Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest
- Thread starter Neablis
- Start date
- Mature Sci-Fi
I would like to roll please.
EDIT: I'll take it.
EDIT: I'll take it.
Wow, y'all are fast.
The Summit of Denva II - 40+17 = 57, success.
What's with the station? - 70+10=80, good success.
Biology is kinda wet - 19+20= 39, success.
Mmkay. I should have time to write the full update tonight, but no promises.
Edit: I'll use some of the later dice if I need more, like I did last turn.
The Summit of Denva II - 40+17 = 57, success.
What's with the station? - 70+10=80, good success.
Biology is kinda wet - 19+20= 39, success.
Mmkay. I should have time to write the full update tonight, but no promises.
Edit: I'll use some of the later dice if I need more, like I did last turn.
Last edited:
I got a sidestory in the works right now. Want me to send you what I got right now?
If you want comments, sure.
- Location
- Home
You are a legend.
A Mother's Worry and Pride - [Canon]
New
A mother's worry and pride
Agent W (or Wilash as her mother called her) knew things were going to go bad when the Mechanicus got upset, especially when it came to their monopoly on technology. More than once during her tenure as head of ACI, factories they thought were secret were blown up with the Mechanicus denying they had a hand in the matter and said it was the will of the Omnissiah they were lost. Any time they tried to understand the tech, the people involved were either recruited, killed, or recruited. That's not mentioning everything else they've done to maintain their stranglehold. The tech-priests may project a untied front, but she knew better than anyone they squabbled as much, if not more so, as the leaders of each of the nations, even if they did so in their screechy language.
When she learned of this V character from Tallis Vren's communications with her, she was told she would be meeting this unknown person, (No one could find any information about her, which made it all the more sketchy. Everyone leaves a trail of some kind in this day and age.) she knew there was a good chance she'll die. That's something that is expected in her line of work, especially when dealing with those toaster-lovers as her colleagues like to call them. When she learned of V's capability to manufacture what they need without going through the tech-priests, she decided to take the risk.
And that risk is still paying dividends to this day.
While W was positive the cogitator banks had back doors installed and V could listen in on the com-links, (some may called that paranoid but when you're the head of Counter Intelligence, paranoia is a requirement.) the aid the mysterious woman provided helped them bridge the gap with the cog-boys, especially when they got their hands on the uplifting primers. Not to mention her leader actually doing their jobs (for the most part) when they got the meds they severely needed. It wouldn't surprise W if the gearhumpers were deliberately holding the medicine back to keep their leaders and officers from being to competent. The head of ACI was still surprised at how much information V willingly given them about herself, though how much of it was true was the question. Sill, two things the veteran agent was sure of was V's dislike of the Mechanicus and the Imperium, and the knowledge about the Mechanicus' inner workings. Giving the ACI false information about the tech-priests helps neither of them.
V may be an ancient as she put it, but she was still human. A human worth allying with when she revealed the Juvenant. W knew time was the one thing no one could beat, she thought so until V revealed them she can manufacture a drug that can halt the ageing process. The woman had no shame admitting her jaw dropped when it was revealed. W thought something like that was the realm of fantasy like the Emperor's Angels but if the people of long pass could make that, then what else was true?
Those kind of thoughts kept Wilash up well into the night and early morning.
Those same thoughts turned to her nephew Victan. She first assigned him to be V's contact after the meeting as a way to get V's measure as well as getting Victan's feet wet. Some may call that nepotism but that only applies if the one that got the position via connections was incompetent, and her boy was anything BUT. She made sure of that.
W kept silent when V first contacted Victan and watched as he meticulously took notes even though she had someone writing along in just the other room. She rose an eyebrow when her subordinate called V ma'am, something that made her nephew sweat but he didn't let it show in his voice to his credit. She heard him mutter when he thinks he's alone she does that just to mess with him. (She does sometimes but he doesn't need to know that.) to be fair, V's tone made her sound like a professional so that was a point in her favor.
Things kept heating up between the tech-priests as time went on what with this mysterious 'Explorator Vita' causing quite a stir. W didn't have a picture of the new Magos, but what her only contact in the Mechanicus could forward to her, they were an explorator that has been excavating an ancient site for the last 300 years. Something W highly doubts is true, while she knew the electronic hogs kept more secrets than all the nations combined, the timing of the Explorator surfacing not long after V made contact was too coincidental despite the supposed years of separation between their appearances.
Still, with the aid of V manufacturing what they needed with the books she provided, Aevon's tech base was growing by the day. The young having a base knowledge to go off of, despite some of them being snapped up by the Mechanicus means they needed the local encalve's help less and less. Something which no doubt hurt their standing among the other enclaves. W was still skeptical when Victan proposed a mining town established near V to help out their benefactor and asking for weapons with both offers being separate from each other. The ACI head had to give credit to him though when V accepted both deals. He was also sure V had hidden weapons at her manufacturing base and she could admit, victan made a convincing argument it was highly unlikely someone like V wouldn't have defenses in place to protect her assets. W knew she could trust V. But she also knew things would boil over sooner or later.
So she made the hard choice and contacted V to see if she would take in her nephew.
W was happy V accepted but she was so sad to see him go. And so worried. She knows V hasn't revealed everything to her and her nephew meeting them could have all kinds of consequences. Despite not showing it to the rest of the Bureau, she could not stop worrying about Victan. She already lost her husband, she can't lose her nephew either. Wilash wasn't sure if she could keep going if she did.
When one month later, Victan contacted her via video call, she nearly lost her composure even though she was in her office alone. Accepting the call, she got a clear picture of her nephew, smiling genuinely. Wilash didn't bother holding back her smile. "Vic." She spoke softly.
"Hi mom," He said back, waving to her, fingers together but the thumb just apart, "Sorry for not calling sooner,"
Important message
"It's alright," W responded, grabbing a pen and some papers then began to write, "I'm pretty busy so I'll have to work and talk."
Ready to receive
"Alright," Victan spoke, turning his hand with one finger partly uncurled as he did "got to meet V, she's really nice."
True
"Oh? That's good to know." W talked as she tapped her pen against her chin in a rhythm while scrutinizing a paper. "Meet anyone else?"
Magos?
"Yeah, Anexa." Nodding while blinking before flexing his left hand a few times. "I like her but she's a bit sassy and is usually either studying or researching something. Usually."
Confirmed. Anexa former Mechanicus.
"Anyway," Victan wrapped up, hands apart before coming together, "I gotta get back to work. Lots to do."
Background established. Forming connections.
W sighed before nodding at him, "Always so much to do. I love you honey."
Contact when possible.
"Love you too, auntie." victan responded then cut the connection.
W made sure Victan called her to 'reassure' her every three months at least. Every time he did, she would learn more and more about the web her boy was crafting. Vita, (He confirmed that was her real name but he couldn't say more as Vita was a code black, a secret that must not be known.) let Victan take over her Explorator alter-ego and began talking to the enclaves. Trading information, technology and favors for more information about the enclaves, who to look out for, the location of hidden bases, even some of the launch codes to the kilsats in orbit. Victan assured her Vita had a way of dealing with those.
"I trained that boy too well." The lead agent muttered to herself, head in her palms.
Meanwhile, W did her best to lead the Mechanicus on a merry chase to buy them time. The information being sent her way helped the ACI make sure the local enclave didn't have the time to focus on what Vita was doing. False information, items being lost or destroyed, cargo not arriving on time, any and all acts of sabotage was used to keep them occupied while Victan prepared something. W didn't know what but he informed her the Mechanicus will not be a threat when the plan is complete.
W wasn't sure what she was expecting but it certainly wasn't a video of Explorator Vita blowing up, taking Magos Thalya with her.
Not three minutes later she saw Vita's announcement via her nephew sending the live feed directly to her personal cogitator. Vita spoke, "Members of the mechanicus, you have likely seen the recording of my meeting with Magos Thalya, and how she tried to assassinate me some minutes ago." She smiles, it was not a nice one. "She was meeting with a servitor mimic of mine, remotely piloted. The moment she attacked, I detonated the bomb contained in its torso. I'm safe in an undisclosed location, and Magos Thalya is dead. It's time for us to discuss the future of the Mechanicus on Denva Secundus." Then the transmission cut out.
W felt an odd mixture of pride and mortal terror. "Victan," Wilash, head back with her eyes closed, groaned out in a tone that is both proud and exasperated.
The next two years things did not seem to change all that much. Her nephew still gave her updates but is was not looking good in the enclaves with many of the older tech-priests refusing to work with Explorator Vita and much to W's frustartions, this was out of her hands. she had to trust her boy, Victan and V they have the situation handled.
Then the other shoe dropped when an agent burst into her office, informing her three kilsats fired.
Wilash's heart leapt into her throat when she got the news. Thankfully, the kilsats hit the mountain range near Aevon. Though, the politicians were not happy to hear that, stating the bombs caused a mass panic among other things. She reassured them the bombs didn't kill anyone and the kilsats were destroyed not long after, but they were still upset with everything that happened.
"Well, V is going to make sure the Mechanicus can't do anything about during the next year." W spoke firmly.
"You're certain?" Vren questioned.
W nodded. "When V is successful, we'll finally be free of the tech-priests' control."
Vren took a deep breath before responding, "Meaning I'll have to come up with an excuse to the populace in the meantime."
"At least you have a straightforward answer," W spoke.
"Speaking to the public is my job, W," Vren responded writing an outline of his speech. "Yours is to keep us updated as the situation unfolds. I would rather not have anymore surprises."
W nodded and left Vren's office.
The next year consisted of keeping track both the Mechanicus' movements and Vita's. W read report after report about how the Mechanicus were unable to communicate with each other, several of them surrendering outright after the kilsats proved to be ineffective and destroyed. Vita's stealth fighters destroying every ICBM launched by Pyrath enclave. Shuttles full of heavily armed soldiers attacking Pyrath enclave and several others, taking heavy casualties as she does so.
'This proves she's more of a diplomat and not a commander.' W thought, reading the latest report about the siege of Pyrath. 'I'm not sure weather that's a good or a bad thing.' What concerns W the most is how Vita was able to hide all this for the past six decades and how she built up so quickly.
She hears someone knocking. "Enter," W says without looking up.
"Ma'am." The agent, Shanak from the sound of his voice speaks, "we've managed to secure a body from V's forces and. . ." He trails off.
"And what?" W looks up, Shanak was never unsure when he delivered his reports.
He grimaced and spoke "Best you come and see, ma'am."
W followed the agent to the autopsy room and, upon entering saw a technician, one of their best, standing over the body laid out on the table along with the doctor. The oddest thing the ACI head noticed there was no blood.
"What's going on?" She snapped, the personnel standing to attention.
"Boss," the doctor spoke. "The corpse the field agents secured is. Well."
"It ain't a corpse at all." The technician finished.
That got W's full attention. Walking up to the man. "What do you mean?"
The man responded, hands raised, "I mean there isn't a scrap of flesh in this thing. It's completely a machine."
"What?" W questioned. The technician gestured to the body and now that she got a good look, he was right.
The body had taken what looks like a plasma blast to the chest, melting and fusing the chestplate but the rest of the body was intact. The arms and legs had musculature similar to that of a human but it seemed denser and no doubt much stronger. The chest was partly melted but what survived still held several electronics she could not identify for the life of her but she was sure it helped this thing operate. The head was partially disassembled and what showed was not a human's face but a machine with the eyes replaced with cameras and a what she was sure was a central processing unit for the brain.
W wasn't sure what to make of this but if word got out it would not end well. she made a snap decision, "Don't breathe a word about this to anyone." She ordered, "and dispose of the body."
"Ma'am?" The doctor questioned.
"This is a code black." She confirmed.
The technician gathered up all the part while the doctor went to get a body bag, one meant to be thrown into the furnace. She knew this information would haunt them but that's what happens when you work in Counter Intelligence; you have to keep secrets that would destroy nations.
As she watched them worked, one thought was going though W's head, 'Who the hell are you Vita?'
Agent W (or Wilash as her mother called her) knew things were going to go bad when the Mechanicus got upset, especially when it came to their monopoly on technology. More than once during her tenure as head of ACI, factories they thought were secret were blown up with the Mechanicus denying they had a hand in the matter and said it was the will of the Omnissiah they were lost. Any time they tried to understand the tech, the people involved were either recruited, killed, or recruited. That's not mentioning everything else they've done to maintain their stranglehold. The tech-priests may project a untied front, but she knew better than anyone they squabbled as much, if not more so, as the leaders of each of the nations, even if they did so in their screechy language.
When she learned of this V character from Tallis Vren's communications with her, she was told she would be meeting this unknown person, (No one could find any information about her, which made it all the more sketchy. Everyone leaves a trail of some kind in this day and age.) she knew there was a good chance she'll die. That's something that is expected in her line of work, especially when dealing with those toaster-lovers as her colleagues like to call them. When she learned of V's capability to manufacture what they need without going through the tech-priests, she decided to take the risk.
And that risk is still paying dividends to this day.
While W was positive the cogitator banks had back doors installed and V could listen in on the com-links, (some may called that paranoid but when you're the head of Counter Intelligence, paranoia is a requirement.) the aid the mysterious woman provided helped them bridge the gap with the cog-boys, especially when they got their hands on the uplifting primers. Not to mention her leader actually doing their jobs (for the most part) when they got the meds they severely needed. It wouldn't surprise W if the gearhumpers were deliberately holding the medicine back to keep their leaders and officers from being to competent. The head of ACI was still surprised at how much information V willingly given them about herself, though how much of it was true was the question. Sill, two things the veteran agent was sure of was V's dislike of the Mechanicus and the Imperium, and the knowledge about the Mechanicus' inner workings. Giving the ACI false information about the tech-priests helps neither of them.
V may be an ancient as she put it, but she was still human. A human worth allying with when she revealed the Juvenant. W knew time was the one thing no one could beat, she thought so until V revealed them she can manufacture a drug that can halt the ageing process. The woman had no shame admitting her jaw dropped when it was revealed. W thought something like that was the realm of fantasy like the Emperor's Angels but if the people of long pass could make that, then what else was true?
Those kind of thoughts kept Wilash up well into the night and early morning.
Those same thoughts turned to her nephew Victan. She first assigned him to be V's contact after the meeting as a way to get V's measure as well as getting Victan's feet wet. Some may call that nepotism but that only applies if the one that got the position via connections was incompetent, and her boy was anything BUT. She made sure of that.
W kept silent when V first contacted Victan and watched as he meticulously took notes even though she had someone writing along in just the other room. She rose an eyebrow when her subordinate called V ma'am, something that made her nephew sweat but he didn't let it show in his voice to his credit. She heard him mutter when he thinks he's alone she does that just to mess with him. (She does sometimes but he doesn't need to know that.) to be fair, V's tone made her sound like a professional so that was a point in her favor.
