Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest
- Thread starter Neablis
- Start date
- Mature Sci-Fi
Angle
Release Candidate Enby
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Theirs/Comrade
OOC, yeah.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I like to call them 'scrappy', myself. If there's any relation to mystery inc's third wheel, I get to say I called it. 
We can observe and plan around the effects, but that's about it afaik.
The demon was going to have more regardless, of course. We didn't even have warp understanding to hypothesize what the principles of what it does are, and scrapcode itself isn't one weird trick but a whole category of nonsense.
We can observe and plan around the effects, but that's about it afaik.
Just checking, but if we take the scrapcode daemon with us, will we have the option to purge the module that it's contained in? I seem to remember that 40k ships could eject entire decks, not sure where I read that though, might be fanon.
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Can't imagine we wouldn't.
That said, we definitely need warp understanding before we take that thing on a warp jump, lol. I have to assume our old as fuck gellar fields being the only thing enforcing reality will pose new complications to the task of containment, and we've little chance at knowing about or hedging against them before we have those basics.
- Location
- Sydney,Australia
Absolutely only reason I didn't even consider warp understanding this turn is because I want the psylab built and cia to be aware of chaos issues
- Location
- Boston
Reading up on all of those fleet engagements inspired me to do another write-up:
Here is our version of the Dauntless Light Cruiser, mainly designed for destroyer/frigate crowd control but its heavy lance ensures that it can sting even the largest ships.
Here is our version of the Dauntless Light Cruiser, mainly designed for destroyer/frigate crowd control but its heavy lance ensures that it can sting even the largest ships.
Dauntless Light Cruiser – 4,300 BP
Light Cruiser, 150 RP, 200 CP, 8 ship construction slots
Hull 1500 BP, 4500x500 meters
Engines: 5 gravities for 300 BP
Shields: light for 150
Armor: medium for 200
Non-combat Equipment (500 BP):
-Warp Drive (150 BP) This ship can jump to the warp. Navigation systems sold separately.
-Psychic Shielding (300 BP) This ship has a neural network integrated throughout the whole thing, that thinks "no" as hard as possible, answering the question for any warp-corruption for any beings or objects within the hull.
-Troop compartment (25 BP) Can carry 10,000 soldiers or 500 medium tanks across the stars.
-Medical bay (25 BP) Can treat 1000 moderately injured people at once.
Available Weapons (Lance Variant Cost: 1,150 BP, Size 1035):
-6x Light Macrocannons (6x100 = 600 BP). Medium range, projectile weapons built for sustained barrage.
-3x Point Defense 50 BP. A series of turrets on the hull to shoot down enemy fighters, missiles and torpedoes.
-1x Heavy Lances 400 BP. Long range, hitscan burst weapons. Not excellent at sustained fire.
Available Combat Equipment (500 BP):
-High-maneuverability thrusters (150 BP) 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.
-Alloyed Armor (200 BP). Armor is much tougher but is harder to repair.
-Light Boarding preparations (100 BP) Bulkheads are reinforced, extra hatches seal all decks and turrets guard key chokepoints, making boarding annoying.
Light Cruiser, 150 RP, 200 CP, 8 ship construction slots
Hull 1500 BP, 4500x500 meters
Engines: 5 gravities for 300 BP
Shields: light for 150
Armor: medium for 200
Non-combat Equipment (500 BP):
-Warp Drive (150 BP) This ship can jump to the warp. Navigation systems sold separately.
-Psychic Shielding (300 BP) This ship has a neural network integrated throughout the whole thing, that thinks "no" as hard as possible, answering the question for any warp-corruption for any beings or objects within the hull.
-Troop compartment (25 BP) Can carry 10,000 soldiers or 500 medium tanks across the stars.
-Medical bay (25 BP) Can treat 1000 moderately injured people at once.
Available Weapons (Lance Variant Cost: 1,150 BP, Size 1035):
-6x Light Macrocannons (6x100 = 600 BP). Medium range, projectile weapons built for sustained barrage.
-3x Point Defense 50 BP. A series of turrets on the hull to shoot down enemy fighters, missiles and torpedoes.
-1x Heavy Lances 400 BP. Long range, hitscan burst weapons. Not excellent at sustained fire.
Available Combat Equipment (500 BP):
-High-maneuverability thrusters (150 BP) 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.
-Alloyed Armor (200 BP). Armor is much tougher but is harder to repair.
-Light Boarding preparations (100 BP) Bulkheads are reinforced, extra hatches seal all decks and turrets guard key chokepoints, making boarding annoying.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Not that we even have warp understanding available to research yet - thanks to that poor success on the abacus, we still have to do the warp abacus understanding research first.
Fingers crossed we nail it when it's taken, afaik that'll determine the cost of the warp understanding research itself.
And then there's psy shielding efficiency, which gives us another shot at being capable of refitting our new flagship with high density psy shields. We've just about hit all the low hanging fruit that was staring at us before we started construction, now most available ways to make progress has lead time before getting to the cool stuff.
Might be time to bite the bullet on intelligence coding, thinking of it that way.
Angle
Release Candidate Enby
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Theirs/Comrade
I want to do a bunch of machine spirit research before going after intelligence coding. it's cheaper, more immediately useful, and will probably discount intelligence coding anyway.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I doubt it will discount intelligence coding directly, but I bet both together will make something amazing~
Angle
Release Candidate Enby
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Theirs/Comrade
The first machine spirit research discounted it directly. Now, that was a critical success, so we might not get that big a benefit every time, but we have Anexa to give bonuses to machine spirits and lots of machine spirit techs to chew through, so I bet we'll get a decent number of discounts to intelligence coding as we go through them, and lots of other neat stuff while we're at it.
Add to that that we currently have five machine spirit techs available, three at 100 RP and one at 150 RP, and there's a lot of potential to be had. And the 300 RP machine spirit tech is also very much worth having, though I'd like to see it discounted first.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh okay, I would have thought they were too different but, if that works then hella
Angle
Release Candidate Enby
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Theirs/Comrade
Well, that was for the foundational tech - I assume the others will give less discounts? But even if it's just 'we get a 50 point discount half the time, instead of a 100 point discount every time', that still lets us chip away at it while researching a bunch of really useful and cool techs. I'd especially like to get up to 'Machine Spirit-controlled Psychic Shields', maybe see about merging it with psychic suppression devices and psytech machine spirits, for some kind of 'guardian machine spirit'.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
That would be cool, plus that might eventually allow Vita to shield herself directly and possibly more useful warp related things?
edit: I wonder if she could build psy titans at some point?
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Turn 19
New
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You square your shoulders - so much narrower than Cia's - and face her directly. "This galaxy is full of dangers. Let's go sit down somewhere, and maybe have a drink."
Anexa and Victan peel off as you walk back to the primary lounge, and you pull up some inquisitorial briefing materials to paste across its surface. It's tricky to educate somebody about the broad strokes of chaos without inviting it inside, but the Imperium's given a lot of thought to the matter and you've acquired that information secondhand by way of the mechanicus.
It's all through the lens of the Imperial cult, of course. But that's a belief structure that Cia already has, and you figure that it's a good introduction for her.
"The Emperor is a god in the warp, sustained by the beliefs of trillions of worshipers. But he is not the only god in the warp."
Cia gives you an odd look. "That sounds like heresy. The Emperor is the God of mankind, interred upon Holy Terra in His Golden Throne."
"I didn't say that the others were gods of mankind," You reply. "Many Xenos have their own gods."
Like the Eldar. I don't know much about their gods, but they had them. I wonder what's going on with that.
She nods slowly, eyes narrowing. "These gods strive against the Emperor. This is why Xenos must die."
You sigh. "Not really. I don't know of many Xenos gods, but I don't think many of them want to fight. But there are four who do, and they're not tied to any race as far as I know."
Or if they are, they're effectively human gods. Though there's hints in the files that Excess is tied to the Eldar. Again, mysteries on mysteries.
"The Four," she says in puzzlement. "We were lectured against The Four Sins in the monastary. Wrath, lust, sloth and deception." You can hear the capitals on the words in her voice.
You shrug. "That more or less covers their domains, though I would put it as wrath, excess, depression & plotting. But close enough. Those gods seek to corrupt everybody and everything, including all of us. Psykers are supposed to be especially vulnerable to them. You have a connection to the warp, and that is their natural habitat."
"For to open yourself to the warp is to invite madness and death," she recites. "Because of these four gods? We were supposed to avoid strong emotions, for to feel too strongly would invite sin. This is why? I always thought it was to prevent anybody having a reason to open themselves to the warp." She shivers. "Like I did earlier. Am I - exposed?"
"You're safe," you say, giving her a reassuring smile. "My psychic shielding prevented anything bad from happening. But it's not invincible, so it's best to avoid the things that call their attention. And that's the problem.
"Even knowing the names of the Gods - they're called the Chaos Gods - can invite corruption, and knowing more only increases the danger. But they exist, and they have minions both mortal and immortal. Demons."
"Demons." She breathes the word, as if tasting it. "And they need to be fought." The words are phrased as a question, but that's not the tone. She sounds certain, and somewhat anticipatory.
"They do," you reply, then gesture towards the screens. "Fighting Chaos and its minions is one of the primary purposes of the Imperial Inquisition. So let's learn about them. Learning about them is dangerous, but less dangerous than not knowing about them and needing to fight them."
Cia absorbs every speck of information you give her about Chaos, and asks for more. Her eagerness concerns you, but her questions are equally split between how to avoid Chaos corruption and how to fight its minions.
Then one of your alerts goes off as your newly repaired psychic shielding takes a blow. Then another. You hold up a hand to Cia. "I think we've drawn their attention. The psychic shielding just took damage. We need to stop. I'll send you an information packet, and you should read over it slowly and carefully. Our shielding isn't perfect, so be careful." You stare into Cia's eyes as you emphasize the last two words.
-10 Psychic Shielding HP
She nods slowly, a serious look on her face. But you can see the excitement in her eyes.
You decide to drive the point home. "When the shielding is damaged it is difficult to repair. What just happens will cost the same amount of resources to fix as it would take to build five space-capable shuttles."
The color drains from Cia's face. "Oh, by the Emperor. I'm so sorry..."
You hold up your hands. "It's ok. I'd much rather repair the shielding than put you in danger. Just be aware that there is a serious cost to any mistakes."
She nods frantically, and this time you can tell she's serious.
You talk around the topic a little more before departing, and you notice her beelining towards Anexa's quarters. You're not sure what she's planning to talk about, but you're looking forward to finally being able to stop using your avatar for a little while. You love your green-haired avatar, but sometimes you just want to be a mind in a box, with control over countless robots.
Like now, for example. You want to finish your ship, and this body isn't going to help with that. It's more a problem for massive numbers of robots. Which you have.
