- Location
- Australia
Great stuff!So after designing those new uniforms a while back I decided to commission a picture of a character wearing the medical variant from @TheOneMoiderah
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
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- Tags
- star trek exploration fully automated luxury gay space communism top level canon (canon) #hashtagcontent all-encompassing space amoeba cardassian boy bands cardassian magical girls darkest bureaucracy debate makes the qm cackle like palpatine hoh is an empire quest it has to be foreign infiltrators more ships ship happens singers delenda est starfleet this is not an empire quest ur waifu is collective?
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[Sudden Baseless Speculation Tangent]
I wonder if there is a belief in a sort of semi-secularist... let's call it Precursorism or Pregenitorism.
Where the speculation (Born out in "The Chase" TNG) that the evolution of multiple species was guided or seeded by a precursor race or being became solidified into a belief system.
It's not a belief in a proper divine God, but a far more knowledgeable and wise race or being who has set certain things in motion with the use of purely mechanical means.
Pregenitorism posits that there is a certain end point along the evolutionary path that so many races share. In humans it is possible that this guidance turns you into a Goddamn lizard, for instance, because the Human genome is a degraded and incomplete blueprint as are those of other species (Witness "Genisis" TNG and "Threshold" VOY) for examples of this process)
Peaceful coexistence and scientific advancement to find a way to unravel this mystery is a key part of this doctrine (With some believing that ultimate end result of the mystery is making races cooperate anyway. "THE REAL TREASURE IS THE FRIENDS YOU MADE ALONG THE WAY")
The Indorians believe a sort of variant of this due to Precursor ruins left on their homeworld.
Denobulans had a similar belief. The Denobulans decided to use science to realize this "Will of Evolution" and underwent a species wide eugenics/augmentation project that went out of control and within a couple of generations left them all sterile and dying out.
This adds to the Federation reluctance to Augmentation has three main examples to why it exists: 1) The Human attempt spiraled out of control after producing exactly what the Humans had set out to do but only on an individual level and left millions upon millions dead and eventually resulted in the third world war. 2) The Vulcans are "Successful" but have pretty severe side effects (Raging near uncontrollable emotions and compulsions such as the Pon Farr as exaggerations of existing natural impulses) and 3) The Denobulans accidentallying their species in a century in a very careful and controlled forced evolution/augmentation attempt
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I like that. It is really, really good.
[Headcanons it for At Last The 2235 Game notes]
[Headcanons it for At Last The 2235 Game notes]
SakSak
Unbound
- Location
- The Cold Wastes of the North
I though we were all agreed that Detox, the so-called fanfic is in fact canon, and that 99% of Voyager episode contents were the hallucinations caused by the air being saturated with a psychedelic drug.
Cause that's the only way to make sense of 99% of Voyger.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I was talking about the Solarians too. My point is that the Solarian League is literally being compromised by a huge secret conspiracy that is actively trying to destroy them. And which has (among other assets) highly effective blackmail tools, enough connections to nudge the people they have blackmail dirt on into top-ranking offices, and straight-up mind control in the form of magic nanites that can hijack your body and compel you to eat a bullet against your will or do something similarly insane.
So basically, the Solarians are ludicrously stupid, far too stupid to make good antagonists in a novel. But they at least have some semblance of an excuse for being that stupid. In that for all their wealth and power, they are in the final stages of being destroyed by a parasitic internal conspiracy. Expecting them to have a coherent strategy is like expecting a terminal cancer patient to put up a noticeable fight in a boxing match; it's at least conceivable, but it's not the way to bet.
Whereas I don't think ThoughtMaster believes that the Cardassians and Sydraxians are being secretly manipulated by bluegill parasites out to destroy their civilizations or anything. He seems to honestly think they're that stupid and incapable of even trying to protect their own interests.