Things kept heating up between the tech-priests as time went on what with this mysterious 'Explorator Vita' causing quite a stir. W didn't have a picture of the new Magos, but what her only contact in the Mechanicus could forward to her, they were an explorator that has been excavating an ancient site for the last 300 years. Something W highly doubts is true, while she knew the electronic hogs kept more secrets than all the nations combined, the timing of the Explorator surfacing not long after V made contact was too coincidental despite the supposed years of separation between their appearances.
Still, with the aid of V manufacturing what they needed with the books she provided, Aevon's tech base was growing by the day. The young having a base knowledge to go off of, despite some of them being snapped up by the Mechanicus means they needed the local encalve's help less and less. Something which no doubt hurt their standing among the other enclaves. W was still skeptical when Victan proposed a mining town established near V to help out their benefactor and asking for weapons with both offers being separate from each other. The ACI head had to give credit to him though when V accepted both deals. He was also sure V had hidden weapons at her manufacturing base and she could admit, victan made a convincing argument it was highly unlikely someone like V wouldn't have defenses in place to protect her assets. W knew she could trust V. But she also knew things would boil over sooner or later.
So she made the hard choice and contacted V to see if she would take in her nephew.
W was happy V accepted but she was so sad to see him go. And so worried. She knows V hasn't revealed everything to her and her nephew meeting them could have all kinds of consequences. Despite not showing it to the rest of the Bureau, she could not stop worrying about Victan. She already lost her husband, she can't lose her nephew either. Wilash wasn't sure if she could keep going if she did.
When one month later, Victan contacted her via video call, she nearly lost her composure even though she was in her office alone. Accepting the call, she got a clear picture of her nephew, smiling genuinely. Wilash didn't bother holding back her smile. "Vic." She spoke softly.
"Hi mom," He said back, waving to her, fingers together but the thumb just apart, "Sorry for not calling sooner,"
Important message
"It's alright," W responded, grabbing a pen and some papers then began to write, "I'm pretty busy so I'll have to work and talk."
Ready to receive
"Alright," Victan spoke, turning his hand with one finger partly uncurled as he did "got to meet V, she's really nice."
True
"Oh? That's good to know." W talked as she tapped her pen against her chin in a rhythm while scrutinizing a paper. "Meet anyone else?"
Magos?
"Yeah, Anexa." Nodding while blinking before flexing his left hand a few times. "I like her but she's a bit sassy and is usually either studying or researching something. Usually."
Confirmed. Anexa former Mechanicus.
"Anyway," Victan wrapped up, hands apart before coming together, "I gotta get back to work. Lots to do."
Background established. Forming connections.
W sighed before nodding at him, "Always so much to do. I love you honey."
Contact when possible.
"Love you too, auntie." victan responded then cut the connection.
W made sure Victan called her to 'reassure' her every three months at least. Every time he did, she would learn more and more about the web her boy was crafting. Vita, (He confirmed that was her real name but he couldn't say more as Vita was a code black, a secret that must not be known.) let Victan take over her Explorator alter-ego and began talking to the enclaves. Trading information, technology and favors for more information about the enclaves, who to look out for, the location of hidden bases, even some of the launch codes to the kilsats in orbit. Victan assured her Vita had a way of dealing with those.
"I trained that boy too well." The lead agent muttered to herself, head in her palms.
Meanwhile, W did her best to lead the Mechanicus on a merry chase to buy them time. The information being sent her way helped the ACI make sure the local enclave didn't have the time to focus on what Vita was doing. False information, items being lost or destroyed, cargo not arriving on time, any and all acts of sabotage was used to keep them occupied while Victan prepared something. W didn't know what but he informed her the Mechanicus will not be a threat when the plan is complete.
W wasn't sure what she was expecting but it certainly wasn't a video of Explorator Vita blowing up, taking Magos Thalya with her.
Not three minutes later she saw Vita's announcement via her nephew sending the live feed directly to her personal cogitator. Vita spoke, "Members of the mechanicus, you have likely seen the recording of my meeting with Magos Thalya, and how she tried to assassinate me some minutes ago." She smiles, it was not a nice one. "She was meeting with a servitor mimic of mine, remotely piloted. The moment she attacked, I detonated the bomb contained in its torso. I'm safe in an undisclosed location, and Magos Thalya is dead. It's time for us to discuss the future of the Mechanicus on Denva Secundus." Then the transmission cut out.
W felt an odd mixture of pride and mortal terror. "Victan," Wilash, head back with her eyes closed, groaned out in a tone that is both proud and exasperated.
The next two years things did not seem to change all that much. Her nephew still gave her updates but is was not looking good in the enclaves with many of the older tech-priests refusing to work with Explorator Vita and much to W's frustartions, this was out of her hands. she had to trust her boy, Victan and V they have the situation handled.
Then the other shoe dropped when an agent burst into her office, informing her three kilsats fired.
Wilash's heart leapt into her throat when she got the news. Thankfully, the kilsats hit the mountain range near Aevon. Though, the politicians were not happy to hear that, stating the bombs caused a mass panic among other things. She reassured them the bombs didn't kill anyone and the kilsats were destroyed not long after, but they were still upset with everything that happened.
"Well, V is going to make sure the Mechanicus can't do anything about during the next year." W spoke firmly.
"You're certain?" Vren questioned.
W nodded. "When V is successful, we'll finally be free of the tech-priests' control."
Vren took a deep breath before responding, "Meaning I'll have to come up with an excuse to the populace in the meantime."
"At least you have a straightforward answer," W spoke.
"Speaking to the public is my job, W," Vren responded writing an outline of his speech. "Yours is to keep us updated as the situation unfolds. I would rather not have anymore surprises."
W nodded and left Vren's office.
The next year consisted of keeping track both the Mechanicus' movements and Vita's. W read report after report about how the Mechanicus were unable to communicate with each other, several of them surrendering outright after the kilsats proved to be ineffective and destroyed. Vita's stealth fighters destroying every ICBM launched by Pyrath enclave. Shuttles full of heavily armed soldiers attacking Pyrath enclave and several others, taking heavy casualties as she does so.
'This proves she's more of a diplomat and not a commander.' W thought, reading the latest report about the siege of Pyrath. 'I'm not sure weather that's a good or a bad thing.' What concerns W the most is how Vita was able to hide all this for the past six decades and how she built up so quickly.
She hears someone knocking. "Enter," W says without looking up.
"Ma'am." The agent, Shanak from the sound of his voice speaks, "we've managed to secure a body from V's forces and. . ." He trails off.
"And what?" W looks up, Shanak was never unsure when he delivered his reports.
He grimaced and spoke "Best you come and see, ma'am."
W followed the agent to the autopsy room and, upon entering saw a technician, one of their best, standing over the body laid out on the table along with the doctor. The oddest thing the ACI head noticed there was no blood.
"What's going on?" She snapped, the personnel standing to attention.
"Boss," the doctor spoke. "The corpse the field agents secured is. Well."
"It ain't a corpse at all." The technician finished.
That got W's full attention. Walking up to the man. "What do you mean?"
The man responded, hands raised, "I mean there isn't a scrap of flesh in this thing. It's completely a machine."
"What?" W questioned. The technician gestured to the body and now that she got a good look, he was right.
The body had taken what looks like a plasma blast to the chest, melting and fusing the chestplate but the rest of the body was intact. The arms and legs had musculature similar to that of a human but it seemed denser and no doubt much stronger. The chest was partly melted but what survived still held several electronics she could not identify for the life of her but she was sure it helped this thing operate. The head was partially disassembled and what showed was not a human's face but a machine with the eyes replaced with cameras and a what she was sure was a central processing unit for the brain.
W wasn't sure what to make of this but if word got out it would not end well. she made a snap decision, "Don't breathe a word about this to anyone." She ordered, "and dispose of the body."
"Ma'am?" The doctor questioned.
"This is a code black." She confirmed.
The technician gathered up all the part while the doctor went to get a body bag, one meant to be thrown into the furnace. She knew this information would haunt them but that's what happens when you work in Counter Intelligence; you have to keep secrets that would destroy nations.
As she watched them worked, one thought was going though W's head, 'Who the hell are you Vita?'
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It needs either another turn (with a poor success or better) or you to just wait 20ish years for the mechanicus enclave to do it on their own.
How about a little bit of sweetener, anything you roll over a poor success (if you roll again) improves the loot roll. If you let the mechanicus do it it's just a flat roll.
How about a little bit of sweetener, anything you roll over a poor success (if you roll again) improves the loot roll. If you let the mechanicus do it it's just a flat roll.
- Location
- US
For reference if anyone's hoping for Navigator samples as loot, we have this statement from the genebank payload:
So it goes:
So it goes:
- Superhuman capabilities
- Psykers
- Space Marines
- Navigators
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Turn 14
New
[X] Plan: Sorting out the New Order
-[X] Diplomacy: The Summit of Denva II
--[X] Well, with the back of the regressive folks decisively broken, the time has come to build something new. Fortunately, you're a lot better at this than you are at kinetic encounters. Using the contacts you've forged, the trust you've garnered, bring everyone to the bargaining table, acting as both mediator and arbitrator to any agreements made. At the end of the day, a world may be able to survive with their guns pointed at each other, but it'll always be an unstable situation that'll fall apart when an unplanned pressure is put on it. The Mechanicus of Denva must join hands with the people of Denva--this isn't even us saying that they need to give up all the secrets--we know and understand full well that Technology is hard and acquiring mastery of even a single branch of it can be the work of a lifetime even if you had unlimited access to knowledge--but extending that monopoly to even basic of the basic techniques and disciplines is doing nobody any favors--the Mechanicus need to waste time and energy on simple maintenance and manufacturing that could be taught to a well trained technician instead of furthering their Question for Knowledge, and the people meanwhile are bottlenecked in their growth and development. Nobody benefits from this, and we have a chance now to establish a system that actually gives everyone what they want instead of spending tremendous energy just to build and point weapons at each other. Help them out, provide incentives, anecdotes, and evidence backing our position, and hopefully we can develop a system that can stand the test of time. (TL;DR: Use all the groundwork we've built up over the course of the game to help hammer out a new order in Denva II, one that hopefully makes it damn clear that you can't expect to have your scientists have to do all the basic manufacturing and maintenance and still expect to have the time to further their own development. Use our database to support our arguments as needed, and don't be too afraid to release non militarized designs and concepts as carrots too.)
--[X] Victan can hopefully give us a bonus on this.
-[X] Diploversion?: Also, what's with the station?
--[X] You're willing to continue the Work with Klyssar Station--goodness knows we'd like some reasonably up to date charts so we can figure out what's going on in the area ourselves. Promise our support, and prove it by way of not only sending them supplies, but reinforcements as well to help chew through their defenses. We'll also send our already established remote proxy to help coordinate any efforts, and determine f there's anything else we can do to assist the project.
-[X] Construction: (2,750 Ground BP, 500 Void BP)
--[X] 6x Spaceports (-600 BP, -150 CP)
---[X] We're going to build these on the spot they already nuked, because hey, it's Free Real Estate.
--[X] 60x Shuttles (-1200 BP, -300 CP)
--[X] Make good our Combat Losses (-270 BP)
--[X] Klyssa Station Dig Supplies (-250 BP, shipped using available infrastructure this turn)
--[X] Incentive Budget for the Summit and Rent (-430 BP)
--[X] 1x Orbital Manufactory (-500 VBP, -50 CP)
-[X] Research (200 + 25 RP)
--[X] Biology is kinda wet (75 + 25 Anexa RP)
--[X] A Study in Physics (125/150 RP)
-[X] [ANEXA] Research - Biology is Kinda Wet
-[X] [VICTAN] Communication - We're doing a lot of that this turn I notice, and I don't think we're being very subtle about it.
-[X] Diplomacy: The Summit of Denva II
--[X] Well, with the back of the regressive folks decisively broken, the time has come to build something new. Fortunately, you're a lot better at this than you are at kinetic encounters. Using the contacts you've forged, the trust you've garnered, bring everyone to the bargaining table, acting as both mediator and arbitrator to any agreements made. At the end of the day, a world may be able to survive with their guns pointed at each other, but it'll always be an unstable situation that'll fall apart when an unplanned pressure is put on it. The Mechanicus of Denva must join hands with the people of Denva--this isn't even us saying that they need to give up all the secrets--we know and understand full well that Technology is hard and acquiring mastery of even a single branch of it can be the work of a lifetime even if you had unlimited access to knowledge--but extending that monopoly to even basic of the basic techniques and disciplines is doing nobody any favors--the Mechanicus need to waste time and energy on simple maintenance and manufacturing that could be taught to a well trained technician instead of furthering their Question for Knowledge, and the people meanwhile are bottlenecked in their growth and development. Nobody benefits from this, and we have a chance now to establish a system that actually gives everyone what they want instead of spending tremendous energy just to build and point weapons at each other. Help them out, provide incentives, anecdotes, and evidence backing our position, and hopefully we can develop a system that can stand the test of time. (TL;DR: Use all the groundwork we've built up over the course of the game to help hammer out a new order in Denva II, one that hopefully makes it damn clear that you can't expect to have your scientists have to do all the basic manufacturing and maintenance and still expect to have the time to further their own development. Use our database to support our arguments as needed, and don't be too afraid to release non militarized designs and concepts as carrots too.)
--[X] Victan can hopefully give us a bonus on this.
-[X] Diploversion?: Also, what's with the station?
--[X] You're willing to continue the Work with Klyssar Station--goodness knows we'd like some reasonably up to date charts so we can figure out what's going on in the area ourselves. Promise our support, and prove it by way of not only sending them supplies, but reinforcements as well to help chew through their defenses. We'll also send our already established remote proxy to help coordinate any efforts, and determine f there's anything else we can do to assist the project.
-[X] Construction: (2,750 Ground BP, 500 Void BP)
--[X] 6x Spaceports (-600 BP, -150 CP)
---[X] We're going to build these on the spot they already nuked, because hey, it's Free Real Estate.
--[X] 60x Shuttles (-1200 BP, -300 CP)
--[X] Make good our Combat Losses (-270 BP)
--[X] Klyssa Station Dig Supplies (-250 BP, shipped using available infrastructure this turn)
--[X] Incentive Budget for the Summit and Rent (-430 BP)
--[X] 1x Orbital Manufactory (-500 VBP, -50 CP)
-[X] Research (200 + 25 RP)
--[X] Biology is kinda wet (75 + 25 Anexa RP)
--[X] A Study in Physics (125/150 RP)
-[X] [ANEXA] Research - Biology is Kinda Wet
-[X] [VICTAN] Communication - We're doing a lot of that this turn I notice, and I don't think we're being very subtle about it.
