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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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I would imagine with info on three of the harmony infiltration plans it will help sort the others out, since I imagine with even the ones we did not grab those species will not be inclined to in anyway join the harmony after learning about this.
 
AKuz said:
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Ten-Forward is near empty at this hour. Its viewports offer only vistas of the dark, ugly station Courageous is docked to; its would-be patrons are on Yellow Alert. All but four. Two security officers in rifle green, a human and a seyek, sit at one table, phaser pistols active and holstered, nervously watching the other two -- Tebaas th'Tharvasse and Iulianna Innach, sitting at another. Orders from the Captain said not to put them in the brig. Orders from the XO said keep an eye on them.

"How long do you think -" Lieutenant (j.g.) Kiassa Cisson asks, his voice quiet.

"I don't know. I don't know!" Ensign Milagros Reyes replies. "Maybe this year, maybe while we were at the Academy? That Horizon AI could have whatever memories she had of when - when whatever made this happen happened. That's what troubles me - how long have I really known Iulianna? Have I ever known her?" The ensign takes a long sip of her drink. "Hell, how do I know I'm not one of them?"

"I've tried not to think about it."

"Oh no," Milagros says, "Here they come." And sure enough, there was Tebaas and Iulianna, standing awkwardly half-a-step away from the tabletop.

"Hey guys," Iulianna says, plucking at the seams of her pants, "Mind if we join you? It's, you know, a little lonely at that table."

Kiassa sways forward slightly, hood half-open. "Don't you have your computer god to keep you company?"

Milagros winces as Iulianna's face falls. Tebaas blinks, but says nothing. Milagros turns to Kiassa. "Don't be a jerk."

"For what it's worth, Iulianna says, "We're not in contact with Z-- Cassiopeia. She's doing… showing Zara, uh, Captain ka'Athnon something."

Milagros glances at her friend, "Come on, sit down. Are you two alright?"

"Kind of?" Tebaas says, settling into the seat, "Sometimes I start to get anxious, and then I get really calm. But I definitely don't like Cassiopeia being out of contact." He pauses, "Not any more than I like the Captain being out of contact."

Kiassa morosely raises an empty glass, "Cheers to that. Can't wait for Captain ka'Anthon to get back so we can bug the hell out of here." He leans forward, "My friend in Sensors showed me some readings of that station. Starbase-level, easily. They turn their plasma cannons on us as we sit here, we're gone like…" and he snaps his fingers, then leans back, smirkingly flicking his tongue, "Can you get us a deal with your digi-gods for resurrection or is that only for you two?"

Iulianna's face goes red, and she begins to shout. "It doesn't -" She swallows her words, and resumes, more calmly, "It doesn't work that way. They can't pluck our souls out and download them into a new body. I think. If they can, Cassiopeia certainly isn't offering."

The table is quiet. Kiassa is eying both of the suspect officers, one hand under the table and on the butt of his phaser pistol. Milagros thinks he looks like some ridiculous caricature of a vaquero.

"It's not easy for us," Iulianna says suddenly, "Everything about myself is in doubt now. Did I really choose to push myself to qualify for the Explorer Corps, or did she want me here, on this ship?" Iulianna sighs, runs her hand through her hair - then stops. "Hell, did I choose to dye this purple, or did she just like the look?"

Milagros feels sorry for her friend in spite of herself, and looks for excuses: "I'm sure she didn't care about something so small - um, so... I don't mean to say that it's unimportant - I'm sure it's important to you - I don't know, is there some cultural thing - ?"

Iulianna laughs. "Well, it is unimportant. Just a whim I had, a few months back, that I liked the look of. ... Unless it wasn't my whim?"

"I just feel really… calm." Tebaas says, "More calm than I've ever been." He looks out the window, at the starfield, "Don't know why she didn't give Iulianna this serenity. Maybe she needed her scared. Maybe I've just come to terms with everything going on. Maybe she forgot." Tebaas laughs to himself. "No, Cassie doesn't forget anything. She must have her reasons."

