And worse, probably some Solars with Transhuman Compassion who would have been horrified with the very concept, much less them backing it, a few centuries earlier.Baughn said:
Shards of a Broken Sun [Deprecated; see link in final post for remake]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover Sci-Fi
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
We saw Io and Protagonist earlier, Daichi's the one who died.Gamerex27 said:
Compassion 5 isn't blocking us, its more making things difficult. If it outright blocked her from doing things that needed to be done I'd be calling... well worse things than "bullshit" at Baughn. As it is I like it. It makes things... It makes it obvious she cares. Its... nice.
... The Ar Tonelico soundtrack I'm listening to could be affecting this opinion as well. Actually that could be an interesting series to pull some stuff from. If we could build an analogue for the tower that others could use to cast magic... we would need limiters obviously, but... hmm.
... The Ar Tonelico soundtrack I'm listening to could be affecting this opinion as well. Actually that could be an interesting series to pull some stuff from. If we could build an analogue for the tower that others could use to cast magic... we would need limiters obviously, but... hmm.
Um, I think it's interesting either way and it's fun seeing this play out, but you did vote for it and most people voted for you.Alectai said:Actually, I think the +compassion option was bolted on by You because it was added in a significant number of votes, even though the majority just went with the basic update. In fact...
Yeah, I just counted. We had 13-14 votes for the plain approach, and only 5 that bolted on Compassion, so please don't call it "Hoist by our own Petard" when you decided to add it on to make things interestingWhich it is!
Alectai said:
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Oh, did I? Call it a petard transplant, then.
You'd be far worse off if Amu didn't have Lore 5. As it is, she knows how to shut up and multiply, which drastically reduces the cost of suppressing compassion for the benefit of a greater good. She won't be happy about it, but she'll do it.
You'd be far worse off if Amu didn't have Lore 5. As it is, she knows how to shut up and multiply, which drastically reduces the cost of suppressing compassion for the benefit of a greater good. She won't be happy about it, but she'll do it.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
No, seriously, I didn't, I voted for the plain option, other people bolted the Compassion boost on after the fact.Cytokinesis said:
That aside, I'm Fine with this, seriously. Then again, I might be missing a discussion post somewhere.
al103
Grumpy Russian Bear (SV edition)
- Location
- Russia, Krasnoyarsk
Honestly... IMO Compassion 5 is not that much more problematic than Compassion 4... at least as long as other three are 3 or less. And IIRC we didn't had option of Compassion 3, only 4. So while 4->5 do Care!->CARE* it doesn't change underlying reasoning behind Amu's action and I doubt that she would had that much less problems with situation with "just" Compassion 4.
...
And honestly if it was fated to be Compassion-based character it makes sense to overcharge that compassion to also get benefits in pursuing said choices.
*(meh...-> care -> Care -> Care! -> CARE)
...
And honestly if it was fated to be Compassion-based character it makes sense to overcharge that compassion to also get benefits in pursuing said choices.
*(meh...-> care -> Care -> Care! -> CARE)
Give normal people cosmic power and borderline no checks on their power and they will all become corrupt dicks. So I doubt it.Baughn said:
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
On the plus side? Amu proved her Own mettle at the end of today. Even without her Passenger's advice, she still organized a ploy that lead to the destruction of a Septentrion with only 30 casualties based on her own instincts, and she did it without stepping on any toes.
That's going to make future infrastructure stuff a Lot more viable.
That's going to make future infrastructure stuff a Lot more viable.
[X] "I'm sorry, but this has been a hectic day, I kind of need time to... You know, process all of this..."
--[X] Leave with a semblance of dignity, go find Ikuto, receive reassurance, then get some rest.
Going with Ikuto instead, Mom's not going to have much context for this except unconditional support.
As for Compassion, this is exactly what some of us were expecting at least, when we voted for it. It's makes her care, and it makes it hurt more when losses happen, that's fine, it pushes her to excel for the sake of others and that we need in a young Solar. That and being able to drop more dice when it really counts.
*Debates going transhuman Compassion Amu*
Maybe after some of that Limit ablates.
--[X] Leave with a semblance of dignity, go find Ikuto, receive reassurance, then get some rest.
Going with Ikuto instead, Mom's not going to have much context for this except unconditional support.
As for Compassion, this is exactly what some of us were expecting at least, when we voted for it. It's makes her care, and it makes it hurt more when losses happen, that's fine, it pushes her to excel for the sake of others and that we need in a young Solar. That and being able to drop more dice when it really counts.
