Isn't that working as intended?
The government's initially investing in a budding new field, then leaving it up to the private sector to carry through seems fairly uncontroversial.
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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?
The government's initially investing in a budding new field, then leaving it up to the private sector to carry through seems fairly uncontroversial.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well, in this case (foreign analysis and military doctrine), it's more like we make it the official job of a government office, then after a few years, get bored and take away most of that office's funding and leave them to analyze the Harmony's military tactics or the best employment of a battleline of heavy explorers in fleet combat on a shoestring budget.
Which, to be fair, is not a rare thing for a government to do.
This isn't really outside the bounds of canonicity, though. I mean, Soong HAD working positronic computers, good enough that he could build his humanoid androids in the 2330s or 2340s at the latest. If he'd been an actual funded, supported part of Starfleet's research apparatus instead of a single crazed guy working in a lab on an isolated colony planet, it's entirely possible that the Federation would have gotten positronic computing- and some of its applications- twenty or thirty years earlier than canon.
There really is a huge difference between what a developed society can do with a focused research effort, and what it does if people just putter around on their own.
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- Location
- Peterborough, NH, USA
Yeah. Einstein was INVOLVED in the Manhattan Project, but he had like a dozen major scientists on the team alongside him, and hundreds of workers. If it had just been him, he wouldn't have been nearly as successful. Same principle here.
@SynchronizedWritersBlock - So something that seems missing from all this yet is going to be relevant fairly soon; how do ship research projects work (if they exist at all) in the new system? Before when we requested a New Explorer from the Council we had to save a ship R&D team for it and it would be researched for a couple years.
This kind of short term research project doesn't seem at all compatible with the new system, as you explicitly say projects are meant to last a minimum of 6 years, so is this feature just getting removed? Or is it getting shoved into some little corner of EAS or somewhere else?
This kind of short term research project doesn't seem at all compatible with the new system, as you explicitly say projects are meant to last a minimum of 6 years, so is this feature just getting removed? Or is it getting shoved into some little corner of EAS or somewhere else?
Omake - Dreams: Chapter P - Simon_Jester
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Dreams, Chapter P
Forgotten Fears, Remembered Names
Forgotten Fears, Remembered Names
Green-lit darkness. Pallid, red-eyed demons, half flesh and half steel, wrestling him down, implements on jointed robotic arms rising-
He fell unconscious, screaming, struggling. He awoke, doing the same, his sightless eyes and panicked mind registering nothing but horror.
Arms with the same terrible strength as the Borg drones held him- but with a strange tenderness for all that they restrained his flailing. His head lay, not against metal or meat, but against-
Against the fabric of a Starfleet uniform. The old kind. A face looked down on him, with the lively tones of humanity, a curtain of blonde hair falling down around it. He gazed up from a woman's lap, into her eyes. And eyes the color of summer lightning, of Cherenkov radiation, gazed back.
She spoke, and he heard, not English, not the subtly strange tones of universally translated speech, but his own mother tongue. Her dialect was strange, archaic, something from the grand siècle. But he could understand the patter of calming words well enough, now that his mind had begun to scramble back from the brink of nightmare and violation.
"Hush, Jean-Luc, hush, it's okay, you're safe here, it's okay, I'm a friend of Guinan's."
A terrible suspicion filled him. He looked around, eyes narrowing, and shouted. "Q, if this is another game-"
Reality rippled, and the woman in red gaped at Picard for a moment, then shouted over his rising voice, eyes flashing. "Jean-Luc, stop that!" The ripples faded. "Are you trying to invoke him in here to trouble us? Don't speak that name! You know he delights in tormenting you!"
A dozen questions, most of which would ignore the woman's request, flashed through his mind. He stifled them, for now.
She purported to be a friend of Guinan's. He found himself wondering exactly why his old friend had raised her hands in obvious gestures of warding when she and Q first saw each other aboard the Enterprise, and what she had hoped to accomplish with them. And he wondered, too, at exactly what had passed between the two in the twenty-first century- if the trickster's words to that effect could be trusted.
