Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest

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You know, if we could give them a spare body of Vita's then we might actually get off on a good foot with them.
Certainly, what they truly need is to get their souls back, but something that's closer to their true forms might be accepted.
 
random_npc said:
so if i'm reading the rules right, a frigate has at most 1000 hull slots, exactly enough for a novacannon. It would have literally 0 bp left for anything else. It would be a novacannon with some engines wrapped around it. A gun with engines is peak ship design, we should build a dozen immediately.
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I don't know, we might want to either use a light cruiser hull or research a tech to reduce its cost. I certainly don't want Chaos taking over our artillery.
 
Neablis said:
I've been reminded that small-scale design-integrated psychic shielding should apply to small installations, including your manufactories. The wording has been changed. Remember this is basic stuff. Warpy stuff won't have free rein, but it can still
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This paragraph just ends abruptly.

Are write ins for Denva Military Ethos acceptable?

Like for an example:

[] [Denva Military] Grinder
Taking a page out of your own book of military responses they will use a combination of intelligence gathering/processing, post-battle scavenging, first line combat drones, strong protections and sheer bulk to face the darkness that is this Galaxy. May cause problems with multiple factions especially because of how ghoulish battlefield scavenging can be, may end up being liked and/or respected by Orcs because of that as well.

I'm thinking a good/neutral version of Grinders from Yuri's Revenge crossed with the philosophy of the Fallen Soldier from Zephon.
 
Added handing over the Necron Warriors, it's annoying to cut off a research avenue, but we already have a lot of those and even the neutrality of the local Dynasty would be worth a lot more to us than that.

[] Plan First Contact V2
-[] Show yourself intrigued and appreciative of the appearance of the newcomers. Transmit a greeting in Gothic and another one in Binaric (since machine intelligence sound like the kind of people who may have learned it). Firmly and politely establish a claim on the system in the name of its inhabitants and explain that they are quite cautious of visitors given the invasion by the Echo of Apotheosis. While the Denvans will defend themselves against those who are unreasonably hostile they seek to break with their ancestors' tradition of xenophobia.
-[] If you receive no answer or a hostile one you and all mobile forces in system will engage the newcomers with Gwen offering such aid as she can in the process.
-[] If the being on the other side seeks to engage diplomatically treat this as a normal first contact scenario with a reasonable willingness to share information about common enemies (Chaos, Orks Dark Eldar etc...). As an offer of goodwill you are also willing to return their 'people' to them, whether they be shut down or merely in sleep mode, along with an explanation of where you found them.
 
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Neablis said:

Denva Military Ethos

This is likely to set the tone of Denva's military for generations to come
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Can we have write-in's here too?
Most of the options don't play into Denva's existing naval culture, of small clanbased family ships.

[] Vitaxian culture : No man is an island, and even if ships can be commanded on your lonesome, that is a quick recipe for detachment. The academy will focus on matching it's students in complementary social groups mimicking the support group Vita herself keeps around.
 
Fantastic update @Neablis, and we get a surprise visit from everyone's favorite terminator robots.

DragonParadox said:
[] Plan First Contact V2
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I like the idea of talking to them first, Necron's are an odd bunch and it could work.

If not we are in for the fight of our life. Necron ships have speed on par with the Eldar and like to fight at long range, which will make it very hard for us to catch them in our weapons range.

@DragonParadox, maybe add something to the combat conditional of Gwen using the Candles to herd/trick the Necrons close to us? If anyone could pull it off, it would be a precog.
 
Xon said:
Frigate swarms just became disturbingly viable at killing the enemy, not sure how survivable it would be but great for Tyranid splinter fleets where raw number of guns-on-target is very important.
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Frigate swarms nothing. Let's see how bad cramming penalties REALLY are.

The Gunship - The ship that is a gun.
Nova cannon destroyer - 1900 BP.
Destroyer - 500bp

Non-cramming cost
Engines 6 - 50
Armor light - 50
Shields light - 50
Machine Spirit - 50
Warp Drive - 50
Void abacus - 50
Psychic shielding - 100
Nova cannon - 100

Cramming cost
Nova cannon - 900

Can it make it's own ammo? No. Can it do literally anything else? Also no. Will it suffer major penalties for being more gun than ship? Most likely. Can it even reload the one gun it has? Probably no.

But it's a destroyer with a nova cannon. More accurately it's a destroyer wrapped around a nova cannon. It does nothing else. On the other hand for a dirt cheap 1900 BP it's a nova cannon that can move between star systems.

