To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

[X] Plan Cheap and Dangerous and Federation

YEah, Good end is one big gamble that might let us do a long term win, or more likely a "win" it is theoretical data, keep that in mind, that means we will need to research it ,test it and hope we can come up with contermeasures, but it i s theoretical so it might work, or not. And in the mean time we let the HoH win a diplo fight, and even if we win there.... well, it won't be pretty if we have to golden bullet them

agumentic said:

In the end, we also need to help Harmony citizens that are already in, so them getting more people doesn't fundamentally change the equation.

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If you say this and then immediately contradict yourself, you may be making a bad argument. It also ignores that giving the Harmony more resources, of any type, will make it harder to help those already under the Harmony's control. One does not let the robber take what he wants and hope to arrest him later; they respond, forcing him to cut short his robbery and flee.

We get actionable information on the selected options and summary/overview information on the other options.

So let's throw out a hypothetical where we get the info on the Harmony activities but not the understanding/ability to identify/counter the Singer Psychi-Cybertech.

We go to the Felis and we say here we have all this hard evidence about the HoH manipulating events, and we publish it, and the Felis are righteously outraged. Then the HoH say mea culpa, those people acted without authority, we are truly contrite and will make it right. Then it comes out that some of the evidence has been manipulated while in our hands. Then the Felis accept the apology and compensation because those people the Singers can influence are still in place, are still undetectable and are still something we can't counter.

I don't think any of the options are bad ones perse. I do think you can spin any of them to be ineffective is isolation. The key thing (IMO) will be the follow-up actions, no matter which plan wins the current vote. I think at the next Snakepit we want to be ordering all the intelligence expansions, and if there is any research/snakepit option to do a full press level of effort into the Singer Psychi-Cybertech I think we take it.

My personal preference is to get the details of the Singer Psychi-Cybertech so that we can understand and develop counters to their abilities. This is because I believe that any actions we take without an ability to counter their influence will be mitigated.

As an aside I find it interesting that it's details of planned operations in Felis space as opposed to details of Harmony infiltration in "other species" space.

But we can already take what happened with the OSA as proof that the HoH can't brush off hard evidence through only manipulation and infiltration.

Night said:

If you say this and then immediately contradict yourself, you may be making a bad argument. It also ignores that giving the Harmony more resources, of any type, will make it harder to help those already under the Harmony's control. One does not let the robber take what he wants and hope to arrest him later; they respond, forcing him to cut short his robbery and flee.

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I don't consider "war will be somewhat harder" a fundamental change. War with HoH is already an extremely undesirable state of affairs, a bit more ships on their side doesn't change it much, in my opinion.

I think the other plans are very good in the short term, because they have actionable proof of the HoH's various misdeeds. However, Singer Psychi-Cybertech is something the HoH has been developing for hundreds of years. Will we be able to eventually detect HoH chipped people? Certainly, though we have no idea how long that will take. But we wouldn't have the tools needed to get a complete understanding of the technology like we can if we take the data here. Plan Good Ending is the most long-term plan, because it gives the Fed the defensive and offensive ability to combat Singer technology, fullscale. In the short term, we might loose a few polities to the HoH's influence, but in the long term this is the key to unraveling the Singer's ability to control people in ways that would take far, far longer otherwise. In the long term, this is what we can use to win the war completely rather than just winning a few battles right now.

Some posters are asking what some things mean. This is an attempt to explain as I understand it, order rearranged into groups:

[65kq] -Full theoretical underpinnings of Singer Psychi-Cybertech.

How they do the voodoo that they do. Whether knowing about it leads us to ways to detect/block it - who knows.

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[40kq] -Full specifications on the Harmony's currently deployed military vessels.
[30kq] -Full specifications on the Harmony's next generation frigate program.
[20kq] -Proposed specifications for the Harmony's next-generation cruiser program.
[05kq] -Current Harmony Military deployments.

Military data. Useful in a war (and the GMS have indicated would also lead to cruiser/frigate tech boosts).

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[25kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration in Honiani space.
[20kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration in Rigellian space.
[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration in Amarki space.
[05kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of Laian space.

HoH penetration into space/societies we have claimed as our own. (Slightly surprised there isn't infiltration into Tellerite space, to be honest …)

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[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of Licori space.
[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of Nessic space.
[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of Bolian space.
[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of OSA space.

