Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest
- Thread starter Neablis
- Start date
- Mature Sci-Fi
It really does depend on what you mean by 'a daemon', some minor flamer got too close and we fried it? Risks of the game, Tzeench probably thinks it's funny, not like he's going to miss the thing. A Greater Daemon on the other hand, that will bring some heat if we can true kill it. On the other hand we just rolled badly on shielding and have a half trained psyker on board, maybe we shouldn't count the dead daemons before we're sure the character is going to live though the next few turns.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Meh, the psi shield poor success just means we're more slow and steady on psyker training (not that we weren't going to be already?). Personal shielding is in reach besides, and we will have the ability to apply improved shielding to that so the type of shielding on the flagship hull is less critical than it might seem at first glance.
There was even an argument to be made that we shouldn't push forward on that until we have cognition filters and personality backups online, even.
I don't think abrupt death is going to be the issue here.
Worth thinking about upgrading the vault since we can't upgrade Vita's personal shields for a while though.
There was even an argument to be made that we shouldn't push forward on that until we have cognition filters and personality backups online, even.
I don't think abrupt death is going to be the issue here.
Worth thinking about upgrading the vault since we can't upgrade Vita's personal shields for a while though.
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It means she's more likely to explode for longer. Major Human psykers in 40K, of which our new friend is, always have to contend with the possibility of abrupt death or worse. A better shield would have just reduced the odds.
Imagine combining this (underline by me):
with this:
Psyker-boosted exterminatus-sized fusion-warheads to throw at nasties like minor demons (ships with scrapcode generators, our scrapcode generator when we are done with it, etc)
So, now that we have to re-do the Psi-shields tech, do we pospone the scrapcode research to the turn 19 or carry on regardless?
On the one one hand, the sooner we can get rid of the thing the better, but on the other having better shields before we poke the cyberdaemon was the original plan.
On the one one hand, the sooner we can get rid of the thing the better, but on the other having better shields before we poke the cyberdaemon was the original plan.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
I could see us doing it the next time it fails a breakout, if we have personal shields on bots by then.
Not sure what the poor success complication will be, but the main loss is that we won't be able to apply it to the main shields of our new ship without a redesign/rebuild.
Nested shields can eventually be refit into the ship at least, and those can use our state of the art.
meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
I'm starting to lean towards researching it now. Unfortunately, this latest problem means that our better psychic shielding against it will be lesser than we hoped. So the risk for giving it time to act has suddenly risen. Trying to research it now before it gathers even more power might be the best move if we are not instantly destroying it.
Because if I've understood it correctly, it should be only 1/4 way towards regaining its full power if we research it on turn 19. Or 2/4, I'm not sure. @Neablis I would want to make sure: how much will have the Scrapcode Generator regained its power when compared to its last attack, if we research it on turn 19, at least as far as Vita can tell?
Anyway, I'm hoping that even with poor result with the improved shielding, Vita might be able to apply it to her current shields where her core is, with the leftover BP we have, as it is not an actual ship with strict limitations on what can be changed. Because if we get at least basic results with the Scrapcode Generator? It should become then much less dangerous for us to keep around, even when it gathers its power for the next attack.
Turn 18
Vox Vitae is up for best new work! Head over and vote!
"Ker's more powerful, and his power is more flexible!" Anexa's voice is a half-shout as she repeats a point she's made several times already.
Victan's patience is starting to fray. "But he'll be harder to work with. Whoever we pick, we'll have to work with them - get along with them - forever. Their personality is more important than their raw power. And direct combat has been our weakness, as we saw with the mechanicus.
Anexa gives him a glower. "You'll get along with Cia better. I like Ker. He reminds me of myself." She pauses. "A bit. He gets focused on things, the same way I do. And he wants to explore. That's what we're going to do."
Watching from the side, you're not sure you would agree. It's clear to you that while Anexa clearly does become very fixated on her projects, she is very willing to hear conflicting viewpoints and consider the problem in the larger context. To be fair, you hadn't seen that much of Ker so far, but your analysis of what you've seen so far suggests a certain lack of... flexibility that makes you worried.
On the other hand, you agree that you his passion for exploration is a point in his favor. He's focused on the right things, and seeing his desire to leave the planet reminded you of the itch burning on your own soul. You're making solid progress towards enabling your own departure, and you almost can't wait to find out new things. There are mysteries to pick from in Denva itself - first Denva Primus, and second the various technological signatures in the outer system.
"She's..." Victan trails off, then rephrases. "We'll grow, and change over time. That's what people do. But right now, at the start of our journey, Cia is an asset. She's friendly, and she'll do her best to help no matter what we give her. Ker's going to require a lot more attention. We'll have to cater to him, be more careful around him. He seemed to be having difficulty controlling his emotions a few times. That's dangerous in a psyker."
Anexa grimaces as she opens her mouth. "But it's worth the effort. From what you've said, Cia sounds like a glory hound, while Ker is going to be wiling to put in the effort on any task he's interested in."
"Any task he's interested in," Victan repeats. "CIa understands that hard work is required for great deeds. She's a pillar of strength." He turns towards you, where your green-haired body is watching their argument. "Vita, I think we're going in circles. What do you think."
You sigh, then raise a placating hand. "Let's hold off on making this decision for right now. Both of them are exciting for different reasons. I have more reservations about Ker, but he's also got his upsides. We have a little bit of time. You two sleep on it, I'll think about something else. Let's talk about this again in a few days."
Both of them reluctantly nod, then sigh and go to bed. You watch them go, and hope that this argument hasn't damaged their friendship. You don't think so. They've been friends for decades at this point, even as their work usually keeps them worried about distinctly different things. Still, you said you were going to pay attention to other things, so you do.
After all, you want to build your ship in the next decade. The first order of buisness is increasing your manufacturing capacity yet again. You've run the numbers, and the most efficent way to build your ship is to first build more manufactories, and second to build your ship. You'll start the ship later, but the greater overall production will increase the rate at which you can build the ship. It's also easier for you to built that manufacturing capacity on the ground and transfer the products into space, which is as much thanks to the plain accessibility of raw materials on the ground as it is to the contribution of gravity to most manufacturing processes. Some things are easier in vacumn, but it's almost easier to create an ultrafine vacumn in-atrmosphere than outside of it.
Anyway. You're building more manufactories. The question of where briefly gives you pause - you've already build out the pseudo-mine near the river about as much as you can. Making it larger will start to negatively impact the surrounding area, and Denva might look askance as you cover literally the entire area they granted you in buildings. But luckily, you've got an alternative site - nobody complained when you set up your shuttles in the mountains, and there happen to be several veins of ore nearby that'll be useful. That's already where the majority of your launch capacity is, so you might as well just expand the mountain area into a larger facility that includes a significant amount of manufacturing capacity.
Construction bots venture forth to collect raw materials and begin the process of turning it into more construction bots and more capability to turn the mountains shattered by the mechanicus orbital bombardment weapons into useful materials. Like the ship you'll use to leave Denva. There's something poetic in that, but you don't have the skill to put it to words.
43 Manufactories completed!
2 Spaceports completed!
15 shuttles completed!
Once that project is underway and not demanding so much of your attention you turn your question back to the choice of psykers. It's something that's been bubbling in the back of your head for a while, and the more you think about it the more you are becoming certain. No matter who you pick you'll be dissapointing one of your crew, but that's not why you're making the decision. This matters. Whoever you pick will come with you to the stars, and will wield the powers of the warp on your behalf. It's important that you pick right. Or at least not wrong.
Your green-haired avatar knocks on Anexa's door and enters at her welcome. You wear a contrite expression on your face.
She looks up from her latest study of the blueprints you made of the psychic shielding, sees your expression and swears. "Ah Frak. You're picking Cia?"
You take a seat and nod. "Sorry. I just think that Victan's right. The more I read of the Inquisitorial documents, the more they emphasize that psykers are dangerous. It seems like the most dangerous thing is for them to get obsessive, to feel alone and seek companionship through their powers. It's not a matter of who I like more. It's a matter of who I trust to not cause a catastrophe. If I brought Ker aboard I'd be looking over his shoulder all the time, and that's not fair to me or to him."
Anexa nods solemnly. "I can accept that. I don't promise to like her though."
"You should try. She seems nice," you reply, somewhat sadly. Then you gesture towards the designs she's examining. "Are you ready to start on the psychic shielding research?"
She shakes her head. "No, let's talk about bringing Cia aboard. Let me call Victan." She sends out a quick mental communication and Victan enters a few minutes later. He's carefully concealing any satisfaction at his victory.
You kick things off. "Okay, so it's going to take her a little while to get up to speed. How do you think we should do it? You've both been introduced to all of this - " you wave your hands around to indicate the buried ship - "before. What do you think? Should I tell her the truth from the start?"
Victan is shaking his head. "We don't know what she's been taught, and what she knows. The monastaries are bastions of the old Imperial Faith, though from what I've seen it's more about trusting the Emperor to save you than scouraging away the unclean. But she might have a bad reaction to your true nature. You should pretend to be what you say you are - an ancient human explorer, awakened from stasis in this day and age."
You raise an eyebrow. "For how long?"
He shrugs. "Until we think it's a good idea to tell her the full truth. It might be quick, it might be slow. But we need to get her used to this."
"Aren't we worried about lying to her?" Anexa asked archly.
"It's not a full lie," Victan replied quickly. "And it's very possible she doesn't even have the understanding to properly contextualize what you are. I don't think they learned science in the monastaries. I can sound her out first, and you can teach her what she needs to know to really understand things."
You nod slowly. "That will mean pretending to be human for a long time. My preference would be to use this avatar."
Victan nods. "She hasn't seen the footage of your other one, I'm almost certain. And even if she had, that's not hard to explain as there being mutliple ancients. You could be Vita's daughter."
That makes you chuckle. "Okay, we can do that." Then you clap your hands together. "Other things. Anexa and I are going to work on improving the psychic shields. I want the option to take the scrapcode generator with us, and that means we're going to need better psychic shields. It'll also probably help us with bringing Cia onboard."
Your attention turns towards Victan. "You and I are going to be in charge of Cia, but your other job is keeping an eye on the nations of Denva. They haven't done anything especially stupid recently, but I'm worried. Especially when I start to build a giant ship above the planet, they're going to notice. They know that's what I want to do, but I think the scale might surprise them."
Anexa snorts. "It's a warp-damned big ship."
You can't help but agree.
Cia arrives a few days later on a shuttle with Victan. You watch through cameras as he escorts her down through the tunnels towards your crashed ship. You've cleaned up the entryway a bit - but not a ton. It's still clearly in the middle of an industrial site, and she is definitely confused by the setting.
Then the door to the ship proper slides open and your primary avatar is behind it, extending a hand in greeting. "Hi! I'm Vita!"
She looks down at you, flashes a dazzling smile and grasps your hand with her own. "Hi Vita, I'm Cia. It's great to meet you."
You had seen her in images before, but you hadn't really grasped how large she is. Your eyes are approximately level with her chest, and the rest of her is proportioned to match. Her legs are thicker than your avatar's torso, but her hand is gentle as she shakes yours.
Anexa steps forward first, offering her own hand with a cold expression. "I'm Anexa."
Cia is clearly taken slightly aback by the introduction, but stays polite. "Hi Anexa. I'm looking forward to getting to know you."
Anexa just grunts and turns to leave, not giving Cia a second glance.
Cia gives you a questioning look, but you ignore it. "First, let's show you to your room, then show you around the ship!" You chirp, turning to hurry down the corridor.
She easily catches up with long strides, short ponytail bouncing as she matches your pace. "This is incredible. It's shielded just like Abess Meeni said. It's nice. How long has the ship been here?"
"I'm not sure," you reply honestly. "About ten thousand years."
"By the golden throne," she says, the words nearly unconsious.
You figure now is as good a time as any. "You believe in the Imperial Cult?" You ask neutrually. "Not many around here seem to hold onto it anymore."
She looks at you out of the corner of her eye. "Yes, I believe in Him. The Emperor of Mankind shall save us from the perils of the warp, and protect our souls from the grasp of Evil. You don't believe?"
You shrug. "I never even heard of the Emperor before I awoke on Denva. He wasn't known at all before I went into stasis."
"Ah." Cia shifts uncomfortably, but doesn't seem to have an answer to that.
You turn another corner, and a door opens at your approach. "This is yours!"
She steps into the room, studying it quickly before pointing to the desk. "What's that?"
"Your workdesk. It's a computer - cogitator, if you want. You can use it to look up anything from our database."
Her brow furrows in surprise. "A cogitator - for me? Just me?"
You give a little curtsy. "That's the smallest thing I'll be making. I'm about to start building a new ship for us to actually journey across the stars with!"
She blinks, surprised yet again. "A - new ship? The abbess said you planned to repair this one."
Victan steps into the room smoothly, replying before you can. "We've let people assume that, but it's easier to build a new one."
Cia nods decisvly. "A new ship, then. To journey through the stars." A fire seems to fill her, and you find yourself easily able to imagine this woman on a battlefield, leading a charge or simply cutting her way through her enemies. Then she looks around. "So - what am I to do? How can I help?"
You smile and start explaining the various features of the room, then walk her through how to use the workdesk to look things up. Victan introduces the reading list he's made to help her catch up, and she looks a little bit intimidated by the list of articles and topics.
Then she asks a question that surprises you. "Can I get some weights? Is there a gym on the ship?"
"Yes?" You answer. "It hasn't been used since - well, since I woke up. We proably need to replace the equipment. But we do have one?"
"I didn't know that." Victan says, slightly amused. "But you won't need to exercise. That's what the juvenat is for!"
Cia blinks at him, clearly not understanding the last part. "It's not for exercise. Or not just for that. It's for mental discipline. And all I need is some space to run, and some weights. Also - what is juvenat?"
"Ah." Victan smiles. "Well. One of the bonuses of being part of the crew is immortality."
Cia's jaw drops, and then Victan starts explaining.
Over the next few months Victan and Cia settle into a steady pattern, and she steadily becomes more and more acustomed to life on the ship. She remarks a few times that she was expecting mroe demand for her abilities, but Victan just shrugs and says they have time. Juvenat removes some of the pressures that most people feel, after all. Anexa warms up to Cia some, but that's primarily through extensive effort from Victan to get them talking. It turns out they both have a passion for strategy games, though the competition can run a little hot at times.
