Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest

[Auks]

Setting aside that we already know what Denvan diplomats fucking around looks like from the Vellkar and that it's paternalism rather than cultural erasure...

You may also remember from that conversation that I was deeply concerned about leaving Caldereth underdefended, and wanted to either stick around to build up some defenses, or circle back in a few turns.

It has now been as many turns since we left Caldereth as we spent away from Denva. Unlike Denva, Caldereth doesn't have to roll two natural 5s in a row to get rolled over, nor does it have the capacity to survive a siege. What it DOES have is the title of "softest target that has Vitan technology". Good thing there's no opportunistic dark elf pirate queens nursing a grudge against Vita around to- oh wait.

Some of the circumstances of our delay were out of our control. This one isn't.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

Click to shrink...

I mean, Orks are probably a bigger threat to Caldereth than the Dark Eldar. We already encountered an Ork Scout ship there, and if you look at the map of Tiran, there's only 5 systems between Zantris and Dornath. But the exact nature of the threat isn't super important; ultimately, it's probably a good idea to check on them, especially as we should now have plans for an FTL communicator, if an extremely low bandwidth one.

Again, the question is if we want to spend an order action (and possibly a boon; not sure if our Cogitare can man the ships) to check on them, or if we just want to spend a boon and have Denva do that and risk them taking over everything entirely.

That said, regardless of what we do or don't do, Denva is going to start expanding sooner or later. A Boon currently gives 45,000 BP worth of manufacturing capacity, which means they probably have at least double that. That's a lot of ships, and it's only natural for them to start poking the neighbors. Hell, they may have done it already; for all we know, that's what those two mystery rolls were about. In which case I have significant concerns about that 19 that was rolled. I mean, for all we know, this next update we're going to hear that Denva and Ascalon had a shooting incident and are now at war. Which could be, uh, interesting, to say the least.

But this is all speculative; the point of mystery rolls is that we don't know what they're for. That 19 could be anything from Ork incursion to scout ships being yoinked by Trazyn to an encounter with an original flavor Xenos empire. We'll findout when Neablis finishes the update, not before.

 

[KyleDaScourge]

While we're on the subject, we really need the capacity to act in more than one system at once. Warp comms make this possible but until Vita herself can be in more than one place at a time we need agents who can go places and do things on our behalf.

Spending a boon to recruit crew for our fleet is one way to do that, but I strongly believe it to be a losing proposition which will drain us of boons over time. We are already seeing this with the Cogitare.

Spending boons to request single operations from the Ascendancy is similarly a losing proposition in my eyes, and furthermore sets a bad precedent of us spending enormous quantities of good will begging our allies to do something which will benefit them at least as much as us.

Building dedicated subordinate AI for tasks is extremely promising but ethically dubious and we aren't quite there technologically yet.

Starting a cloning program is even more ethically dubious and actually doing it effectively requires additional technological research.

It is my opinion that our best bet is to design a series of city-ships, which can be built by our detached Cogitare and the Voidforge Miners in significant numbers as needed, and transition into an actual faction of our own as opposed to "a single entity remote controlling some ships and robots" by allowing more-or-less free immigration of any interested parties from Denva to start out with. Once we have a civilian population, we can run internal universities and training schools, and ad campaigns to recruit graduates into our service.

A fifty thousand person city can comfortably fit into a light cruiser and would provide all the agency needed to pilot a significant military and industrial fleet anywhere we needed to get things done.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Guys I think everyone is overthinking the Sororitas, they are a numerically limited technologically inferior elite force. Just throw 5000 BP worth of bots at them, they will die of exhaustion and hunger even if they bots somehow don't get them. We can do it, the Denvans can do it, they are not a threat, no one without significant space assets is a threat because we can set up in their system and turn asteroids into bombs and robots.

Click to shrink...

None of that is in question, in a straight fight we stomp. Defeating them "Relatively bloodlessly" is the qualifier that takes heavier lifting.

Especially considering the "how do win fast enough to stop them from self-destructing the place to deny it to you" problem.

Basically, it's gonna be like trying to take the defenders of the governor's villa alive but harder.

The in-universe justifications that Games Workshop has written for Sororitas, not wearing helmets a lot of the time is strange and I was not aware of it, But I still think that's not something we can count on to carry us through the whole operation. They do have helmets, we need to be prepared for them to use them.

Also, any gas emitters that we deploy to try to flood the whole base would have to be defended and questions of biological needs would not become relevant in time to stop those emitters from being destroyed.

We should not expect a one-weird trick to succeed at taking them all down without a natural 100. That may sound hyperbolically pessimistic, but remember: The governor villa raid where we failed to spare a single person and almost lost the whole facility to a jury rigged self destruct was a critical success.

That is what I am basing my expectations on here. Doing non lethals in 40k is hard, and we have not prepared to do so against a fanatical military order with NBC gear.

Spending boons to request single operations from the Ascendancy is similarly a losing proposition in my eyes, and furthermore sets a bad precedent of us spending enormous quantities of good will begging our allies to do something which will benefit them at least as much as us.

