A Flame of Hope in the Grim Darkness (A 40k/Multicross Quest)

So, just recently found the quest, and do like premise. I like the idea, and most factions that were chosen for it. Its nice to see the Kushan and the Alliance of Sol, and I don't know much about Macross but the New United Nations should be cool to see, I honestly find the Chaldea and the Compact to be very good fits, especially in scale and capability. Alongside that, both are entites that dont work upon at the very least solar scale, to my knowledge, unlike every faction, who can work at a stellar scale. Also, don't offer much in table when it comes towards civilization, and the like. Union and Federation offered far more as civilizations overall. Both have advanced technology, yes, however, both ahve long experience of governing at a large scale, that of hundreds solar systems, while ensuring a good qaulity of life, for all. Their is another thing to bring up as well, the intoduction of these new technologies to these varies fiction.

Imagine the culture shock of magical technology becoming becoming available to UNSC or the NUN? Anf the biggest problem their, is that unlike all these other civilizations, Chaldea has no experience in applying this technology at scales were thinking of, far off from it. They have worked with magical technology on the basis as a small organization, similar case for android, but that being a global rebel force. With the Union, the Federation however? They have applied these highly advanced technologies throughout their space, theoughout their popularion widily available. Yes, Chaldea would have offered magic and heros that would be of great utility, yes, the androids are fantastic ground combadents that can fight above space marines. However, what the Imperium has over us is that of civilization, that of one that spans across millions of stars. To compete, and be able to stand a fighting chance, we shall need to be a capable interstellar goverment, and both Federation and Union fit those criteria perfectly

Also one thing that should be brought up about magical technology, is scalability and ability to produce it. With LANCER and Star Trek I know is fully mass producable, with some wonderful industrial and manufacturing technology. Meanwhile cor Chaldea, and Androids, is more up to question.

Just keep these things in mind

Edit: quick question, how producable on a mass scale will magic tech and Androids be? Alongisde that, how much would have our industrial capabilities be if we had Union and Federation instead of Compact and Security orginzation (Androids and Faith)

Edit 2: I do question the capability of Chaldea and Androids in causing major effect, in comparison towards Lancer and Star Trek due to sinple issue of Industry. That in honestly my main concern, our ability to produce Androids and Magic tech. As to my knowledge android utilize some form of exotic tech, with magic tech being extoic as well, and I worry the Kushan's manufacturing technology may be incapable of handling those exotic materials both utilize.

[X] Federal Union - Each faction has limited autonomy, and the federal government has greater direct authority over the laws and internal affairs of member polities, or at least can set formal laws establishing what is and is not allowed for local-level policy. High difficulty.

EDIT:
[] [Write-In] Greater Daiamid - All factions, regardless of size, are recognized and given a place and voice in the ruling Daiamid. Laws are universally applied but must be agreed upon by those seated on the Greater Daiamid. Newly founded factions will also be granted a place on the Daiamid. Additionally the Daiamid exists as a place where legal disputes between factions are resolved.

I like the image, but I feel it leans too far towards the Kushan to be fair towards the others.

It's also more Confederal than I'd feel comfortable with, given that we'll have to punch well above our weight.

Archivist Grim said:

Edit 2: I do question the capability of Chaldea and Androids in causing major effect, in comparison towards Lancer and Star Trek due to sinple issue of Industry. That in honestly my main concern, our ability to produce Androids and Magic tech. As to my knowledge android utilize some form of exotic tech, with magic tech being extoic as well, and I worry the Kushan's manufacturing technology may be incapable of handling those exotic materials both utilize.

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Kushan construction technology involves assembling new products from resources that have been broken down to individual atoms. If that technology can't be repurposed for the needs of Chaldea and the androids, I'm not sure there's a mundane means of manufacturing out there that can.

[X ] Federal Union - Each faction has limited autonomy, and the federal government has greater direct authority over the laws and internal affairs of member polities, or at least can set formal laws establishing what is and is not allowed for local-level policy. High difficulty.

Spart117MC said:

Kushan construction technology involves assembling new products from resources that have been broken down to individual atoms. If that technology can't be repurposed for the needs of Chaldea and the androids, I'm not sure there's a mundane means of manufacturing out there that can.