Jean-Luc stirred, the mystery having distracted him, let him reengage his brain. How easy it seemed, here, wherever this was, to get control of himself in spite of what happened. Strangely, he didn't feel so much as bruises where the Borg had manhandled him. He looked down at himself- still in uniform, tired but substantially unharmed.
He began to move- and the woman released him. He rose to his feet, still silent, and looked around at the rolling, grassy fields that stretched in all directions, to the limits of vision. She did much the same, but more purposefully, her eyes scanning the horizon.
His- sister officer? No, that wasn't quite right, though clearly the uniform was a part of her as much as her own skin was, and perhaps more...
Jean-Luc looked at the woman in the old uniform, really looked. She bore rank insignia, but something about them twisted upon itself in an eyewatering way; his mind slid off them without thinking. He frowned, tried to look at them again, slid away, slid back, slid off- he stopped trying to read them. A puzzle for later.
She was about his height, tall for a woman of Earth, with blonde hair braided down her back to her shoulders. She did remind him of Guinan, now that he thought about it. But a more pugnacious Guinan, from the way she looked around, as if it was her turn to wonder if a seemingly omnipotent trickster was about to pay them a visit- a trickster she liked not at all.
Pugnacious lines, yes. On a face whose faint wrinkles held a touch of mischief and worlds of experience. She reminded him of- he thought sadly- of the woman Tasha might have grown into, given ten or twenty more years to do it in.
Dixon Hill, sizing her up as she walked in the door, would have said she was the kind of dame who could get a man into trouble- and then get him back out of it again, nine times out of ten.
And something in her eyes was not human.
More to the point, not any sort of sapient life he'd ever encountered. He could tell, somehow, and he felt as if he were on the brink of unraveling a great secret. Some sense of the poetic came off of her- and not just her, but off the grass of the meadow, the whisper of the wind.
He'd found the right question. Or rather, observation. "This isn't a holodeck."
And she looked at him and nodded, smiling fondly. Very like Guinan. Like a mildly impressed Guinan. "No, it's not a holodeck, Jean-Luc. I could take you to visit some truly interesting not-simulations, if you like- but it's not a holodeck."
He nodded slowly, thoughtfully, glanced down at his hand, up at the sky- briefly, glanced at the sun that shone over the strange sky, the one that seemed to sing faintly. And then, as he remembered his Blake, his eyes widened and he staggered at a sense of revelation. For he had not, in that moment, seen a "a round disk of fire, somewhat like a guinea," though the sense of liminality was more than he could recapture.
He had not seen a mass of fusing hydrogen, or a disk of light. He had seen the unconquering, radiant, glorious Sun. He found it easy to think in such terms, here. Wherever here was.
And so he turned back to the woman in red. The Borg seemed utterly, utterly distant, somehow, as if no thing of theirs could possibly intrude upon him here. And as always, when the storm clouds receded, Jean-Luc Picard reverted to type- to an explorer.
He smiled slightly. "If we didn't exist, we couldn't be having this polite conversation, I suppose."
The woman's own smile grew a bit thinner- but with more fondness around those eyes, the eyesthat he half imagined were glowing faintly. The bright sunlight made it hard to be sure.
"Descartes? You think, therefore you are, and how courteous of you to give me the benefit of the doubt, Jean-Luc. May I ask where philosophy is leading you? I've been waiting years for a chance to speak to you. So tell me, my captain-" and she, unlike Q, could say the words without it sounding like a mockery- "what do you think of little old me? I'm curious."
He paused. "You'll grant me a moment to ruminate?"
"You're the captain, you're entitled." Her eyes glittered, and he wondered where he'd heard that before.
"Of course. You think. You are. And it occurs to me that you've undertaken to rescue me from the Borg. You even think you can hide us from- ahem." He smiled, to show he hadn't forgotten his host's warning. And that he would honor it. At the least, it was common courtesy; at most, perhaps speaking the trickster's name really could summon him.