HoH penetration into other societies, some of which we are completing with them on.

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[10kq] -Full records of the Harmony's actions when they intervened in Padani space.
[05kq] -Full records of the Harmony's actions in regards to their intervention on Kelowna.

Historical information on failed penetrations into societies we are in contact with.

My initial vote:

[X] Plan We should have expected the Inquisition.
[X] Plan Cheap and Dangerous and Federation

I think the short term of crippling HoH diplomacy is the critical thing here. Starfleet can start looking for implants on word-of-Zara, backed by all the other data she got, while it brings the border polities away from them for long enough for us to get some kind of anti-implant tech going (though probably not the same kind of immediate anti-implant effect that data would get us).

It's not about the ships, it's about the people.

Going into ten+ billion people and needing to forcibly remove nano-implants from their brains or else they can be controlled to rebel or act subversively even against their personal interests at any time adds an impossible dimension to any conflict.

Derpmind said:

I think the other plans are very good in the short term, because they have actionable proof of the HoH's various misdeeds. However, Singer Psychi-Cybertech is something the HoH has been developing for hundreds of years. Will we be able to eventually detect HoH chipped people? Certainly, though we have no idea how long that will take. But we wouldn't have the tools needed to get a complete understanding of the technology like we can if we take the data here. Plan Good Ending is the most long-term plan, because it gives the Fed the defensive and offensive ability to combat Singer technology, fullscale. In the short term, we might loose a few polities to the HoH's influence, but in the long term this is the key to unraveling the Singer's ability to control people in ways that would take far, far longer otherwise. In the long term, this is what we can use to win the war completely rather than just winning a few battles right now.

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I strongly disagree, because "a few polities" is going to be a disaster far bigger than we can deal with even in the long term. We would need a solution to the HoH chips on a planetary scale before we can undo that "short term" loss.

agumentic said:

I don't consider "war will be somewhat harder" a fundamental change.

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Everything will be harder.

Your argument is that our obligation to the people of the Harmony overrides our obligations to people who are not currently of the Harmony but will be if we don't act. This is not only internally inconsistent in that if we have an obligation to free the members of the Harmony we have an obligation to keep others free of it as well, it fails to recognize that our obligation to the people of the Harmony demands that we do not make the Harmony stronger and make it harder to free the people of Harmony.

Derpmind said:

In the long term, this is what we can use to win the war completely rather than just winning a few battles right now.

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How?

People are thinking that there's a magic bullet in there, but there may not be. And even if there is, what do you think it will do? Because most of the viable magic bullet solutions aren't ones the Federation will countenance. Genociding the Singers is not an option. Leaving them trapped in an endless black void is not an option. We would have to do with Cassie said, erase their memories, make them live one life and die, and that's realistically not an option either on both practical and moral grounds. And the potential for abuse of this technology is very high, to the point there are good reasons not to have a full understanding of how it works and how to duplicate it. This is putting control chips in people. It is against everything the Federation believes in, and controlling its spread is something most members of Starfleet and the Council would regard as only slightly less than a sacred duty. This is not a capability we want anyone to have, but in our studying it and being able to replicate it from first principles we take the risk that both we ourselves and others will have that ability. So the research effort people are envisioning, some kind of huge crash program moonshot, is never going to be approved in the first place.

Never mind the internally inconsistent approach that if the Harmony is unacceptable as a whole then we must allow it to expand its influence.

Night said:

And the potential for abuse of this technology is very high, to the point there are good reasons not to have a full understanding of how it works and how to duplicate it. This is putting control chips in people. It is against everything the Federation believes in, and controlling its spread is something most members of Starfleet and the Council would regard as only slightly less than a sacred duty. This is not a capability we want anyone to have, but in our studying it and being able to replicate it from first principles we take the risk that both we ourselves and others will have that ability. So the research effort people are envisioning, some kind of huge crash program moonshot, is never going to be approved in the first place.

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Except that that's a stupid approach to the whole issue.

This capacity exists, it's a big universe, other people have or will figure it out from first principles much as the Harmony did, so we need the information to counter it. Pretending it doesn't exist just because it scares us would be tremendously illogical, and quite simply not the sort of thing the federation does.

