Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution

Outsourcing means giving them the instructions needed to produce Tech X which (unsurprisingly) completely negates any of the protection Blackboxing provides.

Maybe I was unclear, or I'm just not understanding the explanation.

Outsourcing shouldn't mean the Black Boxing is pointless, as they don't know what parts are necessary for it to work and thus don't actually understand how it works. They know you put X piece here and Y piece there.
We've got Black Boxing to the point where Revvy took like an hour plus to go through the final product and understand how her own creation worked.
That's not a concern for me, although it's a lot less secure against the Reapers who have at least the equivalent resources of the rest of the Citadel races combined.


What I'm wondering is, does even that slim line of defence help us if we release tech too soon?
Like, ok, maybe they won't understand our technology from first principles for a year or two, but they can get the blueprints for it from the less-secure outsourcing firms right away.
Once they have that, they can churn out their own copies of it untraceably and combine it with all the other technology they had access to but couldn't use because of (whatever problem our tech fixes).

Like, say, how arc-reactors let them give biotics unlimited endurance, or how skillchips plus Better Body nanomachines means all the husks they create will be less 'mindless zombie' and more 'spec-ops Captain America deathknight'.
 
That makes more sense, but I'm sort of confused where you're going with it and how it's going to work in practice. Are you saying that we're going to see bonus knock-on effects from existing techs as they mature, that fully researched techs are going to start off with limited utility until a certain maturity threshold has passed? Would there be additional statistics being added to all techs / certain key techs to track this? At the moment it seems like a bunch of complexity for little gain, but I'm willing to be surprised.
It's totally possible that it's too complex. Still thinking about it. Anyway, the fundamental problem is the following: PI is too small affect the really big stuff in the galaxy on it's own (most importantly, the Reapers), at least in the likely timeframe of the quest. Licensing out is one way to leverage PIs technology, like with the Legionaire. This is supposed to roughly quantify how much leverage you can use. Is it something you only see in a few research labs, something you need a big production park, or just a few fairly common machines?
 
Maybe I was unclear, or I'm just not understanding the explanation.

Outsourcing shouldn't mean the Black Boxing is pointless, as they don't know what parts are necessary for it to work and thus don't actually understand how it works. They know you put X piece here and Y piece there.
It does though. If something is outsourced then by definition they can build it and the whole point of blackboxing is preventing people from being about to build copies of our stuff. This right here is why we have been vary careful about the amount of licensing we've done since every outsourced product is one that will (inevitably) fall into someone villain's (like Cerberus or the Reapers) hands.

What I'm wondering is, does even that slim line of defence help us if we release tech too soon?
Like, ok, maybe they won't understand our technology from first principles for a year or two, but they can get the blueprints for it from the less-secure outsourcing firms right away.
Once they have that, they can churn out their own copies of it untraceably and combine it with all the other technology they had access to but couldn't use because of (whatever problem our tech fixes).

Like, say, how arc-reactors let them give biotics unlimited endurance, or how skillchips plus Better Body nanomachines means all the husks they create will be less 'mindless zombie' and more 'spec-ops Captain America deathknight'.
Releasing technology, as in selling it to other people, does introduce this risk yes. It's why we've been taking care to balance what we do and don't release. For example the Light Laser Pynda is completely broken by current starship standards however it could be vastly worse with a couple techs we plan on unlocking in the near future. However we don't plan on selling any of those, or really utilizing them publicly, until we need to. Which is where the Pynda's hyper-modular design letting us swap parts in and out is so critical and why I want to get as many into Alliance hands as possible. When the Reapers show up it would be fairly easy to swap out the current load out for a hyper-tech load out designed to fight Reapers.

It's totally possible that it's too complex. Still thinking about it. Anyway, the fundamental problem is the following: PI is too small affect the really big stuff in the galaxy on it's own (most importantly, the Reapers), at least in the likely timeframe of the quest. Licensing out is one way to leverage PIs technology, like with the Legionaire. This is supposed to roughly quantify how much leverage you can use. Is it something you only see in a few research labs, something you need a big production park, or just a few fairly common machines?
Ah; I think you may have missed something important here; Paragon Industries isn't small anymore and within the next year or two we will be hitting megacorp status.