"Yes, of course," Iulianna says. "Just wish she comes back."

Kiassa and Milagros look at each other. The seyek's grip on his phaser is as tight as his jaw.
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Anyone want to talk about this section and what it means? Because I feel like we're just skimming over it.

If this is the general state of compromised officers then I think we need to raise the level of alarm. People fitted with an implant where Singers can control them is one thing. People who have been mindfucked so they want Singers to control them, even when Singers aren't actively doing so, is quite another.

That's the difference between, "We just need to take out the chips," and "We need to send them in for extensive de-brainwashing procedures."


....I suppose an extensive understanding of Singer tech would help with that, wouldn't it?
 
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Briefvoice said:
....I suppose an extensive understanding of Singer tech would help with that, wouldn't it?
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I think it would help get the chips out, but honestly I think it would help more there than with deprogramming. Once those chips are gone, it's probably deprogramming like any other that we've done, and we've almost certainly had to rescue people from cults before and so on.
 
agumentic said:
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.
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I dunno.

It seems to me that there's a pretty big difference between an undesirable state of affairs in which we win, and an undesirable state of affairs in which we lose.

It's like, there's a house fire in which you remembered to move the several tanks of natural gas for the grill away from the house, and there's the house fire in which you didn't. Giving an enemy who is likely to consider attacking you that kind of advantage is a pretty big error.

It also feels like metagaming to say "meh, we were planning to free them anyway, and avoid war anyway, so it doesn't matter how big or strong they are or how many people they enslave in the meantime."

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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The problem is that it involves balancing a long term gain against a long term loss.

Long term we get a way to counter Singers better, faster. Long term we ALSO lose two or three species to the Harmony, give the Harmony fewer strategic problems on their borders to worry about, sacrifice some of our coordination with the ISC, and lose a tremendous amount of insight into how the Singers think, how they operate as opposed to the details of how they do their voodoo.

SamPardi said:
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.
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I mean, speaking to a Singer is as easy as hailing a Harmony ship and saying "hello, I demand to speak to your manager," followed by giving them details the Singer will just have to redact out of the poor people's minds over and over.

I'm also deeply uncomfortable with this whole "it doesn't matter how many billions of people they enslave and integrate into their mind control state because we are the Federation and we shall triumph through speeches!" I empathize, but I'm not comfortable with it. The people on the ground matter to me, as does being able to prove that they've been wronged.

Briefvoice said:
Anyone want to talk about this section and what it means? Because I feel like we're just skimming over it.

If this is the general state of compromised officers then I think we need to raise the level of alarm. People fitted with an implant where Singers can control them is one thing. People who have been mindfucked so they want Singers to control them, even when Singers aren't actively doing so, is quite another.

That's the difference between, "We just need to take out the chips," and "We need to send them in for extensive de-brainwashing procedures."

....I suppose an extensive understanding of Singer tech would help with that, wouldn't it?
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Honestly, I could see it being more helpful to have ample evidence of the Singers as bad faith actresses. Once you remove the mind control chip (and I am confident we can do so in time), being able to tell a mind control victim exactly how, mechanically, the Overlord got to them isn't as useful as being able to convince the victim that the Overlord is a baddie.
 
kyuden said:
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.
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Because they're not just infiltrating them in the usual way in order to diplo-annex them, they're planning to actively coup the Felis in an attempt to get the ISC to invade them.

Getting the info on this means we can likely roll up this attempt. Taking the info on psy-borg tech likely means we can't, since it seems to be nearing completion fast.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Long term we ALSO lose two or three species to the Harmony,
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Again, please don't act like it's a done deal. You don't see me saying "We must get schematics, or we will never figure out how implants work". We may lose them, or Intelligence and Beyond do their job and we don't. Just because we don't have immediately actionable proof doesn't mean we don't know where to dig to get it soon.
 
