- Location
- Someplace USA
Hardest difficulty in SFO is a dirty fucker who I don't think has ever been beaten.
If we meet one now we'lose basically everything if we tried a direct battle, giant space flee basically.
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?
If we meet one now we'lose basically everything if we tried a direct battle, giant space flee basically.
aledeth
The Flesh is Weak
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Minor quibble on the Oberth and Miranda. The Oberth is a lot longer than you shape it, and the Miranda Nacelles should be shifted back ~1/2 of the distance, somewhere between where they are now and how the Centaur looks.
edit: Constellation class also has the Saucer come straight out of the center of the ship, no raised 'neck' section.
Picture of the Oberth below.
I still can't get over how the Jaldun and variants look a headless dude Flexing, and the Kaldar got longer legs and a chest plate. It's hilarious.
TNG did start talking to it using gravity pulses. As you said, the Entity had a rather bad habit of sterilizing outposts of life though, and one of the passengers on the Enterprise happened to have family on one of those places the Entity killed. She tweaked the pulses sent by the Enterprise to resonate with the crystal structure of the entity and shattered it.
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lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
I updated my vote tally to include all the tasks - 35 voters isn't that bad, though only 22 out of 35 included a FLEET task vote (either directly or indirectly via plan).
- Location
- Someplace USA
Not gonna lie @OneirosTheWriter I enjoy the normal turns allot more than these state of emergencies and "battle turns"I just need to figure out how and where to tack warp drives to those designs, @Leila Hann!
Apart from that, votes on this one seem to be on the low side, I might let it stay open for a while longer. People may have been chased off by the big fracas that followed the last update.
it's just that captain logs are fun and it's interesting to see the industrial side of starfleet cause of how neglected it is in cannon so I need my fix of saucer construction action.
- Location
- Australia
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I am still at a loss to understand how it is warmongering to note that if the Cardassians wish to begin a war with an unprovoked attack upon one of our task forces, they would be ill advised to start it by launching an unprovoked attack on a heavier task force than their own.
That would be an extremely imprudent maneuver. Especially for a force that is supposed to be something else entirely (e.g. hunting an escaped stealth cruiser, not getting blown to bits in an attempt to create a "Remember the Maine!" pretext for war).
We have two options when they press us and we don't want to press back.
One is the way of being pushed around.
The other is the way of aikido- of reacting to an aggressor, not by launching one's own attack, but by redirecting their own attack. Of using leverage and cleverness to turn an aggressor's force and pressure against them, so that they are thrown off balance and deprived of their ability to cause harm.
"Plan Fall Back and Find the Kadak-Tor" was an attempt at aikido. We would have used a Cardassian 'push' *, in order to carry us in the direction that we wanted to go**, while leaving the Cardassians themselves off balance.*** They would try to bully us, and they fail, not because we struck back at them, but because we are quite capable of besting the Cardassians even without fighting. Perhaps especially without fighting.
The Cardassians will never stop pushing us without a war, UNLESS they learn that even pushing the Federation can work to its advantage, because of its cleverness, its technology, and the broader viewpoints it is capable of supporting through diversity.
Thus, the only way I can imagine to avoid war with Cardassia, probably repeated war, in the long run, is to successfully use strategic aikido against them.
By contrast, uncoordinated flailing, or simply passively accepting without resistance the momentum we receive when the Cardassians push us, will result in us being knocked sprawling. This will not give them an incentive to stop pushing us. Instead, they will push more and more enthusiastically, for greater and greater stakes. Until one day, they push in such a way that we have no choice but to wage war- while standing in a poorly balanced and compromised position.
Again, we can only prevent this outcome (which is exactly what happened in canon, as far as I can tell) through masterful use of strategic aikido. Of outmaneuvering the Cardassians so that even their attempts to bully us result in us gaining an advantage.
_____________________________________________
*(the demand to withdraw to Federation space)
**(namely, to carry Fifth Fleet back in Federation space, where it is an asset to us in finding the Kadak-Tor and in direct defense of our territory)
***(namely, vigorously searching for the stealth cruiser in a place the stealth cruiser has abandoned)
- Location
- Tulsa Oklahoma
I think the best response to that would be "Never interfere when an opponent is busy shooting themselves in the foot, and the Cardassians misinterpretation of what our affiliates are to us is a case of shooting themselves in the foot, for that means they do not realize that each affiliate has its own fleet to defend itself and misinterpret said vessels to belong to Starfleet, inflating their estimation of our defenses to the point of absurdity."