Here are some very rough projections of PI's quarterly production capacity going forwards:
2174-Q3 (Today) = 4,530,030.00pr (0.09 Dreadnoughts)
2175-Q3 = 11,160,030.00pr (0.22 Dreadnoughts)
2176-Q3 (possibly Q4) = 101,160,030.00pr (2.02 Dreadnoughts)​
We have very much just hit the point where exponential growth really starts to kick in. The worst bit is that all these numbers are using cash that we pretty much already have. They don't require any market growth or such. The first is what we currently have, the second is factories already under construction, and the third is Project Project Earthfall which we should have the cash for either next quarter or the quarter after.

We are very much at the point where we don't need to outsource anything because we are finally hitting the levels of production capacity needed to build everything in house.
 
...so as a clueless poster stepping into what seems to be a quest that's been dead for two years, could I ask why this thread's been so active recently? Is the quest being revived or something?

Sorry to interrupt but I'm genuinely curious, as looking through the past four or so pages hasn't told me anything.
 
...so as a clueless poster stepping into what seems to be a quest that's been dead for two years, could I ask why this thread's been so active recently? Is the quest being revived or something?

Sorry to interrupt but I'm genuinely curious, as looking through the past four or so pages hasn't told me anything.
The quest is being revived by a new GM (BurnNote) since the previous GM (Hoyr) seems to have left SB/SV. This isn't the first time this has happened in Shepard Quest (Hoyr was our third GM) so everyone is rather excited and optimistic about it.
 
The quest is being revived by a new GM (BurnNote) since the previous GM (Hoyr) seems to have left SB/SV. This isn't the first time this has happened in Shepard Quest (Hoyr was our third GM) so everyone is rather excited and optimistic about it.
Thanks. I guess I'd better read through the old threads, then. Seems like a cool quest.
 
Ah; I think you may have missed something important here; Paragon Industries isn't small anymore and within the next year or two we will be hitting megacorp status.

Here are some very rough projections of PI's quarterly production capacity going forwards:
2174-Q3 (Today) = 4,530,030.00pr (0.09 Dreadnoughts)
2175-Q3 = 11,160,030.00pr (0.22 Dreadnoughts)
2176-Q3 (possibly Q4) = 101,160,030.00pr (2.02 Dreadnoughts)We have very much just hit the point where exponential growth really starts to kick in. The worst bit is that all these numbers are using cash that we pretty much already have. They don't require any market growth or such. The first is what we currently have, the second is factories already under construction, and the third is Project Project Earthfall which we should have the cash for either next quarter or the quarter after.

We are very much at the point where we don't need to outsource anything because we are finally hitting the levels of production capacity needed to build everything in house.
There's a difference between not small for a corporation, and not small for a nation. And no government that isn't already broken is going to let a corp get to the point where they can act on the same scale as a nation without a serious fight or a way to control them. Because then, they aren't the government anymore. If you want to fight the Reapers (and whatever else I come up with) on your own, you have to be at the nation scale, and just a small nation. You can do that on your own, but it will mean essentially becoming an independent polity. I'd be up for that, because that's cool and interesting, but I'm not sure the thread wants to go there.
 
There's a difference between not small for a corporation, and not small for a nation. And no government that isn't already broken is going to let a corp get to the point where they can act on the same scale as a nation without a serious fight or a way to control them. Because then, they aren't the government anymore. If you want to fight the Reapers (and whatever else I come up with) on your own, you have to be at the nation scale, and just a small nation. You can do that on your own, but it will mean essentially becoming an independent polity. I'd be up for that, because that's cool and interesting, but I'm not sure the thread wants to go there.
find a off the relay system to colonize and we could do both.
 
Since I have some free time and a desire to do more Shepard Quest stuff I thought I'd get started on the plan for the next update's vote.

Update:
Finance Doc

-> Updated ParSec numbers to match those listed in the most recent update.



