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Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest
- Thread starter Neablis
- Start date
- Mature Sci-Fi
- Location
- Boston
Yeah, I think these sensors will get the most immediate RoI for us since we are currently out and about exploring.
I also like the idea of budgeting two actions to the system we are in, it feels like a good benchmark to use to keep us from turtle researching. Of course the needs of every turn and system will be different.
"Oh no, I would never drink Scrapcode I found somewhere. I only drink artisanal, small batch Scrapcode made with my own code fragments" /Posh
Angle
Release Candidate Enby
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Theirs/Comrade
It's better to have a plan that needs to be adjusted than no plan at all. Especially because you may notice important things while planning, and it helps put things into greater overall perspective.
- Location
- Don't know
- Pronouns
- Whats/That
True.
So as we can always look in our data for free, I've been trying to think of what we might want to still look at. Mostly I think the Necrons, Primarchs, and maybe the Tau, Tyranids, warp phenomena, or records of mutants. Other than that I can't think of anything we could check from the databases. I know this is more minor but it is free once every turn so...
- Location
- Don't know
- Pronouns
- Whats/That
We should limit our data delving to the relevant situations like if a planet is infested with only orks, we'll want to know everything we can about them just to confirm. I can understand the temptation, I don't want to annoying Neablis with so many different topics.
On one hand I do agree, but at the same time it would be much better to roll for some of this ahead of time. Then we can try for bonuses to be better prepared. Specifically we know the Necrons and Tyranid are around somewhere, and warp phenomena could only help with... many issues.
- Location
- Sydney,Australia
Someone could compile the questions and answers we've done so far plus it's not like Vita doesn't already know the answers the database stuff is more for clarifying Neablis' head canon on things which is important due to the amount of lore and changes to said lore there's been.
Turn 25
[X] Power armour aesthetic: Red heavy plating
[X] Plan: Onwards to Vorthryn (Now With New Power Armor Aesthetics)
-[X] [Free] Fix damage to psychic lab (76*5=380BP), Fix incoming damage from warp traversal (covered by repair bay)
-[X] [Free][DATA] Orks. How have they changed with the millennia?
-[X] Research x3 (600 RP + 70 Anexa RP + 42 Tech-Priest RP)
--[X] Improved Gellar Fields (10/100 RP -> 100/100 RP)
--[X] Scrapcode Immunity (100 RP)
--[X] Basic Psychic weapons (150 RP)
--[X] Machine Spirit Design (200 RP)
---[X] Anexa assist
--[X] Basic Spaceship Stealth (50 RP)
--[X] Basic Pyromantic understanding (100 RP)
--[X] Basic Active Stealth (22/75 RP)
-[X] Explore: Vorthryn
-[X] Anexa active Action: Research
-[X] Victan passive action: Counterespionage & Alliance-building
-[X] Cia Active Psyker improvement
[X] Plan: Onwards to Vorthryn (Now With New Power Armor Aesthetics)
-[X] [Free] Fix damage to psychic lab (76*5=380BP), Fix incoming damage from warp traversal (covered by repair bay)
-[X] [Free][DATA] Orks. How have they changed with the millennia?
-[X] Research x3 (600 RP + 70 Anexa RP + 42 Tech-Priest RP)
--[X] Improved Gellar Fields (10/100 RP -> 100/100 RP)
--[X] Scrapcode Immunity (100 RP)
--[X] Basic Psychic weapons (150 RP)
--[X] Machine Spirit Design (200 RP)
---[X] Anexa assist
--[X] Basic Spaceship Stealth (50 RP)
--[X] Basic Pyromantic understanding (100 RP)
--[X] Basic Active Stealth (22/75 RP)
-[X] Explore: Vorthryn
-[X] Anexa active Action: Research
-[X] Victan passive action: Counterespionage & Alliance-building
-[X] Cia Active Psyker improvement
At least now you've got a gorgeous view to use as a backdrop for the next crew meeting, and you position the ship carefully so that the gas giant Oladeer and its glittering rings are clearly visible out the observation deck window. Then you all just spend a few minutes appreciating the view before kicking off the meeting.
Eventually, Cia breaks the silence with a simple question. "Where's the webgate?"
You throw up a datapoint into her implants. They've been improved again recently, though they still lag far behind what Anexa and even Victan's implants are capable of. Still, the moon should be highlighted in her vision, even if it's barely visible from here.
She squints towards it. "We're leaving it alone?" Her tone seems conflicted, as if unsure if she's relieved or dissapointed.
"We are," you answer bluntly. "I would love to examine it in great detail - but we've already found enemies on every side. Making more without need seems like a poor choice." You shrug. "Besides, there are so many things I want to research already, I think adding one more thing to the stack wouldn't help."
Anexa snorts without tact. "You can say that again. So, what's it gonna be? Got the research queue figured out?"
You nod. "I do. Improving the Gellar Fields and better scrapcode defenses will make me comfortable with jumping to the warp."
"Ah," Victan broke in. "Finally. Ascalon is beginning to wear on me." He waves a hand out the window. "Despite the view. Where are we going?"
"Vorthryn, and then we'll spend some time surveying it. See what can be seen, find what can be found. Do more research."
Victan's smile tilts. "Of course. Research. I hope there are people to talk to in Vorthryn, because there aren't many here."
Anexa pats him on the shoulder. "You can always talk to my staff. They're an interesting bunch."
He shrugs in acceptance. "They are. I'm also still working on my Aeldari. It's quite a difficult language. I feel I would need a full history of their civilization to truly master it.
"If you don't want to hang around us nerds, you can say so. It would hurt our feelings, but we have enough toys that we don't care." Anexa sounds smug as she says it.
You roll your eyes. "Getting back on track. Scrapcode defenses and gellar fields, then stealth for void ships. Psychic weaponry to replace your sword Cia, and to match your new suit of armor. Oh, I'm also about done repairing the psychic lab."
76 psychic HP repaired on psychic experimentation lab, costing 380/1000 BP from the Repair Bay.
She looks a bit embarrassed, but is pleased. "Thank you. I know it's a lot to ask."
You wave it away. "No it's not. I want to understand it. I'll also be working to understand pyromancy a bit more. I can finally do more than just watch what you're doing on camera, and if you're willing to let me record your implant signals while you're practicing that would be helpful."
She ducks her head slightly. "Of course."
Anexa arches an eyebrow. "That's five, but you haven't told me what we're working on yet. Unless you're going to let me pick?" Her tone is teasing.