You also need to keep your avatar active nearly permanently to keep up the facade of being a real human. You can't exactly just stick it in a closet and turn it off in case Cia sees it and starts asking questions - so you engage. You keep track of meals and fake eating and bathroom trips. It's - surprisingly distracting.
It also seems to be impacting your work. You and Anexa are working on improving the psychic shielding, and it's not going well at all. The shielding itself makes sense to you, and you know how to refactor it into smaller shapes. You'd thought that strengthing the shielding would be a simple matter of extending that research to make it more powerful, more resistant to damage. But with your split attention you can't seem to figure out how to modify the strength without disrupting the intended effect. You have several examples of it being damaged now, and every effort you make to improve the resistance of the network against damage reduces its strength unacceptably.
Eventually the two of you working together arrive at a workable solution, though it makes you want to pull your hair out. Instead of refactoring the system, you just bulk it up. Every piece of the network fits closer together in greater complexity, an almost fractal-like puzzle extending down to the microscopic level to upscale the effect. Even as the smallest details are worn out by damage the larger ones will continue to work, meaning that more damage can be sustained before the shielding fails.
It... has the desired effect. But it's painfully difficult to manufacture the various pieces, and you aren't able to acheive very many of your stretch goals. You'd wanted to try and see if you could work in an upgrade to the psychic shielding on your new ship before you built it - but the new shielding is different enough in form that it would require you to completely redesign the hull to make that work. Additionally, you'd wanted to try and integrate machine spirits to actively control the shielding but you barely even start to think about how that would be possible. You do remain convinced it would be effective if you can figure it out, though.
Researched Improved Psychic shielding - rolled 5 +20 = 25. Poor success
No levels for Anexa. You may now double the strength of any psychic shielding you build by doubling the cost.
Ship Psychic Shielding upgraded - Can double price to double shielding.
Technology discounted - Nested Psychic shielding cost reduced by 50 RP
Unlock for scrapcode vault unlocked - May double HP by spending 1000 BP
New technology unlocked - Efficent Psychic Shielding (150 RP)
New technology unlocked - Alternative Shielding Meanings (500 RP)
New technology unlocked - Machine Spirit-controlled Psychic Shields (300 RP)
Both of you leave somewhat frustrated, and you can't help but blame Cia for the problem a little bit. It's probably unfair, but you're definitely distrcted trying to ensure she doesn't discover your secret. Anexa seems to feel the same way, and gives Cia the cold shoulder on a few different occasions.
Cia seems a big exasparated by Anexa's behavior, and while she makes a few extra efforts when those are rebuffed she seems to shrug and admit defeat, spending more time engaging with you and Victan.
You meanwhile, take your frustration out on the mountainous landscape around your launch pad. The steep mountains have sprouted dozens of factory buildings, and now it's time to build the spaceports and shuttles you need to launch all of that production capacity to space. A few more manufactories go up, along with adjacent spaceports, and shuttles are thrown together to fill them as fast as possible.
7 Manufactories constructed!
3 Spaceports constructed!
35 Shuttles constructed!
5,300/33,650 construction for the Spark of the Ancients!
That takes only a portion of your production capacity, and the rest goes into actually, properly starting your ship. You don't have a shipyard for it, so you build a framework gantry around the correct volume first. It's a spindle-like web that will enclose the final ship, and it just needs to be strong enough to hold all of the parts in place until they can be properly connected. Unlike a traditional shipyard you'll need to disassemble it at the end to let the ship out, but it's a nice compromise that means you don't need to build a full shipyard.
You're building the ship in a middle orbit which goes around Denva every twelve hours or so, to comprimise between ease of access and depth into the gravity web, and you get started on the spine of the ship as well - the central core that contains primary power lines as well as conducting the force from the engines all the way up through the body of the ship.
Your next focus is to try to brush up on your medical basics. Part of this is to learn how to administer better medical care - your auto-docs are good, but they're not able to think and reason their way through problems. They're little better than a glorified look-up engine that you can plug a list of symptoms into and get out a recommended treatment or perscription.
Another part is that you're starting to think about more invasive cybernetics. Your current surgical technologies have so far kept up with everything you've wanted to do, but as you start to think about more significant and dramatic augmentations then you're going to need to understand how to do the surgeries yourself.
The final reason is of course your prize from Kylssar's Nest. A Navigator is person with rare and powerful abilities, and you have an opportunity to raise one. But first you'll need to figure out enough about their biology to do it safely.
There's two hiccup in this process. First is that most of your attention is on building your ship in orbit. It's a complex undertaking, and you're coordinating thousands of shuttle launches and a stream of orbital material in a complex ballet. But you budgeted your attetnion for that.
The second issue is that you're continuing to talk to Cia on a daily basis. You mentioned to her that you're studying medicine and she quickly gets interested, asking if she can join in. She appears to have a latent interest that spawns from her devotion to exercise. You tentatively agree, and soon enough she's joining your avatar for hours each day to go through medical texts. The problem is that she just doesn't have the background for this. Chemistry & biochemistry are mysteries to her, and you find yourself explaining basic cell biology and then realizing that Cia doesn't really understand what molocules are.
To be fair, she figures out the problem without you mentioning it and excuses herself to study the basics on her own. But it still takes time and attention from you. You speed through the rest of the material and learn it quickly enough, but you aren't able to achieve a proper synthesis. You can beat the auto-docs in tricky situations and are able to do more advanced surgeries, but you feel like this is a shaky foundation to build further success on. At least your reading on human genetics makes more sense, but it's not as complete as you would like.
Researched You don't need no stinkin' medical school - rolled 4 + 20 = 24. Poor success.
You have improved your medical knowledge and your medical suites now provide better medical care. But you haven't managed to fully synthesize the knowledge, and will need a follow-up tech to unlock the full synergies with other medical technology.
Prerequisites met for Advanced Organ replacements (150 RP)
Prerequisites met for Advanced Neural Implants (150 RP)
Upgraded Small automated medical facility, Large automated medical facility, Medical bay to treat severe injuries.
New technology unlocked - Ok, maybe there's a point to medical school (50 RP)
Introduction to Human Genetics at 45/100 RP
At least the construction is going well. At this point you've ramped up your construction capabilities enough, and you just want to focus on getting your ship done. The ship's skeleton is taking form, and you've mostly finished several of the core components of the ship like the engine, reactors and the power distribution network. It's slow going, but "slow" is relative when you're talking about a nine-kilometer warship. Really all that matters is that you're exactly on track according to the timeline you laid down. With all of the other distractions and issues you've had you'll take that as a win.
12,550/33,650 construction for the Spark of the Ancients!
You examine the outline through your ground-based telescope with satisfaction - the ship's outline and size is clearly visible, even if you can still see stars through it. Of course, that's when you get a message from Victan.
> Vita, we might have a problem. A few of the governments are demanding an audience with you. They have questions about the ship. [Apologetic]
> What questions do they have? [Innocent]
> I think they're a little bit concerned with its size. They were also probably expecting you to build or repair a ship on the ground and launch it to space. But the fact that it's orbiting over everybody's territory is a bit concerning to them. [Explaning]
> I don't see why it's any of their buisness. Here, I'm coming to talk to you. [Annoyed]
Your flounce into his office moments later, visibly annoyed. "Can you deal with this? I've been distracted too much recently."
He looks up apologetically. "It's Cia, isn't it. I can try to keep her distracted more."
You wave it off. "No, it's fine. She's nice, it's just that I'm having to hide things from her and it takes extra attention. It would be just as bad or worse with Ker. But I don't know that I have time to deal with this."
He shifts uncomfortably. "They're asking for you."
"But you'll be better at dealing with this." You fix him with a level gaze. "You've been dealing with Denva as a diplomat for decades, and you've done a great job at it. Look at what you've achieved, first with the mechanicus, then with the Denva governments, now with the monastaries. You're more than a spy. You're a diplomat now. Go - diplomance. Please?"
He sits up a little straighter at your words. "Ok. What can I say?"
You wave your hand idly. "Anything. Whatever you need to say. They don't have any real power here, but there's various things they could do that would invonceneince me and hurt them. It'll be easier if they're placated, but feel free to let the velvet glove slip and reveal the iron gauntlet underneath if you need to."
He nods. "Ok. I'll do that."
Victan has become a diplomat-spy! He can be used with all diplomacy, spying and subversion actions!
It seems to work, since that's the last you hear of it. And him taking that headache off your plate leaves you finally free to turn your attention to the last thing that was on your list, which is finally getting to the psytech you've had burning a hole in your vaults for the last fifteen thousand years. Anexa's busy with her own research but definitely takes the time to drop by the lab from time to time to check in. She's extremely curious about the research, even if she's doing little more than reading your summaries on the various pieces of technology.
At first the research doesn't go any better than your other investigations in the last few years. You're examining ancient technology that's supposed to enhance a psyker's abilities, but you don't understand those abilities at all. It's complicated and seems designed to channel energy beyond your understanding through fairly complex materials - though you're able to generalize a bit from your studies of the psychic shielding. After a fair amount of scanning and some modelling work you figure out that there are at least three catagories of different devices in the cache of samples you got from Prospero so long ago.
The first appears to be a basic amplification device. It's got some feedback loops that seem designed like some kind of amplifier - but according to subtly different rules than any amplifier for electricity, plasma or acoustics. You recognize that it's just following rules you don't understand, and that's a barrier. Most items of this type appear to be long rods or staffs, though there's one in the shape of a ring, and another that appears to be an early attempt at building the amplification into a suit of armor.
The second is similar, but seems designed to dampen effects instead. There's some functionality to dampen a psyker's own power, but primarily it seems designed to protect the wearer against external psychic effects. However, even with your best guesses as to how psychic energy functions the device sort of inherently doesn't make sense in a few fundamental ways, since it seems to be intended to do destructive interference of psychic energy but as far as you know that's not how psychic energy works.
The third is the weirdest. It seems possible to channel this psychic energy into objects through a kind of serpentine-like structure, to allow psychic eneregy to have direct influence on the physcial world. You don't know exactly what the effect of such a thing would be, but you're guessing it would be enhance the destructive properties or duability of the materials in question. But that's kind of a wild-ass guess, given the fact that most devices like that seem to be built into weapons. There's a sword, an axe, a shield and a hammer. You found all of that cute and anachronistic when you first picked the devices up, but with your current records they instead seem a bit... foreboding.
You explain all of this to Anexa, who takes a quick stab at trying to decipher the problem. She has no more luck than you do, but makes a reluctant - and astute - suggestion.
"Why don't you bring Cia into this? She doesn't know anything about how the energy works, but she's got certain advantages over us. If she can channel some energy into these devices you can see how they react."
"That's... a good point. And I think she's been trying to figure out how to feel useful. I definitely rebuffed her a bit after some recent frustrations. Let's give it a try." You go and find Cia in the lounge, engrossed in a history book.
She's been doing her best not to disturb you recently, clearly feeling guilty about your frustration as she tries to catch up on what you would consider an elementary-level education. Her recent focus has been on history books, apparently enthralled with the records of humanity's spread through the galaxy, and focusing especially on the various wars against hostile Xenos that occured during that period. She's asked several questions about the "Men of Iron" in your records, and you get the sense that she's developing admiration for what she sees as the ultimate warrior's of humanity's past.
You have to admit some complicity in that. You've been suggesting more books and records that portray AIs in a positive light, and it didn't seem like her Imperial education inculcated her strongly against Abomindible Intelligences, likely due to low chance of her running into one.
Regardless, you interrupt her reading. "Cia, can you help me with something?"
She springs to her feet, looking eager. "Of course, Vita. What is it?"
"I've got some psychic technology that I'm trying to figure out, and I've hit a wall. I'm wondering if you have..." You wave a hand at her. "Insights I don't."
She swallows heavily, clearly a bit intimidated by the task. But her voice is positive and she follows you without stopping. "Okay! Show me where and I'll do my best."
You bring her to the lab where the pieces of vaugely organic-looking technology are scattered across the benches. She looks at them in confusion, with no small amount of wonder and anticipation. Then you direct her towards a sensor suite that's closer to a small room. She stands obediently inside and you hand her one of the simpler items, which is a simple one-handed sword about the length of her forearm. It's got a simple curving line of psychically active material buried under the surface, and you want to see what happens.
She lifts the slightly curved sword with one hand, looking at it questioningly. "Now what?"
You shrug. "I don't know. Try to channel your powers into it."
She takes a deep breath. "I've spent most of my life learning how not to do that. But let's give it a try."
Cia holds the sword up vertically in front of her, gazing deep into its depths with a look of deep concentration on her face. You wait patiently, and watch her stare at the sword with unwavering concentration. Her arm starts to tremble, and sweat forms on her face without anything happens. But she doesn't give up, and then you see flickers of energy that don't belong.
Tiny sparks appear where her hand joins the sword, and you watch with dozens of advanced sensors as the crawl backwards into her flesh and up the sword likewise. You are suddenly worried for her safety, but Cia's face is fixed in a snarl of concentration and you don't want to interfere. Besides, the energy doesn't seem to be hurting her? That much electromagnetic radiation coming from a normal person would leave them spasming on the ground, but Cia is unmoving.
The signals reach the tip of the blade and her brain at the same time and she seems to relax, slumping and going to one knee as sudden sweat pours off her body. The blade itself buzzes with energy, and she digs the tip of the sword into the floor in front of her for support, then almost falls as the blade goes through the alloy like a blowtorch through snow.
You both blink at the sight, and she carefully extracts the weapon, looking at it in awe and wonder. "I can feel it. It's - my power. Extended outward from me."
You're frantically flipping through the sensor feeds, trying to digest everything that happens. If nothing else, this is going to accelerate your understanding of actual psychic energy quite dramatically.
"Excellent. Now can we try the rest?"
She nods jerkily, looking up at you, and over the next few months you go through the rest of the devices. She doesn't have as strong a connection to any of the others as she had to the first sword, but it's enough for you to derive some of the principles behind the technology, and that's enough for you to form a baseline.
Researched The Basics of Psytech - rolled 19+20=39. Success!
You understand the basics of psychic energy, and generally understand how to manipulate it in technological devices.