In many respects, you control Denva Secundus now. You just crushed the only force that could reasonably oppose you. The orbitals belong to you, and while there's an argument that the local governments could drown you in bodies if they wanted, you could probably produce bots quickly enough to make that a losing proposition.
Of course, that would involve an enormous amount of needless death. So let's try to avoid that scenario.
It's a good thing that there's probably no need for that outcome. You're in rather good standing with Aevon, and while all of the other nations are certainly unsettled by the assault shuttles tearing through their skies and the explosions in orbit, it's unlikely they'll be upset when they learn that the mechancius's stranglehold over their planet has been lifted.
Though they'll probably assume I'm just here to impose my own stranglehold in return. Time to disabuse them of that notion, and the best way to do that is to involve the friends I've already made.
The admission chime on Victan's living quarters chime as you request entrance. It's granted a moment later and your green-haired body flounces through the door. "Hey, whatcha up to?"
He leans back and stretched from where he was focused intently on several wide screens arrayed around his desk. "Trying to determine the new information we have access to in the archives with our new collection of codes. It's not as much as I'd hoped, but it's more than nothing. How much do you know about navigators?"
You shrug. "Some. They were an alternate method of warp-navigation than the void abacus I have. I only talked to one once, but they seemed pretty arrogant."
Victan does a double-take. "You have a void abacus?"
"Yup!" You grin at him. "How else did you think we were going to leave Denva?"
He raises his hands defensively. "I've been worried about keeping the population of this planet alive."
"So have I," your reply is still a bit smug. "But we also need to think about the future. And now that the mechanicus is gone, we can start doing it more seriously."
He nods. "Good. I'll send you the file. It's about time we make an announcement to the various nations. What's the plan?"
"Do you have any ideas?" You ask, curious what he'll come up with and mildly distracted as you skim through the files. It looks like the Navigators have set themselves up as monopolists over warp travel, charging incredible premiums for anybody to use their gift and destroying any other options.
It might even be a problem for my plan to build void abacuses to enable warp travel. But I feel like giving another part of the imperium reason to destroy me isn't my biggest concern.
Victan's been giving your question some thought. "Obivously we need to spread the same story we used for Aevon and the mechanicus. You're an ancient explorer, trapped in stasis. Now you've risen up to command the mechanicus, and want to institute better policies between them."
"I'd prefer to let them navigate it themselves," you say, flopping down onto a chair. "I'm not going to be around forever, and I don't want to impose a setup that will collapse the instant I leave."
Victan frowns. "That... could work. Should I reach out to the remaining enclaves and have them open communications with their local governments?"
You shake your head. "Let's set up a grand Summit, with all of the governments of Denva and all of the leaders of the mechanicus. Then we'll have them hammer something out, with me looming overhead to make sure everybody plays fair."
"You mean that I'll set up a summit, don't you?" Victan sounds a bit grouchy.
"Well." Your smile turns wicked. "You're the one with contacts in Aevon, and I'll need them to vouch that this is serious. The best place to hold it is probably in Aevon." You bounce back to your feet. "Have fun! I'm off to talk to the mechanicus about that navigator station."
Victan shivers slightly. "Ah, well. Have fun with that. It sounds light a nightmare up there."
You leave his room, humming a little tune "Oh a nightmare from the minds of mankind ~"
Your next order of business is getting in contact with "Explorator" Sigulus, the one who's in charge of the mechanicus expedition in Kylssar's Nest. Her messages are calm and collected, but there's a clear undertone of stridency to them, likely caused by the fact that she's dependent on constant resupply for survival.
You've had a lot on your plate, and you haven't decided until now how to approach the station. You weren't about to leave them up there to starve, but you haven't been sure until recently how much effort you were going to put into the station.
Probably a lot. If a rich and secretive house put defenses that strong on it there's probably something to steal. Well, beyond the station. And the station itself is a prize that would be nice to have.
It is a giant empty city floating in space. If you could claim it then it might be a nice cornerstone to anchor your void industry, or you could help the humans recolonize it. You want a home port, and that station is likely the most literal friendly spaceport you can find. Once it actually houses people again, that is.
You compose a message back to Sigulus, as Magos Vita, promising both their full request of supplies as well as "additional reinforcements to aid in the exploration of Klyssar's Nest."
In short order you receive a polite reply that is nearly dripping with flattery, and you get the sense that she's relieved but slightly skeptical. That's fine. You'll just have to prove your intent with deeds, instead of words. And part of that is actually building stuff. Starting by rebuilding everything you lost during the last little... kerfuffle.
+4 Basic Stealth Fighters
+1400 Heavy humanized infantry bots
+500 Medium humanized infantry bots
+200 light humanized infantry bots
It doesn't take long to get in touch with the rest of the mechanics and coordinate delivering the supplies. They're at first confused, then elated when they hear that they're off the hook for manufacturing the supplies and delivering the necessary recruits and servitors. It's been a drain on the enclaves ever since most of the mechanicus departed Denva, and there was apparently some quiet panic going on about how they were going to maintain supply drops now that several of the enclaves have been nearly destroyed.
Oh - on that note, you remind all of them that the creation of new servitors is forbidden. Verboten. Done. Stopped. You'll shoot them if they try it. That edict costs you some brownie points, but not more than you earned by lifting them of their burden to supply the station expedition - and then you promise to give them some primers on robotics that'll let them replace their servitors with basic bots.
Then you get back into it with Victan, diving into the details of the conference. The ACI is unsurprisingly well-connected with the political hierarchy of Aevon, and once they hear your plan things start moving fairly quickly. There's not a lot of pushback from the government, and you wonder how much of that is because they see this as in their best interest and how much of it is that you've been delivering priceless technology, intelligence and medicines to them for several decades.
Regardless, it's best not to look a gift hose in the mouth, and Victan organizes the political side of things while you reach out to get the tech-priests aboard. They're uncertain of the whole idea at first, especially the part where you want them to leave their enclaves and come in-person. But you remind them that you'll be guaranteeing security, and this is the path forward for the mechanicus on Denva. They can either work with the local governments or get torn apart by them.
After all, the mechanicus doesn't have nukes anymore. Or they basically don't - since you've promised to shoot down any weapons of mass destruction and punish the one who fired them. By strapping them to the next warhead and then firing that.
It takes almost a year to organize and you're sure that it was a bureaucratic nightmare to set up, but you're not in charge of that side of things. You're just happy that the summit is underway - in the house of the lower of Aevon's governing body. On one side of the room are five delegations, one from each of Denva Secundus's governments. They've all got the allowed twenty representatives and ten security guards. On the other half of the room are the dozen leaders of the mechanicus, all of whom were part of the Cogitare Exploraratum and few of whom were alive before the mechanicus abandoned Denva secundus. They've each got an escort of guards, but not all were able to source true skitarii and several of them are guarded by the most-augmented techpriests still alive in their enclave. You spot at least two acolytes who appear to have been handed a lasgun.
It all pales behind the fifty heavily-armored humanized combat bots you have spread out around the room. Not everybody recognizes what they are, but everybody knows advanced technology when they see it, and the plates of heavy armor and array of plasma and melta weaponry make it clear that your guarantee of security is deadly serious.
Which is a good thing, because the atmosphere in the room is... tense.
The politicians of the various countries don't exactly know what to expect. To them the tech-priests are a sleeping giant, one who demands tribute and returns morsels of advanced technology and the maintenance they need to keep their militaries in working order. Then, last year war came to their world but left them untouched. They don't know what happened, why it happened or who perpetrated it. All they know is that the Mechanicus has a new leader who is claiming to be an "ancient" from before the Imperium. You're pretty sure most of them don't believe it, and are waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The representatives from Aevon are calmer. They know - or believe - that you've sided with them over the mechanicus before, and your guise as an unagumented human woman is designed to put the human nations of the room at ease.
The mechanicus knows what to expect the best, and they're not looking forward to it. To them, everybody on the other side of the room is a rube. Somebody without a speck of knowledge, unknowing of the secrets of the machine god or the workings of technology. Then there's the fact that you've showed up in your fully human avatar, and you can't help but notice many scanners subtly directed your way to see if you're actually as unaugmented as you appear. You don't do anything to disrupt their scans - they're likely to pick up that you're not fully organic, but they won't be able to pick up more than that, which suits your needs just fine.
Regardless, it's time. You pound the gavel twice to summon everybody's attention - you've always wanted to do that - then you begin speaking. "Thank you for coming to this Summit, where we shall shape the future of Denva Secundus." You pause to give those words a moment to sink in, pleased to hear complete silence in response.
Good, everybody's paying attention.
"My name is Vita. You've heard who I am. I am an ancient, an explorer from the Stellar Federation, which was a precursor to the Imperium. My ship crashed on Denva Secundus more than ten thousand years ago and I entered stasis as it self-repaired. I awoke about sixty years ago, and have taken steps since then to secure myself, and work towards my goal of building myself a new ship."
There's some number of disbelieving looks, but Aevon has vouched for you in every possible way, which is why every country sent a full diplomatic team.
"I masterminded the attacks against the mechanicus last year. Magos Thalya and Magos Gammian held a blade to the neck of every person on Denva, not only in the weapons of mass destruction in their silos but in a network of orbital bombardment satellites that had the capability to completely destroy this planet."
There's an audible gasp at those words, but you continue.
"All of those weapons are now destroyed or disabled, and it is time to discuss what will happen next. You are here to discuss the future of Devna secundus, for it is time for the mechanicus of Denva to join hands with the people of Denva, and forge a future going forward."
Your statement is met with a fair number of frowns, but nobody is shouting yet, so you'll take that as a win.
"I believe in knowledge, in progress. In the Quest of Knowledge unending. If you work together then you can both benefit. The people of Denva can learn new science, gain the ability to build technology that will improve the lives of everybody on this planet. You can lift yourself up to the stars, to security and prosperity yet undreamed of. The wonders of your ancestors are within your grasp, but it will require your own hands to build them anew."
Mechandendrites rattle as various tech-priests shift uneasily. They're all in for getting more resources, but you don't have to be involved in the digital communication between them to know that they're upset about having to give up any technological knowledge at all.
So you turn your attention to them. "Thus freed from drudgery, the mechanicus will be free to peruse mastery of their technology, unfettered by the need to hold down the people of a planet lest they be a threat. Your true secrets will remain your own, but you will be free to investigate and discover technology of the ancients."
The mood in the room is teetering on the edge of a knife. Both sides are excited by what you're offering, but too they're distrustful of everybody else to trust that your promised golden age will come to pass.
How do you get past distrust? Bribery.
"Because, of course, I am an ancient. I have seen - and built - wonders of technology beyond imagination. Space elevators, ships larger than the navigator station." You shake your head. "We won't star there, but I am distributing technological uplift guides to you now, that you are free to use. They contain a basic primer of advanced technology, as well as a guide on how to quickly upgrade your manufacturing to Imperial levels. Additionally, I will be building a factory in each nation that will be able to produce advanced parts which you can use to build more factories, or whatever else you desire."
Though I won't be uploading any military blueprints, and do have the ability to monitor what they're making.
The tech-priests shift again. You're not offering up their secrets, but you are offering up secrets, and that makes them nervous. "The Mechanicus of course will receive their own prizes, beginning with knowledge of basic robotics, and improved manufacturing techniques."
Then you clap your hands together. "Now, I open the floor for discussions, according to the agreed-upon rules for this debate."
A dozen attention lights spring to life and you sigh inwardly. This is going to be a long summit.
At least it's only taking a fourth of your attention. The rest is with your tech-priest avatar as it soars through the void on one of your assault shuttles, heading to the station of Klyssar's Nest. A trio of other shuttles follow along, carrying two hundred heavy and two hundred medium combat bots. You're coming in just ahead of the supplies you promised to tech-priest Sigulus, though those are flying on more normal mechanicus transports.
It's a long flight for a shuttle from the planet to the station, but finally you arrive and get close-up scans of the station and the mechanicus outpost aboard it. You can't help but shake your head. It's... small. And the shuttle dock they have is jury-rigged together and only large enough for a single shuttle at a time. Your own shuttle docks first and the hatch slides aside to reveal Sigulus waiting for you, along with a half-dozen other tech-priests.
They're... thin. You don't think of normal tech-priests as rotund, but it's clear that the organic portions of the people manning the station are not well-nourished, and if the state of their equipment is anything to judge by then neither are their machines.
"%Magos Vita. I am explorator Sigulus.%" She greets you in the politest possible tones, then trails off as the combat bots begin to disembark behind you. "%Are these your... reinforcements?%"
"%Yes they are. We will be pushing forward in this station. I understand you have been denied the resources you need to make forward progress. That changes now. I have read the reports, but please give me a briefing.%" You inject humor into the side channels. "%I know the difference between reports and truth. I am here for the truth%."
"%Yes, Explorator Vita. Please follow me.%"
"%And stop calling yourself Explorator. You're not, any more than this station is a ship. Though that can change. Demonstrate yourself well here and you may end up with more prestigious assignments%."
Like aboard my ship. Anexa could use a friend.
Sigulus takes you on a tour of the outpost, and then gives you a hacked-together briefing on the state of the exploration. You quickly revise your opinion of her downwards. She's steady and dogged. You'll give her that much. But she's not... smart. It seems like the mechanicus chose Sigulus for this position because they didn't think that she'd get ideas of her own where she was so far away from them.
Yeah, I'm not extending an offer to her after all.
In fact, it seems like one of the things they were worried about was this outpost becoming self-sufficient and cutting itself off from Denva Secundus altogether. So beyond assigning Sigulus they limited the amount of supplies delivered to ensure it was impossible to build up a surplus. Along the way they undercut any chance to make actual rapid progress in the investigation. This doesn't surprise you. You understand the mechanicus well enough at this point to know that this kind of self-sabotage is pretty much par for the course.
They have been able to secure a relatively accurate map of the station, and against it the amount of progress they've made is... well it's not exactly pitiful. In some ways they've cleared a large amount of the station. But it's less than ten percent of the massive volume, and they've done little more than run up against the actual security that's been put in place over the core areas of the station, like the docks, engineering, life support. That's not even to mention the truly secure areas of the station like the command center, the navigator and what look to you like an absurd amount of labspace tucked into the very center of the station.
"Right," You say in normal words, cutting off Sigulus's attempt to describe how they've made progress moving through the sewage system. "I'm taking over. The supplies should be arriving now, use them to repair and maintain your outpost. This place is a mess. Assume regular supply deliveries from here on out, don't try to scrounge. Actually fix stuff. I'm going to start probing towards the command center."
With that you walk out of the secured area, heading straight for the outpost's exit. Your combat bots follow along behind you, marching in perfect sync. There's a hatch that's been fashioned into an airlock, and it takes a while for you to cycle all of your bots through into the cold and dark hallways that await you.