But as he was woolgathering, she smiled back, and spoke. "With luck. He's strong, but he's not quite as close to omniscient as he makes himself out to be, over on this side."
He nodded slowly. "Forgive my speculation, but- if you believe you can shelter me from- our friend with the outlandish costumes- and the Borg, you must be a woman of uncommon resource." She smiled again, and spread her hands, something in her expression inviting him to go on. "And here-" He stopped himself from saying, I feel as if I've stepped out of Plato's cave, but there'd have been a ring of truth to it if he had. This side, she'd called it, in an unguarded moment.
She simply looked at him- an instructor, waiting for him to complete an exercise.
So he obliged, taking upon himself the mantle of the detective, the explorer, just that little bit more. "You know Guinan." Or of her, but something about this woman seemed too familiar, too fond, for him to harbor suspicions. "You know me by name. You- you are somehow connected with us, with all of this, with everything we've done. And yet she's never spoken of anyone like you. I've never seen you..."
The twist of her lips was not merely ironic, but Irony. On this grassy field intuition seemed more natural than deduction. Jean-Luc Picard was not an uncultured man; he had a sense of the poetic, and this was the poetic.
Don't think of it as a piece of detective work. Think of it as a riddle.
There is a lady, powerful, with more than her share of mysteries. She is known to me, and to Guinan. She is familiar with me, and also with Q and the Borg. She knows of my recent doings, and my past ones. I have never looked her in the eye, never heard her voice. But she is merely amused, at the idea that I've never seen her. Who is she?
Think not of the possible, but of the poetic, and there could be only one answer to that question.
"You're- Enterprise. The Enterprise."
And the lady in red grinned with a note of triumph and pride, and her eyes glowed with the blue of a live warp core, so bright that even the light of the unconquered Sun couldn't conceal it.
"My captain." She bowed slightly. "And I think we've reached the point in the conversation where you have a thousand questions. Go ahead- you've earned answers. I'll give you my best."
"If I'm not imagining this..." Picard trailed off thoughtfully. "I rather believe you always have."
Triumph and pride, again, on her face.
"So this, all of this, is..."
"The stuff of concepts and passions."
"And I, here, am a reflection of my mind. My... soul." It sounded strange, when he said it that way. The Federation was, on the whole, a materialist state. He was, on the whole, a man who kept his mind on material things.
But the woman he knew as 'Enterprise' simply shrugged casually, as if deep metaphysical truths were a casual everyday thing of her existence, much as running water and electric lighting were to him.
Perhaps they were, to her.
"True enough, if you like. I'm not preaching; I just live here. But that which makes you truly yourself has left its mark on the cosmos- and now, it's here."
"So have I died and gone to-" he hesitated. "The afterlife, for Starfleet captains?"
And her hesitation sent a spike of fear through his belly- odd, given that he perhaps no longer had one in life.
"Under the rules that stand on this side, you're..." she paused.
"Dead?"
"Ah... only... mostly dead. Your body is..." she peered at him, tilting her head and seeming to look through him. "Yes, still alive, you're just not connected to it. This part of you, the real you, has been... let's say displaced from it, that's all. The Borg have it."
He recoiled in horror. "You mean they're parading me-" he paused, wondering if that would be the right word, deciding it would do- "as some kind of sick trophy?" His stomach churned, but he frowned in thought. Even if in his heart he was a detective and an explorer, by training and vocation he was still the tactician- and still staring mystery squarely in the face. "I thought the Borg were efficient, what good would that do them?"
She frowned, sadly. "You're a smart one, and you know a lot. I think they must have a use for the contents of your grey matter- enough that they want to have it walking around on their side."
No.
He whirled, on instinct, an animalistic denial. How could he be standing here, in a place at peace, while monsters had possession of his body, of his very brain- "How can they-"
"They're not alive, but they're very good at cybernetics." She looked sad, and stepped close to him, taking his hand between hers. "But you, you, are safe here."