New blueprint unlocked - Basic Psychic Experimentation Lab (200 BP, 50 CP)
New technology unlocked - Basic Psychic Amplification Devices (200 RP)
New technology unlocked - Basic Psychic Supression Devices (200 RP)
New technology unlocked - Basic Psychic weapons (150 RP)
New technology unlocked - Basic Pyromantic understanding (150 RP)
Prerequisites met for Psytech Machine spirits (100 RP)
It's only then that you notice your psychic shielding has been a bit scratched. You track back the timeline on the damage and find it corresponds well with the times where Cia's power flared in uncontrolled ways. You'll need to talk to her about that later.
-5 psychic shielding.
Anexa shows up about halfway through the process and quickly gets involved, watching with fire in her eyes as tiny strands of psychic energy - very reminiscint of arcs of electricity - play around Cia as she experiments pushing her power through an amplification staff. That particlar experiment ends with Cia covered in small and mostly superficial burns, and Anexa quickly ushers her off to the medical suite.
You can't help but listen in on their conversation as Anexa keeps Cia company while burn cream and application of other curatives. You aren't entirely surprised to see that Anexa's demenor has almost completely changed in regards to Cia. Before this point she saw Cia soley as a source of problems, and was almost disgusted by her lack of knowledge. But seeing Cia's unique abilities - and more significantly her bravery and determination in the face of a challenge - has eroded Anexa's contempt and replaced it with respect.
At that moment, you make the decision. You're going to reveal yourself to Cia, fully and completely. She's earnest and open. She still holds to the Imperial Cult in many things, but not only was her religious education fairly one-dimensonal, you've managed to fill the edges in with history and other knowledge. Furthermore, Cia's formed emotional connections with the rest of the crew. She already sees you as a person, as somebody to engage in dialogue.
And now, she's gladly reciprocatiang Anexa's newfound friendlieness, so it's clear that she isn't holding Anexa's previous behavior against her. You're not sure if Cia's decided to do her best to ingratiate herself with you and her crew, or if she understood Anexa's dislike and thought it was justified, or if she just isn't the type to hold grudges. But that's the last thing that seals your decision. She won't reject you out of hand, and that means it's time to share the secret.
After you've wrapped the psytech experimentation up, you thank Cia for her help. "That was invalauble. I appreciate you going above and beyond what I expected." You wince slightly at memories of punishing effort that Cia's given to help your research goals. "Now, I want to apologize, becasuse I've been keeping a secret from you." You send messages to Anexa and Victan about what you're planning, and recieve quick confirmations in response.
She looks at you quizzicly, and you gesture for her to follow you. Anexa and Victan meet you outside the relevant dor, and Cia looks around, realizing that this is serious. But she holds her tonuge, waiting for you to explain.
You adjust your glasses and address her seriously. "What I told you about me is the truth. I'm an ancient from before the Imperium. An explorer, a traveller and a scientist. But I'm also an artifical intelligece, a creation of humanity built to help humans explore the galaxy." The door slides open and you walk through, gesturing at the bank of cogitators that make up your central AI core. "This is my actual mind. This body is my primary avatar, and I generally interact with people through similar avatars. I think of this body as me. But this computer is truly me."
Cia seems flabbergasted and takes a number of seconds to recover, looking quickly between you and the computer. She shoots glances at Anexa and Victan, who are standing to either side and looking completely calm. They're watching her with calm expressions, waiting to see her reaction.
"Really?" She asks, but it's not a question. She's trying to adapt to this new information, and is just filling the silence while her brain crunches through the new information. Then she blinks, and makes the connections you were hoping that she'd make. "Like the Men of Iron?"
You nod. "Something like that, but I'm a Man of Stone." You do a quick piourette, your avatar's hair fluttering out. "A woman of stone, actually. But that means I specialize in exploration and building infastructure. And diplomacy. But not in fighting." You stare into her eyes. "I don't know the first thing about fighting, but this galaxy is much less friendly than the one I left behind. We're going to need to fight, and that's part of why I wanted you. Can you help me with that?"
I feel a bit bad manipulating her like this, but both Victan and I agreed this was a good way to win her over. And its not lying. And is it manipulating her if we're trying to unbrainwash her? Well, yes, but I think it's justified.
She nods firmly, agreeing almost before her consious mind catches up. "Yes. That I will do. Who do we need to fight?"
That question catches you off-guard, for some reason. "Uh. Well, we're not sure. There are lots of potentially dangerous Xenos, and..." you trail off, unsure if you want to explain Chaos to somebody who's supposed to be particularly vulnerable to their influence.
Do you explain Chaos to Cia now, or choose to wait? You can do it later as a free action, but it'll be more awkward both now and then. Vote below, separate from the plan vote.
Ground Build Capacity: 6000
Lift Capacity: 6000 (converts between ground and void BP)
Void Build Capacity: 1350
Research Capacity: 200
Psychic Shielding: 95/100 (repair for 10 BP/point)
Juvenat usage: 24/50 people's worth (cannot be stockpiled)
Shipbuilding capacity: 4 ship construction slots (treat it as capacity. You can only be building ships that fit within your construction slots)
Available ships:
1x Mechanicus-disguised Shuttle (5 CP)
30x Basic Stealth Fighters (30x5 CP)
12x Basic Stealth Assault Shuttles (12x5 CP)
100x Basic Stealth Missiles (200x1 CP) - in space
110x Shuttles (5x110 =550 CP) +5500 Lift Capacity
2x Tiny system monitors (2x50 = 100CP)
Available ground forces:
1000 Light Machine-spirit infantry bots (20 CP)
2000 Light Machine-spirit humanized infantry bots (2x20 CP)
1000 Medium Machine-spirit humanized Infantry Bots (20 CP)
3000 Heavy Machine-spirit humanized Infantry Bots with Machine Spirit Jammers (60 CP)
CP costs for infantry bots work as breakpoints in increments of 1000. So 50 or 500 or 1000 bots all cost 20 CP, and 1001 costs 40 CP. Abstraction, y'all.
Misc assets:
27 BP of trade goods that Aevon will accept as rent.
Avatars:
Original Avatar, young human woman with green hair
Adult human woman, indeterminate age.
Female tech priest with some augmentations.
Current Installations:
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:
Spark of the Ancients (12,550/33,650
In progress research:
Introduction to Human Genetics (45/100)
[] [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)
The nations of Denva don't really need your immediate attention. They're integrating the mechanicus, slowly, and moving into space, slowly. The direction is all good, it's just going to take about 10 turns before the situation changes on its own, absent an outside force like you poking it.
[] Construction: Gain build points equal to your build capacity, write in what combination of blueprints you spend them on.
[] 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.
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 severe 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.
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.
(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.
Destroyer, 50 RP, 50 CP, 1 ship construction slots (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, 2 ship construction slots (500-1000 BP, 1600x400-2200x600 meters) Engines: (5/6/7 gravities) for (75/150/225 BP). Shields: (none/light/medium) for (0/75/150) Armor: (none/light/medium) for (0/75/150)
Light Cruiser, 150 RP, 200 CP, 8 ship construction slots (1000-2000 BP, 3500x400-4400x800 meters) Engines: (3/4/5 gravities) for (100/200/300 BP). Shields: (none/light/medium) for (0/150/300) Armor: (none/light/medium) for (0/100/200)
Heavy Cruiser, 200 RP, 300 CP, 32 ship construction slots (2000-6000 BP, 4500x600-6000x1200 meters) Engines: (2/3/4 gravities) for (300/400/500 BP). Shields: (none/light/medium) for (0/200/400) Armor: (none/light/medium) for (0/200/400)
Level 8
-[] 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
Specialty (1/1): Machine Spirits. Grants a +5 bonus when doing research rolls involving machine spirits.
Victan Thallos, Diplomat-Spy
Level 10
-[] Victan active action: Diplomat-Spy - assists any diplomacy action you take, 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.
Cia Steblin, Pyromancer Psyker
Level 0
-[] Active Psyker improvement: Cia will actively attempt to practice her powers. Roll two d100s. Take the higher roll for determining level-up, but take the lower for perils of the warp. (DCs are unknown but context-dependent. They are currently favorable and will get less favorable as she levels)
-[] Passive Psyker improvement: Cia will take lower-risk actions to improve herself, including meditation, study and augmentation. A single level-up roll, with only a very low roll resulting in perils of the warp.
You won't explain the full picture, but about the same of what you did for Anexa and Victan. Chaos exists, is a memetic danger, and can corrupt people. It can corporeally manifest, and you might need to fight it.
[] No
You can always wait until Cia's got a better grasp on her powers and better discipline before you talk about Chaos. For now you can talk about xenos, pirates and other dangers you're scared of.
Cia's got a lot of low-hanging fruit for leveling up, but that's because she barely understands her powers at the moment. She's been given what scraps of psyker knowledge the monestaries had, but is going to have to trial-and-error her way through learning in the future. This is not a survivable approach for most psykers, but she'll be protected from the worst dangers of her power by your psychic shields. Low rolls will result in damage to those shields - which will scale with her level - and injury to herself, which is where medical technology comes into play. You also may want to build the Basic Psychic Experimentation Lab because it'll narratively reduce the consequences of bad rolls. It requires 1 slot if you want to build it into your new ship.
Cia's experimentation with psytech was at very low levels of power, but also very low levels of knowledge. She doesn't even know how to use her own power yet. It's very easy for an untrained psyker to make a lightshow when handed a rudimentary psi-staff. Same with the force weapons - these are baby versions, some of the first prototypes ever created in the galaxy. They don't require permanent linking to the same way that more powerful versions do, but there's still an element of difficulty to using one for the first time, as you saw.
Don't feel like Cia's an inherently distracting influence. I needed a way to explain why all of Vita's rolls were so terrible this turn, and decided that it was the result of bringing Cia on board and bringing her up to speed. She'll continue to be involved in further psytech research, and will narratively unlock significantly more advanced kinds of psytech than you would have had access to otherwise.
I decided not to roll for introducing Cia to your secret, both becasue you've done this a number of times before and because you have both Victan and Anexa to help out. This is something you've done before, and also Victan's specialty and lack of active actions meant he had time to help out. Furthermore, while Cia's been taught the Imperial Creed it's been much more focused on faith and protecting her from dangerous thoughts than "Here's what an AI is and this is why you should kill it." The people setting up the monastary curriculum didn't think that was a particularly relevant piece of information.
Oh, and I didn't bother to write it in, but the scrapcode generator has barey accumulated any energy as far as you can tell. It might have enough oomph for like 2 points of shield damage. This is in-character knowledge.
Let's do 24 hours of moratorium, 24 hours of voting.
On second thought, we can do a shorter timeframe, since there doesn't seem to be too much argument about the plans. 8 hours of moratorium, 12 hours of voting. I don't know that I'll have much time tomorrow but I'll have more than zero.
[X] Diplomat-spy: Victan's active action bonus can be applied to all diplomacy rolls, including first contact with a new culture.
[X] Cia Steblin, confidant pyromancer. Zeta (11)
[X] Plan: Expand your Ship, Vita!
-[X] Construction x3
--[X] First Construction: (4,850 BP, there's enough lift to make the difference between VBP and BP irrelevant)
---[X] +43 Manufactories (4,300 BP, 2,150 CP), 2 Spaceports (200 BP, 50 CP), 15 Shuttles (300 BP, 75 CP), Trade Goods (50 BP)
--[X] Second Construction (7,000 BP, natch)
---[X] +7 Manufactories (700 BP, 350 CP), 3 Spaceports (300 BP, 75 CP), 35 Shuttles (700 BP, 175 CP). Ship!: 5,300/33,650 BP
--[X] Third Construction (7,350 BP, Natch)
---[X] Scrapcode Vault, 40/50 psychic shielding -> 50/50 psychic shielding (100 BP) repair for 10 BP/point
---[X] Ship!: 12,550/33,650 BP
-[X] Research (200 RP + 40 Anexa RP)
--[X] Improved Psychic Shielding (20 + 40 Anexa RP, Complete!)
--[X] The Basics of Psytech (85,Complete!)
--[X] You don't need no Stinkin' Med School! (50/50, Complete!)
--[X] Introduction to Human Genetics (45/100)
[X] Cia Steblin, confidant pyromancer. Zeta (11)
[X] Plan: Expand your Ship, Vita!
-[X] Construction x3
--[X] First Construction: (4,850 BP, there's enough lift to make the difference between VBP and BP irrelevant)
---[X] +43 Manufactories (4,300 BP, 2,150 CP), 2 Spaceports (200 BP, 50 CP), 15 Shuttles (300 BP, 75 CP), Trade Goods (50 BP)
--[X] Second Construction (7,000 BP, natch)
---[X] +7 Manufactories (700 BP, 350 CP), 3 Spaceports (300 BP, 75 CP), 35 Shuttles (700 BP, 175 CP). Ship!: 5,300/33,650 BP
--[X] Third Construction (7,350 BP, Natch)
---[X] Scrapcode Vault, 40/50 psychic shielding -> 50/50 psychic shielding (100 BP) repair for 10 BP/point
---[X] Ship!: 12,550/33,650 BP
-[X] Research (200 RP + 40 Anexa RP)
--[X] Improved Psychic Shielding (20 + 40 Anexa RP, Complete!)
--[X] The Basics of Psytech (85,Complete!)
--[X] You don't need no Stinkin' Med School! (50/50, Complete!)
--[X] Introduction to Human Genetics (45/100)
"Ker's more powerful, and his power is more flexible!" Anexa's voice is a half-shout as she repeats a point she's made several times already.
Victan's patience is starting to fray. "But he'll be harder to work with. Whoever we pick, we'll have to work with them - get along with them - forever. Their personality is more important than their raw power. And direct combat has been our weakness, as we saw with the mechanicus.
Anexa gives him a glower. "You'll get along with Cia better. I like Ker. He reminds me of myself." She pauses. "A bit. He gets focused on things, the same way I do. And he wants to explore. That's what we're going to do."
Watching from the side, you're not sure you would agree. It's clear to you that while Anexa clearly does become very fixated on her projects, she is very willing to hear conflicting viewpoints and consider the problem in the larger context. To be fair, you hadn't seen that much of Ker so far, but your analysis of what you've seen so far suggests a certain lack of... flexibility that makes you worried.