Click to shrink...

Yeah. Right now, it's just a stopgap, to be honest. But it's not as bad as one system, one boon - We can scout all of Zantris and erect ansibles at the chokes just for one while also reinforcing caldereth for one boon, and I'd call that a pretty good value for where we're at right now.

 

[Auks]

While we're on the subject, we really need the capacity to act in more than one system at once. Warp comms make this possible but until Vita herself can be in more than one place at a time we need agents who can go places and do things on our behalf.

Spending a boon to recruit crew for our fleet is one way to do that, but I strongly believe it to be a losing proposition which will drain us of boons over time. We are already seeing this with the Cogitare.

Spending boons to request single operations from the Ascendancy is similarly a losing proposition in my eyes, and furthermore sets a bad precedent of us spending enormous quantities of good will begging our allies to do something which will benefit them at least as much as us.

Building dedicated subordinate AI for tasks is extremely promising but ethically dubious and we aren't quite there technologically yet.

Starting a cloning program is even more ethically dubious and actually doing it effectively requires additional technological research.

It is my opinion that our best bet is to design a series of city-ships, which can be built by our detached Cogitare and the Voidforge Miners in significant numbers as needed, and transition into an actual faction of our own as opposed to "a single entity remote controlling some ships and robots" by allowing more-or-less free immigration of any interested parties from Denva to start out with. Once we have a civilian population, we can run internal universities and training schools, and ad campaigns to recruit graduates into our service.

A fifty thousand person city can comfortably fit into a light cruiser and would provide all the agency needed to pilot a significant military and industrial fleet anywhere we needed to get things done.

Click to shrink...

That could work, though it kind of runs into the same ethical issues of the Enterprise carrying children and families as it travels the stars poking weird shit. But it's probably possible to come up with some sort of system where we recruited people to travel around with us, with education facilities slowly turning them into Cogitare/OMC operators.

In the meantime, one thing that may be worth considering is this:

[Boon] A Fleet Detachment
A collection of ships from the Stellar Ascendency navy, with a total build cost of half of the one-time manufacturing capacity boon. You can dictate this, or just ask for a fleet within a given parameter set. Includes crew. Only ships that Denva currently builds.

Neablis clarified that this is an indefinite loan, not a one time thing. So we could get ~22,000 BP worth of ships and the crew to run them with a single boon, then tell them to do whatever we want with an order action. If we just want to do some scouting, this is probably sufficient as it could buy a great many escorts, though it's more limited if we want a bunch of manufacturing ships.

 

[KyleDaScourge]

That could work, though it kind of runs into the same ethical issues of the Enterprise carrying children and families as it travels the stars poking weird shit. But it's probably possible to come up with some sort of system where we recruited people to travel around with us, with education facilities slowly turning them into Cogitare/OMC operators.

In the meantime, one thing that may be worth considering is this:

[Boon] A Fleet Detachment
A collection of ships from the Stellar Ascendency navy, with a total build cost of half of the one-time manufacturing capacity boon. You can dictate this, or just ask for a fleet within a given parameter set. Includes crew. Only ships that Denva currently builds.

Neablis clarified that this is an indefinite loan, not a one time thing. So we could get ~22,000 BP worth of ships and the crew to run them with a single boon, then tell them to do whatever we want with an order action. If we just want to do some scouting, this is probably sufficient as it could buy a great many escorts, though it's more limited if we want a bunch of manufacturing ships.

Click to shrink...

Eh, the fleet detachment boon runs into all the same issues as crew recruitment except more-so because at least the crew can be reassigned as new ships are developed and produced.

We don't necessarily need to send our city-ships into systems which are actually contested, although sending them places such as the three systems we've already explored is probably fairly safe. We could make it safer by re-scouting them first of course.

What's important is that we establish a self-expanding pool of candidates from which recruits can be drawn from at a cost cheaper than spending boons. A civilian population directly subordinate to either Vita or a direct subordinate of Vita suits that purpose the best of our available options, in my opinion anyway, and we have the industrial power to provide an extremely attractive offer to hundreds of thousands of people. The Ascendancy, meanwhile, has a population of billions and friendly relations with us. They have no real reason to deny their people the chance to emigrate and probably won't notice the loss unless we specifically aim to recruit their best and brightest, which isn't necessary.

Once we have the ability to recruit people in exchange for, at most, a single diplomacy action at a time even if we can't set up some kind of automated recruitment process, we can have them crew scouting fleets and such as needed.

 

[avatar11792]

We are only doing the CSM mutations and augmentations this turn, not the armor. I think studying space marine armor would help discounting really good robotics, but if you want to do that project a plan containing it still needs to win first.

Also I don't think there are any Tau nearby, so its unlikely Vita can get a crisis suit for reverse engineering even though they would be great since they are a totally different tech base than the samples Vita already has.

Click to shrink...

I was just brainstorming possible factions that might lend themselves to Robotics bonuses if we researched their stuff. Didn't have anything like a specific research plan in mind.

 

[DragonParadox]

Especially considering the "how do win fast enough to stop them from self-destructing the place to deny it to you" problem.