"Not if they- if they have me, if they can use my- my mind-"
Horror and violation twisted his face and voice. What could they make him, or the shell that once was Picard, do? Would his shade sell out the Federation, tell them the secrets of the Enterprise? Would they try to make him over into some kind of puppet?
"Then you are still safe here." And her eyes flashed a faintly pearly grey for a moment. "Jean-Luc, if those- things-" she spat the word- "ever had souls, they don't anymore. Maybe their whole mass has one soul to its name. Maybe. But however strong they are in the waking world..." and now she smiled. "They can't touch you here. And by trying to make a puppet of you, to take you over outright- they've detached those parts of you. The real Jean-Luc Picard is all here. With me." She smiled brightly, with the look of one who had come to take the impossible for granted.
He felt as if he'd aged twenty years in the past five minutes.
"How?"
She started counting off on her fingers.
"Wellll, Wesley and Geordi will come up with something clever, we both know they will." And Jean-Luc nodded slowly. Geordi was a good man, and Wesley did have a way of improvising his way out of crises, often not even ones of his own making.
"Probably-" he thought about it. "No, it'd be that deflector dish gambit Lieutenant Commander Shelby suggested."
She nodded back. "I don't know her, but I know me and I know them. So probably, yes. Hmm. Will's going to chase after the Borg, trying to rescue you. He'll figure it's what Jim would have done; he'll be right. He'll try to get someone over to their- I refuse to call that mass of atoms a ship- their..." she waved a hand, gesturing vaguely.
"Cube?"
"I can work with that. Anyway, maybe they'll be able to get you away from them. Maybe... maybe they won't. The Borg may not be around over here, but they're strong over there." She stared bleakly for a moment. "I'm not sure what the fleet will be able to do about them. I wish Jim were there..."
"Or Admiral ka'Sharren?"
"Yes-" she paused. "How did you know?"
"Remember, I know the way she spoke about you, when I was at the Academy." He smiled. "I don't blame you, though; I believe I wish she were on deck for this one, too."
"Maybe she'll be out of sabbatical to bring the cavalry."
"Perhaps so." Jean-Luc smiled fondly, though perhaps not as fondly as the spirit he spoke to. The Commandant had always had a certain air of dynamic invincibility to her. With many years' experience, he could look back and realize that much of it was simply that Admiral ka'Sharren had worn the mask of command better than almost anyone he'd ever known, so well that it was nearly impossible to tell where the commander ended and the woman began.
But then, maybe his host had a different view of her.
His mind worked its way back to matters at hand. "Do you think we can win this?"
"I'll tell you the truth, I've seen things look worse. I've known of captains coming back from worse." Was that hesitation on her face? Perhaps not. Perhaps he was imagining what he didn't want to imagine.
Even if he felt none of the pain directly, Jean-Luc knew on some level that he had been profoundly wronged, violated, that a part of him had been turned into an abomination against everything he'd worked so long to uphold. Even if everything she'd said was true, and all would be well in the end... he would never forgive the Borg for this. He would hold this against them, this personal wrong along with all the destruction they were wreaking, burned into his very soul.
And here, it might be no figure of speech to say that.
He squared his shoulders, and remembered something. That if this were the Enterprise, personified, he still had the duties of a captain. The mask of command.
"What can we do to help?"
"The rest of the crew? From here?" She spread her hands. "Well, I'm with them, too- but not in the same way." She shook her head. "There's nothing for me, here, to do about them. All I can do, there, is keep up hopes."
He nodded, remembering what it was to encourage a subordinate, to tell them honest truths of praise. "If you're doing that as well there as here, you're doing it quite admirably."
"Good. Just remember- this isn't over. You're on the bench, not-" she didn't speak the word, but somehow he knew the word was dead.
He supposed that if his body died aboard the cube, if he were trapped in an afterworld he hadn't known existed, there would be worse introductions to it than this one.