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I'm not familiar with Homeworld.

What's their Tech-Tree like?

SouvikKundu said:

How Human order Impacted humanity of 40k and Emperor?

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Right now, it's not affected them at all. This may change going forward.

Is Alaya active among isot population?

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Chaldea has effectively taken over the functions of Alaya in this iteration. That said, there may at times be automatic responses, but otherwise the Summoning and Master systems stand in for Alaya.

Spart117MC said:

As an aside, I have a very serious question in regards to the Chaldea folk.

Which Ritsuka is the one we have here? Gudao or Gudako?

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It's Male Ritsuka, which is Gudao I believe. This is indicated in the faction info sheet.

StarSingerBlue said:

This. Is. Awesome. I eargerly await more.
[X] Federal Union - Each faction has limited autonomy, and the federal government has greater direct authority over the laws and internal affairs of member polities, or at least can set formal laws establishing what is and is not allowed for local-level policy. High difficulty.
We must present an united front to WH40k's …everything.
I wonder which Warhammer 40k faction we will first encounter. Probably the Orcs, they're everywhere.
It was said that the characters get taken out at the end of their lives. Does that mean those from Macross Frontier have access to blueprints from Macross Delta, because some of them presumably had long lives after the end of Frontier ?
Can the characters get their hands on mimosas ? Are there any decent vintages to be found on the planet's continent ? We'll need lots of alcohol to deal with being in the universe that defined the term grimdark.
Have the other languages the characters knew before arriving been erased and replaced by English, or has English just been added on ? When languages disappear, a lot of the accompanying culture disappear as well.

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I did in fact mention that the factions have seed banks and agricultural facilities, so the vast majority of foods can be recreated. So yes, they can get mimosas, eventually.

Regarding technology...I'll say that they may have knowledge of future tech, but all the stuff they are starting with is from their respective indicated eras. And whatever future tech knowledge they DO have won't extend past maybe a decade forward at most, goes into fuzzy memory at that point.

And no, English is simply an additional language on top of the ones people are already fluent in.

Spart117MC said:

Kushan construction technology involves assembling new products from resources that have been broken down to individual atoms. If that technology can't be repurposed for the needs of Chaldea and the androids, I'm not sure there's a mundane means of manufacturing out there that can.

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One of the reasons I wish we'd grabbed the Federation (aside from the great scanners/science and realspace FTL) is that their replicators are great at weird/living stuff. No big deal, really, but I'm kinda sad I missed the planning period.

The Froggy Ninja said:

One of the reasons I wish we'd grabbed the Federation (aside from the great scanners/science and realspace FTL) is that their replicators are great at weird/living stuff. No big deal, really, but I'm kinda sad I missed the planning period.

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Yeah, in spite of the many things they're good at, people just weren't into the Federation in the voting period. I'm sure we'll figure something out though. We have many different groups who are knwon for doing absurd impossible things, so manufacturing and stuff should be easy enough to figure out.

JoeHalo said:

I'm not familiar with Homeworld.

What's their Tech-Tree like?

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Complex mind-machine interfaces that allow a single person to take on all the duties of a bridge crew of hundreds,
production technology that can be described as 'Supreme Commander-lite' though isn't completely inferior to it, capital ships in the double digits of kilometers and the ability to build them in just over two weeks, capital ships capable of atmospheric flight, oversized land vehicles with their humvee equivalent being the size of an MBT and 500 meter long land carriers able to build every armored vehicle in their inventory in the field, drone weapons, cloaking devices, repair beams, micro-wormholes too small to send anything but atoms through but useful for distributing resources throughout a fleet, and the usual sci-fi staples of FTL comms and FTL sensors.

The Froggy Ninja said:

One of the reasons I wish we'd grabbed the Federation (aside from the great scanners/science and realspace FTL) is that their replicators are great at weird/living stuff. No big deal, really, but I'm kinda sad I missed the planning period.

