Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Excellent /Palpatine
The Practice War [Complete]
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
Excellent /Palpatine
- Location
- USA
Plus beating the tribute fleet is only the first wave and is likely that ship for ship it is weaker than their main fleets
- Location
- Somewhere other than where I am.
There is no 'Scary' rating button. :'(Oh don't you worry. I've known since before I started this quest what you'd be facing
Maybe. I'm not sure how good a use of our time it is - it isn't going to change our overall strategy in advanced, though it might change our tactics once they get here. In particular, it means we will know about the surprise ship or three waiting in reserve, or conversely will be assured that no such ambush exists.
I think I accidentally talked myself into wanting this option. Particularly because if the Shiplords did have a policy of having a hidden reserve like this, we wouldn't know it cause it will have been hidden the last time they were here.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Shiplords.
What do we know/can infer?
The way they handled us and what Insight told us, they've got experience with harvesting.
They trashed us 50(?) years ago, kidnapped most of the adult population, set the directives in place and left - after installing a hidden surveillance system.
I would be astonished if we were the first newly tributed planet that thinks about resisting, arming themselves through the teeth.
If the Shiplords encountered that mindset previously, which I think they did, the second tribute fleet should be prepared to SMASH the resistance. So, I'm not betting on '8' ships opposing us.
Ideas (@Snowfire - please a statement about feasability)
What do we know/can infer?
The way they handled us and what Insight told us, they've got experience with harvesting.
They trashed us 50(?) years ago, kidnapped most of the adult population, set the directives in place and left - after installing a hidden surveillance system.
I would be astonished if we were the first newly tributed planet that thinks about resisting, arming themselves through the teeth.
If the Shiplords encountered that mindset previously, which I think they did, the second tribute fleet should be prepared to SMASH the resistance. So, I'm not betting on '8' ships opposing us.
Ideas (@Snowfire - please a statement about feasability)
- EW platforms
Role: irritate shiplords (malus to combat efficiency) with jamming, scanning and cyberwarfare.
Deployment: stationary, seeded throughout the solar system, throw-away design. Need to be operable for the time the battle rages.
Issues: Can we cook up something worthwile, with the info from the subnet (and the reverse-engineering), and, can we build enough of the stuff and will it be enough of a force multiplier that it's worth building less non-practiced ships (optimization problem. That's what our Turing machine is good for)? - Battle trance
Can we build up on our experiences with miracles to set up a trance that incorporates all of our battle assets into a whole? Kind of a gestalt - no communication errors, no 'what do you want me to do', no hesitation about necessary sacrifices. - Follow-up fleet
Let's say we manage to beat this Tribute fleet. And assume they manage to launch a courier. Can we scale the response by the way we fight? I see the following possible outcomes:- Total effortless curbstomp. We are so dangerous that it's not feasible to beat us. Diplomacy required.
- Curbstomp. We are a danger that needs immediate response. By the biggest battle fleet detachable.
- Easy victory. See above, possibly with minor delays because 'only one system, we've got bigger problems just now.
- Victory. We were underestimated, but the next tribute fleet will be sent immediately and be accompanied by battle fleet assets.
- Pyrrhic victory. Tough luck, next time send a better fleet commander.
- Humanities Avatar
Project: Create a pool of practized generalized nanomachines (assembler/disassembler), enough to run a 'Turing' machine. Set up a system-wide practice trance, where Practicants serve as the scaffold for the whole of humanities soul. Go into trance/meditation with the goal to imprint humanities consciouness and sense of self into the nanomachine assembly.
Role: Who knows? A creature embodying all what humanity is, with self-replicating abilities could be a lot of things. - Dyson Sphere
What would we have to research to make that feasible?
- Location
- Anchorage, Alaska
Should already be a part of either the Command or Tower class capital ships, or crammed into the auxiliary support ships: anything else will be vaporized the moment it's located, or be so heavily armored and shielded that it may as well have been a combat ship anyway.
Possibly, but we probably won't get far enough down the Harmonial Tree (which is where this would be located) before the tribute fleet arrives. Probably.
Oh, and it would probably only link Practicing individuals, and maybe only those in a certain roles. Inducing Trances is not something we've really mastered yet, and never bet on a Miracle, just to be safe.
While interesting to speculate about (for example, I'd take the "diplomacy" possibility off the table entirely) I doubt we can afford to try and fake a narrow victory. The possibility of it being a narrow victory all on it's own is reason enough to hold nothing back.
There's also the bonus that, the more humiliating their defeat here is, the more likely that the entire rest of the galaxy will dogpile on them like piranah's on a fresh corpse.