On the other hand, you agree that you his passion for exploration is a point in his favor. He's focused on the right things, and seeing his desire to leave the planet reminded you of the itch burning on your own soul. You're making solid progress towards enabling your own departure, and you almost can't wait to find out new things. There are mysteries to pick from in Denva itself - first Denva Primus, and second the various technological signatures in the outer system.
"She's..." Victan trails off, then rephrases. "We'll grow, and change over time. That's what people do. But right now, at the start of our journey, Cia is an asset. She's friendly, and she'll do her best to help no matter what we give her. Ker's going to require a lot more attention. We'll have to cater to him, be more careful around him. He seemed to be having difficulty controlling his emotions a few times. That's dangerous in a psyker."
Anexa grimaces as she opens her mouth. "But it's worth the effort. From what you've said, Cia sounds like a glory hound, while Ker is going to be wiling to put in the effort on any task he's interested in."
"Any task he's interested in," Victan repeats. "CIa understands that hard work is required for great deeds. She's a pillar of strength." He turns towards you, where your green-haired body is watching their argument. "Vita, I think we're going in circles. What do you think."
You sigh, then raise a placating hand. "Let's hold off on making this decision for right now. Both of them are exciting for different reasons. I have more reservations about Ker, but he's also got his upsides. We have a little bit of time. You two sleep on it, I'll think about something else. Let's talk about this again in a few days."
Both of them reluctantly nod, then sigh and go to bed. You watch them go, and hope that this argument hasn't damaged their friendship. You don't think so. They've been friends for decades at this point, even as their work usually keeps them worried about distinctly different things. Still, you said you were going to pay attention to other things, so you do.
After all, you want to build your ship in the next decade. The first order of buisness is increasing your manufacturing capacity yet again. You've run the numbers, and the most efficent way to build your ship is to first build more manufactories, and second to build your ship. You'll start the ship later, but the greater overall production will increase the rate at which you can build the ship. It's also easier for you to built that manufacturing capacity on the ground and transfer the products into space, which is as much thanks to the plain accessibility of raw materials on the ground as it is to the contribution of gravity to most manufacturing processes. Some things are easier in vacumn, but it's almost easier to create an ultrafine vacumn in-atrmosphere than outside of it.
Anyway. You're building more manufactories. The question of where briefly gives you pause - you've already build out the pseudo-mine near the river about as much as you can. Making it larger will start to negatively impact the surrounding area, and Denva might look askance as you cover literally the entire area they granted you in buildings. But luckily, you've got an alternative site - nobody complained when you set up your shuttles in the mountains, and there happen to be several veins of ore nearby that'll be useful. That's already where the majority of your launch capacity is, so you might as well just expand the mountain area into a larger facility that includes a significant amount of manufacturing capacity.
Construction bots venture forth to collect raw materials and begin the process of turning it into more construction bots and more capability to turn the mountains shattered by the mechanicus orbital bombardment weapons into useful materials. Like the ship you'll use to leave Denva. There's something poetic in that, but you don't have the skill to put it to words.
43 Manufactories completed!
2 Spaceports completed!
15 shuttles completed!
Once that project is underway and not demanding so much of your attention you turn your question back to the choice of psykers. It's something that's been bubbling in the back of your head for a while, and the more you think about it the more you are becoming certain. No matter who you pick you'll be dissapointing one of your crew, but that's not why you're making the decision. This matters. Whoever you pick will come with you to the stars, and will wield the powers of the warp on your behalf. It's important that you pick right. Or at least not wrong.
Your green-haired avatar knocks on Anexa's door and enters at her welcome. You wear a contrite expression on your face.
She looks up from her latest study of the blueprints you made of the psychic shielding, sees your expression and swears. "Ah Frak. You're picking Cia?"
You take a seat and nod. "Sorry. I just think that Victan's right. The more I read of the Inquisitorial documents, the more they emphasize that psykers are dangerous. It seems like the most dangerous thing is for them to get obsessive, to feel alone and seek companionship through their powers. It's not a matter of who I like more. It's a matter of who I trust to not cause a catastrophe. If I brought Ker aboard I'd be looking over his shoulder all the time, and that's not fair to me or to him."
Anexa nods solemnly. "I can accept that. I don't promise to like her though."
"You should try. She seems nice," you reply, somewhat sadly. Then you gesture towards the designs she's examining. "Are you ready to start on the psychic shielding research?"
She shakes her head. "No, let's talk about bringing Cia aboard. Let me call Victan." She sends out a quick mental communication and Victan enters a few minutes later. He's carefully concealing any satisfaction at his victory.
You kick things off. "Okay, so it's going to take her a little while to get up to speed. How do you think we should do it? You've both been introduced to all of this - " you wave your hands around to indicate the buried ship - "before. What do you think? Should I tell her the truth from the start?"
Victan is shaking his head. "We don't know what she's been taught, and what she knows. The monastaries are bastions of the old Imperial Faith, though from what I've seen it's more about trusting the Emperor to save you than scouraging away the unclean. But she might have a bad reaction to your true nature. You should pretend to be what you say you are - an ancient human explorer, awakened from stasis in this day and age."
You raise an eyebrow. "For how long?"
He shrugs. "Until we think it's a good idea to tell her the full truth. It might be quick, it might be slow. But we need to get her used to this."
"Aren't we worried about lying to her?" Anexa asked archly.
"It's not a full lie," Victan replied quickly. "And it's very possible she doesn't even have the understanding to properly contextualize what you are. I don't think they learned science in the monastaries. I can sound her out first, and you can teach her what she needs to know to really understand things."
You nod slowly. "That will mean pretending to be human for a long time. My preference would be to use this avatar."
Victan nods. "She hasn't seen the footage of your other one, I'm almost certain. And even if she had, that's not hard to explain as there being mutliple ancients. You could be Vita's daughter."
That makes you chuckle. "Okay, we can do that." Then you clap your hands together. "Other things. Anexa and I are going to work on improving the psychic shields. I want the option to take the scrapcode generator with us, and that means we're going to need better psychic shields. It'll also probably help us with bringing Cia onboard."
Your attention turns towards Victan. "You and I are going to be in charge of Cia, but your other job is keeping an eye on the nations of Denva. They haven't done anything especially stupid recently, but I'm worried. Especially when I start to build a giant ship above the planet, they're going to notice. They know that's what I want to do, but I think the scale might surprise them."
Anexa snorts. "It's a warp-damned big ship."
You can't help but agree.
Cia arrives a few days later on a shuttle with Victan. You watch through cameras as he escorts her down through the tunnels towards your crashed ship. You've cleaned up the entryway a bit - but not a ton. It's still clearly in the middle of an industrial site, and she is definitely confused by the setting.
Then the door to the ship proper slides open and your primary avatar is behind it, extending a hand in greeting. "Hi! I'm Vita!"
She looks down at you, flashes a dazzling smile and grasps your hand with her own. "Hi Vita, I'm Cia. It's great to meet you."
You had seen her in images before, but you hadn't really grasped how large she is. Your eyes are approximately level with her chest, and the rest of her is proportioned to match. Her legs are thicker than your avatar's torso, but her hand is gentle as she shakes yours.
Anexa steps forward first, offering her own hand with a cold expression. "I'm Anexa."
Cia is clearly taken slightly aback by the introduction, but stays polite. "Hi Anexa. I'm looking forward to getting to know you."
Anexa just grunts and turns to leave, not giving Cia a second glance.
Cia gives you a questioning look, but you ignore it. "First, let's show you to your room, then show you around the ship!" You chirp, turning to hurry down the corridor.
She easily catches up with long strides, short ponytail bouncing as she matches your pace. "This is incredible. It's shielded just like Abess Meeni said. It's nice. How long has the ship been here?"
"I'm not sure," you reply honestly. "About ten thousand years."
"By the golden throne," she says, the words nearly unconsious.
You figure now is as good a time as any. "You believe in the Imperial Cult?" You ask neutrually. "Not many around here seem to hold onto it anymore."
She looks at you out of the corner of her eye. "Yes, I believe in Him. The Emperor of Mankind shall save us from the perils of the warp, and protect our souls from the grasp of Evil. You don't believe?"
You shrug. "I never even heard of the Emperor before I awoke on Denva. He wasn't known at all before I went into stasis."
"Ah." Cia shifts uncomfortably, but doesn't seem to have an answer to that.
You turn another corner, and a door opens at your approach. "This is yours!"
She steps into the room, studying it quickly before pointing to the desk. "What's that?"
"Your workdesk. It's a computer - cogitator, if you want. You can use it to look up anything from our database."
Her brow furrows in surprise. "A cogitator - for me? Just me?"
You give a little curtsy. "That's the smallest thing I'll be making. I'm about to start building a new ship for us to actually journey across the stars with!"
She blinks, surprised yet again. "A - new ship? The abbess said you planned to repair this one."
Victan steps into the room smoothly, replying before you can. "We've let people assume that, but it's easier to build a new one."
Cia nods decisvly. "A new ship, then. To journey through the stars." A fire seems to fill her, and you find yourself easily able to imagine this woman on a battlefield, leading a charge or simply cutting her way through her enemies. Then she looks around. "So - what am I to do? How can I help?"
You smile and start explaining the various features of the room, then walk her through how to use the workdesk to look things up. Victan introduces the reading list he's made to help her catch up, and she looks a little bit intimidated by the list of articles and topics.
Then she asks a question that surprises you. "Can I get some weights? Is there a gym on the ship?"
"Yes?" You answer. "It hasn't been used since - well, since I woke up. We proably need to replace the equipment. But we do have one?"
"I didn't know that." Victan says, slightly amused. "But you won't need to exercise. That's what the juvenat is for!"
Cia blinks at him, clearly not understanding the last part. "It's not for exercise. Or not just for that. It's for mental discipline. And all I need is some space to run, and some weights. Also - what is juvenat?"
"Ah." Victan smiles. "Well. One of the bonuses of being part of the crew is immortality."
Cia's jaw drops, and then Victan starts explaining.
Over the next few months Victan and Cia settle into a steady pattern, and she steadily becomes more and more acustomed to life on the ship. She remarks a few times that she was expecting mroe demand for her abilities, but Victan just shrugs and says they have time. Juvenat removes some of the pressures that most people feel, after all. Anexa warms up to Cia some, but that's primarily through extensive effort from Victan to get them talking. It turns out they both have a passion for strategy games, though the competition can run a little hot at times.
You also need to keep your avatar active nearly permanently to keep up the facade of being a real human. You can't exactly just stick it in a closet and turn it off in case Cia sees it and starts asking questions - so you engage. You keep track of meals and fake eating and bathroom trips. It's - surprisingly distracting.
It also seems to be impacting your work. You and Anexa are working on improving the psychic shielding, and it's not going well at all. The shielding itself makes sense to you, and you know how to refactor it into smaller shapes. You'd thought that strengthing the shielding would be a simple matter of extending that research to make it more powerful, more resistant to damage. But with your split attention you can't seem to figure out how to modify the strength without disrupting the intended effect. You have several examples of it being damaged now, and every effort you make to improve the resistance of the network against damage reduces its strength unacceptably.
Eventually the two of you working together arrive at a workable solution, though it makes you want to pull your hair out. Instead of refactoring the system, you just bulk it up. Every piece of the network fits closer together in greater complexity, an almost fractal-like puzzle extending down to the microscopic level to upscale the effect. Even as the smallest details are worn out by damage the larger ones will continue to work, meaning that more damage can be sustained before the shielding fails.
It... has the desired effect. But it's painfully difficult to manufacture the various pieces, and you aren't able to acheive very many of your stretch goals. You'd wanted to try and see if you could work in an upgrade to the psychic shielding on your new ship before you built it - but the new shielding is different enough in form that it would require you to completely redesign the hull to make that work. Additionally, you'd wanted to try and integrate machine spirits to actively control the shielding but you barely even start to think about how that would be possible. You do remain convinced it would be effective if you can figure it out, though.
Researched Improved Psychic shielding - rolled 5 +20 = 25. Poor success
No levels for Anexa. You may now double the strength of any psychic shielding you build by doubling the cost.
Ship Psychic Shielding upgraded - Can double price to double shielding.
Technology discounted - Nested Psychic shielding cost reduced by 50 RP
Unlock for scrapcode vault unlocked - May double HP by spending 1000 BP
New technology unlocked - Efficent Psychic Shielding (150 RP)
New technology unlocked - Alternative Shielding Meanings (500 RP)
New technology unlocked - Machine Spirit-controlled Psychic Shields (300 RP)
Both of you leave somewhat frustrated, and you can't help but blame Cia for the problem a little bit. It's probably unfair, but you're definitely distrcted trying to ensure she doesn't discover your secret. Anexa seems to feel the same way, and gives Cia the cold shoulder on a few different occasions.
Cia seems a big exasparated by Anexa's behavior, and while she makes a few extra efforts when those are rebuffed she seems to shrug and admit defeat, spending more time engaging with you and Victan.
You meanwhile, take your frustration out on the mountainous landscape around your launch pad. The steep mountains have sprouted dozens of factory buildings, and now it's time to build the spaceports and shuttles you need to launch all of that production capacity to space. A few more manufactories go up, along with adjacent spaceports, and shuttles are thrown together to fill them as fast as possible.
7 Manufactories constructed!
3 Spaceports constructed!
35 Shuttles constructed!
5,300/33,650 construction for the Spark of the Ancients!
That takes only a portion of your production capacity, and the rest goes into actually, properly starting your ship. You don't have a shipyard for it, so you build a framework gantry around the correct volume first. It's a spindle-like web that will enclose the final ship, and it just needs to be strong enough to hold all of the parts in place until they can be properly connected. Unlike a traditional shipyard you'll need to disassemble it at the end to let the ship out, but it's a nice compromise that means you don't need to build a full shipyard.
You're building the ship in a middle orbit which goes around Denva every twelve hours or so, to comprimise between ease of access and depth into the gravity web, and you get started on the spine of the ship as well - the central core that contains primary power lines as well as conducting the force from the engines all the way up through the body of the ship.
Your next focus is to try to brush up on your medical basics. Part of this is to learn how to administer better medical care - your auto-docs are good, but they're not able to think and reason their way through problems. They're little better than a glorified look-up engine that you can plug a list of symptoms into and get out a recommended treatment or perscription.
Another part is that you're starting to think about more invasive cybernetics. Your current surgical technologies have so far kept up with everything you've wanted to do, but as you start to think about more significant and dramatic augmentations then you're going to need to understand how to do the surgeries yourself.
