Now not gonna lie, it sounds like the energy demands of holding the portals open, even decades of development from now, will be much more strenuous than supplying the paltry few hundred or so megajoules of energy required to take care of the gravitational potential requirements to lift a person from Earth's surface to the lunar surface.
But if we had to do it something like this... Well, again, the problem of lifting people up a very steep potential barrier is not insoluble.
Though in practice, the portal would be less like a very steep slope and more like an impassable wall, because to transit those few millimeters you'd have to do such a ridiculous amount of work that you, yourself, would be physically crushed by the forces involved in traversing it. Because work done equals force times distance and the distances involved are very short, so the forces must be correspondingly high; anything strong enough to push you through the portal would crush you against it in the process.
Again, we can only hope that Arrangements Are Made- that either we bypass the potential energy issue somehow (even if that implies a conceivable perpetual motion machine), or that the energy simply has to be supplied to keep the Earthside portal open as mass goes through it.
In before we accidentally a Warp. Discovering how to travel through hell would be hilarious.
More seriously if it was a perpetual motion machine it must not be super great as the Scrin aren't using it as such and instead use it to mine the Super Spicy Death Rocks. And that the Scrin didn't immediately use it call for help from actual Big Boi Soldiers and not PMC grunts.
Unless the portals somehow magically break conservation of gravitational energy, then that won't work because the Venusian atmosphere still needs to flow 100s of km uphill to get out the other side of the portal.
The surface of both Venus and Mars are a fair distance uphill from the surface of the Earth.
It is possible that the portal technology can compensate for the energy difference, but I expect we have to pay that energy difference, and that means firing the cargo at the portal with enough speed to make the potential energy jump to the other side.
You're talking about the problem of obtaining psychic super-commandos.
I'm not.
I'm talking about the problem of making sure that after you even have psychic super-commandos, that your guy happens to be in the right place to be waiting for their guy when their guy shows up.
The energy difference is the gravitational potential energy difference between the two ends of the portal. You know how we need big rockets to get things into orbit. If you put enough kinetic energy into something to give it escape velocity, it reaches orbit and stops. That is how much energy was needed to move the object from the ground to orbit.
Energy should not be conserved here. The law of conservation of energy only holds when spacetime is symmetric. That is the distance between two points remain the same. Portals fundamentally link two points with a shortcut and thus the distance is no longer conserved.
With that implication, it means there's no need to make up the difference. Gravitational potential energy is simply [Potential Energy] = [mass] * [gravitational field] * [distance] (from the gravitational field). A start and end point will have a differing energy potential due to the path traveled. This is energy is normally a conserved quantity... if the path travelled is conserved spatially.
Hypothesis Two: This works, but there is no way to make it energetically favorable- maintaining the portals takes more active energy input than you can recover from the stream of rapidly falling matter.
Now not gonna lie, it sounds like the energy demands of holding the portals open, even decades of development from now, will be much more strenuous than supplying the paltry few hundred or so megajoules of energy required to take care of the gravitational potential requirements to lift a person from Earth's surface to the lunar surface.
This is what I think happens here. Moving mass from one point of a gravity well to another the regular way is a one-time energy cost. Pay it and it's in the energy account.
Linking two points of spacetime forcefully and keeping them connected is going to be a constant energy drain whether anything goes through it or not. And bending spacetime is certainly going to be more energy intensive than just moving mass.
However, the massive energy cost is probably still worth it. There's always transport restrictions like mass, volume, fuel constraints, or infrastructure constraints. By using portals, the fuel constraint is drastically reduced because it can be supplied by static infrastructure rather than needing to be carried along with whatever vehicle. The infrastructure constraint is also reduced by one (albeit very large) up-front one time cost and can be reused many times. Scrin wormhole generators seem to only require a generator and can generate either end remotely, at least on a planetary scale as well as tactical scale. (See the wormhole support power from the battlefield as well as the Kane's Wrath global conquest support power.) I think the OSRCT would give both nuts to be able to deploy that fast and that rapidly worldwide. Skip the orbit and drop part and just be there, anywhere.