065tdsa said:

Except that that's a stupid approach to the whole issue.

This capacity exists, it's a big universe, other people have or will figure it out from first principles much as the Harmony did, so we need the information to counter it. Pretending it doesn't exist just because it scares us would be tremendously illogical, and quite simply not the sort of thing the federation does.

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It took 9 years to go from "we know the first principles of rocketry" to "we've landed men on the moon and returned them safely to the Earth". Even if we go full Crash Moonshot levels of throw resources at the problem, we probably won't be able to be any faster at stopping the Harmony from being able to take over people than we were to devlop a vaccine for the Biophage - which means IIRC something like a absolute 100% bare minimum of 6 months before good enough progress is made. If we can't mitigate or nullify Harmony agents in the short term while figuring that out, there's a not insignificant chance that we might not get a State of Emergency - which means that we can't even achieve Biophage like results in terms of how fast we get things done. That could be disastrous.

Honestly, my reasoning for not going for plan Good End is that we need to start cutting the ends off the tentacles trying to drag us under before we start trying to hack away at the head of the Kraken.

@AKuz @OneirosTheWriter And other GMs: Do we have approval voting for this? Because we don't know, and that means that the general consensus of "let's not just grab the seeming golden bullet that will take months if not years to load if we get to load it at all" is potentially losing to "here's a really concise plan that seems to look good in theory, even if it actually is a bad plan as far as the majority is concerned", which seems to be wrong.

Night said:

Everything will be harder.

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Will it? Because I don't think so. What would adding those resources give Harmony that it doesn't already have more, and how would resources imperil us, if not at war?

Besides, not getting immediately actionable intelligence doesn't mean 100% giving up border species. Those nations are years away from integration into Harmony, more than enough time for SI to find out proof on their own.

Ash19256 said:

Honestly, my reasoning for not going for plan Good End is that we need to start cutting the ends off the tentacles trying to drag us under before we start trying to hack away at the head of the Kraken.

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Except we already had an overview of Harmony's actions in Federation, and there was nothing immediately catastrophic.

agumentic said:

Those nations are years away from integration into Harmony, more than enough time for SI to find out proof on their own.

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*citation needed*

Harmony diplomatic ability vastly exceeds ours. They have been rapidly tearing through all tags in their way-if we don't interrupt them now I expect to see at least one polity fall to the Harmony within the year.

065tdsa said:

Except that that's a stupid approach to the whole issue.

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It's an approach we've taken before, however, and it is not unprecedent in Star Trek. This is how the Federation has dealt with unwanted tech before, like subspace weapons and Borg assimilation, or the Biophage in this very quest. It's also worth pointing out other people can only develop it in theory; none actually have. If it were that simple and that likely a path to pursue...well, everyone has warp engines. Several people have cloak. Only the Harmony has this, and it's not like the Cardassians or Romulans wouldn't want it so that's clearly not the problem. You can't just say we can't put the genie back in the bottle when it flies in the face of observable reality.

agumentic said:

Will it? Because I don't think so. What would adding those resources give Harmony that it doesn't already have more, and how would resources imperil us, if not at war?

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Your argument is predicated on the idea that adding a finite number to larger finite number does not increase the larger finite number.

This is, frankly, dumb.

It would give the Harmony more scientists, more diplomats, more believers, more ships, more worlds, more of all the resources that can be used to oppose us in all things; not merely in war, as you are ridiculously focused on, but in peace as well. You would give them additional tools to try and face us in every possible sphere, from denying the accusations we make to trying to develop ways to defeat our understanding and countermeasures to their tech. It would make the task of liberating the Harmony measurably and considerably more difficult, by any method whether it uses force or not.

Night said:

It would make the task of liberating the Harmony measurably and considerably more difficult, by any method whether it uses force or not.

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Notably, it seems likely that it would be vastly more difficult to de-chip people and then convince them that the Harmony was in the wrong, instead of having them say, trying to justify the last years of their lives as being right, than to simply prevent them from being chipped in the first place.

[X] Plan Good End

I could give you what I think are well-reasoned rationalities why I chose this plan. For instance, I could cite our innate responsibility to our own constituents to free our polity, our citizens who actively signed on to and believe the Federation's charter of self-improvement for its own sake, from the evils of mind control. Or how moving forwards without a means to identify, even if not correct, such cases of mind control is paramount to limiting the spread of paranoia and reactionary sentiment. Both as dangerous to the Federation's existence as an entity worth fighting for as the Singers themselves will ever be. More, perhaps.