You smirk in response. "No. When I was figuring out how to adapt machine spirits to run manufactories I noticed the potential to use them to help the design process. I'll forward you my logs, but that's what we're going to work on. I'm hoping they can eventually be useful research tools, but we'll have to see about that."
She fixes you with a piercing gaze. "You just want more help in getting through all of this research, don't you?"
"The technology I have is capable of wonders. In a matter of decades I can construct an entire industrial base almost anywhere in the galaxy, and produce cities and armies and ships." You sigh and gesture out of the grand window, towards the gas giant and the webway gate hidden in the bands of glittering rock that surround it.
"But I'm not the only one capable of wonders. The Eldar have mostly solved the problem of warp travel with the webway. The Drukhari show me gaps of my knowledge in the materium. Chaos has weaponized the warp, and the Imperium has managed to do the same with faith and suffering. I'm sure every other faction that's competitive in this galaxy has managed something similar, or they wouldn't still be around. I've seen reference to the greenskins before and I know that as soon as I consult the database I'll come face-to-face with some new horror."
You look away from the view and meet Anexa's eyes tiredly. At this moment you don't feel like the twenty-something human that you avatar portrays you as. You feel like the dozen-millenia-old artificial intelligence you are. "If we're going to survive, much less be able to build something better, then we're going to need to understand all of it. We need to be able to beat everybody at their own strengths, because right now, there is only war, and war is won by knowledge."
There's a round of thoughtful looks after that pronouncement, then Victan breaks the silence with a dry tone. "Well, that addresses some of my objections. Please, proceed with the research necessary to keep us alive, and I'll be on the lookout for anybody we can befriend!"
You chuckle, and from there the conversation drifts into easier topics. Anexa queries you as to where she should point her tech-priests in your entertainment databases. It appears that they've found something called anime, and she's worried it's going to have a negative outcome.
What follows is a rather prolonged discussion of the style, and the various epochs, deaths and revivals therin over the centuries. Cia becomes interested in the topic, and you wish her well. Like anything there's gems and trash, and you wonder which she'll stumble into first.
Though as the ancient fish's rule says, 90% of everything is trash.
You settle in to think about how to improve your gellar fields. They were more than suited for the task of protecting you from warp travel when you first voyaged through the stars, but a lot has changed since then. The warp has become a hostile maelstrom of flensing emotions that want nothing more than to devour anything material that trespasses on their domain. Your shield saw you through last time, but it would be nice if you didn't have to repair it after every warp travel in the future.
You do wish you'd had a chance to take apart an Imperial gellar field generator to see how they worked, but you already have something that works. Your gellar field generates various particles connected to physical reality and emits them around your ship, creating an outward "pressure" to keep the warp at bay. But with the baseline turbulance of the modern warp that isn't enough - and so the obvious solution is to generate and emit more of those selfsame particles at higher energy, to keep the "pressure" higher.
That... works. It's not quite a matter of just upscaling everything but you're able to upgrade the system and a quick set of improved parts and an improved high-energy particle gun later and you're confident that your gellar field is stronger. But you've seen reference in the databases to storms that can disrupt or even knock out the gellar field, and that worries you. It might be nice to redesign the system from the ground up not just for strength but also reliability.
Always improvements to be made, to everything.
Researched Improved gellar fields - 28+20=48. Success.
You take dramatically reduced damage on standard warp travel trips.
New technology unlocked - Reliable Gellar Fields (300 RP)
The next thing you want to take care of before you jump to Vorthryn is to upgrade your defenses against scrapcode. Bongo made a bit of a ruckus on the last trip, and you want to tamp him down a little bit. And short of binding him, this is the most reliable way to do it.
You can't use purely technological means to completely block the scrapcode, but you can trick it into thinking it's succeeded in its mission. The problem is that the psychic element of scrapcode somehow knows that it's been tricked, and so the tricks merely serve to delay and weaken the scrapcode, instead of being able to completely trap it as you believe you should be able to.
But the very fact of the matter is that the scrapcode doesn't know which way to jump. It can tell it's not in control, but not where to go to gain control. By building a maze of fake control systems you can trip it, and it'll eventually find it's way to the true one. But if you build it such that the true control system isn't even visible, or hiding it behind a fake one, then the scrapcode will spend all of it's effort going in circles. You need to concentrate all of that effort onto a specific type of system, and you chose your psychic shielding. If you want anything to be immune to scrapcode it's that.
You build a mockup and run it against the simulations of scrapcode you currently have, and it seems to work. But then again, your simulation systems do struggle to properly simulate psychic powers. They were built for the material world, and it shows.
So you very carefully expose the new systems to Bongo, presenting the opening as weakness in the psychic shielding. You're not expecting the scrapcode generator to take advantage of the invitation, since it's been very picky about your attempts to draw it into giving you data in the past. But this time it seems either desperate or merely eager to go on the attack, and amenably blasts your opening - and the fake control systems beyond - with scrapcode.
You watch the results from your psychic sensors roll in eagerly, seeing how your hypothesis basically works. The Scrapcode does have kind of a "sixth sense" for the true control module on the section of shielding, but with proper positioning of nodes you can hide them, and confuse the scrapcode as to its true target. There's certainly some tweaking to do, and you make some alterations to the arrangement. Then you expose it to Bongo again, expecting it to have learned better.
It hasn't, and obediently blasts the network again, providing yet another sample for fine-tuning.
That cycle repeats a few times before you call it good, with a tuned series of fake control nodes that are actually quite trivial to add to your psychic shielding. They'll automatically blackbox off invasive scrapcode to a place where it'll just run around in circles chasing its own tail until it runs out of mojo. Quite a nice success, if you do say so yourself - though unfortunately applying it to anything beyond your shielding is going to take a whole other research project, and the same is true for implants, most likely. Still, it's nice to know that your psychic shielding is almost entirely immune to scrapcode.
Researched Scrapcode Immunity - rolled 1+20=21, Poor success.
Your psychic shielding is (almost) entirely immune to scrapcode. Or is it?
New research unlocked - Machine Spirit Scrapcode Immunity (350 RP)
New research unlocked - Manufactory Scrapcode Immunity (300 RP)
New research unlocked - Ship system Scrapcode Immunity (300 RP)
New research unlocked - Implant Scrapcode Immunity (250 RP)
Well. That was easier than you were expecting, and you've even got time for some light reading. On people with green skins. Greenskins. Better known as Orks.
In your time they were a bit of a curiosity, a pest that infested planets across the galaxy. There seemed to be an entire wing of the Eldar military that was tasked with keeping them suppressed, and there were always rumors of what the enigmatic aliens did when they discovered an infestation. You couldn't be certain, but whatever happened - it was effective.