Citadel Races - Arc Reactors:
[] Switch from Gen I Arc Reactors to Gen II Arc Reactors - 175,000,000,000cr + 1,125,000cr

We save 175 billion credits and free up 1,125,000pr.

Systems Alliance - Pynda Order:
[] Do not lower Arc Reactor production (59 Light Laser Pynda's constructed) - 977,079,589,000cr

(2,503,431.00pr + 1,125,000cr) / 61,177.810pr per LLP = 59.31 LLPs = 59 LLPs

Remaining Free Production = 18,936.65pr

Internal Production:
[] Resupplying ParSec - 5,530,300,000cr + 16,239.4pr
-[] Construct 115 Lesser Accipiters - 23,000,000cr + 115pr
-[] Construct 8 Tribulus - 13,600,000cr + 88pr
-[] Construct 9 Sagittarius - 2,700,000cr + 14.4pr
-[] Construct 210 Aspidai - 105,000,000cr + 567pr
-[] Construct 35 Hydra Missiles - 140,000,000cr + 595pr
-[] Construct 85 Small Antiship Missiles - 2,975,000,000cr + 8,500pr
-[] Construct 18 Medium Antiship Missiles - 1,071,000,000cr + 3,060pr
-[] Construct 12 Testudo Missile - 1,200,000,000cr + 3,300pr

Personnel:
[] Triple the Income of Staff - 1,140,840,000cr (ongoing)
-[] Triple the income of all Paragon Industries staff - 152,900,000cr (ongoing)
-[] Triple the income of all Paragon Securities staff - 807,940,000cr (ongoing)
-[] Triple the income of all Biotic Academy Staff - 180,000,000cr (ongoing)



It's a rather simple and short plan compared to past plans but that is because the vast majority of our production is being gobbled up by LLP production and our cash is being saved for next quarter's (with this plan we should have 3.9 trillion credits next quarter) Project Earthfall. I've probably forgotten a bunch of things since I haven't gotten around to re-reading the quest just yet. That is part of the reason I decided to start work on a plan so early; so other people can help remember things I've forgotten.



There's a difference between not small for a corporation, and not small for a nation. And no government that isn't already broken is going to let a corp get to the point where they can act on the same scale as a nation without a serious fight or a way to control them. Because then, they aren't the government anymore. If you want to fight the Reapers (and whatever else I come up with) on your own, you have to be at the nation scale, and just a small nation. You can do that on your own, but it will mean essentially becoming an independent polity. I'd be up for that, because that's cool and interesting, but I'm not sure the thread wants to go there.
Well then we are going to have some issues with the Alliance really soon. We're already at the point where we've got the military forces to (theoretically) rebel:
Oh and on purely military terms we could successfully rebel against the government. Which by some definitions makes us a Megacorp. Congrats I guess. Though that'd be a really dumb idea. Most of our armed forces are more loyal to the Systems Alliance than us.
but our mass production of LLPs for the Alliance will stop that.

Even setting that aside however by next year Pargaon Industries' annual income will be about 13% of the Alliance's GDP, well technically less since we bring money into the Alliance and thus raise it's GDP, and we will have both the facilities and finances necessary to outperform the Alliance military full stop. Well they would have bigger ships then us since we don't have the research for building anything bigger then Cruisers yet IIRC but technicalities like that don't really matter here.

That being said it's not like this situation isn't without parallel. Samsung represents 17% of South Korea's GDP and produces a full 20% of the nation's exports.
 
There's a difference between not small for a corporation, and not small for a nation. And no government that isn't already broken is going to let a corp get to the point where they can act on the same scale as a nation without a serious fight or a way to control them. Because then, they aren't the government anymore. If you want to fight the Reapers (and whatever else I come up with) on your own, you have to be at the nation scale, and just a small nation. You can do that on your own, but it will mean essentially becoming an independent polity. I'd be up for that, because that's cool and interesting, but I'm not sure the thread wants to go there.

The correct response to this is not to limit the scale we operate on, but to increase the scale our nation operates on. Ie boost Alliance economy and production. And those are going to be boosted strongly with plug-n-play skills alone, much less our medical stuff.