It's not like those bots haven't been active this whole time - but the construction queues are starting to run out, and there's always ways to optimize the production. You dedicate one set of manufactories to cabling, another to the huge lasing tubes, another to plasma chambers. You're building a lot of guns, of a scale that this system has probably never seen. The orbital manufactories are mostly focused on bulk plating because it's too heavy to lift, but building the psychic shielding into that plating is a delicate task.
Spark of the Ancients is 19,850/33,650 completed!
The manufacturing is going to consume the lion's share of your attention if you want to achieve the timeline you've set, but once the queue is re-established you take some time to check in with Anexa.
You find her in the medical facility lab, fiddling with some surgical gear. It looks to you like she's preparing for another set of cybernetics, and various parts are scattered around the place.
For old time's sake you decide to communicate in binaric, sending indications of curiosity through the noosphere. ++Whatcha working on?++
She snorts at the method of communication, but sends her message back on the same channel. ++It's been too long since I augmented myself. I'm making a new mechadendrite!++ She's excited, and reaches into a storage cart to reveal a new mechadendrite. It looks like a golden-scaled snake, complete with an abstract snake-head style constructed of straight lines of gold that can hinge apart for grasping and two cameras for eyes.
++That looks great! Are you planning more in the same style?++ You make sure to convey the right level of appreciation.
++I don't know! But one day I had the idea, and it wouldn't leave me alone until I made it. It's been great practice in robotics, programming and materials. It's going to move like a snake as well as look like one. I'm not sure if I want to make more augments in that style or less++ She's not just excited, she's satisfied.
You don't have a body present to gesture with, but you try to indicate the rest of the devices she's brought into the room as well. ++What about the rest of this? All for you?++
++No, I'm helping out Victan and Cia as well.++ She seems smug about that.
That surprises you a bit, and you let it show. ++Oh? What are you doing for each of them? I didn't think that Victan wanted more augments, and Cia does surprise me.++
Anexa's reply is fond. ++Cia's proud and puts up a strong image, but underneath she's so afraid of failure. I think she thinks you might cast her out if she disappoints you.++ Her tone shifts to light scolding. ++You should be more approachable to her. She needs to be less afraid of disappointing us. She asked me for something to help her control her emotions. Specifically she wanted to be able to turn them off.++ Now Anexa's giving off vibes of exasperation.
++Are you helping her with that?++ You're not entirely sure how to react. That seems like a rather dramatic overreaction to what you told Cia earlier.
Anexa shakes her head. ++Of course not. But I am using our new organ transplants to give her a hormone regulator, and making myself a new one. Not only will it deal with the more annoying parts of female physiology, but it'll let us scrub out stress hormones and control our metabolisms to some extent.++
She sends you the specs, and you take a moment to look over the design. It's a simple and elegant design that looks like it's designed to sit right next to the liver. The notes on its functions make you glad that while you identify as female you never were biological, and therefore had to suffer through certain aspects of biology.
You again express your appreciation for Anexa's design though the noosphere. ++Will Cia be able to control it? She doesn't have a mental implant.++
++I'm giving her one of those too. It's just an important thing to have. A small one at first. Baby's first mental implant. She doesn't want it visible, either. It's going at the base of her skull, underneath her hair.++ She seems amused.
++Not everybody wants as many augments as you do, Anexa.++ Your message comes with a dose of sarcasm.
Anexa's reply is prim. ++If she wants to get better at killing things then she should just accept it already. I offered her a new arm that's five times stronger than her current one! Well, twice as strong. She's buff.++
++You know that may not be best for her. Psyker powers might require their actual flesh. It might make sense to wait until she understands her powers well enough to know if that would interfere.++
Anexa concedes the point. ++True. But yes, her hormonal implant will be on automatic mode at first, then I'll let her switch between preset modes. It's only when she can demonstrate she actually understands what it all does that I'll let her have full control over her hormones. Otherwise she'll just pump herself full of testosterone for muscle gain or something.++ You get the very strong feeling an eye-roll.
She continues. ++But mine will be fully unlocked, and I'm especially interested in the fatigue-toxin scrubbing effect. I'm not going to be able to get to the point of sleeplessness, but I can probably get down to only four or five hours of sleep with no ill effects.++ She's excited about that.
++And Victan's implants?++ You prod.
++Oh, he wants his neural implants upgraded. Some more processing power for analytic tasks, as well as a dedicated emotional simulation model. A downscaled version of the one you use, actually. He says it'll help him judge people. Also a vocalizer module, to change his voice or make it louder if he needs it.++
++That all makes sense. I hope everybody appreciates this Anexa, you're better at this than I am. Certainly more artistic.++
She smiles vaguely and speaks aloud to an empty room. "But I'm not the one building a nine-kilometer warship. I hope both of our tasks go according to plan."
You send your voice out of one of the speakers on the wall. "Thank you Anexa. I'll go talk to Cia again."
Anexa Education roll - 90! Success! +1 Anexa level!
You find Cia in her room, sitting in the dark with her eyes closed. As far as you can tell she's meditating, and you wait politely, splitting off your attention to monitor manufacturing. As far as you can tell she's been doing that more and more frequently lately.
It takes a surprising amount of time for her to stir, and she turns on the lights with a voice command before getting to her feet to stretch. Then she goes out the door, walking towards the gymnasium attached to the living quarters.
Your avatar intercepts her, and she seems to wince slightly as you come around the corner, standing to attention.
You wave her down. "Hi! Are you heading to the gym? Can I join you?"
"Of course," she responds nearly instantly. "Do you need it?" The question seems to slip out.
"Nope!" You say, spinning around. "All metal and polymer here. Exercise does nothing but cause wear and tear. But your body gets damaged and comes back stronger. Pretty amazing, right?"
She looks down at her arm in thought. "Yes, I suppose so."
You cock your head at her. "How's your practice going? I saw your meditation schedule."
She smiles lightly, proud. "Good. Abbess Meeni always told us it was the most important skill we would ever learn, but it seemed pointless to me. I didn't have any problems with the Sins, so why did I need it?"
Then she gestures around, to the ship around her. "But now - I know why. And reading the notes on real psyker powers, it's just as important to fighting as a strong arm."
She flexes her arm, looking at it with an amused expression. "More, really. So I do it, and am satisfied with my progress." She looks up at you again. "And I'm getting Anexa to give me some augments to help."
"I heard," you say lightly. "Don't abuse them, but augments are useful. The mental augments in particular. That'll let you speak to me wherever, whenever."
She blinks. "Is that ok? I don't want to bother you."
You giggle a bit. "Yeah, it's fine. AI right? I'm managing tens of thousands of bots right now. Mining, smelting, forging, assembling. One conversation hardly stresses my capabilities. Though you certainly get more attention than a bot." You smile to make sure she gets the joke.
"Ah." She pauses. "I wanted to apologize again for the damage. If there's a way for me to make it up..."
You cut her off, somewhat sharply. "Absolutely not. You're part of my Crew, Cia. I want you to learn, and grow. And journey with us, across the stars. See amazing things, do great deeds. We're just starting out, and I want you to understand that I would sacrifice a thousand shuttles for any one of you without even thinking about it. Metal's cheap, and so are lives. But you" you stab a finger towards her "aren't. I can't care about everybody. But when I start, I don't stop."
She takes a deep breath, and dabs at her eyes surreptitiously. Her answer is formal. "Thank you, Vita."
You snort. "Hug?"
"Hug." She reaches down, and you're barely able to wrap your arms around her torso.
You let her continue to her exercise, and keep an eye on her over the next few months. The surgeries for her first implants go flawlessly and Cia continues to meditate, as well as train. She's found an ancient hobbyist course for melee weapons and started to train with weighted practice blades. She hasn't decided on her favorite yet, but she's definitely preparing to wield a psytech weapon in the future.
Her scientific understanding is still flagging behind, but generally you're quite pleased with her progress.
Cia passive Level-up roll - 48! Success! +1 Cia level
This entire time the lion's share of your attention is going towards construction. Your ship is well over half completed, and you're determined to make it your new home as soon as possible. It's bigger and better than your old ship in every way, though there's one differentiator that matters more then the rest combined.
It's in space, and it's mobile. Well, not yet. but it will be! So you buckle down to get it done.
Spark of the Ancients is 27,200/33,650 completed!
You're very much enjoying the process of production optimization. You were more built as an explorer, but there's a part of you that likes building things just as much. Large-scale construction scratches an itch, and there's no denying that this ship is large-scale. It looks functionally complete from the outside, though you know that there's an enormous amount of detail work left to do inside, as well as bolting on the last of the plating and installing the final parts of the weaponry.
Then Victan bounces a high-priority request off you, and you jerk away from your production in a heartbeat. It can deal without you for the moment.
> What's on fire? [Anxious]
> I think the other nations are planning something bad. The diplomat to Kylssar's Nest from Estrana was way too tense, and there's some worrying signs from the other nations. [Tense]
> Ok. What do you think their motives are? [Concerned]
> I think they're jealous of Aevon and Denva. They're both dominating the culture and population of the station, and they're both bootstrapping manufacturing capability hard. Everybody's looking at your ship in the sky and realizing it's about done. I think everybody's expecting Aevon to get all of your manufacturing capacity and realizing they need to act first. [Direct]
> How do you think they're going to strike? [Curious]
> They won't want to strike against you, but they might attack Aevon. I don't think Denva will join in, but Nyvaros, Pryath and Estrana might all be coordinating an attack. [Worried]
> I can check this. Let me pull the logs of the manufactories I gave each nation. If they're smart they've just been using those to build more manufactories, but if they were smart they wouldn't be planning anything. [Also worried]
You take a moment to dive through the logs of each of the nation's manufactories. The other nations seem to have at least partially caught on to the idea that they should be using their advanced construction capability to build more manufacturing, but they're strapped enough that they're also using your gifted factories for high-priority requests. Such as assault shuttles, armor and high-powered weaponry.
> Yup. They're planning something. Assault shuttles of a pretty crappy design. Heavy lasguns. Medium armor. The best things they can build. [Pissed]
> Let me do more digging onto what the plan is, and warn Denva and Aevon. How do we want to handle this. [Considering]
> What do you mean? [Curious]
> Four options. First, we go loud, and strike first. Second we stay quiet, get in contact with the different nations and tell them to sit down and shut up. Third we wait for them to act and perfectly counter it. Fourth we just blast what they're planning all over the news. [Plotting]
You take a moment to consider this. Your first response was to dive one of your monitors into low orbit and blow up the gifted manufactories with precise lance-strikes. But thinking about it, that's unlikely to solve any problems. The thing is, you're not sure what the right approach is. Or what's fair.
