Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest

[Prime 2.0]

This is Warhammer we're talking about, the real reason for the abundance of psykers is that there are no Black Ships to take them off their hands. There'll always be psykers to be found on that planet.

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Yes. But those psykers will be dying of old age, instead of accumulating over generations.

I hate to refer to human beings with the language of a perishable good, but we are ultimately talking about future military assets here that will otherwise expire, even if new ones are born all the time.

Would the monasteries choose to, though? Your logic is sound from a perspective where psykers are useful. But to the monastics, psykers are a burden. Their purpose is to be a hazardous waste containment site, not to cultivate psykic potential.

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Nah, the monastary heads were pretty clear they were holding out hope for the black ships to arrive when we met with them. "Have more psykers to add to the imperium's might" was the master plan of the old governor, and I see no reason why the monastaries wouldn't be on board with it, save one:

That just like everyone else they would really really like to be immortal, and once used to the idea that they are they might not want that immortality to end just because a black ship showed up to take them.

 

[Asheram]

Yes. But those psykers will be dying of old age, instead of accumulating over generations.

I hate to refer to human beings with the language of a perishable good, but we are ultimately talking about future military assets here that will otherwise expire, even if new ones are born all the time.

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Are you certain about that? There are no current wars on the planet, and we've pretty much handed down medical tech to catapult them into their figurative future. The population should increase rather than decrease, and the amount of psykers with them. Heck, psykers would be even more abundant since there are fewer accidents and crimes around the monasteries.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Are you certain about that? There are no current wars on the planet, and we've pretty much handed down medical tech to catapult them into their figurative future. The population should increase rather than decrease, and the amount of psykers with them. Heck, psykers would be even more abundant since there are fewer accidents and crimes around the monasteries.

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So? The old psykers continuing to live still means more psykers than there would be if they died. I'm not sure what the disconnect is here.

Nevermind that Ker was above Denva's expected result for most powerful psyker. Letting him die of old age just because there will be more rolls of the dice would be nonsensical from denva's perspective.

As for war... Denva kinda doesn't have a choice there? War is going to come to them from the stars, and psykers are a strategic asset.

We can preserve more of that asset, and if we do that helps denva. Simple as.

 

[Angle]

We'd need warp coms to keep up communication with the psyker lab if we built it on Denva - and there are multiple monasteries, so either we'd need a lab next to each, or we'd need to move psykers to one monastery in particular when we wanted them to work the lab, or we'd need to put it somewhere else... Also, the monastery leadership probably doesn't approve of psykers actually using their powers. They might accept it when we take away the psykers, and the danger that comes from them, but I suspect they'll be a lot iffier about it happening nearby. Though I suppose we could raise the idea anyway? They probably won't get *too* mad about it...

 

[zack omega24]

"Vastly weaker" isn't exactly accurate when talking about pre-Fall Warp fuckery.

The Three (plus the unborn Fourth, because fuck linear time) were keeping relatively quiet likely because they didn't want to risk shaking the depraved hellscape mosh party that was the late stage Eldar Empire out of their horrifying raperaves or draw the Federation's attention, but the Warp was already pretty dangerous - just mainly for isolated ships and individuals who disappear and become ghost stories and old wives' tales. With the Eldar mostly eaten and the Federation destroyed, there was nothing to interrupt their feeding frenzy. You want a quiet and peaceful Warp, you need to look at the Sea of Souls prior to the War in Heaven.

Actually on the topic of the Eldar, I'm honestly surprised Vita had positive feelings about them when she last thought about them. I'm guessing she had the unreasonably good fortune to only ever encounter sane Craftworlders and Exodites before their planetary cousins murderfucked Slaanesh into existence?

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She probably only met with Periphery Eldar

 

[michaell8000]

Actually on the topic of the Eldar, I'm honestly surprised Vita had positive feelings about them when she last thought about them. I'm guessing she had the unreasonably good fortune to only ever encounter sane Craftworlders and Exodites before their planetary cousins murderfucked Slaanesh into existence?

