Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest

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DragonParadox said:
I meant the part where killing the Emperor would 'end the universe'. Even if we are just talking about the observable universe that is still... considerably larger than the galaxy in which the setting of 40K takes place. Beyond that let's just look at the galaxy, making it so the space fascists are right in that the fall of their capital and death of their corpse-god would be the end of the galaxy is incongruous with the denial/subversion of the Great Man Theory of history at the heart of the setting.
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Thats the thing. They are still wrong.

The Imperium thinks the God Emperor rising from the throne would be a great and glorious thing. And they are -VERY- wrong about that.

Newer lore has it brought up that Emps dying or getting off the throne would be utterly horrific and an utterly cataclysmic event, what with him becoming a chaos god and probably dragging humanity along with him, if not setting off the collapse of reality itself into the Warp.
 
Bad news everyone I did some memory diving and i don't think I've ever heard them use knight in their chapter names I think we're dealing with dark angels here.
 
Mayto said:
Thats the thing. They are still wrong.

The Imperium thinks the God Emperor rising from the throne would be a great and glorious thing. And they are -VERY- wrong about that.

Newer lore has it brought up that Emps dying or getting off the throne would be utterly horrific and an utterly cataclysmic event, what with him becoming a chaos god and probably dragging humanity along with him, if not setting off the collapse of reality itself into the Warp.
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Some of them want him to rise from his throne, we are talking conspiracies and madmen, most everyone is desperately trying to fix the throne because him dying would be the end of the Imperium (in the form of no longer having a navigation beacon if nothing else). Making it so that the end of the Imperium is also the end of the galaxy ennobles that mainstream position of fighting and dying for the Throneworld, the Throne. It makes the Imperium as an institution necessary and justified.
 
RE: Anexa
dbRevned said:
[] Anexa: Jack of All knowledge
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Amerigo Vespucci said:
Currently, we significantly lack RP, and the latter option is a huge boost … currently 110 RP/turn instead of 45. The former option turns her into a sharp Swiss Army knife of specialities but isn't quite as good, I think.
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Derpmind said:
A lot of this comes down to where we expect to put our future research. If we want to heavily focus of Machine Spirit and/or The Warp research, the former is better. But if we expect to focus on other things, or we expect to keep researching in many categories, the latter is often going to be better. Overall, I think I favor Jack of All knowledge.
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I think our best options are high-throughput or multi-talented; we get to pick where we aim Anexa, and with four specialties the options should be broad enough we can be reasonably certain there will be something in her focus to research in any given turn.
We also know the DCs to level up are likely to increase, so having a higher bonus now means faster level-ups.

For Cia: I think keeping her generalist is better, because someone who can vaporise a ship is better than someone who can maybe replace a few superheavy bots. Especially since sending her out there seems more risky in terms of her health.

Re: the marines
DragonParadox said:
The more I think of this the more I think we should just start shooting and recover any prisoners, space mariners or otherwise once the ship has struck her colors.
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Any fighting is likely to draw attention we cannog afford from the Marines. Shooting is basically answering "yes, we are enemies of the emperor".

DragonParadox said:
Not when they start screaming heretek they won't. They would at least ask to be allowed on board our ship, the ship that runs itself and is only crewed by robots.
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Yeah, pretending to be an AdMech seems like it would be very flimsy.

Amerigo Vespucci said:
"I am Vita Humanicus, a pre-Imperial explorer recently (by imperial terms) revived in this system. I am opposed to the agents of the immaterium and support the progress of humanity. I have begun work to improve this system and believe our goals are aligned. Are you willing to cooperate?"
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This seems like the best idea, coupled with a diplomacy action.

michaell8000 said:
Yeah let's just go for 15,000 years of trapped in the warp explorer and what exactly is a god-emperor Because that wasn't a thing back before you got trapped in a pile of space junk in the warp.
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I'd rather we say we were in stasis than lost in the Warp. Spending 15k years in the Warp seems like it would result in unievitable corruption.

armentho said:
And how is the frigate gonna kill a battleship?
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By calling its friends.