There was a set of pressure suits, which aren't needed for pressure. The rest of the station is pressurized, it's just not heated, and the air hasn't been recirculated since the station was evacuated. You don't have detailed chemical sensors, but a normal human would probably get poisoned by the buildup of nasty gases, and they'd also freeze in relatively short order.
You don't have that problem, and march straight towards the nearest access point to the engineering complex. It's a few kilometers away, and you quickly get tired of drab and completely empty metal corridors. This seems like an awful place to live.
Here and there you find some detritus of exploration, a destroyed servitor, broken equipment too badly damaged to be worth salvaging. Once the long-dessicated corpse of some kind of hound-thing that looks like it was bred to be able to chew a hole in steel.
Finally you reach a secured hatch with a few burn-marks on the decking in front of it, and send a combat-bot forward to interface with the door. The moment it tries to plug into the console there's a discharge of electricty powerful enough to ionize the air and send broken pieces of formerly-combat bot flying in all directions.
Outwardly you sigh and order another bot forward. But inwardly you're thrilled. You're exploring again! In an ancient tomb! Well, evacuated station, whatever. But it's like something straight out of fiction! You, Vita, are boldly investigating a mysterious and deadly ruin with unknown treasures waiting!
The third bot manages to interface with the door control, which is definitely still receiving power from somewhere. It would need to be, for such a powerful shock of electricity to be its primary defense. The machine spirit on the inside is... disinclined to be cooperative, but you're able to jam it for the moment you need to unlatch the door, then you have a combat bot step through and blast the cogitator housing it.
Success.
Then panels on the walls open up and unleash a dozen heavily-armed combat servitors which blast your scout into vapor, then turn the corner and start exchanging fire with your own combat bots.
You sigh again, and are again inwardly thrilled. But this is going to take a while, and you request more bots from the surface - including a number of medium combat bots, if all they're going to do is trip traps and be pulverized there's not much reason to use the more expensive heavy bots.
Rolling Klyssar Station investigation - 70 + 10 = 80, good success!
The capability to jam machine spirits is invaluable as well, and you're able to use that to move rapidly through the core areas of the station, destroying security systems as you go. There's more defenses, more traps, more automated guns that would be impossible to defeat without losing anybody - if you were using an organic salvage team. But all of that is a lot less scary when you can treat combat bots as the disposable units they are.
-100 Heavy humanized infantry bots
-200 Medium humanized infantry bots
There is one episode that is... quite alarming through. You're penetrating into the dockyard control system when a rapid series of signals jump between your bots and ping your avatar. They seem to be trying to hijack your bots and fork themselves into everything the bots are connected to. You have good firewalls in your combat bots to prevent any sort of cyberwarfare attack, but this attack blisters through that in ways that should be impossible. You're confused as to what's happened until the attack spreads down to your main signals hub on Denva Secundus, where it seems to home in on you specifically with an unerring precision that no worm this simple should possess.
But then it pings off of your mainframe - and your psychic shields take a small hit. The worms fall apart into a very simple piece of hacking code that should have had no ability to do any of the things its done. But that's what the psychic element was for.
-5 to Psychic Shielding
So that's scrapcode. Nasty shit.
That's not the end of it either - it only managed to penetrate into about a third of the combat bots you have on the station, the success seemingly based on luck instead of anything fancier. Those bots have disconnected from your network, and instead of powering down like they should they immediately raise their weapons and start firing on the uninfected bots. You have enough bots - and enough grasp of tactics - to subdue them. But it's still an unpleasant reminder that not everything works the same way it did fifteen thousand years ago.
-100 Heavy humanized infantry bots
Still, it's almost like this station is haunted by spoooky ghosts. It adds excitement! Right? Maybe I should just be scared.
You take some time to ensure that none of your other bots bear any trace of... anything, then take more precautions. Extra bots on standby in a shutdown state in case you need reinforcements on hand. But it doesn't happen again, and you're able to gain access to the rest of the critical systems, including main engineering and the central reactor, life support, the docks and the hydroponics core. You can't just destroy the machine spirits running these areas, but you can hack them.
Rolling Klyssar Station Control - 79+10, good success!
So you do. You're able to disconnect those areas of the station from the command center and over the course of several years tame their machine spirits to your will. It would take a fair amount of your attention and resources to actually control this station and keep it running effectively, but there's nothing stopping you from booting up the station and using it for your own purposes. That could be to convert it into orbital manufactories or shipyards, or use it to house people from Denva Secundus.
What defeats you are the defenses on the secured areas of the station that surround the actual command center, the navigator quarters and the research labs. They're not just formidable but actually absurd - lascannon batteries that automatically track and destroy any movement within their field of view, as well as a plasma-moat separating that section from the rest of the station. But you can't help but feel that whatever's worth guarding this well is worth the effort to get it, and you know that your curiosity is going to keep you at the problem until you find the solution.
Control of the Klyssar's Nest Station aquired!
Vote below on want to do with the station. It will cost you 500 CP to run Klyssar station, though if you manage to capture the command center intact that will drop to 100. You can either use it to house something like 5 million people or to build 50 orbital manufactories & one medium shipyard at half-cost (in BP, not CP).
At this point you really don't see any reason for Sigulus and the rest of the mechanicus presence here - though you suppose they probably could figure out a way around the innermost defenses, even if only by throwing detritus out to be obliterated and slowly wearing down the power reserves on the defensive guns. But that's probably about all they're good for.
Vote below on what to do with Sigulus - if you leave her here you'll have to pay the 250 bp/turn tax, but she and her team will be able to crack their way into the innermost areas in ~4 turns. If you bring them back to Denva you won't have to pay the tax but you'll have to crack the defenses yourself, which will only require a poor success, and any rollover from that roll will enhance the loot roll (a little bit).
It's a shame Anexa won't get any more company, but you're starting to realize that your standards are very high. You're honestly lucky that you have two crewmembers that you like so much, but you're not about to inflict anybody substandard on them.
Besides, you and Anexa have each other. You last determined that you both desperately needed some practical experience and understanding of biology before you could continue down cybernetics research. You'll give Anexa this much, when she sets her mind to it she's able to just power through things. She's basically been living in disused biology lab recently, and it's very much no longer disused.
Various incubators are full of growing cultures, and instruments hum as they process samples into usable data or synthesize complex chemicals - or fail to, and then you need to figure out what failed. You've been following along with everything as you both get various biological systems booted up and understand how they work and what you can do with them.
Your main body is in the lab with her, since Victan is out in the capitol of Aevon mediating the conference most of the time, and it's not like you want to show this body off. You like the impression it gives, but it's a "friends-only" type thing. And you like spending time with Anexa.
"Having fun?" You ask her as she's frowning at a readout.
"Hmm?" She asks as she surfaces from the data. "Ok, some. It's amazing to think how much knowledge there is here." She waves her hand around the room. "I thought it was just biology, but there's so much. Microbes are so different from humans, and genetics is entirely different from biochemistry. It's like the difference between metallurgy and mechanical engineering. Certainly related, but totally different!"
"Yeah, it's funny how much of science is like that. It's turtles all the way down."
"What?" She looks up at you and wrinkles her nose. "Turtles?"
"Oh. Let me point you at a book series. It's not science, but I think you'll like them."
Later on you have cause to regret your decision. It's not that Anexa's been neglecting her studies, but she's certainly not learning as much as she otherwise would have. And that's because she's gotten lost in archaic fiction that you pointed her to.
You however, are able to pursue the subject to your fascination and you have to admit, it's cool. Biology is so much... squishier than metal. So it's easy to dismiss. But ultimately it's a bunch of little nanomachines that got together and figured out how to self-replicate in the right chemical conditions. And after that, everything is life.
Researched Biology is kinda wet - rolled 19 + 20 = 39. Success!
No levels for Anexa, unfortunately. Though again, an education roll like this wouldn't have resulted in her levelling either.
Unlocked new research - An Introduction to Human Genetics (100 RP)
Unlocked new research - Does in vitro have something to do with wine? (200 RP)
Unlocked new research - You don't need no stinkin' medical school (100 RP)
Unlocked new research - Drugs? Drugs. (100 RP)
Unlocked new research - Juvenat Beginnings (600 RP)
You also spend a fair amount of time going through old physics literature. It was something of a hobby - or more accurately coping mechanism - that you picked up in the long years of slowtime where you had to entertain yourself, and now that you have more energy and brainpower it's nice to look back on everything you learned and fully understand it. You told Anexa that it's turtles all the way down, but they get infinitely small at some point. It's fun to understand how that works, and trying to figure out how some of the more esoteric technologies you've seen work based on those turtles.
Another thing you're working on is getting your launch infrastructure online. You have built up a good manufacturing base already, but now you want to build stuff in space. Which is a whole different matter, and you're going to need a lot of shuttles. First you consider building them nearby your base, but for the sake of the nearby communities developing nearby you decide to look elsewhere. Shuttles taking off and landing at every day and night would be pretty disruptive, after all.
You look farther afield and find the perfect spot. After all, it's easier to launch shuttles from higher elevations and that space there is nice and flat. Well. It's really not, but you can solve that! Honestly, you're losing out slightly on building a heavy-duty transit line between your base and the mountains, but the satisfaction of building your spaceports atop the site that Gammian nuked is just wonderful.
6x Spaceports constructed!
60x Shuttles constructed! 3000 ground-void BP conversion gained!
You've got a bit left over and use it to build a basic orbital manufactory. It looks kind of... lonely floating over Denva Secundus. It's just a small construction platform capable of building things in space, but it's the biggest thing in orbit right now. But you know that won't last long, and you're looking forward to Devna having it's own new constellation of orbital platforms.
Orbital Manufactory completed!
This entire time the diplomatic summit has been dragging on, and you've been paying attention, you swear! It's just... so boring. Everybody wants both the things you're offering and the things that they can give each other, but they also all want to secure the best deals possible, and some of the demands are frankly unreasonable. The mechanicus wants total independence to do whatever, and the governments want the mechanicus to basically become a combined R&D and manufacturing branch of themselves.
You're at the point where you're needing to step in with compromise plans on a semi-regular basis on most little points, and Victan's barely treading water keeping up with all of the complexities to help you propose reasonable plans. You'd hoped at the beginning of all this you could use this as a starting point and convince all of the governments of Denva to unify together.
That's not happening, and it's taken some effort to prevent each government from independently negotiating with the mechanicus in their area. But that sounds like a great way for things to turn out unevenly and the mechanicus to fleet to whoever gave them the best deal and those are some toxic incentives, so you mandate that the way that each mechanicus words with the local government must be equal across the entire planet.
Which means it's even harder to come to an agreement, but that's why it's taking multiple years to negotiate this shit.
Additionally, some of the governments - especially Pryath - whose enclaves were devastated in the fighting feel like they're been cheated. So you get involved in rebuilding those enclaves and offering enough incentives to encourage people to repopulate them, and that's good enough.
Rolling for Denva-Admech Diplomacy = 40+17 = 57. Success!
The DCs for levelling off really big, important things are a little lower, so +1 Victan level. He's masterminded this whole integration thing from the start.
But it's working. Slowly, but surely you're hammering out an agreement between the people of Devna and the mechancius of Devna. It definitely isn't anything you wanted, but it's got the core elements. Instead of a more even integration it looks like each enclave will become a siloed department of the local government, with their own budget. They'll be responsible for training technicians and setting up local manufacturing, as well as being somewhat free to do their own research, though they'll need to convince the local governments to fund their projects with certain budget minimums and maximums.
It's a great compromise, if you take that to mean a situation where nobody walks away happy. Everybody's getting their minimum requirements, with the governments unhappy about their new budget item but happy that they'll start to be able to embrace technology, while the mechanicus is unhappy about the loss of freedom but happy to no longer need to threaten the rest of the planet with weapons of mass destruction to ensure their survival. About the only thing everybody is happy about is the technology and manufacturing facilities you've spread around.
The thing you're not happy about is how long it will all take, since your best guess is a couple of generations for even basic technological capabilities to fully permeate the population - though Aevon is an exception to that, since they've been on the fast path to technological uplift for several decades now. You sort of wonder if they'll just naturally dominate Denva if you leave it be for fifty years, either economically, culturally or technologically. Maybe.
All of the necessary signatures are affixed to the physical versions of the Open Hands Accord - which is not your favorite name - and then you give the closing speech. Nobody's excited about it, and you don't know how to cheer them up.
But maybe if you try, something better will come out of it. "This document is merely the start of Denva's future. It's a place to begin. A minimum commitment. But I challenge you to exceed it, to do better than the requirements laid out in these pages. Because this is a hostile galaxy. The Imperium, Xenos, heretics, and more threats abound in the stars. The way to secure yourself from those is to grow, to expand. To embrace technology and build with it."
You look around the room, at the tired faces of the representatives and the uncaring stares of the tech-priests. "I'm not going to be here forever. I'm going to leave, at some point. I would like to come back here, to maintain positive relations in the future. But if you don't expand then you won't be worth it. I'll leave and go find somewhere more interesting."
You shrug. "Then you'll probably get wiped out by anybody who did care. You've got a chance, here and now, to become powerful. It will take generations of hard work, but if you don't, then in a few centuries I'll probably come back to this system and find a dead world, or one back to being crushed under the Imperial boot. But that's your decision to make, not mine. Accept the state of this galaxy and prepare, or don't, and die."
Then you turn and leave, Victan falling beside you with a thoughtful look on his face. He wears it all the way back aboard the shuttle, and halfway through the ride back to your base speaks out.
"Did you mean that, about them - dying?" His words are quiet. "That you'll just leave?"
You sigh. "I do. I'm an explorer, and I can't stay here to protect them. I want Denva to become strong and powerful, the kind of vibrant society that can survive and thrive with what I can give them. But I can't make it happen."
Victan gives you an odd look. "Yes? We can?"
You blink, and look back at him. "We can?"
He shakes his head. "Of course we can. The problem right now is that everybody is competing against everybody else, and careful of anybody gaining the advantage. Aevon has it now, and as soon as everybody else realizes that they're going to gang up on Aevon and use tariffs and black ops to take out their advantage. It's crabs in a bucket. They're all trapped on the world because anytime one of them tries to escape the others drag them back down. But if we can convince them all to work together..."
"Then they'll be able to get out of the bucket." You finish the thought. "How?"
He smiles. "Lots of ways. Let's see -" He trails off, then chuckles and changes the subject. "I used to be jealous of Anexa, did you know? The amount of things for her to learn - it just seems like you've given her whole worlds to play in. And here I was, stuck doing the same thing I was always doing, coordinating covert ops, spying on people. But it was more than that. Together we overthrew the mechanicus, pointed them in a new direction. Now I'm plotting how to set up a new world order, maybe without them ever realizing it's happened."