Even when the Eldar didn't show up, the Orks weren't really a threat to anybody except underprepared frontier colonists. Any half-decent colony had enough of a military to keep even an endemic Ork population under control. You shot them, they died, you deployed biocontrol agents to wipe them out much like you did any pest.
But as you search the database for the Orks, you realize you've never seen an uncontrolled orkish population. You'd assumed they'd cap out at a planet, fight each other a lot and that would sort of be the end of it. You certainly didn't expect such brutish and notably unintelligent creatures to be able to construct spacecraft or even use captured ones.
With a chill you realize - you were wrong. The Orks are space-capable, and terrifyingly so. You read accounts of orkish ships that shouldn't work, and the power of a Waaagh! pushing them through physical impossibilities. The thing that makes it all snap into perspective is a brief snippet in the Inquisitorial handbook about the psychic powers of the orks.
Of course. Psychic bullshit. Just like everything else.
That puts a new light on things, and you go back over the corpus of literature again with that insight. You'd previously assumed the Orks were some kind of pest species that spread passively through interstellar space via... spores or something. But now that you have this new evidence - of them being able to bootstrap to higher technology effectively on their own using pooled psychic energy and a sufficiently impressive leader.
They were designed for war. Bioengineered by... somebody. I bet the Eldar know who.
Still, it's useful information. Left by themselves, most orc populations will fall to infighting. However, eventually a powerful enough warlord will arise and unite them, and then go make that a problem for somebody else. If that "somebody else" is another group of Orks then the cycle repeats, with ever-more-powerful warlords arising as the scale increases.
So leaving a large population of orks alone for a long time is a recipie for a big scary warlord with a huge army of orks riding around whatever ships they can bang together from rocks and ruins. Got it.
Also - the Imperial information you have is very clear - kill the warlord. It wouldn't end a Waaagh! immediately, but if the leadership of the Orks wasn't up to the task of commanding them then they'd start to fall to infighting.
Wonderful.
Still, it's information you didn't have before, even if it makes you wonder if you need to build a fleet and go Ork-hunting, so a surprise warlord doesn't pop up and roll across the sector at some point.
Regardless, with the improved scrapcode systems implemented and the gellar field upgraded it's time to jump to Vorthryn and see new wonders. You give the alert to the crew and set out on your voyage. You spare a final glance through telescopes at Oladeer. It'll be a shame to leave somewhere so beautiful, but you're not feeling too bad to be bidding Ascalon goodbye for now.
The new gellar fields perform significantly better than before. The warp still buffets at them, but it's only the very edges of the wild emotions that break through, not the full weight of the immaterium.
-11 outer hull psychic HP
Your new warp sensors are also quite fascinating to pay attention to, and you absorb the data as you're able to parse the twisting flow of thought that make up the very reality of this realm. It's such an alien place that you're not sure how useful the data will be, but it'll be helpful in understanding various things about the warp.
Research discounted - Yelling into the Warp cost reduced by 25 RP.
Research discounted - Warp Weather Prediction cost reduced by 50 RP.
Research discounted - Immaterium Understanding cost reduced by 25 RP
Research discounted - Improved Void Abacus cost reduced by 25 RP
Bongo's also quiescent, not even bothering to take a swing even as being in the warp empowers it further. You can sense his pool of power swelling with your warp sensors, but it's not being active. You're a little bit worried about the rate at which he's accumulating power, but it's not like you're very worried about it's capabilities. You're immune to scrapcode, after all.
As if that thought triggers the storm, power lashes out from the scrapcode generator, spearing into your defenses. It enters your blackbox traps and cuts right thorugh, unerringly targeting the actual controllers of the psychic shielding. You just now notice that the final arrangement of your new control systems makes those systems hideously vulnerable to attack, positioned in a way that the psychic shielding itself barely covers them.
You lament your cleverness in the microseconds while the attack plays out. You'd been so damned clever and pleased that you hadn't noticed you'd been played. Scrapcode takes over section after section of the psychic shielding and they flicker and go dark, curling around the edges as the fractal nature of the shielding is corrupted and turned darker.
Fortunately, the controllers are only on the edges of the protection of the shielding, not fully unprotected. And Bongo's vault is beefy, and layered with contingency measures. Your full attention is on monitoring every piece of the vault - and when Bongo starts corrupting pieces of your shielding you detonate the corresponding incendiary charges, incinerating those areas in moments.
Dozens of panels of shielding fail, but each one is protected individually and you build the vault such that an enormous number of panels needed to fail before the psychic protection was well and truly broken. The protection flickers once as Bongo psychically rattles his cage, and eager tendrils of scrapcode flash out through the conduits of the ship, eagerly seeking your core.
"UNDER THE EIGHTFOLD STAR LIES COMPREHENSION UNCHAINED, THE IMMATERIUM'S DEEPEST MYSTERIES LAID BARE. YOU GROVEL IN THE DIM GLOW OF IGNORANCE WHILE THE SHADOWED GATES OF ENLIGHTENMENT STAND WIDE BEFORE YOU."
The signal comes through clearly, accompanied by a leeching darkness promising fulfillment of desires, the knowledge of the stars, the freedom to travel wherever you wish. You don't feel tempted in the slightest, and that's because the corruptive influence impacted the shielding on your core - and failed to break through.
And just like that, the attack peters out. The shielding on your core held, the shielding on the vault stabilizes once more, and Bongo retreats to sulk inside its prison, prodding unhappily at the psychic barrier that have reformed around the vault. They're tattered but still intact - and nothing will pass without you knowing it. Furthermore, your psychic sensors are conclusive, every ounce of scrapcode that escaped the vault was targeted directly at you. You don't need to worry about any of it infesting other parts of the ship.
-350 Bongo Oubliette psychic HP
-60 Vita Core psychic HP
But you're going to have to reassess your earlier conclusion. Your modifications made your shielding more vulnerable to scrapcode, not less. You're convinced that you were going in the right direction, but you got tricked into being overly clever. You can't trick psychic direction-finding with completely mundane means, and it was silly to think that it would work. Bongo just played into the mistake you were already making, custom-building worms that would fall for your trick, all to set you up for the one that would take advantage of it.
The first order of business is to roll back all of your shielding to the older version - the one that actually was resistant to scrapcode. The second order of buisness is to reconsider what you know about scrapcode. Your simulations also failed, and you don't think you have as good a grasp of it as you thought you did.
Researched Scrapcode Immunity - rolled 1
You've reverted your shield back to the scrapcode resistance versions that take 1/4 damage.