Click to shrink...

The way I see it there are two levels of potential damage mitigation here:

• Keep the Sororitas alive so we can try to deprogram them
• Keep them from killing civilians to 'save their souls' from our evil heretical ways

The first I think would be very hard since you would have to keep them from committing suicide not just in the moment, but over the entirety of their captivity. That is a lot of resources spent for the sake of people who are not just pro war crimes, but are willing to die in the process of committing said war crimes.

On the other hand the second is much more necessary, the amount of damage a suicidal person with access to a Hive's reactors can do doesn't bear thinking about, but the solution there also isn't combat oriented since the person who would be blowing up hives or ordering the Guard tanks to fire on that orphanage to save their souls won't be on the front line to be shot or gassed or cut up by a melee bot, they are probably in a command bunker behind the front. The solution to that is probably a combination of hacking to cut off communications and stealth to kill them before they can push the button in the instances where the hacking fails.

 

[Haganeko]

But you're talking about using non-lethals almost exclusively, and that is not an easy feat when their infantry has a dramatic qualitative advantage over ours, which they do.

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I still think attacking the imperials is a losing move, both from the point of view of picking a fight with someone unlikely to pose a threat soon otherwise and from that of angering any marines who learn of it.

Which I am sure is a bad thing in a universe that's not this one. As long as the Calderathians are happy, healthy and well defended against the many, many horrors of the void I do not think we should concern ourselves with the precise cultural context of that happiness and health because there are a lot of people out there, human and alien doing much, much worse.

Click to shrink...

We're trying to be better than the imperium. Cultural genocide for safety is not the way to do that.

Not that I'm arguing against it, I just don't understand your position I don't think.

Click to shrink...

I believe, from Neablis's comments before, that should the Ascendancy expand into those systems and we don't intervene then they will be assimilated. This will involve some degradation and erasing of their cultures—to which we will have contributed, in Calderath's case, by establishing residential schools for their children.

I think that's bad and we should do what we can to avoid it.

I think the idea that we'd need RGR for our bots to win in melee is wildly pessimistic.

Click to shrink...

That's valid—though I maintain if one is good enough at ranged combat then melee is unnecessary.

(and possibly a boon; not sure if our Cogitare can man the ships)

Click to shrink...

They can, though we'd need to supply the ships.

It is my opinion that our best bet is to design a series of city-ships, which can be built by our detached Cogitare and the Voidforge Miners in significant numbers as needed, and transition into an actual faction of our own as opposed to "a single entity remote controlling some ships and robots" by allowing more-or-less free immigration of any interested parties from Denva to start out with.

Click to shrink...

That's kind of what we are, though. Vita is an explorer by nature, which makes becoming a proper faction, as opposed to establishing a tonne of allies in various places, difficult. This is not the quest for that, unfortunately.

 

[KyleDaScourge]

That's kind of what we are, though. Vita is an explorer by nature, which makes becoming a proper faction, as opposed to establishing a tonne of allies in various places, difficult.

Click to shrink...

Difficult, maybe although I think most of the obstacles have already been overcome. Definitely not impossible though. All we actually need is a civilian population (which we can get by allowing immigration from allies), trusted subordinates to manage them (which we can recruit from amongst them with help from Victan), somewhere for them to live (city ships), and a way to keep in contact (warp comms).

We're a quarter of the way there and none of the remaining three obstacles seem actually difficult to overcome from where we're at now.

 

[DragonParadox]

We're trying to be better than the imperium. Cultural genocide for safety is not the way to do that.

Click to shrink...

I assure you it is still way better than the Imperium at its best. Also 'cultural genocide' is a very loaded term for a process of cultural assimilation that was constant over the span of human history. You are not going to stop that process no matter what you do. Look closely enough and right now on Calderath a dozen cultures are being 'wiped out' by a dozen other other cultures, otherwise known as the normal process of cultural exchange and change. Where things get evil as with most human endeavors is when that change is pressed upon members of one culture by another under the implicit or explicit threat of violence. The Denvans obviously won't do that. We spent a boon on it and everything.

 

[Haganeko]

Difficult, maybe although I think most of the obstacles have already been overcome. Definitely not impossible though. All we actually need is a civilian population (which we can get by allowing immigration from allies), trusted subordinates to manage them (which we can recruit from amongst them with help from Victan), somewhere for them to live (city ships), and a way to keep in contact (warp comms).

We're a quarter of the way there and none of the remaining three obstacles seem actually difficult to overcome from where we're at now.

Click to shrink...

I suppose. I still don't see a need. Cultivating allies is easier and seems more like what Vita would enjoy doing. Why be the leader of a whole nation when she can keep exploring and helping people?

I assure you it is still way better than the Imperium at its best. Also 'cultural genocide' is a very loaded term for a process of cultural assimilation that was constant over the span of human history.

Click to shrink...

On the first point: true, though it would be getting closer than I would like.

There is an imbalance of power and means that makes this much worse than a simple exchange. They would be assimilated by a larger polity. What I am asking we do is make sure it stays as just an exchange.