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Yeah because empire loyalist Eldar sent wraithbone armies to do all the murder-enslaveing just as an example commorragh is on the edge of the loyalist core world's and Drukhari are the idiots who are still following the traditions that resulted in the *redacted* (god if it was only murder-rape that would be allot less awful than what actually happened) birth of slanessh and honestly one of the greatest actions anyone could do in 40K is finally destroy the festering shitpile known as the home of Dark Eldar

 

[Speedemon22]

Well, Vita is a cautious optimist at this point of the story and has likely only met or seen regular Eldar.

 

[Angle]

Anybody have any opinions about what technology we want next? I want more machine spirit stuff... But for the most part, only if it comes down in price. Large scale ones, even if they're not cheaper, and then the rest if they come down to 50 RP, or 100 RP in the case of chaos resistance. After that, efficient and personal psy shields. Warp sensors, possibly, depending on price? Medical school, maybe a genetics follow up depending on price. GMEI, or maybe superconductors, or LSVM? OMC follow up, and maybe advanced neural implants depending on price. Maybe the follow up for MMS, if it's not too expensive. Psitech Supression. And we're only gonna have a budget of 450-650 or so to cover all this with...

Gonna have to prioritize a lot. We really need the OMC follow up for our plans, and the LSMS and efficient psy shields for chaos resistance. That's probably at least 400 RP right there. If we want to work in personal psy shields, that's another 50-150... Med School is 30 RP, so that's cheap, but will still probably cut into other stuff. So, that gives us, maybe 100 RP left, if we're lucky. :/

 

[Glau]

Efficient psy shields, omc manufacturing, Diplo to settle up with Denva and seed some stuff on Denva prime (the aliens were described as larger in the records, implying something is reducing calories) then head out. I'd like to tailor research to respond to what we find rather than pre-plan a lot.

 

[Aineko]

I'd think the strategic crux is, what do we want to do before leaving?

The two I think are pretty uncontroversial priorities, if not totally uncontroversial in their solutions:

• Manufacturing handoff problem. (OMC followup will do it.)
• Reckoning with or transporting the scrapcode generator. (IDK)

Possible extras:

• Additional techs to hand to Denva could be anything, potentially.
• If we want escorts, techs for that.
• If we want leave-behind installations, mothballing and potentially other techs for that.
• ???

I'd also say if we do another round of construction we should turn out a bit more of an army, we've got most of our transport space empty and nobody we like ever got hurt by us having too many death robots.

 

[Angle]

Manufacturing handoff problem. (OMC followup will do it.)

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I think we need large scale machine spirits too, so they can put machine spirits in things like frigates, defense installations, and water treatment plants, and not be entirely dependent on psy shields. That would get us the ability to put machine spirits in 90% of our stuff, and also reduce CP usage, unlock techs for improved effectiveness, get us a discount on Intelligence Coding if we crit, and get us farther down the machine spirit tree to improve upon all of those things.

I did forget about Bongo though! So yeah, that's another 50-150 RP right there. Doesn't leave room for much of anything else, most likely. Unfortunate. :/

 

[Prime 2.0]

We can do manned conversions of our factories rather than factory OMC, I recall somebody ran the numbers on that and it'd be pretty reasonable? Now that I think of it though, I'm not sure why Denva wouldn't be able to do such a conversion on their own - let me know if that's feasible, @Neablis.

My "must get for denva before we leave" tech list is heavy in-atmosphere void shields (100 RP) and efficient shields (likely discounted, so < 150 RP?).

What I'm hoping to do next turn is efficient shields, scrap code resistant shields (also < 150 RP?), then scrapcode research (< 150 RP?).

Construction priorities in order would be buffing the vault with nested scrapcode resistant shields, machine spirit conversions for the factories, enough shields for the monitors that they could self destruct before bongo takes over, nested shields for Vita internals, and lastly some bargain bin shielding (1-3 HP) for the rest of our installations so we can limit any needed cleanup.