I don't care if cramming penalties make it a glass cannon that has half the acceleration it should have as a destroyer. It doesn't matter. It's a nova cannon that is also a ship.

It's response to any form of close combat or boarding attempt should be to accelerate towards the enemy ship and set off it's nova cannon as a highly energetic self destruct.
 
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Nightlord256 said:
@DragonParadox, maybe add something to the combat conditional of Gwen using the Candles to herd/trick the Necrons close to us? If anyone could pull it off, it would be a precog.
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Makes sense

[] Plan First Contact V3
-[] Show yourself intrigued and appreciative of the appearance of the newcomers. Transmit a greeting in Gothic and another one in Binaric (since machine intelligence sound like the kind of people who may have learned it). Firmly and politely establish a claim on the system in the name of its inhabitants and explain that they are quite cautious of visitors given the invasion by the Echo of Apotheosis. While the Denvans will defend themselves against those who are unreasonably hostile they seek to break with their ancestors' tradition of xenophobia.
-[] If you receive no answer or a hostile one you and all mobile forces in system will engage the newcomers with Gwen offering such aid as she can in the process. Attempt to pin the enemy in place with the Candles while the Spark gets into range.
-[] If the being on the other side seeks to engage diplomatically treat this as a normal first contact scenario with a reasonable willingness to share information about common enemies (Chaos, Orks Dark Eldar etc...). As an offer of goodwill you are also willing to return their 'people' to them, whether they be shut down or merely in sleep mode, along with an explanation of where you found them.
 
Also we should look into nova mines. We can build a nova cannon's ammunition. I want to strap a nova cannon shell into a remote control Shuttlecraft and use it as a mine. It's stealthed and flies out to sit in space, waiting for the command to set itself off.

What, the enemy thought they could send fighter craft to attack us? We have a field of nova mines ready to blow up any ships or fighter craft that try to close the distance.
 
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DragonParadox said:
If I understand the omake properly the daemon is amusing itself with the electronic equivalent of violent fantasies. It's disturbing to watch in the way such fantasies are, but that is about all and we can't keep the daemon from thinking (unless we True Kill it).
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Originally, there would have been an extra section that explained this better*, but in short, this is real only to Bongo.

If he managed to get himself seaked in the simulation, he'd be sealed twice, but beyond that the bindings are ironclad. Nothing he can do can affect he outside, all communication is one way only.

*Originally, there would have been a confrontation with each of the crewmembers, and Gwen would have tried to inform her real equivalent, only to get blocked by Bongo's bindings. Because no effect outside means no effect, not even through psychically constructed proxies.
 
It is also possible, at least in theory, to have a nova cannon light defense platform.

The Fuck yOu Nova Cannon LIght DEFfense Platform
The Fonclidefp - 1600bp
Light defense platform - 400bp

Non cramming cost
Shield light - 50bp
Armor light - 50bp
Psychic shielding - 100bp
Nova cannon - 100bp

Cramming cost
Nova cannon - 900

It's a nova cannon floating in space. It has light shields, light armor, and enough maneuvering thrusters to point the business end of the cannon at the enemy.

We should build one, if for no other reason than to finally get information on what the cramming penalties actually are.
 
Dmol8 said:
[] [Denva Military] Grinder
Taking a page out of your own book of military responses they will use a combination of intelligence gathering/processing, post-battle scavenging, first line combat drones, strong protections and sheer bulk to face the darkness that is this Galaxy. May cause problems with multiple factions especially because of how ghoulish battlefield scavenging can be, may end up being liked and/or respected by Orcs because of that as well.
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That seems a bit too complicated for a military ethos. I would favour something like "Shield of Civilisation" or something on point like that.

Fouredged Sword said:
Also we should look into nova mines. We can build a nova cannon's ammunition. I want to strap a nova cannon shell into a remote control Shuttlecraft and use it as a mine. It's stealthed and flies out to sit in space, waiting for the command to set itself off.
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A nova cannon shell doesn't fit into a shuttle. You can fit a shuttle into a nova cannon shell.

Fouredged Sword said:
It's a nova cannon floating in space. It has light shields, light armor, and enough maneuvering thrusters to point the business end of the cannon at the enemy.
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Does that even have enough thrusters to counteract the recoil from shooting the cannon?
 