 

[DragonParadox]

On the first point: true, though it would be getting closer than I would like.

There is an imbalance of power and means that makes this much worse than a simple exchange. They would be assimilated by a larger polity. What I am asking we do is make sure it stays as just an exchange.

Click to shrink...

There is always an imbalance of power between any two groups of people and at the same time every process of assimilation goes both ways. Rome conquered the Mediterranean world (and to be clear the Romans were evil and they did use coercion), but even so the Rome of Augustus was vastly different from the Rome of say Scipio, they had imported gods from Egypt, art and architecture from Greece, clothing trends from the nomadic steppe riders. There were plenty of Roman writers bemoaning that very fact because even empires cannot help but be changed by the cultures they come into contact with, much less in the case of a non-imperial Hegemon.

Yes some of the culture of those other planets will be lost and so will some of Denva's culture from being in contact with them, but attempting to ensure there is perfect parity in that exchange can only lead to the kind of invasive and/or coercive cultural practices that I think you are trying to avoid. Should Calderath mandate that its citizens maintain their own culture? How is that defined, what are the consequences if they fail to do so?

You see how this can get very very dark?

 

[Prime 2.0]

I still think attacking the imperials is a losing move, both from the point of view of picking a fight with someone unlikely to pose a threat soon otherwise and from that of angering any marines who learn of it.

Click to shrink...

I agree for different reasons - I think a combination of well-spun caesus beli ("How convenient that her superior was abducted just as the balance of power would have shifted - could she have been in league with the xenos herself?") and "they want our shields and novacannons so fuckin bad" reapolitik could smooth things over...

But, why bother with that when the venn diagram between "tech we need to research to go on a de-chaosing spree in Braxis Fall to space marine approval", "Tech we want to get a better deal from the craftworld eldar" has so much overlap and we've already gotten confirmation from neablis that the space marines could be paid to participate in a raid on Xylaris?

Hell, those things even have some overlap with prepping for an operation on Xylaris's turf - Do you know how fucking funny it would be to teleport in a bunch of space marines right on top of the VIP and holy artifact using Psychic Triangulation to lock on to their distinctive emperor-flavored warp signals right after the rest of our forces pull their defenders away from it?

What are the dark eldar gonna do about it, stop us with the void shields they don't have? Sneak up on our superb sensor equipped fleet after our anti-stealth novacannon munitions go off? Use their smaller vessels that rely on dodging and illusions to avoid dying to pick a straight fight with our "oops, massive AoE" regular novacannon ammo?

I'm from the "hitting birds with a stone" party and our weakness in close quarters boarding actions can be covered by having the best of the best take our grav guns along. Everything else we can have on lock for relative cheap.

And undoing whatever the hell Xylaris did to torture the VIP will be a hell of a lot easier with all the medtech we're developing for Aurora's sake right now.

Put that altogether, and we can no-shit take care of Ascalon while keeping it intact faster than picking a straight fight. And moreover, it adds on to it a far, far more valuable prize:


The precedent of Vita being recognized as a steward of an imperial world. Twisted and specific as the circumstances may be - their unwarranted attack on us, the quest we'd have fulfilled, the vengeance we'd have taken which they couldn't, our vast capacity to supply the hive world, and the animosity between space marines and Sororitas - them going "you're the governor now" just this once rather than looking the other way would make it infinitely easier for us to bloodlessly deal with any other non-regressed imperial holding.

This isn't a new goal on my part, I'm pretty sure I brought up the "get the space marines to help hoist the Sororitas up by their own petard" argument back when we were in Ascalon the first time, but it bears repeating that legitimacy above and beyond mere tolerance is not something that is going to be easy to come by.

Even if it took longer than credible preparation to take Ascalon by non-lethal force, I'd not want to give the opportunity up. Their unreasonableness to date is fertile soil upon which our foreign relations with and subversion of the rest of the former imperium can blossom.

 

[DragonParadox]

I agree for different reasons - I think a combination of well-spun caesus beli ("How convenient that her superior was abducted just as the balance of power would have shifted - could she have been in league with the xenos herself?") and "they want our shields and novacannons so fuckin bad" reapolitik could smooth things over...

But, why bother with that when the venn diagram between "tech we need to research to go on a de-chaosing spree in Braxis Fall to space marine approval", "Tech we want to get a better deal from the craftworld eldar" has so much overlap and we've already gotten confirmation from neablis that the space marines could be paid to participate in a raid on Xylaris?

Hell, those things even have some overlap with prepping for an operation on Xylaris's turf - Do you know how fucking funny it would be to teleport in a bunch of space marines right on top of the VIP and holy artifact using Psychic Triangulation to lock on to their distinctive emperor-flavored warp signals right after the rest of our forces pull their defenders away from it?

What are they going to do about it, stop us with the void shields they don't have? Sneak up on us after our anti-stealth novacannon munitions go off? Pick a straight fight with their smaller vessels that rely on dodging to avoid the "oops, massive AoE" of regular novacannons?