*Debates going transhuman Compassion Amu*
Maybe after some of that Limit ablates.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
...veekie said:
Given the only real Transhuman Compassion Charm I know of that's been written is a carbon-copy of She Who Lives In Her Name's take on Compassion, I would very much not like this to be a thing that happens.
It's actually fairly decent compared to regular Compassion 5. It's like going from Compassion 4 to Compassion 5, you pretty much always get influenced by Compassion, needing willpower to suppress it anyway. It's more lenient in some ways even.Quantumboost said:
Going full EMIYA might be premature at this point though. We don't really have a Reason to assign as our Greater Good yet.
Being able to make obviously good sacrifices like in that example seems like reason enough to want that view.veekie said:
Though I suppose it's "healthier" to simply raise Conviction or whatever.
It isn't really, because having high Conviction doesn't free you from having to suppress Compassion. Conflicting virtues mostly just means you have to suppress them more often.pressea said:
Yeah, it's one way to be a bleeding heart while still doing the right thing. Conviction won't make it hurt less.
Just so long as we have an actual definition of Greater Good to pursue, right now Amu is mainly personal scale. She wants to save the world, her family and her friends, but if she had to choose one of the two, I'm pretty sure friends and family come before universe(and then cue Limit either way)
Just so long as we have an actual definition of Greater Good to pursue, right now Amu is mainly personal scale. She wants to save the world, her family and her friends, but if she had to choose one of the two, I'm pretty sure friends and family come before universe(and then cue Limit either way)
Bah, this is when you want that one infernal charm that lets you form/lose attachments easily. Out with the old, in with the new!veekie said:
Who knows, maybe we'll have in-character reason to cobble something like that together from Infernal-parts if Amu's friends and family start dropping like flies.
You'd still need the transhuman compassion to be able to disregard mook deaths. Bit extreme for now, since we can't talk her into learning it at this point.pressea said:
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
"So what's up with the extra sections?" I hear no-one ask.
Well, they're meant to give you a feel for what's going on in the background, and they're a construct I'm likely to use more often. As to these particular ones, though -
-----
The NHK is Japan's public broadcasting company; for those familiar, it works a lot like the BBC. It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that when an emergency broadcast is required they're likely to be borrowed for the task. Aki is a well-known TV personality (in this fic!), making people more likely to believe her (rather bizarre, even to her) explanations of what's going on. They didn't give away the entire plot, of course; mostly it was "Don't form crowds", "stay home", that sort of thing. More serious explanations will come once everyone has power again.
Amusingly enough some Japanese cellphones have TV receivers, but Aki's broadcast was also sent over radio. Every frequency, in fact. She's probably the most well-known voice in Japan right now, and don't think she's happy about it.
-----
Fukushima, on the other hand, has obviously not blown up yet; the Conception happened before the tidal wave could. It still has all the same design flaws - it's a pressurised-water reactor with the emergency generators in the basement, in a tidal zone - but the tidal waves that killed it in OTL are somewhat less likely to happen here. The ocean is still there, but the mantle isn't.
What's going on there is...
When the Conception happened, there was a massive series of Japan-wide earthquakes as various crustal stresses settled out. A lot of power lines were broken, and a lot of power plants tripped and shut down; this includes every one of their nuclear plants. As an inevitable result, the power grid shut down entirely - after which, so did all the remaining power plants; loss of load is no joke.
Now, datacenters do tend to have backup generators, but they don't have infinite fuel. Getting the grid up and running is therefore a very high priority, although fuel trucks do exist; Japan has a very limited amount of oil on hand and won't be getting more. Shades of WW2, there - it's possible to convert coal to oil, but (wouldn't you guess) that needs a lot of power, and of course Japan doesn't have nearly enough coal to run their power grid off just the coal.
So they need the reactors back up.
After the earthquakes caused Fukushima to trip, the normal procedure would be to fully shut it down, then inspect every component for damage before restarting it. This procedure would normally take a week of constant work, meaning most likely two or three. However, it wasn't actually hit that hard by the earthquakes, and damage is unlikely - not to mention that, quite frankly, a few minor radiation leaks isn't the worst thing that could happen right now. The NRA's job is to make sure safety procedures are followed, but in this case they're the ones telling Fukushima (and most other reactors) to ignore them. This also means not even letting it fully cool down before they're starting it back up, but they do have procedures for that - they just haven't used them before.