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Homeworld Cataclysm implies that is it possible to use Homeworld production tech to assemble organic tissue. One of the factions in that came is a viral organism that converts all biological tissue into more of itself and is able to acquire new ships by infecting unsuspecting crews. That being said the Beast can still expand traditionally by building new ships without having to acquire additional biomass.

This could be seen as a necessary abstraction for the sake of game balance, but Homeworld tends to rationalize much of its game mechanics through fluff and each title's 'mothership' is written to have a large standing crew that can be used to explain where crew for newly constructed units come from, so it could well be that the Beast produces organic matter in conjunction with new ships and converts it into more of itself.

Besides that, replicators aren't all powerful. There exist a number of materials that they aren't able to reproduce, plus you can't print out a capital ship whole hog with replicators in half a month.

Kushan fabrication technology is among the best, though given our situation it is important to remember that it does have some limits. You need to provide any exotic or esoteric materials needed, and it takes the scientists quite a bit of effort to create new designs to manufacture and incorporate new technology. Also need to know how the stuff you're building works to do any modifications to it, though it can print exact copies of black-box technology if you provide an example to copy from.
Also no confirmation it works for living tissues; only The Beast used it for that on screen, and The Beast was perfectly capable of producing more horrid space cancer on its own.

Spart117MC said:

Complex mind-machine interfaces that allow a single person to take on all the duties of a bridge crew of hundreds,
production technology that can be described as 'Supreme Commander-lite' though isn't completely inferior to it, capital ships in the double digits of kilometers and the ability to build them in just over two weeks, capital ships capable of atmospheric flight, oversized land vehicles with their humvee equivalent being the size of an MBT and 500 meter long land carriers able to build every armored vehicle in their inventory in the field, drone weapons, cloaking devices, repair beams, micro-wormholes too small to send anything but atoms through but useful for distributing resources throughout a fleet, and the usual sci-fi staples of FTL comms and FTL sensors.



Homeworld Cataclysm implies that is it possible to use Homeworld production tech to assemble organic tissue. One of the factions in that came is a viral organism that converts all biological tissue into more of itself and is able to acquire new ships by infecting unsuspecting crews. That being said the Beast can still expand traditionally by building new ships without having to acquire additional biomass.

This could be seen as a necessary abstraction for the sake of game balance, but Homeworld tends to rationalize much of its game mechanics through fluff and each title's 'mothership' is written to have a large standing crew that can be used to explain where crew for newly constructed units come from, so it could well be that the Beast produces organic matter in conjunction with new ships and converts it into more of itself.

Besides that, replicators aren't all powerful. There exist a number of materials that they aren't able to reproduce, plus you can't print out a capital ship whole hog with replicators in half a month.

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I'm absolutely here for Homeworld stuff. Homeworld has great heavy industry stuff and it's fabricators and reverse engineering would likely synergize well with replicators and starfleet sensors, ensouled androids are a must for a variety of reasons and Chaldea was the option with the most advanced esoteric research capacity.
If I had to pick a faction I'd rather replace with ST it'd probably be either Macross or Destiny.

The one main downside I could see in this case with Kushan fabrication is that it doesn't interact at all with magic, souls, or other metaphysical stuff. Really, really great for inhaling an asteroid belt and turning it into a fleet of warships, but may well be useless for producing enchanted stuff.

Otherwise, we'll want to get some cross-compatibility going. Outside of a few edge cases and precursor black-boxes, Kushan weapons tech is pretty mundane, though eminently practical. But most of it lacks the raw overpowering punch we may need to deal with 40K ships. Ion cannons and missile batteries are great, but they've got their weaknesses and the Kushan don't have too much variety. So we'll want to figure out the logistics of getting Kushan factories producing Macross Variable Fighters if nothing else.

Definately pump out some of those Movers and Bentusi Super-Acolytes though. Just because we have no idea how they work doesn't make them any less overpowered. Super-Acolytes are brutally overpowered for their weight class in particular if we have the plans for them. (for reference, its a ship design handed over by some precursors at the end of Cataclysm. Deliberately black-boxed, the Kushan can't do anything with the design besides produce copies of the one ship with it, but it somehow crams two rapid-fire capital-grade ion cannons into a single-seat fighter, and is blatantly overpowered.)