Eh. In just hope we'll end up changing the Singer consesus rather than attempt to remove the Harmony and turn them into generic republic Y type Z.

They're more interesting that way.
 
agumentic said:
Again, please don't act like it's a done deal. You don't see me saying "We must get schematics, or we will never figure out how implants work". We may lose them, or Intelligence and Beyond do their job and we don't. Just because we don't have immediately actionable proof doesn't mean we don't know where to dig to get it soon.
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The thing is, we specifically know the Harmony has extensive infiltration of species like the Bolians, the Felis, and the Nessic. We have been directly told so. These are not species where we just need to roll up a few problems here and there.

If we give the Harmony reason to think that they have at most a matter of months or a year to consolidate their gains before we start rolling out anti-Singer-mind-control tech, then of course they are going to leverage that infiltration and try to stage coups. We've been directly told that this is already nearing for the Bolians, and that if we don't push the Bolians very hard and change the situation, they're going to wind up as a Harmony client state. We've been explicitly told that one of the four Nessic component-states has already fallen. And the sheer size of the Felis data packet combined with the fact that we know the Felis use extensive cyberware should tip us off that Harmony infiltration of the Felis is happening on a very large scale.

I say "we're going to lose those states" because I genuinely don't think we have time to work on them without clear, specific intelligence on what we need to work against. If I thought we had more time, I wouldn't be so worried about this.

Also, I think it vanishingly unlikely that conventional methods alone, without us knowing who the infiltrators are and how to prove their activities, will let us save all three groups. Especially given how little proof we'll have that the Harmony is actually objectively bad.

Dutch said:
Eh. In just hope we'll end up changing the Singer consesus rather than attempt to remove the Harmony and turn them into generic republic Y type Z.

They're more interesting that way.
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We'd have to change their consensus very extensively to make them safe neighbors. I'd like that, but it's going to be hard, and I think we need to establish a strong front against them that lets us contain them first.
 
If the Romulans have evidence of horizon cyber chicanery. Would the help us in a war with the horizon? And could we somehow get the Klingons to join in as well?
 
[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.

I really doubt the schematics are going to be the silver bullet some of you are hoping for, and if they are, there's no guarantee they'll arrive in time to prevent a massive crisis. Stopping the bleeding and turning the rest of that part of space against them is a more reliable solution.
 
Himmelhand said:
And the touring Cardassian boy bands are just a cover for Singers to stick their noses in things. It all comes together!
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NO, NOT THE BOY BANDS!!!

WHAT ABOUT THE MAGICAL GIRLS! ARE THE CARDASSIAN MAGICAL GIRLS SAFE!



[] 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 We should have expected the Inquisition.
-[25kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration in Felis space.
-[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of Amarki space.
-[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of Bolian space.
-[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.

I'm more concerned with the short term gains, as well as proof of past misdeeds as a warning to other powers. Military deployments are a lesser concern for now, since I don't think war is looming on the horizon just yet. Not a fan of the magic bullet option that's there. Torn between inquisition and dangerous, so i guess they're both getting my vote for now.
 
[X] Plan We should have expected the Inquisition.
[X] Plan Protect the Vulnerable, Remember the Victims

Going by the example of our indoctrinated crew, letting the harmony gain a toehold is super fucked - even if we get a vaccine/cure in the medium term instead of the long term, they may well still be loyal to the Harmony even without the implants.

I'm going for these two because I really wanna protect the Bolians, but I will vote strategically for Cheap and Dangerous if it comes down to that vs. the alleged "good end."
 
[X] 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.

I think it's about time we gave the Harmony a doomsday clock to worry about.
 
I find the name of Plan Good End to be quite presumptuous and somewhat pretentious. Calling it that just sort of assumes that the plan will just work out fine and we won't suffer fallout from it. It calls itself the good end, but provides no evidence that it will be a good end or even a better end than any of the other plans.
 
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Glad I am not the only one who thinks so, its does sound a tiny bit arrogant, its the same thing as calling something this will succeed or naming a ship The Titanic. Nice in theory, in practice not so much.
 