There's an additional wrinkle. All of Japan's reactors are base-load suppliers, meaning they can't change power output very quickly. Matching production and consumption is very important, because storing power is hard, and if you don't do a good job the voltage and/or frequency of your power grid will swing - this is bad. The reactors could be modified to let them change power more quickly; that's mostly a matter of improving the cooling systems and turbines, the reactor chamber itself can already change power in a matter of seconds. This would, however, take months, and you still wouldn't have a high-reaction-speed generator at the end.
Japan has enough uranium on hand to run their nuclear plants for a few years, before you get into reprocessing the waste. In practice they could push it to several decades.
Japan also has a number of coal plants, but they're a net coal importer and many of those will be shutting down until they can expand mining operations. That doesn't matter too much, because the nuclear plants can largely take the load; coal-based power plants generally take even more time to change power output, unless you're using pulverised/liquified coal, which IIUC they don't.
So what kind of power generation do they use to balance load?
Well, a couple of them. They have a small amount of hydroelectric power, which is great so long as it keeps raining - seriously, they can change output in a fraction of a second - but oil is the main standby. This might become a problem...
-----
Suzuki Madoka. She's the logistics officer of a small howitzer company - group, section, not sure what the proper Japanese term is - and is thus responsible for keeping them supplied with ammunition, fuel, spare parts, food and so forth. Her commanding officer, and the person in charge of the company as a whole, is Captain Urobuchi.
Naturally there have been a few amused comments, and she's received more than one Kyubey plushy as a gift. Given her rather perverse personality, this means her office in Kobe is plastered with them. People find it disturbing, which is precisely what she was going for. Originally she was planning to leave the army to study economics, but under the circumstances she's likely to stay on for a while longer; Japan isn't officially on a war footing - yet - but she takes her responsibilities seriously.
-----
Takeshi, family name unknown: The person whose plan brought a highway down on Dubhe at just the right time, thereby short-circuiting the entire battle, which was otherwise intended to be a probe rather than a serious attempt to kill Dubhe.
He's definitely receiving a commendation, and is likely to be fast-tracked to command of his own squad, but - desk job, seriously? That's not what he's good at. Don't forget, also, that the same plan was responsible for almost half of the battle's overall fatalities. He'll get a pass on the basis that it was worth it, and the circumstances were unpredictable, but he won't come out smelling like roses.
The relevant stats that let him pull that one off are "wits 3, lore 1," though bloody well everyone has lore 1.
Hope that informs!
Well, they're meant to give you a feel for what's going on in the background, and they're a construct I'm likely to use more often. As to these particular ones, though -
-----
The NHK is Japan's public broadcasting company; for those familiar, it works a lot like the BBC. It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that when an emergency broadcast is required they're likely to be borrowed for the task. Aki is a well-known TV personality (in this fic!), making people more likely to believe her (rather bizarre, even to her) explanations of what's going on. They didn't give away the entire plot, of course; mostly it was "Don't form crowds", "stay home", that sort of thing. More serious explanations will come once everyone has power again.
Amusingly enough some Japanese cellphones have TV receivers, but Aki's broadcast was also sent over radio. Every frequency, in fact. She's probably the most well-known voice in Japan right now, and don't think she's happy about it.
-----
Fukushima, on the other hand, has obviously not blown up yet; the Conception happened before the tidal wave could. It still has all the same design flaws - it's a pressurised-water reactor with the emergency generators in the basement, in a tidal zone - but the tidal waves that killed it in OTL are somewhat less likely to happen here. The ocean is still there, but the mantle isn't.
What's going on there is...
When the Conception happened, there was a massive series of Japan-wide earthquakes as various crustal stresses settled out. A lot of power lines were broken, and a lot of power plants tripped and shut down; this includes every one of their nuclear plants. As an inevitable result, the power grid shut down entirely - after which, so did all the remaining power plants; loss of load is no joke.
Now, datacenters do tend to have backup generators, but they don't have infinite fuel. Getting the grid up and running is therefore a very high priority, although fuel trucks do exist; Japan has a very limited amount of oil on hand and won't be getting more. Shades of WW2, there - it's possible to convert coal to oil, but (wouldn't you guess) that needs a lot of power, and of course Japan doesn't have nearly enough coal to run their power grid off just the coal.
So they need the reactors back up.
After the earthquakes caused Fukushima to trip, the normal procedure would be to fully shut it down, then inspect every component for damage before restarting it. This procedure would normally take a week of constant work, meaning most likely two or three. However, it wasn't actually hit that hard by the earthquakes, and damage is unlikely - not to mention that, quite frankly, a few minor radiation leaks isn't the worst thing that could happen right now. The NRA's job is to make sure safety procedures are followed, but in this case they're the ones telling Fukushima (and most other reactors) to ignore them. This also means not even letting it fully cool down before they're starting it back up, but they do have procedures for that - they just haven't used them before.