Razzocnor said:

Also no confirmation it works for living tissues; only The Beast used it for that on screen, and The Beast was perfectly capable of producing more horrid space cancer on its own.

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But there's no real proof that Homeworld can't print out organic stuff either and it makes more sense, to me at least, that they can if only to explain how the Kushan were able to keep their people fed during the journey to Hiigara, without regular trade and dedicated agricultural facilities, after the number of active personnel in the fleet ballooned in order to meet the crew requirements of newly fabricated warships.

The Froggy Ninja said:

I'm absolutely here for Homeworld stuff. Homeworld has great heavy industry stuff and it's fabricators and reverse engineering would likely synergize well with replicators and starfleet sensors, ensouled androids are a must for a variety of reasons and Chaldea was the option with the most advanced esoteric research capacity.
If I had to pick a faction I'd rather replace with ST it'd probably be either Macross or Destiny.

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Tech wise I'll grant you Starfleet has some neat gadgets, but frankly I find the canon Federation in Star Trek to be so very bland. Their idea of high art is Klingon translations of Shakespeare. Macross is much more interesting culturally.

Razzocnor said:

Kushan fabrication technology is among the best, though given our situation it is important to remember that it does have some limits. You need to provide any exotic or esoteric materials needed, and it takes the scientists quite a bit of effort to create new designs to manufacture and incorporate new technology. Also need to know how the stuff you're building works to do any modifications to it, though it can print exact copies of black-box technology if you provide an example to copy from.

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Razzocnor said:

The one main downside I could see in this case with Kushan fabrication is that it doesn't interact at all with magic, souls, or other metaphysical stuff. Really, really great for inhaling an asteroid belt and turning it into a fleet of warships, but may well be useless for producing enchanted stuff.

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Sure, but it's not like those caveats don't exist for replicators and the point I was raising was that Homeworld manufacturing doesn't fall behind Trek replicators.

Razzocnor said:

Otherwise, we'll want to get some cross-compatibility going. Outside of a few edge cases and precursor black-boxes, Kushan weapons tech is pretty mundane, though eminently practical. But most of it lacks the raw overpowering punch we may need to deal with 40K ships. Ion cannons and missile batteries are great, but they've got their weaknesses and the Kushan don't have too much variety. So we'll want to figure out the logistics of getting Kushan factories producing Macross Variable Fighters if nothing else.

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Overwhelming firepower is what we have Macross for. OverTechnology derived weapons are insanely powerful, allowing for ship-to-ship missiles capable of destroying 2 kilometers long capital ships and immensely powerful beam weapons. The SDF-1's main cannon could wipe out fleets and that was in a package just 1.2 kilometers long.

That's around half the length of a Homeworld 1 era Kushan ion cannon frigate. Imagine being able to build Macross warships at the rate Homeworld factions build frigates.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Kushan fabricators can probably do non-living organic material just fine, and thus can make food, but not necessarily anything actually alive without special accomodations.

Since they do not appear to have functional cloning technology, given the critical importance of preserving cryofrozen population.

But they probably are better than Star Trek replicators in most ways, with the only possible exception being that Star Treck does have a lot of experience with weird wibbly anomalous stuff and could probably adapt to Warp shenanigans faster.

To be fair I don't see how anyone could establish a functional colony with only a population of predominantly freshly grown clones and the Kushan at the time of planning the journey to the Homeworld weren't expecting to have to rebuild their people from at most a meager population of 600,000 survivors.

The Taiidan though, they absolutely had the ability to create clones. The Taiidan Emperor was ruled by a succession of clones of a single man and elements of the former Taiidan empire joined with the Hiigarans so there is a chance that the Hiigarans now have that technology.

As an aside, something that I had completely forgotten about the dude until just now is that the Taiidan Emperor was a psychic and he had the ability to knock out Karan when she entered the Hiigaran system to face him. I have no idea how or why, and the devs of Homeworld don't really seem interested in fleshing out that avenue of the setting and are happy enough to leave it as a mystery, but it's a thing.