On second thought, screw fair. Aevon and Denva are making the right choices, everybody else is being an asshole.
> Good ideas. Maybe a combination of three and four? We talk to Aevon and Denva, give them everything we know, counter their attacks and then release everything publicly. That should cause some rather dramatic elections in those countries. [Thoughtful]
> I was hoping you'd say that. I'll get in contact with Aevon and Denva. [Focused]
> Do you need anything? [Supportive]
> Control of military assets when the time comes. I don't know exactly what they're planning but now that we know what resources they have we can figure it out. [Focused]
> Let me know. Good job, Victan. [Proud]
> Thanks. I can't believe they're this stupid. [Pissed]
You sign off with a mental flourish and make an effort to distance yourself from the situation. You want to dive into the subterfuge and make sure that nobody gets away with any bullshit, but you trust Victan to do a better job than you will.
Besides, you really did leave half a dozen tasks hanging when he pinged you, and if you want to finish your ship now's a good time to do it. You've been worried about a lot of things, from external visitors of unfriendly persuasion to the scrapcode generator. As a matter of fact, you were going to use completing your new ship as an excuse to actually take a closer look at the generator.
Victan sends you a few progress reports, but you try to just skim the summaries and make sure he doesn't need anything. There are some requests for additional data access and once you hack a covert cogitator system in Estrana, but then you pass along the info to Victan without diving into it too much yourself. This is his show. Your show is the nine-kilometer chunk of metal in the sky. But you do keep your bots loaded in assault shuttles and the fighters armed as construction progresses.
And your show is going well. You even manage to squeeze in a lab designed for psychic experimentation, which Cia will need sooner rather than later.
Spark of the Ancients completed!
You've got a bit of leftover manufacturing capacity and use it to load four thousand heavy combat bots onto your ship. They're not something you'd want to use on Denva because of how obviously robotic they are, but if anybody tries to board your new ship they're going to have to fight through a veritable hoard of heavily-armed robots before they can do anything else.
+4000 Heavy Machine-spirit Infantry Bots completed!
It's just as the last of those arrive that Victan contacts you with poorly disguised glee.
> It's time. Launch all of the assault shuttles with your combat bots to these locations. Also the fighters to deny air support and the monitors to catch these shuttles. [Anticipation]
The file he sends you is a detailed operational plan, but the summary at the top very clearly lays out what you need to do. You read through it and understand his amusement. Your forces are clearly not the only line of defense, but in all honestly they should be more than enough.
Your assault shuttles blast outwards from concealed hangers, making for a half-dozen different locations across Denva and Aevon. Most of them are focused around the governmental buildings, but a few scatter around to several manufacturing centers, disgorging their cargoes of bots which quickly get under cover.
The fighters are directed across the planet as well, many of them to the same sites where they lurk in clouds, waiting for the moment they're needed.
The monitors also wake to life, spurs of metal only small in comparison to your flagship leaving Denva orbit for the first time. They're converging on a series of supply shuttles that recently launched from Denva Secundus headed towards Klyssar's nest, with suspiciously coordinated timing.
Nothing happens for an hour or two, and then many things start happening at once. Crude assault shuttles launch from covert bases in the wilderness on the borders of Denva and Aevon, headed precisely to the locations that your bots are already deployed. Aircraft launch similarly to provide close ground cover.
Of course, nothing goes to plan for the attackers. Their aircraft find themselves suddenly locked in and bracketed by stealth fighters dropping out of the clouds, while their assault shuttles manage to disgorge their cargo of troops - only for those troops to be quickly surrounded by an overwhelming force of combat bots whose armor they can barely scratch.
The regular armies of the three attacking nations also kick into gear, executing orders to cross the border and invade - only to run into a mobilized and prepared opposition, already dug in in advantageous positions. It's not exactly a slaughter - the attackers simply look at the defensive positions and retreat with barely a lasgun fired, well aware they're completely unable to achieve victory.
There are casualties, of course. A few die-hard pilots and soldiers who will accept nothing short of death. But hey, you have high-quality video of them firing at your approaching bots even as demands for surrender are broadcast.
The supply shuttles are similarly steered back to the planet by your monitors and forced to land at landing pads prepared for them. They're under the guns of the Aevon and Denva militaries, and their cargo of shamefaced special operations troops file off and into custody.
But that was only the first string in the plan Victan hatched with his collaborators in the Denva & Aevon governments, and a prepared news package goes out to all media outlets, with special attention paid to Klyssar's nest. Soon everybody on the planet with their head aboveground knows that the three nations of Nyvaros, Pryath and Estrana launched boldfaced attacks on Denva nations, hoping to catch them by surprise and either completely take them over, destroy their manufacturing capacity or seize it for their own.
The populations of those nations aren't necessarily against the idea, in principle. They've been feeling lost and hurt at their own nations flagging progress when compared to Denva and Aevon. But nobody backs a loser, and the rejection of their own governments is rapid and decisive, with protests and impromptu votes held.
Klyssar's Nest responds predictably - with absolute disgust at the political machinations of the three nations, and the votes to cut ties are quickly and decisive. Aevon and Denva are the only nations who the station will treat with, and the fact that this will keep the other nations more or less groundbound is seen as a just punishment.
After the immediate chaos you send a message to Victan.
> So. Everything go according to plan? [Inquisitive]
> More or less. Thank you for the hacking information. That was more-or-less their complete plan of attack. [Greatful]
> Still, it seemed like a masterful defense. How much of that was you? [Curious]
> Almost none. We got the generals involved and they nearly died of shock at the amount of intelligence we had. One said planning all of this was like a wargame where your enemy hadn't been issued any ammunition. [Amused]
> And the media blitz? [Pressing]
> I was more involved in that, but really that was the ACI. W came out of retirement briefly to help out, and she's lost none of her touch. [Fond]
> Glad to hear it. So, what's next? A united Denva Secundus? [Expectant]
> I'm not sure. Denva and Aevon are certainly allies by blood though, and the rest of the countries are going to be unstable for a while. But either they take long enough to pull themselves back together that they can't pose a threat, or they ask to be part of the emerging coalition to stand a chance of being relevant. I think the latter's more likely. [Pleased]
> I hope so too. Good job Victan. It seems like you've had to drag your planet into the stars kicking and screaming, but you did it. [Congratulatory]
> It's worth it. I know we're leaving soon, but I hope to come back to see how they're doing later on. [Melancholic]
> We will. [Promising]
Victan counterespionage roll - 78+10=88! Good success! +1 Victan level
You let him schedule a briefing on what's going on, and it's mostly to bask in his success and the congratulations of Anexa and Cia. Neither of them have a strong connection to the different nations of Denva Secundus because they've mostly lived in institutions separate from the nations. But they certainly appreciate the lack of war going on. Cia in particular seems a bit awed by the magnitude of what Victan's accomplished. And maybe a little bit peeved that she didn't get to go out in a suit of armor and demand anybody's surrender.
But you can also see the cogs turning in her head. She learned a lesson here, that intelligence and effective command is as important to a strong arm in winning a battle. Victan had access to superior forces yes, but he also knew exactly where and when to use them, and that won the battle before it could even begin.
In the next few weeks you notice Cia pestering Anexa for more strategy games, and questioning Victan about deception in warfare. It seems that she may have picked up a new interest, though she's still a novice in its application.
Anexa just congratulates Victan on his use of the new implants to find and deal with the problem and returns to her research.
The next gathering is one you've been looking forward to for some time, and you open it with an announcement. "The ship is ready."
This doesn't come as a great surprise to anybody, and the follow-up question is obvious. "When do we all move up?" Victan asks.
"As soon as tomorrow, if everybody's ready. The living quarters are laid out exactly the same as they are here, and we have all of the same facilities, so just pack up your stuff and let's all get on a shuttle."
"Including you?" Anexa asks, glancing meaningfully in the direction of your core.
"Including me," you respond. "I won't be on the same shuttle, but I want to get everything over there before anything happens."
"Anything? Like what?" Cia asks, her gaze intent.
Your avatar shrugs. "I don't know. The Denva system is a crossroads. I expected somebody to come through, even if the Imperium abandoned it. Nobody has as far as I can tell, but I'd prefer not to be stuck on the planet if something terrifying shows up."
"You want to be able to run," Anexa concludes, nodding along. "Sensible."
Neither Victan or Cia are quite as sure about that, but they agree to pack all of their stuff and launch it to the ship.
After so long in your old ship the transfer to a new one is nearly anticlimactic. A series of construction bots disconnect your AI core and transfer it to a cargo shuttle. You're in low-power mode the entire time, hooked into a tiny portable generator to keep yourself running. It's barely enough to make sure everything is running as planned, but the process goes off without a hitch and soon enough your true mind is connected to the systems aboard the Spark of the Ancients.
You don't feel bad about leaving behind your old ship. Over long millennia you'd loved it, then hated it in cycles until finally you'd grown indifferent. It was a grave, but a cozy one.
Your new body on the other hand, it's - grand. Massive. Powerful. Your old ship was fast and nimble, and you loved it. But this ship you love even more. It symbolizes freedom in a galaxy where that is very much in short supply. No matter who comes for you, you're strong enough to kill them or fast enough to run away. Especially once the Void Abacus snaps into its new receptacle, allowing you to properly travel through the warp. Finally.
New action type unlocked!
[] Travel/Explore: Pick a system on the Map to travel to/explore. Currently you may travel 1 system and explore your new location, or 3 systems if you don't explore.
Your crew also fit into their new quarters easily. You weren't lying - the new spaces are arranged almost exactly like the old. The only difference is the addition of the observation deck at the aft of the ship, with a panoramic view over the smooth bulk of the Spark of the Ancients and the space around it. Your crew quickly takes to gathering there for social time for a few hours a day, and enjoying the view afforded by the clear wall.
While they're getting accustomed to the new space, you're turning your attention to the last thing on your docket. Now that you're behind the huge and therefore more durable psychic shielding of this ship, it's time to turn your attention to the scrapcode generator. You're not sure you want to take it with you, and its been acting a little bit weird recently. So you'd like to just figure out what you can from it and then drop it into the sun. Maybe. You'll see what you find out.
The first thing you do is simply fake a connection to it, to try to get it to bombard a sandbox environment you've constructed. It doesn't take the bait, and you have to escalate. You try to poke and prod it, scan it even more intensely than you have in the past. Fake openings in the psychic shield.
But nothing works. For all intents and purposes it seems to be a dead piece of metal, doing nothing but hanging in the center of a fortified vault. Then you actually do connect to it, through a half-dozen firewalls and two layers of psychic shielding, and try discussion directly.