You cock an eyebrow at him. "I'm still not hearing ideas."
"You told me you have control of Klyssar's Nest, and are trying to decide how to use it. That's a bargaining chip, and one outside the bucket. Establish something new there, for whoever wants to play ball. Even if the other crabs keep anybody from escaping, you've freed a crab from the bucket."
You raise your other eyebrow. "That's an idea."
Current capabilities:
Command Points 6,315/12,500Ground Build Capacity: 3250
Lift Capacity: 3500 (converts between ground and void BP)
Void Build Capacity: 50
Research Capacity: 200
Psychic Shielding: 95/100 (repair for 10 BP/point)
Juvenat usage: 23/50 people's worth (cannot be stockpiled)
Available ships:
1x Mechanicus-disguised Shuttle (5 CP)
30x Basic Stealth Fighters (25x5 CP)
12x Basic Stealth Assault Shuttles (30x5 CP)
100x Basic Stealth Missiles (200x1 CP) - in space
60x Shuttles (20x60 =1200 CP) +3000 Lift Capacity
Available ground forces:
1000 Light infantry bots (200 CP)
2000 Light humanized infantry bots (2x200 CP)
800 Medium humanized Infantry Bots (200 CP)
1800 Heavy humanized Infantry Bots with Machine Spirit Jammers (200 CP)
CP costs for infantry bots work as breakpoints in increments of 1000. So 50 or 500 or 1000 bots all cost 200 CP, and 1001 costs 400 CP. Abstraction, y'all.
Misc assets:
0 BP of trade goods that Aevon will accept as rent.
Avatars:
Adult human woman, indeterminate age.
Female tech priest with some augmentations.
Original Avatar, young human woman with green hair
Current Installations:
Crashed Ship (10 CP) +100 BP
Underground Directional-Control Radio Tower (5 CP)
2x Underground Manufactories (2x50 = 100 CP) +100 BP
61x Manufactories (61x50 = 3050 CP) +3050 BP
Underground Captive Holding cells, 0/500 occupants (10 CP)
Underground Basic Technological Research Lab (50 CP)
Underground Basic Biology Lab (50 CP)
Small automated medical facility (50 CP)
Camouflaged Observatory (25 CP)
4x Underground Spaceport (4x25 CP) (40/40 ship capacity)
6x Spaceports (6x25 CP) (60/60 ship capacity)
Underground Magnetic Catapult launch system (50 CP) +500 lift capacity
Underground Directional-Control Radio Tower (5 CP)
2x Underground Manufactories (2x50 = 100 CP) +100 BP
61x Manufactories (61x50 = 3050 CP) +3050 BP
Underground Captive Holding cells, 0/500 occupants (10 CP)
Underground Basic Technological Research Lab (50 CP)
Underground Basic Biology Lab (50 CP)
Small automated medical facility (50 CP)
Camouflaged Observatory (25 CP)
4x Underground Spaceport (4x25 CP) (40/40 ship capacity)
6x Spaceports (6x25 CP) (60/60 ship capacity)
Underground Magnetic Catapult launch system (50 CP) +500 lift capacity
Klyssar's Nest - inactive
Orbital Manufactory (50 CP) +50 VBP
Orbital Manufactory (50 CP) +50 VBP
Military Installations:
Underground Machine-spirit Jammer (10 CP)
Underground Medium Void Shield (50 CP)
10x Underground Anti-Air Defenses (10x5 = 50 CP)
2x Underground Anti-Orbital Defenses (2x5 = 10 CP)
In progress construction:
None
In progress research:
Secrets of the Machine Spirits (35/200)
A Study in Physics (125/150)
Actions (choose 4 of the below, can choose the same action multiple times):
[] [Free] Poke around some more in the databases, looking for anything in particular.
I'm not going to write out every aspect of Vita going through the databases she yoinked. If you want to ask if something in particular is present because it's important, do so here. Please keep it to one or two items per turn.
[] Orders: Command existing units in a given theater of operations.
[] Diplomacy/Subversion: Talk to people. (Write-in goal & method)
About half of the Mechanicus wanted to take your deal, and embark on "The Quest for Knowledge unending." The rest disagreed to various degrees. Some surrendered as soon as your forces marched on them, others needed to be forcibly disarmed. There's also the nations of Denva who have been watching all of this with... concern.
[] Construction: Gain build points equal to your build capacity, write in what combination of blueprints you spend them on.
- Installations
- Void Installations
- Ships
- Units
- Export Goods
[] Research: Gain research points equal to your research capacity, to be spent designing new blueprints or researching projects. Write in what you spend them on.
Designable Blueprints:
50 RP - Heavy tanks (500 BP, 50 CP) 100 heavy battle tanks with heavy battle cannons to fight effectively against heavy enemy armor.
50 RP - Medium Shielded tanks (500 BP, 50 CP) 100 medium battle tanks with battle cannons & antipersonnel weapons to fight enemy armor and infantry. Very survivable.
100 RP - Heavy Shielded tanks (1000 BP, 50 CP) 100 heavy battle tanks with heavy battle cannons and void shields to fight effectively against heavy enemy armor. Very survivable.
50 RP - Medium Shielded tanks (500 BP, 50 CP) 100 medium battle tanks with battle cannons & antipersonnel weapons to fight enemy armor and infantry. Very survivable.
100 RP - Heavy Shielded tanks (1000 BP, 50 CP) 100 heavy battle tanks with heavy battle cannons and void shields to fight effectively against heavy enemy armor. Very survivable.
50 RP - Basic Stealth Shuttles (25 BP, 5 CP) Each shuttle converts up to 50 ground build capacity to void build capacity, and shouldn't be especially noticeable to anybody not actively looking for it. Requires a spaceport for efficient transfer of materials.
50 RP - Bombers (20 BP, 5 CP) Sometimes you want to deliver cargo to your enemies. Can deliver a fair amount of ordinance to a target in atmosphere or out of it. Unlocks a bomber hanger attachment for ships.
75 RP - Basic Stealth Bombers (20 BP, 5 CP) Sometimes you want to deliver cargo to your enemies. Can deliver a fair amount of ordinance to a target in atmosphere or out of it. They shouldn't be especially noticeable to anybody not actively looking, though they won't be able to close all the way to attack range without being spotted. Unlocks a bomber hanger attachment for ships.
50 RP - Assault Shuttle (25 BP, 5 CP) Sometimes you want to deliver things other than bombs to your enemies. So let's stick some armor and guns on a shuttle, and make it a bit more maneuverable. Can carry 100 troops and provide anti-personnel and light antiarmor fire.
50 RP - Bombers (20 BP, 5 CP) Sometimes you want to deliver cargo to your enemies. Can deliver a fair amount of ordinance to a target in atmosphere or out of it. Unlocks a bomber hanger attachment for ships.
75 RP - Basic Stealth Bombers (20 BP, 5 CP) Sometimes you want to deliver cargo to your enemies. Can deliver a fair amount of ordinance to a target in atmosphere or out of it. They shouldn't be especially noticeable to anybody not actively looking, though they won't be able to close all the way to attack range without being spotted. Unlocks a bomber hanger attachment for ships.
50 RP - Assault Shuttle (25 BP, 5 CP) Sometimes you want to deliver things other than bombs to your enemies. So let's stick some armor and guns on a shuttle, and make it a bit more maneuverable. Can carry 100 troops and provide anti-personnel and light antiarmor fire.
25 RP - Anti-armor Bunker (50 BP, 5 CP) A bunker with a heavy melta cannon, able to take out most armor in a single shot.
15 RP - Anti-personnel Bunker (20 BP, 2 CP) A bunker with a set of high-fire-rate weapons designed to take down humanoid-sized attackers wearing medium or lighter armor.
50 RP - Light Void-shield installation (250 BP, 25 CP) A void shield capable of stopping light orbital bombardment, approximately ten heavy strikes.
50 RP - Ballistic missile (50 BP, 10 CP) A long-range ballistic missile. By default it carries a high-yield explosive head capable of destroying approximately a city block. Can be intercepted by orbital defenses.
50 RP - Nuclear warhead (25 BP, 1 CP) A variable-yield nuclear warhead that can be deployed by ballistic missile or other means to destroy a city-sized target unless it's heavily dug-in.
25 RP - Spy satellite (10 void BP, 5 CP) A small spy satellite that lets you do your own surveillance on the planet below. Under your complete control and with better sensors and communication hardening than any of the local satellites.
100 RP - Advanced Technological Research Lab (500 BP, 100 CP) Will allow you to process advanced technological samples, including materials of alien orgin. Has advanced scanning, modelling and processing capabilities.
50 RP - Large automated medical facility (500 BP, 50 CP) 500 treatment rooms with autodocs capable of dealing with moderate injuries.
25 RP - Maglev System (5 bp/mile, 50 flat CP) A high-capacity maglev system to transport large amounts of goods across a planetary surface, linking various surface installations together into a single network so production from any of them can be applied at all of them.
Ground Blueprint Design:
To design ground installations & non-combat units, post them and I'll add them here if they're valid, along with RP cost to design them. This includes bunkers, anti-orbital defenses, ground units, etc. You'll unlock more things with more technology.Some things are impossible without the correct research - for example, heavy tanks will require you to research heavy armor first. Other things will be very cheap if you already have most of the design - for example if you research a better weapon it will be relatively cheap to just swap that out on the tanks.
Void Blueprint design:
To design void blueprints, follow these steps:- Choose a starting hull from the list of available void chassis below
- Choose the number of Build Points to be spent on the base hull. This corresponds to overall size of the ship - a destroyer with 200 bp will be 1200x200 meters, while a 500 bp base destroyer will be 1600x400 meters. This will set the "hp" of the design as well as determine the total cost of weapons and combat equipment you can fit into the ship.
- Pick the speed, shields and armor of the design. Shields are recharging temp HP, while armor is damage reduction. Speed is self-explanatory. These do not count towards weapon cramming.
- Pick noncombat equipment to go onto the ship. These do not count towards weapon cramming.
- Choose weapons and combat equipment to add to the ship. As a rule of thumb, your budget for these things is the base BP spent on size before you start to get into cramming. You can cram more stuff in, but there will be penalties to maneuvering, maintenance, etc. As an example, if you build a destroyer with a base hull cost of 400, then you have a budget of 400 to spend on weapons/equipment before penalties start kicking in. See the below example for an explanation:
- Spend the number of RP attached to the chassis.
Here are two examples of me designing the two blueprints you have available:
(Basic Defense Satellite) Light defense Platform. Base 100 Bp (200x200 meters). No engines, Light shields for 50 bp, light armor for 50 bp. 1x light lance battery for 100 bp. Total is 100+50+50+100 = 300. Weapons+equipment is 100, within the base BP of 100, so no cramming penalty.
(Basic System Monitor) Destroyer chassis. Base BP 350 (1500x300 meters) Engines: 7 gravities for 100 BP. Light Shields for 50 BP. Medium armor for 100 BP. 2x Light Macrocannon batteries for 200 bp, 1x Light Lance battery for 100 bp, High maneuverability thrusters for (1/10 base, round up to nearest 50 =) 50 bp. Total is 350+100+50+100+200+100+50 = 950. Weapons + equipment is 350, within the base BP of 350, so no cramming penalty.
Available Void Chassis:
Light defense Platform, 25 RP, 10 CP, (100-400 BP, 200x200-500x500 meters.) Engines: (none) for (0). Shields: (none/light/medium) for (0/50/100) Armor: (none/light/medium) for (0/50/100)Destroyer, 50 RP, 50 CP. (200-500 BP, 1200x200-1600x400 meters) Engines: (6/7/8 gravities) for (50/100/150 BP). Shields: (none/light/medium) for (0/50/100) Armor: (none/light/medium) for (0/50/100)
Frigate, 100 RP, 100 CP. (500-1000 BP, 1600x400-2200x600 meters) Engines: (5/6/7 gravities) for (75/150/225 BP). Shields: (none/light/medium/heavy) for (0/75/150/225) Armor: (none/light/medium/heavy) for (0/75/150/225)
Light Cruiser, 150 RP, 200 CP. (1000-2000 BP, 3500x400-4400x800 meters) Engines: (3/4/5 gravities) for (100/200/300 BP). Shields: (none/light/medium) for (0/100/200) Armor: (none/light/medium) for (0/100/200)
Available Non-combat Equipment:
Living Space (1/5 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) This ship is built to be run and operated by humans. It will require a crew but will not cost CP to command.
Warp Drive (1/10 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to nearest 50) This ship can jump to the warp. Navigation systems sold separately.
Psychic Shielding (1/5 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to nearest 50) This ship has a neural network integrated throughout the whole thing, that thinks "no" as hard as possible, answering the question for any warp-corruption for any beings or objects within the hull.
Troop compartment (25 BP) Can carry 10,000 soldiers or 500 medium tanks across the stars.
Medical bay (25 BP) Can treat 1000 moderately injured people at once.
Manufactory (Any cost up to base cost of hull, counts as combat equipment for cramming purposes) Generates void BP equivalent to 1/10 of its cost.
Repair Bay (Any cost up to base cost of hull, counts as combat equipment for cramming purposes). Repairs damage across friendly ships equal to its cost in repairs.
Warp Drive (1/10 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to nearest 50) This ship can jump to the warp. Navigation systems sold separately.
Psychic Shielding (1/5 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to nearest 50) This ship has a neural network integrated throughout the whole thing, that thinks "no" as hard as possible, answering the question for any warp-corruption for any beings or objects within the hull.
Troop compartment (25 BP) Can carry 10,000 soldiers or 500 medium tanks across the stars.
Medical bay (25 BP) Can treat 1000 moderately injured people at once.
Manufactory (Any cost up to base cost of hull, counts as combat equipment for cramming purposes) Generates void BP equivalent to 1/10 of its cost.
Repair Bay (Any cost up to base cost of hull, counts as combat equipment for cramming purposes). Repairs damage across friendly ships equal to its cost in repairs.
Available Weapons:
Prow Ram 50 bp. This ship is built to run into things, and hurt them more than it gets hurt.
Light Macrocannons 100 bp. Medium range, projectile weapons built for sustained barrage.
Medium Macrocannons 200 bp. Medium range, projectile weapons built for sustained barrage.
Heavy Macrocannons 400 bp. Medium range, projectile weapons built for sustained barrage.
Light Lances 100 BP. Long range, hitscan burst weapons. Not excellent at sustained fire.
Medium Lances 200 BP. Long range, hitscan burst weapons. Not excellent at sustained fire.
Heavy Lances 400 BP. Long range, hitscan burst weapons. Not excellent at sustained fire.
Light Missiles 50 BP short range, limited ammo, vulnerable to enemy point defense but very good burst damage. Limited ammo. Decent anti-fighter/bomber weapon.