I'd say we do a diplo with the spacies, plus triple research. Get Anexa on the Multi Talent, and research advanced shields and get on the artificial intelligence tree. We need the CP. Might also want to get on super heavy armour.

If getting regular crew would allow us to improve our RP, we can also spend a diplo on that, though it would require knowledge compartmentalisation (probably partitioning crew spaces) to avoid leaks of our AI-ness
 
Our existing cover is the best angle here. Keep it simple, stupid. We are an ancient from the DAoT who was in stasis until relatively recently. We admit a lack of familiarity with the specifics of Imperial doctrine, as we predate his rule, but from what we can understand he seeks to protect humanity from a galaxy full of monsters and terrors and we share these goals. Is there a danger that brings one of his noble Space Marines here?

Try to basically play it off as "we have this system well in hand, we are friendly enough, better to spend your limited amount of personal attention elsewhere." Remember, even before the Cicatrix Maledictum went up, Space Marines were always impossibly busy. Their core limitation has always been lacking the numbers to respond to every available fire, so our primary goal should be convincing him that this fire is already out. We shouldn't try to tell him directly not to waste his time, but it shouldn't be hard to lead him to that conclusion.

Unless, of course, he is here specifically for Denva, but he'd need support fleets for that. Far more likely he's here for a quick survey or just passing through.
 
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The biggest Problem is that the Planet we have set up for a stable port is Kiiinda heretical... Just a bit. I mean, Their trading with Xeno's right now.

If we don't bluff them well enough or Kill the frigate, They might point around Secundus, See the Shit that going on and decide to kill everyone, Whether that be now or later.
 
Please remember that a good diplomacy action with the Monasteries could net us another Psyker for our crew.

If we want a Champion, let Cia be that. We can get the Telekinetic bean later and train him into a Diviner who stays back and messes with fleets. He can manipulate the battlefield from the ship and predict incoming fire for stops narrative combat bonuses from that synergy, and also do what we want him to. Have his third speciality double down on Divining for further dice manipulation ability or add in pyro stuff if we want ship melting.

We don't NEED Cia to be our generalist, so why should we push her that way when she WANTS to be a champion specialist? Isn't that what we picked her for anyways?
 
Execute/Dumbo said:
Hey there spacies, good to see you! The fact he referred to the Emperor as 'the God-Emperor' indicates this lad is from one of the more zealous chapters, and the angelic looks and blood-themed chapter name tells us this is a Blood Angels successor chapter. This is... bad? It's not good. He's reasonable enough now, but generally speaking any Chapter that treats the Emperor as a proper god are pretty zealous, and we are a fuckmothering Abominable Intelligence which is managing a planet that just had a cultural renaissance centered around xenophilia.
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This is a slight misunderstanding of Astartes culture. Almost all loyalist Astartes consider the Emperor to be a god, they just don't always worship him as a god, because they are his demigod progeny through the Primarchs. It's like worshiping your grandpa. They consider their relationship with him more approximate.

This is somewhat similar to how Anexa once took the observation that Vita didn't worship the Machine God and concluded she must be an awakened machine spirit, as they do not need to worship.

10ebbor10 said:
Anyway, I think disguising ourselves as a Mechanicus is somewhat unlikely to work, because the Mechanicus tends to be doctrinally orthodox (with the ones who aren't being oft derided as Heretek's) and out ship does no t look like a standard Imperial vessel. And, you know, Space Marines probably have a copy of Jane's Fighting Ships of the 41th Millenium.
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A Techmarine might care about this, but most Astartes won't give a damn about some heterodox Mechanicus business. Long as we aren't Chaos, xenophile, or full-blown AI heretek.

Amerigo Vespucci said:
This was my thought as I was reading discussions about playing Vita off as a member of the Mechanicus.

It would be best to share the lightly edited truth that we've given others:

"I am Vita Humanicus, a pre-Imperial explorer recently (by imperial terms) revived in this system. I am opposed to the agents of the immaterium and support the progress of humanity. I have begun work to improve this system and believe our goals are aligned. Are you willing to cooperate?"
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Imperial Cult doctrine does not well-recognize the "pre-Imperial" period and considers the humans who lived then to be at best spiritually primitive hereteks and at worst enemies of the Emperor which he founded the Imperium to exterminate. This ain't it.

