Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest

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... Perhaps we just tell Anexa the basics and a warning. Then say that when we get some miniaturized shields she can get more details on it.

Edit: Also. I knew that it would be a lot but, really, 100 kill sat's!? That anti orbit lance is just not going to be enough isn't it. @Neablis how many of them and in what placement configuration would we need to get enough of the kill sats to render them ineffective? Or are we just better off going for the cloaked gunships taking them out?
 
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I think building a ship to escape is infeasible until we deal with the Mechanicus, so we're better off ignoring that design action until that's done.

I think maybe 2 actions on research, 1 on building and 1 on diplomacy? Last could just be more research, but if we bring in Victan he could help with the subversion of the Mechanicus acolytes.

[]Plan Karnax draft

[]Diplomacy x1
--[] Either work on coordinating with the Denvan's or put more effort into subverting the Mechanicus (either way with Victan's help).

-[] Construction x1 (1300 BP)
-[] Manufactry x7 (700 BP)
-[] Underground Anti-Orbital Defenses x2 (600 BP)

-[]Research x2 (415 RP)
--[] Secrets of the Machine Spirits (175 RP)
---[] Anexa's active help (15 RP)
--[] Spy satellite (10 void BP, 5 CP) (25 RP)
--[] Combat Bot Humanization, Redux (50 RP)
--[] Basic Stealth Shuttles (25 BP, 5 CP) (50 RP)
--[] Improved Passive Stealth (100 RP)

-[] Anexa Active action: Secrets of the Machine Spirits (+15 RP)

-[]How do you treat your new acolytes among the Mechanicus?
--[] Educate
-[]Do you tell Anexa about Chaos?
—[] Enough to know there is a memetic hazard
-[]Do you take on Victan?
--[] Yes

I figure we're not going to get one golden bullet for dealing with the Mechanicus, so it's best to stack multiple things in our favour. This gives us 1650 BP per action, so next turn we can put two actions in Construction to build an Underground Medium Void Shield installation and have 300 BP left over for shuttles and Trade Goods.

For research this'd finish 5 different tracks. Stealth shuttles are important to start throwing stuff into space, including eventually a spy satellite or two so we have better eyes on the ground, Improved passive stealth should help with fighters/assault shuttles, which I feel would be helpful when taking their station and if the fight goes loud and we can't hack all of their orbital satellites. CBH redux is a low hanging fruit, and Secrets feels a bit expensive for what it does but reducing the chance our own bots can be hacked is probably worth it.

For diplomacy I'm torn between further subversion and trying to coordinate more with the Denvan's. The former feels more urgent if we go for an education focus, but then we'll be taking an action next turn for them anyway so the latter may be more efficient.
 
Getting to the point of surviving an attempt to glass the planet is simple I believe; our newest void shield installation is projected to be able to shield us from 8% of their killsats, while only around 10% of them will be able to fire on us at any given moment. Establishing enough anti-orbital measures to nullify 2 sats is rather easy no?
Of course, that's for surviving a 'glass the surface' reaction where the other 90% expend their munitions on the rest of the planet. Not ideal.
Even if they decide to employ the killsats merely to kill us and not wipe out the planet, they got to know that if the opening salvo fails to at least wound our facility that we'll be able to snipe the killsats that crest the horizon with anti-orbit lances. They're satellites, they're slaves to their orbit after all. A coordinated charge is something they can't do. So they may decide to go for scorched earth afterwords.

In other words; with just a little bit more preparation; we will probably survive the nuclear option. The rest of the planet won't however. With a bit more prep; we might shield Aevon. Remember that it was stated that overlapping a smaller void shield with our current one is viable.
At some point we're going to have to accept we've done what we could and pull the trigger. Remember that the rest of the sector isn't sitting still; while we thankfully did not go for a 'thunderdome sector' plan, there's still multiple rather major threats that we cannot reason with.
 
Nemonole said:
Even if they decide to employ the killsats merely to kill us and not wipe out the planet, they got to know that if the opening salvo fails to at least wound our facility that we'll be able to snipe the killsats that crest the horizon with anti-orbit lances. They're satellites, they're slaves to their orbit after all. A coordinated charge is something they can't do. So they may decide to go for scorched earth afterwords.
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That depends on the thrust and power if their stationkeeping systems. Warhammer has pretty high thrust designs, so those sats might be more mobile than expected.

The other problem is that their weapons are kinetic. They can shoot over the horizon if they pick a trajectory that fnters atmosphere late.
 
Aura Dragon said:
I mean we are at the point where that would only cost about ~3 turns of most of our production. That actually wouldn't be a bad idea.
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We can do it this turn, in 3 build actions.