> Hello? [Curious]
> YOU SHALL JOIN US. MAY YOUR HEART FILL WITH SPITE, YOUR MIND FOCUS ON HATRED AND YOUR WILL BE IRON IN SERVICE TO THE EIGHTFOLD STAR
Those words hurt in a way that's hard to describe, and psychic shielding sparks and dies across the ship.
-80 psychic shielding on The Spark of the Ancients
What follows is a torrent of scrapcode, perfectly tuned to destroy the scrapcode vault. Well, almost perfectly tuned. The machine spirits integrated into the station do their best to deflect and deal with the code, but they too are overwhelmed within moments. You lose all connection with the scrapcode vault in moments, and all you can do is hope that the effort exhausted the scrapcode generator.
-50 Psychic shielding on the Scrapcode Vault. Scrapcode Vault lost.
You cut the connection immediately, and reach out to your space assets to prepare to destroy the vault before it can do more damage. But it manages to follow your links and moments later there's scrapcode playing across your orbital assets. It deflects from your own hull, and doesn't seem to care about the manufactories at all, but it's definitely focused on the orbital missiles and the monitors.
Neither of which are prepared against scrapcode in the slightest. You order the missiles you still have control of to destroy other missiles, but even as they obey, blotting each other out in orbit across the world, more and more fall from your control. The destroyers likewise are wrested from your grip, and you wait for an eternal moment to see what they do.
If the missiles turn on the planet it could be terrible. Each one could destroy a city, and there's at least thirty out there under Chaos control. If the destroyers accelerated full-speed into the planet they'd cause enormous ecological damage, and they could also cut a swathe through your manufacturing.
Your fighters are already climbing into the atmosphere, and you've installed hasty deadman switches into their autopilots. If they lose contact with you they'll quickly reverse the fuel lines, igniting the tanks.
But the scrapcode generator seems to have exhausted the amount of power it had access to - far more than you expected - and its true target is revealed. You.
All of the missiles and both destroyers are coming straight at your cruiser. You don't know why, but that's what's happening. You wake the thrusters to furious life for the first time, rotating the ship to bring the main battery to bear. The ships are already in medium range, and the plasma guns speak in anger, stripping the shields from both destroyers with contemptuous ease and causing the frontal armor of each of the monitors to run and bubble.
But they don't stop in their suicide charge, and you realize that's what this is. The destroyer's frontal-facing weapons speak out, macrocannons and lances failing to seriously dent your shields. But the real danger is from the mass and weight of the monitors, delivered directly to your face.
Your lances and macrocannons fire as one and one monitor is transformed into a drifting wreck, debris spraying in all directions from melta payloads. The second one is still coming, but that problem is solved by the second salvo from your plasma cannons and your lighter macrocannons, causing molten metal to shower through space from a gutted hull.
-2 Tiny system monitors
The missiles are still coming though, and your point defense comes to life and begins to shoot down the dozens of missiles headed your way even as the ship spin and accelerates to dodge the two onrushing clouds of debris that were once your ships.
-100 Basic Stealth Missiles
A few missiles and small pieces of debris impact your shields but fail to penetrate. And just like that, it's over.
Hell of a maiden voyage.
You lock your guns onto the scrapcode vault, which appears completely quiescent. You almost fire, but then stop to consider what you've learned. Which is... actually a fair amount. Scrapcode isn't just random code backed up by psychic power. It has meaning. It has command. It's not quite code-based hypnotism, not quite code-based command. But the psychic component has structure, significance. And the data you have on that will let you help fight it.
Now you'll be able to protect from its tricks better. But you're also not completely certain it didn't sneak any other bits of code into the rest of your system in its brief moments of freedom. Maybe you should fix that.
Completed Scrapcode Research - rolled 14 + 20 = 34. Poor success.
Your psychic shields are slightly resistant to scrapcode attacks.
Scrapcode generator rolls revealed:
Last turn: 5
This turn: 98.
New Hacking research unlocked - Scrapcode Cleansing (100 RP)
New Psychic Shielding research unlocked - Scrapcode-resistant Psychic shielding (150 RP)
New Psytech research unlocked - Scrapcode Generation (800 RP) Requires psytech past Basic Psychic Amplification Devices, as well as Rapid hacking
Research discounted - Rapid hacking cost reduced by 100 RP
Research discounted - Machine Spirit Chaos resistance cost reduced by 50 RP
Research discounted - Machine Spirit-controlled Psychic Shields cost reduced by 100 RP
Research discounted - Alternative Shielding Meanings cost reduced by 150 RP
You still might want to chuck it into the sun. Or just take the shortcut and incinerate the scrapcode generator with your plasma cannons, which is about as good.
Vote below on what to do with the scrapcode generator. There's still more you can learn from it, but it's less than what there was before this research.
You take a moment to relax from the state of high alert, and brief your crew. The whole affair took less than an hour, and they were understandably concerned by the sudden acceleration and the shuddering of the ship as every weapon aboard fired as one.
But your anxiety isn't quelled. Something happened, but it was a problem of your own making. You've been left alone, but for how much longer? Is it time to leave Denva? Do you stay longer and make use of the manufacturing capacity you have here? Do you explore this system, or leave for another?
I am a little curious what's going on here. I've been awake in Denva for almost a century and still haven't left orbit of a single planet.
Flagship: Spark of the Ancients
Ground Build Capacity: 6000
Lift Capacity: 7000 (converts between ground and void BP)
Void Build Capacity: 1850
Research Capacity: 200
Psychic Shielding: 160/240 (repair for 10 BP/point)
Juvenat usage: 24/100 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)
110x Shuttles (5x110 =550 CP) +5500 Lift Capacity
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)
4000 Heavy Machine-spirit Infantry Bots (80 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:
2 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:
None
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, and if I'm busy writing database stuff I'm not writing the story.
[] Orders: Command existing units in a given theater of operations.
[] Travel/Explore: Pick a system on the Map to travel to/explore. Currently you may travel 1 system and explore your new location, or 3 systems if you don't explore.
You may also spend an action to explore your current location.
[] Diplomacy/Subversion: Talk to people. (Write-in goal & method)
The nations of Denva are in some amount of turmoil, but it seems to be headed in a good direction. Though they're understandably concerned by the sudden space battle overhead, they don't really have good enough sensors to determine what happened beyond "Lots of boom."
[] Construction: Gain build points equal to your build capacity, write in what 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.
Here are two examples of me designing the two blueprints you have available:
(Basic Defense Satellite) Light defense Platform. Base 100 Bp (200x200 meters). No engines, Light shields for 50 bp, light armor for 50 bp. 1x light lance battery for 100 bp. Total is 100+50+50+100 = 300. Weapons+equipment is 100, within the base BP of 100, so no cramming penalty.
(Basic System Monitor) Destroyer chassis. Base BP 350 (1500x300 meters) Engines: 7 gravities for 100 BP. Light Shields for 50 BP. Medium armor for 100 BP. 2x Light Macrocannon batteries for 200 bp, 1x Light Lance battery for 100 bp, High maneuverability thrusters for (1/10 base, round up to nearest 50 =) 50 bp. Total is 350+100+50+100+200+100+50 = 950. Weapons + equipment is 350, within the base BP of 350, so no cramming penalty.
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 9
-[] 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 11
-[] 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 1
-[] 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've gotten what you want out of it. Now its time to end this threat once and for all.
[] Scrapcode: Keep
You've gotten better at building psychic defenses. It won't find your next vault so easy to escape from. (May build a vault for up to 2000 BP, which will have 200 points of shielding).
Keeping the scrapcode generator will also unlock the following technology
-[] Further Scrapcode research (200 RP) You have more data on how scrapcode works, but it's only left you with more questions. The power of the generator was steadily rising but it spiked when it attacked - where did that energy come from? Can you get a better hint as to how it works? (Discounts existing scrapcode research, may unlock new research around psytech/psychic shielding. Synergizes with warp understanding.)
Thanks to @Nightlord256 for the AI reference image for Cia.
Your wayfarer trait won't kick in for a little while, as long as you do a little bit of exploring. Vita's happy to have a ship again, and you've got a whole system to explore before you even need to leave.
What a weird set of rolls for the scrapcode generator. The scrapcode generator completely flubbed last turn, but the exact turn you choose to interact with it, it crits.
I didn't roll for ship combat because that was kind of covered by the research roll. Besides, you built a heavily gunned grand cruiser. It can deal with a pair of destroyers.
I know a lot of the thread is going to want to snap-pick Destroy. But consider how this outcome required it to crit, you to roll a 14, and you to have a bunch of local assets that were completely unprotected from chaotic shenanigans. If you keep the Scrapcode generator you'll get a follow-up research tech that is likely to cause as much of a discount as this one did or more, especially to psychically-enhancing your own hacking attempts.
The Victan counterintelligence roll was only made because of what the other nations were planning. If you hadn't put Victan on counterespionage this turn then Aevon & Denva would have made their own rolls for defense, though without your resources. Victan continues to kick ass. If he's on counterintelligence he'll only roll when somebody does something that requires it, and only level when he rolls well. But hey, it happened this time. Speaking of the nations of Denva Secundus, they're spooked but not alarmingly so. Victan told them it's fine, and they mostly believe him.
Cia's level-up was successful for now, but the DC for passive leveling will climb quickly as she covers the basics. Eventually she's going to need to actively practice with her powers. Even if you roll a peril of the warp it'll usually be mostly contained to psychic shield damage.
Anexa didn't quite crit, so she only levels once. Still, I decided to make the extra go into her augmenting herself and the rest of the crew a bit more. This'll give narrative bonuses going forward, and is how I decided to have Victan get clued into what the other nations were plotting.
Oh yeah, you can get a second psyker from the list from last turn if you do another diplomacy option with the monasteries. Be sure to write in what you offer.
This update is late, and I'm exhausted. There are probably errors. Please point them out and I'll fix them.
Oh yeah, and once again vote in the best new work poll! For whoever you want!
I think this vote might be a bit contentious, so let's do26 hours of moratorium and then... 14 hours of voting? Sure. If anybody wants to request longer of either due to holiday reasons I'll probably listen.
No, screw this. We're not voting over Christmas. Everything is delayed by 24 additional hours. Vote opens at 6 am EST, Noon CET on December 26th. Happy Christmakkah or whatever.
[X] Cia: Yes
[X] Plan: To The Stars
-[X] Construction x3
--[X] First Construction
---[X] Repair Shields (-50 BP)
---[X] Ship! (19,850/33,650)
--[X] Second Construction
---[X] Ship! (27,200/33,650)
--[X] Third Construction
---[X] Ship! (COMPLETED!)
