Remove ads

The Grand Solar Rush - Asteroid colony management quest

Voting is open
Reader mode
[x] Crisis
-[x] Pirates
[x] Spiders and Goldfish
-[x] Use the AI

Delighted to have a local, hard-science, non-alien sifi quest.
Don't beat yourself up over slow postings. I'm just delighted to read more of your writing!

I love that two rolls both missed by 1
 
Well, looks like the COD mission is fucked. If they ask, can we tell a little white lie and say we had already deployed to fight the pirates?
 
Really, the main thing with the pirates is showing up and acting as a witness. There's like a dozen ships total in the region total at max, which means that it's very, very easy to pinpoint where the pirates are based out of (and bring sanctions or other repercussions back on the pirates as a result) if someone gets a good look at the ship suspected to be engaging in piracy.

So once our ship sets in an intercept course then the pirates will either have to commit to subduing 2 ships at once (in order to delete records that could otherwise identify them), figuring out an excuse for their having been unresponsive (such as their comms suite having suffered a retroactive mechanical failure), or divert and hope that the ship we sent out is more concerned with the ship the pirates are chasing rather than the fleeing pirates.
 
me.me.here said:
Really, the main thing with the pirates is showing up and acting as a witness.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah, I agree. The chance of actually seeing combat is very low. My worries are more on the political side of this whole debacle. On one hand we have to explain or excuse leaving the COD mission to die and on the other, actually identifying the pirates might start a political shitstorm. Because if memory serves me right, there were accusations that the pirates are actually privateers working for NI.

If that's true, whoo boy. We are in for interesting times.
 
[x] Crisis
-[x] Pirates
[x] Spiders and Goldfish
-[x] Stick to conventional options
 
[x] Spiders and Goldfish
-[x] Stick to conventional options
[X] Crisis
-[X] Black site

I can't in good conscience abandon people that for certain will die for the tiny chance to stop some piracy.
 
[x] Spiders and Goldfish
-[x] Use the AI
[X] Crisis
-[X] Black site

Changing vote.

We can recover the data not the personel.
 
Last edited:
Why are you people so focused on the pirates right now?

The black site will undoubtedly have valuable scientific data along denying a rival faction said scientific data (assuming they are actually privateers).
 
GAWR said:
Why are you people so focused on the pirates right now?

The black site will undoubtedly have valuable scientific data along denying a rival faction said scientific data (assuming they are actually privateers).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Because we do not want to poke whoever is powerful enough to be able to run a black site site and are willing to either attack or sabotage a ship to keep their secrets. Plus even if we save the ship we will certainly earn favor with the dreamers and NI but that may not be enough to get them to share research with us. And we are definitely not in a position to size any data they have and not give it back.

The main reason to help the black site ship is to curry favor with the dreamers and NI as they will be grateful for saving their people. And I could be convinced that that is worth it but for now trying to nip piracy in the bud and potentially opening relations with the resort station seems to be the option with a greater reward.
 
Eldon said:
Because we do not want to poke whoever is powerful enough to be able to run a black site site and are willing to either attack or sabotage a ship to keep their secrets. Plus even if we save the ship we will certainly earn favor with the dreamers and NI but that may not be enough to get them to share research with us. And we are definitely not in a position to size any data they have and not give it back.

The main reason to help the black site ship is to curry favor with the dreamers and NI as they will be grateful for saving their people. And I could be convinced that that is worth it but for now trying to nip piracy in the bud and potentially opening relations with the resort station seems to be the option with a greater reward.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Didn't you know the phrase the my enemy is my friend? Even if they don't what to share the resurch with us they will give us asstance with dealing with the pirates since they present a threat to they (dreamers and NI) interest and that's not taking into account the good PR our action will bring.
 
On the other hand we voted for security during the conference due to pirates and not fighting them now might raise some eyebrows.
 
The pirates are a problem.
It seems like the blacksite is a problem (unless the COD ship is genuinely malfunctioning, and wasn't sabotaged).

A potential sneaky solution.
Could we arrange for the pirates/privateers/mercenaries/whoever-they-are to attack the blacksite, somehow?
 
GAWR said:
Didn't you know the phrase the my enemy is my friend? Even if they don't what to share the resurch with us they will give us asstance with dealing with the pirates since they present a threat to they (dreamers and NI) interest and that's not taking into account the good PR our action will bring.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You would think that but NI proved to be quite recalcitrant on dealing with the pirates during the conference and if they picked a fight with the shadow station I think they will have plenty of distractions. And like I stated earlier I do agree with the PR but I don't think that it overcomes the advantages of showing that we are tackling the pirate problem, and the PR for that.
 
What are the legal, or spacer cultural standards, for responding to distress signals? The pirates distress signal is only probably pirates, while the NI and CD vessel has people imminently dying. It's been a while, but I don't think these pirates had a history of spacing everybody, did they?
 
Karf said:
and the structures rest on plates of led and water tanks to reduce health concerns.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
..."lead"?
Karf said:
there's a few other similar experiments being run back on Mars that might shed light the issues
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
"shed light on"

Hah, was just reminiscing about the quest this Monday. I wonder if mouli starting his Children of a Dead World affected the decision in any way.

[x] Crisis
-[x] Pirates

We promised to look into the pirate activity, and we want to put an end to these raids. We only have a single ship, so it would be inconvenient if the pirates grew bolder than they already are.

The blacksite is a potential problem, yes, but since we haven't backed up the mission (or so I recall), it's not our problem.

[x] Spiders and Goldfish
-[x] Use the AI

Too many projects, too little time. An AI is miles better than what we can come up with, requires no extra resourses, and we already have it. Cut some corners to speed things up, and try to avoid the fallout if anything bad happens.

Also, don't sell the drones out of the system. Or at all. I wonder if their production would still be viable if we kept them in private supply, and leased operator services + devices instead of just devices alone, always keeping an eye on them.
 
Last edited:
Nevill said:
Cut some corners to speed things up, and try to avoid the fallout if anything bad happens.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is how most apocalypse movies start. Also AI by itself appears to be a controversial subject, let's not compound it by adding military tech to it. That way if someone ever raises a stink we can defend ourselves with the fact that it's unable to use any weapons, so it danger is minimised.
 
[x] Crisis
-[x] Pirates
[x] Spiders and Goldfish
-[x] Stick to conventional options

Finally fi ished reading it all. I really like what was done to the setting. The characters are fairly compelling as well, though the early parts definitely suffered compared to when you added the personal options.

Also, I must say that my favorite bits has been how you deal with failed rolls. Especially the Intrigue options, where failure gives us a report which is basically ok if we did not ooc know about the roll results.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top