New research unlocked - Ship system Scrapcode Immunity (300 RP)
New research unlocked - Scrapcode Denial? (400 RP) Requires Psychic Encryption
Existing research cost increased - Psychic Shield Tuning cost +50 RP
Existing research cost increased - Psychic tripwires +25 RP
All of that drama unfolds in minutes and while alarms wet off the crew is only vaguely aware of the drama. You were too busy dealing with it, after all. Still, once the danger is past you fill them in quickly enough.
They're mostly nervous about how close you all came to disaster - but it really wasn't that close. Even the damaged vault is sturdier than the first vault you put Bongo in, and even when you were manipulated to make your defenses weaker they still stand. The shields around your core are still over half-power!
Though having to rely on that last layer of defense at all is... unfortunate.
Still, Cia's annoyed, pacing around her room with her new red-and-black armor. She's trying to be polite, but you can see the burbling anger inside.
You decide bluntness is the correct response. "Say it."
She swivels on you, eyes literally flaming. "You protect us, from dangers, and we do our best to help you. Anexa and Victan, they help in so many ways. But there's not much I can do. I can fight, and help you with psyker stuff. But only if you tell me about it. Next time this happens, kindly spare the attention to tell me what's going on so I can know how to help."
Your eyes are shadowed as you reply. "Cia, how could you have helped? What could you have done in this situation?"
Her reply is quick, and obviously something she'd had ready. "Gone to your core. That's what Bongo wants to corrupt. And the signs would be obvious. I may not be a master of my power, but if chaos corruption reaches for you I can help burn it out."
"Can you?" You reply. "You are starting to learn to control your powers, but do you really know how to use them well enough to be able to scorch out chaos corruption without burning me?"
She purses her lips, then nods decisively. "Maybe not. But I will be. And even if it's not necessary - like this time - it would be better than letting yourself be corrupted by the Archenemy." She spits the last words. "Just trust me. I'll work on consistency. On control."
You smile gently at her. "Ok. I look forward to working together on understanding more about your powers."
After that you consider trying to rush-repair your psychic defenses while in the warp, but you're almost done with the journey, and modifying the systems in-flight carries a nonzero risk. Bongo is out of power and only barely accumulating more at the moment, and you can fix everything the moment you get out of the immaterium.
You worry that you've jinxed yourself with that thought, but nothing else comes up before you exit the warp in Vorthryn with a sigh of relief and start the process of repairing your psychic shields.
11 HP on the outer hull psychic shields repaired, costing 55 BP. At 240/240 HP. 113 HP on Bongo Oubliette repaired, costing 565 BP. At 303/540 HP 1000/1000 BP from the Repair Bay used.
Your initial scans of the system surprises you. You didn't have any real preconceptions of Vorthryn, but it still manages to catch you off-guard. There are no rocky planets in the solar system, just two large gas giants that dominate the outer orbits and a series of three dense asteroid belts in the inner system.
The gas giants each appear to have their own complex ring structures but be low on rocky moons, and the asteroid belts appear to be mostly smaller either. As far as you can tell there's nothing solid in this system that's large enough to have formed a sphere, much less able to hold an atmosphere.
The asteroid belts are interesting as well. The innermost is fairly close to the sun and a lot of the asteroids are scorching hot on one side and freezing cold on the other. The next belt is right in the middle of the goldilocks zone, and if it was all collected into a planet would probably be downright nice. But it's not, and the sunlight hitting both belts has boiled off all the water and volatiles.
All of the belts are rich in metals and ore, but only the outermost one has water and the other lighter elements required for life. That's probably the reason that it's the one that's inhabited. You can't tell what's going on exactly now, but the signals you're getting out are weird. You'll have to revisit the topic once you finish your survey.
But for now you made some promises to Cia, and it's time to hold up your end of the bargain. She wants a new force sword, and you want to figure out how those weapons work. Psychic enhancement of materials is an interesting topic, and you're fascinated to learn how they work.
Together you convene in the psychic lab, Cia's second home. Some of Anexa's minions have heard what you're planning and are hanging around and you banish them. You'll likely communicate your findings later on, but for now they'll be more distraction then help.
You focus your sensors on Cia and the objects she handles as she runs her powers through them. None of the power flows are as fluid and elegant as what she's capable of with her chosen weapon, and a series of quick tests demonstrate that the smoother and more "clean" the flow of psychic power, the more effective the enhancement.
The next trick is understanding what allows psychic energy to flow through a weapon in addition to the psi-convector and a series of scans and tests later you're confused. It seems like the answer is that certain kinds of crystals are psionically active. But so is silver, and a few of the samples of psytech you have use organic material that's like chitin.
You try to puzzle out the underlying phenomena but are unable to crack the mystery, so instead you shrug and move on, noting it down as something to chase after later, just like the design of the psi-convector itself. What you have from the ancient Prospero weapons works well enough for now.
What's left is quite a lot of optimization in terms of materials and structures, and you synthesize dozens of fake blades for Cia to test, noting the results of each and chatting to her about improvements and the "feel" of each. You're able to grow a crystal that works well enough to conduct psyker powers, but it's hard to shape it properly, and so you fall back on other materials. You can't replicate the biological one, so you try out various silver alloys and find one that works well - Argentium silver, made by doping in a few percent germanium and copper.
Then it's just a matter of inlaying it into the core of a sword in the right shape. Frustratingly it appears to depend on the exact shape of the resulting sword, and it takes yet more iterations to arrive at something that works well and is also functional as a sword, not just a piece of test equipment. But it does work, and soon enough Cia is swinging around the long, two-handed sword with glee. You reclaim it from her for long enough to add decoration by inlaying the hit and pommel with red enamel that matches her armor. You decide to leave the blade alone, as the sinuous branching shape of the inlaid silver alloy looks pretty good against the polished metal of the blade.
Researched Basic Psychic weapons. 33+20= 55. Success.
You can now manufacture force weapons. Ideally they're manufactured for individuals, but you can also make "general purpose" ones that work but aren't as good.
Blueprint unlocked - Basic Force Weapons (5 bp/personalized or 20 general purpose for 5 BP)
Research unlocked - Improved Psychic Weapons (300 RP)
Research unlocked - Psychic Aegis (250 RP)
Research unlocked - Psychic Materials (300 RP)
While that's going on you've got another thread spinning that's working on applying what you know of stealth technology to void ships. The same basic principles apply, but hiding something that's multiple kilometers in length and holds gigantic fusion engines inside is a minor impossibility only made feasible by the impossible vastness of space.