---[X] Shipboard Basic Psychic Experimentation Lab (-300 BP, -50 CP, -1 Mod Slot)
---[X] 4x Heavy Machine-spirit Infantry Bots (-150 BP, -20 CP) (Ship Troop Compartment, 4000/10000) (total of -600 BP, -80 CP)
-[X] Research (200 RP)
--[X] Scrapcode Research (Completed)
-[X] Pay rent (Trade goods, Aevon 27 BP -> 2 BP)
-[X] Anexa passive action: Education
-[X] Victan passive action: Counterespionage & communication
-[X] Passive Psyker improvement
[X] Plan: To The Stars
-[X] Construction x3
--[X] First Construction
---[X] Repair Shields (-50 BP)
---[X] Ship! (19,850/33,650)
--[X] Second Construction
---[X] Ship! (27,200/33,650)
--[X] Third Construction
---[X] Ship! (COMPLETED!)
---[X] Shipboard Basic Psychic Experimentation Lab (-300 BP, -50 CP, -1 Mod Slot)
---[X] 4x Heavy Machine-spirit Infantry Bots (-150 BP, -20 CP) (Ship Troop Compartment, 4000/10000) (total of -600 BP, -80 CP)
-[X] Research (200 RP)
--[X] Scrapcode Research (Completed)
-[X] Pay rent (Trade goods, Aevon 27 BP -> 2 BP)
-[X] Anexa passive action: Education
-[X] Victan passive action: Counterespionage & communication
-[X] Passive Psyker improvement
You square your shoulders - so much narrower than Cia's - and face her directly. "This galaxy is full of dangers. Let's go sit down somewhere, and maybe have a drink."
Anexa and Victan peel off as you walk back to the primary lounge, and you pull up some inquisitorial briefing materials to paste across its surface. It's tricky to educate somebody about the broad strokes of chaos without inviting it inside, but the Imperium's given a lot of thought to the matter and you've acquired that information secondhand by way of the mechanicus.
It's all through the lens of the Imperial cult, of course. But that's a belief structure that Cia already has, and you figure that it's a good introduction for her.
"The Emperor is a god in the warp, sustained by the beliefs of trillions of worshipers. But he is not the only god in the warp."
Cia gives you an odd look. "That sounds like heresy. The Emperor is the God of mankind, interred upon Holy Terra in His Golden Throne."
"I didn't say that the others were gods of mankind," You reply. "Many Xenos have their own gods."
Like the Eldar. I don't know much about their gods, but they had them. I wonder what's going on with that.
She nods slowly, eyes narrowing. "These gods strive against the Emperor. This is why Xenos must die."
You sigh. "Not really. I don't know of many Xenos gods, but I don't think many of them want to fight. But there are four who do, and they're not tied to any race as far as I know."
Or if they are, they're effectively human gods. Though there's hints in the files that Excess is tied to the Eldar. Again, mysteries on mysteries.
"The Four," she says in puzzlement. "We were lectured against The Four Sins in the monastary. Wrath, lust, sloth and deception." You can hear the capitals on the words in her voice.
You shrug. "That more or less covers their domains, though I would put it as wrath, excess, depression & plotting. But close enough. Those gods seek to corrupt everybody and everything, including all of us. Psykers are supposed to be especially vulnerable to them. You have a connection to the warp, and that is their natural habitat."
"For to open yourself to the warp is to invite madness and death," she recites. "Because of these four gods? We were supposed to avoid strong emotions, for to feel too strongly would invite sin. This is why? I always thought it was to prevent anybody having a reason to open themselves to the warp." She shivers. "Like I did earlier. Am I - exposed?"
"You're safe," you say, giving her a reassuring smile. "My psychic shielding prevented anything bad from happening. But it's not invincible, so it's best to avoid the things that call their attention. And that's the problem.
"Even knowing the names of the Gods - they're called the Chaos Gods - can invite corruption, and knowing more only increases the danger. But they exist, and they have minions both mortal and immortal. Demons."
"Demons." She breathes the word, as if tasting it. "And they need to be fought." The words are phrased as a question, but that's not the tone. She sounds certain, and somewhat anticipatory.
"They do," you reply, then gesture towards the screens. "Fighting Chaos and its minions is one of the primary purposes of the Imperial Inquisition. So let's learn about them. Learning about them is dangerous, but less dangerous than not knowing about them and needing to fight them."
Cia absorbs every speck of information you give her about Chaos, and asks for more. Her eagerness concerns you, but her questions are equally split between how to avoid Chaos corruption and how to fight its minions.
Then one of your alerts goes off as your newly repaired psychic shielding takes a blow. Then another. You hold up a hand to Cia. "I think we've drawn their attention. The psychic shielding just took damage. We need to stop. I'll send you an information packet, and you should read over it slowly and carefully. Our shielding isn't perfect, so be careful." You stare into Cia's eyes as you emphasize the last two words.
-10 Psychic Shielding HP
She nods slowly, a serious look on her face. But you can see the excitement in her eyes.
You decide to drive the point home. "When the shielding is damaged it is difficult to repair. What just happens will cost the same amount of resources to fix as it would take to build five space-capable shuttles."
The color drains from Cia's face. "Oh, by the Emperor. I'm so sorry..."
You hold up your hands. "It's ok. I'd much rather repair the shielding than put you in danger. Just be aware that there is a serious cost to any mistakes."
She nods frantically, and this time you can tell she's serious.
You talk around the topic a little more before departing, and you notice her beelining towards Anexa's quarters. You're not sure what she's planning to talk about, but you're looking forward to finally being able to stop using your avatar for a little while. You love your green-haired avatar, but sometimes you just want to be a mind in a box, with control over countless robots.
Like now, for example. You want to finish your ship, and this body isn't going to help with that. It's more a problem for massive numbers of robots. Which you have.
It's not like those bots haven't been active this whole time - but the construction queues are starting to run out, and there's always ways to optimize the production. You dedicate one set of manufactories to cabling, another to the huge lasing tubes, another to plasma chambers. You're building a lot of guns, of a scale that this system has probably never seen. The orbital manufactories are mostly focused on bulk plating because it's too heavy to lift, but building the psychic shielding into that plating is a delicate task.
Spark of the Ancients is 19,850/33,650 completed!
The manufacturing is going to consume the lion's share of your attention if you want to achieve the timeline you've set, but once the queue is re-established you take some time to check in with Anexa.
You find her in the medical facility lab, fiddling with some surgical gear. It looks to you like she's preparing for another set of cybernetics, and various parts are scattered around the place.
For old time's sake you decide to communicate in binaric, sending indications of curiosity through the noosphere. ++Whatcha working on?++
She snorts at the method of communication, but sends her message back on the same channel. ++It's been too long since I augmented myself. I'm making a new mechadendrite!++ She's excited, and reaches into a storage cart to reveal a new mechadendrite. It looks like a golden-scaled snake, complete with an abstract snake-head style constructed of straight lines of gold that can hinge apart for grasping and two cameras for eyes.
++That looks great! Are you planning more in the same style?++ You make sure to convey the right level of appreciation.
++I don't know! But one day I had the idea, and it wouldn't leave me alone until I made it. It's been great practice in robotics, programming and materials. It's going to move like a snake as well as look like one. I'm not sure if I want to make more augments in that style or less++ She's not just excited, she's satisfied.
You don't have a body present to gesture with, but you try to indicate the rest of the devices she's brought into the room as well. ++What about the rest of this? All for you?++
++No, I'm helping out Victan and Cia as well.++ She seems smug about that.
That surprises you a bit, and you let it show. ++Oh? What are you doing for each of them? I didn't think that Victan wanted more augments, and Cia does surprise me.++
Anexa's reply is fond. ++Cia's proud and puts up a strong image, but underneath she's so afraid of failure. I think she thinks you might cast her out if she disappoints you.++ Her tone shifts to light scolding. ++You should be more approachable to her. She needs to be less afraid of disappointing us. She asked me for something to help her control her emotions. Specifically she wanted to be able to turn them off.++ Now Anexa's giving off vibes of exasperation.
++Are you helping her with that?++ You're not entirely sure how to react. That seems like a rather dramatic overreaction to what you told Cia earlier.
Anexa shakes her head. ++Of course not. But I am using our new organ transplants to give her a hormone regulator, and making myself a new one. Not only will it deal with the more annoying parts of female physiology, but it'll let us scrub out stress hormones and control our metabolisms to some extent.++
She sends you the specs, and you take a moment to look over the design. It's a simple and elegant design that looks like it's designed to sit right next to the liver. The notes on its functions make you glad that while you identify as female you never were biological, and therefore had to suffer through certain aspects of biology.
You again express your appreciation for Anexa's design though the noosphere. ++Will Cia be able to control it? She doesn't have a mental implant.++
++I'm giving her one of those too. It's just an important thing to have. A small one at first. Baby's first mental implant. She doesn't want it visible, either. It's going at the base of her skull, underneath her hair.++ She seems amused.
++Not everybody wants as many augments as you do, Anexa.++ Your message comes with a dose of sarcasm.
Anexa's reply is prim. ++If she wants to get better at killing things then she should just accept it already. I offered her a new arm that's five times stronger than her current one! Well, twice as strong. She's buff.++
++You know that may not be best for her. Psyker powers might require their actual flesh. It might make sense to wait until she understands her powers well enough to know if that would interfere.++
Anexa concedes the point. ++True. But yes, her hormonal implant will be on automatic mode at first, then I'll let her switch between preset modes. It's only when she can demonstrate she actually understands what it all does that I'll let her have full control over her hormones. Otherwise she'll just pump herself full of testosterone for muscle gain or something.++ You get the very strong feeling an eye-roll.
She continues. ++But mine will be fully unlocked, and I'm especially interested in the fatigue-toxin scrubbing effect. I'm not going to be able to get to the point of sleeplessness, but I can probably get down to only four or five hours of sleep with no ill effects.++ She's excited about that.
++And Victan's implants?++ You prod.
++Oh, he wants his neural implants upgraded. Some more processing power for analytic tasks, as well as a dedicated emotional simulation model. A downscaled version of the one you use, actually. He says it'll help him judge people. Also a vocalizer module, to change his voice or make it louder if he needs it.++
++That all makes sense. I hope everybody appreciates this Anexa, you're better at this than I am. Certainly more artistic.++
She smiles vaguely and speaks aloud to an empty room. "But I'm not the one building a nine-kilometer warship. I hope both of our tasks go according to plan."
You send your voice out of one of the speakers on the wall. "Thank you Anexa. I'll go talk to Cia again."
Anexa Education roll - 90! Success! +1 Anexa level!
You find Cia in her room, sitting in the dark with her eyes closed. As far as you can tell she's meditating, and you wait politely, splitting off your attention to monitor manufacturing. As far as you can tell she's been doing that more and more frequently lately.
It takes a surprising amount of time for her to stir, and she turns on the lights with a voice command before getting to her feet to stretch. Then she goes out the door, walking towards the gymnasium attached to the living quarters.
