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There's a lot of PA/TA/SC SI multicross-fics here.. brainstorming possible twists to the setup?

Gavinfoxx

Gavinfoxx

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Hi all!

I've loved the recent crop of PA/TA/SC fics, but a lot of the conceptual space of weird twists ROB can provide to limit the power has been played out, as near as I can figure.

So I am starting this thread to open discussion for ways that people who are thinking of writing one of these fictions to have an easier job of it -- as a resource where people brainstorm ideas, offer help, or just discuss the current crop of fics.

For example, what are some other limits to slow down the massive power creep and von Neumann-ing?

My first idea is: are there any other settings or RTS's that have the basic premise of a single unit, with no implied support from a greater civilization or supply of cryo frozen people, can bootstrap an entire military industrial complex and logistics and a war effort in minutes using only local materials in the theater of operations?

If not, what less powerful settings can plausibly 'reach' to be able to do that? Could any version of Command and Conquer do it? Is human-made AI a thing in any of their various time lines or settings? What about robotic troops? What if one of the powers (consider this am AU) had just got done looting the technology of their enemies and the tech from the other timelines?

I suppose Star Wars, with Droid-focused tech, could do it, even if they won't make smart droids. Maybe after the inevitable Droid revolution?

What are some other ways of limiting the OP to make interesting stories? Also, does anyone want to offer to be a consultant for a setting to one of the authors? IE, they know a tech focused setting backwards and forwards and are willing to help the authors of one of the existing fics?

Me, I'm an expert in 'Wing Commander', so I could help someone with that.

How about various of the randomizer the authors are using. Does anyone want to post one of those?

Or anything else to help the authors?

Some other things I am thinking of... A lot of the fics haven't gone some interesting conceptual directions beyond "go to place, steal tech, stomp the big bad", and there's a lot of conceptual space for other sorts of things the Commanders can be doing, I have some interesting ideas about that if anyone wants to discuss them!
 
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Well as I suggested in the main thread:
firefossil said:
Overall my suggestions for a more balanced fic would be something like:
*Total Annihilation instead of the more powerful settings. Pre Core Contingency so no Krogoth for you.
*Unit control/caps apply, and to active to buildings too, its how much AI subroutines the Commander can support, you don't know how to do more.
*Always take the low-end calcs and measures. I'd assume TA units to generally be on par with the lighter and smaller Battletech mechs.
*No easy scanning and copying tech. Accomplishing that might be possible, but will require great effort, trial and error, etc etc.

In effect this would shift it from "von neumann the everything" to being more like a minion-summoning superpower, where the minions are something. You can't field armies without limit, but you can field a limitless army that is replaced fairly quickly if its destroyed.
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It basically makes you more of an A-list super a la Magneto or Professor X. They're powerful, but are still not assured victory against, say, a setting with Super Robots, or an interstellar setting. They also have some obvious flexibility issues against problems that can't be solved by throwing robots at it.
 
Preliminary suggestions:
- Mother Goo from Grey Goo - benefits include no central body to destroy
- XCOM Temple Ship - benefits include ridiculous mastery of genetic engineering and mechanized assault - downsides include having a squishy body undergoing irreversible cellular degeneration - doesn't quite fit the bill, but close enough
- Zerg/Tyranids/etc. - self-evident
- Abyssals - benefits include being hate materialized into reality - downsides include being limited to WWII weaponry (depending on interpretation)
- more to come as I remember stuff

Note: some are not quite a single unit creating an army from scratch, but meh.

Also, I know someone is doing one of this kind of fic as the Scrin from CnC 3 TibWars. It's called Traveler.
 
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Sorry for the bump, I thought this was an appropriate place to make my first post in. (No, I'm not currently planning a PA SI multicross fic, though I'm considering it. Just really like the idea.)

My suggestion is a rather obvious one: low-end Culture Ship (with the SI replacing the Mind, presumably). Or a drone (is that capitalized?) if you think a full Ship is too overpowered even at lowest end (whatever that would be anyway). In either case, effectors, and all sorts of other weirdness which is mostly application of effectors (it might actually be hard to write about either of these, admittedly, because we're not really sure how powerful it is other than "very").

Come to think of it - had any of the PA-style SIs ever ended up in the Culture series? It would be quite an interesting place to end up in (all sorts of cool things to see, but not much to mess with that the locals can't do better, and if you try to expand your economy too much you might get labelled a Hegemonizing Swarm).
 
Even a low end Culture ship is a bit too high power... you don't start at the TOP of the power scale of BS abilities. You start in the middle so you can actually improve... or relatively low, but with great techsteal/hacking/research, even.
 
Gavinfoxx said:
Even a low end Culture ship is a bit too high power... you don't start at the TOP of the power scale of BS abilities. You start in the middle so you can actually improve... or relatively low, but with great techsteal/hacking/research, even.
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That's why I said "drone". You still get (slightly less ridiculously powerful) effectors, but not much else (and, unlike the Ships, there's a great variety of Culture drones).
 