I'm from the "hitting birds with a stone" party and our weakness in close quarters boarding actions can be covered by having the best of the best take our grav guns along. Everything else we can have on lock for relative cheap.

And undoing whatever the hell Xylaris did to torture the VIP will be a hell of a lot easier with all the medtech we're developing for Aurora's sake right now.

Put that altogether, and we can no-shit take care of Ascalon while keeping it intact faster than picking a straight fight. And moreover, it adds on to it a far, far more valuable prize:


The precedent of Vita being recognized as a steward of an imperial world. Twisted and specific as the circumstances may be - their unwarranted attack on us, the quest we'd have fulfilled, the vengeance we'd have taken which they couldn't, our vast capacity to supply the hive world, and the animosity between space marines and sororitas - them going "you're the governor now" just this once rather than looking the other way would make it infinitely easier for us to bloodlessly deal with any other non-regressed imperial holding.

This isn't a new goal on my part, I'm pretty sure I brought up the "get the space marines to help hoist the sororitas up by their own petard" argument back when we were in Ascalon the first time, but it bears repeating that legitimacy above and beyond mere tolerance is not something that is going to be easy to come by.

Even if it took longer than taking Ascalon by force, I'd not want to give the opportunity up. Their unreasonableness to date is fertile soil upon which our foreign relations with the rest of the former imperium can blossom.

Click to shrink...

I think you are missing something. The Imperium is (in its own mythology) a singular and indivisible thing where all power flows from the Emperor, therefore when Imperial power fails as it has in sector Thrace after the opening of the Great Rift all imperial successors are equally legitimate, which is to say equally illegitimate. Since they all have to claim to speak for the Imperium anyway the left behind polities each come up for their own little theory for why they and they alone speak with the voice of the Emperor and then in true Imperial fashion they spend the next several decades shooting everyone who disagrees.

Astartes are the Angels of the Emperor sure, but they are also limited by the Codex to keep them from falling into the sins that lead to the Heresy. Obviously, the Sororitas will say, they as true vessels of the Emperor's will and servants of his grand design should speak for Ascalon. And so on and so forth. It is at that point that the Astartes if they had the power to do so would shoot them, or threaten to do so. Because at the seventh and last, beneath all the pious platitudes the Imperium works on the basis of naked force. Normal Imperial sectors in the full grip of their power have civil wars over reasons far more petty than... all the tech heresy and regular heresy we have been committing.

The people one planet over from Ascalon will not care about what agreement we may have reached with them or with the Marines and would probably attempt to shoot both over some obscure point of doctrine given the chance.

Edit: Also that Cardinal is probably dead and he he's not he wishes he was, he's been in the possession of Dark Eldar for decades

 

[KyleDaScourge]

I suppose. I still don't see a need. Cultivating allies is easier and seems more like what Vita would enjoy doing. Why be the leader of a whole nation when she can keep exploring and helping people?

Click to shrink...

I'm not advocating that we stop exploring. I'm just saying that we have a reasonably simple course towards having things set up such that the next time we warp into the midst of an ongoing humanitarian disaster such as what we've found literally everywhere we've gone thus far, we can spend an action calling around within our own faction and count on a humanitarian fleet arriving within a turn or two instead of dropping everything in a largely ineffectual attempt to immediately resolve the situation using our own resources.

As soon as we leave the system the boons we're earning with Denva are going to slow to an absolute trickle if they don't stop entirely. Any plans that expect us to be able to call on them as frequently as we very well may need to are going to run into that wall. So we need a way to get similar results without constantly burning frankly incomprehensible amount of political capital. Having our own faction building up similar resources such that we can command similar results and expect to be obeyed without having to lay out bribes of amazing technological revolutions for every request is the way to do that.

 

[Voidseer]

He was taken by Dark Eldar as a specific target, it's as likely that he is dead as he is alive but wishes to be dead.

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As long as he has not been taken to Commorragh we can get him back. As for if he is dead or alive but wishing he was not, it that does not matter, we said we would get him back and I would very much like that we do that. So baring him being a secret Chaos cultist I say we take the time to get him back.

Besides even if we knock out the entire population and takeover our rule will be tenuous at best, we would have to explain the conquest to the Astartes why we did it when they find out and we would still have to deal with the Sisters. Changing things will be much easier once we have diplomatic access again. If we try conquering them by force (even if we succeed bloodlessly) any changes we do will be looked on with suspicion. Unless we are willing to kill off the Sisters (which I do not endorse) we are just better off getting the Cardinal back in my opinion.

 

[Prime 2.0]

I think you are missing something. The Imperium is (in its own mythology) a singular and indivisible thing where all power flows from the Emperor, therefore when Imperial power fails as it has in sector Thrace after the opening of the Great Rift all imperial successors are equally legitimate, which is to say equally illegitimate. Since they all have to claim to speak for the Imperium anyway the left behind polities each come up for their own little theory for why they and they alone speak with the voice of the Emperor and then in true Imperial fashion they spend the next several decades shooting everyone who disagrees.

