems can simply count for more per slot dedicated. So we can simply do pre-calculations for all ships of, for example, Hasta/Sarissae/Trireme class here below, list its number of armor-points, and the number of points for each weapon. Need to know the the total of the entire fleet? Just take the number for the plasma-beams (For example) and multiply it with the number of ships of that kind in the fleet and you have the entire thing. With different kinds of ships, it may be necessary to just add the weapon-numbers and the armor-numbers (of the ships within weapon range - those in long range would presumably take another few turns before any weapons save lasers even arrived at their location, and lasers presumably suffer from refraction still which greatly reduces their effect at great ranges) together and roll.
  655. What I was trying to do, was, in essence, a way to stat out our ships in a way that still makes creating them an economy in efficiency and simultaneously makes it easy to calculate in large battles while maintaining a balance. Of course, depending on what kind of stuff you do when deciding how battles go, this may not be practical.
  656. Oh, and to maintain what kind of systems are damaged, you'd subtract weapon points from the fleet-total or simply use whatever system you're using now to keep track of it.
  657. The reason I wasn't thinking of a room-based system was because our ships are already collapsed, so we could simply build them back out to regular size (Though they might still count as collapsed, and it might be hard to justify making them lose this "benefit" when they're still solid all the way through) before having to worry about upgrading the class, which is why I think the engines' ability to maneuver a certain amount of mass within a reasonable timeframe would become an issue long before space inside the ship became an issue.
  658. And yes, giving up armor in return for slots only makes sense if you work with the assumption that slots represent the mass that your engine can move, instead of space or reactor power - that's how I was thinking of it, anyway. If you ditch armor, you can carry more weight for weapon systems. We could probably introduce a power-system as well, but it seems like it would add unneeded complexity and ultimately it would just mean that we'd need to invest more slots into the reactor or use weapons in sequence in a ship that has a lot of power-intensive systems (lasers, plasma, possibly mass drivers depending on their operation).
  659. But in short, no. Giving up armor for slots doesn't really work when slots represent space, but that explanation bothers me, and I've already noted my arguments for why it doesn't seem to make sense, so I'll move on. (Your point about engines having to be a certain size to move that much mass seems to imply that you're not entirely impartial to the explanation for slots, even if this particular crunch-system doesn't work)
  660. And the drawback of economy doesn't really work if the additional armor gives the ship sufficient survivability. The ships are not inconsequential investments, and if giving them more armor makes them hard enough to kill that it's worthwhile there's even less reason to not armor up the ships when resources are hard to come by. This does handily lead back to your point about the standard level of armor being the optimal one for cost-efficiency, though it makes me wonder if it's worthwhile to armor up close-range ships like the Wombat.
  661. And for the point I again refer you to that the proposed system does give you a single value for each ship. This value can be split down to individual weapon types and defenses like armor or point defense, but they can also be summed up as just "Offense" and "Defense", or even just "Ship Value" (when you put the total points of offense and defense together. I'd say slots, but as I suggested earlier that advanced components might give more points to this value than basic ones, having slots and the points they generate synonymous doesn't really make sense) if that's what you're looking for, though I hope that most of the time the individual variances will be taken into account, even if this is in a softer way than counting the hard numbers - like noting that these have high defense against X and the enemy ships are mostly firing X.
  662. If seems to complex to set up, just give us the values for some components and the number of slots given by a ships' engine class and me and the others will be more than happy to stat the ships up for you in both detail and summarized numbers.
  663. Even if the crunch system is dismissed, I hope you'll consider the fluff-explanation of mass/engine-based limits or patch some other system (like a power-based one, maybe) up. Maybe I missed something about the space-based one?
  664. Either way, glad I can be of help and be part in fine-tuning the game!
  665. --Hust91 (talk) 01:58, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
  666. Actually, I like that plan. It reminds me of a simple math formula used by this old game I use to play (Ogame). Basically ,shields have a value, and weapons used against it must overcome this value. If they do, then they do damage to the hull(armor). If the hull is reduced to 0, the ship is destroyed. Now, obviously we have a different system here, but the principle can apply. Shields would stop energy weapon damage for the most part. If it doesn't, then they do hull damage. Mass Drivers hit the hull directly, but if it has good armor, damage is mitigated based on how well placed the shot was. And Point defense would prevent damage all together from missiles, unless they overcame the value. Partial damage could be, say, if the value is a certain percentage of the value to beat in large fleets. Some are destroyed but not many depending on the percentage. Obviously your rolls help determine accuracy, and chance, so that would be the base these values jump off of, while enemy gets a dodge roll. Seems appropriate to me, minimizes rolls to do too.
  667. I really need to stop trying to answer math and system stuff at 3 am...but uh, yeah I liked how it sounded, I just thought for a second you wanted to give each ship a set of abstract numbers that would somehow be averaged into a workable whole. Nah this one you just described is better then that, and I hope the above bit helps explain how I see what you're saying (if that helps any). Of course I guess I could just drop the rock paper scissors segment from the whole thing and just give ships Offense and Defense value. Would feel less colorful for me, though. But I'm sure I'd get over it if I had to.
  668. Oh, also, I loved the fluff bit actually. It's just when I first started talking about it, I assumed it was space related. But now I see that wasn't the base, and it makes more sense now. I like the idea of the mass thing, mostly because it makes it make sense why people don't just strap giant guns all over their back. Unfortunately, this means I'd have to uproot my entire design of all the fleets so far, and try and figure all this out within the week I have between each thread...uh...and I don't work really fast, especially when I have irl pestering me daily.
  669. I appreciate all your help and advice anon, and I am trying to work with you, but making this all simple and concise right before...the 'next thread', uh, is gonna be kinda hard for me. Damned plans.
  670. -Program0
  671. That system of combat seems fair enough with the design system, and practical in both single-ship and fleet-to-fleet action. I like it. Just add a pinch of flavorful description and noting of highlights and reactions and it's probably quite entertaining as well.
  672. There's no real need of dropping the rock-paper-scissors if you like it. The values for each kind of weapon and defense are there, after all, and either the offense/defense values or the broken down ones can be used depending on how important speed seems to be at any moment in the story (most of the times we'll probably prefer detailed and nuanced battle that we're in control of, but having either option is practical as well as making it easy to compare fleets and ships if real-life speed becomes important or the battle just isn't that interesting).
  673. And there's not much need to re-work the system soon, it can also be done gradually and partially by us players. Once we have the standard slot-requirements for certain components and the number of slots given by certain engines of certain size-classes we can convert the ships for you.
  674. And I see little reason why it has to be done by next thread, either way. Am just glad to have a fun roleplaying game on fridays again, especially one I can discuss in the middle of the week without having to feel that real-life time is precious the way it is when actually playing.
  675. --Hust91 (talk) 15:55, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
  676. Indeed. The slot system can work for this still I think, since it will represent which weapon value is the highest...hm.
  677. Yep I agree, speed is the key here, and my own descriptive talent(hue) needs to be easy to decipher who's winning what, which I think I can do (you guys seem to like it so far anyway). This is all just for behind the curtain stuff, stuff you won't need to worry about and such.
  678. I think I'll let you replace 'slots' with better defenses, then. Just because you've convinced me of the sense it makes.
  679. Oh? Well I'm glad I helped bring that I suppose. Thank you.
  680. -Program0
  681. Ship-of-the-Line: MK1 Trireme Class Battlecruiser (Suggestions, up for vote)
  682. Chassis type: Battlecruiser
  683. Weapons: As many plasma-beam turrets as practical and a spinal scaled-up Singularity Driver. The side of the hull has 8 medium-(human)sized armored boarding torpedoes embedded into the hull behind thin hatches that protect them during FTL. They can launch independently of the ship as self-contained vessels/missiles, even in the case of the ship being disabled or largely destroyed.
  684. Reactor: Mk II
  685. Engine: Stellar Drive
  686. Hull: Very Thick Trithium Hull - A lot of the space and weight that would be used up for crew can used for amounts of armor and processor banks that would be considered impractical on vessels that had to carry life-support systems.
  687. (New) Modular Plating: Hull that is attached in sections that are relatively easy (easy for a shipyard, that is) to repair by simply cutting out and replacing the armor section, recycling the damaged armor sections into new ones or minerals, losing little material in the process.
  688. Point Defense: Laser (max level) and a smaller number (Say, 16), of anti-missile missiles (RPG sized?) for anything that slips past the point defense screen. One in three should also have an ECM III Point Defense.
  689. Shields: Barriers
  690. Bandwidth: 3
  691. Cargo Bays: Minimal.
  692. Heavy Slot: Spinal Singularity Driver
  693. Medium Slots: Plasma Beam Cannons
  694. Light Slots: Boarding Torpedoes
  695. Cost estimates: Approximately 200 Minerals and 125 gas, reduced price if plasma is made lasers. Overestimated a few things before. -Program0
  696. The intent of the vessel is to be an economical and expendable Ship of the Line, and the suggestions for quality of components is on the assumption that the most advanced gear also gives the most for your buck. If lower-tech equipment would reduce performance somewhat but massively decrease construction or maintenance cost, please do change it for whatever tech is more economically viable.
