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zanni posted:That's in the works! We've been planning a bit over in the discord, I'm putting together the proposal and we have a goon volunteer to run them. Hello, my name is a goon volunteer to run them. I'll be typing up something more comprehensive when we're not in cliffhanger time, but my angle is essentially a bunch of spooks simultaniously pointing at the resounding succes at kneecapping 90% of Gladio's efforts, and also whatever is going to end up happening with that shuttle and how lucky we had to get with the one geosurvey guy hitting jackpot on Revenge. We need better coordination, and we need it before the next potential disaster rears its head. Where will that disaster come from, with Gladio having taken its shot and missed? That's what we'll be working tirelessly to find out. The world is not yet united under the red banner, and the threat of aliens is an all too real gaping hole in our knowledge. (Because I intend to play an international organisation I will inevitably end up using nationalities represented by other players, it's up to them whether whatever my dudes and dudettes end up saying is an outlying or mainstream view in their factions.)
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Sep 9, 2021 22:52
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| # ? May 31, 2024 22:28 |
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Aliens are not a concern. Any civilisation advanced enough to achieve interstellar travel will obviously be advanced enough to have achieved communism, and will greet us as brothers.
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Sep 10, 2021 04:02
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Unless they also have subsersive and reactionary elements hidden within them as we do
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Sep 10, 2021 04:25
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We have evidence of multiple factions of aliens actively warring against each other in our system. We must assume at least some aliens will be hostile, and we face a terrifying technology gap. But let's continue this discussion after the issue of the imrpovised Gladio ICBM has been resolved.
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Sep 10, 2021 07:07
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Yes, after we deal with that there will have to be a talk. A talk about the implications of having really, extremely powerful space magic spy satellites in orbit.
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Sep 10, 2021 08:28
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March 1, 1983 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQFplXS0DIM 3:45 Ascension standard time The state-of-the-art missiles fired in swarms at the stolen shuttle are iterative developments of one of the first such weapon systems ever deployed, a model the Soviets have been using since 1957. These have been upgraded with insights from decades of use, including a world war. They have also been packed with bleeding-edge Trans-Newtonian sensor packages and guidance systems. The spacecraft they're firing at is moving far, far faster than anything they were designed to shoot at, but it's not impossible, especially not with this kind of volume of fire. Stanislav Petrov, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, is helpless as he watches the missiles arc towards their targets on the war room's display screen, and for the sake of his subordinates he tries not to let on how much it's bothering him. He's been the one in the control center before, the one trying his best to keep the world from ending. The last time something like this was happening, he took action. Now he can do nothing of the sort; he can only watch. The flight path of the shuttle, the Buran-class light orbiter Ptichka, is also tracked on the screen, westbound and currently on a suborbital trajectory. The MOSA liaison - a new one, his name escapes Petrov at the moment - grunts, from his seat next to the General Secretary. "They're not flying it like a spacecraft, they're flying it like an airplane. I don't think that's one of our cosmonauts in control." He hopes it's not one of our cosmonauts in control, he means. "Where was it headed?" someone wearing a Strategic Rocket Forces uniform and general's stars asks. "Before the theft, I mean." It doesn't matter, of course, but, as they all watch the board, completely powerless, it's helpful to pretend they can do something important, to assert some kind of control. "She was bound for the freighter Grigory Vakulenchuk, with a load of radiation shielding for new habitats on Luna." The liaison grunts again. "Perfect place to smuggle a nuclear warhead, eh? Probably their original plan. If we hadn't caught them that warhead would have been at the Lunagrad spaceport in a couple hours." He considers that a moment, then quickly shoots off an urgent email, to be relayed from Ascension Island to the Lunar Self-Defense Force. "Fifteen seconds to missile impact!" a technician calls out. All eyes track the board, as the little '^' symbols inch closer and closer to the icon representing the shuttle - then, finally, merge, with a white circle flashing on the screen. "That's two hits! Good effect on target!" There are no cheers, but there's a collective sigh of relief, and nods and smiles exchanged all around - all of which abruptly freeze in place when the technician adds "Wait! Target still airborne!" A cold feeling develops in the pit of the General Secretary's stomach as it occurs to