Medium Missiles 100 BP short range, limited ammo, vulnerable to enemy point defense but very good burst damage. Limited ammo. Decent anti-fighter/bomber weapon.
Heavy Missiles 200 BP short range, limited ammo, vulnerable to enemy point defense but very good burst damage. Limited ammo. Decent anti-fighter/bomber weapon.
Light Plasma Cannon 250 BP, Medium range, high-fire rate with incredible damage potential. Extremely effective against shields.
Medium Plasma Cannon 500 BP, Medium range, high-fire rate with incredible damage potential. Extremely effective against shields, less effective against armor.
Light Melta cannon 200 BP, Very short range, medium-fire rate but with incredible damage potential. Extremely effective against shields.
Medium Melta cannon 400 BP, Very short range, medium-fire rate but with incredible damage potential. Extremely effective against shields.
Fighters 100 BP, 50 CP. Parasite craft with short-ranged guns and some missile capability.
Point Defense 50 BP. A series of turrets on the hull to shoot down enemy fighters, missiles and torpedoes.
Small Torpedoes 150 BP. A payload of straight-flying armored torpedoes, sized to give destroyers a bad day, hurt frigates and prick cruisers.
Medium Torpedoes 300 BP. A payload of straight-flying armored torpedoes, sized to wreck frigates, hurt cruisers and make grand cruisers know they've been touched.
Light Teleportarium 100 bp. Can teleport a small number of organics or robots onto enemy ships from close range. Enemy shields must be down.
Medium Teleportarium 200 bp. Can teleport a medium number of organics or robots onto enemy ships from medium-close. Enemy shields must be down.
Heavy Teleportarium 400 bp. Can teleport a large number of organics or robots onto enemy ships from long range. Enemy shields must be down.
Light Macrocannons 100 bp. Medium range, projectile weapons built for sustained barrage.
Medium Macrocannons 200 bp. Medium range, projectile weapons built for sustained barrage.
Heavy Macrocannons 400 bp. Medium range, projectile weapons built for sustained barrage.
Light Lances 100 BP. Long range, hitscan burst weapons. Not excellent at sustained fire.
Medium Lances 200 BP. Long range, hitscan burst weapons. Not excellent at sustained fire.
Heavy Lances 400 BP. Long range, hitscan burst weapons. Not excellent at sustained fire.
Light Missiles 50 BP short range, limited ammo, vulnerable to enemy point defense but very good burst damage. Limited ammo. Decent anti-fighter/bomber weapon.
Medium Missiles 100 BP short range, limited ammo, vulnerable to enemy point defense but very good burst damage. Limited ammo. Decent anti-fighter/bomber weapon.
Heavy Missiles 200 BP short range, limited ammo, vulnerable to enemy point defense but very good burst damage. Limited ammo. Decent anti-fighter/bomber weapon.
Light Plasma Cannon 250 BP, Medium range, high-fire rate with incredible damage potential. Extremely effective against shields.
Medium Plasma Cannon 500 BP, Medium range, high-fire rate with incredible damage potential. Extremely effective against shields, less effective against armor.
Light Melta cannon 200 BP, Very short range, medium-fire rate but with incredible damage potential. Extremely effective against shields.
Medium Melta cannon 400 BP, Very short range, medium-fire rate but with incredible damage potential. Extremely effective against shields.
Fighters 100 BP, 50 CP. Parasite craft with short-ranged guns and some missile capability.
Point Defense 50 BP. A series of turrets on the hull to shoot down enemy fighters, missiles and torpedoes.
Small Torpedoes 150 BP. A payload of straight-flying armored torpedoes, sized to give destroyers a bad day, hurt frigates and prick cruisers.
Medium Torpedoes 300 BP. A payload of straight-flying armored torpedoes, sized to wreck frigates, hurt cruisers and make grand cruisers know they've been touched.
Light Teleportarium 100 bp. Can teleport a small number of organics or robots onto enemy ships from close range. Enemy shields must be down.
Medium Teleportarium 200 bp. Can teleport a medium number of organics or robots onto enemy ships from medium-close. Enemy shields must be down.
Heavy Teleportarium 400 bp. Can teleport a large number of organics or robots onto enemy ships from long range. Enemy shields must be down.
Available Combat Equipment:
Low-emission Systems (1/10 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) This ship has been tuned to reduce overall emissions, making it stealthier. Not stealthy. Stealthier.
High-maneuverability thrusters (1/10 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) This ship is more maneuverable, able to flip, spin and dodge more quickly. This lets it maneuver well through dense asteroid clusters and dodge/ram more effectively in combat.
Plasma payloads (choose missile warheads or Macro cannon warheads) (1/20 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) This ship can load and fire plasma-warhead ammunition, which has a flat damage increase.
Melta payloads (choose missile warheads, Macrocannon warheads or torpedoes) (1/20 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) This ship can load and fire melta-warhead ammunition, which is especially effective against enemy armor and hulls.
Tuned Shields Costs the same as the chosen armor cost, but does count towards cramming (not the total cost, just the extra cost for tuned shields, so if shields costs 100 bp, then tuned shields cost 100 bp and 100 bp is counted against cramming). These shields recharge significantly faster, but when taken down all the way take slightly longer to reboot.
Alloyed Armor Costs the same as the chosen armor cost, does count towards cramming (not the total cost, just the extra cost for tuned shields, so if armor costs 100 bp, then alloyed armor costs 100 bp and 100 bp is counted against cramming). Armor is much tougher but is harder to repair.
Light Boarding preparations (1/20 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) Bulkheads are reinforced, extra hatches seal all decks and turrets guard key chokepoints, making boarding annoying.
Medium Boarding preparations (1/10 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) The ship layout is designed to funnel borders into kill-zones in front of armored bunkers, and any borders will take heavy casualties.
Heavy Boarding preparations (1/5 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) This ship as essentially a flying dungeon, filled with escherian mazes, hidden turrets, crushing-hallways and other deathtraps.
Light Machine Spirit Jammers (1/20 of the base cost of hull, rounded up to nearest 50) Banks of cogitators with code to disable machine spirits. Enough to cause significant degradation in an enemy ship's sensors, maneuvering and targeting. Primarily effective against ships of the same weight class.
Medium Machine Spirit Jammers (1/10 of the base cost of hull, rounded up to nearest 50) Banks of cogitators with code to disable machine spirits. Same as light jammers, plus will also effect total thrust, weapons firing rate. Primarily effective against ships of the same weight class.
Heavy Machine Spirit Jammers (1/5 of the base cost of hull, rounded up to nearest 50) Banks of cogitators with code to disable machine spirits. Same effect as medium, but may also effect friend-foe designation and reactor stability. Primarily effective against ships of the same weight class.
High-maneuverability thrusters (1/10 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) This ship is more maneuverable, able to flip, spin and dodge more quickly. This lets it maneuver well through dense asteroid clusters and dodge/ram more effectively in combat.
Plasma payloads (choose missile warheads or Macro cannon warheads) (1/20 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) This ship can load and fire plasma-warhead ammunition, which has a flat damage increase.
Melta payloads (choose missile warheads, Macrocannon warheads or torpedoes) (1/20 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) This ship can load and fire melta-warhead ammunition, which is especially effective against enemy armor and hulls.
Tuned Shields Costs the same as the chosen armor cost, but does count towards cramming (not the total cost, just the extra cost for tuned shields, so if shields costs 100 bp, then tuned shields cost 100 bp and 100 bp is counted against cramming). These shields recharge significantly faster, but when taken down all the way take slightly longer to reboot.
Alloyed Armor Costs the same as the chosen armor cost, does count towards cramming (not the total cost, just the extra cost for tuned shields, so if armor costs 100 bp, then alloyed armor costs 100 bp and 100 bp is counted against cramming). Armor is much tougher but is harder to repair.
Light Boarding preparations (1/20 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) Bulkheads are reinforced, extra hatches seal all decks and turrets guard key chokepoints, making boarding annoying.
Medium Boarding preparations (1/10 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) The ship layout is designed to funnel borders into kill-zones in front of armored bunkers, and any borders will take heavy casualties.
Heavy Boarding preparations (1/5 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to the nearest 50) This ship as essentially a flying dungeon, filled with escherian mazes, hidden turrets, crushing-hallways and other deathtraps.
Light Machine Spirit Jammers (1/20 of the base cost of hull, rounded up to nearest 50) Banks of cogitators with code to disable machine spirits. Enough to cause significant degradation in an enemy ship's sensors, maneuvering and targeting. Primarily effective against ships of the same weight class.
Medium Machine Spirit Jammers (1/10 of the base cost of hull, rounded up to nearest 50) Banks of cogitators with code to disable machine spirits. Same as light jammers, plus will also effect total thrust, weapons firing rate. Primarily effective against ships of the same weight class.
Heavy Machine Spirit Jammers (1/5 of the base cost of hull, rounded up to nearest 50) Banks of cogitators with code to disable machine spirits. Same effect as medium, but may also effect friend-foe designation and reactor stability. Primarily effective against ships of the same weight class.
The ways to get new research options are to:
-[] Void Manufacturing Efficiency (50 RP) Now that you've built your first void manufacturing platform, you realize that there are much more efficient ways to do it. Especially in acquiring raw material - you can just send out some light tugs to grab inner-system comets and asteroids instead of building the infrastructure to haul raw materials up from the surface before refining them. (Halves the BP cost of Orbital Manufactories & Deep Space Manufactories).
-[] Heavy Cruisers (300 RP) How to make a bigger ship? Let's figure that out. Surely it's not much more complicated than just multiplying all of the dimensons by two! (unlocks heavy cruisers)
-[] Can I have a new ship please? (200 RP) Triggers a sub-turn to design yourself a new ship. It can be any size, up to one class larger than what you currently have available (This is Vita's unique mechanic, and will let you design the first iteration of your ship)
-[] Basic Spaceship Stealth (100 RP) Spaceships are big, and emit a lot of energy. It's hard to hide them. Nonetheless, by making them show up worse on active sensors you could make an inactive spaceship much harder to spot. (Unlocks new non-combat equipment to improve ship stealth. Unlocks further research towards better spaceship stealth. Will be able to take advantage of some other stealth technologies.)
-[] Basic Ground force stealth (50 RP) Tanks show up pretty well on scanners, and it would be nice to change that. You might also be able to make your bots hide better. (Unlocks new design options for tanks and ground forces that are less obvious. Unlocks further research towards better ground force stealth. Will be able to take advantage of some other stealth technologies.)
-[] Improved Passive Stealth (100 RP) Ok, you've figured out the basics of hiding your small craft, but you have ideas on what you can do better, that might allow them to hide from even fully-alert enemies. They probably won't be able to close all the way to attack range, but they'll be able to get a lot closer (Unlocks improved stealth designs with improved performance. Unlocks further research for advanced passive stealth technologies. Will synergize with other stealth research.)
-[] Basic Active Stealth (150 RP) Just deflecting away and hiding your signature only helps so much. Then next step is to overlay a hologram over your small craft to make them effectively invisible, and even counter passive sensors. It'll still be a hazy outline, but this is the path towards being able to close to actual combat ranges unobserved (Unlocks improved stealth designs for actively hiding signatures, though they will be expensive. Unlocks further research for improved active stealth, and will synergize with other stealth research.
-[] Shuttle automation (150 RP) Surely I don't have to fly these stupid things myself. (Reduce the CP cost of shuttles by 50%)
-[] Heavy In-atmosphere void shields (200 RP) Well, the void shields you have are nice. But it would be nice to be able to build bigger ones, that can shrug off essentially any possible orbital bombardment. You need to figure out how to take advantage of the ridiculous energy and heat dissipation capabilities of being on a planet. (Unlocks heavy and super-heavy void shield installations. May unlock research towards better overall void shielding.)
-[] Tiny In-atmosphere void shields (200 RP) Instead of scaling up a void shield, can you scale one down to the size of a person? It won't be as capable of the big ones, but if it's only meant to block small-arms fire it could be quite effective. (Unlocks the ability to build personal void shields, as well as add them to combat bots. May unlock research towards better overall void shielding)
-[] Superheavy Armor (200 RP) Let's just stick starship armor on them and call it a day. (Unlocks superheavy tanks and is half of the puzzle for space-marine-quality power armor)
-[] Advanced Materials (300 RP) You know there are exotic elements with absurd physical properties. But it's also possible to build absurdly strong materials with common elements. How does that work? Time to dust off some ancient research projects and figure this stuff out. (Unlocks improved armor, as well as research to unlock megastructures. Also required for battleships and larger walkers)
-[] Basic power armor (100 RP) Putting heavy armor on a person doesn't work well because... well. It's heavy. If you can give it some robotic actuation then they don't need to carry all of it. (Unlocks humanoid heavy armor, as well as being a prereq for superheavy-humanoid armor, i.e. for space marine-quality, once you research superheavy armor.)
-[] Avatar self-customization (200 RP) Your previous avatar was capable of changing its appearance at your whim, changing the hair, eye and skim color rapidly. Hair length and body size changes took a bit longer but were also possible. Is this worth figuring out? It might just be you being vain. (Unlocks some disguise-style cybernetics... once you get good cybernetics and can do things like skin/eye replacements).
-[] Improved Armor Articulation (100 RP) From your research on humanizing combat bots you have some ideas about improving the points of articulation on armor to increase the range of motion and make the suits more responsive. (Increased performance & mobility for heavier armor, both for combat bots & people wearing heavy armor you make. May unlock further armor upgrade techs)
-[] Walkers (300 RP) Tanks are... kind of boring? Mechs are cooler. (unlock armiger knights, starts the knights/titans research tree)
-[] Really good Robotics: (900 RP) You know it's possible to make robots that are really strong. You've seen the specs floating around. You just don't quite know how to do it, though you've got some ideas on the matter... it would take quite a bit of simulation and a lot of trial and error to bring them into reality (Unlocks improvements to avatars, power armor, cybernetics, combat bots, improved manufactories). Acquire samples of advanced robots to reduce this cost.
-[] Intelligence Coding (500 RP) You don't really understand how your own code and hardware works. Maybe putting some effort into understanding that would pay dividends. It's never been something too interesting, but hey, maybe you should give it a shot. (Helps you understand your own code. Prerequisite to building new AIs, starts command point tree and automation tree, also unlocks personality-checking research)
-[] Improved Psychic shielding: (500 RP) Your "no" shielding seems to have worked to protect you from attack so far. But the design is really just a first-generation version. You could develop the second generation, make it capable of more complex and powerful thoughts? (Gives you the ability to build improved psychic shielding, and further upgrades down the path to make it even stronger, half of the research towards using this as some kind of attack against warp beings).