First one : 13 manufactories (1300 bp
1950 bp available for second action
Second one : 9 manufactories (900 bp) +1050 launch loop
2300 bp available for third action
Third one : 1950 to finish launch loop
350 to spent on leftovers
 
So... we are kind of in trouble, a lot of trouble. I do not think we can realistically count on on our tech to build enough protection to deal with all the kill sats and the nukes and the ad mech armies and the local armies that are not Aevon and friends. We need to hack them and the best way to hack them given the kind of security methods the ad mech uses is to have people in the inside. I think we should go all in on Subvert, put Anexa on it for a +5 and pray. As the GM reminded us we are on the clock with regards to the rest of the sector.
 
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10ebbor10 said:
That depends on the thrust and power if their stationkeeping systems. Warhammer has pretty high thrust designs, so those sats might be more mobile than expected.

The other problem is that their weapons are kinetic. They can shoot over the horizon if they pick a trajectory that fnters atmosphere late.
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That is if they are kinetics, if they are lance/laser or plasma then they will have limited firing arcs. Our best bet is likely to build the defenses at our base and shields in the main population centers and use a fleet of stealth gunships to take down the kill sat's. Nobody here has large amounts of space lift, that is one advantage that only we have.
 
Neablis said:
-[] Rapid hacking (600RP) You need to figure out a new approach to subverting machine spirits. It might involve some combination of confusing them with a burst of signals, then showing up and 'relieving' the issue. But it would take a lot of trial-and-error to get right. (Improves hacking of imperial tech. Potnetially enough for use in combat situations? May unlock advanced hacking research that synergizes with jamming capaiblities).
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Unfortunately, the next step is prohibitively expensive. It looks like Rapid + Jamming would be really powerful, but we'd have to spend three actions and roll well to get it. We could do it, but we'd have to pause our other research or our other actions. Hopefully what we have now is good enough?
Karnax626 said:
-[]Do you tell Anexa about Chaos?
—[] Enough to know there is a memetic hazard
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Anexa is a genius, and naturally very curious too. Telling her there's something hazardous for her to learn about is likely to result in her learning more about it even if she knows better. Best to just hold off until we have the time to get better (and person-sized) psychic shielding.
 
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DragonParadox said:
So... we are kind of in trouble, a lot of trouble. I do not think we can realistically count on on our tech to build enough protection to deal with all the kill sats and the nukes and the ad mech armies and the local armies that are not Aevon and friends. We need to hack them and the best way to hack them given the kind of security methods the ad mech uses is to have people in the inside. I think we should go all in on Subvert, put Anexa on it for a +5 and pray. As the GM reminded us we are on the clock with regards to the rest of the system.
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You're trying to find a one size fits all solution, and that just doesn't exist.

Hacking isn't magic, if we rely on it for every threat, then a system is going to slip through, or a mechanicus is going to bd able to do a manual override, or something.


Derpmind said:
Anexa is a genius, and naturally very curious too. Telling her there's something hazardous for her to learn about is likely to result in her learning more about it even if she knows better.
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I m think we owe her more trust than that. She has, very patiently, gone along with everything we did for and to her.
 
Derpmind said:
Anexa is a genius, and naturally very curious too. Telling her there's something hazardous for her to learn about is likely to result in her learning more about it even if she knows better. Best to just hold off until we have the time to get better (and person-sized) psychic shielding.
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Yes she is a genius, and? We can simply tell her that the information is a severe Cognito hazard and that if she wants to learn more about it then we need to miniaturize the shields that we have for it to be considered safe to tell her more than the basics. She isn't an idiot, and is currently under some decent shields that we trust so there wont be any warp shenanigans making her unnaturally interested in it. As long as we make decent progress on the shields I don't think she will mind.

Edit: We even have a way to give her proof. We can get her to monitor the shields while Vita is thinking about the Cognito hazard, she would be able to see the shield deteriorate in real time.
 
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10ebbor10 said:
You're trying to find a one size fits all solution, and that just doesn't exist.

Hacking isn't magic, if we rely on it for every threat, then a system is going to slip through, or a mechanicus is going to bd able to do a manual override, or something
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Hacking isn't everything but hacking and people on the inside has fewer moving parts than trying to rush them with shuttles. We do not even know if the codes for the kill sats are even on planet, they might be on the station, about whose contents we know nothing beside 'there are enough people on there that blowing them up would count as a war crime'.
 
DragonParadox said:
Hacking isn't everything but hacking and people on the inside has fewer moving parts than trying to rush them with shuttles. We do not even know if the codes for the kill sats are even on planet, they might be on the station, about whose contents we know nothing beside 'there are enough people on there that blowing them up would count as a war crime'.
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We wouldn't be 'rushing them' with shuttles. We would be sending up stealth shuttles (would need some research) and having them loiter around in space, perhaps even having them dock to parts of the kill sat's that don't have cameras.
 