The final reason is of course your prize from Kylssar's Nest. A Navigator is person with rare and powerful abilities, and you have an opportunity to raise one. But first you'll need to figure out enough about their biology to do it safely.
There's two hiccup in this process. First is that most of your attention is on building your ship in orbit. It's a complex undertaking, and you're coordinating thousands of shuttle launches and a stream of orbital material in a complex ballet. But you budgeted your attetnion for that.
The second issue is that you're continuing to talk to Cia on a daily basis. You mentioned to her that you're studying medicine and she quickly gets interested, asking if she can join in. She appears to have a latent interest that spawns from her devotion to exercise. You tentatively agree, and soon enough she's joining your avatar for hours each day to go through medical texts. The problem is that she just doesn't have the background for this. Chemistry & biochemistry are mysteries to her, and you find yourself explaining basic cell biology and then realizing that Cia doesn't really understand what molocules are.
To be fair, she figures out the problem without you mentioning it and excuses herself to study the basics on her own. But it still takes time and attention from you. You speed through the rest of the material and learn it quickly enough, but you aren't able to achieve a proper synthesis. You can beat the auto-docs in tricky situations and are able to do more advanced surgeries, but you feel like this is a shaky foundation to build further success on. At least your reading on human genetics makes more sense, but it's not as complete as you would like.
Researched You don't need no stinkin' medical school - rolled 4 + 20 = 24. Poor success.
You have improved your medical knowledge and your medical suites now provide better medical care. But you haven't managed to fully synthesize the knowledge, and will need a follow-up tech to unlock the full synergies with other medical technology.
Prerequisites met for Advanced Organ replacements (150 RP)
Prerequisites met for Advanced Neural Implants (150 RP)
Upgraded Small automated medical facility, Large automated medical facility, Medical bay to treat severe injuries.
New technology unlocked - Ok, maybe there's a point to medical school (50 RP)
Introduction to Human Genetics at 45/100 RP
At least the construction is going well. At this point you've ramped up your construction capabilities enough, and you just want to focus on getting your ship done. The ship's skeleton is taking form, and you've mostly finished several of the core components of the ship like the engine, reactors and the power distribution network. It's slow going, but "slow" is relative when you're talking about a nine-kilometer warship. Really all that matters is that you're exactly on track according to the timeline you laid down. With all of the other distractions and issues you've had you'll take that as a win.
12,550/33,650 construction for the Spark of the Ancients!
You examine the outline through your ground-based telescope with satisfaction - the ship's outline and size is clearly visible, even if you can still see stars through it. Of course, that's when you get a message from Victan.
> Vita, we might have a problem. A few of the governments are demanding an audience with you. They have questions about the ship. [Apologetic]
> What questions do they have? [Innocent]
> I think they're a little bit concerned with its size. They were also probably expecting you to build or repair a ship on the ground and launch it to space. But the fact that it's orbiting over everybody's territory is a bit concerning to them. [Explaning]
> I don't see why it's any of their buisness. Here, I'm coming to talk to you. [Annoyed]
Your flounce into his office moments later, visibly annoyed. "Can you deal with this? I've been distracted too much recently."
He looks up apologetically. "It's Cia, isn't it. I can try to keep her distracted more."
You wave it off. "No, it's fine. She's nice, it's just that I'm having to hide things from her and it takes extra attention. It would be just as bad or worse with Ker. But I don't know that I have time to deal with this."
He shifts uncomfortably. "They're asking for you."
"But you'll be better at dealing with this." You fix him with a level gaze. "You've been dealing with Denva as a diplomat for decades, and you've done a great job at it. Look at what you've achieved, first with the mechanicus, then with the Denva governments, now with the monastaries. You're more than a spy. You're a diplomat now. Go - diplomance. Please?"
He sits up a little straighter at your words. "Ok. What can I say?"
You wave your hand idly. "Anything. Whatever you need to say. They don't have any real power here, but there's various things they could do that would invonceneince me and hurt them. It'll be easier if they're placated, but feel free to let the velvet glove slip and reveal the iron gauntlet underneath if you need to."
He nods. "Ok. I'll do that."
Victan has become a diplomat-spy! He can be used with all diplomacy, spying and subversion actions!
It seems to work, since that's the last you hear of it. And him taking that headache off your plate leaves you finally free to turn your attention to the last thing that was on your list, which is finally getting to the psytech you've had burning a hole in your vaults for the last fifteen thousand years. Anexa's busy with her own research but definitely takes the time to drop by the lab from time to time to check in. She's extremely curious about the research, even if she's doing little more than reading your summaries on the various pieces of technology.
At first the research doesn't go any better than your other investigations in the last few years. You're examining ancient technology that's supposed to enhance a psyker's abilities, but you don't understand those abilities at all. It's complicated and seems designed to channel energy beyond your understanding through fairly complex materials - though you're able to generalize a bit from your studies of the psychic shielding. After a fair amount of scanning and some modelling work you figure out that there are at least three catagories of different devices in the cache of samples you got from Prospero so long ago.
The first appears to be a basic amplification device. It's got some feedback loops that seem designed like some kind of amplifier - but according to subtly different rules than any amplifier for electricity, plasma or acoustics. You recognize that it's just following rules you don't understand, and that's a barrier. Most items of this type appear to be long rods or staffs, though there's one in the shape of a ring, and another that appears to be an early attempt at building the amplification into a suit of armor.
The second is similar, but seems designed to dampen effects instead. There's some functionality to dampen a psyker's own power, but primarily it seems designed to protect the wearer against external psychic effects. However, even with your best guesses as to how psychic energy functions the device sort of inherently doesn't make sense in a few fundamental ways, since it seems to be intended to do destructive interference of psychic energy but as far as you know that's not how psychic energy works.
The third is the weirdest. It seems possible to channel this psychic energy into objects through a kind of serpentine-like structure, to allow psychic eneregy to have direct influence on the physcial world. You don't know exactly what the effect of such a thing would be, but you're guessing it would be enhance the destructive properties or duability of the materials in question. But that's kind of a wild-ass guess, given the fact that most devices like that seem to be built into weapons. There's a sword, an axe, a shield and a hammer. You found all of that cute and anachronistic when you first picked the devices up, but with your current records they instead seem a bit... foreboding.
You explain all of this to Anexa, who takes a quick stab at trying to decipher the problem. She has no more luck than you do, but makes a reluctant - and astute - suggestion.
"Why don't you bring Cia into this? She doesn't know anything about how the energy works, but she's got certain advantages over us. If she can channel some energy into these devices you can see how they react."
"That's... a good point. And I think she's been trying to figure out how to feel useful. I definitely rebuffed her a bit after some recent frustrations. Let's give it a try." You go and find Cia in the lounge, engrossed in a history book.
She's been doing her best not to disturb you recently, clearly feeling guilty about your frustration as she tries to catch up on what you would consider an elementary-level education. Her recent focus has been on history books, apparently enthralled with the records of humanity's spread through the galaxy, and focusing especially on the various wars against hostile Xenos that occured during that period. She's asked several questions about the "Men of Iron" in your records, and you get the sense that she's developing admiration for what she sees as the ultimate warrior's of humanity's past.
You have to admit some complicity in that. You've been suggesting more books and records that portray AIs in a positive light, and it didn't seem like her Imperial education inculcated her strongly against Abomindible Intelligences, likely due to low chance of her running into one.
Regardless, you interrupt her reading. "Cia, can you help me with something?"
She springs to her feet, looking eager. "Of course, Vita. What is it?"
"I've got some psychic technology that I'm trying to figure out, and I've hit a wall. I'm wondering if you have..." You wave a hand at her. "Insights I don't."
She swallows heavily, clearly a bit intimidated by the task. But her voice is positive and she follows you without stopping. "Okay! Show me where and I'll do my best."
You bring her to the lab where the pieces of vaugely organic-looking technology are scattered across the benches. She looks at them in confusion, with no small amount of wonder and anticipation. Then you direct her towards a sensor suite that's closer to a small room. She stands obediently inside and you hand her one of the simpler items, which is a simple one-handed sword about the length of her forearm. It's got a simple curving line of psychically active material buried under the surface, and you want to see what happens.
She lifts the slightly curved sword with one hand, looking at it questioningly. "Now what?"
You shrug. "I don't know. Try to channel your powers into it."
She takes a deep breath. "I've spent most of my life learning how not to do that. But let's give it a try."
Cia holds the sword up vertically in front of her, gazing deep into its depths with a look of deep concentration on her face. You wait patiently, and watch her stare at the sword with unwavering concentration. Her arm starts to tremble, and sweat forms on her face without anything happens. But she doesn't give up, and then you see flickers of energy that don't belong.
Tiny sparks appear where her hand joins the sword, and you watch with dozens of advanced sensors as the crawl backwards into her flesh and up the sword likewise. You are suddenly worried for her safety, but Cia's face is fixed in a snarl of concentration and you don't want to interfere. Besides, the energy doesn't seem to be hurting her? That much electromagnetic radiation coming from a normal person would leave them spasming on the ground, but Cia is unmoving.
The signals reach the tip of the blade and her brain at the same time and she seems to relax, slumping and going to one knee as sudden sweat pours off her body. The blade itself buzzes with energy, and she digs the tip of the sword into the floor in front of her for support, then almost falls as the blade goes through the alloy like a blowtorch through snow.
You both blink at the sight, and she carefully extracts the weapon, looking at it in awe and wonder. "I can feel it. It's - my power. Extended outward from me."
You're frantically flipping through the sensor feeds, trying to digest everything that happens. If nothing else, this is going to accelerate your understanding of actual psychic energy quite dramatically.
"Excellent. Now can we try the rest?"
She nods jerkily, looking up at you, and over the next few months you go through the rest of the devices. She doesn't have as strong a connection to any of the others as she had to the first sword, but it's enough for you to derive some of the principles behind the technology, and that's enough for you to form a baseline.
Researched The Basics of Psytech - rolled 19+20=39. Success!
You understand the basics of psychic energy, and generally understand how to manipulate it in technological devices.
New blueprint unlocked - Basic Psychic Experimentation Lab (200 BP, 50 CP)
New technology unlocked - Basic Psychic Amplification Devices (200 RP)
New technology unlocked - Basic Psychic Supression Devices (200 RP)
New technology unlocked - Basic Psychic weapons (150 RP)
New technology unlocked - Basic Pyromantic understanding (150 RP)
Prerequisites met for Psytech Machine spirits (100 RP)
It's only then that you notice your psychic shielding has been a bit scratched. You track back the timeline on the damage and find it corresponds well with the times where Cia's power flared in uncontrolled ways. You'll need to talk to her about that later.
-5 psychic shielding.
Anexa shows up about halfway through the process and quickly gets involved, watching with fire in her eyes as tiny strands of psychic energy - very reminiscint of arcs of electricity - play around Cia as she experiments pushing her power through an amplification staff. That particlar experiment ends with Cia covered in small and mostly superficial burns, and Anexa quickly ushers her off to the medical suite.
You can't help but listen in on their conversation as Anexa keeps Cia company while burn cream and application of other curatives. You aren't entirely surprised to see that Anexa's demenor has almost completely changed in regards to Cia. Before this point she saw Cia soley as a source of problems, and was almost disgusted by her lack of knowledge. But seeing Cia's unique abilities - and more significantly her bravery and determination in the face of a challenge - has eroded Anexa's contempt and replaced it with respect.
At that moment, you make the decision. You're going to reveal yourself to Cia, fully and completely. She's earnest and open. She still holds to the Imperial Cult in many things, but not only was her religious education fairly one-dimensonal, you've managed to fill the edges in with history and other knowledge. Furthermore, Cia's formed emotional connections with the rest of the crew. She already sees you as a person, as somebody to engage in dialogue.
And now, she's gladly reciprocatiang Anexa's newfound friendlieness, so it's clear that she isn't holding Anexa's previous behavior against her. You're not sure if Cia's decided to do her best to ingratiate herself with you and her crew, or if she understood Anexa's dislike and thought it was justified, or if she just isn't the type to hold grudges. But that's the last thing that seals your decision. She won't reject you out of hand, and that means it's time to share the secret.
After you've wrapped the psytech experimentation up, you thank Cia for her help. "That was invalauble. I appreciate you going above and beyond what I expected." You wince slightly at memories of punishing effort that Cia's given to help your research goals. "Now, I want to apologize, becasuse I've been keeping a secret from you." You send messages to Anexa and Victan about what you're planning, and recieve quick confirmations in response.
She looks at you quizzicly, and you gesture for her to follow you. Anexa and Victan meet you outside the relevant dor, and Cia looks around, realizing that this is serious. But she holds her tonuge, waiting for you to explain.
You adjust your glasses and address her seriously. "What I told you about me is the truth. I'm an ancient from before the Imperium. An explorer, a traveller and a scientist. But I'm also an artifical intelligece, a creation of humanity built to help humans explore the galaxy." The door slides open and you walk through, gesturing at the bank of cogitators that make up your central AI core. "This is my actual mind. This body is my primary avatar, and I generally interact with people through similar avatars. I think of this body as me. But this computer is truly me."
Cia seems flabbergasted and takes a number of seconds to recover, looking quickly between you and the computer. She shoots glances at Anexa and Victan, who are standing to either side and looking completely calm. They're watching her with calm expressions, waiting to see her reaction.
"Really?" She asks, but it's not a question. She's trying to adapt to this new information, and is just filling the silence while her brain crunches through the new information. Then she blinks, and makes the connections you were hoping that she'd make. "Like the Men of Iron?"
You nod. "Something like that, but I'm a Man of Stone." You do a quick piourette, your avatar's hair fluttering out. "A woman of stone, actually. But that means I specialize in exploration and building infastructure. And diplomacy. But not in fighting." You stare into her eyes. "I don't know the first thing about fighting, but this galaxy is much less friendly than the one I left behind. We're going to need to fight, and that's part of why I wanted you. Can you help me with that?"
I feel a bit bad manipulating her like this, but both Victan and I agreed this was a good way to win her over. And its not lying. And is it manipulating her if we're trying to unbrainwash her? Well, yes, but I think it's justified.
She nods firmly, agreeing almost before her consious mind catches up. "Yes. That I will do. Who do we need to fight?"
