The ship got blown up twice and at no point did we suffer an improper detonation of photon torpedoes or antimatter storage. That's probably part of the rant.
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
-
- 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?
The ship got blown up twice and at no point did we suffer an improper detonation of photon torpedoes or antimatter storage. That's probably part of the rant.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOUR SHIPS LITERALLY BEEN HIT BY A NOVA?!?! HUH I'LL WAIT." *Lifts ISC man off of ground by lapels* "OH, NONE?!?! WELL MY TORPEDOES ARE SAFE. YOU HEAR ME? SAFE? WE KNOW WHAT WE'RE DOING HERE. JUST BECAUSE YOU GET YOUR LITTLE ANTENNAE IN A TWIST BECAUSE 'OH NOOOO ANTIMATTER' DOESN'T MEAN THAT I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM DOING WITH MY TORPEDOES. THIS SHIP IS SAFER THAN YOU'RE ENTIRE PISSANT FLEET"
[In Sol half the FDS spontaneously has a heart attack]
"DIPPLAI LEMAT, WE HAVE A SITUATION"
*Body of an ISC ambassador thunks against the window on the 69th Floor*
"I AM VERY, VERY AWARE, DIPLOMACAT!"
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
I have a better plan:
Request development of 40 Eridani A Shipyards, 18pp (4 turns, gain new 1m t berth) [Can take multiple times, +5pp per subsequent build]
Request Excelsior berth at [Utopia Planitia], 32+4*5=52pp (6 turns, gain new 3m t berth) [+5 for every extra 3mt berth present at shipyard past the first]
Request new Starbase I [Alpha Centauri] 15+2*12=39pp [+12pp for each Starbase past the first in-sector]
Increase Threat Level 80pp
Request Science Academy Development, 15pp (Gain +1 Techs throughput)
Request Start of General Cruiser project, receiving one-off boost of Research Points and go-ahead for some projects, 18pp
Request focused Diplomacy on a potential member species, 20pp (One affiliate or prospective race will undergo accelerate diplomacy) [Sotaw]
Sponsor efforts to create additional Critical Ship Infrastructure on another world, 50pp [Vidotti (Indorian major world)]
Sponsor efforts to create Heavy Industrial park to reduce construction times by 1 month/year in that system, 115pp [Solitude]
18+32+4*5+15+2*12+80+15+18+20+50+115=407pp
(Out of curiosity, I tried to come up with the worst possible snakepit plan
)edit: I could've made a lot more pointless pp expenditures by spamming more useless starbases and marked up Excelsior berths, but I figure that's cheating
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I have a better plan:
Request development of 40 Eridani A Shipyards, 18pp (4 turns, gain new 1m t berth) [Can take multiple times, +5pp per subsequent build]
Request Excelsior berth at [Utopia Planitia], 32+4*5=52pp (6 turns, gain new 3m t berth) [+5 for every extra 3mt berth present at shipyard past the first]
Request new Starbase I [Alpha Centauri] 15+2*12=39pp [+12pp for each Starbase past the first in-sector]
Increase Threat Level 80pp
Request Science Academy Development, 15pp (Gain +1 Techs throughput)
Request Start of General Cruiser project, receiving one-off boost of Research Points and go-ahead for some projects, 18pp
Request focused Diplomacy on a potential member species, 20pp (One affiliate or prospective race will undergo accelerate diplomacy) [Sotaw]
Sponsor efforts to create additional Critical Ship Infrastructure on another world, 50pp [Vidotti (Indorian major world)]
Sponsor efforts to create Heavy Industrial park to reduce construction times by 1 month/year in that system, 115pp [Solitude]
18+32+4*5+15+2*12+80+15+18+20+50+115=407pp
(Out of curiosity, I tried to come up with the worse possible snakepit plan
Eh, it wouldn't be the worst thing. We'd piss away about 200pp, but the diplomacy, the Threat, the general cruiser, even the berths would all be functional.
Here's my plan, wait for the bloody snakepit so we know what our options are!
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
That should only cost 20 pp though.
Request focused Diplomacy on a potential member species, 20pp (One affiliate or prospective race will undergo accelerate diplomacy) [Gretarians]
See?
Jokes on us, augment dogs then take over the Federation.