- Location
- Patriarchova
Minor quibble on the Oberth and Miranda. The Oberth is a lot longer than you shape it, and the Miranda Nacelles should be shifted back ~1/2 of the distance, somewhere between where they are now and how the Centaur looks.
edit: Constellation class also has the Saucer come straight out of the center of the ship, no raised 'neck' section.
Picture of the Oberth below.
I still can't get over how the Jaldun and variants look a headless dude Flexing, and the Kaldar got longer legs and a chest plate. It's hilarious.
TNG did start talking to it using gravity pulses. As you said, the Entity had a rather bad habit of sterilizing outposts of life though, and one of the passengers on the Enterprise happened to have family on one of those places the Entity killed. She tweaked the pulses sent by the Enterprise to resonate with the crystal structure of the entity and shattered it.
Thanks, will edit soon.
I just need to figure out how and where to tack warp drives to those designs, @Leila Hann!
Apart from that, votes on this one seem to be on the low side, I might let it stay open for a while longer. People may have been chased off by the big fracas that followed the last update.
I thought I made the warp engines obvious in most cases. Keep in mind that, as the vulcans demonstrate, they don't need to be rod shaped.
The only one I'm really not sure about is the Orion interceptor, which I mostly just scaled up from their ENT design. I'll play with that one a bit more.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm not so sure it's absurd for the Cardassians to factor the member world fleets into their strategic calculus, especially if we start to use the Member World Coordination Office to push more Explorer-weight vessels into their service.
- Location
- Australia
All the more reason to not start a war!Not gonna lie @OneirosTheWriter I enjoy the normal turns allot more than these state of emergencies and "battle turns"
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The flip side is, if we don't have a viable system for coping with emergencies, and one which gives the players a sense of agency, the game is going to get dull in a sandbox sort of way sooner or later.
I get a sense that the biophage crisis really caused things to "shake down" in this quest, though that was before I signed on. Without things like that, I'm not sure how long it would be fun to just keep chugging along with ship spreadsheets and research team lists. The captains' logs are lovely, but they don't provide the interactivity that distinguishes a good game from a good serial webfic.
I get a sense that the biophage crisis really caused things to "shake down" in this quest, though that was before I signed on. Without things like that, I'm not sure how long it would be fun to just keep chugging along with ship spreadsheets and research team lists. The captains' logs are lovely, but they don't provide the interactivity that distinguishes a good game from a good serial webfic.
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Omake - Yrillian Brief - Briefvoice
Since @OneirosTheWriter has refused to tell us anything about the Yrillians, I made a bunch of stuff up.
Yrillian Cultural and Intelligence Brief
From: Spec. Commander Tethvox
To: Admiral Vitalia Kahurangu
As per your directions, I have prepared a brief on the species known as Yrillians (eye-rill-ee-an). Though the Federation has a long superficial familiarity with this race, it is only recently we have begun to understand them.
LOCATION:
Yrillia itself is located in the Ethur II system near the intersection of sub-sectors c1/b1/c0/b0, with the closest major Federation world being Vega. This area is known to local spacers poetically as "the Yrillian Garden", due to the unusually high concentration of Class M planets found in close proximity to each other. If you are interested, I have attached an astronomical report linking this phenomena to a mass supernova detonation of dozens of local stars some one billion years ago, a phenomena that many researchers theorize was not natural. Truly, the history of our galaxy is wide and deep.
For our purposes it is enough to note that despite claiming a small area of space, Yrillians have colonized at least twenty worlds outside their home system and potentially more we are unaware of. The majority of these are what we would consider "minor" colonies with limited population and industry, often making use of only a small fraction of the planet's surface. Despite this, there are unusually high number of small (300k t) shipyards scattered through the Yrillian Garden region with total production in excess of the needs of the Yrillian population. (See Status in the Galaxy section for further explanation.)
BIOLOGY AND APPEARANCE:
The Yrillians are build on a "scaled up" standard humanoid model, greatly resembling human beings except that their average height is slightly over 2.1 meters with proportions to match. Individuals reaching 2.6 meters in height are rare but seen with regularity. Moreover, their hands and feet are scaled even larger than this would suggest, resulting in the derogatory term "big foot" being applied by less culturally enlightened individuals. Males tend to the hirsute, sporting full beards and extensive body hair.