3: Maybe the portal isn't a direct spatial gate, but instead some sort of matter transmission across a threshold. In that case you just have to pay the difference in energy. That makes transport in the uphill direction expensive, unless you can bottle the energy coming from downhill transportation efficiently. I doubt we can do it efficiently for quite a while.
This is also possibility. Although "wormhole" implies a direct linkage rather than a disassemble-transmit-reassemble, none of the Scrin's wormholes are actually see through. The wormhole, portal infantry builder, warp sphere vehicle builder, and gravity stabilizer all have a vague "glowy energy circle thingy" rather than see-through.
Frankly, the idea that portals using Space Magic Materials to break physics as we know it, cannot break this one specific aspect of physics, seems pretty silly to me.
In short, don't get hung up on a specific element of things, it works.
Frankly, the idea that portals using Space Magic Materials to break physics as we know it, cannot break this one specific aspect of physics, seems pretty silly to me.
In short, don't get hung up on a specific element of things, it works.
I'll gladly accept Casmir cavity blah blah blah space-time bubble blah blah blah absolute penguin field blah bleh blah, but God help you if you break mass/energy conservation and then just not make a note of that. Like that's not going to be the first thing someone is going to check? Come on.
I'll gladly accept Casmir cavity blah blah blah space-time bubble blah blah blah absolute penguin field blah bleh blah, but God help you if you break mass/energy conservation and then just not make a note of that. Like that's not going to be the first thing someone is going to check? Come on.
I thought the general assumption with portals was "they always break it"? I haven't seen a single normal portal in fiction where things didn't just come out the other side the same way they went in (as in "same speed and direction")
You're talking about the problem of obtaining psychic super-commandos.
I'm not.
I'm talking about the problem of making sure that after you even have psychic super-commandos, that your guy happens to be in the right place to be waiting for their guy when their guy shows up.
The Regency War: Part 1 — The Order of The Remembrancer
The Forgotten hated the Brotherhood.
It's a piece of truism, and like any truism, it's simplified.
Once, the Forgotten didn't hate the Brotherhood. Once, the seeds of the latter were the greatest proponents of those who would be unremembered. Once, the GDI did less than nothing to help these dispossessed few. Once, the GDI abandoned entire subcontinents to the ravages of Tiberium. Once, shelter was given under the aegis of a black scorpion.
But this elaboration hid a bedrock of ugly implications. The Forgotten were never truly united after all, and the kidnappings of the Forgotten were never a norm throughout the Brotherhood either. People would rather shut out these assumptions with the above-mentioned truism. Because the alternative is reopening that sordid page of history.
But what was unremarked history for the GDI is living memory for the Forgotten. Some of them resented their lot. Some of those who resented the Eagle more than the Scorpion. Some who took the faith of the Messiah with the zeal of fanatics.
Some, like the Order of the Remembrancer.
– Drafts from The Unclassified, "On The Order"
As the hegemon fighting a never ending war, the GDI R&D division is one armed to the teeth. Not merely limited to the venerable Steel Talons and their weapon testing sites, any GDI research institute worth its salt is built like a fortress. From passive deception tactics like false locations complete with decoy energy generators to active measures on-site, with killzones and fixed emplacements as well as priority listing for QRFs, and recently the OSRCT drops, the databanks that held some of the greatest technologies of the GDI are hard to pry into for any given infiltrators.
And within the space of a month, two of such facilities, the Irvan Institute of Tiberium Research and Yarchev Polytechnics were hit by the Order of the Remembrancer.
Located in the deep wilderness of Murmansk off the small township of Apatity, Irvan Institute is located close enough to the Kem Airbase and Murmansk Base, where respectively a team of Zone Troopers and three companies of Ground Forces, are ready to intercept attacks all around the Russian Blue and Green Zone regions. After the attacks on Arkhangelsk and with the knowledge of the coming war, Kem was in a state of high alertness. For those working in Irvan, they had thought themselves safe enough and could relax. It was not to be, as in the late night shift seconds after their half hour checkup with Kem Airbase, a broad spectrum jamming and EMP blast rocked the surrounding woodlands and Institute.