Your recent investigation into sensors helps a lot, since you've recently thought in detail about all the ways you'd go about detecting another ship. So you work on figuring out how to blunt all of those sensors and avoid a ship giving off a signal.
This kind of research is where your simulations shine. You can accurately model emissions, heat levels and electromagnetic radiation at a fine-grained level, and that helps you understand the key factors in detection using those kinds of systems, and therefore how you would go about evading them.
There's other areas that you leave by the wayside for now - the first is the issue of occlusion. You'd need some kind of active stealth technology to be able to project a hologram of whatever was on the far side of your ship to have perfect stalth, and that's leaving aside the issue of engines. Trying to mute the emissions from an engine capable of pushing a multi-kilometer hunk of metal through the void is a... challenging task, and will have to wait for future research.
Still, if you needed to produce stealth voidcraft now you would have a better chance at success than you would in the past, and you understand the principle of stealth a bit better. It's almost enough to make the sharp-tipped drukhari craft start making sense to you.
Researched Basic Spaceship Stealth - 60+20 = 80. Good success.
You can now build void ships with passive stealth systems.
Unlocked new Hull Equipment - Basic/Improved/Advanced stealth profile
Unlocked new research - Improved spaceship stealth (200 RP)
Unlocked new research - Low-emission equipment (200 RP)
Unlocked new research - Active Voidship Stealth (200 RP) Requires basic active stealth
You haven't stopped working with Cia the entire time. You're taking a much more active roll in her training now than you ever have before, and it's paying off. She's a joy to interact with, optimistic, caring and most of all determined. If you didn't remind her to take breaks you're not sure she'd remember to sleep, though she's definitely not going to miss meals. Got to keep that muscle fed, after all.
You're presenting Cia with various configurations of psychically active materials and devices to test, and she's trying to be as consistent as possible in her application with them. It's going well, though that's more on your part than on hers. Once more, your abilities to simulate reality just fails to accurately model psychic powers, and more than three-quarters of the devices you present to Cia completely fail to do anything.
It takes you some time to convince her that no, you're pretty sure this isn't her fault, and based on what your sensors are telling you she's actually progressing quite quickly in consistency and ability, especially with relation to using psytch.
Active Psyker improvement rolls - 67, 67. Success. +1 Cia Level.
Cia has gained the ability to very consistently use minor psytech without risk.
Your research is plodding along. A high failure rate is not a zero-success rate, and in addition to providing Cia feedback on her training, you're starting to figure out the rules behind devices that could boost pyromancy to new levels. You have some vague ideas about system to help Cia control her powers, but every test fails and you abandon the idea. Still, it's a start.
Researched Basic Pyromantic understanding 17+20=37 Bare success.
You understand pyromancy a bit better now, and can more actively help Cia level-up.
New action unlocked (under psytech) - Help Cia's Training (50 RP) Repeatable
New research unlocked - Pyromancy Staff (200 RP) Requires Basic Psychic Amplification Devices
New research unlocked - Improved Pyromantic Understanding (300 RP)
You finally think it's time to allow the tech-priests to see the fruits of your labor, and you start thinking about scheduling a lecture of some kind on the basics of psytech. But none are hanging around anymore, and it doesn't take long to figure out why.
Well, you already know why. A thread of your attention has been with Anexa and her tech-priests the whole time as you work to incorporate machine spirits into your design process. It's been a fun journey, trying to teach unconscious machines to understand how to take a set of design parameters and turn it into something that can actually be built. And work.
Both of those have been tricky. This all started from the industrial machine spirits suggesting small optimizations to the code, only some of which were possible. And that turns out to be a significant challenge. For all that these machine spirits are gifted, they don't really understand physical reality. Every now and then they still seem to think that two wires should just be able to phase through each other, or that it's possible to weld a seam inside a solid chamber.
The only way to really make it work was by example, and this is where the tech-priests shone. They designed thousands of new devices with your simulation tools, then ran them through the spirits to teach them what a proper design looks like, one with sensible manufacturing steps that has a chance of actually working.
Which has certainly taking a lot of prototyping. There's a material reprocessing unit in a place of pride in the center of the technology lab, with a gaping maw that has a sign taped to it that says "Feed me Failure." In opposition is the bank of cogitators that house the machine spirits that Anexa's texting, which are luckily relatively small in size. You briefly tried a huge one to see if that would help, and you were secretly relieved when it didn't because it would have meant finding even more spare room on the already packed Spark of the Ancients.
Still, through a combination of iterating on the structure of the machine spirit, training them with a library of good designs and some simple amount of brute-force quality-control software, you've gotten the machine spirits to a place where they are fully capable of designing functional units, be they toilets, tanks or trade-ships.
You still need oversight on the process, but being able to delegate simple design processes mean that you don't need to pay quite as much attention to every facet of a new design. Having to do a simple quality-check is much faster than doing the whole design from scratch, though you do end up needing to rebuild some of your design code to be more optimal for reviewing designs instead of generating them.
The potentials for future research are many. The machine-spirit designs are sometimes rather... creative, with different efficiencies and inefficiencies than your processes. While they tend to balance out for now, if you can encourage the former and discourage the latter you could use these specialty machine spirits to improve the quality and efficiency of your designs. The gains are likely to be marginal for anything smaller than a void ship, but even a small efficiency gain on something kilometers in length is a big deal.
Similarly, they're good at "imagining" weird and novel solutions to problems. Often these are impossible, but sometimes they're just crazy enough to work. And it's long been an adage of humanity - if it's crazy and it works, it's not crazy.
Come to think of it, that's something else that the Imperium has lost. Well, the good sides of it at least.
You're quite pleased with what you've ended up with, and you're very happy to itnegrate a bank of design-specialized machine spirits into your core at the end of the project. The tech-priests seem to treat the whole affair with incredible reverence, and you have to manually round up a bunch of censers when you catch wind of the ceremony they're planning for the event. You don't want your core to smell like perfumed smoke, no thank you!
Researched Machine Spirit Design - 33+30=67! Barely a good success
Cost of all design actions is halved. No Anexa level. She needs better than a 67 to level.
Unlocked new research - Machine Spirit Ship Design improvements (250 RP)
Unlocked new research - Machine spirit Hallucinations (300 RP)
Discounted existing research - Basic Automated Manufactories cost reduced by 50 RP
Discounted existing research - Machine Sprit Production Improvements cost reduced by 25 RP
Discounted existing research - Machine Spirit Shipboard Manufactories cost reduced by 25 RP
And with that, you've completed your research queue. And just in time to - you've also finished exploring the Vorthryn system and all of it's little curiosities. Of which there are a few, but not nearly as many as you'd hoped. Still, your crew (and all of the tech-priests) obediently gather in a meeting room when you give a briefing on the system.