Aura Dragon said:
We wouldn't be 'rushing them' with shuttles. We would be sending up stealth shuttles (would need some research) and having them loiter around in space, perhaps even having them dock to parts of the kill sat's that don't have cameras.
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Deadman switches, if we do not take them off line in one go the system is going to default to glassing the planet or as much of it as it can still reach. This is a system that was designed not just by imperials, but notably paranoid imperials.
 
DragonParadox said:
Deadman switches, if we do not take them off line in one go the system is going to default to glassing the planet or as much of it as it can still reach. This is a system that was designed not just by imperials, but notably paranoid imperials.
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And? If we were trying to take them out before they can glass the planet then we would obviously be making enough of our countermeasures that we could take out at least ~75/100 on the first strike given a 1/4 failure rate. Then of course we'd have to send a second wave of attacks to get the remainder. Of note is the fact that this isn't going to be a system where every single one of these kill sat's can kill the entire planet. That's to much overkill. We just have to get rid of enough of them and have void shields over ourselves and the large population centers to soak up the ones we miss and the nuke barrages.


Edit: I'm not saying that the imperium/mechanicus wouldn't use this much overkill if they could. Just that this system is simply just not important enough for it to have that many Exterminatus weapons actively stationed here. If it was important then the mechanicus wouldn't have mostly abandoned the system in the first place.
 
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Aura Dragon said:
And? If we were trying to take them out before they can glass the planet then we would obviously be making enough of our countermeasures that we could take out at least ~75/100 on the first strike given a 1/4 failure rate. Then of course we'd have to send a second wave of attacks to get the remainder. Of note is the fact that this isn't going to be a system where every single one of these kill sat's can kill the entire planet. That's to much overkill. We just have to get rid of enough of them and have void shields over ourselves and the large population centers to soak up the ones we miss and the nuke barrages.


Edit: I'm not saying that the imperium/mechanicus wouldn't use this much overkill if they could. Just that this system is simply just not important enough for it to have that many Exterminatus weapons actively stationed here. If it was important then the mechanicus wouldn't have mostly abandoned the system in the first place.
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There is no way to build enough void shields to protect a civilization of billions 'success' still looks like mega-deaths from direct impact and ecological damage, hell we cannot even build at all outside of Aevon without multiple diplomatic actions that will slow us down even more if they go well. That is why I think our main string should be getting inside their command loop and turning it off, or at least most of it and having the shuttles do the clean up on any running on independent power.
 
Toboe said:
Nice!
Not just stealthier crafts, but also making our stealthiest launch option even stealthier.

We should build an underground magnetic launcher.
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I'm a bit torn because on the one hand an underground magnetic launcher is a hell of a lot more expensive than stealth shuttles, on the other it'd make room in our hangars to just use them for fighters and assault shuttles, and on the first hand again having stealth shuttles for carrying BP could be useful for upteching the other polities on the planet.

I'm even more sure now that we want to bring Victan in, because we'll need to delegate as much of the eventual plan to the Denvan's as we can if we want to minimise the chance of us missing something.
 
DragonParadox said:
Deadman switches, if we do not take them off line in one go the system is going to default to glassing the planet or as much of it as it can still reach. This is a system that was designed not just by imperials, but notably paranoid imperials.
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That applies just as much, if not more to the hack.

Hacking involves more moving parts than blowing shit up, because every piece of imp tech has hundreds of uniquely evolved and adapted machine spirits.

A bomb sufficient to blow up one killsat will work on another killsat just as well
A hack has to be tailormade for each sat.
 
10ebbor10 said:
A bomb sufficient to blow up one killsat will work on another killsat just as well
A hack has to be tailormade for each sat.
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I think there is centralized control we can hack all at once, it is the IoM, the big boss having a big button that can kill or disarm the system is a cultural imperative. Sure there might be some slippage, but if our first move takes out most of the network and all their coordination it makes the rest a lot more doable.
 
DragonParadox said:
I think there is centralized control we can hack all at once, it is the IoM, the big boss having a big button that can kill or disarm the system is a cultural imperative. Sure there might be some slippage, but if our first move takes out most of the network and all their coordination it makes the rest a lot more doable.
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There are multiple enclaves, so I can see each one only controlling a portion of the network.
 
DragonParadox said:
While that is true the independent of the Enclaves is due to them being enclaves, it's a post rebellion thing. This used to be one big imperial administration under the governor, and that is who built those kill sats.
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Generally, I think the safer bet is simply to find a way to blow them up. We can make and stockpile as many missiles as we need to get the job done. But if the Hack roll fails then that's it. We get worn down by constant bombardments that we can't fight back against. That isn't to say that we can't or wont use hacking to stop them from firing for as long as we can. It's just that there can be multiple methods of overriding them and that those overrides wont work on a piece of scrap.
 
So a though ton the mechanicus not liking our puzzles and the bit about taking more apprentices, what if we try spinning it to them as getting any explorator minded people out from under them?

Although I guess that could lead to somewhat of a hardening of more conservative mechanicus so probably not worth actually doing completely
 
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