Thinking fast, the garrison and researchers within surged into action and prepared to fire into the kill zones, only to be greeted with the sounds of broken glass, as blindingly accurate laser shots drilled through the building, wounding personnel and confusing the situation as the sound of gnashing teeth echoed outside the woodlands.
To their credit, they rallied as Afanc-class Gana started their crocodilian march into the Institute, some clambering impossibly up the walls. Gana and soldiers clashed in a contest of metallic mandibles and ballistics. Yet, unlike the uncoordinated Afanc of old, these ones seemed intelligent, covering each other in crossfire and employing tactical sacrifices, some of the bioweapons surging forth to explode and take out the emplacements. Inch by bloody inch the fighting continued, until only the inner stronghold remained, holding within the remnant of the security garrison and the researchers with only three machine guns and two rocket emplacements among them. At this point, twenty minutes had passed since the jamming started. Within the confines of the stronghold, a boxy bastion covered with three metres of concrete sandwiched between with ten inches of steel alloy on each side, matched by an equally imposing blast door, it was clear enough to the defenders that they could hold out for the next ten minutes for Murmansk Garrison and Kem QRF forces to realize something was off and send in reinforcements which would arrive ten minutes after that. All this information was retrieved by investigators from the outer layer of the surveillance grid, deliberately disconnected from the ones inside the redoubt.
Twenty five minutes later, the Kem QRF forces arrived at a scene of carnage and remnants of battle. Of the attackers, only the biomechanical forms of the Afanc-class and a new tiger-like variant of Gana remained before being quickly dispatched. Of the defenders, only their thoroughly gored and murdered remains were found. And the databanks inside the stronghold, containing the breakdown of the Hewlett-Gardener refinement method, had been thoroughly plundered.
All without more than superficial damage on the blast doors.
Of the inner redoubt's surveillance grid, only a little information could be gleaned and yet, all the more valuable. The few seconds of data from the inner grid revealed that the blast doors had been ground open despite the scrambled attempts of the researchers to force it closed. Logs showed a tug of war between the GDI terminal and a 'SysAdmin' access that inexorably pushed the door open, long enough for the tiger-like Ganas, tentatively dubbed the Bengal-class, to rush inside. Before the recording cut, the sleeker bioweapons surged with enough speed to appear as blurs through the door.
The second time the feed seemed restored is in the aftermath of the fighting, as two giants in what seemed to be rudimentary facsimiles of power armour attempted to haul the mainframe through the halfway opened blast doors and finding themselves unable to pass through. Next to them, three cloaked figures seemed to be talking to each other before noticing the giants' futile attempts to pry the doors open. One of them seemed to sigh before waving their hands, and here, the 'SysAdmin' access is logged once more as the doors grind fully open, allowing the giants to exit the redoubt.
That figure then turned to face one of the cameras, revealing a figure wearing a half-mask smiling directly into the lens. They then waved their hand into a snap, cutting the surveillance feeds completely. The Order is the culmination of that forgotten page in history. We had done much for the Forgotten but some of the old sins have washed deep enough that only blood remains and where only fire might burn that page closed. An initiative of Mehretu's – though we didn't know of it at the time – where he would arm the best of the Forgotten tribes under the aegis of those who would no longer call themselves 'Forgotten'. Their core numbers are few, but they would prove a potent disruptive force when complimented with assortments of Gana variants old and new. Even in security obligations alone, the threat of a sudden Order attack shifted forces all around the GDI to accommodate for tighter QRF windows and reinforcements.
The assault of Irvan Institute had been ruinous, but it had been one scrutinized extensively. Why, of all targets, scrounge a force that steals only the schematics of Hewlett Gardener? It had boggled us at the time, but the needs of war made finding out the 'why' a tertiary concern.
At least, until the attack on Yarchev Polytechnics provide not just the inkling of a pattern, but also further insight into the Order's mettle.
– Drafts from The Unclassified, "On The Order"
Across the continents in the Russian Far East, Yarchev Polytechnics is a misleading name for a misleading research bolthole. Located among the peaks of the Kolyma Mountains, the bolthole is meant to be a place to test abatement methods, utilizing the latest in inhibitor technologies to experiment and using the remoteness of the facility as a cover. Officially, this is a blacksite far enough from Magadan that no reasonable QRF could arrive in time, save for that of the nascent OSRCT. And after the first attack of Irvan, the timing of the checkups for high-priority facilities such as Yarchev had been shortened to a mere fifteen minutes.
