I more meant that there will be multiple ships to attack. And at current going rates 10k bots cost 900 to 1900 BP. That's not an insignificant fraction of the cost of the whole ship.
Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest
- Thread starter Neablis
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I think the most important factor in the Velkar negotiations is that it's their choice how they want to interact with Denva and the Stellar Ascendancy. Our goal should be to empower them to make an informed choice and have that choice be respected, not for us to decide what is best for them and directly cause that outcome.
It's a small distinction sometimes, but an important one: if we think they'd be best off as a polity separate from the ascendancy but the velkar want to join the ascendancy, or vice versa, the Velkar's choice is what matters, not Vita's forecast of what would be best for them.
I favor strategist Gwen, because for any roll type we have bonuses for, her reroll is very little because not only does she not get vita or anexa or victan's bonuses, Gwen's generalist seer roll has a malus. Contrast to working as a strategist where she gets rerolls with a bonus - and where military rolls happen rapidly in short succession, which her bonus would presumably apply to every last one of.
It's a small distinction sometimes, but an important one: if we think they'd be best off as a polity separate from the ascendancy but the velkar want to join the ascendancy, or vice versa, the Velkar's choice is what matters, not Vita's forecast of what would be best for them.
I favor strategist Gwen, because for any roll type we have bonuses for, her reroll is very little because not only does she not get vita or anexa or victan's bonuses, Gwen's generalist seer roll has a malus. Contrast to working as a strategist where she gets rerolls with a bonus - and where military rolls happen rapidly in short succession, which her bonus would presumably apply to every last one of.
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The Imperium are also humans, and they would execute us for existing. The Mechanicus of Denva literally tried. I really think your argument here falls flat on its face.
Oh, and you may want to look up xenophobia. It's exactly what you're displaying: "the perception that not only is it impossible for certain people designated as foreign to integrate into one's own society but also that they pose a threat to the integrity of that society."
The tech to make juvinate? We gave them the facilities we left behind and it let them make a trickle, but I am talking giving them the tech to make more juvinate production facilities.
Sure, worldwide unlimited lifespans will be an upheaval, but that's why I think it may be best to do it now when things are already in upheaval. Their society is in the middle of being redefined so upsetting it's definitions is less harmful right this moment.
1. It only has a malus until she reaches level 10. After that, it's a bonus.
2. The ability to replace the minimum across multiple rolls on a given turn is much more powerful than a +10 for just certain actions, both because the minimum has a much lower expected value and because there are many turns where we don't actually use a military action.
Additionally, 1s laugh in the face of bonuses but not rerolls.
Driven by Apathy
Formerly known as Brain_Caster
Is there a difference between our manufacturing technology and "civilian" manufacturing? AFAIK, if they have the former it's not particularly hard to turn it towards military purposes.
I admit my level of caution might seem excessive, but I believe we're in the sort of universe that warrants it. Imagine the following worst case scenario: Suppose the Vellkar are biologically hardwired to become agreeable and cooperative whenever interacting with someone more powerful than them, but to demand absolute subservience and submission when dealing with less powerful entities.
Please note that I deem this unlikely, but were dealing with an alien species here, meaning we shouldn't just assume something like this isn't the case.
That's my entire point. Alien species can mean alien psychologies. With humans, we more or less know what to expect, for better and for worse. With aliens, assumptions are dangerous, both to us and to them. Just think of something like the Fithp from Footfall or the Race from the Worldwar series.
Having Victan spend half a turn investigating the Vellkar before giving either a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on the tech-transfer seems obviously sensible and necessary to me.
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Military actions when we do them consist of multiple rolls, and military actions also happen to us, and Gwen eventually hitting positives does not change that her modifier does not stack with the mods of Vita or any of her crew as a generalist seer - she would always be rolling at disadvantage to have any impact at all.
Our benefit for adding Gwen to literally any action that is not military is marginal, the benefit of having bonuses and rerolls to every military roll is massive. It's that simple - but I'll have hard numbers showing how stark the difference is soon.
And for nat 1s... I'd caution that we have never seen a nat 1 on a military roll before, and that we lucked the hell out that the echo fight didn't go worse.
We've been lucky that Vita's weakness hasn't been punished, in otherwords.
I want to stop relying on luck, and start relying on strength instead.
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10ebbor10
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Suppose the Velkar are biologically hardwired to be agreeable when you treat with them in good faith, but are biologically hardwired to become ULTRA HITLER 9000 when you treat them with undue paranoia?
I don't see the point in your hypothetical. It's scenario that you 100% made up, with no backing information, to support your conclusion.
When you deal with hypotheticals this detached from any basis in fact, you can make up anything.
With humans, we know that they can do a lot of harm. More harm than the Velkar are capable off, because the Velkar, regardless of psychology, don't have the infrastructure to do harm.
