Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest

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Alright, dice are in! Thanks folks. Writing has begun, will take a couple of days. I might ask for another d100 or two.

1st roll, Machine Spirit Ground Tactics: 19+20 = 39. Barely a success.
2nd roll, Personal-sized psychic shielding: 10+20 = 30. Poor success.
3rd roll, Basic Cognition Filter: 75+30 = 105. Critical Success.
4th roll, Military takeover of the Transport Ship: 75. Good success.
5th roll, Diplomatic takeover of the transport. 44+25=69. Good success.
d6 is on the factions present on the transport. 5. Better than you might expect.
 
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Well at least we didn't screw up anything this time though it just had to be the psy shields that rolled poorly didn't it.
 
Wonder if Anexa will get a level out of that crit. That cog filter be good for avoiding any spooky and sinister Chaos stuff. And definitely good that our best roll was the flat military one. Bummer about the psy-shields but overall I say that combined with the diplomacy roll and faction roll its overall a successful turn.
 
Well hopefully the shields are just expensive and we can make a redux later.
But now we have a great roll on the cognition filters wich helps a lot.
Also we kinda took over the trasport ship with minimal fuzz so yeay we got minions?
 
Glau said:
Hopefully the good role on the transport means no chaos factions on it.
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I'm personally not holding out much hope for that one - too many opportunities for contact with and ingress by the chaotic stations, and lots of room to hide. Even a ~16.5% (of nat 6) chance seems a bit high for the chances of that, and we rolled ~33% (5).

With good success on diplo we should broadly have succeeded at finding out where they are (because per the desc on 5 everyone else probably hates them if they exist lol), and the good success on military means we should have been pretty good at catching those sites with their pants down and searching probable hiding spots.

Which just leaves improbable hiding spots and sleeper agents*, which may be the work of next turn - we'll see, I guess.

*Not the best term for what I'm trying to describe, but close enough in effect? Chaos aligned folks keeping it secret among chaos-opposed folks.
Angle said:
Eh, she fought those Druhkari. And killed them, and got her hand chopped off. Though this might be her first long duration combat.
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Oh, true! I guess she is blooded already, then.

Still, this is her first time on offense, so it still counts for something imo.
Derpmind said:
I think this is the second time I quickly fix a post after realizing it's flawed, only for you to ninja me with a super-fast quote. >_<
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The minutes after a roll are like that, yeah. :V
 
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Derpmind said:
It took us 21 turns to set Denva up. I think you're severely underestimating how much effort it would take to set up a friendly civilization from a world that lacks nearly everything Denva had.
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An existing civilization is almost exclusively a hinderance to us, since they'd object to us setting up industry and we don't want to kill anyone unless absolutely necessary. As mentioned, we can get the raw BP output within 3 turns of half effort (assuming we invest some of our research capacity in Superconductors and MS Production) and at that point we just need to invest in a governing AI (researching, building and then spending a turn or two hanging out to make sure they're chill) and they'd be fine. Literally the only thing Denva gave us that wasn't "help avoiding other problems on Denva" was hero units and we're not that desperate for more crew. And even if we were, we could still house and feed the maximum expected population of a Feral world and start screening them for psychic, combat, social or technical talent well before the tenth turn of investment, again if we're taking it relatively slow so we can do related research.

Construction Action 1 (700BP*)
*I'm assuming we're going to develop Large Scale Void Manufactuing before this
-MS Manufactory x5 600/600
-MS Light Infantry 30/30
-Bribes for Locals So We Don't Need to Use Infantry 60
-MS Manufactory 6 10/120
Construction Action 2 (950BP)
-MS Manufactory 6 10-120/120
-MS Manufactories 7-14 840/840
Research ~350
-Superconductors 100/100
-Ground Manufactory Efficiency 50/50
-Mothballing 50/50
-Machine Spirit Production 75/75
-Machine Spirit Shipboard Production 75/75
Diplomacy
-Get the locals off our back via bribery and implicit threats.
This gets our initial industry and defenses set up, plus grabs some low hanging research for making said industry way better.
Construction Action 1 (1,820BP*)
*Assuming average Superconductor and MS Production rolls.
-MS Manufactories x14 1680/1680
-Bio Lab 50/50
-Tech Lab 50/50
-MS Manufactory 40/120
Construction Action 2 (2,730BP)
-MS Manufactory x23 2720+40/2760
Research x2 (~550RP)
-Intelligence Coding 400/400
-Mechanized Agriculture 150/150
Continue scaling industry, plus unlock the basics for setting up a base, Intelligence Coding and making food for any humans who live there.
CA1 (4,225BP)
-MSM x35
CA2 (6,500BP)
-MSM x50
Research
-Personality Check
-???
At this point the hard math of it all kind of breaks down since we don't know how much the unlocked technologies (or any requisite follow up researches) will cost, so I'll just extrapolate BP production and assume we can finish up any research or ancillary construction along the way. Keep in mind that with Superconductors and MS Production, we'll be getting an increasing margin of free BP to do non-industry stuff with since I'm going to limit my projections to doubling rather than squeezing every last bit of efficiency out.

Turn 4: 9,750 -> 19,500
Turn 5: 19,500 -> 39,000
Turn 6: 39,000 -> 78,000
Turn 7: 78,000->156,000
Turn 8: At this point a single Construction Action could build enough housing and (probably, assuming reasonable costs) farming to sustain the upper end of the "100k-5m" population of a Feral World, and we can almost certainly make an AI with sufficient physical and esoteric defenses to feel comfortable leaving behind.

Then we can spend a turn or two helping our Baby of Stone get settled in, maybe getting a better ship or vetting additional crew and bounce, content in the knowledge that there's someone competent we can go to if we, say, stumble across a system that requires thousands of BP of material aide while we continue looking at stuff, all in less than half the time it took to even get our first flagship. And, in all honesty, we could probably set things up to progress without us a few turns earlier.

Admittedly, it's entirely possible that I'm underestimating how deep the AI research tree to get to that point is, but even then, a human generation is only something like four turns, so if we get the housing for a hundred thousand people on turn 4, we could have them solidly educated and with the requisite cybernetics by turn 8 still.
 
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Well technically with growth/clone vats we could do it from zero in 8 turns. No need to have a existing population.

The power of being a supertech arkship.
 
People always forget that the hard part of raising a kid is the raising bit. It's not like pregnancy is easy, but full time 1:1 or 2:1 caregivers for at least five years, and part time for the next 10? That's a commitment.
 
It can sound a bit cold but... That is what the bunch of automation helps on.
Yes it it's rasing on a glorified orphanage/School staffed by robots, and it's better than 99.9% of humanity is getting on this universe.
 
Glau said:
People always forget that the hard part of raising a kid is the raising bit. It's not like pregnancy is easy, but full time 1:1 or 2:1 caregivers for at least five years, and part time for the next 10? That's a commitment.
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Yeah. No amount of BP is going to help you with how much time, effort, and emotional investment it takes to raise one child. Let alone creating a stable and self-sustaining culture for an entire planet. That's a multi-generational project if I've ever seen one - and not a project you can just set and forget a newborn AI on. (People write horror and disaster stories about that kind of thing for a reason.)
 
TBF, a Daughter of Stone doesn't actually need a major human population. Some Crew-candidates to stay sane, yes. Actual population? Nah. A dead world would be ideal for building.
 
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