Keep in mind the End Game people.

What is our goal here? How do we want this to end?

What we truly need is to solve the Singers, their mind control, and their control over HoH.

As a lot of control over the HoH is done with mind control, the theory option solves two of those.

Details on infiltration are defensive options, or even further kill HoH diplomacy, which should already be thoroughly dead. They do not help with solving the HoH issue, do not prevent war with them, their civil war, or worse.

Random Member said:
Yeah no, I don't think it's going to be that quick and easy. It's probably going to take years to reach that level, and in the meantime we have no info on the HoH's infiltration of us or our neighbors.

Knowing how the tech works in theory doesn't really prove anything to our neighbors about the HoH infiltrating them after all and theory is not always easy to put in practice.
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Years? Starfleet has a long and proud history of cobbling stuff like that on the spot with an explorers worth of resources.

As most of HoHs infiltration is through their mind control, identifying and removing that would cripple it.

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
The problem with Plan Good End is that it gives up the diplomatic fights. At best we have rumor to show to those peoples. We also don't have the tools to uncover Singer interference in the border powers as they'll immediately move to cover it up. Given the nature of the revelations I don't see that as viable. On the other hand we do have the tools to uncover the psytech. Basically, anything but this plan. It is missing the forest for one very large tree.
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I do not believe so. A proof of what was done to the Tauni, much less alongside the OSA scandal, the mind control proof (we have examples of the implants in a bunch of people on the Courageous. Combine with the theory of how they work and we will have proof of what they do, instead of just mysterious implants capable of who knows what), the Singer revelation...

HoH diplo is death. Simple as that.

With the counter to mind control at hand, their intrigue is mostly too, if not completely (superhacking is annoying to be against).

For example, we know about the Felis cybernetic operation. With proof of what those implants do, and where they come from...

Simon_Jester said:
THIS.

Theoretical knowledge doesn't translate directly into practical knowledge. And these implants can't be literally invisible, nor can the Singers themselves, once we have a wealth of information on a huge number of their puppets.
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It helps greatly though, and mind control is the centerpiece of HoH problems. Its the foundation of HoH, their diplo, and their intrigue.

Could we get this from reverse engineering the implants themselves, without the data?

Yes. But it will take many times longer. Same as we could clean up infiltration without that data, in time.

We need to strike NOW, before the Singers do something most unwise. Infiltration details are for the clean up, they are not the solution.

Simon_Jester said:
The Harmony has extensive tentacles in many nations. I'm pretty sure that we don't just automatically get the benefit of all those other nations spontaneously overcoming their own infiltration problems if we DON'T vote for the information that would describe them. I suspect the Felis, Bolians, and so on will remain infiltrated if we can't tell them where to look, at least until several years of time have passed, by which point they may be firmly under Harmony control.
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Harmony control would be very hard to archive without their mind control or diplomacy.

They would be able to pull some strings with superhacking and some intrigue, but with mind control shot their influence would be crippled.

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Plan Good End likely loses us all the border species other than the OSA. We end up sitting pretty in our little Fortress Federation but as our GMs pointed out, this is about what we can prove. And the people who are going to be demanding hard evidence of meddling won't have it.

We're talking about billions of sapients being put under subtle mind control against their will.
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This is exactly what the plan is meant to prevent. It is the fast and reliable road to destroying HoH mind control utterly.

As for diplomacy, being able to identify those implants and what they do should be more then enough. Also proof of what Hoh did to the Tauni, right on the tails of the OSA scandal.

I am really not worried there.

Simon_Jester said:
This will not give us a fast end, and it will result in Harmony Bullshit triumphing in multiple species scattered throughout what is now neutral space. The Harmony will confront a Federation that is now hostile and immune to its control, but from a greatly strengthened strategic situation thanks to its ranks being swollen by all the species we didn't have the means to save.
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You seem to be missing the fact that we would share the mind control counters. Singers cant even govern the HoH without that ability it seems, so for other powers to become part of the Harmony with proof of the Tauni atrocities and proof and countermeasures to their mind control seems truly ridiculous to me.