him that the Buran is a Trans-Newtonian design. It's designed to be used for jaunts to orbit and back multiple times per day if needed. Its sleek, airplane-like black-and-white hull is constructed out of a strong duranium alloy. He finds himself wondering if the 200-kg fragmentation warheads on the missiles even scratched the paint. "She's definitely hurting," another technician comments. "I'm seeing a sharp reduction in acceleration, we probably knocked out an engine." "Anything else we can send at them?" In this dim room packed with people, who even knows who asked that; everyone was thinking it, anyway. "Nothing that will reach them in time. The Germans are scrambling everything they have." "It's up to them, then." ------------------------------------------------- It's a modern Trans-Newtonian vessel, but it isn't a warship. Two missiles hurt it; even one more might finally kill it outright. Everything that can be launched is launched. But she's so high, and so fast. By the time the Germans - and the French, and the Polish, and the Dutch - get their weapons off, she's already hopelessly out of range, and in the upper atmosphere over Eastern Europe, she cuts her engines, on a ballistic trajectory that will dump her - and her nuclear payload - in the Atlantic Ocean, in the middle of loving nowhere. "Maybe they missed?" someone in the Soviet war room suggests, hopeful and tinged with desperation. "Maybe...they didn't know how to fly the shuttle right, or knocking out the engine forced them off course?" "Or maybe they're trying to detonate in the upper atmosphere, cause an EMP? It would certainly give their friends in Europe an easier time of it." "Wait, what about orbital installations, is there anything up there whose orbit their trajectory intersects?" There is. The orbital track of Interkosmos Station, one of MOSA's two civilian shipyard complexes, is added to the plot. It will intersect almost exactly. It will be at a highly oblique angle and the two will be moving at extreme speeds relative to each other; while the station is enormous, actually hitting it directly would be nearly impossible even for an expert pilot. Someone says as such, and someone else points out that they don't need to, they have a nuke. "How long do we have?" "93 seconds." "Is that enough time?" "No." ----------------------------------------- The yards operate on Ascension time, and almost everyone is still asleep when the alarm sirens blare. An evacuation order has been given, specifically the 'imminent attack, abandon ship' warning, with a distinctive audio cue. Drop what you're doing, get to a spacecraft, get as far away as you can. There is only one space traffic controller on duty - most of that work is handled on Ascension Island anyway, and there's very little yard-related traffic at 3 in the morning. By default, the young cosmonaut, a Welshman by the name of Evans, is the main point of contact for the station, and the one who has to try to coordinate this whole thing, a task for which he is unsuited. He tries anyway, quickly explaining the situation over the intercom, then relaying information about the evacuation to mission control on Ascension Island. Groggy workers in their underwear rush to put on EVA suits, flight suits, emergency survival suits, anything with life support and a sealed helmet. Those who are close to the work pod hangars or the docking rings try to make it to spacecraft, and some of them succeed, and a few of them manage to get them started up in time. In cargo shuttles, personnel shuttles, short-range work pods never designed to operate outside the yard itself, even individual maneuvering packs, hundreds of people jet away from the station in all directions. Thousands more don suits and brace for impact. Evans remains at his post. There isn't even time for him to suit up. Dozens of spacecraft have to be directed, prevented from crashing into each other. He's also taken control of the station-keeping thrusters - he doesn't have the authority to do that, but the shift foreman was eating a meal and there wasn't even enough time for her to make it back to the command deck - and is firing all of them at once, trying to rotate the station's massive bulk so that the slipways and service section are between the incoming nuke and the crew section. Fifteen seconds to impact. Mission Control at Ascension receives a voice transmission from the station. "Meredith, kids, I love you." Five seconds. "This is Interkosmos Station, signing off." 
Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Sep 10, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 08:40
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Holy Crap. A reminder that we talk about things here. https://discord.gg/zr6Um6mgUc
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Sep 10, 2021 08:42
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Evans no! He'll be late for choir!
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Sep 10, 2021 08:48
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 comrade Evans, born too late to gently caress around, born too early to find out.
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Sep 10, 2021 08:50
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The problem now, by the way, is that aurora works so, so strange when you hit a shipyard. You essentially get a dice roll for each slipway it has if it gets destroyed or not.
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Sep 10, 2021 08:59
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Evans Memorial Station will exist in the future.