So again, your theory would suggest that we not give out tech to any humans.
Edit : Also, blocking of miltiary tech from our techbase is trivial, we've done it before. Your argument relies one the incredibly silly idea that a civilization, exposed to a technology it has never seen before, will then instantly master that technology, and use it to design weaponry from the ground up, using physical principles they've never heard out before.
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Can we even give our manufacturing without also uplifting the entire species to the point where brain implants becomes practical? That's sorta a big deal and I have no idea if our implants for humans will even work on an alien species.
Our tech is kinda based on a specific tech base that requires a base level of uplift to run.
Our tech is kinda based on a specific tech base that requires a base level of uplift to run.
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10ebbor10
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We've had non-MMI operated manufactories since the start of the quest. They're not going to be able to scale as rapidly as Denva is (also, because they're just lacking the educational facilities), but that once again makes the paranoia sillier.
Integrating the MMI's came much later.
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I think even now Juvenat is too expensive for them to give it to everyone. It would just be the rich and powerful, and then we have made (even more of) a gerontocracy.
Uuuh. Firstly, that is a wild hypothetical with very low probability. We should not act based on it. One can always come up with hypotheticals for how an action could have disastrous consequences. What's up for argument here is both probability and ethics: probability of them doing us wrong without obvious red flags (low) and our ethical obligation to render aid despite risks (yes). Especially since those risks are not large when one is not employing a xenophobic mindset.
"Stopping relying on luck" means reducing variability. The best way to reduce variability is to address the minimal roll each turn. I'll also try to get some stats in.
My thought was more that we don't give them weapons designs yet.
If the problem is that we know basically nothing about the vellkar beyond what we've peeled out of old and incredibly xenophobic records in addition to the... one time we saw some in person and the maybe three sentences we've exchanged over comms...
And I do agree that's an issue...
We can take the first step to mutual understanding by inviting their government to send some exchange students (And maybe an actual ambassador) to ASCEND!
And I do agree that's an issue...
We can take the first step to mutual understanding by inviting their government to send some exchange students (And maybe an actual ambassador) to ASCEND!
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And since the most variability is in military rolls, where we have no mitigants at all, that's where it should be!
Here are the chances Gwen can improve a research roll with Anexa assigned: Not how much she improves it by, just whether or not she improves it at all.
| Scenario | 1.1 | 1.2 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 3.1 | 3.2 | 3.3 |
| Vita rolls | Too high to beat: 41% | ←cont. | >2: 58% | ←cont. | nat 1: 1% | ←cont. | ←cont. |
| Gwen Rolls | 0.00% | 41.00% | 29.00% | 29.00% | 0.89% | 0.10% | 0.01% |
| Outcome | Improve | Doesn't | Improves | Doesn't | Improves | Doesn't | Double Nat 1 |
| Gwen Does not improve: | 70.11% | Gwen improves: | 29.89% |
30%. She has about a 30% chance.
Strategist Gwen has a 100% chance of improving military rolls - and I haven't even really gotten in to the narrative factors that come from her being a strategist diviner that a strategist taking advice from a diviner just will not have.
Strategist-diviner is an absolutely incredible opportunity we should not miss. Generalist seer otoh is a poor fit for our existing build.
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10ebbor10
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Yeah, in the research department Gwen is unfortunately a distinct second to Bongo, and probably just as prone to causing demonic manifestations.
(Like, don't ignore that. High chance of perils of the warp on a roll that carries a -10 malus is a bad deal. We could be looking at a 20-30% chance of major damage each turn, especially when you take into account that the passive action also carries it's own seperate risk of perils of the warp).
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From a strictly action economy perspective, I'd say that having her able to provide a reroll anywhere means she'll have something to do every turn and does not prevent her from assisting Vita or a future Strategist when we have something military happening.
How many turns have we had where we do have something militant going down though?
Disregarding that we're likely to have an ample pool of strategists and tacticians to recruit from before long anyway.
How many turns have we had where we do have something militant going down though?
Disregarding that we're likely to have an ample pool of strategists and tacticians to recruit from before long anyway.
10ebbor10
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It's a reroll with a cost so high, that for 90% of all actions it's more beneficial not to take it.
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First of all, appreciate the stats.
Second, this is to start. When she hits 10 her perk might change.
Additionally:
We have already been told that we can build psytech can enhance her benefit. So we can improve it further with research.
The cost is some BP in psi shielding. It's a cost, but not a dramatic one.
It also means our success is a lot less variable. It removes the bottom end, not the top.
I think given the chance to spend 100bp to halve the chance of a research roll failing we would take that trade every time we could.