Astartes are the Angels of the Emperor sure, but they are also limited by the Codex to keep them from falling into the sins that lead to the Heresy. Obviously, the Sororitas will say, they as true vessels of the Emperor's will and servants of his grand design should speak for Ascalon. And so on and so forth. It is at that point that the Astartes if they had the power to do so would shoot them, or threaten to do so. Because at the seventh and last, beneath all the pious platitudes the Imperium works on the basis of naked force. Normal Imperial sectors in the full grip of their power have civil wars over reasons far more petty than... all the tech heresy and regular heresy we have been committing.

The people one planet over from Ascalon will not care about what agreement we may have reached with them or with the Marines and would probably attempt to shoot both over some obscure point of doctrine given the chance.

Edit: Also that Cardinal is probably dead and he he's not he wishes he was, he's been in the possession of Dark Eldar for decades

Click to shrink...

He's definitely wishing he was dead rather than dead.

As for naked force - yeah, duh? That's why having us be recognized as the legitimate governor of an imperial system by the fragment with the most force matters, especially if our takeover of ascalon comes at the barrel of a space marine's* gun.

What, did you think if they declared us the legitimate steward that they wouldn't take umbridge at the existing leadership saying no?

*We will probably have built the gun for them, but shh...

Put that on tape and then even imperial worlds that don't recognize how bullshit our technology is will understand that not only is the naked force not coming to save them, if they try to obstruct us from cleaning house of the archenemy and other things the space marines disapprove of, that naked force may even show up on our side.

Thus, the situation remains the same. Looping in the space marines lets us skip over having to address the weakness of our infantry before we swoop in and do what we want to do - Be that at Xylaris' base, or at Ascalon Primus putting the sororitas in time out.

Ascalon's cooperation is entirely optional.

The more unreasonable the Sororitas are in the face of us holding up our end of their agreement and doing the right thing as recognized by the knights, the stronger and more hamfisted a precedent we will have.

Do you get it? If we just go in there ourselves, any other imperial worlds can just hang out and implore the Knights of the Crimson Vigil to protect them from us, and pursuing our interests on those other imperial worlds will be a harder political problem almost every time.

But if we jump through the hoops to have the rightful leader on our side (what with the rescue from a fate worse than death and all) and the space marines on board, Ascalon becomes an example.

Treat with Vita in good faith, or there will be no-one to save you.

Diplomacy is not friendship. I am not suggesting we fulfill the quest to be nice.

I am suggesting that we do it to prove that our soft speaking voice is inarguably backed by the biggest stick in Thrace.

 

[Haganeko]

There is always an imbalance of power between any two groups of people and at the same time every process of assimilation goes both ways. Rome conquered the Mediterranean world (and to be clear the Romans were evil and they did use coercion), but even so the Rome of Augustus was vastly different from the Rome of say Scipio, they had imported gods from Egypt, art and architecture from Greece, clothing trends from the nomadic steppe riders. There were plenty of Roman writers bemoaning that very fact because even empires cannot help but be changed by the cultures they come into contact with, much less in the case of a non-imperial Hegemon.

Yes some of the culture of those other planets will be lost and so will some of Denva's culture from being in contact with them, but attempting to ensure there is perfect parity in that exchange can only lead to the kind of invasive and/or coercive cultural practices that I think you are trying to avoid. Should Calderath mandate that its citizens maintain their own culture? How is that defined, what are the consequences if they fail to do so?

You see how this can get very very dark?

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Firstly, "there's always an imbalance of power" as an argument neglects that the size of that imbalance can vary wildly. Secondly, you are treating it as if I were arguing against the Ascendancy making contact with Calderath, when all I am doing is saying we should make sure they don't annex them. Those are very different things.

You keep telling me "there's no way to ensure perfect parity" and "there's always going to be some change from contact" but that's a strawman. My whole point is that that loss and that imbalance can be reduced to an acceptable point by us putting our metaphorical finger on the scale.

I'm not advocating that we stop exploring. I'm just saying that we have a reasonably simple course towards having things set up such that the next time we warp into the midst of an ongoing humanitarian disaster such as what we've found literally everywhere we've gone thus far, we can spend an action calling around within our own faction and count on a humanitarian fleet arriving within a turn or two instead of dropping everything in a largely ineffectual attempt to immediately resolve the situation using our own resources.

As soon as we leave the system the boons we're earning with Denva are going to slow to an absolute trickle if they don't stop entirely. Any plans that expect us to be able to call on them as frequently as we very well may need to are going to run into that wall. So we need a way to get similar results without constantly burning frankly incomprehensible amount of political capital. Having our own faction building up similar resources such that we can command similar results and expect to be obeyed without having to lay out bribes of amazing technological revolutions for every request is the way to do that.

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You are advocating we set up a whole civilization around us. That would take work to build and maintain that would take away from our ability to travel and explore. Additionally, any actions we would spend using Orders to have that civilization do things can be replaced by Diplomacy actions once we have set up more than one allied polity (something on which we have started, but are still very far from completing).

 

[KyleDaScourge]

He's definitely wishing he was dead rather than dead.