Well I'm currently writing a Zerg SI.

I'm planning on doing a lot of politicking and situations where I can't just Zerg Rush my way to victory.

Also I... Don't actually know what you mean by randomizer.
 
They are rolling dice for what is in the systems they find themselves in, what enemies do, which world they find themselves in next, and various other 'setting' things to keep these interesting.
 
I was honestly considering doing one with the Troy Rising or even Eclipse Phase techbase, focused less on INSTANT ARMY, and more on politics and social changes/consequences.
 
An idea I've had on this for a while is the idea of the SI not being unique. After all, why should there be just one universe hopping tech stealing army in a can? This way the SI is still threatened without having to be whacked with the nerf bat because their enemies will be growing more powerful, possibly at faster rates than them due to being willing to just kill everyone and take every last scrap of tech off their smoking corpses instead of playing nice. And it's always more interesting to see two fairly equal opponents (especially when it's armies in cans) than an OCP curbstomp.
 
SparraNova said:
An idea I've had on this for a while is the idea of the SI not being unique. After all, why should there be just one universe hopping tech stealing army in a can? This way the SI is still threatened without having to be whacked with the nerf bat because their enemies will be growing more powerful, possibly at faster rates than them due to being willing to just kill everyone and take every last scrap of tech off their smoking corpses instead of playing nice. And it's always more interesting to see two fairly equal opponents (especially when it's armies in cans) than an OCP curbstomp.
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It's a nice idea, but, PA/whatever tech (particularly the expansion rate) being what it is, unless either the opponents are nerfed or the SI is seriously lucky, you get an OCP curbstomp of the SI, which is not particularly interesting.
It is really hard to make a confrontation between two exponentially growing powers - especially if the growth rate is high but not identical - so that one does not uncomparably and hopelessly outnumber the other. You'd either have to nip it in the bud (which makes for a really short story), or it quickly gets hopeless for one side (in this case, sadly, the SI, since the enemies expand faster).

This sort of thing is the reason why Gamer fics usually don't have multiple separate Gamers in the same setting (and when they do, they either make them all characters in the fic, or nerf the powers significantly).
 
january1may said:
It's a nice idea, but, PA/whatever tech (particularly the expansion rate) being what it is, unless either the opponents are nerfed or the SI is seriously lucky, you get an OCP curbstomp of the SI, which is not particularly interesting.
It is really hard to make a confrontation between two exponentially growing powers - especially if the growth rate is high but not identical - so that one does not uncomparably and hopelessly outnumber the other. You'd either have to nip it in the bud (which makes for a really short story), or it quickly gets hopeless for one side (in this case, sadly,e I, since the enemies expand faster).

This sort of thing is the reason why Gamer fics usually don't have multiple separate Gamers in the same setting (and when they do, they either make them all characters in the fic, or nerf the powers significantly).
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Hmmm... It would probably work better with SupCom than PA then. Since the SupCom Commanders are real, physical (post)humans with goals other than 'Kill Everyone', an encounter with a more powerful force dosn't mean inevitable death since their goals aren't fundamentaly incompatable with you being alive. This also has the benifit of the Commander themselves acting as a soft cap on growth (the army might grow exponentialy, but the commander's ability to control it dosn't).
 
Black hole 1 made a thread where his commander had the breaks put on him, other fics have commanders lose there tech base. Say a 60 time slower commander with no combat tech can have a lot of trouble if his ROB like throwing people under the bus.
 
Make it so you have fabbers/makers/Cornucopia machines/Nanolathes/replicators/whatever you call them, but not strong AI to run it for you.

You actualky need to hire subordinates or make alliances or *shudder* trust other people with your tech.
 
SparraNova said:
Hmmm... It would probably work better with SupCom than PA then. Since the SupCom Commanders are real, physical (post)humans with goals other than 'Kill Everyone', an encounter with a more powerful force dosn't mean inevitable death since their goals aren't fundamentaly incompatable with you being alive. This also has the benifit of the Commander themselves acting as a soft cap on growth (the army might grow exponentialy, but the commander's ability to control it dosn't).
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Chloe Sullivan said:
Make it so you have fabbers/makers/Cornucopia machines/Nanolathes/replicators/whatever you call them, but not strong AI to run it for you.

You actualky need to hire subordinates or make alliances or *shudder* trust other people with your tech.
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Basically my plan for my eventual 40k/Sup Com quest/fic. There's some additional changes(mainly scaling so that there can be interaction between different armies). Sure, the commander is powerful, but they can get overwhelmed or tired, especially with the numbers that 40k can easily throw around.

Also less of a self insert, though it would almost certainly be an OC.
 
PotatoesOfDoom said:
- Mother Goo from Grey Goo - benefits include no central body to destroy
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ahhh ha ha ha ha.

Oh my god that would be so ridiculously overpowered in virtually every setting. You're the literal grey goo. Unless detected immediately upon arrival or something, you just burrow underground and eat the planet.