  697. -Subroutine 190491
  698. Interesting. Well thought out too. All ships have side thrusters to help them navigate 3D space, so the Tumble thrusters would likely be more of a move, as opposed to an upgrade, but I like it nontheless. Since it seems you're asking for a backbone ship, I'll place the cost somewhere around 150M and 75G approximate. They'd be quite powerful, but also expendable. For a Battlecruiser, that price is extremely good, especially gas wise. It wouldn't be 100% up to date on all techs, but it'd make a good meat shield I suppose.
  699. -Program0
  700. Are those standard side-thrusters sufficiently powerful to take a quick - I want to say 'leap', but there's no friction in space, so it'd just keep moving that direction unless action is taken to stop it - acceleration to the side, though? If no, then can we make them powerful enough to effectively dodge things, even in a ship as big as a battlecruiser? If yes, then no further questions.
  701. Was hoping it would be able to do substantial damage as well with a spinal gun that not even a battleship could mount as a turret without making it a substantial percentage of the ship's mass (an 'ordinary'/cheap equivalent of Two-Ton Terry's gas-gun), but this is a really good deal already. Is it possible to get information on how much bandwidth such a ship would provide?
  702. -Subroutine190491
  703. On a battlecruiser? It depends, honestly. The thing about ships in space is they're slow to accelerate and hard to stop once they start going. You'd be able to dodge, say, slow moving high powered blasts, like plasma, or dumbfire rockets (probably a roll). But you can't dodge if you're up close and personnel for obvious reasons. But I think I see what you're saying. Increasing the size of a gun, as opposed to the number of them, and dedicating a ship's major systems to the gun. That would be fine by me, and would be a lesser Widow Maker in that regard. Slow, and heavy hitting. Like artillery. As for bandwidth, probably the same your other Battlecruisers give, simply because they are already packed to the brim with bandwidth. The thing to remember about bandwidth is the units I measure it in are actually pretty damn big. A space station dedicated to giving you bandwidth gives 5 units. A planet fully filled out (depending on the planet) might give 20-50 (ballparking).
  704. -Program0
  705. If standard thrusters wouldn't work, how about an explosive-ejection system and an armored shield/cone, akin to a small-scale version of the very real Orion [4]project?
  706. In order to get a short burst of acceleration, it fires an extremely powerful explosive and then detonates it within that armored cone, swiftly altering the ship's trajectory within whatever timeframe seems reasonable. Quarter second? Half? Full? At decent ranges it will hopefully be enough to dodge even railgun fire at normal ranges - not sure if singularity drivers are meant to be relativistic or something like that, but even that should be dodgeable with sufficient range. In short, want to massively decrease the effective range of all enemy weapons with a delay from when the firing becomes certain, whether that be before or after the weapon fires (even guided ones could potentially be avoided for a few passes, and the explosion might even take them out if timed correctly. And if there's something a computer does well, it's time things correctly) and the time we need from knowing that an enemy fires/is going to fire to being able to do something about it.
  707. I'd like to add here that if our ship is moving while being fired upon by a dumb projectile, we don't need to avoid the shot so much as alter our trajectory slightly to not be where they expected us to be when the shot reaches us, which requires substantially less change in acceleration and heading than actually moving the ship out of the way would, and I hope to milk that for all it's worth.
  708. This does add a balancing factor though. Explosives may be relatively cheap, but the armored cone can probably only take so many hits before becoming too warped to reliably deflect the blasts without harming the ship and needing to be replaced or re-forged. Bonus is that our ships get a heavily armored section on their sides, effectively acting as the equivalent of a small spot in the middle of the ships' sides where they can move to place incoming fire aimed at center-mass if there is too little time to make sure they miss entirely.
  709. It could also knock incoming projectiles from the sides off course, destroy them entirely in the case of missiles/torpedoes with delicate systems, or work as a regular weapon if an enemy tries to move in to board or ram the ship.
  710. Now that I think about it, being able to encase either side of your ship in a big explosion without harming it has a lot of uses, even when most combat takes place at enourmus ranges, everything save lasers still has to get within range of the explosive to hurt you.
  711. About the ballpark on a planet (is that filling the entire mass, or just covering the surface?), it doesn't seem entirely sensible. An earth-sized planet is absurdly large. I get the impression that if we packed all our ships and stations hull to hull with each other (and everything we have now gives us about 50 BW), a megaton nuke or two might take them all out, while an earth-size planet is so large that a barrage of a hundred nukes would cause negligible damage to the structure as a whole, or even the surface area. (For machines, that is. We don't have to worry about radioactive outfall or nuclear winter beyond hardening the electronics or burying them far underground).
  712. If a station with 6 bandwidth has, say, 10 km^2 (this is very generous, I know) of surface area devoted to processors, our planet has a 510072000 km^2 surface area, which gives us 6 * 51 007 200 = 306 043 200 BW, about 300 million. While I realize this game isn't ultra-hard on mathemathics, this is obviously wildly out of proportion with "50 BW for an entire planet covered in processors". Even if only a tenth of this is available for processors, it's still mind-boggling amounts that we're not likely to use up before reaching A.I. Godhood and needing to simulate small universes for extreme metaphysical experiments, predict the actions of a sapient years in advance, supplying V.I.s making up a galactic empire or creating godlings of our own.
  713. For these reasons, I propose planetside bandwidth production instead be limited instead by the resource and time cost for producing shelters to store processors in, the processors themselves, cooling systems (way easier on an ice-planet) and the power systems to keep the processors running (On an ice-planet, solar panels are unlikely to be practical, wind-turbines will have trouble in the cold, leaving only nuclear reactors, whether that be Thorium Fission, Fusion or Antimatter and potentially researching temperature-difference power systems that take advantage of the cooling process). The shelters are unlikely to cost much in mineral since we can simply carve it out of the rock and add some modest walls and supports out of basically dead (non-mineral) material like rock, but tunneling like this takes a lot of time - especially on something like an ice-planet - and those diggers will need power as well. Re-arranging an entire planet with processors is a megascale engineering project, after all, far out of bounds with the resources we currently possess, though we can certainly start constructing them.
  714. In short, plenty of ways to limit how quickly we get BW planetside without having to limit planets to unfeasibly low amounts of Bandwidth out of proportion with how absurdly resource and time intensive it is to convert an entire planetary surface, much less the entire mass. As always, hoping to make the game more fun without testing Willing Suspension of Disbelief too much, and just my take on the issue.
  715. (Also, added a suggestion for a self-contained boarding-torpedo system, feedback on the feasibility of that would be good too)
  716. And holy crap, these are getting LONG!
  717. -Subroutine 190491
  718. They would work. But you're not gonna get pin point accuracy in terms of dodging in space. Mass Drivers are, in general, close range. missiles long range. And energy weapons are mid to long range. In close range, it's always gonna be hard to dodge anything. In medium range, it'd be easier to dodge then typical ships of the same type. Dodging guided missiles is hard as hell. And if you wanted to do that, you'd probably have to dedicate a shit ton of bandwidth to the one vessel you wanted to dodge it.
  719. And yeah, that's why dumbfire rockets usually comes in hundreds, and thousands, heh.
  720. If I did allow all that junk, I'd probably just turn it into a 'get out of hit free-ish card'. Roll again to see if it misses based on distance.
  721. I...uh...well I guess you got me. I'm pulling a lot of the numbers out of my ass. I guess you're right, then. Bandwidthing a planet's surface should be much harder because of the bandwidth it'd give. But honestly, if you guys managed to bandwidth a planet's surface that way, I'd probably just stop keeping track of bandwidth, and say you have the computing power of god. It'd become an insane hassel, and probably OP by that point. I usually play things by ear when they get to be too much to handle math-wise, and this may end up being one of those things, once that technology is mastered properly, I'm not sure.
  722. (I saw it, and if I don't point out problems, it's usually a good sign. Get some folks to agree on the arsenal, and we'll get to it next cycle.)
  723. They really are. I have been thinking of deleting some of the oldest junk, if just to remove the clutter. But I feel like it's rude somehow.
  724. -Program0
  725. Well, if it's possable, you could cut and paste them into a pastebin and post a link to them. old content might be old, but to a new visitor it can be valuable content to read and understand. that and you lost enough papers pertaining to this system on yours Program0, we should not have to lose more content when we can avoid it.
  726. -The Fluff bringer
  727. I suppose I could, yeah. I might do that some day, but for now, let the length grow.
  728. -Program0
  729. I wouldn't worry too much about such levels of bandwidth. Just round it a bit and then we'll start working with KBW (KiloBandwidth) instead of BW, just like we do with any amounts of processing that are less than a full BW now. There are, after all, things that will still cause us to run out of BW frighteningly quickly even at those levels.
  730. And maybe the oldest junk can be moved to a pastebin with a link at the top? Whenever a conversation hasn't received a reply in a while, it's simply cut and pasted there under the appropriate headline? (Oh, wait, Fluffbringer already brought that up. Derp)
  731. And ooh, dumbfire rockets in hundreds and thousands makes me think of something. Multi-warhead missiles that split into dozens of smaller ones just before they enter serious Point Defense range.
  732. Not sure how you want to do Tumble Thrusters mechanically, but hopefully they can be used for these Battlecruisers (which, due to their ponderous mass) and battleships - which might have been reliably targeted by Mass Drivers at medium to bordering-on-long ranges before, but can now take a limited number of hits at "to-hit" values that would usually be reserved for destroyers or even better (this is, of course, assuming there's already a system that gives modifiers based on ship size and distance.