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Sep 10, 2021 11:20
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MotherFUCKERS
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Sep 10, 2021 11:51
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quote:Men of Kosmos stop your dreaming
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Sep 10, 2021 15:17
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15,000 Feet Above Brandenburg, DVR, 4:43 PM Local Time Come on, come on, COME ON. Rudolf Meissner was nearly rocking back and forth in his seat. The Panavia Tornado was the best air-superiority fighter in the world. The pride of a rebuilt Western Europe, the product of four of the world's greatest nations working in concert, a true symbol of what socialism could achieve. It could outfly anything made before the Great Revolutionary War and climb at rates that were, frankly, terrifying. Yet right now he felt like he was standing still. How high is it going to be? It's a loving shuttle, it could be anywhere. He didn't think about if he could catch it. Rudolf Meissner was 29. He had been born in Göttingen. World War II had spared it. World War III had not. It had been directly in front of the Soviet Third Shock Army and treated as a free fire zone by the NATO Northern Army Group "defending" it. Göttingen today was a city of gleaming TNE structures. Göttingen for young Rudolf was a scorched scrapyard, cowering in the shattered frames of centuries of history, collecting sour rainwater, scrounging for food every day. The Deutsche Volksrepublik had saved him from that Hell. He would not let it down. Rudolf Meissner was going to catch that shuttle, stop that nuke. He flipped on his radio. "Twenty thousand and climbing. Do we have radar visual yet?" = = = Herzgeist, Harz Mountains "Target will be above local radar net, Windstorm. Stand by for FESTER data." The coordinator, Tuchel, flipped a switch. In an instant his computer queried, shook hands with, and picked up the data from the Comintern FESTER network, which beamed down into his computer, then along the lightspeed cable to Berlin, out from there to Schönefeld, and up to Meissner's Tornado in less time than it took him to say that. Tuchel spared a look over his shoulder; behind him stood Minister-General Waldemann himself, General Erlitz of the Luftwaffe, the Soviet attaches, and a crowd of anxious staffers. No pressure, huh. He gave a mental shrug and turned back. They didn't make excitable people into flight coordinators. "Confirm FESTER data, Windstorm." The speaker crackled. "Confirm receipt. Twenty-two five." From two seats down, another staffer, Kleiner, spoke up. "Baikonur reports launch. Westbound, bearing 317." The room looked up to the big map of Europe as the man in the booth arranged the line. Everyone winced. The red line slashed across Northern Germany scarcely twenty miles south of Berlin. Kiev, Lodz, Warsaw, Cottbus, Magdeburg, Wolfburg, Hanover, Bremen... Erlitz looked back down first. "Elevation?" "Climbing." Kleiner was fixated on his screen. "As only a spacecraft can. Angle suborbital but still very high." "Keep it tracking." The speaker crackled again. "Twenty-six thousand." = = = Meissner and the rest of Windstorm Group shrieked through the upper atmosphere. The Tornado was the best, but it was still an atmospheric fighter. Above fifty-thousand feet the engines would choke on the thin air; even before that, they'd have to be very careful. It would be under two minutes before they hit that ceiling, so fast could they climb. Below them the rest of the Luftwaffe was spread out, searching and climbing themselves, hedging their bets. Nothing could catch them. "Thirty-thousand." = = = Kleiner looked up. "Soviets report two anti-air missile hits. Target still airborne but speed is reduced. Still at climbing angle." "Jesus." Erlitz shook his head. "Two of those would turn anything we have into shrapnel." Waldemann spoke up, for the first time since this had started. "They're still climbing. At that angle, what's their projection?" There was a moment of pause, and then a voice came over the loudspeaker from the projection booth, sounding relieved. "Sir, at that angle they'll arc clean over Europe. Splashdown is estimated somewhere in the Atlantic." There was a split second of sheer elation, before Erlitz spoke, still grim. "If they do." He nodded to Tuchel, who flipped the microphone back on. "Meissner, this is Erlitz. Target is well above ceiling now, current projection to miss Germany. Continue to climb. I don't want him diving on us." "Jawohl. Forty-thousand." In an instant, Tuchel looked back up, urgently. "Sir, FESTER says the target has cut all engine power." = = = Forty-two five. Meissner peered up out of his cockpit; the sky was starting to darken, this high up. THERE -- he could see something, a streak of fire off in the east and high, high up, untouchable. Not aimed at him. Not aimed at the DVR. He kept his eye on it. "Possible visual, command. Far too high for us right now." A twinkle caught in the corner of his eye, and he looked over. There was something else up there, a little point of light moving crossways to the streak of fire. "Command, something else is up there." Forty-six thousand. = = = "What?" Erlitz looked confused. "What is--" "SIR!" The voice over the loudspeaker was suddenly panicked, and the map of Germany was abruptly overlaid with another line, crossing the red one just at the eastern edge. A blue one, labeled WERFTRAUMSTATION INTERKOSMOS. The command center was suddenly silent. = = = Forty-nine thousand! The altimeter alarm blared, and on automatic, Meissner pressed the yoke forward, levelling the Tornado out; he couldn't see out the back of his head but he knew his squadron would be following, perfect as practiced. He wanted to keep climbing, so badly, but he knew better. He turned instead, moving to parallel the streak of fire, follow its track in case-- "WINDSTORM!" The speaker erupted with General Erlitz's voice. "EYES DOWN! BLINKEN!" Flash. Every child in Germany knew immediately what to do. Meissner slammed his head down, helmet crashing into