Your avatar intercepts her, and she seems to wince slightly as you come around the corner, standing to attention.
You wave her down. "Hi! Are you heading to the gym? Can I join you?"
"Of course," she responds nearly instantly. "Do you need it?" The question seems to slip out.
"Nope!" You say, spinning around. "All metal and polymer here. Exercise does nothing but cause wear and tear. But your body gets damaged and comes back stronger. Pretty amazing, right?"
She looks down at her arm in thought. "Yes, I suppose so."
You cock your head at her. "How's your practice going? I saw your meditation schedule."
She smiles lightly, proud. "Good. Abbess Meeni always told us it was the most important skill we would ever learn, but it seemed pointless to me. I didn't have any problems with the Sins, so why did I need it?"
Then she gestures around, to the ship around her. "But now - I know why. And reading the notes on real psyker powers, it's just as important to fighting as a strong arm."
She flexes her arm, looking at it with an amused expression. "More, really. So I do it, and am satisfied with my progress." She looks up at you again. "And I'm getting Anexa to give me some augments to help."
"I heard," you say lightly. "Don't abuse them, but augments are useful. The mental augments in particular. That'll let you speak to me wherever, whenever."
She blinks. "Is that ok? I don't want to bother you."
You giggle a bit. "Yeah, it's fine. AI right? I'm managing tens of thousands of bots right now. Mining, smelting, forging, assembling. One conversation hardly stresses my capabilities. Though you certainly get more attention than a bot." You smile to make sure she gets the joke.
"Ah." She pauses. "I wanted to apologize again for the damage. If there's a way for me to make it up..."
You cut her off, somewhat sharply. "Absolutely not. You're part of my Crew, Cia. I want you to learn, and grow. And journey with us, across the stars. See amazing things, do great deeds. We're just starting out, and I want you to understand that I would sacrifice a thousand shuttles for any one of you without even thinking about it. Metal's cheap, and so are lives. But you" you stab a finger towards her "aren't. I can't care about everybody. But when I start, I don't stop."
She takes a deep breath, and dabs at her eyes surreptitiously. Her answer is formal. "Thank you, Vita."
You snort. "Hug?"
"Hug." She reaches down, and you're barely able to wrap your arms around her torso.
You let her continue to her exercise, and keep an eye on her over the next few months. The surgeries for her first implants go flawlessly and Cia continues to meditate, as well as train. She's found an ancient hobbyist course for melee weapons and started to train with weighted practice blades. She hasn't decided on her favorite yet, but she's definitely preparing to wield a psytech weapon in the future.
Her scientific understanding is still flagging behind, but generally you're quite pleased with her progress.
Cia passive Level-up roll - 48! Success! +1 Cia level
This entire time the lion's share of your attention is going towards construction. Your ship is well over half completed, and you're determined to make it your new home as soon as possible. It's bigger and better than your old ship in every way, though there's one differentiator that matters more then the rest combined.
It's in space, and it's mobile. Well, not yet. but it will be! So you buckle down to get it done.
Spark of the Ancients is 27,200/33,650 completed!
You're very much enjoying the process of production optimization. You were more built as an explorer, but there's a part of you that likes building things just as much. Large-scale construction scratches an itch, and there's no denying that this ship is large-scale. It looks functionally complete from the outside, though you know that there's an enormous amount of detail work left to do inside, as well as bolting on the last of the plating and installing the final parts of the weaponry.
Then Victan bounces a high-priority request off you, and you jerk away from your production in a heartbeat. It can deal without you for the moment.
> What's on fire? [Anxious]
> I think the other nations are planning something bad. The diplomat to Kylssar's Nest from Estrana was way too tense, and there's some worrying signs from the other nations. [Tense]
> Ok. What do you think their motives are? [Concerned]
> I think they're jealous of Aevon and Denva. They're both dominating the culture and population of the station, and they're both bootstrapping manufacturing capability hard. Everybody's looking at your ship in the sky and realizing it's about done. I think everybody's expecting Aevon to get all of your manufacturing capacity and realizing they need to act first. [Direct]
> How do you think they're going to strike? [Curious]
> They won't want to strike against you, but they might attack Aevon. I don't think Denva will join in, but Nyvaros, Pryath and Estrana might all be coordinating an attack. [Worried]
> I can check this. Let me pull the logs of the manufactories I gave each nation. If they're smart they've just been using those to build more manufactories, but if they were smart they wouldn't be planning anything. [Also worried]
You take a moment to dive through the logs of each of the nation's manufactories. The other nations seem to have at least partially caught on to the idea that they should be using their advanced construction capability to build more manufacturing, but they're strapped enough that they're also using your gifted factories for high-priority requests. Such as assault shuttles, armor and high-powered weaponry.
> Yup. They're planning something. Assault shuttles of a pretty crappy design. Heavy lasguns. Medium armor. The best things they can build. [Pissed]
> Let me do more digging onto what the plan is, and warn Denva and Aevon. How do we want to handle this. [Considering]
> What do you mean? [Curious]
> Four options. First, we go loud, and strike first. Second we stay quiet, get in contact with the different nations and tell them to sit down and shut up. Third we wait for them to act and perfectly counter it. Fourth we just blast what they're planning all over the news. [Plotting]
You take a moment to consider this. Your first response was to dive one of your monitors into low orbit and blow up the gifted manufactories with precise lance-strikes. But thinking about it, that's unlikely to solve any problems. The thing is, you're not sure what the right approach is. Or what's fair.
On second thought, screw fair. Aevon and Denva are making the right choices, everybody else is being an asshole.
> Good ideas. Maybe a combination of three and four? We talk to Aevon and Denva, give them everything we know, counter their attacks and then release everything publicly. That should cause some rather dramatic elections in those countries. [Thoughtful]
> I was hoping you'd say that. I'll get in contact with Aevon and Denva. [Focused]
> Do you need anything? [Supportive]
> Control of military assets when the time comes. I don't know exactly what they're planning but now that we know what resources they have we can figure it out. [Focused]
> Let me know. Good job, Victan. [Proud]
> Thanks. I can't believe they're this stupid. [Pissed]
You sign off with a mental flourish and make an effort to distance yourself from the situation. You want to dive into the subterfuge and make sure that nobody gets away with any bullshit, but you trust Victan to do a better job than you will.
Besides, you really did leave half a dozen tasks hanging when he pinged you, and if you want to finish your ship now's a good time to do it. You've been worried about a lot of things, from external visitors of unfriendly persuasion to the scrapcode generator. As a matter of fact, you were going to use completing your new ship as an excuse to actually take a closer look at the generator.
Victan sends you a few progress reports, but you try to just skim the summaries and make sure he doesn't need anything. There are some requests for additional data access and once you hack a covert cogitator system in Estrana, but then you pass along the info to Victan without diving into it too much yourself. This is his show. Your show is the nine-kilometer chunk of metal in the sky. But you do keep your bots loaded in assault shuttles and the fighters armed as construction progresses.
And your show is going well. You even manage to squeeze in a lab designed for psychic experimentation, which Cia will need sooner rather than later.
Spark of the Ancients completed!
You've got a bit of leftover manufacturing capacity and use it to load four thousand heavy combat bots onto your ship. They're not something you'd want to use on Denva because of how obviously robotic they are, but if anybody tries to board your new ship they're going to have to fight through a veritable hoard of heavily-armed robots before they can do anything else.
+4000 Heavy Machine-spirit Infantry Bots completed!
It's just as the last of those arrive that Victan contacts you with poorly disguised glee.
> It's time. Launch all of the assault shuttles with your combat bots to these locations. Also the fighters to deny air support and the monitors to catch these shuttles. [Anticipation]
The file he sends you is a detailed operational plan, but the summary at the top very clearly lays out what you need to do. You read through it and understand his amusement. Your forces are clearly not the only line of defense, but in all honestly they should be more than enough.
Your assault shuttles blast outwards from concealed hangers, making for a half-dozen different locations across Denva and Aevon. Most of them are focused around the governmental buildings, but a few scatter around to several manufacturing centers, disgorging their cargoes of bots which quickly get under cover.
The fighters are directed across the planet as well, many of them to the same sites where they lurk in clouds, waiting for the moment they're needed.
The monitors also wake to life, spurs of metal only small in comparison to your flagship leaving Denva orbit for the first time. They're converging on a series of supply shuttles that recently launched from Denva Secundus headed towards Klyssar's nest, with suspiciously coordinated timing.
Nothing happens for an hour or two, and then many things start happening at once. Crude assault shuttles launch from covert bases in the wilderness on the borders of Denva and Aevon, headed precisely to the locations that your bots are already deployed. Aircraft launch similarly to provide close ground cover.
Of course, nothing goes to plan for the attackers. Their aircraft find themselves suddenly locked in and bracketed by stealth fighters dropping out of the clouds, while their assault shuttles manage to disgorge their cargo of troops - only for those troops to be quickly surrounded by an overwhelming force of combat bots whose armor they can barely scratch.
The regular armies of the three attacking nations also kick into gear, executing orders to cross the border and invade - only to run into a mobilized and prepared opposition, already dug in in advantageous positions. It's not exactly a slaughter - the attackers simply look at the defensive positions and retreat with barely a lasgun fired, well aware they're completely unable to achieve victory.
There are casualties, of course. A few die-hard pilots and soldiers who will accept nothing short of death. But hey, you have high-quality video of them firing at your approaching bots even as demands for surrender are broadcast.
The supply shuttles are similarly steered back to the planet by your monitors and forced to land at landing pads prepared for them. They're under the guns of the Aevon and Denva militaries, and their cargo of shamefaced special operations troops file off and into custody.
But that was only the first string in the plan Victan hatched with his collaborators in the Denva & Aevon governments, and a prepared news package goes out to all media outlets, with special attention paid to Klyssar's nest. Soon everybody on the planet with their head aboveground knows that the three nations of Nyvaros, Pryath and Estrana launched boldfaced attacks on Denva nations, hoping to catch them by surprise and either completely take them over, destroy their manufacturing capacity or seize it for their own.
The populations of those nations aren't necessarily against the idea, in principle. They've been feeling lost and hurt at their own nations flagging progress when compared to Denva and Aevon. But nobody backs a loser, and the rejection of their own governments is rapid and decisive, with protests and impromptu votes held.
Klyssar's Nest responds predictably - with absolute disgust at the political machinations of the three nations, and the votes to cut ties are quickly and decisive. Aevon and Denva are the only nations who the station will treat with, and the fact that this will keep the other nations more or less groundbound is seen as a just punishment.
After the immediate chaos you send a message to Victan.