-[] Miniaturized psychic shielding: (300 RP) Right now you can build and repair psychic shielding that's roughly ship-sized. Maybe aiming for building-sized next? (Lets you build smaller and less expensive versions of the psychic shielding. Unlocks further research to "nest" the shielding, as well as build person-sized versions).
- [] The Basics of Psytech (200 RP) You have that pile of samples from Prospero. You were supposed to see if anybody was interested in them, but you doubt the people who gave them to you will care much what you do with them anymore. Maybe poke around and figure out what's what. (Beginner psytech learnings. Unlocks research projects to build individual pieces of psytech)
-[] The workings of a Void Abacus (200 RP) You have a void abacus. It's pretty complicated, but you also have the manual, and you've always been good at physics. (You're better at using your void abacus, and unlocks the technology to figure out how to manufacture them, half of unlocking research for better warp understanding).
-[] A Study of Physics (150 RP) You have a good understanding of physics, and access to a huge network of academic papers from several different eras on physics theory. But being able to query it and understand it are different things. It's actually kind of interesting, you have to admit. (First steps towards more exotic weapon types like nova cannons, graviton weapons, vortex bombs, fusion beamers, as well as some new potential manufacturing techniques).
-[] Secrets of the Machine Spirits (200 RP) You can imagine a lot of uses for these machine spirits in your own work. If they're included in the command loop on various pieces of machinery then that would reduce their command cost, and likely make them harder to hack. And if the Imperial literature is to be believed, corrupt? (Unlocks the ability to stick machine spirits into your combat bots, reducing CP cost. Unlocks follow-up research to use them for chaos shielding, as well as the ability to put machine spirits into installations or ships)
-[] Minaturized antigrav (100 RP) You can make antigrav that reduces the weight of things like shuttles to make them able to make orbit. But there's a floor on how small you can make that technology. The Imperium seems to have solved that. (Unlocks drones, jump-packs etc, as well as additional research to make antigrav vehicles/walkers)
-[] Servitorization (100 RP) You find it repulsive, but being able to replace somebody's brain with a computer that drives them around would have its uses. (Unlocks the ability to servitorize people in the medbay. Unlocks follow-on research to replicate their personality as well)
-[] Combat Mobility Cybernetics (100 RP) Sticking rockets and grappling hooks into cybernetics isn't just cool. It's also useful - it'll let the wearers utilize more of the strength of their new limb without tearing apart their organic body. It'll also give them new maneuverability options. (Unlocks new parts for augments that enhance the wearer's strength and mobility. Synergizes with other technology, may unlock enhanced mobility for bots & armors)
-[] Combat Neural Implants (50 RP) Allows you to install neural implants to calculate trajectories, assist with aiming, further improve reaction time and generally improve human capabilities in combat. (Unlocks combat-focused neural implants. Will synergize with other cybernetics and neural implant technologies)
-[] An Introduction to Human Genetics (100 RP) Humans are complex creatures, but apparently their manufacturing instructions are just 6 billion bits long, and most of that seems redundant. Interesting. (Unlocks very basic genetic enhancements, as well as a basic understanding of mutations. Unlocks research for more complex genetic engineering, and may lead to research to fix mutations)
-[] Does in vitro have something to do with wine? (200 RP) Unlocks the ability to clone basic humans (Unlocks the cloning bay, as well as further technology to clone things other than baseline humans, like humans without brains for organs or humans with more dramatic genetic mutations. Along with brain implants may lead to personality backups).
-[] You don't need no stinkin' medical school (100 RP) You've got a few auto-doc modules that can prescribe drugs based on symptoms or do basic surgeries. If you actually understood the medicine you'd be able to perform better care, as well as do more advanced surgeries (Unlocks better medical care, as well as general enhancements to surgeries, cybernetic augmentations and more. Maybe be a prerequisite to further biomedical research. Also unlocks more research for advanced medical care, which will likely reduce other research costs and be a prerequisite for advanced augmentations.)
-[] Drugs? Drugs. (100 RP) Human biochemistry is... weird. You've got a standard list of recipies for basic drugs, but if you wanted to get further into it you could start pulling out some stranger and more illicit ones from your research databanks. (Unlocks a wide variety of drugs for things like interrogation, combat, sedation, etc. May lead to research for things like perfect knockout gas, super-adrenaline, psytech drugs, etc.)
-[] Juvenat Beginnings (600 RP) Ok. Juvenat is complicated. You're able to make it by following a formula that is at times precise, at times general and at times just - what? Maybe start to delve into the science of that. (Unlocks a basic understanding of juvenat, and may make it more efficient to produce. Tech cost will be reduced by other biomedical researchers. The start of the juvenat research tree.)
-[] Rapid hacking (600RP) You need to figure out a new approach to subverting machine spirits. It might involve some combination of confusing them with a burst of signals, then showing up and 'relieving' the issue. But it would take a lot of trial-and-error to get right. (Improves hacking of imperial tech. Potentially enough for use in combat situations? Will unlock further hacking technology).
-[] Improved Machine-spirit Jamming (400 RP) Well, you can't combine it with hacking, but you can still try to improve what you have to be more efficent, target more machine spirits at a time, etc. (Improves success rate of jamming imperial tech, decreases failure penalties. May unlock further jamming technology)
-[] Organic-Machine control (200 RP) Allows you to hook humans into your own command-and-control loop, allowing you to turn over command duties of various bots to humans - though they'll only be able to command combat units. (Unlocks brain implants that allow a human to control some number of CP worth of combat bots/ships. There are more technologies to allow humans to command larger ships/manufacturing systems as well)
-[] Organ replacements, Redux (50 RP) Your organ replacements need work. They need to cover more of the functions of a given organ than the primary one, and that's going to take a bit more work. You also have some ideas around some improvements like adrenaline glands, toxin-filters & other miscellaneous internal augments. Not as good as genetic engineering, but easier. (Removes the malus on your artifical organs, unlocks advanced organ replacements that are effectively as good as biological ones, and improved internal augments).
-[] Advanced Neural Implants (200 RP) Well, your current neural implants are good, but what if you further integrated them into the brain, improving throughput and allowing the recipient even further integrate themselves with digital systems (unlocks advanced neural implants, unlocks further technologies related to neural implants, such as basic cognition filters). Requires Biology is kind of wet, a subsequent biology tech and Organ replacements.
-[] Basic Cognition Filter: (??? RP) Antimemetic threats are such a hassle. Even the programs you've written to partion your own knowledge are an ad-hoc solution. And aside from having an innate resistance above the zero-tolerance you likely have, humans have a really hard time not thinking about something. Fix it. Work out a method for existing brain-augments to isolate knowledge on cognitohazards to the augment's machine spirit in inert memory vaults. The user will have to instead consciously override the locks on the chosen memories to access them temporarily. That way, stray thoughts about the isolated memories cannot happen, and long-term memories in the brain when the memory vaults are unlocked get instead rerouted to the machine spirit of the brain implant. Will have a harder time isolating knowledge from existing long-term memories formed when not actively using the cognition filter. (Unlocks cognition filter modification to brain implants, unlocks further technologies related to cognition filter and methods for mitigating cognitohazards, basilisk hacks, etc. perceived in real-time.) Requires Advanced Neural Implants, cost to be determined by the roll on that research.
- [] Personality-Checking Routines (200 RP) All of this chaos-corruption is making you nervous. People changing according to the will of some warp-entity? Becoming different in ways that would disgust their past selves? That gives you the heebee-jeebies. Maybe - just maybe - it would be good to develop some ways to automatically check if aspects of your personality are diverging ways you don't want them to. Then you might be able to fix the problem before you become somebody who doesn't want (Gives you some algorithms to check for personality divergence in AIs. Doesn't do anything, just alerts you to changes and lets you decide what steps to take. Unlocks further research to prevent/rollback personality change, as well as potentially extend this research to humans with neural implants). Locked behind Intelligence Coding.
-[] Advanced Combat cybernetics (200 RP) Your cybernetics can easily contain light and some medium weapons, but they're not really suited to heavy combat. Yet. You could make them tougher, beefier, and figure out how to fit the power sources for larger weapons inside. (Unlocks advanced combat augments. Half of the technology for excellent combat augments, unlocks further cybernetics/research). Locked behind Really good Robotics.
- Do research. That'll unlock more research.
- Build appropriate installations & potentially acquire samples to research in them (samples could be anything from 'a human' to 'a Norn queen' in rarity).
- Ask for them. Often I'll tell you what you need to do to unlock specific research options,
-[] Void Manufacturing Efficiency (50 RP) Now that you've built your first void manufacturing platform, you realize that there are much more efficient ways to do it. Especially in acquiring raw material - you can just send out some light tugs to grab inner-system comets and asteroids instead of building the infrastructure to haul raw materials up from the surface before refining them. (Halves the BP cost of Orbital Manufactories & Deep Space Manufactories).
-[] Heavy Cruisers (300 RP) How to make a bigger ship? Let's figure that out. Surely it's not much more complicated than just multiplying all of the dimensons by two! (unlocks heavy cruisers)
-[] Can I have a new ship please? (200 RP) Triggers a sub-turn to design yourself a new ship. It can be any size, up to one class larger than what you currently have available (This is Vita's unique mechanic, and will let you design the first iteration of your ship)
-[] Basic Spaceship Stealth (100 RP) Spaceships are big, and emit a lot of energy. It's hard to hide them. Nonetheless, by making them show up worse on active sensors you could make an inactive spaceship much harder to spot. (Unlocks new non-combat equipment to improve ship stealth. Unlocks further research towards better spaceship stealth. Will be able to take advantage of some other stealth technologies.)
-[] Basic Ground force stealth (50 RP) Tanks show up pretty well on scanners, and it would be nice to change that. You might also be able to make your bots hide better. (Unlocks new design options for tanks and ground forces that are less obvious. Unlocks further research towards better ground force stealth. Will be able to take advantage of some other stealth technologies.)
-[] Improved Passive Stealth (100 RP) Ok, you've figured out the basics of hiding your small craft, but you have ideas on what you can do better, that might allow them to hide from even fully-alert enemies. They probably won't be able to close all the way to attack range, but they'll be able to get a lot closer (Unlocks improved stealth designs with improved performance. Unlocks further research for advanced passive stealth technologies. Will synergize with other stealth research.)
-[] Basic Active Stealth (150 RP) Just deflecting away and hiding your signature only helps so much. Then next step is to overlay a hologram over your small craft to make them effectively invisible, and even counter passive sensors. It'll still be a hazy outline, but this is the path towards being able to close to actual combat ranges unobserved (Unlocks improved stealth designs for actively hiding signatures, though they will be expensive. Unlocks further research for improved active stealth, and will synergize with other stealth research.
-[] Shuttle automation (150 RP) Surely I don't have to fly these stupid things myself. (Reduce the CP cost of shuttles by 50%)
-[] Heavy In-atmosphere void shields (200 RP) Well, the void shields you have are nice. But it would be nice to be able to build bigger ones, that can shrug off essentially any possible orbital bombardment. You need to figure out how to take advantage of the ridiculous energy and heat dissipation capabilities of being on a planet. (Unlocks heavy and super-heavy void shield installations. May unlock research towards better overall void shielding.)
-[] Tiny In-atmosphere void shields (200 RP) Instead of scaling up a void shield, can you scale one down to the size of a person? It won't be as capable of the big ones, but if it's only meant to block small-arms fire it could be quite effective. (Unlocks the ability to build personal void shields, as well as add them to combat bots. May unlock research towards better overall void shielding)
-[] Superheavy Armor (200 RP) Let's just stick starship armor on them and call it a day. (Unlocks superheavy tanks and is half of the puzzle for space-marine-quality power armor)
-[] Advanced Materials (300 RP) You know there are exotic elements with absurd physical properties. But it's also possible to build absurdly strong materials with common elements. How does that work? Time to dust off some ancient research projects and figure this stuff out. (Unlocks improved armor, as well as research to unlock megastructures. Also required for battleships and larger walkers)
-[] Basic power armor (100 RP) Putting heavy armor on a person doesn't work well because... well. It's heavy. If you can give it some robotic actuation then they don't need to carry all of it. (Unlocks humanoid heavy armor, as well as being a prereq for superheavy-humanoid armor, i.e. for space marine-quality, once you research superheavy armor.)
-[] Avatar self-customization (200 RP) Your previous avatar was capable of changing its appearance at your whim, changing the hair, eye and skim color rapidly. Hair length and body size changes took a bit longer but were also possible. Is this worth figuring out? It might just be you being vain. (Unlocks some disguise-style cybernetics... once you get good cybernetics and can do things like skin/eye replacements).
-[] Improved Armor Articulation (100 RP) From your research on humanizing combat bots you have some ideas about improving the points of articulation on armor to increase the range of motion and make the suits more responsive. (Increased performance & mobility for heavier armor, both for combat bots & people wearing heavy armor you make. May unlock further armor upgrade techs)
-[] Walkers (300 RP) Tanks are... kind of boring? Mechs are cooler. (unlock armiger knights, starts the knights/titans research tree)
-[] Really good Robotics: (900 RP) You know it's possible to make robots that are really strong. You've seen the specs floating around. You just don't quite know how to do it, though you've got some ideas on the matter... it would take quite a bit of simulation and a lot of trial and error to bring them into reality (Unlocks improvements to avatars, power armor, cybernetics, combat bots, improved manufactories). Acquire samples of advanced robots to reduce this cost.
-[] Intelligence Coding (500 RP) You don't really understand how your own code and hardware works. Maybe putting some effort into understanding that would pay dividends. It's never been something too interesting, but hey, maybe you should give it a shot. (Helps you understand your own code. Prerequisite to building new AIs, starts command point tree and automation tree, also unlocks personality-checking research)
-[] Improved Psychic shielding: (500 RP) Your "no" shielding seems to have worked to protect you from attack so far. But the design is really just a first-generation version. You could develop the second generation, make it capable of more complex and powerful thoughts? (Gives you the ability to build improved psychic shielding, and further upgrades down the path to make it even stronger, half of the research towards using this as some kind of attack against warp beings).
-[] Miniaturized psychic shielding: (300 RP) Right now you can build and repair psychic shielding that's roughly ship-sized. Maybe aiming for building-sized next? (Lets you build smaller and less expensive versions of the psychic shielding. Unlocks further research to "nest" the shielding, as well as build person-sized versions).
- [] The Basics of Psytech (200 RP) You have that pile of samples from Prospero. You were supposed to see if anybody was interested in them, but you doubt the people who gave them to you will care much what you do with them anymore. Maybe poke around and figure out what's what. (Beginner psytech learnings. Unlocks research projects to build individual pieces of psytech)
-[] The workings of a Void Abacus (200 RP) You have a void abacus. It's pretty complicated, but you also have the manual, and you've always been good at physics. (You're better at using your void abacus, and unlocks the technology to figure out how to manufacture them, half of unlocking research for better warp understanding).