the pilot's yoke, autopilot holding the plane on course, for a brief moment not thinking at all. He saw it. As he'd been told, bouncing off of every surface in the cockpit. It wasn't as bright as it should be. It wasn't the flashbulb he remembered. But there was no mistaking it. There was a rumble, and a sharp downdraft that kicked the Tornado downwards as the atmosphere itself, so thin above him, compressed. Meissner wrestled the yoke, whipping the Tornado back into line, holding. Fifty thousand feet. He looked up. He couldn't see anything from down here. Both twinkling lights were gone. But maybe it was still there. He couldn't tell. Maybe that was just the tears in his eyes. "Verdammt..." = = = Monitor E4 sat unmanned, its operator over by Tuchel's desk. But it remained open -- it always remained open. It was the blast monitor. And now, faint and distant but unmistakeable, its lines of seismometer, pressure, and electromagnetic readouts spat out a signature that the entire Deutsche Volksrepublik could read. Redeye Flight fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jun 26, 2022 |
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Sep 11, 2021 01:13
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Sep 11, 2021 03:24
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5:40 pm, Pacific time Commander Orr gave a small smile, just for himself. Two weeks ago the Revenge had been captured. The men at China Lake had set EXCALIBUR facing west 'just in case', and the cranes were just now getting ready to lift it to return the weapon to testing. The engineers had wanted to examine every nook and cranny after it had been moved the first time. Even though not fired, the manhandling to get a new device pointed in the general direction of the sub might have shaken something loose, and why waste the results of an impromptu field experiment? It would provide good experience of just how durable they were in the field and provide hints as to the maintenance that would be needed. He began checking his email. He was no commander of the old guard, he operated his computer himself to check. The new Macintosh by Wozniak's Apple Collective was wonderful, allowing him to see messages from other military bases in a second window even as he read his mail in the first. As he was doing so, there was a notice. It seemed reactionary elements were showing their resistance to the course of history. No matter, they might sow some small chaos but would only reveal any reactionary groups left, making the socialist world all the more secure. Nevertheless, he continued reading the reports as they came in. The sky darkened outside, the work crews got EXCALIBUR lifted and turned, and were beginning to crawl to the east when he saw the 8:44 update. He grabbed his phone and called the Lieutenant overseeing the work crew. "Stop everything! Get EXCALIBUR placed again, facing east. Yes immediately. I don't care about the possible damage, have it ready in the next few minutes. I'll have a track for you." He knew this was even more useless than the men's gesture two weeks ago. Not only did they still have no targeting, but Baikonur was almost perfectly halfway around the globe. And it wasn't like a shot would orbit, it was a straight shot or nothing. But if there was even a chance it came this far, he needed to be ready. As a gunnery officer ran to Orr's office, Orr had already pulled up the tracking program. As it loaded he was already considering the possibilities. Luna? No, they would have gone east if they intended a full space launch. He saw messages on the screen speculating about Paris. If that was the target there was nothing he could do to help. He began loading data from reports of the spaceplane's trajectory. It was quickly obvious that no city could be the target, even as the report came of it cutting engines and going ballistic. His eyes were inexorably pulled to the intersection with another plot, even as the messages showed that others had reached the same conclusion. Interkosmos. And it would be still a quarter of the way around the world. Even with the world's most advanced weapon, there was nothing he or his base could do. He knew he should call the crew again, try to limit any further damage from them too-rapidly moving it about. But all he would do was watch the trajectory lines in horror as a counter ticked down. 74...73...72...
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Sep 11, 2021 04:02
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For those who are interested, here's the current state of our research: And what we are working on: 
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Sep 12, 2021 02:35
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The blurb of Steven Levy's book on the Automation Revolution in planning and the culture it produced, Apparatchiki. In the early days of the Automation Revolution, amidst the raging Great Revolutionary War, KOMPLAN created a research and development lab in Moscow. Officially intended to further research on computerised planning and OGAS (which would later become the Internetwork after merging with similar projects like Cybersyn), its wide remit, lax oversight, high funding, and later impressive reputation meant that it would expand into a sprawling research facility at the forefront of all areas of computer technology. This was the Glushkov Cybernetics Institute, the nexus of the anarchic Comintern computer culture and the origin of the operating system Planner 9, the Interlinked Document Transmission Protocol, the NPD line of binary and trinary minicomputers, and of course the wildly successful series of computer games Tetris. The researchers - computer nerds, typically young - ironically appropriated the originally derisive term "apparatchik", working as they did in the very bowels of the Comintern planning apparat. They had a generally anti-authoritarian and freewheeling culture, but though they often complained about stifling bureacracy, they were in general emphatically behind the socialist project of the Comintern - and have done more to build it than anyone knows. These are their stories.