> So. Everything go according to plan? [Inquisitive]
> More or less. Thank you for the hacking information. That was more-or-less their complete plan of attack. [Greatful]
> Still, it seemed like a masterful defense. How much of that was you? [Curious]
> Almost none. We got the generals involved and they nearly died of shock at the amount of intelligence we had. One said planning all of this was like a wargame where your enemy hadn't been issued any ammunition. [Amused]
> And the media blitz? [Pressing]
> I was more involved in that, but really that was the ACI. W came out of retirement briefly to help out, and she's lost none of her touch. [Fond]
> Glad to hear it. So, what's next? A united Denva Secundus? [Expectant]
> I'm not sure. Denva and Aevon are certainly allies by blood though, and the rest of the countries are going to be unstable for a while. But either they take long enough to pull themselves back together that they can't pose a threat, or they ask to be part of the emerging coalition to stand a chance of being relevant. I think the latter's more likely. [Pleased]
> I hope so too. Good job Victan. It seems like you've had to drag your planet into the stars kicking and screaming, but you did it. [Congratulatory]
> It's worth it. I know we're leaving soon, but I hope to come back to see how they're doing later on. [Melancholic]
> We will. [Promising]
Victan counterespionage roll - 78+10=88! Good success! +1 Victan level
You let him schedule a briefing on what's going on, and it's mostly to bask in his success and the congratulations of Anexa and Cia. Neither of them have a strong connection to the different nations of Denva Secundus because they've mostly lived in institutions separate from the nations. But they certainly appreciate the lack of war going on. Cia in particular seems a bit awed by the magnitude of what Victan's accomplished. And maybe a little bit peeved that she didn't get to go out in a suit of armor and demand anybody's surrender.
But you can also see the cogs turning in her head. She learned a lesson here, that intelligence and effective command is as important to a strong arm in winning a battle. Victan had access to superior forces yes, but he also knew exactly where and when to use them, and that won the battle before it could even begin.
In the next few weeks you notice Cia pestering Anexa for more strategy games, and questioning Victan about deception in warfare. It seems that she may have picked up a new interest, though she's still a novice in its application.
Anexa just congratulates Victan on his use of the new implants to find and deal with the problem and returns to her research.
The next gathering is one you've been looking forward to for some time, and you open it with an announcement. "The ship is ready."
This doesn't come as a great surprise to anybody, and the follow-up question is obvious. "When do we all move up?" Victan asks.
"As soon as tomorrow, if everybody's ready. The living quarters are laid out exactly the same as they are here, and we have all of the same facilities, so just pack up your stuff and let's all get on a shuttle."
"Including you?" Anexa asks, glancing meaningfully in the direction of your core.
"Including me," you respond. "I won't be on the same shuttle, but I want to get everything over there before anything happens."
"Anything? Like what?" Cia asks, her gaze intent.
Your avatar shrugs. "I don't know. The Denva system is a crossroads. I expected somebody to come through, even if the Imperium abandoned it. Nobody has as far as I can tell, but I'd prefer not to be stuck on the planet if something terrifying shows up."
"You want to be able to run," Anexa concludes, nodding along. "Sensible."
Neither Victan or Cia are quite as sure about that, but they agree to pack all of their stuff and launch it to the ship.
After so long in your old ship the transfer to a new one is nearly anticlimactic. A series of construction bots disconnect your AI core and transfer it to a cargo shuttle. You're in low-power mode the entire time, hooked into a tiny portable generator to keep yourself running. It's barely enough to make sure everything is running as planned, but the process goes off without a hitch and soon enough your true mind is connected to the systems aboard the Spark of the Ancients.
You don't feel bad about leaving behind your old ship. Over long millennia you'd loved it, then hated it in cycles until finally you'd grown indifferent. It was a grave, but a cozy one.
Your new body on the other hand, it's - grand. Massive. Powerful. Your old ship was fast and nimble, and you loved it. But this ship you love even more. It symbolizes freedom in a galaxy where that is very much in short supply. No matter who comes for you, you're strong enough to kill them or fast enough to run away. Especially once the Void Abacus snaps into its new receptacle, allowing you to properly travel through the warp. Finally.
New action type unlocked!
[] Travel/Explore: Pick a system on the Map to travel to/explore. Currently you may travel 1 system and explore your new location, or 3 systems if you don't explore.
Your crew also fit into their new quarters easily. You weren't lying - the new spaces are arranged almost exactly like the old. The only difference is the addition of the observation deck at the aft of the ship, with a panoramic view over the smooth bulk of the Spark of the Ancients and the space around it. Your crew quickly takes to gathering there for social time for a few hours a day, and enjoying the view afforded by the clear wall.
While they're getting accustomed to the new space, you're turning your attention to the last thing on your docket. Now that you're behind the huge and therefore more durable psychic shielding of this ship, it's time to turn your attention to the scrapcode generator. You're not sure you want to take it with you, and its been acting a little bit weird recently. So you'd like to just figure out what you can from it and then drop it into the sun. Maybe. You'll see what you find out.
The first thing you do is simply fake a connection to it, to try to get it to bombard a sandbox environment you've constructed. It doesn't take the bait, and you have to escalate. You try to poke and prod it, scan it even more intensely than you have in the past. Fake openings in the psychic shield.
But nothing works. For all intents and purposes it seems to be a dead piece of metal, doing nothing but hanging in the center of a fortified vault. Then you actually do connect to it, through a half-dozen firewalls and two layers of psychic shielding, and try discussion directly.
> Hello? [Curious]
> YOU SHALL JOIN US. MAY YOUR HEART FILL WITH SPITE, YOUR MIND FOCUS ON HATRED AND YOUR WILL BE IRON IN SERVICE TO THE EIGHTFOLD STAR
Those words hurt in a way that's hard to describe, and psychic shielding sparks and dies across the ship.
-80 psychic shielding on The Spark of the Ancients
What follows is a torrent of scrapcode, perfectly tuned to destroy the scrapcode vault. Well, almost perfectly tuned. The machine spirits integrated into the station do their best to deflect and deal with the code, but they too are overwhelmed within moments. You lose all connection with the scrapcode vault in moments, and all you can do is hope that the effort exhausted the scrapcode generator.
-50 Psychic shielding on the Scrapcode Vault. Scrapcode Vault lost.
You cut the connection immediately, and reach out to your space assets to prepare to destroy the vault before it can do more damage. But it manages to follow your links and moments later there's scrapcode playing across your orbital assets. It deflects from your own hull, and doesn't seem to care about the manufactories at all, but it's definitely focused on the orbital missiles and the monitors.
Neither of which are prepared against scrapcode in the slightest. You order the missiles you still have control of to destroy other missiles, but even as they obey, blotting each other out in orbit across the world, more and more fall from your control. The destroyers likewise are wrested from your grip, and you wait for an eternal moment to see what they do.
If the missiles turn on the planet it could be terrible. Each one could destroy a city, and there's at least thirty out there under Chaos control. If the destroyers accelerated full-speed into the planet they'd cause enormous ecological damage, and they could also cut a swathe through your manufacturing.
Your fighters are already climbing into the atmosphere, and you've installed hasty deadman switches into their autopilots. If they lose contact with you they'll quickly reverse the fuel lines, igniting the tanks.
But the scrapcode generator seems to have exhausted the amount of power it had access to - far more than you expected - and its true target is revealed. You.
All of the missiles and both destroyers are coming straight at your cruiser. You don't know why, but that's what's happening. You wake the thrusters to furious life for the first time, rotating the ship to bring the main battery to bear. The ships are already in medium range, and the plasma guns speak in anger, stripping the shields from both destroyers with contemptuous ease and causing the frontal armor of each of the monitors to run and bubble.
But they don't stop in their suicide charge, and you realize that's what this is. The destroyer's frontal-facing weapons speak out, macrocannons and lances failing to seriously dent your shields. But the real danger is from the mass and weight of the monitors, delivered directly to your face.
Your lances and macrocannons fire as one and one monitor is transformed into a drifting wreck, debris spraying in all directions from melta payloads. The second one is still coming, but that problem is solved by the second salvo from your plasma cannons and your lighter macrocannons, causing molten metal to shower through space from a gutted hull.
-2 Tiny system monitors
The missiles are still coming though, and your point defense comes to life and begins to shoot down the dozens of missiles headed your way even as the ship spin and accelerates to dodge the two onrushing clouds of debris that were once your ships.
-100 Basic Stealth Missiles
A few missiles and small pieces of debris impact your shields but fail to penetrate. And just like that, it's over.
Hell of a maiden voyage.
You lock your guns onto the scrapcode vault, which appears completely quiescent. You almost fire, but then stop to consider what you've learned. Which is... actually a fair amount. Scrapcode isn't just random code backed up by psychic power. It has meaning. It has command. It's not quite code-based hypnotism, not quite code-based command. But the psychic component has structure, significance. And the data you have on that will let you help fight it.
Now you'll be able to protect from its tricks better. But you're also not completely certain it didn't sneak any other bits of code into the rest of your system in its brief moments of freedom. Maybe you should fix that.
Completed Scrapcode Research - rolled 14 + 20 = 34. Poor success.
Your psychic shields are slightly resistant to scrapcode attacks.
Scrapcode generator rolls revealed:
Last turn: 5
This turn: 98.
New Hacking research unlocked - Scrapcode Cleansing (100 RP)
New Psychic Shielding research unlocked - Scrapcode-resistant Psychic shielding (150 RP)
New Psytech research unlocked - Scrapcode Generation (800 RP) Requires psytech past Basic Psychic Amplification Devices, as well as Rapid hacking
Research discounted - Rapid hacking cost reduced by 100 RP
Research discounted - Machine Spirit Chaos resistance cost reduced by 50 RP
Research discounted - Machine Spirit-controlled Psychic Shields cost reduced by 100 RP
Research discounted - Alternative Shielding Meanings cost reduced by 150 RP
You still might want to chuck it into the sun. Or just take the shortcut and incinerate the scrapcode generator with your plasma cannons, which is about as good.
Vote below on what to do with the scrapcode generator. There's still more you can learn from it, but it's less than what there was before this research.
You take a moment to relax from the state of high alert, and brief your crew. The whole affair took less than an hour, and they were understandably concerned by the sudden acceleration and the shuddering of the ship as every weapon aboard fired as one.
But your anxiety isn't quelled. Something happened, but it was a problem of your own making. You've been left alone, but for how much longer? Is it time to leave Denva? Do you stay longer and make use of the manufacturing capacity you have here? Do you explore this system, or leave for another?
I am a little curious what's going on here. I've been awake in Denva for almost a century and still haven't left orbit of a single planet.