"Perhaps, my friend-" and she smiled at that- "you could show me more of this place that seems to be your home, if perhaps not mine?"
She beamed. "We can wait somewhere better appointed, if nothing else. One of the easiest places for me to visit- it always has been- and one quite familiar to you."
"That... that would be a good thing." He was shaken, he knew it, under the mask.
"I can guide you. Take my hand."
There was a swirl of color, a sense of unreality.
The sun still shone between high cumulus clouds, but the grass was gone. His eyes took in a grand boulevard, wider than any practicality could call for, tree-lined on both sides. Stretching into the distance, through a city of music and artists and clattering vehicles that ran more smoothly and less smokily than they had any right to. Of vitality and promises subtle and gross, and a high civilization achieving things no one had ever imagined possible.
And the curving steel framework of the Tower stood over it all.
"Paris." He breathed.
"The City of Lights," she said, and it sounded like a correction, not a nickname.
The boulevard was not without its activity, but it seemed as though most of the passersby were simply taking in the sights. Not least the crowd- for this was clearly not only Paris, the capital of France, but also Paris, the capital of the Federation. He saw beings of every member species, and most of the affiliates he could remember. Even a few Klingons and Cardassians, looking furtive but envious, as though they wished they could stay.
She guided him to a cafe, an entirely typical one save for the seeming perfection of the furnishings. Even the waiter- something of a novelty to Jean-Luc, a thing more out of old fiction than reality- seemed proud, though occupying a role that so few in the Federation would have accepted for themselves.
Perhaps the waiter was an echo from out of time, like the streetcar passing by.
And the woman who had transported him here, whom he found himself imagining as the embodiment of the ship that he'd led with every ounce of his wit and skill for three years, did the most mundane thing imaginable, in a Paris cafe, while making it seem an impossibility.
She ordered a bottle of wine.
"Veuve Clicquot, 1811." She tilted her head, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. The waiter nodded in confirmation, dignity in his every feature as he turned and strode away.
Jean-Luc recognized that year, from books, and found himself raising an eyebrow, in turn, bemused. "When we met, I asked if this was the afterlife- but perhaps this is heaven, for vintages, if not for people?"
She smiled and gave an answer that was not an answer. "Comet wines tend to be long-lived. And this? It's like I said. This is just the City of Lights, as you might dream of it. As you have." She pointed at one of the tables in a cafe across the boulevard. "I first saw you here, you know. You were standing on a table and singing, with fire in your heart and-" she smiled teasingly- "a full head of hair. It was back in twenty- hm, I forget."
"I- I believe I remember..." And now that he thought about it, he did. He knew, somehow, that he had been here before, in dreams. This wasn't Paris as it was. Nor exactly as it had ever been. But it was the soul of Paris. "But it's difficult."
"Very few people really remember what happens here, in the waking world. They get impressions, but they don't remember." She smiled to herself. "I do so love exceptions, but I've learned not to expect them."
And then the waiter arrived, a bottle in hand.
She poured for him, then for herself, and smiled, raising her glass.
"Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet!" The words sounded to him like something he'd only almost say, or something only almost he would say... but he'd drink to it.
And the wine was- it was not champagne. It was Champagne. The first champagne. Champagne as might be experienced by a connoisseur of wines who had somehow, impossibly, never had any, drinking it for the first time with a palate already experienced. He found himself unable to even process the question of whether it was good or bad champagne. It was simply Champagne.
"Do you like it?"
"It's- quite a marvel."
"Yes; I'm told it made such an impression that Tsar Alexander had it smuggled to him, despite his own ban on French products, what with the... unpleasantness at the time. And here? Well, we won't run out, as long as they don't forget champagne in the waking world." She smiled and took another sip. "Speaking of which, I'd ask you to give my regards to your brother. Though I don't expect you to remember the request."
"I'll try- I owe you that much." He raised his glass slightly, in salute.
That much, and more.