And just like before, mere seconds after the routine check ended, the comms array, one air-gapped from even the already insulated surveillance grid, cut off in an instant.
This time however, the security forces in Yarchev were prepared. Knowing that technology might fail them, the only recourse available are ones rudimentary, yet nonetheless effective. An artillery piece, overloaded with a blank charge, located in the middle of a bunker compound to shelter it from laser fire from all around, is ready to be fired. The deafening sound would be heard from dozens of kilometres away, signalling that the research blacksite is under attack by enemy forces. And yet, as they attempted to enter, the enemy had already intercepted them.
Two giants, clad once more in facsimiles of Zone Armour started firing their weapons, each wielding a pair of laser chainguns more commonly seen on vehicles. Immediately, the courtyard devolved into chaos as retrieved combat footage showed that the two giants weren't just mere brutes or particularly humanoid Gana, but rather two Gamma-class Forgotten. Showing a large degree of combat coordination, they covered each other's blindspot and with the aid of accurate sniper fire from outside the compound pinned the GDI forces from getting through to the artillery piece.
Elsewhere, in the halls of Yarchev compound itself, the defenders there were greeted with three more attackers. Clad in what seemed to be stolen Zone Armour, the three combatants were armed with laser weaponry seemingly in line with what Stahl had proliferated at the onset of the Regency War in the South American front. Though barely counting as a fireteam, they managed to neutralize all opposition in their way. The collected combat footage points to a pattern of eerily prescient understanding on the ebbs and flows of battle, peeking out of cover just at the right moment to pin down the hunkered down defenders as their compatriots throw hallucinogen grenades, throwing the hallways into a morass of violence.
A morass that the Order fireteam waded through with ease as they reached the databanks, with only Head Scientist Intan Tsui within the server room. It had been her responsibility to destroy the data regarding the Tiberium Inhibitor tech and yet, she did not do so. Instead, she committed to a gamble. One that has led to her comatose condition at the time of this report, five days after the assault. But the end result was that the Order fireteam managed to bag the much more compact server drives and moved to extraction.
At the same time in the open air, the two Gamma attackers had lost ground. Fierce as their suppression was and accurate as the sniper fire was, there were only three angles of attack. Suppressing them had cost the GDI forces, but the quick thinking of PFC Emanuel Garcias saved the day. Utilizing one of the Guardians near the facility garage and activating its autodrive function – as well as the rudimentary fallback of a taped-on brick on the accelerator pedal – led to the APC crashing head-on into one of the Gammas. Unwilling to leave their comrade, the other Gamma aided their compatriot, who seemed to get off with a mere limp and broken laser chaingun despite the impact. Unwilling to let the opportunity go to waste, several members of the security forces rushed to the artillery piece despite the sniper fire before triggering the piece, letting the resounding blast be picked up by the automated stations all around Yarchev.
And as luck would have it, the window of opportunity was just right for the Space Force to fast drop into the combat zone.
At this point, it was clear that time was of the essence for everyone involved. From Magadan, Carryalls filled with medical teams and hospital suites rushed to stabilize the casualties. From the Sokolma Airstrip, a flight of Firehawks burned their engines to provide air cover. From further on Anadyr, a larger company was hastily assembled. And from space, a single pod containing three four-person fireteams under the banner of Halmahera Squad readied itself to be launched onto Earth. Against an unknown foe of such caliber and with the risk of Tiberium Inhibitors falling to enemy hands, overkill was considered the bare minimum.
For their part, the Order elements regrouped under fire outside the compound. The last of their members, the sniper, was seen clambering down the rocky valleys like a mountain goat, taking the time to fire snap shots at any defenders attempting to close in. Before the security forces could react however, a series of explosions rocked the site and the path between them and the Order squad, allowing the latter to evade capture. For a mere ten minutes, before Halmahera's drop pod crashed down in front of the escaping forces.