But that's not why I ultimately decided on this plan.

In this case, at this time, I voted for us to gain the theory behind the Singers' tech because I think that's the fastest way to get the chance to really talk to them.

I want us to force a connection to the Singers on their own level and make them give us a real debate. Not a stage acted performance for the 'mutes', not a diplomatic ploy to turn polls, an actual straight-up argument for argument debate with our captain(s) where they can't simply ignore and erase the dissent. I want us to win with a Picard Speech for the ages.

Because to me, that's Star Trek.

I'm not afraid of the Harmony gaining more member states in the meantime. Because we are the Federation. Citizen on up to Commander Star Fleet. If this goes to war, we have failed. Not just in some dice rolley kind of way, but we've failed to be the Commander Star Fleet that Councillor Stesk knows we can be. So if they wind up in the Harmony rather than the Federation, that's just fine, because if we've succeeded the Harmony won't be the enemy much longer. Not because they are defeated. But because the Singers have become the eldritch computer gods Stesk knows they can be... And there's nothing wrong with people choosing to be a part of that.

I know it isn't logical. This is just what I loved most about the shows, and loved every time I've seen it in this quest. Maybe the QMs disagree with me entirely and will hammer us hard if we pick this option.

I don't know. I just didn't want to be another silent write in.

Edited: A couple spelling corrections and to remove some language that seemed overly combative on a second read.

[X] Plan Good End.

Glassware said:

*citation needed*

Harmony diplomatic ability vastly exceeds ours. They have been rapidly tearing through all tags in their way-if we don't interrupt them now I expect to see at least one polity fall to the Harmony within the year.

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UberJJK said:

So with three quarters of numbers lets update things a bit:

Horizon Progress:
OSA: +90 +30 +15 = +135 total = ~+45/qtr
Felis: +100 +25 +15 = 140 total = ~+46.7/qtr
Bolian: +60 +30 +10 = 100 total = ~+33.3/qtr

Time To Membership (TTM):
OSA: 475pts @ 45/qtr = 11 quarters (ETC 2327.Q3)
Felis: 1,260pts @ 46.7/qtr = 27 quarters (ETC 2331.Q3)
Bolian: 393pts @ 33.3/qtr = 12 quarters (ETC 2327.Q4)

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Night said:

the Biophage in this very quest

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I seem to remember us doing a lot of research into Biophage, more than enough to weaponize it if we wanted to, for some idiotic reason.

Night said:

Your argument is predicated on the idea that adding a finite number to larger finite number does not increase the larger finite number.

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My argument is, it does not increase finite number enough for it to be worth getting over the schematics, especially in the non-war areas. And that the said increase is not guaranteed.

[X] Plan Cheap and Dangerous and Federation
[X] Plan We should have expected the Inquisition.

[X] Plan Cheap and Dangerous and Federation
[X] Plan We should have expected the Inquisition.

Yeah. One small risk with having Full Mind-Control Cybertech is if someone tries to *use* it in a(nother) Starfleet bAdmiral situation. And... even then... what we wanted was evidence of HoH chicanery to push back in the Diplo-War. Leaping up the Mind Control tech tree won't directly help with that.

On the fence about the two main options... vote subject to change I guess.

[] Plan Good End.
-[65kq] -Full theoretical underpinnings of Singer Psychi-Cybertech.
-[05kq] -Full records of the Harmony's actions in regards to their intervention on Kelowna.

[X] Plan Cheap and Dangerous and Federation
[25kq] -Full details of planned operations in Felis space.
[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of Licori space.
[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration in Amarki space.
[05kq] -Full records of the Harmony's actions in regards to their intervention on Kelowna.
[05kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of Laian space.
[05kq] -Current Harmony Military deployments.

[X] Plan Good End.

Would prefer Bolians, but better than nothing.

[X] Plan Cheap and Dangerous and Federation
[X] Plan We should have expected the Inquisition.

@AKuz If we pick a lot of information proof choices is there a synergy? Seems like it would get easier with each pick, and help with non picked ones as well.