Hey, the cats already did it, must be their turn.
- Location
- Patriarchova
I've never heard anything about Wong to suggest that he is anything other than that.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Very possibly. Part of it is that the Federation sees a disproportionate number of the Apiata's weirdos. Part of it is that the Apiata seem like such a 'locked' species in terms of biology being destiny that I suspect a lot of SV-ers are honestly more comfortable writing Apiata weirdos than they are writing Apiata normals.
Dizzy may or may not count as "met social expectations." She did absolutely everything she was supposed to, to the best of her ability. She just doesn't have a measurable biochemical response to queen pheromones. And to the other Apiata of her own particular hive this translated as "She's a fraud! She's been pretending to love Mom all along!" followed by "GET HER!" This probably had to do with a political background of 'defective workers are a very very serious problem and cannot be accomodated safely" in her particular hive's area.
Dunno yet. Need time to form an impression. Leslie usually doesn't form opinions on things until he's had some time to think it over and gather evidence; he spent a lot of time when he was young keeping his mouth shut and his eyes open. Nowadays he comes to conclusions a bit faster, possibly due to experience and possibly due to arrogance. But note that he didn't start tearing strips off the Gaeni working on Courageous back in '09 until he'd carefully inspected their work. There was a reason for that.
Mike Wong's problem isn't stupidity. It's that he is deeply, staggeringly bad at actually assimilating other people's opinions and taking them seriously. He enjoys yelling at people and calling their opinions dumb too much to listen to the inner voice that says "wait, they can't possibly be doing this, I must have misunderstood."
This results in him spending a lot of time insulting straw versions of things he doesn't like. And any conversation with him will last only as long as it takes for him to misunderstand you, at which point he will start relentlessly attacking the misunderstood version of your position and calling you a liar if you tell him that's not what you meant.
Because he's just missing that very specific piece of the brain that says "wait, other people are smart too, give them the benefit of the doubt."
I do get that, but I think it's a shame not to also try and understand them as they are, which I suspect isn't really as "locked" as people seem to be assuming. By the numbers, the greatest poet among the Apinae is probably a worker. The greatest architect... also a worker. The greatest mathematician... you get the point. Workers aren't inferior in creativity or passion to anyone else.
Rather than talk about biological destiny and loyalty and such, I think an analogy that better fits human experience is to think of workers as heavily partisan. Like most partisans, they look to their leaders as trusted sources to determine their opinions about anything they aren't a personal expert in. They're heavily inclined to give their queens the benefit of the doubt and trust they know what they're doing. Most of them probably think that, "If my queen were ever really wrong about something important, I'd have the courage to stand up and tell her no!" (Most of them probably wouldn't- but they like to see themselves as someone who would.)
Rather than some sort of bio-robots who are incapable of disobedience, I think workers who are into philosophy probably have a lot of deep scholarly debates about when it's a worker's duty to stand up to their queen on some question of ethics with lots of thought experiments (and real life examples) and such.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Hm. I don't see those as mutually exclusive- though I suspect that the creativity, genius, and passion found in Apiata workers expresses itself in ways that are distributed differently from the Earthly sort.
My thing about the Apiata is, they're among the more alien aliens in the setting so far- different in physical ways, not just culture. We can imagine humans with the culture of Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and so on. And such humans would do a lot of the same thing those alien species do, while at the same time being recognizably very human in many important ways.
But no human culture could support a social structure like the ones normative/natural for the Apiata, and I suspect that makes a difference.
I don't want to waste their different-ness by trying to downplay it, at the same time that I don't want to sweep the entire species up into a stereotype.
My thing about the Apiata is, they're among the more alien aliens in the setting so far- different in physical ways, not just culture. We can imagine humans with the culture of Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and so on. And such humans would do a lot of the same thing those alien species do, while at the same time being recognizably very human in many important ways.
But no human culture could support a social structure like the ones normative/natural for the Apiata, and I suspect that makes a difference.
I don't want to waste their different-ness by trying to downplay it, at the same time that I don't want to sweep the entire species up into a stereotype.
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Mostly because the Apiata have decided that sending their weirdos to join Starfleet or other Federation organizations is more humane than what they were doing pre-Federation contact.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
History* has shown how critical the defense of Alpha Centauri is to the Federation. It is only sound and prudent to heed the lessons of the past*.