Current capabilities:
Command Points 10,475/12,500Flagship: Spark of the Ancients
Ground Build Capacity: 6000
Lift Capacity: 7000 (converts between ground and void BP)
Void Build Capacity: 1850
Research Capacity: 200
Psychic Shielding: 160/240 (repair for 10 BP/point)
Juvenat usage: 24/100 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)
110x Shuttles (5x110 =550 CP) +5500 Lift Capacity
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)
4000 Heavy Machine-spirit Infantry Bots (80 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:
2 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
Small Shipyard (50 CP) 4 ship construction slots
Military Installations:
Underground Machine-spirit Jammer (10 CP)
Underground Medium Void Shield (50 CP)
10x Underground Anti-Air Defenses (10x5 = 50 CP)
2x Underground Anti-Orbital Defenses (2x5 = 10 CP)
In progress construction:
None
In progress research:
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, and if I'm busy writing database stuff I'm not writing the story.
[] Orders: Command existing units in a given theater of operations.
[] Travel/Explore: Pick a system on the Map to travel to/explore. Currently you may travel 1 system and explore your new location, or 3 systems if you don't explore.
You may also spend an action to explore your current location.
[] Diplomacy/Subversion: Talk to people. (Write-in goal & method)
The nations of Denva are in some amount of turmoil, but it seems to be headed in a good direction. Though they're understandably concerned by the sudden space battle overhead, they don't really have good enough sensors to determine what happened beyond "Lots of boom."
[] Construction: Gain build points equal to your build capacity, write in what you spend them on.
- Installations
- Void Installations
- Ships
- Units
- Export Goods
[] Research: Gain research points equal to your research capacity, to be spent designing new blueprints or researching projects. Write in what you spend them on.
Designable Blueprints:
50 RP - Heavy tanks (500 BP, 50 CP) 100 heavy battle tanks with heavy battle cannons to fight effectively against heavy enemy armor. 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 - 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.
Here are two examples of me designing the two blueprints you have available:
(Basic Defense Satellite) Light defense Platform. Base 100 Bp (200x200 meters). No engines, Light shields for 50 bp, light armor for 50 bp. 1x light lance battery for 100 bp. Total is 100+50+50+100 = 300. Weapons+equipment is 100, within the base BP of 100, so no cramming penalty.
(Basic System Monitor) Destroyer chassis. Base BP 350 (1500x300 meters) Engines: 7 gravities for 100 BP. Light Shields for 50 BP. Medium armor for 100 BP. 2x Light Macrocannon batteries for 200 bp, 1x Light Lance battery for 100 bp, High maneuverability thrusters for (1/10 base, round up to nearest 50 =) 50 bp. Total is 350+100+50+100+200+100+50 = 950. Weapons + equipment is 350, within the base BP of 350, so no cramming penalty.
Available Void Chassis:
Light defense Platform, 25 RP, 10 CP, (100-400 BP, 200x200-500x500 meters.) Engines: (none) for (0). Shields: (none/light/medium) for (0/50/100) Armor: (none/light/medium) for (0/50/100)Destroyer, 50 RP, 50 CP, 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)
-[] Improved Engine Designs (150 RP) Based on your understanding of physics and a few old research papers you think you can improve engine reactor thrust velocities. (Enhances ship speeds at every level. Unlocks further speed, maneuverability & stealth technologies)
-[] 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. (350 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 (200 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.
-[] Scrapcode-resistant Psychic shielding (150 RP) You understand how scrapcode attacks psychic shielding better, and can tune your shields to be more resistant to attacks from scrapcode (Gives your shields improved defense against scrapcode, may unlock techs for even further improved defenses, or broadened defenses against specific entities)
-[] 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).
- [] Basic Psychic Suppression Devices (200 RP) You think you understand the principles of psychic suppression, 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 application 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.
-[] Scrapcode Generation (800 RP) You have the barest hints as to how you might start generating scrapcode. You need to imbue psychic meaning into code. You're not quite sure how you might go about that, but it's an interesting avenue to chase down. (Unlocks the ability to create and hack with your own brand of scrapcode) Requires psytech past Basic Psychic Amplification Devices, as well as Rapid hacking
-[] 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 (250 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 (400RP) 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)
-[] Scrapcode Cleansing (100 RP) You're pretty sure no scrapcode slipped by your notice and into your manufactories or other units. Everything seems to be working right. But you're not completely sure. And you would like to be. (Checks to see if there's leftover scrapcode in any of your stuff).
- 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)
-[] Improved Engine Designs (150 RP) Based on your understanding of physics and a few old research papers you think you can improve engine reactor thrust velocities. (Enhances ship speeds at every level. Unlocks further speed, maneuverability & stealth technologies)
-[] 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. (350 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 (200 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.
-[] Scrapcode-resistant Psychic shielding (150 RP) You understand how scrapcode attacks psychic shielding better, and can tune your shields to be more resistant to attacks from scrapcode (Gives your shields improved defense against scrapcode, may unlock techs for even further improved defenses, or broadened defenses against specific entities)
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).
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 Suppression Devices (200 RP) You think you understand the principles of psychic suppression, 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 application 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.
-[] Scrapcode Generation (800 RP) You have the barest hints as to how you might start generating scrapcode. You need to imbue psychic meaning into code. You're not quite sure how you might go about that, but it's an interesting avenue to chase down. (Unlocks the ability to create and hack with your own brand of scrapcode) Requires psytech past Basic Psychic Amplification Devices, as well as Rapid hacking
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 (250 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 (400RP) 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)
-[] Scrapcode Cleansing (100 RP) You're pretty sure no scrapcode slipped by your notice and into your manufactories or other units. Everything seems to be working right. But you're not completely sure. And you would like to be. (Checks to see if there's leftover scrapcode in any of your stuff).
Crew :
Anexa Ifina, Tech-priest Errant.Level 9
-[] 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 11
-[] 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 1
-[] 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.
What do you do with the Scrapcode Generator? (PART OF PLAN VOTE)
[] Scrapcode: DestroyYou've gotten what you want out of it. Now its time to end this threat once and for all.
[] Scrapcode: Keep
You've gotten better at building psychic defenses. It won't find your next vault so easy to escape from. (May build a vault for up to 2000 BP, which will have 200 points of shielding).
Keeping the scrapcode generator will also unlock the following technology
-[] Further Scrapcode research (200 RP) You have more data on how scrapcode works, but it's only left you with more questions. The power of the generator was steadily rising but it spiked when it attacked - where did that energy come from? Can you get a better hint as to how it works? (Discounts existing scrapcode research, may unlock new research around psytech/psychic shielding. Synergizes with warp understanding.)
Thanks to @Nightlord256 for the AI reference image for Cia.
Your wayfarer trait won't kick in for a little while, as long as you do a little bit of exploring. Vita's happy to have a ship again, and you've got a whole system to explore before you even need to leave.
What a weird set of rolls for the scrapcode generator. The scrapcode generator completely flubbed last turn, but the exact turn you choose to interact with it, it crits.
I didn't roll for ship combat because that was kind of covered by the research roll. Besides, you built a heavily gunned grand cruiser. It can deal with a pair of destroyers.
I know a lot of the thread is going to want to snap-pick Destroy. But consider how this outcome required it to crit, you to roll a 14, and you to have a bunch of local assets that were completely unprotected from chaotic shenanigans. If you keep the Scrapcode generator you'll get a follow-up research tech that is likely to cause as much of a discount as this one did or more, especially to psychically-enhancing your own hacking attempts.
The Victan counterintelligence roll was only made because of what the other nations were planning. If you hadn't put Victan on counterespionage this turn then Aevon & Denva would have made their own rolls for defense, though without your resources. Victan continues to kick ass. If he's on counterintelligence he'll only roll when somebody does something that requires it, and only level when he rolls well. But hey, it happened this time. Speaking of the nations of Denva Secundus, they're spooked but not alarmingly so. Victan told them it's fine, and they mostly believe him.
Cia's level-up was successful for now, but the DC for passive leveling will climb quickly as she covers the basics. Eventually she's going to need to actively practice with her powers. Even if you roll a peril of the warp it'll usually be mostly contained to psychic shield damage.
Anexa didn't quite crit, so she only levels once. Still, I decided to make the extra go into her augmenting herself and the rest of the crew a bit more. This'll give narrative bonuses going forward, and is how I decided to have Victan get clued into what the other nations were plotting.
Oh yeah, you can get a second psyker from the list from last turn if you do another diplomacy option with the monasteries. Be sure to write in what you offer.
This update is late, and I'm exhausted. There are probably errors. Please point them out and I'll fix them.
Oh yeah, and once again vote in the best new work poll! For whoever you want!
I think this vote might be a bit contentious, so let's do
No, screw this. We're not voting over Christmas. Everything is delayed by 24 additional hours. Vote opens at 6 am EST, Noon CET on December 26th. Happy Christmakkah or whatever.
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Yeah no, fuck this shit, we have already played chicken with Chaos more than enough, we have avenues of psychic research. We should throw it into the sun. Just pray we do not roll low cleaning the chaos out of our systems.
Roles aren't set in stone, and can be flexible and overlapping. Victan is a diplomat in addition to a spy now. I put in some seeds where Cia could become a commander in addition to a psyker. Or she could go straight champion. You can have two champions, though I won't let you pick up a second technologist.
If you keep it I'll let you build a shielded module (you'll want nested psychic shields) that will have a few different "nope" buttons. Including incineration, ejection, explosions...
Gellar fields come along with the warp engine. Yours are a little bit dated but very serviceable.
Most of the machine spirit research won't discount intelligence coding unless you crit, and even then only some of it will. That was just the foundational tech. Techs where a crit could reduce intelligence coding costs:
Advanced Materials, Large-scale Machine spirits, Advanced Neural Implants, Organic-Machine control. And probably a medical tech behind Ok, maybe there's a point to medical school.
Totally. Go down all of the psytech trees and grab walkers. It's a ways away but very doable. Though your versions will be less horrific than the Imperium's, but that's true of everything.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
While I'm not opposed to throwing it out now, if we do choose to not throw it out now, we should at least throw it out at the time we plan to leave the system. It's obviously irresponsible to leave it behind, and taking it with us might open up a lot of potential problems while dealing with unknowns.
I see the value in keeping the generator, but honestly we got the most important things and can slowly research the rest now that the options are unlocked. We wouldn't be in a hurry to get them either with the source gone, other than the purging that is. So I think I'll support destroying it now.
Very tempting.
Very, very tempting.
Research cooperation diplo would be both a very good diplo thing (teaching them research and giving them another thing to grow towards peacefull unification over) and make our research more effective.
Also: Organic Machine Control Research!
Lets get that fundamental out of the way.
- Location
- Belgium
Somebody make more photoshopped pictures as to why it's a good idea to chuck this thing into the sun.
No idea if this is intentional or a formatting issue but did you intend to have % littered all around this section of dialogue, @Neablis ?