Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest

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Neablis said:
[] Diplomat-spy: Victan's active action bonus can be applied to all diplomacy rolls, including first contact with a new culture. Victan's only been able to be included on these diplomacy rolls thus far becuase he's a local, and has contacts inside Aevon he can use for diplomacy. If you go somewhere new he'll be limited to just being a spy without this.
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I definitely think this one's the best.
We have no idea if we'd be able to get another diplomat in this system, and even if we did I'd be inclined to leave them here, Denva Secundus kinda needs all the help it can get to actually work together.

On the other hand Victan has already proven he can be good at diplomatic actions, and if we leave him as just an intrigued character it means outside this one planet we can only use him for intrigue.
Letting him be flexible means we can afford to specialise out later beans more, and flexibility is a lot more useful early on whilst our crew is still small.
 
DragonParadox said:
She is as unstable as it is possible to be in the bounds of the system. If she has scored a 2-3 that would be different, but a 1...? Hard Pass. I'd rather take one of the others and buy divination at level 10
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Got to remember though, that the bounds of the system in this case is a collection of psykers, who have kept the system stable, selecting their best candidates.

Worst of the best is still pretty good.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Got to remember though, that the bounds of the system in this case is a collection of psykers, who have kept the system stable, selecting their best candidates.

Worst of the best is still pretty good.
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It's actually pretty terrible, imperials are at best mediocre at training psykers by any objective metric and these people are amateurs by those standards. Being able to stay on the edge of sanity in an isolated monastic community with other psykers to notice issues and help with control is not the same thing as doing so out in the wider galaxy with all sorts of new stresses, including warp transit, that thing Imperials generally use Black Ships for.
 
Neablis said:
-[] Improved Psychic shielding: (100 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, as well as half of the requirements to integrate machine spirits with psychic shielding).

-[] Personal-sized Psychic shielding: (150 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, as well as half of the requirements to integrate machine spirits with psychic shielding).

-[] Nested Psychic shielding: (200 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, as well as half of the requirements to integrate machine spirits with psychic shielding).
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These all have the same description.

BTW, what happens if a research would be discounted to 0 RP?
DragonParadox said:
It's actually pretty terrible, imperials are at best mediocre at training psykers by any objective metric and these people are amateurs by those standards. Being able to stay on the edge of sanity in an isolated monastic community with other psykers to notice issues and help with control is not the same thing as doing so out in the wider galaxy with all sorts of new stresses, including warp transit, that thing Imperials generally use Black Ships for.
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Anyone we recruit as a crewmember will be a named character that can both level up on a gameplay level and go through character development on a story level. I'm not scared that Kezathi will somehow be a bad choice. (Well, her name is a bit clunky, but that doesn't count.)
 
IIRC, construction of the newly designed ship will take two turns, if three actions are used for building and one for construction of additional void facilities. Using a diplomatic action for more psykers has risk, because we believe there are approaching threats, and we won't have an active defense until our ship is done.
 
Derpmind said:
Anyone we recruit as a crewmember will be a named character that can both level up on a gameplay level and go through character development on a story level. I'm not scared that Kezathi will somehow be a bad choice. (Well, her name is a bit clunky, but that doesn't count.)
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I mean she is a psyker in Warhammer 40K, I am worried a daemon will wear her as a meat-suit and we'll have to shoot her. Of course that applies to all the others as well, she is just the most likely to suffer that fate due to her low baseline stability, a thing which we as players know both OOC from the rolls and IC from the impressions of Vitcan and Vita. I think it would be unwise to dismiss that with 'there are no bad choices'. We are choosing which of these half trained space wizards we are taking through Space Hell.
 
Amerigo Vespucci said:
IIRC, construction of the newly designed ship will take two turns, if three actions are used for building and one for construction of additional void facilities. Using a diplomatic action for more psykers has risk, because we believe there are approaching threats, and we won't have an active defense until our ship is done.
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There is, in fact, a way to get a decent defense before we make our Grand Cruiser sized main ship - making basic light cruiser drone ships. We can even make them monitors (no warp capability) to cut costs even more. Someone made a list of what we can use for a Lunar light cruiser analog a little while back.
 
For research, don't forget (like I did) that the last plan put 40 RP into improved psy shields. So it is currently sitting at 40 of 100 RP needed.

Since that would give my plan a total of 130 RP floating with Axena, I swapped MedSchool for PsyTech.

Edit:
@Aura Dragon - We could certainly churn out some ships, but light or heavy cruisers would require us building a larger shipyard. The lunar cruiser write up I did still came in around 10,000 BP and would require the 10,000 BP large shipyard. So we would get 2 ships instead of one.

We could get some destroyers or frigates with our current setup, or light cruisers with the 3,000 BP medium shipyard, but none of that gives us the strategic flexibility of a mobile body. Right now we cannot leave the planet no matter what. With a ship we can run away if we need to, which is worth more than a swarm of ships.

That being said I full support getting that swarm of ships as soon as we are done with our new body.
 
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I think we should go with:
[] A dozen weaker psykers, led by Nabal Sidz. Caps out at Iota (8)

1) We can dip our toes in the psyker waters more safely than with a powerful (and dangerous) psyker
2) We have a wider spread of disciplines of Vita to observe and study.
3) We can leave a Crew spot open for a future planet.
 
