Ad Astra ex Lutum

IIUC the vehicles are basically Jeeps

I also think 12 sounds like a lot. I thought our cargo plane was, well... like a Learjet in size? We went for rough field capability and all.

Let's see... we have two 240kn engines. So about 600 horsepower total?
....that sounds extremely wrong to me and I'm tired. Bleh. Nevermind.
240 kn are extremely powerful engines. An-124 flies on four 230 kn engines. So Type 39 is about Il-76 sized, I believe.
 
If we can copy the laser weapons do we necessary want to because it sounds with them being a mercenary band as well not really the best?
 
One thought I had was on possibly delaying the naval exercises for a turn to instead also take Remove Underperforming Commanders alongside the one more directly targeting the fascist commanders, but I'm not sure how that would go. It would also allow us to do the Unification of Orbital Datalinks alongside the start of naval exercises, which should make training go a lot better with at least the sensor systems getting unified.
Naval exercise is a long term thjng so I dont think it particularly matters to try and do unification of orbital datalinks at the same time as them. My main problem with doing both the "remove commanders" options is that we'd be tossing out an absolute fuck ton of our commanders at that point. I suspect the worst of the politically neutral incompetents will absolutely be tossed anyways to provide cover, and we can toss more people later if they manage to learn. Being too disruptive right now wouldnt be good I think.
 
[]Plan Overcoming (our own) Incompetence
-[]Operation Quiet Walk
-[]Operation Moldy Vase
-[]Second Generation Infantry Equipment
-[]Increase Staffwork Intensity
-[]Naval Exercise Formalization
-[]Military-Diplomatic Mission to the Lirrir
-[]Strike Underperforming Politically Incapable Commanders

Fireiy's plan, but changed out Illustrious Flag for Quiet Walk. Illustrious Flag is more for supporting possible kinetic actions than gaining that useful intel, and while I want to do it I think we can do it next turn while simultaneously doing Ethereal Summer. Quiet Walk is a moderate risk, but given the high level leak we can obfuscate our intentions if we get caught. The politicians will probably get somewhat annoyed but it'll be more of a simple security minded overreach than something explicitly politival; while the current government is probably fine with targeting the fascists we still dont want the fascists to know we're targeting them. If we pretend we're just overreaching in an attempt to stop leakers then it's just the army bring the army.
 
Last edited:
A good point about the leaks giving us some political cover for Quiet Walk. Very annoying that Luxiriant Hat failed so badly but hopefully that has taught Department 4 some lessons on CYBINT. I'm hoping we get at least one unqualified success on these two intel operations for once.
 
[X]Plan Overcoming (our own) Incompetence
-[X]Operation Quiet Walk
-[X]Operation Moldy Vase
-[X]Second Generation Infantry Equipment
-[X]Increase Staffwork Intensity
-[X]Naval Exercise Formalization
-[X]Military-Diplomatic Mission to the Lirrir
-[X]Strike Underperforming Politically Incapable Commanders

I agree with pretty much all of this, we need to strike while the iron is hot on the issue of commanders, incompetence is a great excuse for demotion. Better do it now while we have a valid reason, or do it later at a much greater risk of looking politically motivated (risk still exists here, but I think its worth taking). The same reasoning applies to Quiet Walk and the leaks.

Only doubt I have is whether to do Moldy Vase or Illustrious Flag. But I think this is a good plan and will vote for it.
 
Last edited:
the civilian government has proven itself capable of handling secret information without leakage even in charged circumstances allowing more information to later be conveyed. (Massive Political Support Gain)
Wow, turn out civilian government will actually start supporting you if you stop acting suspicious and not trusting them with basic of information.

The shelves themselves contain tightly stacked heads in the remnants of some organic soup, with what seems to be their spinal cords directly attached to a lower interface plate.
...So, is no one else going to comment about this? What are those cybernetic-integrated brains for? And why are they out in the vacuum?

likely the obsolescent drives onboard have done more for our diplomatic image than anything else
Wow, our drive are so bad it menage to reassure traumatised, paranoid people that we are far too low-tech to come and conquer them. Truly, Elves' diplomatic achievement know no bounds.

In exchange, the Lirrir diplomat has provided two alien laser rifles along with a suit of captured power armor
Is this something we can start reverse engineer?

[X]Plan Overcoming (our own) Incompetence
 
My personal Cube theory is some kind of wetware server rack/network node. God only knows what they were hosting, maybe it's a bunch of rich guys plugged into Space World of Warcraft as a hedonistic thing, maybe they're unconscious processors getting their brains hijacked by the evil precursors, maybe it's virtual personality storage, maybe it's a torture box, idk. But I can't imagine what else you'd do with a bunch of efficiently packed brains wired directly into FTL transmitters other than some kind of wetware server linked to the FTL internet.

The real spooky thing is why did they bury it in a metallic asteroid? That had to be intentionally hidden there, a metallic asteroid can't naturally form in a mere few thousand years around something like this.
 
Last edited:
Why would you need 50 brains packed in a box to run a listening post though, you could do it much cheaper with just some dumb electronics. Or, if for some reason you need a brain on site because you're from Dune and don't use computers or whatever, then you need like 1-2 brains, maybe 3-5 if you really want redundancy. Not 50+...
 
Last edited:
Why would you need 50 brains packed in a box to run a listening post though, you could do it much cheaper with just some dumb electronics. Or, if for some reason you need a brain on site because you're from Dune and don't use computers or whatever, then you need like 1-2 brains, maybe 3-4 if you really want redundancy. Not 50+...

Could be a cultural thing, or some sort of weird matrix/neural wetware shenanigans going on, or wanting enough scientists on site to do the initial work before sending out low-bandwidth data. But it definitely is weird that it's hidden, but still has FTL signaling capabilities - suggests it wasn't hidden from everyone, just "casual" observation.
 
Heavily plugged into FTL internet with every single brain being hardwired straight into a transmitter and then also having like 50% extra redundancies, but also hidden deep inside something camouflaged to look like a natural asteroid is indeed a super weird combo. The hardwiring directly into FTL transmitters makes me pretty sure that the brains were regularly talking to something far away, but fucked if I know what or why
 
It's also possible that their whole or much of their active society was composed of heads talking to each other via FTL, and this node was simply the people overseeing the elves or doing other work in the system before whatever incident caused it to be abandoned.
 
Those theories sound good, but what if was by accident they got in the asteroid and it used to be part of something bigger?
 
You can't accidentally end up fully encased in a metallic asteroid, not in the ~10,000 years the Cube has existed anyways. It had to have been put there intentionally by someone somehow.
 
You can't accidentally end up fully encased in a metallic asteroid, not in the ~10,000 years the Cube has existed anyways. It had to have been put there intentionally by someone somehow.
Like I'm trying to say that a catastrophic accident or attack could happened and there very advanced ftl technology can probably break physics when exploding? And not disagreeing with you at all and your ideas make sense just that we got nothing much to work with so kind of anything could be possible at this rate.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top