Speaking of those - am I the only one thinking that proliferation of those will lead to infantry garrisons, if not all infantry aside from special ops and elite units, disappearing? With them, and a stockpile of military grade weapons / armor, you could quickly turn the whole adult population into effective modern fighting force on demand, with no need to feed soldiers when you don't need them.
 
The correct response to this is not to limit the scale we operate on, but to increase the scale our nation operates on. Ie boost Alliance economy and production. And those are going to be boosted strongly with plug-n-play skills alone, much less our medical stuff.

Speaking of those - am I the only one thinking that proliferation of those will lead to infantry garrisons, if not all infantry aside from special ops and elite units, disappearing? With them, and a stockpile of military grade weapons / armor, you could quickly turn the whole adult population into effective modern fighting force on demand, with no need to feed soldiers when you don't need them.
mandatory military militia grade skill chips for everyone Human, 100% possible mobilization?
 
The correct response to this is not to limit the scale we operate on, but to increase the scale our nation operates on. Ie boost Alliance economy and production. And those are going to be boosted strongly with plug-n-play skills alone, much less our medical stuff.

Speaking of those - am I the only one thinking that proliferation of those will lead to infantry garrisons, if not all infantry aside from special ops and elite units, disappearing? With them, and a stockpile of military grade weapons / armor, you could quickly turn the whole adult population into effective modern fighting force on demand, with no need to feed soldiers when you don't need them.
I am not so sure. In theory, it is a workable idea, but I am not so sure that it would actually work in practice. Theoretically, you can turn whole populations into a modern fighting force. But that does not mean that population would be skilled in fighting as a soldier needs more than knowledge to be an effective soldier. Not to mention, a lot of people will not want to be soldiers.

Also, there will be a lot of backlash against the idea of plug-n-play skills. Essentially, people who have studied and worked all their lives for the desired job will not like the idea of getting replaced by someone who just needed 10 minutes to upload the required information into his head.
 
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That being said it's not like this situation isn't without parallel. Samsung represents 17% of South Korea's GDP and produces a full 20% of the nation's exports.
Thinking about things this is a surprisingly more apt comparison then I'd first thought. The Alliance is a small nation surrounded by giants that is only really competitive because we caught up with technology really fast post first contact and that we've had a couple major scientific breakthroughs (medi-gel for example) that let our economic advance well beyond where it should be.

This is also why Paragon Industries can grow to become such a large player in the Alliance; because a lot of our sales are to the Citadel markets which dwarf the Alliance market. After all there are only 12 to 13 billion humans while the Citadel Races are, collectively, in their trillions.

Paragon Industries is one of the few Human companies to actually make it big on the 'global' scale. This is also part of the reason why the Alliance is going to have issues restraining PI. Legally speaking there isn't much they can do to stop Revy from moving PI's headquarters to the Citadel or some other (larger) nation. Especially not when so much of PI's wealth tends to be in direct credits. Sure it would gut our personnel count but with trillions in credits we can always just hire new personnel.

PI leaving the Alliance sphere of influence is something they just can't afford. We are too much of a golden goose for them; as can be seen by them placing one of like five fleets directly overhead even though it weakens the Alliances's overall defensive abilities. In a sense we have become, for the Alliance anyway, too big to fail.

That said we definitely can't do anything we want. Part of the reason we are getting away with becoming so powerful and influential is that Revy has clear and strong ties to the Alliance, specifically it's military. We are very much a known factor and part of that is we are known to be fairly patriotic, something which our actions in this war is only going to reinforce. Now consider that Terra Firma holds 40% of the seats in the Alliance parliament and with the war that number is only expected to grow. Unsurprisingly a hyper powerful human company really appeals to a pro-human organization even if they don't entirely agree with Revy's ideals. To quote the head of the Terra Firma party after one of our products saved his life:
Claude Menneau, one of the two candidates for leadership of the Terra Firma Party, escaped an assassination attempt by one of his guards and the pilot of his ship. Mr. Menneau credits his survival to the arc-reactor powered shielding he had recently obtained.