* 10 million years ago
Funny thing is that I was trying to find the worst option for a diplomacy push, but it's apparent that there are still proponents for Sotaw and Gretarian pushes -_-
- Location
- alphen aan den rijn
not so much on the sotaw but yes on the gretarian because it opens up a other front of diplomatic presure and potencial intel war
also seyak
i forget the one it the NE
and ether risa for them maybe to become a member next time or
pad for them to go over the 250 mark and send us more stuff
also seyak
i forget the one it the NE
and ether risa for them maybe to become a member next time or
pad for them to go over the 250 mark and send us more stuff
Captain's Log - 2316.Q1.M2
- Location
- Australia
Captain's Log, USS Stargazer, Stardate 25909.2 - Captain Maryam Ajam
The Tofii are escorting us through their territory, helping us to avoid a hostile species we would have run into if we had remained on our earlier course. This adds a couple months of travel time, but it will be worth it to avoid having to take the remaining fragments of the Kadeshi population through a running set of space battles.
It's hard for me to keep straight in my head, sometimes, that every last Kadeshi I meet is actually an important surviving fraction of their entire species, of their culture and way of life. They are fearless as they strike out into the unknown, but with so few remaining, the tragedy of every last casualty grows ever greater.
-
Captain's Log, USS Vigour, Stardate 25909.5
The Academy on Tellar Prime thought there would be some ruins of interest, potentially Tkon era, on the planet Apoia III, but a thorough survey has turned up very little. We have a few cultural icons, but nothing that wasn't already known to the academies of the Federation. It is believed that an archaeology institute on Sar Alpha will dispatch an expedition regardless, but I doubt they will find much.
[Search failed]
-
Captain's Log, USS Kearsage, Stardate 25909.9
After an unusual outburst of solar activity, the dust in the Fan Maas system has become charged with a deadly energy field, one that is disrupting industry within the system by destroying a number of asteroid tenders with powerful discharges. By working alongside the Zephyr we were able to isolate the cause of the activity; an interaction between Tesladium molecules in the cloud and phased radiation from the star's recent uptick in activity. We are unable to undo the effect, but we have been able to show the local administrators that is is a temporary effect, and should wear off in another two weeks.
[Gain +5rp]
-
Chief of Staff's Log, Stardate 25910.4
The inability of the Rigellian sector to whistle up a free ship for an emergency run to help address a Yan-Ros medical crisis has gone over very poorly in the Council. The ineffable Councillor Stesk in particular has taken Starfleet to task for focusing, in his opinion, too strongly on the Gabriel Border Zone and, and the President for her militant adventurism, causing a shortage of assets for important aid and diplomacy.
[Lose -10pp]
-
Captain's Log, USS Huascar, Stardate 25911.5
A Caitian Swarmer on patrol close to the KBZ picked up on some unusual sensor readings coming from one of the planets in the Ithica system. After arriving to investigate, we have found that recent tectonic activity has revealed a few deposits of exotic minerals used in warp core tensile bonding. It is not a massive haul, by any means, but there is certainly a good few warp cores in this deposit.
[Gain +15sr]
-
Federation News Network
Reports from Orion space indicate that the vessel was lost while transiting a system that was undergoing considerable plasma storm activity. Normally a minimal threat, it is believed that an inattentive third watch resulted in a close-encounter with a plasma spout that disabled the ship. Unfortunately, no responders were able to reach the ship in time before the Molhane Patrol Ship was destroyed with the loss of half her crew.
[Orion Union loses 1 frigate]
-
Captain's Log, USS Stargazer, Stardate 25913.6
The new course will angle us closer towards the core, a glorious bright glow ahead in the view screen. Another stage of the journey lies ahead, with the well-wishes of our new friends behind us. I hope that one day the Federation's diplomats can reach out here as well, and bridge these divides between friends.
[Journey avoids combat situations]
-
Stargazer - The Tofii lead them to a safe part of their territory to avoid hostile power -
The Tofii are escorting us through their territory, helping us to avoid a hostile species we would have run into if we had remained on our earlier course. This adds a couple months of travel time, but it will be worth it to avoid having to take the remaining fragments of the Kadeshi population through a running set of space battles.