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This seems extremely optimistic. The Dark Eldar, or rather their Haemonculi, definitely have the capacity to still have the Bishop alive somewhere in more-or-less eternal living torment but it is by no means every captured victim who gets that treatment and there is a potentially large gap between "alive, technically, somewhere" and "recognizably alive somewhere we have any hope of retrieving him".

You are advocating we set up a whole civilization around us. That would take work to build and maintain that would take away from our ability to travel and explore. Additionally, any actions we would spend using Orders to have that civilization do things can be replaced by Diplomacy actions once we have set up more than one allied polity (something on which we have started, but are still very far from completing).

Click to shrink...

Not very much though? The process could easily be more-or-less entirely delegated.

Which other allied polities are you expecting to appear and how soon are you expecting them to reach the point where we would be able to usefully call on them to do the things we'd want them to?

The Ascendancy is pretty much already there but we've already seen how that's going vis a vis needing to conjure up a new miracle in trade for every request. Sure, they're expanding and will probably be doing so beyond their home system quite soon, and once they do so they'll be doing the sort of things we'd want done everywhere they go. That'll still just be "doing good wherever they go" as opposed to "coming at our call to do good in places where we have learned that it's needed." Unless we go back to spending boons like water that is.

Any other faction is starting a century or two behind and will almost certainly run into the same limitations. Unless it's one we build, in a process which we can have rolling independently with at most a few actions, ready to start sending out humanitarian development and security fleets in a handful of turns.

 

[Prime 2.0]

You are advocating we set up a whole civilization around us. That would take work to build and maintain that would take away from our ability to travel and explore. Additionally, any actions we would spend using Orders to have that civilization do things can be replaced by Diplomacy actions once we have set up more than one allied polity (something on which we have started, but are still very far from completing).

Click to shrink...

We already set it up.

Like, a majority of the game by turn time has been setting up this civilization to be a force for good in the sector that tries to do right by other people.

Fundamentally, you're out here alone saying for us to be afraid of them doing a colonialism or acts of cultural erasure despite the absolutely enormous amount of time, effort, and resources we have continuously spent on making sure they don't do that.

We've never seen eye to eye on the value of the Stellar Ascendancy, you've long insisted that we could just start over with someone else, but you have to see the contradiction in asserting that our direct action can shield other planets from imbalances of power, but that no one else can even if we've hand-trained them to do so?

Because if that's true, then there's no point to anyone but Vita being in charge. Do away with the notion that these people govern themselves, because the galaxy must be protected from them, and the rest of the galaxy protected from each other.

We have the tools we need to deal with issues as they crop up - political leverage, Ansibles, a fountain of new technologies we can hand out to even playing fields... but as a baseline, we need to trust that well meaning folks we have trained to pay attention to these things can work it out among themselves more often than not.

Which, in context, means we don't need to hesitate because Neablis said Caldereth and Vorthryn would assimilate with the SA. What "assimilate" means in context is not a bad thing.

This seems extremely optimistic. The Dark Eldar, or rather their Haemonculi, definitely have the capacity to still have the Bishop alive somewhere in more-or-less eternal living torment but it is by no means every captured victim who gets that treatment and there is a potentially large gap between "alive, technically, somewhere" and "recognizably alive somewhere we have any hope of retrieving him".

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But this isn't a random captive victim, now is it? It's the sovereign of a planet, who Xylaris knows we want back, and who was the single most important captive she took on the whole raid.

The idea that she would just throw out someone she could use for leverage, bait, or as a plain old hostage when she hasn't even paid us back for her humiliation yet is silly.

 

[Haganeko]

Not very much though? The process could easily be more-or-less entirely delegated.

Click to shrink...

That's not how the quest's action system works. We want something to happen, we're basically always paying an action for it; it's how Neablis keeps updates from becoming unwriteable.

Which other allied polities are you expecting to appear and how soon are you expecting them to reach the point where we would be able to usefully call on them to do the things we'd want them to?

Click to shrink...

Other rebel humans; xenos species, including peehaps aeldari; civilisations we seed across the sectors.

Any other faction is starting a century or two behind and will almost certainly run into the same limitations. Unless it's one we build, in a process which we can have rolling independently with at most a few actions, ready to start sending out humanitarian development and security fleets in a handful of turns.

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Not necessarily! They may have different startimg bases, natural advantages, and so on! Calderath, for example, has potential around the agriculture sector (which could allow population growth) that the Ascendancy does not, while the Vellkar may have other advantages.
And even then, as they all cooperate, they can each drive the others to greater heights.

 

[Aineko]

I think caring about Ascalon at all would be a mistake at this point.

Can we overcome our past trouble and get through to them? Yeah, probably if we really try.

But that's a lot of effort for one planet that really really isn't more important than the next.

If we happen to off the Drukhari leader for a better reason, we can cash the plot coupon. If Denva somehow slamdunks the diplomatic contact, that's nice too. If we don't get either, plenty more and more strategic horizons out there.

 

[Haganeko]

We already set it up.

Like, a majority of the game by turn time has been setting up this civilization to be a force for good in the sector that tries to do right by other people.

Click to shrink...