Dmol8 said:
which means that right now it is 080 M42.
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The Imperium doesn't know what time it is. It's 999 M41 forever. The clock hands fall off and Chaos reigns. Worse, even if we got a look at Sol right now, we still wouldn't be able to reverse engineer the time due to the Intersystem Catastrophe, Malcador pulling Titan into the Warp, and all sorts of other shit that wrecked the regularized orbits.

Now, as to this pickle, consider the facts:

- Polite by Astartes standards
- Blood Angel successor in the Imperium Nihilus
- Fucking outgunned

Go with the old cover story, more or less. We are the self-proclaimed Archmagos of this remnant human colony. There is NO chaos here. There are NO xenos here. We are well in hand trying to protect ourselves against the EVERYTHING, hence the ship. We MIGHT be doing a LITTLE TECH-HERESY, but YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT. Praise the Omnissiah, whom is one and the same with HIM ON TERRA, and GOODBYE.

We do not want to get hostility from this force and let them slip away, because then they could report back to Dante and with that make the entire Nihilus command aware of us.
 
Thanks for the great chapter!

I think [] Anexa: Jack of All knowledge
Anexa now contributes +level/3 (round up) to the research roll in addition to additional RP is the best trait to take heres why.

1.
[] Anexa: Industrial Planner
Anexa's secondary action becomes one that improves construction actions, contributing +5xlevel% BP to a construction action.

This trait is just bad in every way. It does not help our RP, splits Anexa's focus between construction and research actions and just doesent fit the character.

2.
[] Anexa: High Throughput Researcher
Anexa contributes +10xlevel RP to research actions.

At first i thought this would be a valid contender with the other two traits but after thinking back to the massive amounts of discounted RP we get through a great success or crit and crucially how we had to basically pay an additional 50% RP everytime we get a poor success ... . Additionally a higher chance to get completely new techtrees opened up is in my opinion just more valuable.(Psychic Ai's?!) Also, again doesent really fit her character.

3.
[] Anexa: Master of Many Talents
Doubles specialty capacity & bonuses (so will be able to have 4 specialties, and each give +10 to the dice roll and potentially unlock new technologies when she uses them)

[] Anexa: Jack of All knowledge
Anexa now contributes +level/3 (round up) to the research roll in addition to additional RP

For me its basically between Master of Many Talents and Jack of All knowledge. (Its not explicitly said that Master of Many Talents keeps the additional RP bonus like with Jack but im just going to assume it is otherwise Jack is just way better.)

What we get right now with,
Jack of All knowledge
+55 RP
+9 on Warp and Machine Spirit research
+4 on all other research
vs
Master of Many Talents
+55 RP(?)
+10 on Warp and Machine Spirit research
+2 Speciality slots
+more unique research opportunities

What we get in the future(lvl 30) with,
Jack of All knowledge
+150 RP
+15 on Warp and Machine Spirit research +2 other specialities
+10 on all other research
vs
Master of Many Talents
+150 RP(?)
+10 on 8 specialities
+more unique research opportunities

This shows that Jack in the longterm is just better and in the shortterm basically even with Master, but what really convinced me is that
Master is inherently unsynergistic. With Master of Many Talents you want to put her on as much speciality research as possible to get those unique research opportunities but at the same time we need to put her on other research first and then crit to even get those specialities... . Thoughts?

Edit: Didnt see you there @Derpmind q-q
 
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The choice of pushing Cia towards either being a champion or a commander comes down to weather we want her as a railgun or a nuke. If we go with champion, she'll be great against any other champions or elite units our foes will have, but if we go with the commander route, she'll be better suited to large-scale warfare as is typical in 40k. I think we should go with the champion route as that will help deal with elite units. We do need a commander, yes but we don't need one desperately as long as negotiations with the Space Marines goes well.