@Derpmind, even better! Let me go clean my draft up for a third time (I love this quest so much).

Edit: question for @Neablis or anyone who knows the answer, is there any utility in leaving a buffer of unspent RP in a research plan? Would this help with any potential failures?
 
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10ebbor10 said:
Kinda suprised.

Why do you think he's most useful?
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Neablis says diviners are able to affect rolls meaning we have a way of gaining a general bonus to some rolls which will be very useful especially on the more important ones.

Anyway, here's what I think we should do on a few things:

[] Diplomat-spy: Victan's active action bonus can be applied to all diplomacy rolls, including first contact with a new culture.
Very useful and will stack with our Woman of Stone bonus even though he can only help with one of those actions. He's been able to do great things while being a diplomat and best kind of spy is one who no one would think is because they don't want to believe it.

[] Infiltrator: Victan may go on active missions involving stealth & subterfuge to acquire data or objectives that would otherwise be completely unavailable. Unlocks powerful new narrative subterfuge options. Will be boosted by cybernetics research.
While this would put him in danger, we could get stuff that would otherwise be unobtainable like Astartes gear or STCs of which the Mechanicus are notoriously cagey about even just a damaged fragment. Heck, he might even be able to assassinate enemy leaders should it be necessary

[] Master of Whispers: Victan will passively cultivate contacts in any society you interact with, building up intelligence over time. Upon return visits this will quickly update you on the local happenings.
This option is tempting but this requires us to revisit place we've been to alot. We're an explorer, we'll often be travelling to new places. I can understand why some would take this as knowledge is invaluable, however, I personally would pass on this.

[] Virtuoso Spy : Victan's bonus to standard infiltration actions increases to 1.5xlevel.
This one I feel would give Victan less flexibility overall. He'll be a better spy, yes, but that's it. Number go up, yeah but it'd be a specialized number.

As for picking a psyker, I am unsure. Ker being a telekinetic who wants to explore would make for an interesting companion. Cia, a tomboy pyro with ambition would be awesome and cause all kinds of shenanigans. Kezathi the diviner I want to take on principle because the poor bean definitely needs help. As for the Psyker group, being able to study all branches of Psykic is tempting but we have too many things to research already.
 
-[] Grand Cruisers (400 RP) Making a ship design that's not spaghetti takes time and effort. It's still boring. But if you want to make queens of the void, its necessary. (unlocks grand cruisers, half of the prereq for battleships)
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@Neablis how are we building a Grand Cruiser for our 1st mothership if we don't have the technology unlocked?
 
Eh, still think the pyro would be the best fit for our motley crew in terms of her personality and utility, the telekine is a close second but given we only have a finite number of crew slots, he's not really interesting enough to warrant spending a diplo action and a second crew slot on.

Seer is a little more empathetic now that I know that she's just a goober haunted by her visions but I'd need a really strong arguement to consider voting her into the crew.
 
I think that no matter what we take for crew it will be fun and the quest will adapt. I do however think that this turn we should go all in on shield tech. Let's give these people the best shielding we possibly can. Maybe we can get another option for Tagalongs in 15 years when it is actually time to leave if we do.
 
Speedemon22 said:
@Neablis how are we building a Grand Cruiser for our 1st mothership if we don't have the technology unlocked?
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Our special ability means that we can make our personal ship one size larger than what we have unlocked. When we started we had the tech that allowed us to build light cruisers normally, meaning that we could make our personal ship as a heavy cruiser. But we researched how to make heavy cruisers normally a few turns ago.
 
I said this already on discord to Neablis, but I'm laughing and laughing at the Scrapcode Generator blindly flailing aroud and just accelerating our development for better shielding technologies.

Also, wasn't expecting it, but the telekinesis-psyker-bean tugged my heartstrings with his desire the explore. Still not sure who to pick, and coming around the idea of potentially getting both of them (the pyromancer being the other) with an another diplo-action (unless we roll horribly).
 
Neablis said:
-[] Improved Psychic shielding: (100 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, as well as half of the requirements to integrate machine spirits with psychic shielding).

-[] Personal-sized Psychic shielding: (150 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, as well as half of the requirements to integrate machine spirits with psychic shielding).

-[] Nested Psychic shielding: (200 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, as well as half of the requirements to integrate machine spirits with psychic shielding).
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These got copy/pasted?
 
zack omega24 said:
I think it might be useful to build another one but not camouflaged.
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Great idea, maybe we can build it in orbit for an even better view?

@Aura Dragon got me thinking about what comes after our ship, and we will need to build more ships. Both for the system and to travel with us. This will require a shipyard and if we build a large shipyard before or ship we get an effective 2,500 BP discount since we no longer need to pay that tax on our ship. So it would only cost an effective 7,500 BP and we can afford the CP (barely)

This would give us 64 build slots for ships after our flagship is done, so we could start cranking out a fleet. This would push our timetable to 7 actions leaving us with only one flex action or pushing into 3 turns.

On another track, we could use an action to have our two new ships survey / scout out the system. This would give us some more information and some people have speculated that we could reactivate some of the other stations for our use.

Thoughts?
 
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