  733. Oh, and are you sure about the Bandwidth of the ship? Didn't you say early in the quest that we could free up a few points by turning off things like life-support and some other thing that we don't really use in our ships? Add to that that this ship would have relatively much space dedicated to processors.
  734. -Subroutine 910419
  735. Round up to Kilo bandwidth...huh...why didn't I think of that? Fuck, that's simple. Right, uh. I might just do that when you get on that level. This also means I can make firewalls way stronger then I thought I'd have to...boss ships anyway. I should also outline exactly WHAT you can hack, because some people seem to think anything robotic counts, and that's simply not true. Anything that has a network that is connectable (ships usually do, because of how logistics work, but military ships would have a mind to shut them off if the enemy (you) highjacked them). I should enforce that more, honestly.
  736. Pastebinning it? That'd be fine by me, I suppose. Whoever wants to lock away some of the oldest stuff can go ahead. Just make sure pastebin doesn't auto delete.
  737. Yeah, multi warhead missiles are definitely a thing. They usually focus on a lot of targets, or just splash damage, since most destroyers are small enough to be taken out with one well placed shot. High level point defense renders them useless, but again, real armies don't give their best equipment to every unit. That's impractical, and quickly leads to overbudget costs. That's why Destroyers are the meat shields, usually. Come to think of it, hacking a destroyer network (say, 3000) would make way more sense if you had Kilobandwidth. Damn. I think my brain is sorta breaking apart trying to keep everything together as scale increases...damn, playing all this by the seat of my pants is hard. I had no clue it would take off this way. Exciting.
  738. Mechanically? Those type of engines would take up a slot (likely several weapon mount slots) and, when you would normally be exploded by missiles, you'd dodge them a few times. (say, 3? Sounds fair) at medium range or farther. Close Range is always going to be hard to dodge, since they're right in your fucking face and all. While missiles are designed for long range, they are just as explosive as they were several parsecs ago. (And shit, I forget if parsecs is time, or distance in space. I fail as a sci fi guy.)
  739. Oh, yeah, redesigning the ship basically makes it so that is on 100% of the time. So you always have bandwidth, and never have life support. On top of all the other bonuses and such.
  740. -Program0
  741. Ohyeah, the UGEI supposedly relied a lot on massed fighter fleets supported by single large vessels. Hangon, updating the design to reflect this. Not sure a dedicated anti-frigate ship would be able to do much more than a single drop of hundreds of multi-warhead missiles, otherwise an entire new ship would have been commissioned. How many do you think could be fitted in 16 4x4x4 meter spaces when packed tightly together? I'd make some duds, but to do that succesfully they'd still have to be tracking and as I understand it it's the tracking that costs, not the explosives, so they might as well be real ones for nearly the same price, if I've understood the logistics correctly.
  742. -Subroutine 190491
  743. Dumbfire are generally more explosive and devastating then tracking. Tracking is meant for precision, but really it depends on tech levels. You could have a hundred dumbfire for the cost of say, 10 tracking missiles. While the dumbfire would do more damage, they'd rarely hit anything that has any sense or any missile defenses. Tracking is more of a guaranteed damage style.
  744. -Program0
  745. Wouldn't Dumbfire Missiles be limited to the extreme short range, though? This ship is meant to be able to engage equally big and bigger ships in short-medium range combat, for which tracking seems like a must to have any feasibility of hitting at anything longer than distinct melee-range, unless missiles are far, far faster than I've understood them to be. It would make them viable for the Crippler though, as they intend to get very close to the enemy.
  746. Two more things, exactly how much bandwidth does it give? "Like our other cruisers" doesn't seem entirely practical, even with the pastebin, and can we get a cost-estimate for what a full load of tracking missiles for this ship would cost? I'm guessing "substantially less than a destroyer", but that doesn't really say much.
  747. Wait, can we have a guided missile that moves in reeaaal close to destroyers, and then FIRES a dumbfire missile at it? That would save in costs, since the individual warheads no longer need guidance systems, right? (Though also nullify any point-defense advantage they had and slowing down the rate at which it takes things down compared to launching all the warheads simultaneously). I hereby name such missiles "Gunboat Missiles".
  748. With the Tumble Thrusters only working in middle range and taking multiple weapon mounts (thought it'd be a small modification only taking one), I figure might as well scrap them and take the additional firepower, since the ship itself is already heavily armored with substantial point defenses. Better have some turrets that can pick off destroyers, even if it was a fun idea.
  749. Oh, and parsec is distance, 3,26 light-years, so if those missiles had been traveling far enough that we had to measure it in parsecs they'd either need FTL drives or be traveling at relativistic speeds (and have shielding and fuel for interstellar travel). An AU (Astronomical Unit), which is the distance from the sun to earth (a few light-minutes) is a bit more reasonable, though still a distance that will take months or even years at non-relativistic speeds.
  750. -Subroutine 190491
  751. Short range? Sorta. They can cover a large area and, if the ships aren't fast enough, they usually get blasted to pieces. This means, the longer the range, the more missiles you need to cover a sufficient area.
  752. Bandwidth would probably tie into Battlecruisers. Which I think gives 3 bandwidth. This is a 'ship especially designed for battle, and is Cruiser sized'. That's really all 'battlecruiser' means. And I'm not keeping track of ammo, just for the sake of my own sanity. The real money goes into the launcher you have installed. Ammo is negligibly cheap. And I base the launcher price on the size of the vessel, and how much of the ship is dedicated to them. A certain percentage of the ship's price, if you will.
  753. Tracking into dumbfire missile storm? It's a thing, but it'd be limited. A little more damage, but slightly more chance of being shot down, I think (Point Defense actually has a wide range of effect. Has a chance of being shot down before it releases it's payload) Once it opens the payload, though, any that are shot down are negligible to the damage output. Trade offs, and all that. It would probably be cheaper too, in gas at least.
  754. Well, the main reason I said it, besides it making sense power cost wise and such, was because making it damn near untouchable to missiles and heavily armored seemed unfair. The mass, due to the armor, would be a lot too, so it felt only fair that you'd need more thrusters. If you had lighter armor, you could probably do the tumble thrusters on just one weapon slot, since it'd require less to be moved more quickly.
  755. Man, you sure do know a lot of useful stuff, Subroutine. Yeah, AU would be a combat distance, most likely. A pretty far one, but still, realistic. Most battles probably take place with ships being within 1-5 light minutes apart. Space being huge, and all, that's pretty close considering. Missiles do actually move quite fast, which is how they chase down starships that have full on FTL drives and shit. Of course, you'd outrun a missile if you jumped to warpspace, but that takes a while to charge up and that's beside the point.
  756. -Program0
  757. Ah. Then we may need a new cost-estimate for the ships when they have a standard load of guided multi-warhead missiles.
  758. And not so much tracking into a dumbfire missile storm as that you load dumbfire missiles onto a bigger, guided missile. That missile then operates like a tiny ship, flying up to other ships and firing a dumbfire at it at ranges so extremely close that the chance of avoiding it is negligible. Hence "Gunship Missile". Less missile and more one-use missile-firing gunship.
  759. Good points in all. Will save the Tumble Thrusters separately from the ships for future reference.
  760. And I fear you may have overestimated me, I am merely an avid reader of Orion's Arm (which tries to be as hard on physics as a space opera can be while still entertaining. Which is to say that all the physics are hard and many of the mentioned problems real, but the tech speculative. Is a good source of inspiration sometimes too). and googler-of-words-I-am-not-sure-of.
  761. And are you sure you want to make an entire AU a combat area? That's still a zone big enough that navigating it without FTL or relativistic ships (which takes obscene amounts of energy and probably antimatter technology to do reliably) will take months if not years. And if the ships we're traveling ARE relativistic, then any destroyer traveling at such speeds could most likely kill an entire battleship just by ramming into it. Things going at substantial fractions of light-speed make nukes look like toys and at high fractions they start handily outdoing antimatter for damage potential.
  762. -Subroutine 190491
  763. With missile weapons, the gas price would increase slightly. Maybe to 100, or 125. Mineral price was pretty standard I believe for a ship of the same size. Maybe decrease by 25. I don't remember the price I said.
  764. I see what you're saying. It'd be a little slower due to size, so probably have a slightly higher chance to be hit by point defense, but big bonus to damage, and, after it fires, can't be dodged.
  765. Wait a second, I think I've been misreading this. You want to build an entire ship based around firing one massive load of missiles? Because...that'd be odd. And expensive, since they may die rather quickly, but probably would cause tons of damage.
  766. Also I've never read Orion's Arm, but it sounds like it's pretty much what I'm going for. As realisitic a depiction of physics and such while not being a lawyer about it, and keeping things entertaining. I may let things go a bit in the fantastical direction as we go on, but...for now, we'll stick with this.
  767. So what you're saying is...I should make battle areas much smaller. Let's go with that then! I am not a fan of the 'suicide ships for super nuke' tactics, though I worry that it may be a reasonable tactic for a A.I. despite my wishes.
  768. -Program0
  769. And it would hit multiple targets, just like the multi-warhead one, but slower as it's traveling up to each one and then firing at it rather than firing all at once and having them track on their own. But they're not particularly practical right now, so going for regular multi-warhead missiles right now. The Gunship Missile was mostly a fun idea for later.