CULTURE AND GOVERNMENT:
The fundamental unit of Yrillian society is the "self-selected association of workers to achieve goals", a phrase that the Universal Translator demands be used in full the first time to provide proper context but which we can hereafter translate as "work gang". These work gangs are voluntary associations that share all resources and pursue certain agreed-on goals together, which can take the form of manufacturing physical products or producing non-physical outputs such as completing a survey of a geographical area. Questions such as how one joins or leaves a work gang, support in changing work gangs, whether work gangs should continue indefinitely or dissolve after specific long term goals are achieved, and how property should be split in such a case are the lead preoccupation of Yrillian society and should be regarded as long-running debates rather than issues to be settled permanently.
Yrillian government is radically democratic, with major and minor policy questions decided by frequent binding referendum votes. Governmental work gangs have weak powers on their own and must frequently resort to referendums to ratify their decisions. While there is a species-wide government centered in Ethur II, its powers are extremely limited and it must resort to polite requests for resources to maintain the small Yrillian government navy.
Science for its own sake is not highly valued in Yrillian society, and craftsmanship applied to old designs is appreciated over engineering to create new designs. Other races frequently accuse the Yrillians of being unimaginative and unintelligent. It would be more accurate to say that they prefer to apply their intelligence and imagination to matters they value more highly.
STATUS IN THE GALAXY:
Yrillian starships are far from the fastest or the biggest or having the mightiest weapons or the best armor, but they have one unique feature. They are for sale.
Space travel has an honored and rich tradition in Yrillian culture, and with it has come a demand that it be available to as many citizens as possible. In contrast to other spacefaring cultures, the vast majority of their ships are "privately owned" (though by work gangs rather than individuals). An extremely high percentage of the population will travel in space at least once in their lives, and there is a large "spacer" population that makes their primary residence in orbital yards and space stations (though still a minority compared to planetary dwellers).
Over hundreds of years Yrillians have refined designs for the equivalent of shuttles and runabouts, as well as slightly larger cargo vessels and light armed escort-equivalents. (They rarely build larger and only Yrillia itself is believed to have a shipyard capable of building 1mt ships.) These designs are deliberately kept simple and technologically unsophisticated in order to minimize resource costs. In return they can be build cheaply and quickly, with a typical Yrillian yard believed to be able to turn out a 250kt Escort in well under an earth year.
They are willing to sell to aliens. With a combination of weak government and high number of poorly tracked shipyards, Yrillia is the source of choice for parties unable to obtain a ship by other means. These parties range from criminal organizations such as the Orion Syndicate (who though believed to have their own off-the-books shipyard couldn't possibly supply all their needs through it) to Federation citizen groups unable to gain sufficient priority in our member world shipyards.
I am not sure if you have ever personally been in a Yrillian ship, Admiral, but I am certain you have seen pictures. The interiors are as over-sized for vulcan/human/etc individuals as they appear, but nonetheless are operable with practice and a judicious use of stools and stepladders. A Yrillian runabout is not comfortable for someone of our scale, but it will travel.
HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS:
Yrillians have had warp travel for at least 800 years, remaining a minor power primarily due to frequent civil wars, lack of unity even when at peace, and a tendency towards technological stasis. This has not stopped them from exploring the far expanses of our local area of space, with some journeys rumored to last years. This would no doubt yield a fascinating trove of historical information, were it not for their idiosyncratically erratic approach to record-keeping, much less effort to maintain a historical narrative. Even today small Yrillian vessels can be encountered nearly anywhere, showing remarkable disregard for borders.
Currently the Yrillian population is on a familiar downward slide to civil war, as their weak central government is unable to control the actions of its colonies, who in turn are unable to control Yrillian pirate vessels raiding both their own commerce and that of their neighbors, including the Federation. There are three principle factions vying for support before a full war breaks out. A very rough description of their respective political priorities would be:
DIPLOMATIC COMMENTARY:
The greatest difficulty with securing Yrillians as Affiliates is deciding which Yrillians we wish to Affiliate with. Under the circumstances it would be impossible to maintain politically neutral; we would have so select one faction as a point of contact for the Yrillian people. Attempting to default only to the current government of Yrillia (as opposed to the Status Quo reformist faction) would result in a partner whose political lifespan can be measured in years and whose successor would be unlikely to honor any arrangements. Waiting until the civil war settles itself likely cedes them to the Cardassians.