As for it not being a fast end, it might or might not be, but the other options are not an end at all. They do not solve the problems, merely fix some symptoms.

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Remember that the Romulans also have some psy-tech evidence, but they aren't running around easily convincing people the HoH is evil.
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Thats because they cant prove what those implants do, except something with the mind. With the theory, we easily could.

Otherwise, they would have shared the info, crippling HoH intrigue and diplomacy. Romulans do not benefit from stronger HoH, much less one that significantly infiltrates UFP.
 
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chryssalideater said:
I think it's about time we gave the Harmony a doomsday clock to worry about.
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Precisely how do you expect us knowing how their tech works to give us the power to do that?

Jrin said:
Are you guys sure about leaving this one out? I thought our cruiser program is below quality compare to other navies or is it the frigates that have issues? Either in stats or tech boost.
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We have a lot of ways to gain that information, and have regularly learned information about foreign ships by normal means. We can live with developing our own ships and using normal intel.

Oshha said:
I find the name of Plan Good End to be quite presumptuous and somewhat pretentious. Calling it that just sort of assumes that the plan will just work out fine and we won't suffer fallout from it. It calls itself the good end, but provides no evidence that it will be a good end or even a better end than any of the other plans.
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I very much agree. We have NO guarantee that the Harmony can't just leverage their infiltration in various nations to roll up those nations and become too powerful for us to deal with.

Rhinohunter said:
Glad I am not the only one who thinks so, its does sound a tiny bit arrogant, its the same thing as calling something this will succeed or naming a ship The Titanic. Nice in theory, in practice not so much.
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More like naming a ship "The Unsinkable" or naming a military operation "Operation We Win The War."

Enerael said:
Keep in mind the End Game people.

What is our goal here? How do we want this to end?

What we truly need is to solve the Singers, their mind control, and their control over HoH.

As a lot of control over the HoH is done with mind control, the theory option solves two of those.
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No, it doesn't "solve" the Singers, it doesn't end their mind control or their control over the Harmony. Knowing exactly how they're doing it doesn't mean we can stop them from doing it.

We know exactly how the Cardassian government exercises control over its people and the Ashalla Pact, using totally mundane and well-understood techniques. That doesn't mean we can stop them

Details on infiltration are defensive options, or even further kill HoH diplomacy, which should already be thoroughly dead.
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No. Why would it be dead? I mean, we've proven Harmony malfeasance in ONE place, and we'll have documentation that only the Tauni and the Federation are likely to believe. Why would we expect that to make much of a dent in Harmony diplomacy in, say, the Licori space (where many people oppose us), Bolian space (where they don't know us), Felis space (where the Harmony has hacked the cyberware of a lot of important people), or Nessic space (where they've barely heard of us)?

You're making a LOT of assumptions about just how powerful this theoretical information on a piece of tech is, and on how little we need specific evidence to prove our assertions about their infiltration of various foreign societies.

With the counter to mind control at hand, their intrigue is mostly too, if not completely (superhacking is annoying to be against).

For example, we know about the Felis cybernetic operation. With proof of what those implants do, and where they come from...
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So basically you think we don't need proof of Harmony activity in Felis space to get the benefits of having proof of Harmony activity in Felis space.

What, do you think that us being offered the information on the Felis (and other species) is just a trap option to stop us from voting for the 'obviously right' choice of the theory of how the Singers' tech works? Because that's what you're implying here- that we don't even NEED that evidence to prevent the Felis from being infiltrated and taken over.

We need to strike NOW, before the Singers do something most unwise. Infiltration details are for the clean up, they are not the solution.
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This is exactly what the plan is meant to prevent. It is the fast and reliable road to destroying HoH mind control utterly.
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We have absolutely no reason to think that we can somehow strike to destroy all Singer mind control systems and capabilities 'quickly' just from the theory of knowing how their tech works.