So that is even worse than what Weber did, in a way. Weber (for idiotic reasons) wanted to turn the Solarians into puny weaklings, but at least he came up with some kind of reason for them to be that weak and stupid. ThoughtMaster isn't even trying; he actually believes that his enemies will behave like moronic caricatures, blindly adhering to treaty provisions convenient to us but inconvenient to them, while we subvert the treaty in obvious, conspicuous ways that are also convenient to us.
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AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Except the Mesan conspiracy makes no sense and Solaria makes no sense even with that explanation.
Like, read the thread, this discussion has happened before.(I'd recommend people read it anyway because it's entertaining and forms part of the early SV experience. Though it is pre-threadmark.)
The current state of the Solarian League makes no sense on any level even factoring in Mesa's dumb hereditary plot. (Even the Nanotech ends up being very watered down to program you to do one action once. It's not true mind control in any way because nothing anyone has should ever be effective against Mesa. It's about as useful as very hard to detect neurotoxin that gives you a heart attack)
Like the state of the Solarian League makes so little sense that if they had that level of control then they should have won. Full stop. A millennia ago. There should be no chance at all of fighting them. Except Weber is in the process of making even the Mesans weaker and dumber with each new book. And even then Solaria has been retconned from their status as God in the early novels to a barely functional crazy assemblage of political opponents David Weber doesn't like by this point. (One of the Solarian Admirals is /literally/ called Marge Simpson in one chapter for element's sake)
(Like, I like the Honourverse, I'm probably one of the only ten people on this planet that genuinely enjoy Saganami Island Tactical Simulator. But everything mainline past War of Honour is bullshit and half of everything from that oversized tome is dumb too.)
EDIT: I do get your point in the comparison though.
- Location
- Patriarchova
That would definitely explain the attitudes of some of the characters.
However, the only way Threshold could have actually happened is if the Preservers deliberately programmed the giant salamanders into the human genome to be expressed in certain contingencies.
SakSak
Unbound
- Location
- The Cold Wastes of the North
Or Threshold was a drug-fuelled hallucination.
I like thinking of it as a drug fuelled-hallucination.
Can we all just agree it was a drug-fuelled hallucination? Pretty please?
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The Preservers have a unique sense of Humour
> : V
Romulans, interestingly enough, turn into giant Raptors. Or, at least, that's what we tell ourselves > : V
- Location
- Patriarchova
Anyway, if you feel the need to explain the absence of Denobulans in this quest and you don't want to recognize the existence of Dear Doctor, there's an easy solution. Despite being early affiliates, they ended up getting peeled away from the nascent federation and became a Klingon or Romulan subject.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Also good.
Or combine the explanations; the Klingons saw what the Denobulans did to someone in the name of 'evolution' and got so mad they bombed the Denobulans into the Stone Age.
I'm just saying, Weber at least recognized that the level of stupidity he was writing into his antagonists was so stupid that there had to be some kind of excuse for it. He had to give Worf some kind of flu, in other words.
This isn't good or impressive writing, but it's some kind of puny, pitiful minimum that at least enables Weber to pass the Turing Test in my eyes, if not to retain my respect. I get that he's being a fool and sinking the literary quality of his own series, I'm just trying to subdivide the great Realm of Stupid into various zones, of which Weber does not occupy the deepest.
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- Location
- Australia
Vote closed - does anyone have a link to the plan?
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
Vote Tally : Sci-Fi - To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) | Page 1427 | Sufficient Velocity
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
Task: FLEET
[X][FLEET] All Miranda-As to the Pool
No. of Votes: 7
Total No. of Voters: 7
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
Task: FLEET
[X][FLEET] All Miranda-As to the Pool
No. of Votes: 7
Total No. of Voters: 7
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Very noncontroversial plan, hence the low turnout, I think...
I hope no one minds Renaissance's commissioning trials having taken her out towards Andor for her race with Docana, though.
I hope no one minds Renaissance's commissioning trials having taken her out towards Andor for her race with Docana, though.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
We're gonna have a crazy amount of firepower in the GBZ by Q4. Starfleet+Apiata+Amarki fleets total C126 S89 H73 L118 P84 D123.