As the pod impacted, the earth trembled and quaked. And in an act more improbable than impossible, an Underminer carrier crashed headlong into the drop pod, sending it careening down the valley before more than a single fireteam could exit. The four man group of Halwa Fireteam had disembarked the fastest while their comrades were jostled through a short yet precipitous drop. It was up to the four of them to fight against augmented Forgotten and whatever lies inside the Underminer.
And according to the combat records of Captain Abdulmejid, the skirmish started in earnest with the unarmed Gamma throwing a boulder at his face.
—
The jets scream, carrying him up and backwards. The rock beneath them shatters upon their impact on the ground as the members of his fireteam scatter under a hail of laser fire. Scorch marks erupt on his armor, the internal warning system reminding him to keep evasive maneuvers as he takes aim at the giant that threw a rock at him. The air heats up all around as the railgun fires–
–and he is hit. A laser shot hitting the flying Captain square on his chest as the slug exits the round. The shot that would have pierced the giant's gut instead gouged his left arm, eliciting a cry of pain as both fell down onto the mountainous ground.
Yet before he could stand and finish off the Gamma, the Underminer doors opened to the sound of yowling growls.
And through his own eyes before a tiger lunged at his throat, he saw something. Something that when reviewed after the fact, would reveal something only he noticed amidst the battle.
A dwarf-like figure, cowled beyond obscurity as it rushed out of cover into the borehole alongside the rest of the enemies.
—
Though Halwa Fireteam managed to dispatch the Bengal-class Gana berthed inside the Underminer with the aid of their fellow members on Halmahera Squad – delayed by the roll down the valley and having ignited their jump-packs to reach the embattled group in time – without any casualties save for the rents and scratches on Captain Abdulmejid's armour, the distraction had cost them the pursuit attempt as the Underminer soon exploded, preventing salvage and destroying the tunnel behind it. As excavation teams attempted to dig through, they found that the inside of the borehole was, in fact, a mess of warrens and dead-ends. Not wanting to risk deadfall traps and IEDs in their search, the local commanders decided to use large scale surveillance scans and search teams along the Kolyma Mountains and the surrounding region.
The result of the ensuing three weeks of searching was a game of running skirmish and hunt. In normal circumstances, the GDI could bring their all in an important manhunt. With a global offensive ongoing, resources had to be allocated and in this, the search party had to be pared down. Nonetheless, they had performed admirably. The notable discovery is the fact that this entire endeavor had been a work of months, if not years. The Russian Far Eastern Front has always been sparsely guarded, after all. Far from established holdings and anything more than Fortress Towns, it had been accepted that infiltration risks from porous borders were outweighed by the fact that the front had also been sparsely guarded by the Brotherhood, even now during the global offensive. The tunnels, once excavated and searched under guard, had been ones significantly lived in for the standards of Brotherhood infiltrators. Following the tunnel network, the search party found that even down here, they were not alone. Duos or trios of Bengal-class Ganas awaited them, and it's only due to the support of the Halmahera Squad that there were no significant casualties among the group.
Above ground, the pattern repeated as intermittent teams of Gana hampered the progress of the search parties. Of the Order members themselves, the arms of the Initiative seemed to grasp at straws. Though they were harried constantly north-and-westward, they eluded capture even with several attempts at grid square ion bombardments, seemingly none worse for wear. At the end of the third week though, the trail went abruptly hot as the Order members reached the Russian Far Eastern frontlines, specifically around the region of Yakutia, near the frozen marshlands off the coasts of the Dmitry Laptev Strait and the New Siberian Islands. Far from any Fortress Towns or Brotherhood redoubts, this area had been a no man's land, home to the few Forgotten tribespeople making a living among the barren lands. Yet as the 117th Far North Battalion tightened the noose of the still escaping Order members, a more conventional hindrance attacked.
What would be known as the Skirmish of the Shelonsky Islands ensued as maneuver warfare of both GDI and Brotherhood occurred far from any close air support. Initiative Guardians and Reckoners emblazoned with the markings of Oleg Pavchenko – the premiere Nod Warlord of the Far East – churned the muddy ground as both attempted to respectively kill and rescue the Order members. It was a bloody battle, where both GDI and Brotherhood troops died within their armored coffins more than bleeding in the barren, coverless ground. More disastrously, it was a battle that the GDI lost. As the first support wings of Firehawks screamed into view, it was too late to do more than fight and eliminate a rearguard formation which was intent on finishing what had been left of the deployed portion of the 117th. Their quarry was already scattering into the lands of Krukov's vassals.