Species Summary
Yrillians
Nutshell: "Pirates who are Giants"
Canon/OC: OC
Homeworld: Yrillia/Ethur II
Alignment: Shipbuilders
Tech: Fed-Level (but used for cheap ships instead of powerful ships)
Type: Humanoid
Distinctive Features: They're all over 2 meters tall.
Social: Referendum-based democracy; about to tip into civil war.
The only omake reward I would ask is if you'd make all of this canon....
Yrillian Cultural and Intelligence Brief
From: Spec. Commander Tethvox
To: Admiral Vitalia Kahurangu
As per your directions, I have prepared a brief on the species known as Yrillians (eye-rill-ee-an). Though the Federation has a long superficial familiarity with this race, it is only recently we have begun to understand them.
LOCATION:
Yrillia itself is located in the Ethur II system near the intersection of sub-sectors c1/b1/c0/b0, with the closest major Federation world being Vega. This area is known to local spacers poetically as "the Yrillian Garden", due to the unusually high concentration of Class M planets found in close proximity to each other. If you are interested, I have attached an astronomical report linking this phenomena to a mass supernova detonation of dozens of local stars some one billion years ago, a phenomena that many researchers theorize was not natural. Truly, the history of our galaxy is wide and deep.
For our purposes it is enough to note that despite claiming a small area of space, Yrillians have colonized at least twenty worlds outside their home system and potentially more we are unaware of. The majority of these are what we would consider "minor" colonies with limited population and industry, often making use of only a small fraction of the planet's surface. Despite this, there are unusually high number of small (300k t) shipyards scattered through the Yrillian Garden region with total production in excess of the needs of the Yrillian population. (See Status in the Galaxy section for further explanation.)
BIOLOGY AND APPEARANCE:
The Yrillians are build on a "scaled up" standard humanoid model, greatly resembling human beings except that their average height is slightly over 2.1 meters with proportions to match. Individuals reaching 2.6 meters in height are rare but seen with regularity. Moreover, their hands and feet are scaled even larger than this would suggest, resulting in the derogatory term "big foot" being applied by less culturally enlightened individuals. Males tend to the hirsute, sporting full beards and extensive body hair.
CULTURE AND GOVERNMENT:
The fundamental unit of Yrillian society is the "self-selected association of workers to achieve goals", a phrase that the Universal Translator demands be used in full the first time to provide proper context but which we can hereafter translate as "work gang". These work gangs are voluntary associations that share all resources and pursue certain agreed-on goals together, which can take the form of manufacturing physical products or producing non-physical outputs such as completing a survey of a geographical area. Questions such as how one joins or leaves a work gang, support in changing work gangs, whether work gangs should continue indefinitely or dissolve after specific long term goals are achieved, and how property should be split in such a case are the lead preoccupation of Yrillian society and should be regarded as long-running debates rather than issues to be settled permanently.
Yrillian government is radically democratic, with major and minor policy questions decided by frequent binding referendum votes. Governmental work gangs have weak powers on their own and must frequently resort to referendums to ratify their decisions. While there is a species-wide government centered in Ethur II, its powers are extremely limited and it must resort to polite requests for resources to maintain the small Yrillian government navy.
Science for its own sake is not highly valued in Yrillian society, and craftsmanship applied to old designs is appreciated over engineering to create new designs. Other races frequently accuse the Yrillians of being unimaginative and unintelligent. It would be more accurate to say that they prefer to apply their intelligence and imagination to matters they value more highly.
STATUS IN THE GALAXY:
Yrillian starships are far from the fastest or the biggest or having the mightiest weapons or the best armor, but they have one unique feature. They are for sale.
Space travel has an honored and rich tradition in Yrillian culture, and with it has come a demand that it be available to as many citizens as possible. In contrast to other spacefaring cultures, the vast majority of their ships are "privately owned" (though by work gangs rather than individuals). An extremely high percentage of the population will travel in space at least once in their lives, and there is a large "spacer" population that makes their primary residence in orbital yards and space stations (though still a minority compared to planetary dwellers).