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Driven by Apathy
Formerly known as Brain_Caster
I believe there is a tiny, tiny, barely worth mentioning chance the Vellkar could indeed be "genetically evil" - or more accurately, genetically predisposed to behaviors we would find evil or dangerous to us. I don't find this likely, it contradicts what we've seen of them so far. But the fact is that we haven't seen a lot of them yet, so it doesn't hurt to have Victan spend a year or two looking at their society and checking.
You recall my very first post on the issue, that aliens should not be looked at as if they were just different human cultures or ethnicities? Because when we're dealing with members of the same species (or Star Trek style forehead aliens) I totally agree that evil is not genes, chaos is not genes, tyranny is not genes.
But the same is not necessarily true when dealing with other species. A tiger is in fact genetically predisposed to kill and eat you, if you're more or less prey-shaped and behaving like prey.
I see absolutely no reason why an intelligent alien species couldn't have evolved to be genetically predisposed towards behaviors we would identify as evil. I also see absolutely no reason why they couldn't have evolved to be much nicer people than humans.
But we won't know until we check. And every new alien species is potentially different from the last.
Xenophobia evolved because if encountering something foreign in the wilds, the consequences of incorrectly assuming it's friendly are usually much deadlier than the consequences of incorrectly assuming it's a threat.
Within the context of human civilization, that instinct almost always leads us astray if we listen to it. Within the context of running into an unknown animal of sufficient size and physical capability somewhere in the wilds, it's absolutely the correct response.
When dealing with intelligent aliens whose exact nature is as of yet unknown, we shouldn't trust the xenophobic instinct. But neither should we automatically assume there is no threat. Aliens aren't human, the assumptions we can usually rely on when interacting with humans do not necessarily apply here.
The solution is to employ reason, be cautious but not aggressive, and gather information until the unknown becomes a known.
With the Vellkar we're already reasonably close to that point, but I'd like to dot the i's and cross the t's.
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A reroll anywhere that only achieves something 1 out of 3 turns, and when it does do something, it does less than what a strategist gwen military roll will do - and you may notice, we've been having military actions more than 1 out of 3 turns.
Oh, and also we'll be putting gwen on the military action as a matter of course even if she's not a strategist, because we have no protection for those at all otherwise, so actually her utility as a generalist seer only provides a benefit for 1 out of 3 non-military turns. And also she still achieves nothing even on military turns sometimes.
This is a terrible deal.
Those strategists and tacticians will not be as good as Gwen. Having the strategist and diviner be the same person means that those divinations can be better targeted, and the OODA-loop involving them wildly faster.
You will notice that we lost the ascalon delegation because Vita did not react fast enough to the DEldar raid - she could have gotten ahead of it to frame herself as somebody who can help, or started running, but instead was the last to act and so everyone sent there was killed. Vita did not cycle through observation-orient-decide-act fast enough to salvage the situation.
Sometimes, it does not matter if you can see more if it takes you longer to act on it, and a strategist taking advice from Gwen will never be able to act as fast on what Gwen sees as Gwen acting as a strategist herself will.
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10ebbor10
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The one perils of the warp roll we got destroyed the entire psy facility we had, and it hasn't been replaced.
And that was a middle of the road roll, a 59, not even a bad roll.
None of this makes sense.
Again, if we followed your logic, we would never help humans, because we can see the Imperium of Man and see that they suck. We know
You're not just relying on alien psychology, you're also relying on this alien psychology being literal magic that allows them to bypass all physical limitations in order to suddenly become a threat.
Your argument falls apart on 3 grounds, and you only ever adress 1.
1. They could be a threat. This is the point you keep repeating, and it's unprovable point because you keep making up hypotheticals that deny any all evidence we have.
2. If they could be a threat, we should not give them technology. This is the part of the argument you continiously ignore. We know that humans can be threats, we've all seen the imperium of man, and yet to you the fact that humanity can do evil is no justication to not give them technology. The odds of Denva turning out fascist (or being conquered by chaos) were a lot greater than the aliens have a superhidden biological quirk.
3. If we give them the technology, they can do bad stuff. This is the third part of your argument that doesn't work. Because your argument relies on the equivalent of the idea that if you give a caveman a phone, he's going to go home to his cave and build an uranium enrichment facility, then an ICBM and nuke us.
Edit :
Actually, thinking about this. This is a hostile galaxy. Chaos getting our technology would be bad. Chaos invading again and winning is a far more probable thing than a literal stone age civilization being able to overthrow Denva.
Thus , if you're unwilling to help the Vellkar because of hypotheticals, you should be completely unwillign to help Denva.
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Yes we absolutely need to keep our shielding built to the power level of the psykers we employ, but at the end of the day it's still just BP cost.
We outgrew that lab and needed to upgrade it.
Again, not unless we build a man of iron to take that role for us. Then we can just manufacture a strategist.
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We did replace the psy lab (and doubled it's shielding).
Also it was a 5 that destroyed it.