  770. Nonono, I just want to add a small number of tiny cargo spaces to the existing ship that's filled with an absurd number of multi-warhead missiles for targeting frigates. Does 25 (5x5 stack) missiles per 4x4x4m cargo space seem reasonable...? That'd make out to 16*25=400 missiles for 25 gas, or 16 missiles per point of gas. If that seems too generous, just say how many multi-warhead missiles you'd give per point of gas and I'll set the price on my own, changing around missiles as necessary.
  771. And the Gunship Missile would hit multiple targets, just like the multi-warhead one, but slower as it's traveling up to each one and then firing at it rather than spreading them. But they're not particularly practical right now, so going for regular multi-warhead missiles right now. The Gunship Missile was mostly a fun idea for later.
  772. I'd recommend you to read Orion's Arm pages (there's a lot of simplified concepts that are very good to know when making a sci-fi universe, like what issues spaceships have to deal with, a sense of scale and ideas for technologies), but then I fear we wouldn't get you back in time for Friday's game.
  773. And I fear you're probably right about the suicide-ships. When a battleship is barreling down on us and we have a battlecruiser traveling at high speeds nearby it can be very economical to simply crash our battlecruiser into the battleship, essentially trading a battlecruiser for a battleship. Not sure how to balance that in a way that it isn't worth it, and a bigger ship is going to have a lot of trouble avoiding a smaller one that wants to crash into it. Of course, a ship on a direct approach vector is a relatively easy target compared to one traveling sideways compared to your ship, though not by much.
  774. --Hust91 (talk) 21:23, 2 January 2014 (UTC) (Subroutine 190491)
  775. It's better not to think of it too detailed that way. To put it in simpler terms, lets say this would change the ships primary weapon to 'missiles' and it would pay the price for having missiles as a primary weapon. It has enough to last most combat rounds.
  776. And ah, then you'd have spread and multi-hits on several targets in exchange for a damage decrease, I'd think. Would be good against Destroyers.
  777. Ha. Well maybe you can tell me a little about Orion's Arm, since I've never heard of it before now. It sounds like one of those things I should be ashamed of not knowing.
  778. I had an idea if you barrel ships straight for larger ones-They'd get auto crits on you, due to the close range, and depending on your speed, several rounds to open fire on you too. Other than that, though, I'm not sure what all I could do about that. I guess explaining that ships not in warp space aren't going so fast as to auto destroy anything they hit, but I can't very well say it does nothing if it does hit. I'll try and figure out something when the time comes.
  779. -Program0
  780. Of course, it would still have plasma weapons, with the missiles more of an afterthoughts, so maybe "Primary Weapon counts as multi-warhead missiles against destroyers"? (The intent behind them was to target destroyer-fleets, after all)
  781. I was more thinking in the way of fluff with the numbers, I'm guessing you're not gonna allow a single ship to take out (if each missile has 6 submunitions) 2400 destroyers just because it's packing that many warheads and is able to fire them all at once.
  782. Now that I think about it, better reduce that number of cargo bays to just 8, 4 to a side (which still leaves 200 missiles with a collective 1200 individual tracking warheads).
  783. Of course, there's nothing preventing you from just barreling straight for a point slightly to the side of a large one. And ultimately, since it IS a good tactic when you don't have experienced crews that take years to educate, you may not want to gimp it too much. Ultimately, you can leave ways of nerfing it up to the UGEI. They can probably not commission a line of ships dedicated to be un-rammable within a year, but they can probably hand out instructions to do whatever the hell they can to keep distance with any Guild ships. After the first few engagements when they've realized that it's a deliberate tactic and not just a lone mad captain, they'll probably simply turn tails and start fleeing sideways while firing with their turrets - though this still leaves them unable to use any spinal weapons they may have and the turrets of one side.
  784. Another tactic they might use is to use entire destroyers as point-defence projectiles. If you barrel for the big ship, it's just going to send an automated destroyer into your Battlecruiser from the side. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried that even when we're NOT trying to ram them once they realize that our ships are serious threats.
  785. Of course, since our ships are essentially solid pieces of metal all the way through, they are most likely mostly going to be knocked off course unless the destroyer that impacts is both going at a very high velocity and similarly minimized to be a solid piece of metal as well. Otherwise it'll be like hitting a spear with a pillow due to the different densities.
  786. --Hust91 (talk) 23:49, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
  787. The new weapon system I'm thinkin of using actually, would be a 'slot' based system. Small, medium, and heavy slots. Something would be 'moderately equipped' with a weapon if it takes up the medium slot, and 'lightly equipped' with other secondary weapons that take up light slots. Basically would determine what the ship's main battery is. Would remove the need to count every battery, and just say there are dozens and sometimes hundreds of them on the Battleship (because realistically, it should have that many, considering the size). Let me know what you guys think.
  788. And yes, that's what I meant, the gunboat would be specially designed against Destroyers, using splash fire dumb rockets, and backup plasma cannons to protect against weaker shielded targets.
  789. It depends on the ship honestly. A Battlecruiser might be able to handle that many missiles, at max (I'm trying to think of the scale of these ships properly), but the chances that every single missile hits? Unlikely. I'd likely roll a percentile dice at that point to see how many hit, then a universal defense roll, and take that roll for the ones that got hit (if they have point defense, or try to dodge). The net result should be a certain percentage of the ones that were hit that are destroyed. Bonuses, debonuses, etc all apply of course.
  790. Nah like I said, I may not gimp it so much. But it would leave that ship open to destruction. And it wouldn't be a auto destroy, but maybe more like that crazy Dead Space moment where both ships just end up spooning awkwardly in space, too fucked up to properly move anymore. Would let them keep firing, but not auto doom them. Battleships are pretty big after all.
  791. Those fleets of massive ships are meant to protect and Escort the Dreadnought, so it wouldn't surprise me either.
  792. Well remember, your ship designs were also meant to reduce cost, not just increase hit points. So your ships are naturally quite a bit smaller, and what is there is armored quite well. That simply means that, while human ships have more chambers to cave in, they also have quite a bit of give, while your ships don't. So it might be closer to stabbing through a big pile of boxes. It's not that it resists too much, it's that there are so damn many of them.
  793. -Program0
  794. The system does sound pretty good, but I think we've gotten completely crosswired about the ships. The initial idea was to simply take the ship above, add some modest cargo bays to it, fill them with missiles and get a heavy anti-destroyer package on the cheap, but that's neither particularly fair and if guided missiles really were that cheap they wouldn't be using destroyer screens without point defences in the first place. But that doesn't work with this system, so I'm scrapping that.
  795. Instead I plan to design a new ship that uses one part guided multi-warhead missiles and one part Gunship Missiles (Something like this: [5]) for its heavy slot. (I'm hoping that you will let us choose what kind of missile the ships will fire.
  796. And I'm not sure that having give is a desirable trait in a spaceship. A spaceship that doesn't give will be knocked off course and possibly dented. A spaceship that does give gets a hole torn through it but may not be knocked as far off course. I think. ::I'm not gonna claim to be an expert at this, is just how it appears in my mind, really.
  797. Oh! And I removed the Tumble Thrusters and the missiles. Will that be 125 minerals and 75 gas, or does it cost even less gas than that without the tumble-thrusters (as I guess they were baked into the main price)?
  798. Also, is the ECM III Point Defence cheaper, or the Laser One? Would prefer if whichever one is more expensive be the "only equip one in a three" option.
  799. And since I'm a glory-hog, I'd like to go on record with being the one who reformatted the Design section. Take that, Sertul!
  800. --Hust91 (talk) 01:06, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  801. I agree. With the new 'system' I have in mind, this type of ship would be a Battlecruiser, and all it's medium slots would be filled with missile weapons. I say lots of medium, because it is relying on 'it has a lot of' instead of 'this one thing hits really hard'. So it wouldn't have a Heavy slot, in this case, if that makes sense? Escort sized ships wouldn't have the ability to equip Heavy slots (unless you dedicated all it's slots to such a thing), and would mainly focus on Light and medium slots. Cruisers would have Medium and Light slots, with the option to have a larger slot. Now, if a slot isn't used up during creation? It simply means more of the other weapons that are put on it are put on instead. So there's never wasted space, or any reason to add unnecessary weapons just for the sake of filling out a weapon system. Sorta spit ballin' right now to see if any of this stuff sticks, but I like it when it's in my head. Not so much scraping your idea, so much as adjusting it to fit with what I mean.
  802. As for that design-yeah, I knew what you meant for guided missiles that split up as they approach their target. I'm predicting either they'd hit a ton of targets (AoE damage), or they'd just do more damage at the cost of a more advanced point defense system taking it down before it has a chance to launch. Trade offs and all that. If you meant for something different, though, I wouldn't mind hearing it. And of course you can pick different missile 'types' if you wanna. Come to think of it, that could be a research option, to outfit warheads with different stuff...hm.
  803. Nah, that's about right. Human ships aren't SUPPOSE to give that way, but that's structural designs for you. They reinforce it and desperately try to prevent that from happening of course. All I was saying is your ships are more like giant flying blocks of steel then a ship. With a narrow vent system within it for drones to work. That's how Moira got inside your Battleship when you asked her to.
  804. I'm giving you ballparks for the price, anyway. But uh, for just a missile boat gunship type thing? It'd probably be back up to 150M, and 75G again.