That question catches you off-guard, for some reason. "Uh. Well, we're not sure. There are lots of potentially dangerous Xenos, and..." you trail off, unsure if you want to explain Chaos to somebody who's supposed to be particularly vulnerable to their influence.
Do you explain Chaos to Cia now, or choose to wait? You can do it later as a free action, but it'll be more awkward both now and then. Vote below, separate from the plan vote.
Current capabilities:
Command Points 8,920/12,500Ground Build Capacity: 6000
Lift Capacity: 6000 (converts between ground and void BP)
Void Build Capacity: 1350
Research Capacity: 200
Psychic Shielding: 95/100 (repair for 10 BP/point)
Juvenat usage: 24/50 people's worth (cannot be stockpiled)
Shipbuilding capacity: 4 ship construction slots (treat it as capacity. You can only be building ships that fit within your construction slots)
Available ships:
1x Mechanicus-disguised Shuttle (5 CP)
30x Basic Stealth Fighters (30x5 CP)
12x Basic Stealth Assault Shuttles (12x5 CP)
100x Basic Stealth Missiles (200x1 CP) - in space
110x Shuttles (5x110 =550 CP) +5500 Lift Capacity
2x Tiny system monitors (2x50 = 100CP)
Available ground forces:
1000 Light Machine-spirit infantry bots (20 CP)
2000 Light Machine-spirit humanized infantry bots (2x20 CP)
1000 Medium Machine-spirit humanized Infantry Bots (20 CP)
3000 Heavy Machine-spirit humanized Infantry Bots with Machine Spirit Jammers (60 CP)
CP costs for infantry bots work as breakpoints in increments of 1000. So 50 or 500 or 1000 bots all cost 20 CP, and 1001 costs 40 CP. Abstraction, y'all.
Misc assets:
27 BP of trade goods that Aevon will accept as rent.
Avatars:
Original Avatar, young human woman with green hair
Adult human woman, indeterminate age.
Female tech priest with some augmentations.
Current Installations:
Crashed Ship (10 CP) +100 BP
Underground Directional-Control Radio Tower (5 CP)
2x Underground Manufactories (2x50 = 100 CP) +100 BP
116x Manufactories (116x50 = 5800 CP) +5800 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)
11x Spaceports (11x25=275 CP) (110/100 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
116x Manufactories (116x50 = 5800 CP) +5800 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)
11x Spaceports (11x25=275 CP) (110/100 ship capacity)
Underground Magnetic Catapult launch system (50 CP) +500 lift capacity
27x Orbital Manufactory (27x40=1080 CP) +1350 VBP
Small Shipyard (50 CP) 4 ship construction slots
Scrapcode Vault, upgraded with machine spirits (10 CP) 50/50 HP, repair for 10 BP/HP. Can double HP by spending another 1000 BP.
Small Shipyard (50 CP) 4 ship construction slots
Scrapcode Vault, upgraded with machine spirits (10 CP) 50/50 HP, repair for 10 BP/HP. Can double HP by spending another 1000 BP.
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:
Spark of the Ancients (12,550/33,650
In progress research:
Introduction to Human Genetics (45/100)
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)
The nations of Denva don't really need your immediate attention. They're integrating the mechanicus, slowly, and moving into space, slowly. The direction is all good, it's just going to take about 10 turns before the situation changes on its own, absent an outside force like you poking it.
[] 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:
You can add psychic shielding to anything that's shuttle/fighter/assault shuttle-sized or larger by spending any cost between it's BP and twice its BP, gaining shielding on it with HP equal to the number of BP spent divided by ten.
50 RP - Heavy tanks (500 BP, 50 CP) 100 heavy battle tanks with heavy battle cannons to fight effectively against heavy enemy armor. Also unlocks the machine-spirit versions.
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. Also unlocks the machine-spirit versions.
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. Also unlocks the machine-spirit versions.
50 RP - Heavy tanks (500 BP, 50 CP) 100 heavy battle tanks with heavy battle cannons to fight effectively against heavy enemy armor. Also unlocks the machine-spirit versions.
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. Also unlocks the machine-spirit versions.
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. Also unlocks the machine-spirit versions.
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 severe 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 amount of space inside the ship, which is represented by the number of BP spent on the hull. That's your "Budget"
- 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 cramming.
- Pick noncombat equipment to go onto the ship. These do not count towards cramming.
- Choose weapons and combat equipment to add to the ship.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.
(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, 1 ship construction slots (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, 2 ship construction slots (500-1000 BP, 1600x400-2200x600 meters) Engines: (5/6/7 gravities) for (75/150/225 BP). Shields: (none/light/medium) for (0/75/150) Armor: (none/light/medium) for (0/75/150)
Light Cruiser, 150 RP, 200 CP, 8 ship construction slots (1000-2000 BP, 3500x400-4400x800 meters) Engines: (3/4/5 gravities) for (100/200/300 BP). Shields: (none/light/medium) for (0/150/300) Armor: (none/light/medium) for (0/100/200)
Heavy Cruiser, 200 RP, 300 CP, 32 ship construction slots (2000-6000 BP, 4500x600-6000x1200 meters) Engines: (2/3/4 gravities) for (300/400/500 BP). Shields: (none/light/medium) for (0/200/400) Armor: (none/light/medium) for (0/200/400)
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 or 1/2.5 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. HP of the shield is 1 HP per 10 BP spent on it.
Troop compartment (25 BP) Can carry 10,000 soldiers or 500 medium tanks across the stars.
Medical bay (25 BP) Can treat 1000 severely 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 or 1/2.5 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. HP of the shield is 1 HP per 10 BP spent on it.
Troop compartment (25 BP) Can carry 10,000 soldiers or 500 medium tanks across the stars.
Medical bay (25 BP) Can treat 1000 severely 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:
Multiple the final weapon cost by 0.9 before applying it to ship designs. So if you have 500 BP of weapons, it only counts as 450 for the purposes of ship packing. But it'll count as 500 for final ship cost.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.
Heavy Plasma Cannon 1000 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 armor.
Medium Melta cannon 400 BP, Very short range, medium-fire rate but with incredible damage potential. Extremely effective against armor.
Heavy Melta cannon 800 BP, Very short range, medium-fire rate but with incredible damage potential. Extremely effective against armor.
Fighters 100 BP, 50 CP. Parasite craft with short-ranged guns and some missile capability. Basic stealth automatically applied.
Shuttles 100 BP, 50 CP. 10 Shuttlecraft, combined capacity of 500 lift to or from a planet.
Assault Shuttles 150 BP, 50 CP. 10 Assault shuttles, with combined capacity of 1000 troops or 10 tanks in one trip. asic stealth automatically applied.
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.
Large Torpedoes 600 BP. A payload of straight-flying armored torpedoes, sized to wreck cruisers, hurt grand cruisers and make battleships 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.
Heavy Plasma Cannon 1000 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 armor.
Medium Melta cannon 400 BP, Very short range, medium-fire rate but with incredible damage potential. Extremely effective against armor.
Heavy Melta cannon 800 BP, Very short range, medium-fire rate but with incredible damage potential. Extremely effective against armor.
Fighters 100 BP, 50 CP. Parasite craft with short-ranged guns and some missile capability. Basic stealth automatically applied.
Shuttles 100 BP, 50 CP. 10 Shuttlecraft, combined capacity of 500 lift to or from a planet.
Assault Shuttles 150 BP, 50 CP. 10 Assault shuttles, with combined capacity of 1000 troops or 10 tanks in one trip. asic stealth automatically applied.
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.
Large Torpedoes 600 BP. A payload of straight-flying armored torpedoes, sized to wreck cruisers, hurt grand cruisers and make battleships 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:
-[] Medium Defense Platforms (100 RP) You've already got most of the tools you need to build bigger defensive platforms, but these would be a larger platform to stick guns on, with more ability to withstand damage. (Unlocks medium defensive platforms, potential for other void-based installation options)
-[] Streamlined ship design (150 RP) You can improve your tools for ship design to make it easier to design ships in the future. That might be nice (Halves the RP cost to design new ships, may unlock other ship design improvements)
-[] Efficient Equipment Distribution (100 RP) Let's see if you can apply the benefits from weapon packing to equipment (Combat equipment costs count as 0.9x for ship capacity packing.)
-[] Extremely Efficient Weapon Distribution (200 RP) You did a good job already in packing more weapons into less space. But you think you see ways to make it even better (Weapons cost at 0.75 for ship capacity packing)
-[] 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 new iterations of your ship)
-[] Boarding Capabilities (100 RP) Apparently it's common for ships in this day and age to board each other and for the crew to fight hand-to-hand. Instead of, you know, chucking enormous missiles at each other. Insane. Well, it might be a nice capability to have in case you want to capture ships intact. (Unlocks boarding torpedoes and boarding craft for hangers, may combine with stealth research to unlock stealth borders)
-[] Networked missiles (100 RP) The biggest danger to missiles is that they'll get shot down by fighters and point defense. If you can network them together to cooperate against those threats, more of the warheads will reach their targets. (Unlocks new combat equipment to make missiles more effective. May unlock more technology to make missiles smarter, longer ranged and generally more effective)
-[] Large-scale Void Manufacturing (200 RP) Unlike ground factories, which have to deal with gravity and atmosphere, there's little stopping you from just... scaling up the principles of void manufacturing. Besides the annoying spaghetti of logistics, but that's a solvable problem. (Allows you to design large void manufactories that are more efficient, improves the manufactories on your ships to be 1/5 instead of 1/10 production). Potential for other void-based platform technologies).
-[] Ground Manufactory Efficiency Improvements (50 RP) You dramatically improved the efficiency of your void manufacturing by stripping out the dumb stuff that was required by stellar federation beauracracy. There's probably some stuff like that in your ground manufactories too. (Reduces the CP cost but not BP cost of your ground manufactories).
-[] Shuttle automation (150 RP) Surely I don't have to fly these stupid things myself. (Reduce the CP cost of shuttles by 50%)
-[] Walkers (300 RP) Tanks are... kind of boring? Mechs are cooler. (unlock armiger knights, starts the knights/titans research tree)
-[] Mothballing (100 RP) Keeping a bunch of systems functional and ready requires attention that is swiftly running out. Maybe you can figure out how to spend less attention on things that are mostly inactive (Unlocks the ability to mothball an installation for 10% of it's build cost, free reactivation that takes a few weeks. May unlock techs to allow you to freely turn things on and off, as well as increasing the speed of reactivation enough for you to keep military installations mothballed until they're needed.)
-[] Abacus Manufacturing (200 RP) You understand all of the physical parts of an abacus. Now you need to figure out all of the manufacturing techniques needed to actually put one together. (Unlocks the void abacus ship equipment)
-[] 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 (50 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 (100 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.
-[] Heavy Void shields (200 RP) Your current shields are good, but they could be better. Specifically, you want to make multi-layered shields, which could be applied to anything larger than a destroyer (Unlocks heavy void shields for ships and stations, as well as further research for void shielding improved for recharge speed, layered defenses, etc.)
-[] Heavy In-atmosphere void shields (100 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 (100 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 (250 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 (100 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 (50 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)
-[] Really good Robotics: (600 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 (400 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)
- [] 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.
-[] Efficent Psychic Shielding (150 RP) Your "fractal" method is painfully difficult to manufacture, and is bottlenecking further design. If you spend some more time on it you think you could either improve the manufacturing techniques or figure out a more efficent solution to the same problem (Improves the BP/HP ratio for psychic shields, unlocks discounts on other psychic shielding, may unlock further research towards cheaper or more ubiquitous shielding).
-[] Alternative Shielding Meanings. (500 RP) Your current shielding says "No" at all times, which seems to work against most warp threats. You think you might be able to modify it for a different meaning, which may have different effects. You're not sure exactly what, but you'd kind of like to try "Aboslutely not" or maybe even "You're not real" and see what happens. (Unlocks new types of psychic shielding with different/improved effects, as well as further research into more powerful psychic shielding - some of which may be less "shielding" and more of an offensive weapon.)
-[] Machine Spirit-controlled Psychic Shields (300 RP) You think it's possible to integrate machine spirits into your chaos shielding, which would probably make it more effective in almost every way except cost. (Unlocks new kinds of psychic shielding that are more resistant to damage, potentially self-repairing and more) Requires Machine Spirit Chaos resistance.
-[] Personal-sized Psychic shielding: (150 RP) You were able to break your psychic shielding down into components to rescale it, but that gets you down to a size measured in tens of meters. If you want to make another one that's even smaller, then you're going to have to break it down into even smaller pieces and build something back up again. But doing that would let you start weaving the shielding into armor or individual bots. (Allows you to outfit individuals with psychic shielding, though it may be less powerful than what you can build into larger structures. Unlocks additional technology for further miniaturization to put it into totems or implants.)
-[] Nested Psychic shielding: (150 RP) With multiple sizes of shielding comes the question - can you simply layer different kinds of shielding to protect against psychic attacks. The current answer is no due to some unfortunate resonance between different layers of shielding. You think you can solve for that, though it involves you making some assumptions about warp-psyker-stuff that you'll need to validate experimentally (Allows you to have multiple layers of shielding active at once. Unlocks additional technology for templating multiple effects into one shield, which will also require improved psychic shielding.) Locked behind warp understanding.
-[] Abacus-Warp interactions (100 RP) The one part of the abacus you don't understand is how it interacts with the warp. That part is just weird, and you need to put in some more brain-sweat to figure it out. (Better understanding of the void abacus, necessary for any improvements on the basic design, and unlocks technology for better warp understanding).
-[] Scrapcode Research (200 RP) How does scrapcode work? Obviously the answer is "psychic shenanigans," but you'd like to get a little bit more detail than that. Maybe you'll be able to defend against it in some way. (Understanding of scrapcode that's likely useful for defending against it. Grants light reduction to shield damage from scrapcode and unlocks technology to further reduce psychic damage from scrapcode, and potential technologies to generate or store scrapcode for your own use.)
- [] Basic Psychic Supression Devices (200 RP) You think you understand the principles of psychic supression, but to actually confirm that you need to build some and see if it works. (Allows you to build basic psychic hoods or other personal psychic protective devices. Unlocks more advanced psychic nullification, as well as larger nullification constructs)
- [] Basic Psychic weapons (150 RP) The most basic applifcation of psychic energy to materials is to make more powerful weapons. Let's try to figure out how to build those, and think about how to expand out to other devices. (Allows you to build basic force weapons, unlocks more technology for advanced force weapons, as well as psychically attuned armor or larger material effects).