There would be dark times ahead, he knew it, in spite of the small talk and the scenery, with its- literally- unearthly beauty. He could sense a stir in the air, as though this great reflection of the subconscious knew, somehow, that danger approached.
The Borg wouldn't be lightly stopped, and even if he was out of the battle, even if perhaps he would never return to the waking world, that mattered. He would not forget his duty, no matter what happened to him. If he was rescued by his friends, or reduced to a bodiless ghost, duty remained.
Even so, in this moment, he was under the aegis of she who might be, in the final analysis, the closest of his friends. And this he would not forget, either. Perhaps it would grant him the strength he needed to go on. For this much, even the Borg couldn't take from him. No more than they anything had ever taken it from Kirk, Harrison, ka'Sharren, Mrr'shan, or Zhang.
Wherever he found himself, be he wounded or traumatized or even dead, he'd always have that. In his soul, he'd remember the touch of her spirit, and remember the name- Enterprise.
All else would follow.
This, like Chapter N, a Dreams story set in TNG canon, but integrating elements of TBG canon. Perhaps obviously, it takes place during Best of Both Worlds.
...
With a Dreams story, I'm almost never sure if I've made it good, or made it stupid. But they always demand to be written, when the time comes. I've had this one simmering away for over a year; it's not new. Though recent questions regarding connections to the Harmony and Dreams continuity do give it a certain... relevance.
...
With a Dreams story, I'm almost never sure if I've made it good, or made it stupid. But they always demand to be written, when the time comes. I've had this one simmering away for over a year; it's not new. Though recent questions regarding connections to the Harmony and Dreams continuity do give it a certain... relevance.
Also, I'd like to dedicate this omake to @siflux and @Aranfan , our recent thread trawlers.
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Not Quite Picard: I am Locutus of -
Enterprise: Yoink! Back off you lego knock offs, and go grow your own Captain! This one's mine.
Picard: This was not how I expected to spend my day when I woke up. Still, if you can't take a surprise, you never should've joined the 'Fleet.
Enterprise: Back to the old country. We are both too sober for today.
Enterprise: Yoink! Back off you lego knock offs, and go grow your own Captain! This one's mine.
Picard: This was not how I expected to spend my day when I woke up. Still, if you can't take a surprise, you never should've joined the 'Fleet.
Enterprise: Back to the old country. We are both too sober for today.
I don't really consider accelerated technology a problem, not one that has to be solved. I want there to be effort involved, which is what the soft-blocks are for, but getting 2350s shipboard positronics in 2346? That's hardly any different than getting 2330s shipboard isolinear in 2327? It's the exact same magnitude of acceleration we already did. In the changes to the system, I never really saw the level of acceleration in specific areas as a problem.
If you want. Dropping techs one at a time ties up your project resources for 3-4 years, dropping the entire project hits your PP budget and credibility with the Council, so it's not without cost. If you want to cycle them into and then out of an open project and you have an appropriate project ongoing, that's a bit more iffy, but for now we'll see how it goes. I have ways to prevent it if I see you cheesing things, your words.
For more tactically-focused techs, the people involved in completing them without sponsorship might well be within Starfleet or within member militaries, so don't think of it as outsourcing it to private interests in a capitalistic fashion. You just aren't funding a expanded team or convincing them to prioritize one subject over others.
Made-up dates because I don't remember exactly, but basically after ordering the Comet in the 2319 Snakepit, in 2319.Q3 EAS Guidance you'd get a Comet Design Research [DATE 2322.Q3], discounted by your bonuses of -1Q (so now [DATE 2322.Q2]) and if you slap it into an appropriate research project using the "Add 1 Technology" vote it could get breakthroughs just like any other tech. The only difference is ship designs can have a quarterly unlock date.
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- Location
- Aotearoa
How about Refits? The same approach?
(Hmm. You might want to find a different word than Comet Project, if it's more like a Technology that gets added to a Research Project?)
That aside, this approach means we'll need an operating project to add the Excelsior-B refit too. New Heavy Explorer seems appropriate... which leads me to another thought.