For Anexa's level up I would have to go with the Jack of All Knowledge. Master of Many Talents is tempting but we'd need to get crits on two different subjects and I worry our research focus would shift in a way she wouldn't be able to help. High Throughput Researcher is a good choice, though I would rather we swing the dice more in our favor than get more research. We have other ways of getting it. As for Industrial Planner, I can see some people taking that but our manufacturing base can grow exponentially as long as we have the CP.

For the Gas station we should definitely keep it. A thousand BP is a lot this early, especially for only 250 CP. I imagine we'd be able to get the defense platforms under our control with a bit more work.

If we're gonna give the tech to Denva, I still think we should treat them with the kid gloves and make two diplo actions this turn. One for Denva to ensure the technology is being used properly and one to talk with the Space marines and see if some kind of agreement can be formed. I would also recommend spending our free action looking up the Astartes chapter just in case.
 
Hmm. Not sure what to do about the space marines. I figure, either we try and kill them, or we try and convince them to go away and find bigger problems to deal with? And we tell them whatever lies or truths are most convenient for making that happen. And it would be nice to pump them for information as to the state of the sector...

As for research, our first priority should be the following, in my opinion:

-[] Immaterium Investigations (200 RP)

This gives us a proper understanding for what we're doing when we deal with the warp, and enhanced the benefits we can get from studying the scrapcode generator.

After that:

-[] Manufacturing Machine Spirits (100 RP)

This gives us a lot of benefits:
* Less CP usage from manufactories, which is where the majority of our CP are spent right now.
* Better manufactory chaos resistance
* More progress on machine spirits in general, which lowers CP usage, improves chaos resistance, and offers a variety of other side benefits to make our tech better.

After this, I'm a bit more ambivalent. I don't think we need more psychic shields immediately? And I want to get the immaterium research done before poking the scrapcode again. And I want to see if we get any discounts to machine spirits before going for more tech there. The superconductors got discounted though, and are looking pretty juicy. And mothballing is probably at the minimum price, and might be worth following up on? Oh, and large scale void manufacturing also got discounted. And GMEI is still pretty cheap and would save us a lot of RP. Not sure we need any of those this turn though, we don't seem desperate for more manufacturing power. Psytech is also an option, but is relatively expensive ATM and not actually something we have that much of a use for yet. Probably, we mainly want to progress with the medical technologies we started researching, med school and genetics. That would give an overall agenda of:

-[] Research, 2 actions
-[] Immaterium Investigations (145 RP + 55 Anexa RP)
--[] Anexa assists
-[] Manufacturing Machine Spirits (100 RP)
-[] Ok, maybe there's a point to medical school (30 RP)
-[] An Introduction to Human Genetics (55 RP)
-[] 70 RP on something else? Could pick up Mothballing or GMEI for cheap, and have some RP left over to start another research? Or could get most of the way through a 100 point research, or almost halfway through a 150 point research.

On the topic of Anexa's abilities, Jack of all Knowledge is almost strictly better than Master of Many Talents, which kind of annoys me, but oh well.
 
Neablis said:
Everybody's already on the map. Who you run into depends on which direction you go, not what you roll. But who comes to find you is dependent on a roll. Does that seem like a good distinction?
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A fine one, though I'd have expected them having spatial positions to preclude there being 6 equally likely first contacts - though (A) we don't strictly know that's what the roll meant and (B) it might depend on just how mobile everyone else is (since Vita's void abacus navigation is noted as relatively slow).
 
Random fun fact I just found out, the Fail vs Success chance for this Quests dice rolls is 15/85% and you can near perfectly replicate those odds by a rolling a d6-1 or a 2d6-4.
 
Neablis said:
-[] 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)
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Hmm question. Are we waiting on this for any specific reason? I may have missed some context because this seems fairly powerful
 
Mayto said:
Eyerolls

A lot has happened in the galaxy since then. For one, there is a godlike Psyker sitting upon the thing, on the edge of apotheosis from being fed billions of souls, whose final death might spell the end of the universe.
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Prove it.

