And if we leave tech-priest here to try to uplift this place,
Which I have repeatedly emphasized we are not doing.
This is a stopgap meant to operate for about 15-20 years, after which Denva takes over, armed with third generation sensors if we have the good sense to develop them.
Maybe that 5 we rolled unveiled a faction that can work in place of our techpriests, but I'm not counting on it. It is worthwhile to plan around having to do the stopgap ourselves, with the resources and technology we know will be available.
I think you are really underestimating the Drukhari here. Their technology, their skill and just the sheer petty spitefullness of their sadism. These are people who, sometimes very literally, have practiced exploiting vulnerable targets to bring it to a level of a literal art-form. Though even then, if we were a complete unknown to the Drukhari at this point, I might have been able to trust the protection that obscurity would bring. Unfortunately, we don't have that anymore, and in fact defied the local Drukhari raiders and their leader by not allowing anything to be stolen from our ship.
Xyaris is long gone, and has more priorities and enemies than just us. We're a curiosity to her, probably not a priority.
But even if we were - she has to learn our assets are even here after we leave, which is not an obvious conclusion to make from "the people on the ship are paying tribute to people on some stations".
And however expert and sadistic the Drukhari may be at capture and torture,
Vita is an expert at using self destruct systems to preserve opsec, these techpriests have been read in on that MO for
decades and all but worship her as a god, and any volunteers for this mission will be briefed and approved by Victan, who is an expert in counterintelligence.
The series of events required to even get to that point are extroardinarily likely to happen in 20 years - Denva, a prosperous crossroads system with lots to loot, only gets one visitor every ten! We're in a bypassable route along a single branch going towards that crossroads, and Xylaris doesn't even know which branch we took if she decides she wants to chase us...
...and if she's searching thoroughly enough to have even the slightest chance of finding our boys, then she either has to split up her assets to check both, slowing the search, or guess correctly. And
that is if she guesses that we're one system away, which considering more standard travel speeds are double digit systems per fourth of a turn is, uh.
Well, from her perspective the net she would have to cast to look is wide, and the wider she goes the more her activity gets noticed by the corsairs pissed off at her.
Which she'd have to pull from other priorities, and compensate for uncertain returns.
Assuming Xylaris might try to do a salty runback and therefore look hard enough to find us is missing how hard it would be for her to try, basically. It doesn't really change anything - our means for deploying a stealthy and well informed humanitarian operation as a stopgap remain sufficient.
However. Why don't we just make this much safer way, and just pick and train some locals to become the equivalent of tech-priest initiates? Without telling them the truth about Vita? Give them a crash course in maintaining and fixing the local technology, uplift primers for further reading, some augmentations to those wiling so that they can better absorb information and be able to better to defend themselves, and the technology to start expanding both their numbers and repairs they do. Doesn't require leaving behind our tech-priest crew and still gets the job done.
Because these are cavemen in space, running a humanitarian operation is actually kind of complicated, nevermind a tech-first one like this would need to be, and we would have zero guarantee they don't just take the bag and run instead of helping because unlike the techpriests, these are people we just met who have no proven loyalty to us nor our goals, and who
also have had deadly fights with the very people we'd be asking them to help.
And who would have to
continue to risk their lives to distribute aid. And if they evacuate the station, would be taking in what might be a violent rival tribe in their entirety onboard the ship where they could do the most damage.
Our techpriests' ability to control bots is a lot of what makes humanitarian operations possible here, and the natives will not get to do that, and even if they could, left to their own devices we'd risk them just using the bots as their own military in the same old struggles.
What are you planning to build for them with a sensor package??
An early warning system, operated remotely by our techpriests with optional assistance in carrying shifts from locals they deem trustworthy.
What bleeding, though? There's no rapid collapse in progress. They'll still be here in 3 turns if we do nothing, as a population.
Recall that stations have already failed before we gotten here:
"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.
My reading here is that while most failed in the long past - not all of them did. Neablis's previous answer about "250 BP to stabilize, less if given voluntary access" implied that those that remain are not in good shape. If a station goes dark while people are still
on it, that's tens of thousands dead in one stroke.
Though, I suppose I should confirm that reading, get a better grasp on the specifics.
@Neablis - have any of the stations appeared to have died in the
recent past, or appear to be at risk of doing so in the next 20 years?
I rather thought exploring some stars was the point. We've done very little of that, and have very little need to stop.
It's the overall vibe of the quest, but I pointed out before we even entered this system that there's no reason for the 3 jump tour we initially planned to stay prioritized over exploring anywhere else - in fact, I preferred that we check out denva's immediate neighbors one after the other at that time, and I still do prefer this.
We're not going to stop exploring. But we have spent the time we anticipated exploring before stopping back at denva already. Our exploration quota is filled. I'm eager to go on more adventures, but we have to balance that with some base management so to speak or we'll be stuck with diminishing returns among a galaxy that is quickly becoming dangerous.