There's an additional wrinkle. All of Japan's reactors are base-load suppliers, meaning they can't change power output very quickly. Matching production and consumption is very important, because storing power is hard, and if you don't do a good job the voltage and/or frequency of your power grid will swing - this is bad. The reactors could be modified to let them change power more quickly; that's mostly a matter of improving the cooling systems and turbines, the reactor chamber itself can already change power in a matter of seconds. This would, however, take months, and you still wouldn't have a high-reaction-speed generator at the end.
Japan has enough uranium on hand to run their nuclear plants for a few years, before you get into reprocessing the waste. In practice they could push it to several decades.
Japan also has a number of coal plants, but they're a net coal importer and many of those will be shutting down until they can expand mining operations. That doesn't matter too much, because the nuclear plants can largely take the load; coal-based power plants generally take even more time to change power output, unless you're using pulverised/liquified coal, which IIUC they don't.
So what kind of power generation do they use to balance load?
Well, a couple of them. They have a small amount of hydroelectric power, which is great so long as it keeps raining - seriously, they can change output in a fraction of a second - but oil is the main standby. This might become a problem...
-----
Suzuki Madoka. She's the logistics officer of a small howitzer company - group, section, not sure what the proper Japanese term is - and is thus responsible for keeping them supplied with ammunition, fuel, spare parts, food and so forth. Her commanding officer, and the person in charge of the company as a whole, is Captain Urobuchi.
Naturally there have been a few amused comments, and she's received more than one Kyubey plushy as a gift. Given her rather perverse personality, this means her office in Kobe is plastered with them. People find it disturbing, which is precisely what she was going for. Originally she was planning to leave the army to study economics, but under the circumstances she's likely to stay on for a while longer; Japan isn't officially on a war footing - yet - but she takes her responsibilities seriously.
-----
Takeshi, family name unknown: The person whose plan brought a highway down on Dubhe at just the right time, thereby short-circuiting the entire battle, which was otherwise intended to be a probe rather than a serious attempt to kill Dubhe.
He's definitely receiving a commendation, and is likely to be fast-tracked to command of his own squad, but - desk job, seriously? That's not what he's good at. Don't forget, also, that the same plan was responsible for almost half of the battle's overall fatalities. He'll get a pass on the basis that it was worth it, and the circumstances were unpredictable, but he won't come out smelling like roses.
The relevant stats that let him pull that one off are "wits 3, lore 1," though bloody well everyone has lore 1.
Hope that informs!
Desk job reasoning is pretty simple:
Out of the box thinking is invaluable. You dont leave that kind of thing out in the open where there's more things that can kill you then there arent
Once weve got the wartime bureaucracy going, we can shuffle him to a minor command so hes in charge of handling responses to minor crises.
Getting an army going is all about finding the right people to delegate to to get jobs done. Protagonist types are great for being on the ground, getting things done. But they need guiding minds behind them to make things easier, and Amu cant be that all the time
Takeshi can fill a very particular, but still vital, niche in the overall scheme. That being the role of reliable middle management.
Out of the box thinking is invaluable. You dont leave that kind of thing out in the open where there's more things that can kill you then there arent
Once weve got the wartime bureaucracy going, we can shuffle him to a minor command so hes in charge of handling responses to minor crises.
Getting an army going is all about finding the right people to delegate to to get jobs done. Protagonist types are great for being on the ground, getting things done. But they need guiding minds behind them to make things easier, and Amu cant be that all the time
Takeshi can fill a very particular, but still vital, niche in the overall scheme. That being the role of reliable middle management.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Hmm, in light of that, it might actually be worthwhile to prioritize Harmonious Academic Methodology then Tiger Warrior Training Method right out the gate, because Holy shit we need to find ways of solving these problems before they become unreasonable.
That being said, hopefully we'll have lots of XP when the Exaltation is back online.
That being said, hopefully we'll have lots of XP when the Exaltation is back online.
Nah, TWTM is more important. A stable environment is needed, and that requires people that can fend off superpowered idiots with delusions of grandeur
The entire point of these emergency measures in the first place is to create a sense of stability. Shoring up that takes priority over working things past stopgap status
Gotta short term for now until the various aftershocks of Conception stop and the vortex world reaches something resembling stability
The entire point of these emergency measures in the first place is to create a sense of stability. Shoring up that takes priority over working things past stopgap status
Gotta short term for now until the various aftershocks of Conception stop and the vortex world reaches something resembling stability