And on the off-chance that there's actually a semi-reliable source saying so (as opposed to an imperial source), the math still does not add up. The fall of the Eldar Empire at the end of the Age of Technology was a way bigger singular event than anything to have happened since then. No doubt the Emperor's death would cause considerable (probably galaxy-wide) instability in the Warp, but that's not the same as "the end of the universe".

And by the way, "end of the universe"? That speaks of someone having lost all perspective. The Chaos Gods, the Necrons, the Imperium, the Old Ones, the Orcs, the Tyranids, everyone... they are all absolute nobodies on a universal scale, as is everyone else in the Milky Way. The universe is unfathomably bigger than them all.
 
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Personally, for the marines, I'm of the opinion that we should tell them the same almost truth that we told the planet, awakened ancient, last time I was awake humanity had no empires, yadayada.
Cause like… this is bad, but they're in a frigate, and Vita out ramps them so hard it's not even funny.
To that end?
We should definitely data dump our tech up to at least heavy cruiser range onto the planet, tho maybe wait on the ships until we get large construction machine spirits integrated? Because if they've caught the attention of the imperium, they're going to need all the guns they can muster.

I think Cia should be a champion scale asset, cause like, as much as giant space firestorms appeal to me, Vita already has ways to deal massive amounts of strategic scale destruction, and she doesn't really have any dedicated close combatants.(which, side note, we should definitely get better robotics so we can research power armor)
 
Driven by Apathy said:
Prove it.

And on the off-chance that there's actually a semi-reliable source saying so (as opposed to an imperial source), the math still does not add up. The fall of the Eldar Empire at the end of the Age of Technology was a way bigger singular event than anything to have happened since then. No doubt the Emperor's death would cause considerable (probably galaxy-wide) instability in the Warp, but that's not the same as "the end of the universe".

And by the way, "end of the universe"? That speaks of someone having lost all perspective. The Chaos Gods, the Necrons, the Imperium, the Old Ones, the Orcs, the Tyranids, everyone... they are all absolute nobodies on a universal scale, as is everyone else in the Milky Way. The universe is unfathomably bigger than them all.
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The omniscient narration of The End and the Death indicates that the death of the Emperor and the birth of the Dark King would be the final event that tears open reality like an overripe fruit, spiraling into desolate Chaos and then the final extermination of everything. The Chaos Gods salivate over this possibility and are majorly disappointed when it doesn't happen.

It's up to you whether you consider Chaos to be a galactic mirror, universal omnipresent, or multiversal omnipresent, but that is what the current canon says would happen and generally it also leans towards seeing them as multiversal omnipresent.
 
Driven by Apathy said:
Prove it.

And on the off-chance that there's actually a semi-reliable source saying so (as opposed to an imperial source),
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Why do you ask when you have already made it clear you'll dismiss anything that goes against your interpretation, either because you disagree with the scale of the writing, or the one saying it?

But yes, as MSH says, the Apotheosis of a Dark King in the Siege of Terra would have been the end of reality, splitting it like a ripe fruit.

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
 
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One Autumn Leaf said:
Hmm question. Are we waiting on this for any specific reason? I may have missed some context because this seems fairly powerful
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It's expensive - and the main thing it will do is unlock follow on research, which will be even more expensive.

That said, neablis did give us a list of techs that would chip way at it:

Neablis said:
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.
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10ebbor10 said:
Anyway, I think disguising ourselves as a Mechanicus is somewhat unlikely to work, because the Mechanicus tends to be doctrinally orthodox (with the ones who aren't being oft derided as Heretek's) and out ship does no t look like a standard Imperial vessel. And, you know, Space Marines probably have a copy of Jane's Fighting Ships of the 41th Millenium.
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Our ship is an upsided grand cruiser called "spark of the ancients". The Mechanicus have a long history of finding DoTA super-tech and slapping a cog on it and everyone nodding that it is totally legit.

armentho said:
We offer bribes in the form of maintainance (admech operandi) so they dont reveal the civil war and tech heresies (every admech center does it) bit
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It wouldn't actually be out of order for that "offer" of maintenance to be practically a demand.
 
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