I want to call this crazy, and there would probably be a lot of intermediary steps to get there. If it did happen though, you'd probably end up with something along the lines of the Guardian Dragons, but built from the Sixth Secret instead of the Second, and buffed with Practice.
Don't bet on it being an insta-win though. Or even being able to clone itself.
Prediction: "Have you beaten the Shiplords yet? No? Get back to me on that."
Mind you, this is all my speculation, but I think it's fairly well grounded.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's one of the points. I wasn't talking about '5' platforms, more like '5000000'+ platforms. As cheap as possible, as annoying as possible. I hoped the 'throw-away' part would convey that.
We don't know yet how hard it will be to achieve a victory; however, should we have the option to get an overwhelming one it's worth making plans before that just happened. I don't think we'll survive a crash-dispatched battle fleet arriving in ~6 years because we are recognized as a legitimate threat.
And galaxy dogpiling? If that could happen after we trashed a (expendable) tribute fleet, all the more reason for the shiplords to proof whose top-dog by trashing the upstarts.
I think it's just worth to have our think-tanks think about a strategy that allows us to survive a victory long enough that attacking us again becomes to costly, because we had more time to built and Practice.
- Location
- Anchorage, Alaska
You conveyed that you wanted a cheap, expendable way to smack them over the head with E-Warfare. My counterpoint is that we
Maybe if they're tacked on as a supplemental unit to the fleet? Maybe, but I'm not seeing them having enough relevance to reach above the level of abstraction that is required for GM sanity (could be wrong though).
REFRESHER TIME!
Read the rest of the Interlude too, but to summarize: Losing to us, a nobody polity in the ass end of nowhere, will be exactly the proof that everyone needs that the Shiplords can be beaten, that they can bleed, and that they can die.
Coming in and wiping us out with a proper warfleet might be something that they REALLY WANT to do, but it would already be to late. There's blood in the water, and they need to fight everyone else off at the same time. Hopefully, they'll be to busy treading water to send an insurmountable counter attack at us before we're ready.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So, the rest of the galaxy gets an instant news broadcast? What happens here is not noteworthy because it's business as usual. If it happens to not be business as usual, this news will filter through whatever channels, for example 'has anybody seen tribute fleet X in the last 15 years'? That may be to late for us. And you assume that a second tribute fleet losing is something new and noteworthy.
Assume, in the heyday of USA<>Soviet Union cold war times that the US fucked up with the support of a coup attempt in Ivory Coast. Would you expect the SU to immediately declare all-out war?
- Location
- Anchorage, Alaska
Somehow, apparently? If we're really worried about it, we should probably look into finding a way of broadcasting this ourselves, just to guarentee that we get the desired result.
That said, our magical think-tank that pulls knowledge literally out of thin air told us this was true, so I'm inclined to accept that it is true. Magic bullshit is the rule here, literally powers the Secrets, and is the cornerstone of all our hopes and plans. If you can't trust it, than we're halfway down the creak already.
As for the US SuperPower argument, the parallel isn't exactly perfect in the first place, starting with how the US doesn't go out of it's way to be COMPLETE MONSTERS, and are at worst merely dickish, and ending with the fact that, yes, people who hate us do, in fact, shoot at us. Being isolated by two oceans and not being universally despised by everyone else on the planet generally mitigates that, though. Let's not use that analogy in the future though, shall we? The last thing anyone wants is RL politics and analogies in our Space Opera.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
@Broadcast: superb idea.
@real life comparisons: have always the complication to be able to be misunderstood, like you did apparently. I'll try and use fictional ones. Which everyone knows as well as the cold war period.
.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Ok, so, for reference here. Shiplord scanners were capable of picking up man sized targets on a completely passive trajectory towards the system hub. You've managed some reverse engineering of their sensors, and working out where to shove the jamming or EW would be pretty easy. The problem would be building enough of them, and spreading them widely enough across an entire solar system. You'd need millions to achieve the sort of saturation required for them to be effective. Building small numbers to spread around your orbitals and launch from your auxiliaries is quite doable, and something which is going to happen pretty much automatically.
@Sightsear nailed the answer to this one pretty much off the bat. You could put your Potential Commanders into a trance, at least theoretically, but there's no guarantee that it would work. Extending a Trance to non-Potentials is completely beyond your capabilities, and you've got no idea if it's even possible.
It's somewhat realistic, but it's missing some things. Mostly things that you really don't have much chance of finding out before the invasion, unfortunately. Also, no, not really. If they get a courier off it's blazingly unlikely that they won't have a proper download on your surviving assets. And they have good modeling AI.
This is vastly beyond your current capabilities. Humanity also doesn't have a singular soul.