- [] Basic Pyromantic understanding (150 RP) Cia's naturally inclined towards energy manipulation with her power. You could try and figure out more details about how that works, though it'll rely on her to generate somewhat larger-scale effects. (Allows you to build pyromancy focused psytech, and potentially unlock new kinds of actions or narrative options for Cia) Locked behind Basic Psychic Experimentation Lab and Cia reaching level 5.
-[] Gravity Weapons (200 RP) You know it's possible to use gravity as a weapon, though it sounds a bit crazy. But still, it might be worth trying? (Unlocks basic graviton weapons for infantry, vehicles and warships, as well as research for more advanced graviton weapons. Half of the research necessary for Nova Cannons)
-[] The Biggest Boom (150 RP) So. There's no actual upper limit for how big a fusion warhead can get. But it does get more complicated to build bigger and bigger bombs. Let's figure that out. (Unlocks bigger, exterminatus-grade warheads for nukes. The other half of the research necessary for Nova Cannons)
-[] Superconductive Shenanigans (200 RP) Room-temperature superconductors are a thing. But only kind of, and they still need to be highly pressurized to be stable. You know some people cracked this problem, but they didn't publish on it, which was annoying. But you think you might have an idea how they did it. Figuring it out would be great for manufacturing, and drop costs across the board. (A flat production boost of 5-15% depending on rolls).
-[] Miniaturized antigrav (50 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)
-[] High-energy Physics (300 RP) There's some pretty crazy stuff you can do with physics. Especially when the energy exponents really start getting insane. However, that's going to take a bit of testing - maybe on a planetoid you don't care too much about. Or in space. (The next steps towards bigger, badder weapons, such as fusion beamers, disintegration weapons. Half of the research for vortex weaponry.) Locked behind a High-Energy Physics Research Lab
-[] Improved combat Machine spirits (100 RP) Right now the machine spirits can match the performance of bots you directly control. However, with some tweaking of their networks, structure and code you think you can make an across-the-board improvement in aim, tactics and decision-making of the machine spirits in combat. (Improved combat performance of machine-spirit imbued infantry & vehicle forces. May unlock technology for improved tactical coordination, as well as improved combat performance of machine-spirit equipped ships/larger installations)
-[] Large-scale Machine spirits (150 RP) As it stands, you can integrate machine spirits into small things. Expanding that to military installations and ships is going to require designing even more complex networks and figuring out how to make them work. With Anexa's insights you think it's eminantly possible thought (Unlocks machine-spirit equipped versions of frigate-sized or smaller ships and platforms, as well as most defensive installations. Unlocks more research for machine spirits for larger ships & platforms.)
-[] Manufacturing Machine Spirits (100 RP) Making machine spirits run reactors and shoot guns is one thing, but making them build something? That poses another challenge. You don't think it's insurmountable though. (Unlocks machine-spirit controlled manufactories, orbital manufactories and deep-space manufactories. Unlocks more research for other kinds of machine-spirit aided manufacturing).
-[] Machine Spirit Chaos resistance (300 RP) You think the reason that the machine spirits resist chaos is because they understand their purpose to some extent, and the entire neural network needs to be corrupted to corrupt that purpose, which is harder. There's also emotional simulation that's going on in there. (Improves the basal resistance of machine spirits to chaos corruption. May unlock further technology down this chain, as well as half of the requirements to integrate machine spirits with psychic shielding.)
-[] Psytech Machine spirits (100 RP) You don't think that machine spirits can be psychically active. However, from what you understand of psytech it's a temperamental and difficult discipline, and you think that integrating machine spirits into the construction of psytech might improve its reliability and performance. (Improves psytech, at the cost of making it somewhat more expensive. May lead to more advanced versions for more advanced psytech, and may contribute to better psychic shields)
-[] Servitorization (50 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)
-[] 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).
-[] Ok, maybe there's a point to medical school (50 RP) You have a textbook understanding of medicine, but it's not enough for you to speculate and unlock new research, or generalize what you know to other areas. (Unlocks discounts for medical tech, cybernetic augmentations and more. May be a prerequisite to further biomedical research. Also unlocks more research for advanced medical care)
-[] 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.)
-[] Navigator Genetics (500 RP) So... you have some navigator genetic material. You can poke at that, see if you can figure out how it works. They had a reputation even back in your day, and it only seems to have gotten worse. Still, tempting. (Unlocks basic understanding of navigator genetics. Will unlock further technology to improve the health of navigators, as well as technology to allow you to clone navigators.) Locked behind tech you haven't unlocked yet - probably 1-2 down the human genetics chain depending on rolls.
-[] Navigator Gestation (200 RP) You have a navigator fetus. You don't know what to do with that beyond the obvious. So, how would you do it? Well, you doubt you could just implant it into somebody. From the traces left behind on Klyssar's nest you should do this in a tank. (Allows you to turn the navigator fetus into a navigator baby) Locked behind the Does in vitro have something to do with wine? and maybe a followup tech depending on rolls.
-[] 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)
-[] Advanced organ replacements (150 RP) Your organ replacements almost fully replicate the real thing, but not quite. But they can't adjust to shocks in body homeostasis and they do need to be replaced every decade or so. You think you can make them as good or slightly better than the real thing, including the potential to grow with the bearer. (Unlocks organs which actually just replace normal organs almost perfectly. Likely to synergize with other implant/cybernetics/enhancement techs).
-[] Superhuman organ replacements (300 RP) Your organ replacements almost fully replicate the real thing, and have some useful auxiliary functions. But there's another level of improvement that's possible here. You could make organs that conveyed superhuman characteristics on the wearers. Improved oxygen transfer rate, improved bone density, immunity to most toxins, improved healing rate. (Unlocks advanced organs implants which grant superhuman capabilities. Not quite space-marine-level, but that's the next tech, though these are still artificial). Locked behind Advanced Combat cybernetics.
-[] Advanced Neural Implants (150 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).
-[] Advanced Combat cybernetics (150 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.
-[] 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.) Locked behind Advanced Neural Implants, cost to be determined by the roll on that research.
-[] Organic-Machine control (150 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)
-[] Rapid hacking (500RP) 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 (300 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)
- 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,
Ship Design:
-[] 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)-[] Medium Defense Platforms (100 RP) You've already got most of the tools you need to build bigger defensive platforms, but these would be a larger platform to stick guns on, with more ability to withstand damage. (Unlocks medium defensive platforms, potential for other void-based installation options)
-[] Streamlined ship design (150 RP) You can improve your tools for ship design to make it easier to design ships in the future. That might be nice (Halves the RP cost to design new ships, may unlock other ship design improvements)
-[] Efficient Equipment Distribution (100 RP) Let's see if you can apply the benefits from weapon packing to equipment (Combat equipment costs count as 0.9x for ship capacity packing.)
-[] Extremely Efficient Weapon Distribution (200 RP) You did a good job already in packing more weapons into less space. But you think you see ways to make it even better (Weapons cost at 0.75 for ship capacity packing)
-[] 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 new iterations of your ship)
-[] Boarding Capabilities (100 RP) Apparently it's common for ships in this day and age to board each other and for the crew to fight hand-to-hand. Instead of, you know, chucking enormous missiles at each other. Insane. Well, it might be a nice capability to have in case you want to capture ships intact. (Unlocks boarding torpedoes and boarding craft for hangers, may combine with stealth research to unlock stealth borders)
-[] Networked missiles (100 RP) The biggest danger to missiles is that they'll get shot down by fighters and point defense. If you can network them together to cooperate against those threats, more of the warheads will reach their targets. (Unlocks new combat equipment to make missiles more effective. May unlock more technology to make missiles smarter, longer ranged and generally more effective)
General Design:
-[] Large-scale Void Manufacturing (200 RP) Unlike ground factories, which have to deal with gravity and atmosphere, there's little stopping you from just... scaling up the principles of void manufacturing. Besides the annoying spaghetti of logistics, but that's a solvable problem. (Allows you to design large void manufactories that are more efficient, improves the manufactories on your ships to be 1/5 instead of 1/10 production). Potential for other void-based platform technologies).
-[] Ground Manufactory Efficiency Improvements (50 RP) You dramatically improved the efficiency of your void manufacturing by stripping out the dumb stuff that was required by stellar federation beauracracy. There's probably some stuff like that in your ground manufactories too. (Reduces the CP cost but not BP cost of your ground manufactories).
-[] Shuttle automation (150 RP) Surely I don't have to fly these stupid things myself. (Reduce the CP cost of shuttles by 50%)
-[] Walkers (300 RP) Tanks are... kind of boring? Mechs are cooler. (unlock armiger knights, starts the knights/titans research tree)
-[] Mothballing (100 RP) Keeping a bunch of systems functional and ready requires attention that is swiftly running out. Maybe you can figure out how to spend less attention on things that are mostly inactive (Unlocks the ability to mothball an installation for 10% of it's build cost, free reactivation that takes a few weeks. May unlock techs to allow you to freely turn things on and off, as well as increasing the speed of reactivation enough for you to keep military installations mothballed until they're needed.)
-[] Abacus Manufacturing (200 RP) You understand all of the physical parts of an abacus. Now you need to figure out all of the manufacturing techniques needed to actually put one together. (Unlocks the void abacus ship equipment)
Stealth Technology:
-[] 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 (50 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 (100 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.
Shield technology:
-[] Heavy Void shields (200 RP) Your current shields are good, but they could be better. Specifically, you want to make multi-layered shields, which could be applied to anything larger than a destroyer (Unlocks heavy void shields for ships and stations, as well as further research for void shielding improved for recharge speed, layered defenses, etc.)
-[] Heavy In-atmosphere void shields (100 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 (100 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)
Materials & Armor:
-[] 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 (250 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.)
Robotics:
-[] Avatar self-customization (100 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 (50 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)
-[] Really good Robotics: (600 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.
AI research:
-[] Intelligence Coding (400 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)
- [] 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.
Psychic Shielding:
-[] Efficent Psychic Shielding (150 RP) Your "fractal" method is painfully difficult to manufacture, and is bottlenecking further design. If you spend some more time on it you think you could either improve the manufacturing techniques or figure out a more efficent solution to the same problem (Improves the BP/HP ratio for psychic shields, unlocks discounts on other psychic shielding, may unlock further research towards cheaper or more ubiquitous shielding).
-[] Alternative Shielding Meanings. (500 RP) Your current shielding says "No" at all times, which seems to work against most warp threats. You think you might be able to modify it for a different meaning, which may have different effects. You're not sure exactly what, but you'd kind of like to try "Aboslutely not" or maybe even "You're not real" and see what happens. (Unlocks new types of psychic shielding with different/improved effects, as well as further research into more powerful psychic shielding - some of which may be less "shielding" and more of an offensive weapon.)
-[] Machine Spirit-controlled Psychic Shields (300 RP) You think it's possible to integrate machine spirits into your chaos shielding, which would probably make it more effective in almost every way except cost. (Unlocks new kinds of psychic shielding that are more resistant to damage, potentially self-repairing and more) Requires Machine Spirit Chaos resistance.
-[] Personal-sized Psychic shielding: (150 RP) You were able to break your psychic shielding down into components to rescale it, but that gets you down to a size measured in tens of meters. If you want to make another one that's even smaller, then you're going to have to break it down into even smaller pieces and build something back up again. But doing that would let you start weaving the shielding into armor or individual bots. (Allows you to outfit individuals with psychic shielding, though it may be less powerful than what you can build into larger structures. Unlocks additional technology for further miniaturization to put it into totems or implants.)
-[] Nested Psychic shielding: (150 RP) With multiple sizes of shielding comes the question - can you simply layer different kinds of shielding to protect against psychic attacks. The current answer is no due to some unfortunate resonance between different layers of shielding. You think you can solve for that, though it involves you making some assumptions about warp-psyker-stuff that you'll need to validate experimentally (Allows you to have multiple layers of shielding active at once. Unlocks additional technology for templating multiple effects into one shield, which will also require improved psychic shielding.) Locked behind warp understanding.
The Warp:
-[] Abacus-Warp interactions (100 RP) The one part of the abacus you don't understand is how it interacts with the warp. That part is just weird, and you need to put in some more brain-sweat to figure it out. (Better understanding of the void abacus, necessary for any improvements on the basic design, and unlocks technology for better warp understanding).
-[] Scrapcode Research (200 RP) How does scrapcode work? Obviously the answer is "psychic shenanigans," but you'd like to get a little bit more detail than that. Maybe you'll be able to defend against it in some way. (Understanding of scrapcode that's likely useful for defending against it. Grants light reduction to shield damage from scrapcode and unlocks technology to further reduce psychic damage from scrapcode, and potential technologies to generate or store scrapcode for your own use.)
Psytech:
- [] Basic Psychic Amplification Devices (200 RP) You think you understand the principles of psychic amplification, but to actually confirm that you need to build one and see if it works. (Allows you to build basic psychic staffs or other personal psychic amplificiation devices. Unlocks more advanced psychic amplification, as well as larger amplification constructs) Locked behind Basic Psychic Experimentation Lab.- [] Basic Psychic Supression Devices (200 RP) You think you understand the principles of psychic supression, but to actually confirm that you need to build some and see if it works. (Allows you to build basic psychic hoods or other personal psychic protective devices. Unlocks more advanced psychic nullification, as well as larger nullification constructs)
- [] Basic Psychic weapons (150 RP) The most basic applifcation of psychic energy to materials is to make more powerful weapons. Let's try to figure out how to build those, and think about how to expand out to other devices. (Allows you to build basic force weapons, unlocks more technology for advanced force weapons, as well as psychically attuned armor or larger material effects).
- [] Basic Pyromantic understanding (150 RP) Cia's naturally inclined towards energy manipulation with her power. You could try and figure out more details about how that works, though it'll rely on her to generate somewhat larger-scale effects. (Allows you to build pyromancy focused psytech, and potentially unlock new kinds of actions or narrative options for Cia) Locked behind Basic Psychic Experimentation Lab and Cia reaching level 5.