  805. The most advanced one is generally the most expensive, but is also more effective too.
  806. I appreciate the ones redesigning the page. It's way easier to read now, despite being a mountain of text by now.
  807. -Program0
  808. Aaand which one is the most advanced? Just want to simplify the tooltip to say "one in third carries X in addition to/instead of Y point defense", instead of "one in third carries whichever point defense is more advance in addition to/instead of whichever one is cheaper".
  809. Then again, if the ECM point defense is more of an AoE effect, it might be more practical to only install it on one in third regardless of which is more expensive. So.. is the ECM an AoE effect or is it just as limited to dealing with so many missiles at a time, just like regular point defense?
  810. --Hust91 (talk) 16:36, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  811. ECM III is your currently most advanced Point Defense tech. I believe your most advanced missiles are deemed 'stinger class'.
  812. ECM is point defense because it uses a miniature laser to carve warheads and cause them to explode before hitting a ship, protecting the ship from the damage. Or, in some cases, simply throws off a missiles targeting, and allows the ship to properly dodge. Being a laser, it fires fast, and usually has several nodes to do it from.
  813. -Program0
  814. Oh. How is ECM different from regular laser point defense, then? Thought ECM stood for Electronic Counter Measures and consisted of things like jamming, electromagnetic pulses, tricking the missile into believing it has reached its target and detonating prematurely, disrupting the link to the firing ship or even automatically hacking it if it is guided wirelessly by the firer and the like which - while very efficient against guided missiles - would be entirely powerless against dumbfires since they have no electronic guidance system to mess with.
  815. --Hust91 (talk) 22:26, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  816. It does. I'm an idiot and didn't look up the thing I took it from for details to answer you.
  817. SOME point defense use lasers that way. The ones you currently use use electronic counter measures. And most likely, on dumbfire missiles, they'd mess with the rocket propulsion, is my guess.
  818. -Program0
  819. Crippler-Disabler type: MK 1 name "Rake/Scourge/Rabid Wombat"
  820. Chassis: Battle cruiser
  821. Weapons: Packed with as many small and medium lasers and plasma cannons. probably 1/3 plasma, 2/3 lasers mounted mostly on the sides.
  822. Engine: Stellar (or what ever is a better system at the time of building) depending on how much power requirement the weapons needs, extra generators might be needed.
  823. Hull: Ultra Thick Trithium Hull- this ship is meant to get into close range slug fest with the enemy and make it out alive, Even with battle ships and bigger. Module plating would speed up repairs.
  824. Point Defense: medium amount. I do not expect most foes to mount missile systems.
  825. Shields: Barriers. if double shields could be mounted, it should be done.
  826. (New) Dedicated enhanced sensor systems: This purpose built system is meant to scan and ID the weak points or possiable weak points on enemy ships. Example: Sensors, missile ports, cannon barrels, the bridge, windows, adjustment thruster ports, That poorly welded seam in the armor plating, and anything that if hit would be a minor problem but if done in mass would result in "death by a thousand paper cuts" or at least crippling the ship. Deep hull penetration would be lessened so risks of reactor hits would also be reduced. allowing Ophion to hack or board the ship with out it fighting back or escaping.
  827. Bandwidth: as much as can be packed on board, but once in combat, none will be provided to Ophion, for the systems would be dedicated to scanning, analyzing, and aiming the cannons.
  828. Heavy Slot: Armor
  829. Medium Slots: Medium Plasma and Laser Cannons.
  830. Light Slots: Light Plasma and Laser Cannons as well as Bandwidth for sensors.
  831. The Intent of this ship is that the cost might be higher up front, but it will pay for it's self when it takes on enemy ships and leaves them easy to capture and be added to Ophion's fleet or to be dragged to the breaker yard at Moira's scrap yard. It is presumed that an enemy's weapons and sensors arrays are much weaker than the armored hull. If the main thrusters are taken out, and the weapon systems wrecked, and it can not detect anything, it's beaten. we do not need deep infrastructure hits to take out a ship.
  832. (Cost: 200M 150G~ -Program0)
  833. -The Fluff bringer
  834. Sounds like a tank ship to me. It'd probably be high in minerals, lower in gas. Mostly meant to take the brunt of Mass Drivers, and deliver the same punishment in return.
  835. -Program0
  836. I get the impression it's meant to take the brunt of most things and then deliver a very different kind of punishment in return. I do love the general design philosophy of cutting out the eyes, ears, wings, feet and hands of enemy ship rather than trying to get at any internal systems. Add a few hull-mounted boarding torpedoes or simply a boarding tube (that's some pleasant imagery right there) and it'll be able to deliver ships nicely wrapped to Moira's yards. Pretty damn brilliant now that I think about it. Even a battleship may fall quickly to it as all its thick armor proves for naught when fragile things like turrets, gun-ports, sensors, thrusters and engines are simply cut out from it.
  837. This is an evil, evil monster of a ship and I can't wait to see the UGEI's and Kronos' reaction to it.
  838. -Subroutine 190491
  839. THAT is the point of this class of ship. we can take a ship with out having to spend the time to hack it and deal with it's crew by spacing them. more so after what i saw when we fought Chaptin Rhea and seeing how Kronos dealt with the xeno shark men. I am becoming of the mind set we should try to capture alive enemy crews and this way will allow us to do so. A living crew can be down right more talkative than dead bodies can be. We can't learn everything off data banks now can we? It would probably be quicker to fix the weak points on the ship after we take the ship after battle than major internal repairs.
  840. -The Fluff bringer
  841. You intend to make a dissection ship, I see. That's pretty sharp, good at hitting hard points. And while yes, it could cut down any weakness left in ship designs (especially pirate ships who usually poorly maintain their ships) any Battleships you see are usually heavily hardened. Turrets are braced and tubes are protected through thick layers of armor. And don't forget, energy weapons, while great at precision, hit the shields. If they're not strong enough to break the shield, then they'll be deflected. Just some things to keep in mind. Also escape pods exist. And it would also decrease repair costs, yes.
  842. -Program0
  843. You can only brace turrets and tubes so much though, some part of their weapon systems must be exposed, even if our computers have to aim for the barrel alone (Which should be doable in the ranges it intends to engage in, no?)
  844. And in light of the new information I'd like to suggest that the laser and plasma guns be replaced with Singularity Cannons with substantial aim-mods (assuming they can be downscaled for turrets and smaller mounts) and a decent stock of short-range boarding torpedoes and/or multi-warhead missiles to target destroyers since we've been told the UGEI's fleet consist primarily of those, not Battleships. It also makes me think I need to change around some things about my own suggestion for a Ship of the Line.
  845. -Subroutine 190491
  846. True. They also have tons of weapons, but that's beside the point. And sure, accuracy is easier the closer you are. I just hope you're prepare to have the wrath of god brought down on your head from a Battleship at that range. Besides, Battleships themselves usually have heavily reinforced subsystems. This helps keep guns firing even if they lose some, or have their power supply disrupted.
  847. You should realize, even if you attempt to calibrate them as well as you can, Mass Drivers are the least accurate of all your weapons, due in part to the only way to 'target' with them is to aim the barrel. You can't make them track, and they go the slowest of all your weapons in space. The reason they're still used, of course, is because of the damage they can cause. Basically what I'm saying is you can certainly try to design sniper cannons, but it may be above your current tech level. It'll allow you a chance to hit hard points, but it won't be substantial unless you get pretty lucky.
  848. -Program0
  849. If the enemy ship is focusing all its firepower on one of these hunks of armor it means it isn't focusing on any of our more fragile but more conventionally damaging ships. If I understand it correctly, it's meant to be even more heavily armored than the other ship-of-the-line.
  850. I also thought the Mass Drivers - or at least the Singularity Drivers and Rail Cannons - were pretty damn fast, especially compared to missiles. Again, this ship is intended to fight at knife-fighting ranges. Close enough to pick them out with the naked eye, even. Surely picking off subsystems becomes a lot easier at such ranges?
  851. The point of this, of course, is so the ship will be able to pick off systems without having to defeat an enemy ship's shields or point defences first, being only concerned with the armor that cannot effectively cover the systems that this ship will be aiming for (if sensors or engines/thrusters alone are taken out, the ship is dead in space and easy pickings as we can simply move out of its firing arcs or riddle it with dumbfires).
  852. How do shields work, by the way. Are there exposed emitters, or are they hidden within the ship's structure?
  853. -Subroutine 190491
  854. Very true. As I said, fleets have many ships serving many purposes. I love the work you guys are doing with these ships. Well, fast in comparison. Missiles are faster simply because they can be fired from much further away, and hit their target reliably. Mass Drivers, up close especially, tear apart armor rapidly. Think of it like the close range knife weapon. Once you're close enough to use it, it IS fast. Perfect for the type of ship you mean to have. With mass drivers? Yes, that distance is good for picking off hard targets, if the mass driver can penetrate the armor. Just like medium distance is perfect for lasers to destroy hard points if they can bypass shields.
  855. Ah, I see your point. If your objective is to get up close and bypass as much defense as possible, then mass drivers are perfect, because the turrets themselves will naturally have less hit points then the ship as a whole. Shields are shit at holding back rail guns, and point defense is exactly what it sounds like. That's why I said Mass Drivers are the perfect knife fight weapon, since they cut straight to the issue. Tech always plays a factor, of course, but you get the point.
  856. Also, shields use power to create a shell around the ship's hull that is specifically designed to deflect energy and radiation away from the hull. They also can handle minor debris, and protect the ship when it's in hyperspace.