See @Sightsear's answer to this.
The rest of the galaxy doesn't get an instant broadcast, but the loss or defeat of a Tribute Fleet isn't something that is likely to go unnoticed. There really isn't a good real world example here, not that I'm searching hard to find one. The way information propagates from what Insight discovered, it would be reasonable to expect some of the stronger/braver races that have earned the right to their secrets would come looking for you before the Shiplords follow up. It's also very much not a Cold War scenario. The Shiplords have been the dominant power in the galaxy for literally millions of years.
And thanks to last turn's Insight action, you now have some idea of how they fight when they go no holds barred. Imagine an enemy that only drops out of continuous FTl to fire, and is gone again before their lightspeed main armament hits. Bringing their battle fleet down on you at this point constitutes a Bad End.
This is why you'll need allies, and you should be in a position to get some.
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Interlude: Tombstone
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
In the end it was the purest form of happy accident for humanity. The sort of insane coincidence that no one ever counted on, but any commander worth his salt prayed for. The FSNS Avalanche had been on her home run, cruising back to Earth for some much needed R&R after having been detached to the Ministry of Security for most of a year. She was the last vessel to be returning from assignment to the MoS, and she'd seen some of the heaviest action of all the auxiliary craft. One of the only third generation heavy cruisers assigned to Operation Gauntlet, her Practiced defensive systems and generators had proven invaluable in the few situations that had gone hot.
Now though, with the last of the Shiplord outposts neutralised and well on the way to being dismantled, she was on her way back home. Even then however, her crew was watching like a hawk for anything that might go wrong. To a point they had to, being out in the black for a year had pushed Avalanche's maintainability to the limit, especially with multiple combat missions.
So when the officer on sensor duty caught a blip on scanners, he didn't dismiss it. There'd been far too many sensor blips that had mattered over the last year for him to do so. Which was what led to you on your way to the bridge, trying to work out what Lieutenant Matheson had found.
"Jane, what have we got?" You asked as the doors slid open, addressing your second in command. A holo floated at the centre of the deck, detailing what it could of the object you'd found. From the lack of information displays around it, that wasn't much.
"We're not sure, Commander." Jane Cyneburg had been your XO aboard the Avalanche, and she'd proved her competence dozens of times. Confusion wasn't something that you were accustomed to hearing from her. She gestured to the strange, angular object floating in the air before you. "It's Shiplord design, the basic composition makes that clear. But it's optimised for stealth in a way that we've never seen. It's also tiny."
"How tiny?" You asked.
"That image is to scale." Jane replied, and you stared for a second. The image couldn't be more than a couple of meters on a side.
"What?" You looked over to the sensor station. "Nick, is that true?"
"It is, Sir." Nicholas Matheson nodded. "My grav sensors can't even see it, the secondary array picked it up. We got lucky with a pulse refraction." He explained. "If we hadn't come close enough, we'd have flown right past without ever knowing it was there. Pure luck, sir."
"Unbelievable." You shook your head, then straightened. "Helm, alter course. Let's go find out what we've found. Jane, update the Ministry and tell the Navy to watch out for these. We don't know if they're mines or not."
"On it." She said. "But even with Shiplord technology, I can't imagine that a mine that size would be very powerful."
"We thought that the network hub couldn't be very dangerous to our ships." You pointed out blandly, and she winced.
"Noted." She slipped on a headset and began talking quietly.
"Lieutenant Andel," you addressed your tactical officer. "Bring the ship to general quarters, I want all combat systems online and ready before we reach the object."
"Aye, sir."
"Nick, get me everything you can on that thing as we close. Forward all your scans to the Ministry, we've got Insight Focused who can look into it."
"Yes sir. The hull is coated in some sort of stealth composite that's bouncing half of my sensors and just not being there for almost all of the rest. I can get us to it, but I'm not sure any of our sensors will be able to get through the outer layer. And we can't risk firing on it, either. Even if it isn't a mine."
"I know," you said. "But if there's one platform like this out there, then there might be more. And some of them might be armed. Keep your eyes open." You turned your attention back to the helm. "Ensign May, how long to intercept?"
"Long enough for all of our defensive systems to spin up, no longer. We were almost on top of the darn thing."
"Thank you." Your eyes swept the command deck. "We're going to do this carefully, people. If that thing has information, we want what's in it. If it's a weapon, I intend for us to survive it. Be ready for anything."
"Yes sir!"
