Remove ads

Strangers in a Strange Sphere - [Battletech]

Voting will open in 2 hours, 19 minutes
Reader mode
HeroCooky said:
9+ Billion pop world + space colonies working as one for ~30 years per drive.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Alright then, I'll be advocating for the Greater Colonies option, with each colony being its own self-sufficient sovereign state. Creating our own interstellar nation sounds neat, but I doubt we could actually maintain cohension over 46 different worlds with only a single FTL-capable ship, especially when it'll be too busy supporting the set-up of new colonies to play courier.

I'm not an expect on Battletech Lore, but I'm under the impression that there is a reason why every major successor state is a feudal state, whether de facto or de jure; and they maintain mostly power by hoarding most Lostech and having most of the planets they rule as primitive backwaters. And (un?)forturnately, chances are that the Fontaine isn't going to settle for that level of development for its colonies, which means that most of them will be technicolgically advanced cultures that will develop their own politics and beliefs.

The only way that our could form a new nation is if we're lucky enough to capture a dropship almost immediately, if we can reverse-engineer it with ease, and if we're able mass-produce it to form easy travel between our worlds. And all three of those steps are a big 'if'.
 
Model DC.14F said:
Alright then, I'll be advocating for the Greater Colonies option, with each colony being its own self-sufficient sovereign state. Creating our own interstellar nation sounds neat, but I doubt we could actually maintain cohension over 46 different worlds with only a single FTL-capable ship, especially when it'll be too busy supporting the set-up of new colonies to play courier.

I'm not an expect on Battletech Lore, but I'm under the impression that there is a reason why every major successor state is a feudal state, whether de facto or de jure; and they maintain mostly power by hoarding most Lostech and having most of the planets they rule as primitive backwaters. And (un?)forturnately, chances are that the Fontaine isn't going to settle for that level of development for its colonies, which means that most of them will be technicolgically advanced cultures that will develop their own politics and beliefs.

The only way that our could form a new nation is if we're lucky enough to capture a dropship almost immediately, if we can reverse-engineer it with ease, and if we're able mass-produce it to form easy travel between our worlds. And all three of those steps are a big 'if'.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
In Battletech the in-setting conceit is that FTL communications is hard and FTL between systems is hard too. Jumpships are expensive and can only carry so much.

The state of the major nations' worlds depends on which one it is.

Lyran Commonwealth: Tends to be quite nice and well developed on average. The wealthiest nation in the Inner Sphere.

Free Worlds League: Sort of mirrors the Lyran Commonwealth, though it is far more fragmented and dependent on where you are due to effectively being various states/groups of worlds in a trench coat more or less.

Federated Suns: Wants to develop its worlds but needs of hostile borders plus having anemic economy for its size hampers attempts to build up its smaller/poorer worlds.

Draconis Combine: Oppressive state with a militant upper class that keeps the boot firmly on the necks of the peasantry.

Capellan Confederation: Has an outright caste system and everything must be in service to the state.
 
[] Continue The Mission...
-[] With a new interpretation.

Time to make not!GIFontaine great again. :V

...and this one doesn't end the Quest(?), though I doubt we'll be reaching similar length like Lords of Ruin...
 
[X] Continue The Mission...
-[X] With a new interpretation.

[X] Continue The Mission...
-[X] But seek to create far greater colonies
 
Last edited:
[X] Continue The Mission...
-[X] With a new interpretation.

We should not abandon Gunhallow to linger on until the next group of pirates reap even more damage, and to build larger or more geographically (astrographically?) concentrated colonies without the shared defence, connections, trade, communication and support of a political union of nation-states and nationhood, will merely make more targets for the greater (and more terrible) powers, or eventually, in true Battletech fashion, inevitably allow some future figure or faction to arise within the colonies to conquer them all (no doubt with devastating consequences for everyone involved).

HeroCooky said:
Naturally, there wouldn't be any automated minds controlling them, as the chance for accidents and miscalculations done by sterile machine minds blindly following their orders was too large. But work still remained, like the problems of lag that had yet to be overcome. Nonetheless, TAUBENMUTTER remained...determined that the first prototypes would be ready in less than half a decade.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

@HeroCooky, would TAUBENMUTTER be willing to allow humans to help safely control them from a distance if direct AI control would be more laggy?

Secondly, how difficult would it be to either create forks of TAUBENMUTTER or non-"sterile" AI minds from scratch that might be trusted to manage war machines (void-borne or planetary-bound) as a means to deal with lag and multi-star system conflicts (where TAUBENMUTTER simply can't be everywhere at once)? I'm guessing it's not as simple as running an instance of TAUBENMUTTER in every separate machine (presumably because it's not yet known how to, and would regardless be deemed ethically fraught and dangerous even with the AI's full consent, to "simplify" or "trim" an AI so it can run on smaller hardware due to the risk of triggering PSCF events whether in the secondary or primary instances)?
 
Last edited:
Negentropy said:
@HeroCooky, would TAUBENMUTTER be willing to allow humans to help safely control them from a distance if direct AI control would be more laggy?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That would just be drone controllers without any extra decorations. So no.
Negentropy said:
Secondly, how difficult would it be to either create forks of TAUBENMUTTER or non-"sterile" AI minds from scratch
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
A hard-coded [NO] regarding TAUBENMUTTER and a pretty hefty "Maybe in a decade or three, once we have an AGI-Institute up and running" for the latter.
 
HeroCooky said:
That would just be drone controllers without any extra decorations. So no.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

So if I understand correctly, for TAUBENMUTTER to feel comfortable with humans controlling the drones, they would have to be significantly further away or more degrees of separation removed from the fighting than even drone operators typically are (the "extra decoration"), which presumably will take significant effort?
 
Negentropy said:
So if I understand correctly, for TAUBENMUTTER to feel comfortable with humans controlling the drones, they would have to be significantly further away or more degrees of separation removed from the fighting than even drone operators typically are (the "extra decoration"), which presumably will take significant effort?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
In effect, they'd need to be at the level of "Videogame Commander telling units to go to Place X and Kill Y" levels of separation.
 
[X] Continue The Mission...
-[X] But seek to create far greater colonies.

Still going to advocate for this. I still believe that a interstellar nation isn't going to be viable with only a single FTL ship in our possession. Unless we manage to find a way to mass-produce more ships, which is far from certain, I just don't think it's possible to retain a cohesive national identity/culture/government.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting will open in 2 hours, 19 minutes
Remove ads
Back
Top