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Sep 13, 2021 13:39
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e-dt posted:The blurb of Steven Levy's book on the Automation Revolution in planning and the culture it produced, Apparatchiki. CHUNG CHUNG
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Sep 13, 2021 15:14
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quote:the operating system Planner 9 Would love to have had a throwaway comment about being inspired by the "dead" sailors from Mars.
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Sep 13, 2021 17:24
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OOC: So we've been talking a lot in the Discord, and eventually it was realized that that kind of provides another barrier to entry. So I thought I'd talk more about what we've been discussing, hopefully to bring the discussing back into the thread. We've been doing a LOT of stuff outside of the scope of Aurora, the actual game here, but we're getting to the point where the narrative and the mechanics are starting to reconverge. There's been a LOT of talk about intelligence going forward, and we're about to complete (April 4, just over a month out) our first proper Electronic Intelligence module, which will give us both HumInt and ElInt/SigInt capability and let us start putting together actual intelligence agencies. What this would take the form of is up in the air. At the moment, the Comintern is still mostly made up of individual countries, all of which have their own intelligence agencies. A lot of those countries are also very suspicious of intelligence agencies due to the role they played in the pre-GRW world, like the CIA, MI6, and the Stasi. There's two primary ideas, and they don't preclude each other. One is giving the Comintern its own top-level intelligence agency, which is currently going under the name of the SPECTRE proposal -- the ground-level counterpart to FESTER's sky-eyes. This has problems, namely that it would be another and fairly major step to the Comintern being its own government instead of an alliance, along with the aforementioned suspicions and, let's not forget, the questions about FESTER's role going forward if we've finally put the loving boot to Gladio. However, it's also unquestionable that we would have had no chance of stopping Gladio without FESTER, and ultimately intelligence-gathering and information security is an essential part of being a polity. The second one is something akin to Five Eyes, the intel-sharing arrangement between the US and the four big Commonwealth countries. A formal coordination process between national-level intel organizations; the working name for this one is ARGUS, the guardian with a hundred eyes. The fundamental potential problem with this one you can see perfectly well in the actual arrangement; the Five Eyes intel agencies have decided to use it to completely ignore domestic limitations on spying, and thus basically become completely above the governments they're supposed to serve. The only real way to counter this is intense and tightly-constructed oversight, so as to ensure that none of the organizations get ambitious; and to be frank, given the role MI6 played in kicking off the GRW and apparently has just now played in getting these loving nukes to Gladio, this is something that should be a primary consideration worldwide anyway. This proposal would be "safer" in that it would be less of a confrontation to the existing system of smaller governments, and if not debuted alongside a SPECTRE could eventually lead to the creation of one. Secondly, now that we're wrapping up the Cydonia survivors thing, we can return to the question of colonization. This one is more defined by the game mechanics. Venus is currently targeted for our experimental mission with the Japanese, but to be frank Venus is extremely hostile as an environment and thus would be wildly expensive to colonize. We're probably going to wind up going there EVENTUALLY, as Venus is also the #1 source in the Solar System for space-chromium and thus crucial for engine production, but it's going to be real expensive and so not a priority project. Mars is the #1 prospect in the Solar System; it has the biggest potential for population and terraforming outside of Earth. Population is super important y'all. Mars also features two small moons, and we have been reassured that as moons that size are in fact ideal for defense stations, we can in fact convert Phobos into a giant head of Marx which will vaporize intruders with its laser eyes. We also have a toehold there, so Mars is almost certainly next. After that, though? We should probably be looking at Titan. Titan's atmosphere is significantly Earthlike, it's pretty darn large (50% bigger than Luna and 80% more massive, so easier to live on), and most importantly, it orbits Saturn, which is our best bet for large-scale sorium extraction. We also do know there's SOME kind of ruins on Titan, though initial scans don't suggest anything as large or intricate as what we found at Cydonia. Thirdly, we've started discussing ship design and ship doctrine. But other people have much more system experience with that than me and have been getting specifically involved in it, so I'll let them elaborate on that. Fourthly, we've been talking about other future considerations for securing Earth. We're getting a lot of success with our soft-power diplomatic blitz here, and there's no reason to not keep at that, but there's other places that -- if we have actually put the boot proper to Gladio -- we can start thinking about. Basically #1 on this list is Israel, which... well, we know basically nothing about what's going on in there, which is itself a really bad sign, because given what Israel was like at the divergence, it CAN'T be anything good. Once we have the ability to kneecap the nuclear triad it does open up actually striking them militarily, but as we currently know basically nothing about them there may be other options. This is also an Extremely Hot Button Issue for a lot of people IC, such as my own DVR, which have extremely confused feelings about Israel and may be very hard to convince on smashing them militarily. Finally, there's been a little thinking about changing things up as we shift focus off of Earth and back to Aurora proper; consolidating Earth viewpoints which might well involve consolidating Earth countries, most likely through organizations like the Organization of African States/African Union taking their places in the narrative. Personally, I've been thinking about a kind of Western Europe economic-strategic alliance, France-Germany-Low Countries-Italy, name to be determined (not quite an EU, though consisting of its most prominent and influential countries). However, I know we definitely had a France player at one point (not sure if we still do), and I don't know if anyone else would be interested in doing things with these countries, so I wanted to make sure to test the waters on it first (and this would also require narrative groundwork I haven't started on yet).