Your name is Marcus Romero, and you are staring in shock at the report on your desk. Reading the enclosed datafiles was easy, but that was just absorbing the information. Processing it was going to take longer. The download you'd gotten out of the hub on the subnet's assets had had a few scattered references to something called Tombstone, but you'd thought that it had meant the courier that you'd captured. You'd never imagined that the network had another string to its bow.
Tombstone, you knew now, was a protocol held in reserve by Shiplord subnets in the event of certain detection. It was made up of thousands of platforms like the one Avalanche had discovered. It was such a simple idea that everyone had missed it. A miniaturised lagless transceiver connected to solid state data storage, all wrapped in layers of stealth composite. You'd have to all but run over one of the things to detect it, which was what Avalanche had almost done.
But now you knew that they were there you were able to start making plans. And even if you couldn't neutralise every platform before the Tribute Fleet arrived, you now had one of the platforms, data drive intact. The main directories remained sealed at your order, you didn't want anyone but you to go delving into that drive. But if you could break in?
You'd thought that the hub had been the only source of truly valuable intelligence in the system. Over the year, your fear had steadily played out into reality. All that Operation Gauntlet had really done was bring down the rest of the subnet. There were some things there that could be reverse engineered, but that wasn't your field, and the data haul had been considerably less impressive.
This, if the accessible data was telling the truth, could give you the subnet's analysis of your defences. And who knew what else. You'd have called Amanda right away, but she was otherwise occupied in the Appalachians with whatever the Elder First had left behind. Hopefully she'd pass whatever test they'd left behind for those like her. Despite everything you'd found, and what you might still be able to unlock, the imagery of unrestrained Shiplord combat had shaken the entire cabinet.
Still, the Tribute Fleets historically were anything but Fleet formations. Powerful, yes, but not unstoppable.
(Options unlocked. Reverse engineering avenues expanded. Remaining subnet assets completely eliminated. Tombstone platform captured. Tombstone discovered.)
Now though, with the last of the Shiplord outposts neutralised and well on the way to being dismantled, she was on her way back home. Even then however, her crew was watching like a hawk for anything that might go wrong. To a point they had to, being out in the black for a year had pushed Avalanche's maintainability to the limit, especially with multiple combat missions.
So when the officer on sensor duty caught a blip on scanners, he didn't dismiss it. There'd been far too many sensor blips that had mattered over the last year for him to do so. Which was what led to you on your way to the bridge, trying to work out what Lieutenant Matheson had found.
"Jane, what have we got?" You asked as the doors slid open, addressing your second in command. A holo floated at the centre of the deck, detailing what it could of the object you'd found. From the lack of information displays around it, that wasn't much.
"We're not sure, Commander." Jane Cyneburg had been your XO aboard the Avalanche, and she'd proved her competence dozens of times. Confusion wasn't something that you were accustomed to hearing from her. She gestured to the strange, angular object floating in the air before you. "It's Shiplord design, the basic composition makes that clear. But it's optimised for stealth in a way that we've never seen. It's also tiny."
"How tiny?" You asked.
"That image is to scale." Jane replied, and you stared for a second. The image couldn't be more than a couple of meters on a side.
"What?" You looked over to the sensor station. "Nick, is that true?"
"It is, Sir." Nicholas Matheson nodded. "My grav sensors can't even see it, the secondary array picked it up. We got lucky with a pulse refraction." He explained. "If we hadn't come close enough, we'd have flown right past without ever knowing it was there. Pure luck, sir."
"Unbelievable." You shook your head, then straightened. "Helm, alter course. Let's go find out what we've found. Jane, update the Ministry and tell the Navy to watch out for these. We don't know if they're mines or not."
"On it." She said. "But even with Shiplord technology, I can't imagine that a mine that size would be very powerful."
"We thought that the network hub couldn't be very dangerous to our ships." You pointed out blandly, and she winced.
"Noted." She slipped on a headset and began talking quietly.
"Lieutenant Andel," you addressed your tactical officer. "Bring the ship to general quarters, I want all combat systems online and ready before we reach the object."
"Aye, sir."
"Nick, get me everything you can on that thing as we close. Forward all your scans to the Ministry, we've got Insight Focused who can look into it."
"Yes sir. The hull is coated in some sort of stealth composite that's bouncing half of my sensors and just not being there for almost all of the rest. I can get us to it, but I'm not sure any of our sensors will be able to get through the outer layer. And we can't risk firing on it, either. Even if it isn't a mine."
"I know," you said. "But if there's one platform like this out there, then there might be more. And some of them might be armed. Keep your eyes open." You turned your attention back to the helm. "Ensign May, how long to intercept?"
"Long enough for all of our defensive systems to spin up, no longer. We were almost on top of the darn thing."