Physics:
-[] Gravity Weapons (200 RP) You know it's possible to use gravity as a weapon, though it sounds a bit crazy. But still, it might be worth trying? (Unlocks basic graviton weapons for infantry, vehicles and warships, as well as research for more advanced graviton weapons. Half of the research necessary for Nova Cannons)
-[] The Biggest Boom (150 RP) So. There's no actual upper limit for how big a fusion warhead can get. But it does get more complicated to build bigger and bigger bombs. Let's figure that out. (Unlocks bigger, exterminatus-grade warheads for nukes. The other half of the research necessary for Nova Cannons)
-[] Superconductive Shenanigans (200 RP) Room-temperature superconductors are a thing. But only kind of, and they still need to be highly pressurized to be stable. You know some people cracked this problem, but they didn't publish on it, which was annoying. But you think you might have an idea how they did it. Figuring it out would be great for manufacturing, and drop costs across the board. (A flat production boost of 5-15% depending on rolls).
-[] Miniaturized antigrav (50 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)
-[] High-energy Physics (300 RP) There's some pretty crazy stuff you can do with physics. Especially when the energy exponents really start getting insane. However, that's going to take a bit of testing - maybe on a planetoid you don't care too much about. Or in space. (The next steps towards bigger, badder weapons, such as fusion beamers, disintegration weapons. Half of the research for vortex weaponry.) Locked behind a High-Energy Physics Research Lab
Machine Spirits
-[] Improved combat Machine spirits (100 RP) Right now the machine spirits can match the performance of bots you directly control. However, with some tweaking of their networks, structure and code you think you can make an across-the-board improvement in aim, tactics and decision-making of the machine spirits in combat. (Improved combat performance of machine-spirit imbued infantry & vehicle forces. May unlock technology for improved tactical coordination, as well as improved combat performance of machine-spirit equipped ships/larger installations)
-[] Large-scale Machine spirits (150 RP) As it stands, you can integrate machine spirits into small things. Expanding that to military installations and ships is going to require designing even more complex networks and figuring out how to make them work. With Anexa's insights you think it's eminantly possible thought (Unlocks machine-spirit equipped versions of frigate-sized or smaller ships and platforms, as well as most defensive installations. Unlocks more research for machine spirits for larger ships & platforms.)
-[] Manufacturing Machine Spirits (100 RP) Making machine spirits run reactors and shoot guns is one thing, but making them build something? That poses another challenge. You don't think it's insurmountable though. (Unlocks machine-spirit controlled manufactories, orbital manufactories and deep-space manufactories. Unlocks more research for other kinds of machine-spirit aided manufacturing).
-[] Machine Spirit Chaos resistance (300 RP) You think the reason that the machine spirits resist chaos is because they understand their purpose to some extent, and the entire neural network needs to be corrupted to corrupt that purpose, which is harder. There's also emotional simulation that's going on in there. (Improves the basal resistance of machine spirits to chaos corruption. May unlock further technology down this chain, as well as half of the requirements to integrate machine spirits with psychic shielding.)
-[] Psytech Machine spirits (100 RP) You don't think that machine spirits can be psychically active. However, from what you understand of psytech it's a temperamental and difficult discipline, and you think that integrating machine spirits into the construction of psytech might improve its reliability and performance. (Improves psytech, at the cost of making it somewhat more expensive. May lead to more advanced versions for more advanced psytech, and may contribute to better psychic shields)
Medical Technology:
-[] Servitorization (50 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)
-[] 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).
-[] Ok, maybe there's a point to medical school (50 RP) You have a textbook understanding of medicine, but it's not enough for you to speculate and unlock new research, or generalize what you know to other areas. (Unlocks discounts for medical tech, cybernetic augmentations and more. May be a prerequisite to further biomedical research. Also unlocks more research for advanced medical care)
-[] 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.)
-[] Navigator Genetics (500 RP) So... you have some navigator genetic material. You can poke at that, see if you can figure out how it works. They had a reputation even back in your day, and it only seems to have gotten worse. Still, tempting. (Unlocks basic understanding of navigator genetics. Will unlock further technology to improve the health of navigators, as well as technology to allow you to clone navigators.) Locked behind tech you haven't unlocked yet - probably 1-2 down the human genetics chain depending on rolls.
-[] Navigator Gestation (200 RP) You have a navigator fetus. You don't know what to do with that beyond the obvious. So, how would you do it? Well, you doubt you could just implant it into somebody. From the traces left behind on Klyssar's nest you should do this in a tank. (Allows you to turn the navigator fetus into a navigator baby) Locked behind the Does in vitro have something to do with wine? and maybe a followup tech depending on rolls.
Cybernetics:
-[] 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)
-[] Advanced organ replacements (150 RP) Your organ replacements almost fully replicate the real thing, but not quite. But they can't adjust to shocks in body homeostasis and they do need to be replaced every decade or so. You think you can make them as good or slightly better than the real thing, including the potential to grow with the bearer. (Unlocks organs which actually just replace normal organs almost perfectly. Likely to synergize with other implant/cybernetics/enhancement techs).
-[] Superhuman organ replacements (300 RP) Your organ replacements almost fully replicate the real thing, and have some useful auxiliary functions. But there's another level of improvement that's possible here. You could make organs that conveyed superhuman characteristics on the wearers. Improved oxygen transfer rate, improved bone density, immunity to most toxins, improved healing rate. (Unlocks advanced organs implants which grant superhuman capabilities. Not quite space-marine-level, but that's the next tech, though these are still artificial). Locked behind Advanced Combat cybernetics.
-[] Advanced Neural Implants (150 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).
-[] Advanced Combat cybernetics (150 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.
-[] 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.) Locked behind Advanced Neural Implants, cost to be determined by the roll on that research.
-[] Organic-Machine control (150 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)
Hacking:
-[] Rapid hacking (500RP) 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 (300 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)
Crew :
Anexa Ifina, Tech-priest Errant.Level 8
-[] 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
Specialty (1/1): Machine Spirits. Grants a +5 bonus when doing research rolls involving machine spirits.
Victan Thallos, Diplomat-Spy
Level 10
-[] Victan active action: Diplomat-Spy - assists any diplomacy action you take, 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.
Cia Steblin, Pyromancer Psyker
Level 0
-[] Active Psyker improvement: Cia will actively attempt to practice her powers. Roll two d100s. Take the higher roll for determining level-up, but take the lower for perils of the warp. (DCs are unknown but context-dependent. They are currently favorable and will get less favorable as she levels)
-[] Passive Psyker improvement: Cia will take lower-risk actions to improve herself, including meditation, study and augmentation. A single level-up roll, with only a very low roll resulting in perils of the warp.
Do you explain Chaos to Cia? (seperate from plan vote)
[] YesYou won't explain the full picture, but about the same of what you did for Anexa and Victan. Chaos exists, is a memetic danger, and can corrupt people. It can corporeally manifest, and you might need to fight it.
[] No
You can always wait until Cia's got a better grasp on her powers and better discipline before you talk about Chaos. For now you can talk about xenos, pirates and other dangers you're scared of.
Cia's got a lot of low-hanging fruit for leveling up, but that's because she barely understands her powers at the moment. She's been given what scraps of psyker knowledge the monestaries had, but is going to have to trial-and-error her way through learning in the future. This is not a survivable approach for most psykers, but she'll be protected from the worst dangers of her power by your psychic shields. Low rolls will result in damage to those shields - which will scale with her level - and injury to herself, which is where medical technology comes into play. You also may want to build the Basic Psychic Experimentation Lab because it'll narratively reduce the consequences of bad rolls. It requires 1 slot if you want to build it into your new ship.
Cia's experimentation with psytech was at very low levels of power, but also very low levels of knowledge. She doesn't even know how to use her own power yet. It's very easy for an untrained psyker to make a lightshow when handed a rudimentary psi-staff. Same with the force weapons - these are baby versions, some of the first prototypes ever created in the galaxy. They don't require permanent linking to the same way that more powerful versions do, but there's still an element of difficulty to using one for the first time, as you saw.
Don't feel like Cia's an inherently distracting influence. I needed a way to explain why all of Vita's rolls were so terrible this turn, and decided that it was the result of bringing Cia on board and bringing her up to speed. She'll continue to be involved in further psytech research, and will narratively unlock significantly more advanced kinds of psytech than you would have had access to otherwise.
I decided not to roll for introducing Cia to your secret, both becasue you've done this a number of times before and because you have both Victan and Anexa to help out. This is something you've done before, and also Victan's specialty and lack of active actions meant he had time to help out. Furthermore, while Cia's been taught the Imperial Creed it's been much more focused on faith and protecting her from dangerous thoughts than "Here's what an AI is and this is why you should kill it." The people setting up the monastary curriculum didn't think that was a particularly relevant piece of information.
Oh, and I didn't bother to write it in, but the scrapcode generator has barey accumulated any energy as far as you can tell. It might have enough oomph for like 2 points of shield damage. This is in-character knowledge.
On second thought, we can do a shorter timeframe, since there doesn't seem to be too much argument about the plans. 8 hours of moratorium, 12 hours of voting. I don't know that I'll have much time tomorrow but I'll have more than zero.
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And here we see the dangers of being a psyker, perils is a table that includes 'death' and 'fate worse then death'. The safest thing we can do with her still comes with a Perils roll on what I assume (and hope) is a sub 10 or the like.
Anyway we should still focus on the ship so she should be put on passive I think.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Hmmm, assuming I did not miscalculate (I might have), this ship will be about 3 times larger than the ISS in our night sky.
So plenty visible with the naked eye from the ground.
We should bring it into low orbit, then it'll be a hundred times bigger.
I tried to throw an answer to this in at the end. It seems to have regained a very minimal amount of power.
Denva? They're shooshed.
meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
Well, we already knew it put that our research this turn was going to be rough. Speaking of rolls, it was very nice that we didn't need to try rolling with Cia's reaction. Glad to see those holding cells I insisted way back still remaining to be unused.
On Cia herself, besides being somewhat of a gloryhound, she seems quite earnest. And kinda like a big friendly dog, who didn't know what they did wrong when she was suddenly being treated coldly by both Anexa and Vita. But now that we have crested that hill caused by the narrative born out of dice rolls, I'm looking forward to seeing her in action at some point in the future. Because that bit with the force sword was quite promising
Also also, Victan is really showing how much he has grown, huh? He is almost like a lucky charm for our diplomacy rolls, and I'm glad he can continue in that role with our winning choice for his specialization.
On Cia herself, besides being somewhat of a gloryhound, she seems quite earnest. And kinda like a big friendly dog, who didn't know what they did wrong when she was suddenly being treated coldly by both Anexa and Vita. But now that we have crested that hill caused by the narrative born out of dice rolls, I'm looking forward to seeing her in action at some point in the future. Because that bit with the force sword was quite promising
Also also, Victan is really showing how much he has grown, huh? He is almost like a lucky charm for our diplomacy rolls, and I'm glad he can continue in that role with our winning choice for his specialization.
Thanks for the answer! So yeah, I'm thinking we research the scrapcode generator now. Our bad roll improving our shielding means that I don't think we can just rely on passively containing it until we feel 100% ready. We should strike now when its probably still weak. Because I don't want our ship to be as vulnerable to dedicated scrapcode attacks coming from things like this but worse with some actual power being fed into them. Instead of being starved and imprisoned inside shielding like this one is. Or even this particular Scrapcode Generator getting time to gather more power and maybe adapt.
Angle
Release Candidate Enby
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Theirs/Comrade
Okay, so we have three build actions for the ship. I'd be tempted to build a bunch of extra manufactories in the first one, they'll pay for themselves and break even this turn, then we'll have them for whatever else we want to do. Also build a psy lab just so that Cia can level easier - we'll want that for the passive option even, and especially for the active option.
In terms of research, lots of tempting options. We probably want to go back to medical school. Then there are GMEI and MMS again, the psy shield efficiency, the spytech machine spirits, the genetics we already have like halfway unlocked... And I'd really like to work towards warp understanding. That's a lot to pick from though, so we'll need to prioritize...
In terms of research, lots of tempting options. We probably want to go back to medical school. Then there are GMEI and MMS again, the psy shield efficiency, the spytech machine spirits, the genetics we already have like halfway unlocked... And I'd really like to work towards warp understanding. That's a lot to pick from though, so we'll need to prioritize...
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Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Gureito.
[ ] Plan: EXPAND!
-[ ] Construction x3
--[ ] First Construction
---[ ] Repair Shields (-50 BP)
---[ ] Ship! (19,850/33,650)
--[ ] Second Construction
---[ ] Ship! (27,200/33,650)
--[ ] Third Construction
---[ ] Ship! (COMPLETED!)
---[ ] Shipboard Basic Psychic Experimentation Lab (-300 BP, -50 CP, -1 Mod Slot)
---[ ] 600 left over? Ideas?
-[ ] Research (200 RP)
--[ ] Scrapcode Research (Completed)
[ ] Plan: EXPAND!
-[ ] Construction x3
--[ ] First Construction
---[ ] Repair Shields (-50 BP)
---[ ] Ship! (19,850/33,650)
--[ ] Second Construction
---[ ] Ship! (27,200/33,650)
--[ ] Third Construction
---[ ] Ship! (COMPLETED!)
---[ ] Shipboard Basic Psychic Experimentation Lab (-300 BP, -50 CP, -1 Mod Slot)
---[ ] 600 left over? Ideas?
-[ ] Research (200 RP)
--[ ] Scrapcode Research (Completed)
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Give it to the crew, see if they have something neat they want to own, build?
If you leave, you can't get any new mementos.
- Location
- Canada
Should we be concerned that we didn't get an alert as this happened?
I'd like to destroy the scrap code generator first (after we finish research on it this turn), having it infect the factories that don't have our protection would be... very bad.
Angle
Release Candidate Enby
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Theirs/Comrade
50 BP per manufactory for manual operation refits.
meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
Most likely was due to the fact that the damage was so minimal and happening so slowly over years. So this seems more like a narrative thing. I'm betting that Vita has already recalibrated her sensors on the shields so that this doesn't happen ever again.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That for undergrounds and orbitals, too?
Angle
Release Candidate Enby
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Theirs/Comrade
No, we don't have prices for those yet, but we don't have nearly enough BP left over to get to them this turn. And it'll take quite a while for them to find people to run all those manufactories and decide what to do with them anyway, so I'm not too concerned about them. They're a tiny portion of our manufacturing base anyway.