Really wishing we had studied those Necrons when we had the time. Might know a bit more about how advanced their tech is—and now we may need to hand it over.
DragonParadox said:
They are already in the prison, shouldn't be too hard to shove bots in there.
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We already had bots in there, originally. Unsure whether that garrison has been replenished, but a plan should include that provision.
armentho said:
large scale void manufacturing?
sweet

and just in time given we unlocked large scale MS
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Sadly, Large Scale MS doesn't apply. We need Megastructure Scale.
Aineko said:
New manufacturing can deliver higher BP-for-BP yields than orbital manufactories by a decent factor and also slightly higher BP-for-CP though on that they fall behind the MS deep space manufactory (due to not getting machine spirit treatment yet).

To catch up with raw surface-manufactory performance ratio would require getting the scaling factor from its current max of 5 up to 18. (And building individual factory platforms that cost more than most cruisers.)
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To be fair, one would need to include the lift capacity to truly compare ground manufacturies.

Lord4StarCommand said:
I'm worry in case our diplomacy with Necrons work how it's gonna affect our relations with the Astarte Chapter we met before consideirng they are fighting Necrons.
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What they don't know can't hurt us...
DragonParadox said:
We could also offer to return the Warriors, they are not actually intelligent, but doing so could be constructed as a mark of respect.
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My worry is this could cause issues with them from assuming we had captured their brethren—or worse, these could be necrons from another faction.
seonor said:
Not having studied the Necron warriors yet just might be a boon if they are one of the Dynasties who takes offence to others studying their tech. Which are basically all of them.

Vita being able to tell them honestly she found them in an abandoned installation but did nothing with them might not defuse the situation entirely, but it might help.

Vita, NO. Not until you are fighting Tyranids somewhere in deep space. Deep deep space.
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I mean... when you take 10 petatons tnt (4.2x10^28 J), even a single astronomical unit will reduce the density to the order of what 10 kilotons would be from a kilometre, or Little Boy from 1.7km (outside the blast radius).

You don't want to fire these at a target in orbit, but they work for system-scale engagements.
random_npc said:
so if i'm reading the rules right, a frigate has at most 1000 hull slots, exactly enough for a novacannon. It would have literally 0 bp left for anything else. It would be a novacannon with some engines wrapped around it. A gun with engines is peak ship design, we should build a dozen immediately.
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Due to weapon cramming, you also can fit in one ammo bunker and technically have 10 bp left over.
DragonParadox said:
Added handing over the Necron Warriors, it's annoying to cut off a research avenue, but we already have a lot of those and even the neutrality of the local Dynasty would be worth a lot more to us than that.

[] Plan First Contact V2
-[] Show yourself intrigued and appreciative of the appearance of the newcomers. Transmit a greeting in Gothic and another one in Binaric (since machine intelligence sound like the kind of people who may have learned it). Firmly and politely establish a claim on the system in the name of its inhabitants and explain that they are quite cautious of visitors given the invasion by the Echo of Apotheosis. While the Denvans will defend themselves against those who are unreasonably hostile they seek to break with their ancestors' tradition of xenophobia.
-[] If you receive no answer or a hostile one you and all mobile forces in system will engage the newcomers with Gwen offering such aid as she can in the process.
-[] If the being on the other side seeks to engage diplomatically treat this as a normal first contact scenario with a reasonable willingness to share information about common enemies (Chaos, Orks Dark Eldar etc...). As an offer of goodwill you are also willing to return their 'people' to them, whether they be shut down or merely in sleep mode, along with an explanation of where you found them.
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Are we sure this is the best idea? Will they not get offended to be told they're the same people as another group of necrons, or just mad we had them (and could have studied them) at all?
 
seonor said:
That seems a bit too complicated for a military ethos. I would favour something like "Shield of Civilisation" or something on point like that.
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That sounds to me like "Dutiful" or "Chilvaric"...

I was thinking something like "Defence: focus on protection and escorting of missions, with reduced focus on invasion and non-relatiatory strikes". I guess that might fall under dutiful?
 
Haganeko said:
My worry is this could cause issues with them from assuming we had captured their brethren—or worse, these could be necrons from another faction.
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I think it is reasonable to assume they would be able to detect the powered down Necrons on board our ship so trying to 'hide' that we have them is more likely to be an issue than offering to hand them over. Also Necron Warriors are drones, even if these ones had belonged to another faction any Cryptek would be able to reset their controls and the willingness to hand them over should at least count as a mark of respect from one who (resonably) would not be able to tell one Necron from another.
 