In the aftermath and after the dead were mourned, the investigations began in earnest. Yarchev was a blacksite. To know its location is one thing, to know what to steal is another. Detailed sweeps of every individual that ever worked there and their relatives were launched, though without much success. Instead, it was the gambit of Head Scientist Intan Tsui that gave grounding to the actions of the Order. The following is the transcription of her recorded conversation with the Order fireteam.
ORDER-1: You bear no weapons save for the recording device.
TSUI: The only ones I needed. You would have killed me otherwise.
ORDER-2: We can kill you now.
ORDER-3: No, we let her be. Questions for technology, is that your intent?
TSUI: Why?
ORDER-3: A question with varied answers, but I know the one you seek. Patronage is the answer. Our main benefactors wished for these as our proving ground. 'Technologies of Peace' true and desired.
ORDER-2: We have no time for this.
ORDER-3: We do. For two more questions.
TSUI: How?
ORDER-3: I see through your intended obfuscation. There are two answers but you will have the most important. The Scrin were once the Masters of the Material. We merely harnessed that which makes machines heed our beck and call. That which makes man seem as nothing more than apes banging rocks to make sparks. We remain apes, despite the Gifts.
TSUI: …Weakness?
ORDER-1: Kemal that is enou-
KEMAL: Apes bleed, and banging rocks require hands, no? But those are the three questions. And now-
[The sounds of clanging metal and scuffles resounds.]
KEMAL: Questions for technology. The pact is fulfilled. Your own survival however, must be of your own volition.
KEMAL: My suggestion? Take a lungful of air before we gas the room. Oh, and don't bite your own tongue. Lying down as you are, you'll choke on your own blood.
Parsing the entire log and putting the Skirmish of the Shelonsky Islands into context, three facts became clear. The attacks were targeted to find technologies intended to manipulate Tiberium. Though these methodologies could be turned into weaponized ends, the intent seemed to be that the patrons wished for the economic gains. The second fact seemed to stem from the fact that these Order members possess a degree of psionic abilities derived from the Scrin. When Zaragoza Atreides was questioned, he divulged further that the psionic machine manipulation, or as he called it 'technomancy', is within the powers of a Delta Forgotten. Mr. Atreides then proceeded to showcase this power and solved the reason why the research data stored within the two facilities was not destroyed.
Given a hard drive that has been waterlogged then ran with heavy electrical currents, and a piece of smoothened Tiberium crystal, Atreides touched the seemingly destroyed hard drive. Concentrating hard to the point that visible exhaustion began to show for the next ten minutes, he finished and asked the researchers to plug the drive into a computer. Though no outward changes occurred, the plugged drive showed that the stored data had been recovered, if imperfectly and with corrupted files. The Delta remarked that while it is not a power that he can utilize well, anyone trained further would have the ability be refined, confessing that whatever 'Kemal' had likely done in Irvan in manipulating both blast door and security systems was a cut beyond Atreides' ability, even with a Tiberium crystal to amplify his power. Miss Tsui put her life on the gamble, figuring that their enemies had abilities to stop or reverse her attempts. It was brave to the point of foolishness. Yet, it succeeded and for that, she gained the Medal of Eagle's Bravery and medical leave, the scars of the hallucinogenic gas wrecking her nerves even after she regained consciousness. Her last question highlighted the main weakness of the Order. That they are invincible because they have to be. The Gana may be a substitute for the Marked of Kane, but the number fielded in the two Order raids amounted to half of that fielded by Krukov during the Battle of St. Petersburg. It does not end there, as comm intercepts found in the aftermath of the skirmish revealed that the Order had been aided by Oleg Pavchenko himself. Far from his roost in Irkutsk, he had directed what amounted to a rescue operation. To command the attention of even a vassal Warlord suggested then that the Order were irreplaceable.