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Sep 14, 2021 02:34
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Also there's talk of invading DC to arrest the headless government of Spiro Agnew.
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Sep 14, 2021 02:59
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Have there been discussions about what mechanics are going to be "bent" with regards to colonization, because 3 colonies being planned is a bit excessive at this point. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Sep 14, 2021 |
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Sep 14, 2021 03:20
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Telsa Cola posted:Have there been discussions about what mechanics are going to be "bent" with regards to colonization, because 3 colonies being planned is a bit excessive at this point. Not really, this is just long-term thinking. In terms of things we're ACTUALLY doing, Titan is a far future "next step", once we start needing mass quantities of sorium. Mars is the immediate priority due to its immediate potential and Venus is basically an experimental sideshow, or at least that's the impression I've gotten so far.
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Sep 14, 2021 03:31
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Redeye Flight posted:Not really, this is just long-term thinking. In terms of things we're ACTUALLY doing, Titan is a far future "next step", once we start needing mass quantities of sorium. Mars is the immediate priority due to its immediate potential and Venus is basically an experimental sideshow, or at least that's the impression I've gotten so far. Thank you for the response, I'm not really going to be checking the discord so I do appreciate you making posts about the going ons! I imagine some of my following comments might have been covered by discord chat so my bad if so. There's really no need a for a fuel harvesting support base on Titan or whatever outside of story reasons. Maybe if you worked out some STO units to allow coverage of the harvesters but I'm fairly certain that the ranges involved for good coverage are way to big even for end game tech. Fuel harvesting isn't really a huge concern in 1.13 because you can make a million ton fuel harvesting station (or whatever size you deal convient) and have your planet side industry make it. Tow it where needed and have some tankers running a convoy cycle with the fleet speed worked out so that they hit the base when its at ~90% capacity and you are golden until the suns burn out because you probably aren't draining a gas giant of all it's sorium in a single game. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Sep 14, 2021 |
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Sep 14, 2021 03:38
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Telsa Cola posted:Have there been discussions about what mechanics are going to be "bent" with regards to colonization, because 3 colonies being planned is a bit excessive at this point. the colonization mechanics will for the most part be used exactly as they are, with very few exceptions (if you vote to create a Lagrange Point station somewhere, for example, that literally can't exist in the default mechanics so I'll have to basically fake it by making a fake 'asteroid' with a mass of like 1kg and then putting the station in 'orbit' of that) very rarely, when there is a good story reason for doing so, I might fudge a mechanic here and there, but I'm trying to avoid doing that too much unless there literally aren't mechanics that do what I want to do (basically all of the diplomacy/soft-power stuff simply cannot be simulated in Aurora, for example, but the attack on the shipyard could, so it was; if GLADIO had got off their other nukes, that also would have been simulated in the mechanics). anyway, working on another update
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Sep 14, 2021 06:12
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One of the things we really wanna see is moving a bunch of the discussion and stuff back into the thread and encouraging more people to play as countries. Right now we're missing like... all of asia, all of africa. That's.. not good. I think all of south america too. We don't even got a china, despite them being like, the biggest of the comintern's nations. Other thing: how much hard power we wanna use and how we use it. It's pretty easy to go "declare war, crush capitalism" now when we have the biggest guns, but my views on that are basically that even though we must liberate people from the cycles of oppression, we can't do that without at least some of them wanting it where we're going. So we go for the old "identify and support agitators" move, while identifying those countries so openly tyrannical that no one would care if we hit them.