...That sounds like quite a lot, but we also have a lot of BP, and efficient shielding is going to bring the price down by an unknown about so I made sure there was a lot to spend it on lol. Still need to run the numbers before formalizing it into a budget though.

 

[Aineko]

I think we need large scale machine spirits too, so they can put machine spirits in things like frigates, defense installations, and water treatment plants, and not be entirely dependent on psy shields. That would get us the ability to put machine spirits in 90% of our stuff, and also reduce CP usage, unlock techs for improved effectiveness, get us a discount on Intelligence Coding if we crit, and get us farther down the machine spirit tree to improve upon all of those things.

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Not strictly required - our industry has done fine with neither machine spirits nor psy shields as long as we've owned it, except for a single scrapcode strike that we brought on ourselves (not a dig about the decisions, noting that the only source of scrapcode we've encountered in our possession). But it's certainly an attractive tech. And might help make the stuff we hand over look a little more normal in important ways too.

It won't help Vita much for a while, probably, since we're going to be divesting of most of our CP demands...

 

[Angle]

Not strictly required - our industry has done fine with neither machine spirits nor psy shields as long as we've owned it, except for a single scrapcode strike that we brought on ourselves (not a dig about the decisions, noting that the only source of scrapcode we've encountered in our possession). But it's certainly an attractive tech. And might help make the stuff we hand over look a little more normal in important ways too.

It won't help Vita much for a while, probably, since we're going to be divesting of most of our CP demands...

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That's because we haven't been letting anyone else at it. Once the populace at large starts using the techbase we leave them, and expanding on it, there will be a lot more opportunities for chaos cultists to get at facilities, and we'll want to make sure that it's harder for them to mess with them than just 'sabotage the psy shields (which will often be lowest bidder and poorly maintained because they don't actually make any money) and plug in a flash drive with bottom tier script kiddie scrapcode'. And machine spirits will reduce labor requirements and actually save money for the person who owns the facility, so hopefully they'll be better maintained. At the very least, it gives some redundancy, and means two things need to go wrong instead of just one.

 

[armentho]

Anybody have any opinions about what technology we want next?

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Vague long term:
Keep bongo and beat his ass for lunch money untill we have scrapcode researched then sun bath his ass

Short and mid term:
Focus on warp fundamental stuff
( understanding/theory,machine spirits and psy shielding)

We need to bring the cost of producing shields down as well being able to miniaturize and nest them

Focus on AI fundamentals as wells (we need those personality corruption checks subroutines and need AI partners as we are reaching our CP limits)

Also jesus christ,comman points acronym is awfull

 

[Prime 2.0]

Alright, started looking through the blueprints spoiler to get some numbers to plug in, and-

You can add psychic shielding to an installation by spending any cost between it's BP and twice its BP, gaining shielding on it with HP equal to the number of BP spent divided by ten.

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haha oh god, I have to backtrack hard on my wishlist of what to shield. "Give factories 3 HP of shielding" isn't actually an option, and presumably won't be until we get that efficient shielding follow-on. 25 HP minimum, for 250BP at current prices.

And the tiny monitors would also be expensive to shield. Uh. Okay, new plan:

Anti-Orbital Defenses (100 BP, 5 CP) A single large lance dug into a reinforced bunker. Will prevent hostile forces from claiming the orbits uncontested, but can be neutralized by orbital bombardment or ground invasion.

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We have two of these underground, but underground construction sucks - so make a few above-ground instead and shield them, then park the monitors above them. If shit goes wrong, they can get shot down basically immediately. If nothing goes wrong, denva needed more of these things anyways.

Actually, can we land the monitors? If we mothball them, are they inoperable to bongo? Could be a simpler solution.

...basically anything right now is spitballing though, and it's late. Gonna come back at this in the morning and try to figure out what a sensible budget looks like.

 

[Angle]

haha oh god, I have to backtrack hard on my wishlist of what to shield. "Give factories 3 HP of shielding" isn't actually an option, and presumably won't be until we get that efficient shielding follow-on. 25 HP minimum, for 250BP at current prices.