Rule 3: Be Civil
Neablis said:
--[X] Replace Troop compartment modular slot and Medical facility modular slot with 2x Juvenat Production Facility (750 BP)
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Whose bright idea was this? No, seriously, killing our onboarded military and medical seems to be a pretty damn stupid decision. This is our HQ flagship, and it seems like every turn it gets progressively less functional and less useful, and this is just another step in that direction, and it was already an awful ship.

Christ, chasing the Nav now is shortsighted. In our limited time here we need to use the facilities (THAT ONLY EXIST HERE) to their maximum potential, not chase tech that can be done anywhere, at any time with no real immediate benefit, while continuing to neglect production or our basics that we specifically came back to Denva to shore up. We still can't manufacture even a single goddamn Candle on our own in one turn, we should be churning out production ships to bring our prod with us as well as doing the appropriate research, as well as making our ship more efficient so we can fit more modules.

Christ, instead of removing the dwindling utility of a paucity that we had, have you considered doing the appropriate research and making efficient. Or hell, strip some of the badly chosen, haphazard weapons instead of the little persisting utility of our gigantic paperweight.

We're even still doing even more fucking daemon R&D. Please be more strategic and less... well, stupid people. I fully expect us to die like a dog to any and all adjact polities because of our anti-strategic decisions, when we're coming out of this with the exact same badly-designed ship that we started with, with no actual production to bootstrap us, and all the shitty ships we made given to Denva.

I hope you don't intend to actually help or do anything. Our personal prod can accomplish even less than it did at the start, which was already nothing, and as an explorer, that's the dumbest strategy I can think of when we were almost destroyed and couldn't do much to fix anything personally, other than distribute tech. No, calling Denva every time we run into some civilization is not a fix, nor a trend anyone should want.
 
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For ethos id think dutiful is probably for the best, a generally capable force is a good match for overwhelming industry.

Also i really think that single person warships are a bad idea, it gives single people control over absurd amounts of firepower and then has them operate in relative isolation for a long time, this already seems like a pretty unhealthy combination.

It also (unless i am drastically underestimating the machine spirits) demands a frankly ridiculous list of competences from prospective operators: gunnery, sensor operations, void-combat tactics, boarding&anti-boarding tactics as well as engineering&repair.
And thats just what i can think of right now.

We of course don't need imperial crew numbers but i do think actual crews, even just 30-50 will give better results.
 
Cookiesndip said:
rude words
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Well.

1. There is no need to be rude. and-

2. If you actually bothered to read the vote instead of skimming to find parts to complain about, you would have found that we simply transferred the troop compartment and medical bay to non-module slot versions due to refitting to apply the new cramming discount we got.
--[] Refit the Spark of the Ancients [122.5 Cramming free after partial refit => one additional slot]:
---[] Add to Non-Combat Equipment (reduce left cramming from 70 BP to 2.5 BP:
----[] Troop compartment (50*1.5=75 BP, 45 Cramming)
----[] Medical bay (25*1.5=37.5 BP, 22.5 Cramming)
---[] Replace Troop compartment modular slot and Medical facility modular slot with 2x Juvenat Production Facility (750 BP)
 
Anyways, I'm all for pragmatic. This is 40k, moral allowances have to be made, and as a small polity against a terrifying universe, taking a few pages out of the Freespace GTVA playbook is sensible.

Chivalric is probably the darkest timeline.
 
seonor said:
That seems a bit too complicated for a military ethos. I would favour something like "Shield of Civilisation" or something on point like that.



A nova cannon shell doesn't fit into a shuttle. You can fit a shuttle into a nova cannon shell.



Does that even have enough thrusters to counteract the recoil from shooting the cannon?
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What I am talking about is a nova cannon shell with shuttle thrusters and remote control. It's an area denial tool that means it is extremely dangerous to fly anywhere a nova mine shuttle could be parked.

And for the second part... I have no idea, just by the rules it's technically possible, it will just face significant unknown problems due to an absurd degree of cramming. It could explode after being shot once for all I know. What I want is to know. What exactly are the cramming penalties and when exactly do they become no longer worth it?

And SOMETHING funny, likely gravity based, is going on with the nova cannon recoil in general. You cannot accelerate several tons of shell to near lightspeed without throwing any conceivable launching mechanism backwards. This does not happen, so we need to assume some tech solution was applied.
 
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