"Thank you." Your eyes swept the command deck. "We're going to do this carefully, people. If that thing has information, we want what's in it. If it's a weapon, I intend for us to survive it. Be ready for anything."
"Yes sir!"
***
Your name is Marcus Romero, and you are staring in shock at the report on your desk. Reading the enclosed datafiles was easy, but that was just absorbing the information. Processing it was going to take longer. The download you'd gotten out of the hub on the subnet's assets had had a few scattered references to something called Tombstone, but you'd thought that it had meant the courier that you'd captured. You'd never imagined that the network had another string to its bow.
Tombstone, you knew now, was a protocol held in reserve by Shiplord subnets in the event of certain detection. It was made up of thousands of platforms like the one Avalanche had discovered. It was such a simple idea that everyone had missed it. A miniaturised lagless transceiver connected to solid state data storage, all wrapped in layers of stealth composite. You'd have to all but run over one of the things to detect it, which was what Avalanche had almost done.
But now you knew that they were there you were able to start making plans. And even if you couldn't neutralise every platform before the Tribute Fleet arrived, you now had one of the platforms, data drive intact. The main directories remained sealed at your order, you didn't want anyone but you to go delving into that drive. But if you could break in?
You'd thought that the hub had been the only source of truly valuable intelligence in the system. Over the year, your fear had steadily played out into reality. All that Operation Gauntlet had really done was bring down the rest of the subnet. There were some things there that could be reverse engineered, but that wasn't your field, and the data haul had been considerably less impressive.
This, if the accessible data was telling the truth, could give you the subnet's analysis of your defences. And who knew what else. You'd have called Amanda right away, but she was otherwise occupied in the Appalachians with whatever the Elder First had left behind. Hopefully she'd pass whatever test they'd left behind for those like her. Despite everything you'd found, and what you might still be able to unlock, the imagery of unrestrained Shiplord combat had shaken the entire cabinet.
Still, the Tribute Fleets historically were anything but Fleet formations. Powerful, yes, but not unstoppable.
(Options unlocked. Reverse engineering avenues expanded. Remaining subnet assets completely eliminated. Tombstone platform captured. Tombstone discovered.)
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Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
So this was going to be out sooner, but I ended up rewriting the entire thing when I realised I was going about things in a really stupid and complex way. It also didn't work, not for an interlude. So I scrapped most of it and turned it into this. Sorry for the wait! Opening of Requiem for a Dream should be up Sunday night after work.
For reference, Tombstone was not in any of the directories that you captured. If you had not rolled this stupidly well, you would never have found it. This wouldn't have been absolutely terrible, but it could have hurt a lot. Now you have the ability to counter it.
For reference, Tombstone was not in any of the directories that you captured. If you had not rolled this stupidly well, you would never have found it. This wouldn't have been absolutely terrible, but it could have hurt a lot. Now you have the ability to counter it.
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- Location
- Queensland, Australia
So... uhh... that's a thing...
I take it the expanded Reverse Engineering Avenues means we've got more possible results from Picking the Bones?
Also... we may just have acquired the complete data that the Hub had on board, including what was incinerated by it's anti-capture protocols...
I take it the expanded Reverse Engineering Avenues means we've got more possible results from Picking the Bones?
Also... we may just have acquired the complete data that the Hub had on board, including what was incinerated by it's anti-capture protocols...
- Location
- Anchorage, Alaska
That's some stupid good rolls we had there, huh.
- Location
- Somewhere other than where I am.
I think we already have FTL comm.
Here's an idea: Can we sabotage these somehow?
Another: Can we tap their FTL comms to find them all? The Shiplords must have a reliable way to find and access them, or there would be no point.
Combined: Tap the FTL comms on these things and overwrite them with convincing fake data.
Also: Set out a fake ones of our own that warn us if they are accessed as part of our early warning system.
acegunner
Planeswalker - Nicol Bolas
- Location
- Dominaria
Could we upload a combat ai into the shiplord network? Something that can self replicate inside tier system rapidly while working for us?
To maybe gather information, act as a cyberwarfare system for us?
Could this stealth mayerial be used on missiles?
To maybe gather information, act as a cyberwarfare system for us?
Could this stealth mayerial be used on missiles?
- Location
- Anchorage, Alaska
Nope. This is a hard storage unit that is set up purely to passively receive information, until (presumably) they are pinged by the Tribute Fleet, who will can likely relay information back in their own way, but "FTL" comms is apparently still slower than a ship with a FTL Drive.
But know, we'll know what they'll know. In fact we now know things that we weren't meant to know that they knew. This is an intelligence coup that will be paying dividends well after we throw-down with the Tribute Fleet.