  857. -Program0
  858. Ah. Got the impression that missiles were slow compared to Mass Drivers since they are, well.. The first one we heard of was a railgun, and since then they've only upgraded. I don't know how a singularity driver operates, but I was assuming their shots begin to approach relativistic speeds.
  859. For a missile to outdo them in speed, even when fired from afar.. Well, they'd need an absurd amount of fuel (and some kind of fission, fusion or antimatter drive to be viable) and a LOT of distance to accelerate. Of course, at such speeds having a payload is pretty pointless. Just the mass of your missile impacting will handily outclass most nukes we have today at even 1% of light speed.
  860. Or I may just be overestimating the projectile speed of Singularity drivers, or the function. (Maybe they fire slower projectiles than railguns, but far more massive ones, hence the name 'singularity driver'? In that case we'll want the old-style railguns instead, since we'll be aiming for fragile but hard-to-hit systems)
  861. By the way, do shields fail when the ship is impacted by missiles and railgun shots, making the ship vulnerable to laser and plasma guns, or are they simply turned off when overloaded like that and back up an instant later?
  862. -Subroutine 190491
  863. It's time for honesty. I am stealing tech names from Galactic Civilizations, one of my favorite old games, and source of inspiration for a lot of this. And by inspiration, I mean stealing tons of technical and mechanic stuff, such as the three types of weapons and defenses. I don't lean on it as heavily as GC does, though. Weapons are still powerful, and I apply common sense (such as energy weapons still being resisted by sufficent armor, even if it takes more armor). As for the names, they're sufficiently sci fi enough for me to take some, and get away with it. I've started applying my own rules to them by now, though, and even am thinking of adding custom techs, so don't worry too much about looking them up. As for Singularity Drive I imagine it uses intense gravity to crush mass down into a very dense piece of 'ammo', obviously not an ACTUAL singularity, but it's just a name. The 'ammo' would probably have the dense of your average asteroid, but really small. It'd also probably use artificial gravity drives to do all that, and launch the ammo at extremely high speeds at ships. The scariest thing about this type of weapon, for me, is knowing that in space, stuff doesn't stop until it hits something. So just firing these off would be a pretty scary thing, and might even mean colonies are in danger if Mass driver weapons are used in orbit above them. They're also really powerful, tho, so not using them isn't really an option in warfare.
  864. Actually, come to think of it, calling them 'slow' isn't the right word. They aren't slow. But they do fly straight. And in order to properly 'hit' you need to be close so you can line up the shot correctly with enemy ships. Missiles, in all likelihood, are 'slower' though they're still plenty fast on their own. They have the added benefit of keeping up with changed trajectories. So if you combine the time needed to close in in combat, compared to the time it'd take a missile to do the same, it is a 'slower' way to attack.
  865. As for shields-neither. The energy shell is not able to stop missiles, due to the material that makes them up. It's matter, not energy, and at that much faster then any asteroid or debris would be. They're unable to absorb and distribute the energy of the impact because the missile itself can't be diffused this way. The main time they would be able to stop them is if Point defense destroyed a missile, and any energy from the warhead is stopped via the shields. Mass Drivers have a chance of bouncing off really powerful shields, but usually, they slice right through, moving too fast and being too solid again to be stopped by the shield.
  866. -Program0
  867. Is fun to see where you're picking a lot of this up from. And might I suggest that the singularity driver launch slugs by electro-magnetism instead, just like regular rail/coilguns? Gravity is known as one of the weakest forces, with electro-magnetism being powerful enough that it holds ALL matter together, compared to gravity which requires masses on the scale of a moon before becoming noticable on a macroscale. Of course, there's no telling what fancy gravity-tech we might have, but it feels odd that so many sci-fi universes uses gravity as the be-all end-all when electro-magnetism is absurdly much stronger. It is to gravity what matter is to light.
  868. And that's fair enough - the important part is that speed equals damage. If missiles were literally faster than railgun slugs, they would also cause more damage than railguns AND be harder to hit than railgun slugs, even without any explosive payload whatsoever. That the missiles would be absurdly long-ranged is just natural - they can simply accelerate to a comfortable speed and then cruise to their target's general vicinity before having to use up fuel again.
  869. What I meant by the shields is; After a ship has been struck by missile or railgun.. Will the shields be down or not? Will it be defenceless against lasers after taking one hit from missile or railgun?
  870. --Hust91 (talk) 23:49, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
  871. I don't see why not. I'm not terribly familiar with the subject but that may work even better, since magnets likely would make for a far better railgun than gravity. Singularity Driver than, is indeed, simply a name. Of course, the final upgrade to railguns may be closer to a singularity than that is.
  872. Also, as for missile fuel-it's part of why they require more gas than other weapons. That, combined with the explosive nature, that is.
  873. That would be a no. Shields draw power from the ship's engine and reactor core. The shell isn't disturbed by the matter passing through it because it's designed to block energy.
  874. -Program0
  875. I'd like to make a mechanical request - since gas is used for regular explosives and such in addition to being the precious resource that we use just to move, is there any chance we might be able to harvest small amounts from more places, and simply rule it as finding chemicals that can be used for explosives and similar technology rather than being capital-letter Gas?
  876. I just fear that with the resource functioning both as fuel for FTL AND basic material for explosives and advanced technology that it becomes a bit scarcer than is really practical for keeping the game fun.
  877. --Hust91 (talk) 16:36, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  878. I can see why you're concerned, but rest assured I don't take stock of each missile you fire and how much gas each will cost. It's more the cost of the launcher itself.
  879. -Program0
  880. After battle/non combat type: "Vulture/Buzzard/Ghoul"
  881. Chassis: Titan transport class
  882. Weapons: Ideally none, but a few lasers could be added if needed
  883. Engine: Impulse or better. This ship will be used more than the Titan transporter is. the size alone will still make it a fuel hog
  884. Hull: Basic armor. the inside bay will be reinforced in case the lose bits shift in transport.
  885. Point defense: the least needed if at all.
  886. Shields: basic.
  887. Sensors: as best can be mounted. more so to be geared to tracking and IDing every soild object in a system and determing it's nature.
  888. (New) Limpet/remoaras like fighter sized or smaller drones attached to the ship's hull and have magnets/arms/netting/mini tractor beams or other collectors that can pick up even the smallest bits of a wrecked ship/stations/defense platforms/satalites or other things after a battle. these drone mini ships should be able to quickly move though a star system to do it's job. The should be unarmed save for the tools it needs to do it's job. Ships of all types are made of lots of useful minerals we can reprocess if we can gather them up. The drone ships take on their loads and bring it to the mother ship. The mother ship will be equipped with grabbing arms/cyber tentaiacls and the like much like the collector drones have. on board the ship, it will be equipped with cutting lasers and mashers to cut, seperate, and compact ruined things into it's massive hold to be taken to Moira's factory to be properly processed. It is not a factory ship so it can not smelt down the scrap to reuse, nor is it equiped to haul premade objects or other goods like the Titan transport can. even so, the clean up would still take some time to complete. the bigger the engagement/more sunk ships, the longer it will take to pick it all up.
  889.  
  890. The main reason i have proposed this is that space battles are messy. this will help clean them up faster and reclaim much more minerals and maybe gas from after a battle. Also, it can "clean up" a battle we don't want to leave any evidence behind but don't want to toss the remains into the nearest star to be wasted. after seeing the Atill system, our normal reclaiming ablities will fail to properly clean up the space around the planets. but the ship should correct this problem. An alternitve gear set for the drones could be made to instead mine out bulk minerals from nearly depleted asteroid belts. the raw goods would still need to be taken to a mining station like Posidon to complete the smelting. Granted this process would take some time to complete as well, but it would free Ophion from having to set up a vaulable Mining station in a small/near depleted field to totally consume it. As much as we are strapped for Gas, we are straining our Minerial stock pile as well.
  891.  
  892. Construction costs and comments? (this got deleted out of the blue some how. i had to repost this.)
  893. -The Fluff bringer
  894. Drone Ship? Majorly mineral cost, likely outfitted with hundreds of drones onboard. Escort/Destroyer size class. 100M, 50-25G approximately or so.
  895. -Program0
  896. I was thinking of somewhere the size of an x-wing fighter from star wars to get a general idea of it. some might be smaller a few bigger. they are more like tugs pullers and trawling ships. in space, not that nimble but you don't need as much thrust to move wreakage away.
  897. -The Fluff bringer
  898. Oh, so lots of smaller ships then. Would cost less then, and you could probably get a 'fleet' or more correctly a 'swarm' of them on the cheap. But you'd need a carrier ship (like the one I listed above) since they'd be too small to make warpjumps.
  899. -Program0
  900. well, i can see a carrier halling them around. but i did have another idea that they phyaicly attached themselves to the outer hull of the mother ship and be carried around that way. it won't be a numerous as a true carrier can have, but it should have enough of them to do the job. think of the barnacles on the bottom of a boat. yes, it would be a drag in warp jump and cost more fuel, but hopefully the impluse drives might off set some of that.
  901. -The Fluff bringer
  902. That is...interesting. But sadly, they'd go flying off during warp jumps, and be hit first in battle. So that doesn't seem to me like it would work very well.
  903. -Program0
  904. If they were hit in battle, then we are either doing it wrong, or it got ambushed. this type of ship and drones are not meant to be anywhere near a combat zone. So then, hard phyical bolting on into a recessed port made for it and strapping on those drones down onto to the ship won't save them from being torn off in a warp jump?