-[] A Study of Physics (150 RP) You have a good understanding of physics, and access to a huge network of academic papers from several different eras on physics theory. But being able to query it and understand it are different things. It's actually kind of interesting, you have to admit. (First steps towards more exotic weapon types like nova cannons, graviton weapons, vortex bombs, fusion beamers, as well as some new potential manufacturing techniques).
-[] Secrets of the Machine Spirits (200 RP) You can imagine a lot of uses for these machine spirits in your own work. If they're included in the command loop on various pieces of machinery then that would reduce their command cost, and likely make them harder to hack. And if the Imperial literature is to be believed, corrupt? (Unlocks the ability to stick machine spirits into your combat bots, reducing CP cost. Unlocks follow-up research to use them for chaos shielding, as well as the ability to put machine spirits into installations or ships)
-[] Minaturized antigrav (100 RP) You can make antigrav that reduces the weight of things like shuttles to make them able to make orbit. But there's a floor on how small you can make that technology. The Imperium seems to have solved that. (Unlocks drones, jump-packs etc, as well as additional research to make antigrav vehicles/walkers)
-[] Servitorization (100 RP) You find it repulsive, but being able to replace somebody's brain with a computer that drives them around would have its uses. (Unlocks the ability to servitorize people in the medbay. Unlocks follow-on research to replicate their personality as well)
-[] Combat Mobility Cybernetics (100 RP) Sticking rockets and grappling hooks into cybernetics isn't just cool. It's also useful - it'll let the wearers utilize more of the strength of their new limb without tearing apart their organic body. It'll also give them new maneuverability options. (Unlocks new parts for augments that enhance the wearer's strength and mobility. Synergizes with other technology, may unlock enhanced mobility for bots & armors)
-[] Combat Neural Implants (50 RP) Allows you to install neural implants to calculate trajectories, assist with aiming, further improve reaction time and generally improve human capabilities in combat. (Unlocks combat-focused neural implants. Will synergize with other cybernetics and neural implant technologies)
-[] An Introduction to Human Genetics (100 RP) Humans are complex creatures, but apparently their manufacturing instructions are just 6 billion bits long, and most of that seems redundant. Interesting. (Unlocks very basic genetic enhancements, as well as a basic understanding of mutations. Unlocks research for more complex genetic engineering, and may lead to research to fix mutations)
-[] Does in vitro have something to do with wine? (200 RP) Unlocks the ability to clone basic humans (Unlocks the cloning bay, as well as further technology to clone things other than baseline humans, like humans without brains for organs or humans with more dramatic genetic mutations. Along with brain implants may lead to personality backups).
-[] You don't need no stinkin' medical school (100 RP) You've got a few auto-doc modules that can prescribe drugs based on symptoms or do basic surgeries. If you actually understood the medicine you'd be able to perform better care, as well as do more advanced surgeries (Unlocks better medical care, as well as general enhancements to surgeries, cybernetic augmentations and more. Maybe be a prerequisite to further biomedical research. Also unlocks more research for advanced medical care, which will likely reduce other research costs and be a prerequisite for advanced augmentations.)
-[] Drugs? Drugs. (100 RP) Human biochemistry is... weird. You've got a standard list of recipies for basic drugs, but if you wanted to get further into it you could start pulling out some stranger and more illicit ones from your research databanks. (Unlocks a wide variety of drugs for things like interrogation, combat, sedation, etc. May lead to research for things like perfect knockout gas, super-adrenaline, psytech drugs, etc.)
-[] Juvenat Beginnings (600 RP) Ok. Juvenat is complicated. You're able to make it by following a formula that is at times precise, at times general and at times just - what? Maybe start to delve into the science of that. (Unlocks a basic understanding of juvenat, and may make it more efficient to produce. Tech cost will be reduced by other biomedical researchers. The start of the juvenat research tree.)
-[] Rapid hacking (600RP) You need to figure out a new approach to subverting machine spirits. It might involve some combination of confusing them with a burst of signals, then showing up and 'relieving' the issue. But it would take a lot of trial-and-error to get right. (Improves hacking of imperial tech. Potentially enough for use in combat situations? Will unlock further hacking technology).
-[] Improved Machine-spirit Jamming (400 RP) Well, you can't combine it with hacking, but you can still try to improve what you have to be more efficent, target more machine spirits at a time, etc. (Improves success rate of jamming imperial tech, decreases failure penalties. May unlock further jamming technology)
-[] Organic-Machine control (200 RP) Allows you to hook humans into your own command-and-control loop, allowing you to turn over command duties of various bots to humans - though they'll only be able to command combat units. (Unlocks brain implants that allow a human to control some number of CP worth of combat bots/ships. There are more technologies to allow humans to command larger ships/manufacturing systems as well)
-[] Organ replacements, Redux (50 RP) Your organ replacements need work. They need to cover more of the functions of a given organ than the primary one, and that's going to take a bit more work. You also have some ideas around some improvements like adrenaline glands, toxin-filters & other miscellaneous internal augments. Not as good as genetic engineering, but easier. (Removes the malus on your artifical organs, unlocks advanced organ replacements that are effectively as good as biological ones, and improved internal augments).
Locked behind samples/installations/prereqs:
-[] Advanced Neural Implants (200 RP) Well, your current neural implants are good, but what if you further integrated them into the brain, improving throughput and allowing the recipient even further integrate themselves with digital systems (unlocks advanced neural implants, unlocks further technologies related to neural implants, such as basic cognition filters). Requires Biology is kind of wet, a subsequent biology tech and Organ replacements.
-[] Basic Cognition Filter: (??? RP) Antimemetic threats are such a hassle. Even the programs you've written to partion your own knowledge are an ad-hoc solution. And aside from having an innate resistance above the zero-tolerance you likely have, humans have a really hard time not thinking about something. Fix it. Work out a method for existing brain-augments to isolate knowledge on cognitohazards to the augment's machine spirit in inert memory vaults. The user will have to instead consciously override the locks on the chosen memories to access them temporarily. That way, stray thoughts about the isolated memories cannot happen, and long-term memories in the brain when the memory vaults are unlocked get instead rerouted to the machine spirit of the brain implant. Will have a harder time isolating knowledge from existing long-term memories formed when not actively using the cognition filter. (Unlocks cognition filter modification to brain implants, unlocks further technologies related to cognition filter and methods for mitigating cognitohazards, basilisk hacks, etc. perceived in real-time.) Requires Advanced Neural Implants, cost to be determined by the roll on that research.
- [] Personality-Checking Routines (200 RP) All of this chaos-corruption is making you nervous. People changing according to the will of some warp-entity? Becoming different in ways that would disgust their past selves? That gives you the heebee-jeebies. Maybe - just maybe - it would be good to develop some ways to automatically check if aspects of your personality are diverging ways you don't want them to. Then you might be able to fix the problem before you become somebody who doesn't want (Gives you some algorithms to check for personality divergence in AIs. Doesn't do anything, just alerts you to changes and lets you decide what steps to take. Unlocks further research to prevent/rollback personality change, as well as potentially extend this research to humans with neural implants). Locked behind Intelligence Coding.
-[] Advanced Combat cybernetics (200 RP) Your cybernetics can easily contain light and some medium weapons, but they're not really suited to heavy combat. Yet. You could make them tougher, beefier, and figure out how to fit the power sources for larger weapons inside. (Unlocks advanced combat augments. Half of the technology for excellent combat augments, unlocks further cybernetics/research). Locked behind Really good Robotics.
Crew :
Anexa Ifina, Tech-priest Errant.Level 5
-[] Anexa active Action: Research - assists a research action you take, granting +5xLevel RP to the action. Will level on successful roll, scaled by the importance of the tech.
-[] Anexa passive action: Education - Roll to level, difficulty is 10+5xLevel
Victan Thallos, Spy.
Level 8
-[] Victan active action: Subversion - assists a diplomacy action you take for the purposes of covert action, granting +Level to the dice to the action. Will level on successful roll, scaled by the significance of the action.
-[] Victan passive action: Counterespionage & communication - Defends against covert action, as well as gathering information on your foes and keeping communication channels open with any allies present. Will only level if something interesting happens.
The crew mechanics are linked in the Crew, Samples and Assets informational page.
What to do about Klyssar's Nest?
It will cost you 500 CP to run Klyssar station, though if you manage to capture the command center intact that will drop to 100. You can either use it to house something like 5 million people or to build 50 orbital manufactories & a medium shipyard at half-cost.[] Use it for Industry. You can build 50 orbital manufactories & a medium shipyard at half-cost (in BP, not CP).
[] Use it for People. It can house ~5 million people, and will be much easier for them to run if they have access to the command center.
[] Leave it inactive for now.
What to do with Sigulus?
This decision is made independently of the decision of what to do with the station - she can keep working on it regardless.[] Leave her on Kyssar's Nest. She'll be able to break through the last layers of security in about four turns, but you'll have to pay 250 bp/turn to keep her going.
[] Send her home She'll be happy to integrate back into one of the damaged enclaves on Denva secundus.
My day job is a research biologist. So the biology tech tree is probably going to be the most detailed. I'll try to avoid breaking it down into too many pieces. But the tech descriptions are likely to be snarky.
I firmly believe "It's turtles all the way down" is actually a nugget of enormous philosophical wisdom that I hope humanity never loses. It's best-known nowadays from Terry Prachett, but the statement itself is much older than that.
Victan's active action says it can only be used for covert action - I'm relaxing that while on Denva. He's got contacts here and knows both the Aevon/Denva governments and the mechanicus inside and out. When he hits level 10 you'll get to vote on how he upgrades, and one of the options will definitely take him more in a diplomat direction.
Don't feel like Victan's suggestion is a word-of-god mandate. Please. It's a suggestion made by a crewmember. You don't need to slavishly follow it, and in fact you could totally try to unify Denva's governments without it using technological/juvenat carrots with a decent chance of success.
You're just over halfway to your CP cap. You can't build things over your CP cap, unless you mothboll old things, but then you can't use them and need to bring them online again. There's a few techs you have access to that will reduce your CP costs or eventually increase your CP cap, or alternate blueprints that are more CP efficient than ground-based manufactories & shuttles. Just an FYI.
Let's do 20 hours of Moratorium & 20 hours of voting?
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OK now I think is he moment we want to talk to the psykers. We are established as an 'ancient', we have a good reason to ask for psyker help, we found scrap code and we can share our shielding as a bribe.
- Location
- Belgium
[jk] Use the station as a international space station where all factions work together in research and development of technology trough international cooperation.
Typos:
"of needless death".
Needs a full stop between sentences.
"problem for my plan".
"expedition".
"guaranteeing" and "guarantee".
"statement".
"knowledge".
"then".
"military".
"receive" and "knowledge".
"developing".
"about is how long".
"mechanicus".
I think it may be prudent to leave the station inactive until we see the outcome of gaining access to the command center. Logistics change quite a lot based on whether we damage it or not.
- Location
- Alaska
It seems like the next step forward in diplomacy is to get the nations to commit to a multinational command dedicated to extraterrestrial threats … an X-Com, if you will.
[] plan: Shipyard building draft
-[] [free] database research. What's up with the xeno's on the planet nextdoor
-[] monastery diplo/spying action (basicly say hi, try and figure out what's going on with them)
--add Victan
-[] Military action. Get some bots together and capture that command center (intact if possible)
then bust into the labs and do some looting.
-[] research (200 +25 RP)
--[] A Study in Physics (25/25 RP)
--[] Secrets of the Machine Spirits (10/200 -> 165/165 RP)
---Anexa assists
--[] The workings of a Void Abacus (35/200 RP)
-[] Construction: (2,800 BP)
--[] Medium Shipyard (2,700/5000 BP)
--[] Klyssar's Nest (100/100 BP)
-[] Klyssar's Nest
--[] Use it for People
-[] Sigulus
--[] Send her home
Basicly a rough draft plan to get started on building a Shipyard for our new to be designed shipself while also sizing the station for its sweet loot and you know so people can live there. Also finishes Machine spirit research and starts working on Void Abacus tech (the other half of unlocking warp understanding reaserch)
-[] [free] database research. What's up with the xeno's on the planet nextdoor
-[] monastery diplo/spying action (basicly say hi, try and figure out what's going on with them)
--add Victan
-[] Military action. Get some bots together and capture that command center (intact if possible)
then bust into the labs and do some looting.
-[] research (200 +25 RP)
--[] A Study in Physics (25/25 RP)
--[] Secrets of the Machine Spirits (10/200 -> 165/165 RP)
---Anexa assists
--[] The workings of a Void Abacus (35/200 RP)
-[] Construction: (2,800 BP)
--[] Medium Shipyard (2,700/5000 BP)
--[] Klyssar's Nest (100/100 BP)
-[] Klyssar's Nest
--[] Use it for People
-[] Sigulus
--[] Send her home
Basicly a rough draft plan to get started on building a Shipyard for our new to be designed shipself while also sizing the station for its sweet loot and you know so people can live there. Also finishes Machine spirit research and starts working on Void Abacus tech (the other half of unlocking warp understanding reaserch)
It may not be a word of god but i think it dovetails really well with something i want to do:
Long term I'd like our ship/fleet to include a reformed progressive Mechanicus enclave working under Anexa.
And for that, this seems like a golden opportunity.
Take the station (50 manufactories option)
Turn it into a Mechanicus enclave (Explorator Enclave) under Magos Vita, Initial Population selected from cogitare exploratum members Anexa likes. The most loyal, that we might one day tell our secret (NOT yet).
Get the Bio Machine Control so they can start sharing the CP load.
Then we have a shining beacons as carrot for Mechanicus. And an example from which new teaching + science culture
And spare BP as carrot for the Government.
Anexa can (with Vitas support) gradually gain leadership experience (like being an older Acolyte supporting younger Acolytes to being a Tech-priest to one day being a Magos) and have friends.
By the time we are done with monasteries, the Station exploration, ship building and in-system exploration (Devon Primus) that Enclave hopefully has a strong Vita-esque culture.
When it comes time to leave fast-comms-range we can split off a mobile Enclave meitosis style. While the remaining Explorator Enclave could continue to be a positive influence.
@Neablis
What to call people part of our crew that aren't part of the 5-7 bridge Crew?
Would "(the bridge Crews) staff" work as official term?
Insult Everyone!
Master of Evil but bad at it.
- Location
- Right behind you~
Vita is such a dissappointed mom this chapter.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Is juvenant research behind this option? How far away are we from that, anyways?
Could we split this? Something like housing for 2.5 million people, and 25 orbital manufactories? Also, can the manufactories be manned, so that the people here can start building orbital infrastructure after we leave?