Can you expand on the example with the New Light Explorer class we might want to kick off when the Next Gen Heavy Ship project finishes?
Is the intent that we will be be able to add the Light Explorer Project to the New Gen Heavy Ship Project, the very same EAS it (otherwise) completes? That's an impression I picked up somewhere in the last few pages.
(Hmm. You might want to find a different word than Comet Project, if it's more like a Technology that gets added to a Research Project?)
That aside, this approach means we'll need an operating project to add the Excelsior-B refit too. New Heavy Explorer seems appropriate... which leads me to another thought.
Can you expand on the example with the New Light Explorer class we might want to kick off when the Next Gen Heavy Ship project finishes?
Is the intent that we will be be able to add the Light Explorer Project to the New Gen Heavy Ship Project, the very same EAS it (otherwise) completes? That's an impression I picked up somewhere in the last few pages.
Right, best use a wording like Comet Design Research.
The project has to be active, so no. I realize that's inconvenient and a little out-of-flavor, but I don't want to encourage extending projects through additions.
- Location
- Aotearoa
My thanks, Simon. That was very touching and had some quite beautiful moments.
That works.
Are Refits handles the same way, just presumably with a circa one year timeline?
This is one of the less elegant parts.
Why does a ship project, now, as constructed need to wait for the constituent techs to complete?
Couldn't it be added (or just revealed) and done similarly to the New Labs as a multidisciplinary tech, requiring both its own breakthroughs and end date, but perhaps also 'these other four-six core enabling techs in the same project' to complete?
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- Aotearoa
On the Possible Research Project Question:
I believe, historically, we have almost always been working on weapons, so:
Next Generation Tactical Systems.
This project would essentially aim to deliver T4 Phasers, Torpedoes, Arrays, and perhaps related adjuncts like impulse or tactical sensors. Perhaps Shields, too?
So why would we stop now, just because we've delivered today's weapons?
Or, if that's not appealing, then perhaps-
Advanced Signals Research
Work on the next generation of Sensors and Subspace Communications.
The ones we can see are
2330s Multispectral Sensors (required to unlock 2330s Labs),
2330s Planetary Communications (+1 to diplomatic rolls (pushes and auto-rolls), +1 to affiliate diplomatic rolls (auto-rolls), 1 random non-affiliate gets a diplomatic push]), but I'd intend this as a Comms and Sensors focused project, that would have both ship-related and non-ship-related, diplomatic benefits.
I quite like this one.
I believe, historically, we have almost always been working on weapons, so:
Next Generation Tactical Systems.
This project would essentially aim to deliver T4 Phasers, Torpedoes, Arrays, and perhaps related adjuncts like impulse or tactical sensors. Perhaps Shields, too?
So why would we stop now, just because we've delivered today's weapons?
Or, if that's not appealing, then perhaps-
Advanced Signals Research
Work on the next generation of Sensors and Subspace Communications.
The ones we can see are
2330s Multispectral Sensors (required to unlock 2330s Labs),
2330s Planetary Communications (+1 to diplomatic rolls (pushes and auto-rolls), +1 to affiliate diplomatic rolls (auto-rolls), 1 random non-affiliate gets a diplomatic push]), but I'd intend this as a Comms and Sensors focused project, that would have both ship-related and non-ship-related, diplomatic benefits.
I quite like this one.
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- Infraspace
Right, new headcanon: Comets have vineyards instead of arboretums.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Mostly, yes.
The thing going on here is that in Dreams continuity, if one isn't a distinct individual with one's own inner mental life, and if no one else who is an individual thinks of one as a distinct thing, then one doesn't have an extension into spirit.
Borg drone 859 of 1,237 doesn't have individuality and nobody thinks of them as a person as opposed to just a thing, in terms of the Dreams otherworld, they have rather less spirit presence than a child's teddy bear (because of course teddy bears have souls, albeit usually little ones).