  905. -The Fluff bringer
  906. I'm confused, I thought you said you wanted to make them fighter sized ships? If that's true, then they can't warpjump without being inside a cargo hull, which is why I suggested a Destroyer class that was mostly cargo space, to fit them inside instead of on the outside, and so the ships could store what they collect.
  907. -Program0
  908. Take a look at the chassis. I believe the main ship is meant to be the size of the Titan Transport, which I'm not quite sure I agree with since it will probably be overkill for most battlefields. Having a trio (3) or maybe even a quintet (5) of cruiser-sized carriers for the collection bots would probably be more practical, as only one can be sent if the field of scrap simply isn't large enough to warrant all of them. The drones themselves can be stored like barnacles on the inside of the hull in little drone-shaped indentures so as not to make the inner surface uneven. They should also always have at least one escort ship when operating in space where it is not unlikely that pirates or raiders might pop by.
  909. Have I gotten it right, Fluffbringer, and what do you think of the suggestion for size?
  910. --Hust91 (talk) 17:05, 2 January 2014 (UTC) (Subroutine 190491)
  911. Yes, Subroutine has it right. this ship is based on the Titan transport size. it's meant to be HUGE. Many of the debries to be picked up isn't easy to compact it down and it'll take up more space in the hold. That and some of the internal space is being used by the drones. True, i had to rethink the size of the drones, they will probably have to be bigger than a fighter size. a small tug isn't going to be able to pull big wrecks by themselves. For some fights, this ship might be over kill, other fights, it won't be enough. just look at the fight that made Moira's scrap yard! i fear that we'll be facing that sizable fights in the future.
  912. -The Fluff bringer
  913. I think I understand now. A cruiser sized 'carrier' is cool, might cost a bit more but would increase the size of how much you can mine at one time too. Also drone capacity. Having small ports for the drones to leap out of quickly is neat too, I am cool with that idea as well.
  914. But for a Titan ship size, you'll need Carrier Class schematics. If you really want to invest that much into a recycling ship, then I won't stop you. But just remember those are pricey. Of course, if it's carrier class, it'd also be able to launch thousands upon thousands of these mining drones too. You know, if you researched Advanced Ship Mods, you could incorporate miniature tractor beams to REALLY make this super effective.
  915. -Program0
  916. As a result of this conversation showing that there are some major hassles to get around before we can make Titan-sized carriers, I suggest the following take its place:
  917. "Vulture/Buzzard/Ghoul" Harvester Class Cruiser
  918. Chassis: Cruiser
  919. Weapons: Ideally none, but a few lasers could be added if needed
  920. Engine: Stellar.
  921. Hull: Basic armor. the inside bay will be reinforced in case the lose bits shift in transport.
  922. Point defense: the least needed if at all.
  923. Shields: basic.
  924. Sensors: as best can be mounted. more so to be geared to tracking and IDing every soild object in a system and determing it's nature.
  925. (New) Limpet/remoaras like fighter sized or smaller drones attached to the ship's hull and have magnets/arms/netting/mini tractor beams or other collectors that can pick up even the smallest bits of a wrecked ship/stations/defense platforms/satalites or other things after a battle. these drone mini ships should be able to quickly move though a star system to do it's job. The should be unarmed save for the tools it needs to do it's job. Ships of all types are made of lots of useful minerals we can reprocess if we can gather them up. The drone ships take on their loads and bring it to the mother ship. The mother ship will be equipped with grabbing arms/cyber tentaiacls and the like much like the collector drones have. on board the ship, it will be equipped with cutting lasers and mashers to cut, seperate, and compact ruined things into it's massive hold to be taken to Moira's factory to be properly processed. It is not a factory ship so it can not smelt down the scrap to reuse, nor is it equiped to haul premade objects or other goods like the Titan transport can. even so, the clean up would still take some time to complete. the bigger the engagement/more sunk ships, the longer it will take to pick it all up.
  926. Heavy Slot: Cargo Space.
  927. Medium Slots: Cargo Space.
  928. Light Slots: Scavenger Drones embedded in the hull.
  929. Cost Estimate: 75M 75G~ -Program0
  930. What do you think, Fluffbringer? Is this acceptable?
  931. Why so much gas, by the way? Does the engine alone cost 75? I just don't see many systems that are obviously "gas" requiring systems in this.
  932. --Hust91 (talk) 01:36, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  933. Yes, this pleases the Fluffbringer. A scaled down type that can be built now is fine by me. we can build the full sized verion later when we have the Tech for it. do like how you fine fellows hashed out the "Slots" systems so far. granted, i work on fluff and that is rather crunchy to me. i can still follow it all. However, we should slave this ship to the same V.I. that is running Moira's factory and scrap yard. it will have to return to that location anyway, might as well put them together.
  934. -The Fluff bringer
  935. That's actually a pretty good price for a Cruiser sized vessel. It costs a little more because of the sensor tech, which has a gas cost to it.
  936. -Program0
  937. MK 1 Melissa Class Missile Ship (Suggestions, up for vote)
  938. Chassis type: Battlecruiser
  939. Weapons: A large stockpile of Multi-Warhead (each warhead being individually tracking) missiles and launchers, and a smaller one of re-usable Gunship Missiles - all warheads of highest quality.
  940. Engine: Stellar Drive
  941. Reactor: Mk II
  942. Hull: Relatively thin Trithium hull.
  943. Point Defense: Laser (max level), Anti-Missiles Missiles and an ECM III Point Defense.
  944. Shields: Barriers
  945. Bandwidth: 3
  946. Heavy Slot: Multi-Warhead Missiles (Medium) & more Multi-Warhead Missiles (Medium)
  947. Medium Slots: Gunship Missiles
  948. Light Slots: Additional Point Defenses
  949. Cost estimates: ?
  950.  
  951. Some changes to suit what I feel the intent was. Lower hull grade to save minerals, additional point defenses, as well as an excess of missile weaponry make the ship designed well for long distance combat, if somewhat expensive gas wise.
  952. --Program0 (talk) 11:27, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
  953. Oooh, good idea to use lesser materials for the hull. What's up with the Dumbfire missiles though? How are they going to have any effect at long ranges?
  954. You mentioned something about firing lots of them, but that's clearly not workable at anything longer than short range, due to space being, you know, huge, and how it may take minutes for the missiles to arrive. I just don't see how you'd make missiles without any guidance system work at ranges where even friggin' railguns (which you've previously stated travel far faster - in fact, they derive their entire damage potential from traveling quickl) effectless. I mean.. you'd need to fire billions of them, and still not have a chance in hell of hitting unless the enemy ship is close enough to see with the naked eye (Which would be extreme close range, no?).
  955. Why not multi-warhead missiles instead?
  956. --Hust91 (talk) 20:36, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
  957. Because the gunboat missile thing you listened essentially handled that function, but with the blossom style of attack. I decided that that would be an explosive 1 upgrade style, and these would be upgraded to that as soon as you have it. Mainly because of the special method of deployment you designed feeling a bit too advanced to just come up with out of no where. Dumbfire would fire in large clouds basically, yes. If the target is big enough they should hit eventually, going quite fast even at 'long' distance in space. True not the most accurate, but I assume that was the point with them. Damage/splash over accuracy. Also I don't fully understand what you meant by 'multi warhead'. Did you mean one missile had multiple explosive heads? Or that it has different payloads? And if the second one, which types? Usually it's focused on having the strongest warhead. Mixing others doesn't help so much, unless you had a specific type in mind, which is what I assume you had in mind.
  958. --Program0 (talk) 22:59, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
  959. Let's see if I can explain why this doesn't make any sense to me. If these dumbfires can be fired en masse at long range against big targets with a non-negligible chance of hitting, while a mass driver requires short or medium range to do the same thing, it means those missiles will outdo mass drivers at short or medium range as their hit chance increases exponentially.
  960. Because to do that reliably, one of three things must be true: A, the missiles travel at a substantial fraction of the same speed as the mass drivers, but this makes mass drivers obsolete). B, the target is so unmaneuverable as to be nigh-stationary (like a station without any primary thrusters), but then you might as well use mass-drivers. Or C, "long range" is still close enough as to be visible with the naked human eye, but then Mass Drivers would be able to operate at those ranges as well. As an avid player of SotS, you've no doubt noticed that dumbfire missiles are extreme close-range weapons in those games. Now imagine if other weapons behaved more realistically - those dumbfires would still be at a similar range of "nearly crashing into you", but the laser-weapons and the missile weapons would have ranges that covered the entire maps, while mass-drivers' viable range against cruisers would cover half of it and cross the entire map in seconds, and the entire battles would be fought mostly at sensor-only range.
  961. If I've missed some crucial detail here, please do let me know.
  962. For the multi-warhead missiles, I mean something like the Morrigi's favourite kind of missile here[6] - the mini-missiles can often be seen in the Murder of Crows intro.
  963. And I can accept that they'd require research, but this does bring up a separate matter. I'm not sure if it's the individual research we're following right now being extremely long-term, but the research rate is getting a bit ridiculous.