Spart117MC said:

But there's no real proof that Homeworld can't print out organic stuff either and it makes more sense, to me at least, that they can if only to explain how the Kushan were able to keep their people fed during the journey to Hiigara, without regular trade and dedicated agricultural facilities, after the number of active personnel in the fleet ballooned in order to meet the crew requirements of newly fabricated warships.

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You mean aside from the Star Trek faction summary stating other factions' fabricators can't do organics?

I think we should work on getting our FTL back online, but we absolutely should not be using it to go outside the solar system for awhile. Instead, we use it to establish system defense forces and mine the asteroid and ice and comet belts. Only after we get together a fleet of >100 major ships (ships similar to the Sanjuuk or the Macross Quarter), do we start going on expeditions. Until then, telescopic observation only.

Also, Chaldea's magecraft could be theoretically used industrially. Fate/Requiem has a world where everyone has a Servant, and in the Age of Gods (and our current situation is said to have characteristics resembling the Age of Gods), magical creatures were common and so were magic users. Paracelsus von Hohenheim also has an EX Rank Item Construction skill, and can mass produce stuff like the magically empowered gems Rin Tohsaka uses.
The Macross Galaxy also has chemical plants which can mass-produce food in quantities for 10 million people.

Honestly, still wish we gotten the Union, you don't see enough LANCER around, and they can handled some more magical/paracausal technology. Just look at some things made by HORUS and the other various corperations, if the Union had full catlog of mechs and the like, well the technology would have been insane

Our armory would have far more diverse, with mutiple new options that would have been available, if we had Star Trek tech, I'd also imagine speed of advancing and combining this broader arsenal would have increased greatly

And having both them would have some ferm govermental and administrative basis to build our polity upon

Sadly, I was not their for first vote

[X] Federal Union - Each faction has limited autonomy, and the federal government has greater direct authority over the laws and internal affairs of member polities, or at least can set formal laws establishing what is and is not allowed for local-level policy. High difficulty.

The Froggy Ninja said:

You mean aside from the Star Trek faction summary stating other factions' fabricators can't do organics?

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If your manufacturing techniques involving piecing things together atom by atom, being unable to assemble any organic materials is pretty silly. Replicators are described as operating on the same resolution, reducing feedstock materials to the atomic level and piecing things together from component atoms

Other than the ability to convert energy into matter and vice versa there isn't much different between these two technologies in terms of capability. Granted, replicators being able to produce the an object in full rather than incrementally could be a factor when it comes to producing living tissue, but I can't see any reason why only it can make stuff like food.

I simply believe that there is enough circumstantial evidence in favor of Homeworld being able to fabricate organic matter, but if that's how Bob ultimately wants to handle things I suppose I'll have to concede that point.

Archivist Grim said:

Honestly, still wish we gotten the Union, you don't see enough LANCER around, and they can handled some more magical/paracausal technology. Just look at some things made by HORUS and the other various corperations, if the Union had full catlog of mechs and the like, well the technology would have been insane

Our armory would have far more diverse, with mutiple new options that would have been available, if we had Star Trek tech, I'd also imagine speed of advancing and combining this broader arsenal would have increased greatly

And having both them would have some ferm govermental and administrative basis to build our polity upon

Sadly, I was not their for first vote

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People's unfamiliarity with Lancer didn't help its chances.

Depending on whether we pick the Federal, Confederate or Greater Daiamid option, how intergrated will our various militaries be ? Because having different militaries, each with their own culture and possibly jurisdictions, is a recipe for disaster. Interservice rivalry is a nasty thing.
In terms of military doctrine, we should invest in drones like the Warsats from Destiny or the Ghost V-9 AI-operated units in Macross (and make sure they don't spontaneously turn against us).
And we focus on air superiority, force multipliers and asymmetric and long-range warfare, because we're already good at that and we'll likely never be a huge faction in terms of numbers.