Early on, of course, we did not know they were even called 'The Order'. We knew only of "Kemal" and a band of heavily armed Forgotten Mercenaries doing daring raids. But then Jeddah happened, and the seed of Professor Granger's generosity bore fruit.
I thought the general assumption with portals was "they always break it"? I haven't seen a single normal portal in fiction where things didn't just come out the other side the same way they went in (as in "same speed and direction")
Yeah, but (to my understanding) they're always presented in contexts where you can fudge it if they're operating on 'pay the difference in portal power'. You know, static portals frames, ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY and the like.
Or Portal, where it's already obviously taking the piss.
Early on, of course, we did not know they were even called 'The Order'. We knew only of "Kemal" and a band of heavily armed Forgotten Mercenaries doing daring raids. But then Jeddah happened, and the seed of Professor Granger's generosity bore fruit.
Well, the second half of that sentence implies that how things shook out from whatever happened there was at least somewhat to our benefit.
Welcome to Masterstroke-land, where psychic supercommandos and their cyber-pets fight Orbital Drop Troopers. (Also, the issues with just Not Enough Resources for patrols to stop extensive scouting of sites before an attack. Not really anyone's fault, just means we need more 📈 )
Well, the second half of that sentence implies that how things shook out from whatever happened there was at least somewhat to our benefit.
Welcome to Masterstroke-land, where psychic supercommandos and their cyber-pets fight Orbital Drop Troopers. (Also, the issues with just Not Enough Resources for patrols to stop extensive scouting of sites before an attack. Not really anyone's fault, just means we need more 📈 )
If all they wanted really was the economy stuff, that is completely fine by me. Tiberium destabilizers or something similar would have been a bad thing, but if the brotherhood does some abatement for us, that is very nice of them.
Yet, unlike the uncoordinated Afanc of old, these ones seemed intelligent, covering each other in crossfire and employing tactical sacrifices, some of the bioweapons surging forth to explode and take out the emplacements.
So maybe this is just the psychic commandos directing them, though that's in doubt because they claimed to be technopaths and not mind controllers, but if the Gana keep getting smarter, are we going to have to look into the rights and standards of treatment for intelligent bioweapons?
Twenty five minutes later, the Kem QRF forces arrived at a scene of carnage and remnants of battle. Of the attackers, only the biomechanical forms of the Afanc-class and a new tiger-like variant of Gana remained before being quickly dispatched. Of the defenders, only their thoroughly gored and murdered remains were found. And the databanks inside the stronghold, containing the breakdown of the Hewlett-Gardener refinement method, had been thoroughly plundered.
All without more than superficial damage on the blast doors.
Two giants, clad once more in facsimiles of Zone Armour started firing their weapons, each wielding a pair of laser chainguns more commonly seen on vehicles. Immediately, the courtyard devolved into chaos as retrieved combat footage showed that the two giants weren't just mere brutes or particularly humanoid Gana, but rather two Gamma-class Forgotten.
A morass that the Order fireteam waded through with ease as they reached the databanks, with only Head Scientist Intan Tsui within the server room. It had been her responsibility to destroy the data regarding the Tiberium Inhibitor tech and yet, she did not do so. Instead, she committed to a gamble. One that has led to her comatose condition at the time of this report, five days after the assault. But the end result was that the Order fireteam managed to bag the much more compact server drives and moved to extraction.
At this point, it was clear that time was of the essence for everyone involved. From Magadan, Carryalls filled with medical teams and hospital suites rushed to stabilize the casualties. From the Sokolma Airstrip, a flight of Firehawks burned their engines to provide air cover. From further on Anadyr, a larger company was hastily assembled. And from space, a single pod containing three four-person fireteams under the banner of Halmahera Squad readied itself to be launched onto Earth. Against an unknown foe of such caliber and with the risk of Tiberium Inhibitors falling to enemy hands, overkill was considered the bare minimum.
The attacks were targeted to find technologies intended to manipulate Tiberium. Though these methodologies could be turned into weaponized ends, the intent seemed to be that the patrons wished for the economic gains. The second fact seemed to stem from the fact that these Order members possess a degree of psionic abilities derived from the Scrin. When Zaragoza Atreides was questioned, he divulged further that the psionic machine manipulation, or as he called it 'technomancy', is within the powers of a Delta Forgotten. Mr. Atreides then proceeded to showcase this power and solved the reason why the research data stored within the two facilities was not destroyed.