It's hard for me to keep straight in my head, sometimes, that every last Kadeshi I meet is actually an important surviving fraction of their entire species, of their culture and way of life. They are fearless as they strike out into the unknown, but with so few remaining, the tragedy of every last casualty grows ever greater.
-
Captain's Log, USS Vigour, Stardate 25909.5
The Academy on Tellar Prime thought there would be some ruins of interest, potentially Tkon era, on the planet Apoia III, but a thorough survey has turned up very little. We have a few cultural icons, but nothing that wasn't already known to the academies of the Federation. It is believed that an archaeology institute on Sar Alpha will dispatch an expedition regardless, but I doubt they will find much.
[Search failed]
-
Captain's Log, USS Kearsage, Stardate 25909.9
After an unusual outburst of solar activity, the dust in the Fan Maas system has become charged with a deadly energy field, one that is disrupting industry within the system by destroying a number of asteroid tenders with powerful discharges. By working alongside the Zephyr we were able to isolate the cause of the activity; an interaction between Tesladium molecules in the cloud and phased radiation from the star's recent uptick in activity. We are unable to undo the effect, but we have been able to show the local administrators that is is a temporary effect, and should wear off in another two weeks.
[Gain +5rp]
-
Chief of Staff's Log, Stardate 25910.4
The inability of the Rigellian sector to whistle up a free ship for an emergency run to help address a Yan-Ros medical crisis has gone over very poorly in the Council. The ineffable Councillor Stesk in particular has taken Starfleet to task for focusing, in his opinion, too strongly on the Gabriel Border Zone and, and the President for her militant adventurism, causing a shortage of assets for important aid and diplomacy.
[Lose -10pp]
-
Captain's Log, USS Huascar, Stardate 25911.5
A Caitian Swarmer on patrol close to the KBZ picked up on some unusual sensor readings coming from one of the planets in the Ithica system. After arriving to investigate, we have found that recent tectonic activity has revealed a few deposits of exotic minerals used in warp core tensile bonding. It is not a massive haul, by any means, but there is certainly a good few warp cores in this deposit.
[Gain +15sr]
-
Federation News Network
Reports from Orion space indicate that the vessel was lost while transiting a system that was undergoing considerable plasma storm activity. Normally a minimal threat, it is believed that an inattentive third watch resulted in a close-encounter with a plasma spout that disabled the ship. Unfortunately, no responders were able to reach the ship in time before the Molhane Patrol Ship was destroyed with the loss of half her crew.
[Orion Union loses 1 frigate]
-
Captain's Log, USS Stargazer, Stardate 25913.6
The new course will angle us closer towards the core, a glorious bright glow ahead in the view screen. Another stage of the journey lies ahead, with the well-wishes of our new friends behind us. I hope that one day the Federation's diplomats can reach out here as well, and bridge these divides between friends.
[Journey avoids combat situations]
-
Stargazer - The Tofii lead them to a safe part of their territory to avoid hostile power -
- Location
- USA
Well that month did not go so well.
So Rigel sector and Amarkia sector had a lack of responders
So Rigel sector and Amarkia sector had a lack of responders
Reminds me of what Starfleet did to the Cardasians ...
So remember when the complaint about Lone Ranger doctrine was that it didn't allow for any ships to assist when an Excelsior responds? Now it's actually starting to feel like a boon. Keeps too many ships from bunching up on one event so they're free for other events later in the month.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Perhaps, but even focusing on the "regular" Apiata, the majority of it will fall on their differences. If you were to describe a Queenship bridge, purely visually, it would be an utterly baffling experience, because at least half the conversations carried out and orders being given are pheromonal rather than verbal. To an outsider it would be impenetrable.
We've seen some scenes on a Queenship bridge, and they give their commands verbally like most other humanoid species.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Sure. That's what it looks like.
On the other hand as eusocial BEEEEE-alikes you can bet money that most of what's going on went directly over your limited perspective's head. Why wouldn't it? Throw in enough alarm scent and somebody's gonna raise shields, and everyone's adrenal response or equivalent triggers so they get twitchy...
Really, if you treat them as what they are supposed to be, they will be very different.