The fact we're able to access designs from Delta is good, although looking over the wiki page of VF-31 Siegfried, it apparently requires increased amounts of Fold Quartz. Some of that is to get a power boost from Wälkure's songs, but also for the Inertial Storage Converter, which is also essential to Frontier's VF-25 Messiah. Fold Quartz is also needed for supraluminal communication systems and Dimension Eaters, as well as a bunch of helpful stuff.
Unfortunately, the only way to get it in Macross is to harvest it from Vajra corpses, and there are no Vajra around. Even if we get a big lump of it included with our factory micro-satellite, it'll eventually run out even if we recycle everything.
Well, Paracelsus von Hohenheim is a guy with an EX Rank in Item Construction, and he invented modern gemcraft and alchemy in the Nasuverse. If anyone can figure out how to mass-produce an artificial version of Fold Quartz, it's him.
I also thought about making a bio-reactor that mimics the process by which the Vajra make Fold Quartz from the remains of dead stars.

Crazy idea, but could we turn the Barren Molten Planet near our star into a factory satellite.

Mercury, which is basically our solar system's Barren Molten Planet, has a diameter of 4880km.

The Factory Satellite we see in Super Dimension Fortress Macross is 3000km high and 6000km across. If we can't turn the Barren Molten Planet into a Factory Satellite, we can always grab an asteroid from the asteroid belt and turn that into a Factory Satellite.

For infrastructure, we should build a orbital ring around at least one of our habitable worlds. Not only can tethers be extended from the ring to the surface and provide a cheapening of surface-to-space costs, but it can also serve as a massive shipyard.

And they're apparently quite easy to make with a bootstrap system, so much that some people estimate that with improvements in materials technology, our completely normal Earth could build one. Also, they look awesome.

Which faction will Chaldea work with directly ?

Ideally, they would end up with the Alliance of Sol, but if you left the choice to Chaldea they would likely pick the Androidkind Compact, which won't be good.
I'm not sure about the magi of Chaldea, but most magi are particularly amoral people (Makiri Zouken is "slightly worse than average", there was a pair of magi, the Kuruokas in Fate/Strange Fake who read about his work, thought "how great !", and tested a bacterial version of his Crest Worms out on their preteen daughter Tsubaki, which put her in a coma, with their only concern being if her reproductive systems were still developing so she could pass her enhanced magical capabilities onto her children).

According to Fate/Apocrypha, Goredolf Musik's father Gordes is a specialist in the making of homunculi, who he used as magic batteries despite them being fully sentient.
Those homunculi had shortened lifespans and very weak bodies as a trade off for better Magical Circuits, and basically sat for their whole life in a tank providing prana for Yggredmilla's Servants, then had their bodies unceremoniously dumped in a mass grave and were promptly replaced by another.

The androids will be treated as subordinates as best, if some of the more arrogant magi are around.

Which Nasuverse characters are coming along with Chaldea ? Is Sigma (Maiya Hisau's son, and the Master of Watcher in Fate/Strange Fake) with them ?

Also, it says in the mission objectives that we should ally with some of the non-hostile alien factions, such as some of the Necrons and some of the Eldar.
That's going to be hard, Eldar and Necrons are basically a few steps away from mortal enemies. Well, there's nothing like a good challenge to stir things up !

As a heads up to everyone, the current vote will conclude on Tuesday at 7 PM Central Standard Time, so make sure to get your final votes in before then.

Also, I'm going to say that the Write-In option of Greater Daiamid has a difficulty rating of Very High Difficulty, more than Federal Union but less than Centralized Government, mainly due to issues of cultural friction between factions that have never interacted before now. They are not likely to easily adopt the Daiamid system wholesale, hence the rating.

You have national guard/local self defense forces
We can leave those to local already existing structures

Then you expeditionary forces (the sort used for quick invasions/interventions),like the marines

And you got the army,the work horse used to hold land and long term engagements

You also got navy and airforce

We should try to set up a external intelligence aparatus (soll alliance got a organization of spies and macross probably has its own)

Spart117MC said:

People's unfamiliarity with Lancer didn't help its chances.

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Fuck, I completely forgot about LANCER!

The mechs they have are so bullshit it's not even funny.

As a consolation the Coalition does have warships that transform into kilometer tall mecha that make Emperor-class titans look like the miniatures that represent them on the physical tabletop games.