Given a hard drive that has been waterlogged then ran with heavy electrical currents, and a piece of smoothened Tiberium crystal, Atreides touched the seemingly destroyed hard drive. Concentrating hard to the point that visible exhaustion began to show for the next ten minutes, he finished and asked the researchers to plug the drive into a computer. Though no outward changes occurred, the plugged drive showed that the stored data had been recovered, if imperfectly and with corrupted files. The Delta remarked that while it is not a power that he can utilize well, anyone trained further would have the ability be refined, confessing that whatever 'Kemal' had likely done in Irvan in manipulating both blast door and security systems was a cut beyond Atreides' ability, even with a Tiberium crystal to amplify his power.
Early on, of course, we did not know they were even called 'The Order'. We knew only of "Kemal" and a band of heavily armed Forgotten Mercenaries doing daring raids. But then Jeddah happened, and the seed of Professor Granger's generosity bore fruit.
so one thing i wanted to ask is if you guys want to continue using tiberium as the basis of our economy in the future or switch to normal economy back?
I prefer to continue using tiberium, until releasing it in some unimportant worlds in the future to mine, of course I know that the public opinion in general will not like it at all, but at this point we will already have some colonized planets and also a better understanding of tiberium, it will be much easier to convince people to spread tiberium at that time since a long time will have passed and even though it will still be very difficult to do it will not be impossible anymore, even though the population still there was a great fear of tiberium in general with much better technology at that time and the possible benefits we can convince them to spread tiberium on mining planets, of course a lot of people will still be against this action, more like there are always people who wants to continue following the "tradition" that tiberium should never be spread and that kind of thing, in human history there has never been a lack of people going against these "traditions" and trying to change the way society works and as it sees certain things with so many benefits to do this the number will not be small wanting this option
So what is your opinion for the future of GDI in general on the tiberium issue?
So it look like they're technopaths in the way that they can control computer systems. Worrying, but my primary concern is espionage rather than direct attacks like this. They can easily track our communications and protocols, and give that knowledge to other NOD forces, making them a dangerous force multiplier.
And just like before, mere seconds after the routine check ended, the comms array, one air-gapped from even the already insulated surveillance grid, cut off in an instant.
This time however, the security forces in Yarchev were prepared. Knowing that technology might fail them, the only recourse available are ones rudimentary, yet nonetheless effective. An artillery piece, overloaded with a blank charge, located in the middle of a bunker compound to shelter it from laser fire from all around, is ready to be fired. The deafening sound would be heard from dozens of kilometres away, signalling that the research blacksite is under attack by enemy forces. And yet, as they attempted to enter, the enemy had already intercepted them.
See, this is what I mean. They knew exactly when to attack, and what to counter. Credit to the security force though, they tried come up with a solution to a new threat, and it eventually worked.
Early on, of course, we did not know they were even called 'The Order'. We knew only of "Kemal" and a band of heavily armed Forgotten Mercenaries doing daring raids. But then Jeddah happened, and the seed of Professor Granger's generosity bore fruit.
While the 'generosity' is undoubtedly partly the Mecca/Jeddah Planned Cities, I'm actually expecting a large part to be the overly generous amount of Forgotten Aid we sent. Because I doubt the Order was the only group of Forgotten that experimented with their powers.
If all they wanted really was the economy stuff, that is completely fine by me. Tiberium destabilizers or something similar would have been a bad thing, but if the brotherhood does some abatement for us, that is very nice of them.
Hewlett-Gardner is, by word of GM, less productive than what Nod has.
Most generous explanation is they knew something was there but not what, second most generous is they knew and they're trying to gauge our progress. Less generously, I'd worry about Tiberium accelerators.
While the 'generosity' is undoubtedly partly the Mecca/Jeddah Planned Cities, I'm actually expecting a large part to be the overly generous amount of Forgotten Aid we sent. Because I doubt the Order was the only group of Forgotten that experimented with their powers.