"While I am not 100% behind her politics, I can definitely say that Dr. Rebecca Shepard delivers a good product."

Basically as long as we keep supporting the Alliance, build support with Terra Firma via Project Earthfall, and generally act in a politically acceptable way Paragon Industries will be allowed to grow more or less unchecked. Because by this point our growth and humanity's growth are interlinked.
 
Basically as long as we keep supporting the Alliance, build support with Terra Firma via Project Earthfall, and generally act in a politically acceptable way Paragon Industries will be allowed to grow more or less unchecked. Because by this point our growth and humanity's growth are interlinked.
You make very valid points. But, do you think there might be negative consequences of letting Terra Firma get so strong in the Alliance Parliament? There is no question that Terra Firma will make huge gains as a result of the Alliance-Batarian War. In fact, I believe that Terra Firma might gain a majority in the Alliance Parliament, thus form the next government.

Would a Terra Firma Government make it a bit difficult for PI when we try to expand our market in Citadel space and etc?
 
I'm sure we can ninja our way into MegaCorp before the Systems Alliance Parliament has a chance to react. It'll take us ~2 years at most to become embedded on Earth right? We're at war so their attention is going to be preoccupied with more important things.

We'll also probably have political allies by then, in the form of all the SA member nations that are benefiting from PI presence in their lands. New jobs, actual corporate welfare, infrastructure overhaul, decreased population pressures, etc., all of it funded by Paragon Industries. I don't see anyone trying very hard to take us down tbh. As long as we don't become dicks with our power I think we'll be just fine.
 
Thinking about things this is a surprisingly more apt comparison then I'd first thought. The Alliance is a small nation surrounded by giants that is only really competitive because we caught up with technology really fast post first contact and that we've had a couple major scientific breakthroughs (medi-gel for example) that let our economic advance well beyond where it should be.

This is also why Paragon Industries can grow to become such a large player in the Alliance; because a lot of our sales are to the Citadel markets which dwarf the Alliance market. After all there are only 12 to 13 billion humans while the Citadel Races are, collectively, in their trillions.

Paragon Industries is one of the few Human companies to actually make it big on the 'global' scale. This is also part of the reason why the Alliance is going to have issues restraining PI. Legally speaking there isn't much they can do to stop Revy from moving PI's headquarters to the Citadel or some other (larger) nation. Especially not when so much of PI's wealth tends to be in direct credits. Sure it would gut our personnel count but with trillions in credits we can always just hire new personnel.

PI leaving the Alliance sphere of influence is something they just can't afford. We are too much of a golden goose for them; as can be seen by them placing one of like five fleets directly overhead even though it weakens the Alliances's overall defensive abilities. In a sense we have become, for the Alliance anyway, too big to fail.

That said we definitely can't do anything we want. Part of the reason we are getting away with becoming so powerful and influential is that Revy has clear and strong ties to the Alliance, specifically it's military. We are very much a known factor and part of that is we are known to be fairly patriotic, something which our actions in this war is only going to reinforce. Now consider that Terra Firma holds 40% of the seats in the Alliance parliament and with the war that number is only expected to grow. Unsurprisingly a hyper powerful human company really appeals to a pro-human organization even if they don't entirely agree with Revy's ideals. To quote the head of the Terra Firma party after one of our products saved his life:


Basically as long as we keep supporting the Alliance, build support with Terra Firma via Project Earthfall, and generally act in a politically acceptable way Paragon Industries will be allowed to grow more or less unchecked. Because by this point our growth and humanity's growth are interlinked.
In which it is explained to the prospective QM, exactly what a clusterfuck he's gotten in charge of.
If you feel the need to back out or retcon thing @BurnNote we'll probably understand.
 
A few quarters back there was a quote that the guard personal we have on pay are enough that PI could successfully rebel against the local groverment and is therby already a megacorp. It is just that all those guards are former soldiers and would not support such a move.
 
I'm sure we can ninja our way into MegaCorp before the Systems Alliance Parliament has a chance to react. It'll take us ~2 years at most to become embedded on Earth right? We're at war so their attention is going to be preoccupied with more important things.