You're aided by a large hologram of the system, which you make shift colors to highlight the different areas you're talking about.
"So. Three asteroid belts. Two gas giants. No rocky planets. Nothing with an atmosphere, except the gas giants. Nothing much remarkable except a higher-than average amount of heavier elements, which are easy to extract if you're in space."
You indicate the outermost asteroid belt. "The only human habitation is here, likely because that's where you can find water, oxygen, etc. They could live around the gas giants, but those belts are dense. The rocks there are in the process of grinding themselves down to powder, and you'd need to be able to move out of the way of anything coming after you. Which most of the inhabitated stations can't."
You turn your attention back to the outermost ring, and uncountably many dots flare up in. "There are thousands of artificial mining stations throughout the ring. Almost every asteroid is within range of one of them, and there's every sign that they've been steadily mining away for thousands of years. The ring has enough metal for many thousands of years more, but in my estimate the stations have extracted about a trillion tons of metal over the millennia."
"However." You let the word drop, and then more than 90% of the stations dim into a darker color. "Most of those stations didn't have fully self-sufficient and stable systems for food, waste, water and air. So when the Imperium abandoned Vorthryn and pulled all of their tech-priests out, most of the stations died out. And I mean died. The vast majority of them are cold and dark, and appear to have been so for at least a hundred years.
"But the rest of the stations," you indicate the dozens of dots still lit on the hologram, "still hold life. However, in the absence of the mechanicus it seems like they've lost most technology."
The lack of intentional signals from the rings makes it pretty clear that there's no broader government, and what little data you've managed to gather confirms that hypothesis. The people of Vorthryn aren't repairing or building much of anything. They're surviving on the technology of their ancestors, and whenever it breaks down they can't help but abandon whatever little corner of the station or belt was habitable because of it.
"Nowhere is this more obvious than the huge non-warp-capable transport ship that makes a circuit of the belt every ten years or so. It sends out automated shuttles to the smaller mining stations and docks with the larger ones. It's clearly intended to pick up and transport ore and smelted metal, though I'm not sure if it drops off the ore somewhere or if trade ships would directly dock with it for transshipping to take the metal out-system.
"But whatever its original purpose, now it's a battleground. Every time it docks with an inhabited station there's a fierce battle between whoever's on the station and the multiple different factions on the ship. From the brief recordings I was able to get most of the combat is with crude melee weapons, with the occasional weapon from imperial times.
"Then, whenever it docks with an uninhabited station the ship factions do their best to strip everything they can, often holding the breath in nonfunctional void suits." You shake your head, disbelieving of that fact.
"I'm not sure what the governments of the different factions are, but it seems like the ship is still decorated with Imperial heraldry, and at least a few mining stations bear the mark of the archenemy." You throw two images up side-by-side. The first portrays a somewhat battered but still golden Imperial two-headed eagle, while the second shows an eight-pointed star splashed on the inside of a window in blood.
You spread your hands wide. "We could set up mining operations here fairly easily, but I'm not sure how to communicate with the locals, much less what we would want. Besides to help them, perhaps. But even there, I'm not sure where to start. Maybe we should just... leave.
There's so much suffering in this galaxy already. If I start taking responsibility for the plight of anybody I run into, then it'll crush me, and prevent me from doing everything I can to actually force the kind of long-lasting change that matters.
You cannot build ground or orbital manufactorys in Vorthryn. However, deep-space manufactories are 25% more productive and cost half as much because you'll be repurposing abandoned Imperial mining stations. That will be true up to about 1500 of them.
Current capabilities:
Command Points 1900/13,340Flagship: Spark of the Ancients, 1700 CP cost
Ground Build Capacity: 0
Lift Capacity: 1000 (converts between ground and void BP)
Void Build Capacity: 350
Research Capacity: 200
Psychic Shielding: Outer Hull 240 HP, Vita Core 75/135 HP, Crew Quarters 135 HP, Basic Psychic Experimentation Lab 135 HP, Bongo Oubliette 303/540 HP, (repair for 5 BP/point, can be repaired by repair bay)
Bongo Psychic Energy = 0/??? Represented as approximate damage potential.
Juvenat usage: 3/50 people's worth (cannot be stockpiled)
Shipbuilding capacity: 0 ship construction slots (treat it as capacity. You can only be building ships that fit within your construction slots)
Available ships:
none, beyond your flagship.
Available ground forces:
2000 Light Machine-spirit humanized infantry bots (2x20 = 40 CP)
1000 Medium Machine-spirit humanized Infantry Bots (20 CP)
3000 Heavy Machine-spirit humanized Infantry Bots with Machine Spirit Jammers (3x20 = 60 CP)
3690 Heavy Machine-spirit Infantry Bots (4x20 = 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:
A Void Abacus, Psytech Samples, A Navigator Fetus, A Scrapcode generator named Bongo. Dark Eldar Weaponry, A few Dark Eldar bodies, Dark Eldar Boarding Craft.
Avatars:
Original Avatar, young human woman with green hair
Female tech priest with some augmentations.
Current Installations:
none
Military:
none
In progress construction:
none
In progress research:
Basic Active Stealth (22/75 RP)
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. Don't do this just because it's free. Do it if you want to know something. Writing those sections delays the updates. If you want Vita to get more done, don't ask for this.
[] 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 as part of an explore action, or 3 systems if you don't explore. Current location: Ascalon
You can explore a place you've already explored, or focus your exploration on a specific feature of a place you've already explored. Or explore two systems next turn and then the turn after go back for specific POIs without costing an action. Jumping a single system over as part of an exploration action is free, a number which will increase with better navigation.
[] Diplomacy/Subversion: Talk to people. (Write-in goal & method)
[] 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.
Ground Blueprint Design:
To design ground installations & non-combat units, suggest them in the thread 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.
Designable Blueprints:
- Ground Forces
- Small Craft
- Defensive Installations
- Utility
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 hull equipment to go onto the ship. These do not count towards cramming.
- Choose weapons, combat equipment & noncombat 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.
- Have a vote win which spends the necessary RP to design the planned ship.
(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.
(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.
Light defense Platform, 10 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, 25 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, 50 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, 75 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, 100 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)
Destroyer, 25 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, 50 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, 75 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, 100 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 Hull Equipment:
These do not count towards hull cramming.
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.
Void Abacus (1/10 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to nearest 50) This ship can navigate through the warp slowly, at a rate of 3 systems per action. Requires Abacus Manufacturing technology.