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...Hmm? For plain surface manufactories, we can give them 10 HP for 100 BP. Though the Void Manufactories are 25 HP for 250 BP, yeah.

We have two of these underground, but underground construction sucks - so make a few above-ground instead and shield them, then park the monitors above them. If shit goes wrong, they can get shot down basically immediately. If nothing goes wrong, denva needed more of these things anyways.

Actually, can we land the monitors? If we mothball them, are they inoperable to bongo? Could be a simpler solution.

...basically anything right now is spitballing though, and it's late. Gonna come back at this in the morning and try to figure out what a sensible budget looks like.

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Again, large scale machine spirits lets us put machine spirits in both the monitors and the anti-orbital defenses. And we'll probably want efficient psi shields also, yeah.

 

[DragonParadox]

This is Warhammer we're talking about, the real reason for the abundance of psykers is that there are no Black Ships to take them off their hands. There'll always be psykers to be found on that planet.

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You are assuming everything we plan to teach those psykers would be fine with their culturally imperial minders. I do not think that is a given. 'and this is how you generate scrap code.'

 

[Angle]

You are assuming everything we plan to teach those psykers would be fine with their culturally imperial minders. I do not think that is a given. 'and this is how you generate scrap code.'

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Yeah, it's one thing for us to take a single psyker away and teach them to develop their abilities, it's a whole nother for us to come back and go 'now we want to have all your psykers develop their abilities, while you keep them in your monasteries where a bad perils of the warp roll could kill you all'...

 

[DragonParadox]

Yeah, it's one thing for us to take a single psyker away and teach them to develop their abilities, it's a whole nother for us to come back and go 'now we want to have all your psykers develop their abilities, while you keep them in your monasteries where a bad perils of the warp roll could kill you all'...

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Plus if we take them away they can pretend those psykers never existed when the Black Ships come (for which they are still hoping for). Even if they do not blow up the higher ups won't want them to be overly trained because Black Ships are awful and trained psykers are more likely to kill or at least seriously harm their jailers which would negate the whole exercise. You do not really want someone who understands demonology (one of the things we might get from warp understanding) because they might decide to break out of their cells when the electro-prodders come out

 

[Angle]

Plus if we take them away they can pretend those psykers never existed when the Black Ships come (for which they are still hoping for). Even if they do not blow up the higher ups won't want them to be overly trained because Black Ships are awful and trained psykers are more likely to kill or at least seriously harm their jailers which would negate the whole exercise. You do not really want someone who understands demonology (one of the things we might get from warp understanding) because they might decide to break out of their cells when the electro-prodders come out

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Exactly, right. And "The black ships aren't coming, and if they were I would stop them anyway" is really not what they want to hear and is not something that will help negotiations... XD

 

[Bolo]

Just got caught up on this amazing quest to pardon if it's been this question been answered.
Any plans to recruit more psykers before we leave?
Hopefully we can get some better understanding of the vellkar to prepare them for what's to come.

Have we asked about Blanks yet?

 

[dpara]

Whether we chuck Bongo or not we could ask the space marines to test our shielding tech.
They'd probably appreciate a percentage of their crew/ships not growing extra faces, while we get data how our tech behaves in high corruption situations.

 

[Angle]

Whether we chuck Bongo or not we could ask the space marines to test our shielding tech.
They'd probably appreciate a percentage of their crew/ships not growing extra faces, while we get data how our tech behaves in high corruption situations.

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They're a long way away - I think someone calculated it would take a couple full turns of dedicated sprinting to reach them for us at the moment, and we're looking to stay pretty close to Denva right now anyway.

 

[DragonParadox]

Exactly, right. And "The black ships aren;t coming, and if they were I would stop them anyway" is really not what they want to hear and is not something that will help negotiations... XD

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Mind the day will come when the Denvans decide 'we'd like access to those psykers and fuck the Imperium', but that day is not this one and we do not have to be involved in the social unrest and/or minor war that will cause.