No one promised, at any point, that we could somehow just bounce an anti-graviton beam off the main deflector dish and "turn off" Harmony mind control all over the sector. And it sounds as if you expect us to be able to do that.

As for diplomacy, being able to identify those implants and what they do should be more then enough. Also proof of what Hoh did to the Tauni, right on the tails of the OSA scandal.
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This, again, strongly implies that all the other stuff is just a pointless trap option. I don't buy it. I don't think that there's zero downside to passing up the specific details of what the Harmony is doing in favor of knowledge of how they're doing it.

You seem to be missing the fact that we would share the mind control counters. Singers cant even govern the HoH without that ability it seems, so for other powers to become part of the Harmony proof of the Tauni atrocities and proof and countermeasures to their mind control seems ridiculous to me.
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Other powers like the Felis may not even believe the Harmony IS using the technology this way, even if we can prove that in principle they could.

Thats because they cant prove what those implants do, except something with the mind. With the theory, we easily could.
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I mean, by your logic, "these implants somehow affect the mind" should be more than enough to make people suspicious and thus give us all the benefits of convincing no one to ever use them, and to scan for them. We wouldn't even need the data, any more than we need data on the Felis infiltration to stop the Felis infiltration.
 
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
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.
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It would be stupid of Singers to not have self destructs in the implants, or remote disable or something, to prevent discovery.

Also jamming should be very possible.

Night said:
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.
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Singers are only part of the problem. The other parts are mind control and the HoH.

As the HoH is build on Singers and mind control, and the Singers are hidden, revealing and preventing the mind control and singers, along with jamming or something, would take care of that too.

It might not be a magic bullet, but it is by far the closest thing to it that we could get.

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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Thats like not researching viruses because of the potential for bioweapons. What about developing antivirals?

Once the implants can be detected and stuff, they will no longer be a danger. Also Starfleet is capable of confidential research, so I am not worried.

Ash19256 said:
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
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If we had the theory of how biophage infection works from the start it would probably take a month or so.

Also, the implants are far simpler to deal with than the biophage. For example find out what signals they identify as instructions and jam them. Or, as they are nanite based, an inoculation should be possible. Many options
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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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Not really. Except fort he Bolians, with Envoys coming up, we can win the rest even without killing HoH diplo dead.

The Felis are the only possible exception, and any plan currently winning poisons HoH foreign relations enough for them to fail there.

Alliterate said:
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.
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Thats like saying that leaping up the virus tech tree does not help with curing viral infections.

Oshha said:
I find the name of Plan Good End to be quite presumptuous and somewhat pretentious. Calling it that just sort of assumes that the plan will just work out fine and we won't suffer fallout from it. It calls itself the good end, but provides no evidence that it will be a good end or even a better end than any of the other plans.
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I called it that because its meant to pursue the theoretical Good End of the whole HoH business, which I believe lies in either befriending the Singers (unlikely), or disabling the implants. Or fully enabling them so that they work like the old Harmony network did.
 
People, keep in mind that the option in discord is this:
Full theoretical underpinnings of Singer Psychi-Cybertech

Theoretical underpinnings, that doesn't mean practical data, information on how the current generation of devices actually work, just the theoretical framework under which they operate.
Will this give us understanding on how they function? probably, well, once we go over all the data, can create a theoretical model within our own psionic framework and can experiment with the technology to go from a prototype to something that can be useful.
Not what we'd use the, but we do need to study and find ways to intercept, detect and/ or counter.

But will we be able to detect them? that wouldn't be something part of the psy-cybertech theoretical underpinnings, which might actually be part of the pure cybertech practical data.


In the mean time their agents within the federation continue to worm their way in and do damage, maybe they will target the labs working on this! if they find out and they might.

this one is obviously a high risk option, but I am unconvinced it will be a high rewards one, at least at this stage.
 
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