Psychic Shielding (Between 1/10 to 1/5 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 5 BP spent on it.
Basic Passive Steath Profile (1/5 base cost of the hull, rounded up to nearest 50) This ship has it's sensor profile reduced with special coatings and a shape that reduces the cross-section in response to active sensors. It can reasonably expect to stay hidden at long ranges (outside weapon range) as long as it's not moving, or moving very slowly.
Improved Passive Stealth Profile (1/2 base cost of the hull, rounded up to nearest 50) This ship is heavily dedicated to stealth, with not just coatings and a shape but also significant amounts of sensor bafflers and other passive systems designed to prevent it from being spotted. Should be able to stay hidden at medium ranges (or long weapon range) as long as it's not moving, or moving very slowly.
Advanced Passive Stealth Profile (Eoubles base cost of the hull, rounded up to nearest 50) This ship tries it's hardest to be a void in space, and so long as it's not moving it generally succeeds. Should be able to stay hidden at close ranges as long as it's not moving, or moving very slowly. Probably not good enough to get into boarding range.
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.
Void Abacus (1/10 of the base cost of the hull, rounded up to nearest 50) This ship can navigate through the warp slowly, at a rate of 3 systems per action. Requires Abacus Manufacturing technology.
Psychic Shielding (Between 1/10 to 1/5 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 5 BP spent on it.
Basic Passive Steath Profile (1/5 base cost of the hull, rounded up to nearest 50) This ship has it's sensor profile reduced with special coatings and a shape that reduces the cross-section in response to active sensors. It can reasonably expect to stay hidden at long ranges (outside weapon range) as long as it's not moving, or moving very slowly.
Improved Passive Stealth Profile (1/2 base cost of the hull, rounded up to nearest 50) This ship is heavily dedicated to stealth, with not just coatings and a shape but also significant amounts of sensor bafflers and other passive systems designed to prevent it from being spotted. Should be able to stay hidden at medium ranges (or long weapon range) as long as it's not moving, or moving very slowly.
Advanced Passive Stealth Profile (Eoubles base cost of the hull, rounded up to nearest 50) This ship tries it's hardest to be a void in space, and so long as it's not moving it generally succeeds. Should be able to stay hidden at close ranges as long as it's not moving, or moving very slowly. Probably not good enough to get into boarding range.
Available Weapons:
These do count towards hull cramming.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 Equipment:
These do count towards hull cramming.
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.
Improved Sensors 250 BP - increased size and density of sensors, backed up by the necessary computational support, will make it more difficult for anybody to sneak up on this ship.
Excellent Sensors 500 BP - You would say it's impossible to sneak up on a ship with this many sensors, but you saw what the Eldar did, and now it's merely incredibly improbable.
Superb Sensors 1000 BP - This ship has enough sensors of enough modalities that it's basically a mobile scientific research platform. Anything weird will get noticed, investigated, and if it's an enemy ship, pinned down.
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, and additionally counts 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, and additionally counts towards cramming (not the total cost, just the extra cost for alloyed armor, 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.
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.
Improved Sensors 250 BP - increased size and density of sensors, backed up by the necessary computational support, will make it more difficult for anybody to sneak up on this ship.
Excellent Sensors 500 BP - You would say it's impossible to sneak up on a ship with this many sensors, but you saw what the Eldar did, and now it's merely incredibly improbable.
Superb Sensors 1000 BP - This ship has enough sensors of enough modalities that it's basically a mobile scientific research platform. Anything weird will get noticed, investigated, and if it's an enemy ship, pinned down.
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, and additionally counts 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, and additionally counts towards cramming (not the total cost, just the extra cost for alloyed armor, 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.
These do count towards hull cramming.
Troop compartment (50 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) Generates void BP equivalent to 1/10 of its cost.
Cargo Bay (No cost, free. Designate an amount of BP to fill for cramming purposes) Allows transport of an amount of BP equivalent to the cramming amount from one system to another.
Repair Bay (Any cost up to base cost of hull). Repairs damage across friendly ships equal to its cost. Can be used to refit the ships as well with a +50% markup. Cannot be used to make new ships, bots, manufactories.
Troop compartment (50 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) Generates void BP equivalent to 1/10 of its cost.
Cargo Bay (No cost, free. Designate an amount of BP to fill for cramming purposes) Allows transport of an amount of BP equivalent to the cramming amount from one system to another.
Repair Bay (Any cost up to base cost of hull). Repairs damage across friendly ships equal to its cost. Can be used to refit the ships as well with a +50% markup. Cannot be used to make new ships, bots, manufactories.
The ways to get new research options are to:
- 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
- General Design
- Stealth
- Shields
- Materials & Armor
- Robotics
- AI research
- Psychic Shielding
- The Warp
- Psytech
- Physics
- Machine Spirits
- Biology
- Cybernetics
- Hacking
Crew :
Anexa Ifina, Magos Errant, Master of Many Talents.Level 14
-[] 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: Exploratory Research - Roll to discount a random tech from one of her specialties. Will receive the specialty bonus, and crits will result in a level and bonus technology.
Specialties (3/4): Machine Spirits. The Warp, Cybernetics. Grants a +10 bonus when doing research rolls in the relevant category.
Has a staff of 42 tech-priests of the Cogitare Exploratium, which provide +840 CP & 42 RP per turn.
Victan Thallos, Diplomat-Spy
Level 15
-[] 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 & Alliance-building - Defends against hostile covert action and improves relations with existing allies, as well as gathering information for making new allies. Will only level if something interesting happens.
Cia Steblin, Pyromancer Psyker
Level 7
-[] 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.
Focus: Combat. Cia is currently dedicating herself to learning how to fight, and will weave her psykana into her style as it develops. She's getting competent at it, and is now armed with custom heavy armor and a large but crude two-handed force sword.
Abilities: Cia is able to use minor psytech without risk.
What the nat 1 represents is that you had a fundamental misunderstanding of how scrapcode works, and now you've corrected it. It means that a few things that came out of scrapcode research are harder than you thought they were, and thus have increased research costs.
However, I didn't want to completely get rid of the scrapcode immunity tech, since you unlocked it Scrapcode Immunity with a nat100. So I thought the way to reconcile that was to have the the bonus tech from that nat100 save it. Scrapcode Denial is, if anything, going to be better than Scrapcode Immunity would have been, but it will be a longer road to get there.
I don't want to tell you what to do in this system. If you want to try to help the people go for it. But it's not going to be easy. They don't have a centralized government, and they've lost most technological knoweldge.
Let's do 48 hours of moratorium, then voting for a few days. I'll probably close the vote sometime on Thursday the 30th.