Moreover, the act of taking away a person's individuality decouples their soul from their body and leaves it metaphysically 'floating.' It can be reattached, but it isn't attached while the person is a drone.
That doesn't stop a Borg drone from thinking, because the material universe runs on atoms-and-forces, not concepts-and-passions, and you don't actually need concepts-and-passions in order to think. It just means that the drone doesn't have any extension into the territory that is made out of concepts-and-passions. Just atoms and void. And by extension, the same applies to Borg ships.
From Enterprise's perspective, the Borg are p-zombies. Philosophically, we might disagree, but then, she's more of an immaterialist than we are.
Comet vintages are actually a thing in Earth winemaking custom.
- Location
- Infraspace
I know, and so does at least one of the designers of the Comet.
The Ashidi continue to be one of the larger builders of civilian ships and with this refit they have refitted all of their L7 cruisers.
If we are going for new ships based on 2327 parts we might want to look for adding:
It only needs a single breakthrough to be ready in 2327
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- Location
- Aotearoa
Possibly next year. I strongly advocate pruning New Heavy ship down to five technologies and keeping it there, so we can guarantee two breakthroughs on the 2329 Forcefield and Isolinear techs, bringing them into 2327.
This year we remove flight ops, next year I can think we can remove 'something else' and let it land in 2327 after a 2326 breakthrough- perhaps those nacelles.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I'm picturing the "have tech in project in 2325 and 2326, remove in 2326 to end in 2327" as a sort of low-resolution representation of Commander Starfleet going "hello, let's fund this but whoa let's not get nuts here."
- Location
- Aotearoa
It would be disappointing to me personally not to see the new shipbuilder before we complete EAS, only to find out we've thereby screwed ourselves out of an opportunity.
Still, I'm 99% certain about pruning Flight Ops, and not adding another tech to Heavy Ship this year. (With intent to prune one more and add one next year).
Edit- perhaps even add more than one 2328-date tech in EAS, if it works the way I think it works.
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There are a lot of post to go before the next EAS as it is the last of Q3, there is a name vote for the newly crewed EC ambassador, discord votes and results and several more logs before that one
- Location
- Infraspace
Actually, to continue this, there's probably someone who decided to try growing grapes literally on an actual comet.I know, and so does at least one of the designers of the Comet.
- Location
- Patriarchova
Hey bitches,
In order to help me out with an upcoming log event, and to restore some of the cooperative/omake-based worldbuilding that I feel the quest has had less of recently, I'm putting out a call for someone who wants to write something about the uaquuo. Could be an intel brief, could be a dialogue between characters, you name it. Omake bonus will be determined after the fact, but it'll be a good one because I asked for this.
In order to help me out with an upcoming log event, and to restore some of the cooperative/omake-based worldbuilding that I feel the quest has had less of recently, I'm putting out a call for someone who wants to write something about the uaquuo. Could be an intel brief, could be a dialogue between characters, you name it. Omake bonus will be determined after the fact, but it'll be a good one because I asked for this.
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- Location
- Germany
I would very much prefer if we didn't fiddle around to much with removing techs from and adding techs to projects all the time.
I mean sure, if a tech looks unnecessary to you, then make plan that removes it. But please don't just take it out to complete someting other first, just to put it back in again later.
Maybe we could have some rule that once a technology is removed from project, it can't be added to the same project later on.
I mean sure, if a tech looks unnecessary to you, then make plan that removes it. But please don't just take it out to complete someting other first, just to put it back in again later.
Maybe we could have some rule that once a technology is removed from project, it can't be added to the same project later on.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Right.
Or rapidly escalating PP costs associated with repeated changes to the same project. If the first alteration to a project is free (just so that we have SOME leeway if we feel the QMs have done something unreasonable), and each subsequent change costs 10pp more than the last, people will generally lose interest in micromanaging projects pretty quickly.
It's like, you CAN take a tech out of a project and then put it back in again, but is it really worth paying large amounts of political will for the privilege?