We'll also probably have political allies by then, in the form of all the SA member nations that are benefiting from PI presence in their lands. New jobs, actual corporate welfare, infrastructure overhaul, decreased population pressures, etc., all of it funded by Paragon Industries. I don't see anyone trying very hard to take us down tbh. As long as we don't become dicks with our power I think we'll be just fine.

We might want to do some urban renewal as well a year or two after we get project earthfall in said cities. Update city infrastructure and image from the funds produced by said factories. Maybe make it so that all of the profits they make for a set time goes into improving general life on earth.

A few quarters back there was a quote that the guard personal we have on pay are enough that PI could successfully rebel against the local groverment and is therby already a megacorp. It is just that all those guards are former soldiers and would not support such a move.

I don't see them doing it if we initiated it, but if say the systems alliance tried to take over the company or shut us down in some way they would feel betrayed. Right now as was said PI is to big to fail. That includes in PR, right now we are already offering basically free gene upgrades to everyone and their aging mother. While also providing stupid cheap energy, and almost as cheap housing.
 
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Would a Terra Firma Government make it a bit difficult for PI when we try to expand our market in Citadel space and etc?
It depends upon what exact flavor of "Pro Humanity" Terra Firma, and especially a Terra Firma government, takes. If they go full isolationist we'd have some serious issues but I doubt we'll see that. Isolationism doesn't really work as an economic strategy and would see them losing serious tax dollars. To put things into perspective when we're earning 20 trillion credits, mostly from sales onto the Citadel market, the Alliance would be raking in 4 trillion in tax revenue. That is a noticeable amount of money even on governmental budget scales.

I suspect instead what we will see is a lot of protectionist policies. Tariffs on imports, restrictions on alien visas (especially work visas), and incentives to operate in the local economy. It would probably cut into our profit margins, notably because tariffs tend to result in other nations putting tariffs on your goods, but as long as we continue to base our factories out of Alliance worlds and primarily employ humans we should be fairly fine.

I don't see them doing it if we initiated it, but if say the systems alliance tried to take over the company or shut us down in some way they would feel betrayed. Right now as was said PI is to big to fail. That includes in PR, right now we are already offering basically free gene upgrades to everyone and their aging mother. While also providing stupid cheap energy, and almost as cheap housing.
Oh! I almost forgot the most important thing here; depending upon how the revamp to the research system plays out we are entirely capable of completing Eternal Youth in a single quarter. So if we ever need a PR boost we can literally just go and invent biological immortality more or less on demand.
 
mandatory military militia grade skill chips for everyone Human, 100% possible mobilization?
Personally I prefer carrot approach - free skill chip(s) and augmentation(s) if you agree to take a soldier pack skill chip and to be mobilized in case of attack on your colony / all out war
I am not so sure. In theory, it is a workable idea, but I am not so sure that it would actually work in practice. Theoretically, you can turn whole populations into a modern fighting force. But that does not mean that population would be skilled in fighting as a soldier needs more than knowledge to be an effective soldier. Not to mention, a lot of people will not want to be soldiers.

Also, there will be a lot of backlash against the idea of plug-n-play skills. Essentially, people who have studied and worked all their lives for the desired job will not like the idea of getting replaced by someone who just needed 10 minutes to upload the required information into his head.
You don't need 100% saturation. I would argue that you don't need 30% saturation for this to be efficient. Benefits are:
1) Each soldier replaced with on-demand mobilized person is a soldier that both adds to the economy through peaceful work, and doesn't subtract from the economy by needing to be fed, kept trained, drilled and such.
2) Each soldier (or a person with a chip) can organize several non-soldiers
3) This allows far more efficient guerilla warfare as go-to colony defenses, because you can also produce wilderness survival and asymmetric warfare methods into the package.

As to backlash, I think we need to get on top of that. Personally, if we do this at least partially as skill-sharing where people can add their skills to the database (with expert systems integrating various imprints / skillsets to constantly improve the system), we could probably move towards reputation system being involved in society.
 
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