Assuming last intel reports stand and Sydraxians have reinforced to same level in GBZ, Cardassia+Sydraxian fleets total around C90 H80 L85. If Dylaarians join in, I'd gamble that their fleet is comparable with the Sydraxians (around C20 [H+L]40). Either way, we likely outgun the opposition. We'll see if the Cardassians escalate further in response.
Assuming last intel reports stand and Sydraxians have reinforced to same level in GBZ, Cardassia+Sydraxian fleets total around C90 H80 L85. If Dylaarians join in, I'd gamble that their fleet is comparable with the Sydraxians (around C20 [H+L]40). Either way, we likely outgun the opposition. We'll see if the Cardassians escalate further in response.
I'm fairly sure our last fleet strength report on the Cardassians is years old, but do we have an estimate on their total shipping? I'm kind of curious in both what they can bring to the party if they want to, and what kind of percentage of their fleet that sent to contest the GBZ in the first place.
Went and tracked down a Cardassian break down, following the Kadak-Tor incident.
These numbers are over 4 years out of date.
20 Frigate.
19 Cruisers (13 Jalduns, 6 Kaldars I suspect)
1 Capital. (Lorgot)
They had 5 shipyards at the time, but we have no actual building slip breakdown.
7 worlds and 7 colonies to feed industry.
They have gained three resource rich affiliates, so I expect the ship yards to be full.
Any one want to make a wild guess on the current numbers?
Intel has them sending the following combat hulls to the GBZ:
2 Kaldar
6~7 Jaldun
7~9 Escort Grade
So that is (on the old report) roughly half of their Frigate/Cruiser line up.
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What's the issue with them?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
It all refers back to an episode of Enterprise where the ship's Denobulan doctor advocated letting an intelligent species die out due to genetic problems, and get outcompeted by another species on the same planet, because it was 'the will of evolution' or some such. The idea was to set up a sort of proto-Prime Directive debate and create some edgy moral questions or something, but it basically wound up just making Archer and Phlox look like genocidal fuckwits.
It is semi-canon that the Federation and Klingons fought a protracted war in in he mid 23rd century. It is possible that during this process we lost one or more affiliates to the Klingons.
Perhaps it co-incided with an endgame in the Denobulan gene engineering project. The Denobulan augments took over in a Klingon supported coup, and by the time peace was settled they were by far the majority, and chose to be a protectorate of the Klingons.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well, the idea of the Denobulans being devastated if not outright wiped out by botched genetic manipulation or by some medical disaster nobody helped them with is specifically appealing only because of the irony it creates compared to Phlox's stance in Dear Doctor.
Why not have both. After becoming part of the Klingon sphere a unnoticed flaw in the design in the Denobulan augments becomes apparent and fertility rates crash. The Klingons preoccupied by their Cold War with the Federation are only vaguely interested in trying to help and by 2300 the Denobulans are an endangered species. They are a minority on their own home world following Klingon colonisation.
The idea that they would extinct the,selves accidentally whilst being Fed affiliates, and no one helping, as ironically satisfying as it would be, doesn't seem likely to me.
The idea that they would extinct the,selves accidentally whilst being Fed affiliates, and no one helping, as ironically satisfying as it would be, doesn't seem likely to me.
I would actually assume that, given the Klingons, it would be the opposite -- hardcore bio-purists [or whatever you want to call them] took over and went to the Klingon sphere. Would've been ironic given how it's implied humans slowly went from "no technology with 'gene' in it" to at least doing some in vitro genetic testing and modification.
I thought the Klingons were into genetic engineering at the that time as well?
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- Location
- Patriarchova
That's possible. They also could have been conquered during the Romulan War.
This actually goes a ways toward explaining a lot of the spacefaring species who turn up in one episode but then never again. While individuals or small groups of these races can be found anywhere, their homeworlds and major colonies are all hidden away in the Klingon or Romulan empires.
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Nah that'd be right after a bunch of them lost their ridges due to messing with human augment techniques.
It is possible they recruited The Denobulans deliberately to help fix the damage they did.