Over hundreds of years Yrillians have refined designs for the equivalent of shuttles and runabouts, as well as slightly larger cargo vessels and light armed escort-equivalents. (They rarely build larger and only Yrillia itself is believed to have a shipyard capable of building 1mt ships.) These designs are deliberately kept simple and technologically unsophisticated in order to minimize resource costs. In return they can be build cheaply and quickly, with a typical Yrillian yard believed to be able to turn out a 250kt Escort in well under an earth year.
They are willing to sell to aliens. With a combination of weak government and high number of poorly tracked shipyards, Yrillia is the source of choice for parties unable to obtain a ship by other means. These parties range from criminal organizations such as the Orion Syndicate (who though believed to have their own off-the-books shipyard couldn't possibly supply all their needs through it) to Federation citizen groups unable to gain sufficient priority in our member world shipyards.
I am not sure if you have ever personally been in a Yrillian ship, Admiral, but I am certain you have seen pictures. The interiors are as over-sized for vulcan/human/etc individuals as they appear, but nonetheless are operable with practice and a judicious use of stools and stepladders. A Yrillian runabout is not comfortable for someone of our scale, but it will travel.
HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS:
Yrillians have had warp travel for at least 800 years, remaining a minor power primarily due to frequent civil wars, lack of unity even when at peace, and a tendency towards technological stasis. This has not stopped them from exploring the far expanses of our local area of space, with some journeys rumored to last years. This would no doubt yield a fascinating trove of historical information, were it not for their idiosyncratically erratic approach to record-keeping, much less effort to maintain a historical narrative. Even today small Yrillian vessels can be encountered nearly anywhere, showing remarkable disregard for borders.
Currently the Yrillian population is on a familiar downward slide to civil war, as their weak central government is unable to control the actions of its colonies, who in turn are unable to control Yrillian pirate vessels raiding both their own commerce and that of their neighbors, including the Federation. There are three principle factions vying for support before a full war breaks out. A very rough description of their respective political priorities would be:
- Status Quo – Attempting to salvage the current system as much as possible, but with stricter rules for the referendums and a slightly more empowered central government. Has high levels of popular support, but is also believed to be supported by the Orion Syndicate as it preserves the Yrillians as a naval supplier. Also unlikely to actually solve underlying issues.
- Centralize Power on Yrillia – Give power to a strong central government based on Ethur II and able to suppress piracy and address a host of other long-standing issues. Believed to have some level of Cardassian backing. Hampered by lacking popularity outside the home system itself or source of legitimacy.
- Promote Spacer's Alliance – Give power to space-based Yrillian population, a culturally homogeneous mixture of traders and ship-builders who would act to "police their own" by clamping down on pirates and ensuring more even distribution of resources between worlds, in return allowing traditional referendum-based democratic governments for matters affecting only individual planets. Believed to be seeking patrons.
DIPLOMATIC COMMENTARY:
The greatest difficulty with securing Yrillians as Affiliates is deciding which Yrillians we wish to Affiliate with. Under the circumstances it would be impossible to maintain politically neutral; we would have so select one faction as a point of contact for the Yrillian people. Attempting to default only to the current government of Yrillia (as opposed to the Status Quo reformist faction) would result in a partner whose political lifespan can be measured in years and whose successor would be unlikely to honor any arrangements. Waiting until the civil war settles itself likely cedes them to the Cardassians.
Species Summary
Yrillians
Nutshell: "Pirates who are Giants"
Canon/OC: OC
Homeworld: Yrillia/Ethur II
Alignment: Shipbuilders
Tech: Fed-Level (but used for cheap ships instead of powerful ships)
Type: Humanoid
Distinctive Features: They're all over 2 meters tall.
Social: Referendum-based democracy; about to tip into civil war.
The only omake reward I would ask is if you'd make all of this canon....
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Huh. Well, it distinguishes the Yrillians from the Yridians in canon. I like the Bigfoot comparison.
The UT doesn't like "Labor Union" because it immediately implies there is a Capital side to negotiate with; that is, the Work Gangs control both labor and capital.
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The workers control the means of production? Why does that sound familiar?
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
What is humanity's Hat?
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We find nearly anything romantically appealing?
Gear
Set Moon to Ramming Speed!
Diplomacy
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Including the Borg?
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Truth: I spent a good few minutes toying with the idea of inserting a line about how some humans find Yrillian females quite attractive, then decided there's no point in spending word count on the obvious.