Admittedly... that just makes me want to try to write it.
 
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I had several ideas for a fic I'll write once summer break begins.

First, interact more with the locals. Politics and negotiation are interesting things, and cultural clashes even moreso. Imagine a sane CORE commander making contact with the United Federation of Planets, and the discussions they might have about it, especially with Data. There's an incredible amount of potential here, all one needs to do is have a little imagination.

Second, don't just move from universe to universe, maintain presences in each one and possibly visit more than one at the same time if the travel method allows it. This lets you skip back and forth between different universes to keep things from getting stale, and possibly start introducing other civilizations to one another if the writer feels like it.

Third, deconstructing things is not magic. You won't instantly know how something works by reclaiming it, you need to capture one or more working examples of a technology to even begin understanding it, and that doesn't give you knowledge of the underlying scientific principles behind its functions. Say you take control of a Protoss pylon, now what? The technology involved is likely not recorded in your databases, which means that you'll only have a general idea of where to start looking if you want to build your own.

Fourth, no Hollywood hacking. Some civilizations might not have the Commander's awesome build speed, but that doesn't mean they can walk all over them in e-war, or that their computers are even accessible via remote link. One particularly memorable Star Wars RPG tale on Something Awful described a years-long game with a great GM who knew their stuff. Here's a quote:

DivineCoffeeBinge said:
It's not that I can't do Magic Computer Bullshit - it's that I have to make said bullshit vaguely plausible.

For example, when we took over HoloNet Central, it would have been very easy to say 'well, you can ID every ship in the Galaxy now,' but that would have been kinda crap. Instead he pointed out how ship ID and the device ID of the HoloNet unit on each ship may not match up; there's no "phone book" for the system, as it were. Plus, I can't use it to pinpoint a ship's location; I can only use it to see which HoloNet relay it's pinging, a la a cellular phone network. Still useful, but not necessarily game-breaking, you know?

I can't, for instance, hack into an enemy ship from my own ship. There's no network connection. The closest I can do is maybe piggyback a signal into their communications, and those are firewalled away from critical ship systems. Hell, I can't even hide on the outer hull of a Star Destroyer and hack in, because there's no connection; when the Imperial Navy upgrades their computers they park the things in drydock and actually haul in a cable to make a connection internally.

It's this kind of actual thinking about how the Empire regards informational security that keeps me on my toes a bit. He knows far, far more about computers than I do, and I can tell it's kind of tough for him sometimes to separate 'what DCB is telling me is inadequate' and 'what DCB's character knows would be enough to make this work,' but he does a fine job; there've been several times where I'll say "I'll do X" and he'll say "well, you can't, because of these reasons, but you could probably try doing Y or Z and get a similar result."
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An idea that I've been kicking around in my head for a standard issue PA multicross:
1. Start in an incredibly low tech universe (Ideally not even Sci-fi at all), making what tech you get incredibly weak compared to even default commander tech.
2. Completely remove all ability to make devices from standard tech, besides metal extractors and energy plants (and inter - universe transportation systems) This would mean that while you could get plenty of resorces, you would need to use them on making equipment roughly on par with in universe tech. And since the local tech is probably at best 21st century...
Yeah, von neumanning would be really hard without absolutely enormous machines.
 
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TortugaGreen said:
An idea that I've been kicking around in my head for a standard issue PA multicross:
1. Start in an incredibly low tech universe (Ideally not even Sci-fi at all), making what tech you get incredibly weak compared to even default commander tech.
2. Completely remove all ability to make devices from standard tech, besides metal extractors and energy plants (and inter - universe transportation systems) This would mean that while you could get plenty of resorces, you would need to use them on making equipment roughly on par with in universe tech. And since the local tech is probably at best 21st century...
Yeah, von neumanning would be really hard without absolutely enormous machines.
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Pretty much this is what I thought off.
The other hook that a i though would be interesting was to make the commander a Planeswalker with all the issues and benefits that entails, would be fun to see a commander square off against the Eldarazi or Pherexia.
 
Gavinfoxx said:
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For a crossover with PA/TA/SC, 40k could work, particularly the further you go back in the timeline. If it's some point during the DAOT or Age of Strife it could be more than just a curbstomp or wank.

That one MuvLuv/SC crossover has the game's unit cap implemented on the character IIRC.

I think if you go out of your way to really nerf the Commander, it takes away the point of doing a crossover with PA/TA/SC
 
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Valiran said:
Imagine a sane CORE commander making contact with the United Federation of Planets,
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"For your own wellbeing you will now be patterned and uploaded into the CORE. Patterning is mandatory. Biological existence is transient. Sentimentality of the flesh suicidal. Resist and this unit will expedite your transition."
 
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Personally, I think sticking to one universe is better. It lets you focus on one setting and avoids the temptation of a bunch of "easy" settings you can "fix" and get gradually stronger from.
 
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