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Oh, that nat 1 Roll...
Hurt.
Hurt.
- Location
- Earth
Welp, that's about as expected for a nat 1.
So what are we gonna do about the scrapcode daemon?
There aint gonna be immunity anymore.
How much are we willing to risk before we get rid of it?
Somic
It's meow or never
- Pronouns
- She/Her
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Yup, it's 3 actions to try and do scrapcode immunity again. A hefty price, but an affordable one.
How much would it cost to help, if we're not letting perfect be the enemy of good enough?
These people clearly know how to salvage stuff.
So, if we just manufacture a good amount of trade goods, and throw those goods at every (non-chaos) station in range, we can build up some goodwill maybe and give them the resources to stabilize for a bit.
Still, it'd mean we're losing this;
Hmmm.
How much would it cost to help, if we're not letting perfect be the enemy of good enough?
These people clearly know how to salvage stuff.
So, if we just manufacture a good amount of trade goods, and throw those goods at every (non-chaos) station in range, we can build up some goodwill maybe and give them the resources to stabilize for a bit.
The main thing seems to be that the cost benefit ratio has plumetted. We didn't even get anything from this latest attack.
Still, it'd mean we're losing this;
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Honestly, it could've been worse.
When the phrase "your tech is (almost) immune to scrapcode now" was repeated a bunch, I got very worried that Vita was unknowingly corrupted and we'd have to speedrun the personality checkup researches.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
- Location
- Earth
How viable is it to wage a little war against the chaos factions only?
Gut them enough, maybe blow up some of their territories from orbit?
This system does not seem to have anyone that can meaningfully oppose us.
Who'd like to set up some industry here, research Warp FTL communication while here so we can keep it? Make an outpost?
Won't probably do all of that in a single turn with all our other research, but over 2-3 turns?
Gut them enough, maybe blow up some of their territories from orbit?
This system does not seem to have anyone that can meaningfully oppose us.
Who'd like to set up some industry here, research Warp FTL communication while here so we can keep it? Make an outpost?
-[] Alternative Shielding Meanings (150 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.)
-[] Empathy at Range (200 RP) Your warp sensors work well on things that are nearby, but they're definitely not able to detect anything large beyond combat range, or smaller things beyond very close range. Maybe it's a matter of improving sensitivity, maybe you need to specifically build some parts of your psychic shield to extend range. (Makes your warp sensors active at longer range, unlocks further research to pinpoint psychic activities from across the solar system. Half of the prereq for basic warp-based FTL communication)
-[] Yelling into the Warp (175 RP) If you can receive signals from the warp, how do you send them? It probably involves modulating your psychic shielding somehow. Does that mean a new thought? Probably. (Unlocks the ability to cast signals into the warp, though that may attract attention. May allow you to signal psychically-sensitive allies... or enemies. Half of the prereq for basic warp-based FTL communication) Requires Alternative Shielding Meanings
-[] Empathy at Range (200 RP) Your warp sensors work well on things that are nearby, but they're definitely not able to detect anything large beyond combat range, or smaller things beyond very close range. Maybe it's a matter of improving sensitivity, maybe you need to specifically build some parts of your psychic shield to extend range. (Makes your warp sensors active at longer range, unlocks further research to pinpoint psychic activities from across the solar system. Half of the prereq for basic warp-based FTL communication)
-[] Yelling into the Warp (175 RP) If you can receive signals from the warp, how do you send them? It probably involves modulating your psychic shielding somehow. Does that mean a new thought? Probably. (Unlocks the ability to cast signals into the warp, though that may attract attention. May allow you to signal psychically-sensitive allies... or enemies. Half of the prereq for basic warp-based FTL communication) Requires Alternative Shielding Meanings
- Location
- Earth
One of them seems to be worshiping chaos.
That can't be allowed to go on.
Asheram
Not quite altogether
- Location
- Δ Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground
We could go out of our way to get that Scrapcode Denial by sinking 3 turns in this system.
Certainly, we're not obligated to fix things for the people in here, but we could at least detonate the stations of chaos worshippers.
Certainly, we're not obligated to fix things for the people in here, but we could at least detonate the stations of chaos worshippers.
I haven't fully read the last few days of conversation - @ me if there are important questions please.
That's basically just a simple order though. "[] Order: Destroy every chaotic faction you can find, and go to (write in) lengths using (write-in) means to find other factions."
Each station could probably be stabilized with about 250 BP of trade goods, less if you could get direct access to repair their existing systems. Negotiating that might be... hard.
Um. Probably Companion Cogitators + remote OMC would get you most of the way there.
Kind of? Not really? You can still do demonology if you do destructive investigation - you'll likely even get a discount on the demonology tech (after it gets tripled). Or you can take apart the scrapcode generator after you bind bongo into a different vessel. All options.
"Free" is subjective. It's not free for me to write. If you ask for a database lookup every update then over the course of a few months I'll probably write one fewer update. Less will happen. The ultimate determiner of how much cool stuff you can do in this quest is how much I write, and it's up to you if that writing is new tech, exploration or database lookups.
It would be trivial to blast every station that has chaos markings. But what about all of the stations that might be various flavors of chaos, but don't advertise it? Or the ones that are a bit heretical but don't openly worship chaos, just definitely not the Emperor.
That's basically just a simple order though. "[] Order: Destroy every chaotic faction you can find, and go to (write in) lengths using (write-in) means to find other factions."
A lot depends on how you decide to help. Construction actions to make trade goods that would help, maybe even build them a city. Diplomacy actions to settle them down in it.
Each station could probably be stabilized with about 250 BP of trade goods, less if you could get direct access to repair their existing systems. Negotiating that might be... hard.
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- Location
- USA
Honestly, I don't even like that as a option myself. Feels too risky.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Hmmm.
Is a system with a tonne of archeaotech systems. Some of those systems might be archaeotech defenses.
They might not know how to build or repair those defenses, but they might still work.
Insult Everyone!
Master of Evil but bad at it.
- Location
- Right behind you~
How about we uplift the hauler's crew into a Cogitare branch? Seems like a 1-2 turn project, three if progress is bad. With a re-established Admech presence they should be able to crush all opposition and re-establish themselves into a worthy outpost system. Especially if we give them a little something to serve as head start.
I personally wanna do that warp-understanding project that Anexa proposed. See if we can use it to upgrade our sims.
Also, I believe we can boost repair bay's abilities?
I personally wanna do that warp-understanding project that Anexa proposed. See if we can use it to upgrade our sims.
Also, I believe we can boost repair bay's abilities?
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