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Sep 14, 2021 06:58
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I'll also fully admit that after opening up the Discord we may have gone too strong into using it. There's been a LOT of discussion going on in this LP, just, a lot of it didn't wind up in the thread, often because it happened in rapid-fire IRC style conversation that doesn't translate well to posts. But that presents its own problem, because of course nobody reading the thread can SEE that. So that's on posters like myself, who need to 
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Sep 14, 2021 09:05
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One thing worth talking about is the fact that we have magic space cameras. They did just prevent nuclear terrorist attack. But... do we really want to make a surveillance state? The UAWR is very, very leery of the idea of using FESTER coverage and top-level decapitation attacks against elements like GLADIO as a solution to our problems. It saved us now, but maybe we should focus on ways of stopping things from getting to this point in the future?
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Sep 14, 2021 09:24
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Posted in the Discord first: When it comes to civilian oversight of a future intelligence agency, could something like this work? Fairly restrictive 'general' rules for what they can do, and everything above and beyond has to go through a 'security council'. This council is selected by randomly selecting CI polities that then have to pick and select a handful of representatives, these are shipped to wherever our intelligence hq is (maybe the sector hq arcology when that's built?), there's psych evals both to ensure they can do the job (no use having someone who'll ban/approve everything no matter what) and hopefully ensure they won't get hosed up by doing this. Then one of the candidates that pass the evals gets a place on the council, with the others getting some other deskjob for the duration. The council position is 4 years, half are replaced every 2 years. There'll be advisors (legal, ethical, whatever else) on hand if they have questions, but otherwise spooks come in, go "we wanna do x to y because z" and they'll approve/deny requests. Add in strict record-keeping and documentation as well as automatic declassification of all records in a timely manner it should ensure a fairly transparent setup. No permanent seats on this council, once you get picked from the random draw you're out of the pool for a couple of picks, and it's entirely up to the polity who to send/how to pick them.
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Sep 14, 2021 09:36
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Speaking as someone who would love to participate more, I would love a dump/summary of the big picture world building that’s been established by the discord — it’s hard to know how to contribute constructively without knowing what’s already been decided.
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Sep 14, 2021 12:07
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punched my v-card at camp posted:Speaking as someone who would love to participate more, I would love a dump/summary of the big picture world building that’s been established by the discord — it’s hard to know how to contribute constructively without knowing what’s already been decided. Alright, so, established players on the comintern side are : In North America People's Republic of California. American-style federal state republic, but socialist. Currently has big struggles with the land barons who control agriculture. CWC State that controls most of cascadia, anarchists. Has problems with the right wingers up in the cascades. New Afrika Major State in the South-east. Technically, they were the guys who killed nixon, or some guy claiming to be representing them did, I think? Savannah People's Front Close ally to New Afrika and based out of Georgia, both of them very opposed to old US nationalism and concerned with black empowerment and minority empowerment throughout the comintern. Republic of the Outer Banks North Carolinan Republic that was cut off from the continent by an exclusion zone caused by nukes. Elsewhere Lunagrad, city on the moon, run by councils. DVR German state, successor not to east germany, which it overthrew mid-war at the same time as west germany. Controls all of prewar united german territory. UAWR A vaguely-syndicalist confederation that covers members in Australia, New Zealand and Polynesia. So loose, in fact, that it has member nations who are separately represented and played. USSR The Warsaw pact collapsed in WW3 or a while after and is now independent nations, the USSR also lost hold of many of it's means of control, particularly movement restrictions and is caught between reform and stasis. Kalmar Union Union of Scandinavian countries. A bit vague geographically, just in case people want a piece to play as. Still have royalty, technically, but they aren't in charge even ceremonially, instead being kept as part of the bureau of cultural heritage. Five Nations Not the same as the five tribes in former Oklahoma: actually New York city and Long Island. Still at war with the NYPD. Major Players without representation People's Republic of China In this timeline the red guards were never shut down and the cultural revolution never ceased. As a result it has turned into a political mess where there are two governments, the official beijing one and the red guards. They move very carefully to not trip over each other and the whole affair is a bit of a mess. As a result of this, china is hardline against the comintern intervening in the internal politics of member states, which has happened before: we went in hard to smash pol pot in cambodia. France I think we had a player for this, I don't think they're around anymore. France is basically experimental socialism and probably the guys leading the more democratic arm of the comintern. Italy ??? Cuba Lead the people's army and the african uprisings. Castro probably still laughs at the US today. Britain