The quest master has stated the Ascendancy will swallow Calderath and Vorthryn up if we do nothing. It wouldn't even be mean-spirited; it's a consequence of their education system being set up by people from Denva Secundus and the disparity in population and power.

I'm not arguing the Ascendancy is evil; I'm arguing they wouldn't care, or know to care, about the fact that they stand so large they will blot out smaller civilisations with their cultural weight and hegemony without even meaning to.

Think of it as a cultural takeoved in Civilization, or phase three Spore, if that helps.

 

[KyleDaScourge]

That's not how the quest's action system works. We want something to happen, we're basically always paying an action for it; it's how Neablis keeps updates from becoming unwriteable.

Other rebel humans; xenos species, including peehaps aeldari; civilisations we seed across the sectors.

Not necessarily! They may have different startimg bases, natural advantages, and so on! Calderath, for example, has potential around the agriculture sector (which could allow population growth) that the Ascendancy does not, while the Vellkar may have other advantages.
And even then, as they all cooperate, they can each drive the others to greater heights.

Click to shrink...

Calderath is starting from a position of three orders of magnitude and change less population and with only the industry and education that we've set up for them to have. They'll eventually get to the position of being able to equal Denva's feats in their own system and then potentially expand in a similar way, provided nothing stomps them flat in the meantime, but it's going to be a long time. The only way that's going to change is with fairly enormous investment from either ourselves or the Ascendancy, which you also seem to be against.

We've already got examples of the ability to automate things. See our detached Cogitare. And a specific technological path towards totally automating the development of a subordinate civilization. See the Cradle Facilities and Cloning branches of the tech tree. This is just doing the same thing using diplomacy actions as part of the initial setup to create a process less ethically fraught then cloning up an army of charity workers and having them raised by robots.

We'll still be spending actions if we want to give them specific instructions, but it's better than spending boons to beg our allies to do the same, and I really don't think it'll be that much of a challenge to set up or that much of a drain on our attention.

Edit - And yes, Prime's point in the post below this about the expanding scale of the quest and layers of abstraction necessary for that is exactly correct. I was failing to find a way to express that myself, so thanks for that @Prime 2.0

 

[Prime 2.0]

But that's a lot of effort for one planet that really really isn't more important than the next.

If we happen to off the Drukhari leader for a better reason, we can cash the plot coupon. If Denva somehow slamdunks the diplomatic contact, that's nice too. If we don't get either, plenty more and more strategic horizons out there.

Click to shrink...

Ehhh, as a planet it's more valuable than it otherwise would be because it's Denva's neighbor and is an entry point for Dark Eldar with that webway gate. Having the system on lock is actually pretty important for the Stellar Ascendancy's security.

But however we achieve that, I maintain that the main reason to do so via offing Xylaris and taking back Ascalon's leader and loot is to get the precedent that the space marines will take our side if we're the reasonable party against a former imperial world's leadership doing a shit job and obstructing us from fixing it.

Having that as an example would grease the wheels for countless operations of influence across the sector.

...that we can take our shot at making it happen with the same adventures and lines of tech development we'd need to secure Braxis Fall and the myrix crossroads as recognized SA borders then elevates it from "nice to have" to "best thing to work towards I can think of".

That's not how the quest's action system works. We want something to happen, we're basically always paying an action for it; it's how Neablis keeps updates from becoming unwriteable.

Click to shrink...

Of course that's how it works, you just put it off screen or behind a layer of abstraction, just like Neablis has had to do for every increase in scale.

We used to have to spend actions on making individual observatories and underground tunnels. Now that's basically all under the hood - so it will go for many things that we will delegate in the future, bundled together as part of actions of much larger scale.

The quest master has stated the Ascendancy will swallow Calderath and Vorthryn up if we do nothing. It wouldn't even be mean-spirited; it's a consequence of their education system being set up by people from Denva Secundus and the disparity in population and power.

I'm not arguing the Ascendancy is evil; I'm arguing they wouldn't care, or know to care, about the fact that they stand so large they will blot out smaller civilisations with their cultural weight and hegemony without even meaning to.

Think of it as a cultural takeoved in Civilization, or phase three Spore, if that helps.

Click to shrink...

And I am saying that he implied nothing of the sort. "Assimilate with the stellar ascendancy" does not mean "Their culture is replaced", it does not mean their sovereignty is compromised, it does not mean erasure, it means "they join".

At no point, ever, has the quest master echoed your ideas about colonialism and neocolonialism being inevitable here.

The main reason Neablis brought it up was to let us know that Vita would stop being in charge. As in, the people of those worlds would decide to be independent of us.

I'm not bringing up "We may as well just have Vita in charge" as hyperbole. We are directly discussing whether to let them join the SA or stay under Vita's direct control right now.

So what is it? Can only vita stop them from being "swallowed"? Is the stellar ascendancy a burden, rather than a help, to our quest to uplift and protect the people and cultures of the galaxy? Should we take them over too, so that they don't overshadow everyone by accident?

Or can we bloody trust people to be kind to each other after investing the whole quest in vetting them for the task?