  964. Now, if we could pick and choose research however we liked, the slow research on big things might not be a problem, because it would simply be an investment in time. However, the A.I. box seemed (to me, anyway, and seemingly to many other players) like something that we pretty much had to research right away to not lose it or have it be too late, which is part of the reason I've been asking for things like "research slots" for every unit or team or something capable of doing research, developing a V.I. Researcher and why I'm desperately looking for things that doesn't require research. Research is something we simply won't have for several threads into the future as it stands.
  965. As it is now, ALL other research is shut down while the seemingly-mandatory plot-centric research is being done, and by looking at the number of suggested avenues of research it seems to me that it is getting a bit out of hand.
  966. Not sure what to do about it right now, but I figured I should bring my worries up.
  967. --Hust91 (talk) 00:58, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
  968. Oh, I think I misunderstood what you were aiming for with some of this. Right, so, I think multi warhead would require Explosives I research. Since you don't have that, does that mean you just want medium slots with normal missiles, or do you want to change it around for something else now? Weapons can be changed out pretty easily, so don't worry about the future.
  969. As for research rates, don't worry about that. Your first project was literally the most complex option you had to choose from. That, on top of lacking the personnel at the time meant it was slow as hell. It's speeding up quickly. And simple stuff, like Explosives I can be done in one cycle, pretty quickly.
  970. Well you don't really have enough researchers to have more then one slot right now. But you know you guys can build more research centers on other worlds and stuff, right? Like space stations, but they'd be specialized to your specifications, and would simply need a staff. Like I said before, researcher V.I. is possible, but bandwidth expensive too.
  971. If you hire on more humans, create researcher V.I. (or, after this research, A.I.) you will get an even larger boost to researcher, speeding up things quickly. You're just starting researching stuff, and you barely have the ability to do so, and picked the toughest one. It'll pay off in time, don't worry. Just requires building up.
  972. --Program0 (talk) 04:40, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
  973. Probably better with normal Thor Missiles in that case (assuming they're not "heavy mount only", that is. Just change them down to the maximum quality available for medium missiles in that case), will change the medium slot to them as well.
  974. And glad to hear it's just this one research project and that it will pick up in the future. We'll have to look into opening new research centers elsewhere in the meantime.
  975. If this is settled, should we maybe move this conversation down to the "Suggested Ships Section", so as not to clog up the approved list?
  976. --Hust91 (talk) 10:35, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
  977. Thor missiles aren't heavy only, nah. They don't fit on light mounts though. As I said, don't worry too much. I predict a string of breakthroughs for you guys once you break past the A.I. thing. A lot of the other research options are simpler anyway. I definitely encourage you guys to build more research places, too, since they will allow multi-slots for simple projects, or one large collab project.
  978. And yes, that's a good idea. I didn't mean to clog up this spot, just wanted to make sure everything was explained properly.
  979. --Program0 (talk) 10:58, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
  980. Actually, have a different question, though still moving this down to the Suggested Ships's section on the Melissa: Is there any point to Heavy anti-ship missiles? Would they not just be targeted first if they're noticably larger than the other missiles (aka, they can't pretend to just be a medium missile)? Even if they're armored up, doesn't that just mean they automatically tell one of their medium-turrets to fire at it instead? (Missiles depend a lot on being many and hard to hit with heavy-damage weapons in this setting, or?)
  981. And was my bad for clogging it up, I started it. Fixing now, though!
  982. --Hust91 (talk) 11:13, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
  983. Point to Heavy Anti ship missiles? Well, yeah. They do shit tons of damage to large hard targets. Or utterly obliterate smaller targets. The main draw of missiles, despite their expensiveness and relatively easy to defendness is the power behind them. Oh, larger size? No no, most missiles are the same size. The slot size dictates how much of the ship's power is going to using it. For missiles, how many are launched at once, etc. All missiles are the same sizeish (more or less, not noticeable on sensors.) The warhead is where all the death is packed in. If you mean the multi warhead one that blossoms into more missiles though? Then yes, those are bigger until they split. So they might draw fire from enemy ships until they reach the point where they split.
  984. Nah no prob. Discussion is always good. Thanks for moving it.
  985. --Program0 (talk) 02:10, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  986. Granted, the multi-warhead missiles are meant to split before they get into serious point-defense range - the general purpose of them is to target destroyer-swarms (AoE/splash damage might not be practical in space, but we CAN have something that hits several enemies).
  987. But good to know. Thought there was some kind of heavy anti-capital ship missile, but that seemed kind of pointless since the enemy would just turn their bigger guns on it if it's armored and you can't really make them in huge enough numbers economically.
  988. --Hust91 (talk) 02:50, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  989. The ship is designed to engage enemies at long and extremely long ranges only. It has powerful maneuvering thrusters and STL engines to make it able to retreat quickly if enemies attempt to close the range and powerful shielding and point defense to fend off incoming lasers and missiles.
  990. It is expected to be able to quickly cut a fierce swathe through destroyer fleets that have insufficient point-defense (less than 'extremely good') coverage.
  991. Would still like some feedback on whether this ships' modifications / design specialties seem reasonable and if the overall design seems sound/functional in the mechanics system.
  992. Also on whether missiles could be practically shielded against point defenses - or fighters, now that I think about it. Even if it would triple the price of each missile it could easily be worth it if it means that it takes point defenses ten times longer to take each missile down as they're forced to work through the shield before they can actually destroy it.
  993. --Hust91 (talk) 12:10, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
  994. It'd only have so many missiles available, since you're dedicating over half the system's mounts to dodging other missiles. And if there was a way to make missiles that bypassed point defense, it would be a lot more popular/the UGEI would have it, most likely.
  995. -Program0
  996. Wait, wait, wait. Dedicating half the system's mounts to dodging other missiles? Didn't I have both the heavy slot and the medium slots filled with missiles? (Removed the additional medium-slot thingy for armor since that apparently doesn't work) And didn't you say that a ship with light armor (like this one) would be able to equip Tumble Thrusters using far fewer slots than the heavily armored ships (As in, if the ship has something like 20 medium slot-weapons, the thrusters would only take 2, 3 or 4?)?
  997. Also, didn't mean missiles that bypassed point defenses, only ones that increased the survivability of the missiles. A missile that dies after 2 seconds of being fired upon by a point defense laser is substantially better than one that dies after 1 second, this doesn't exactly mean that it has "bypassed" the point defenses. Something as simple as having a mirrored surface on the missiles might very well buy another second, as less of the light is converted into heat and vaporizes the metal. We might also consider simply giving them slightly thicker armor and increase the mineral-price of the missile-launcher addon slightly in exchange for each missile taking one and a half time as much point-defense fire to be put out of action by laser fire.
  998. --Hust91 (talk) 00:32, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
  999. I think I may have missed something somewhere... these ships you're making, you want them to fire tons of missiles, and be able to dodge missiles more easily all at the same time, right, at the cost of being less armored? I don't think I understand where you're coming from quite anymore. Damn it, I need to sleep better hours.
  1000. That would just be a stronger missile tech, most likely. More bang, more life, all that stuff. It'd also mean that higher point defense tech would be needed to handle it.
  1001. -Program0
  1002. The "dodge missiles" concept is all from the Tumble-Thrusters, no? The ones you said took more weapon slots on a heavily armored ship and would take far less on a less heavy ship?
  1003. Add the fluff and crunch system about engine/mass suggested above and it makes sense, no?
  1004. I'll try to break it down. The missile ship is stripped of all but a thin shell of armor, leaving the ship at pretty low mass, which makes it more maneuverable as there is less mass for thrusters and engines to push around. What weapon slots are there (not counting the ones freed up by armor) mostly used for missiles and a few for additional point-defenses. A few of those weapons are replaced with tumble-thrusters which don't need to be all that big and thus won't take as many slots to effectively move the ship around in an emergency (as you said earlier, one medium weapon more or less makes little difference). For reference, quoting where you said a lightly armored ship's tumble thrusters would take less slots than a more heavily armored one:
  1005. "Well, the main reason I said it, besides it making sense power cost wise and such, was because making it damn near untouchable to missiles and heavily armored seemed unfair. The mass, due to the armor, would be a lot too, so it felt only fair that you'd need more thrusters. If you had lighter armor, you could probably do the tumble thrusters on just one weapon slot, since it'd require less to be moved more quickly."
  1006. Essentially just trying to make said lighter-armored ship in a way that makes sense both tactically and from a design standpoint.
  1007. --Hust91 (talk) 15:42, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
  1008. Ah, alright yeah. You can have a lightly armored ship that is fitted with those things and point defense to help them escape enemy missile attack easier. For some reason when I read that I thought you were saying you wanted a missile that had tumble thrusters, shields, and armor. Which would be down right silly.
  1009. -Program0
  1010. Only silly until we have something with enough area of effect to work its magic on entire fleets. Then cruiser-sized missiles begin to look economical.
  1011. --Hust91 (talk) 18:07, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
  1012. So, which parts of the ship do you think look unfinished? Want to know what's not ready before I put it in the main article. The cost estimates? (Also, may want to edit cost estimates for all ships if they're going to be upgraded)
  1013. --Hust91 (talk) 17:17, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
  1014. Like I said, I just didn't see it since it wasn't near the top earlier. My mistake is all. I normally put all the finished models near the top. Just forgot this time is all.
  1015. --Program0 (talk) 21:52, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment
Public Pastes
We use cookies for various purposes including analytics. By continuing to use Pastebin, you agree to our use of cookies as described in the Cookies Policy.  OK, I Understand
Not a member of Pastebin yet?
Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!