The UK collapsed into several socialist states. Incidentally, Jeremy Corbyn was over in south america at the time of divergence and probably is back here. Vietnam They rebuilt Hanoi as a TNE city and invaded cambodia to oust Pol Pot. Chicago It's important up in NA as a comintern member. Might be run by the IWW? We don't know much. South Africa Recently overthrew the apartheid government, happened in-thread, actually. Five Tribes The federation of tribes in former oklahoma, now part of the comintern. Non-Comintern Nations Haiti Baby Doc Duvalier is in charge here. But not for long: rebellion is already happening bigtime. Israel An apartheid fortress state maintained by it's no-longer-barely-hidden nuclear arsenal. Dealing with them will involve a whole lot of very touchy actions. New England They established themselves as waiting for the rest of the government to shape up at the worst possible time. As things degraded, they've devolved into barely holding their territory together. Bernie Sanders is still a senator for Vermont I think. Texas LBJ took charge when things went to poo poo. Didn't have time to drink and smoke himself to death like in our timeline. Switzerland Still neutral despite the entirety of Europe being red or at least pink. Spain Mad about catalonia and the basques and has a king, but is otherwise firmly comintern-friendly. Turkey Comintern-friendly, nothing else is known about it I think. Albania Run by Hoxha, calls us revisionists. Basically in the comintern anyway. As you can see, much of the map really is just "comintern yay" or "comintern grr" without much established. So people, feel free to come in wherever! NewMars fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Sep 14, 2021 |
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Sep 14, 2021 13:24
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Antilles posted:Posted in the Discord first: We'll want to define a specific mission statement beyond "is the global intelligence agency". Like a lay out specific responsibilities. Probably want some kind of inspector's office to look into things at council request, or lengthen member terms. With the rate of turnover and potential scope and resources of such an organization it'd be a little too easy for parts to start setting their own agenda. NewMars posted:One thing worth talking about is the fact that we have magic space cameras. They did just prevent nuclear terrorist attack. But... do we really want to make a surveillance state? The UAWR is very, very leery of the idea of using FESTER coverage and top-level decapitation attacks against elements like GLADIO as a solution to our problems. It saved us now, but maybe we should focus on ways of stopping things from getting to this point in the future? I don't think we're at risk of that at present, the FESTER sats have pretty consistently had a very specific mission. We could always pass a law that they have to be mothballed when there's nothing they're very specifically needed for. I don't think they take long to make?
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Sep 14, 2021 18:37
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NewMars posted:But... do we really want to make a surveillance state?  100% this becomes self justified as a hunt for the rest of GLADIO and for the queen, whether or not they still effectively exist. Meanwhile, they also become useful for political negotiations and to ensure compliance with treaties, with preventing any potential TN-specific terrorism (even if non nuclear, I imagine sorium still burns very well), and so on and so forth. I like the utopian idealism but this just feels like wishful thinking.
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Sep 14, 2021 18:52
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On a note divorced from anything else: the addams family was pre-divergence. It makes one wonder if a revival would be possible, and if so: movie or tv show?
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Sep 14, 2021 21:38
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NewMars posted:On a note divorced from anything else: the addams family was pre-divergence. It makes one wonder if a revival would be possible, and if so: movie or tv show? Movie, but it somehow ends up being the exact same movie that releases in our timeline.
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Sep 14, 2021 21:51
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Pyroi posted:Movie, but it somehow ends up being the exact same movie that releases in our timeline. Well, it might be slightly different.  (image courtesy of Grizzwold)
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Sep 14, 2021 22:51
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NewMars posted:One thing worth talking about is the fact that we have magic space cameras. They did just prevent nuclear terrorist attack. But... do we really want to make a surveillance state? The UAWR is very, very leery of the idea of using FESTER coverage and top-level decapitation attacks against elements like GLADIO as a solution to our problems. It saved us now, but maybe we should focus on ways of stopping things from getting to this point in the future? While there are no extant examples in hellworld it is not theoretically impossible to have an intelligence apparatus that is actually concerned with real threats rather than running drug rings and pedophilia rackets
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Sep 15, 2021 00:15
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The Western Desert Republic of Reno-Carson also exists! We're totally not entirely propped up by the Calis as a bulkwark against the Mormons, promise!
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Sep 15, 2021 05:41
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mcclay posted:The Western Desert Republic of Reno-Carson also exists! We're totally not entirely propped up by the Calis as a bulkwark against the Mormons, promise! Or a cheap attempt to try and undercut Vegas, even!
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Sep 15, 2021 07:24
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