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Not even backroom bollocking, having an SLBM was almost certainly a golden opportunity they'd have been foolish to ignore.
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Oct 6, 2022 01:39
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Yeah there's like, basically no reason to actually care about them having had it. Except for maybe asking how they even got the damned thing.
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Oct 6, 2022 02:43
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Oh yeah I agree, them taking it in the first place wasn't bad, I was thinking more about the "keeping quiet about it in the years since" part.
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Oct 6, 2022 07:44
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Clearly the solution is to have a nuke buyback program
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Oct 6, 2022 11:28
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There aren't going to be more opportunities for people to secretly acquire a nuke, so there is no need for a demonstration to discourage people from acquiring secret nukes. We do want to encourage people who already have a secret nuke to hand it over (before the capitalists steal it). So logically we want to praise and reward Ireland.
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Oct 6, 2022 11:55
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Aren’t all our spacemunitions nukes?
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Oct 6, 2022 12:45
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Get anything in space moving fast enough and it may as well be!
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Oct 6, 2022 13:38
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Affi posted:Aren’t all our spacemunitions nukes? Mechanically in Auroura pretty much everything is basically either a tactical nuclear weapon or a full blown nuke with how they will gently caress up a planet. Actual missiles get a multiplier when used on surface targets to account for the fact they "splash" but orbital weapons are not precision weapons and you will cause collateral.
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Oct 8, 2022 02:22
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GunnerJ posted:Get anything in space moving fast enough and it may as well be! A solid munition can't be fitted with a proximity detonator though, it either scores a hard hit or it misses completely.
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Oct 8, 2022 12:35
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Recording, “Lecture on Olsonian Cooperativism” Economics of the Socialist World: Study of Non-European Economic Models in the Comintern Professor Maurice Deschamps, Sorbonne University = = = = = Alright, today’s first system to study is an interesting one. The American socialists produced a number of exotic economic models amid their collapse – we have seen this with California and New Afrika already, both of which have strong market socialism tendencies. Today we will enter the “Midwest” region by looking at the Democratic Republic of Minnesota, or DRMN, with its “Olsonian cooperativism” model. Lest I forget, do we have any Minnesotans in the class? No? Mm, a shame. So, Minnesota is not unlike California, in that it remained as a whole unit as the United States collapsed – California seceded shortly before the martial law declaration in 1972, Minnesota shortly after. It is, of course, much less large, populous, and powerful, which has often led to it being regarded as an afterthought, but as a state Minnesota has shown resilience and self-sufficiency far beyond expectations, what with being locked so deep in the continental interior by the chaos. Yet they survived, and even helped to ensure the independence of their neighbors in Chicago and Detroit. This is partly due to the model we are discussing today. “Olsonian cooperativism” is named primarily after a former Governor of Minnesota, Floyd B. Olson. Olson was elected in 1931, during the Great Depression, after aggressively pursuing right-to-work advocates as state attorney. That is to say, the advocates attempted to blow up a labor leader’s house with dynamite, Olson attacked them like a hunting dog, and labor was very impressed. He was elected by their Farmer-Labor Party, and served until dying in office in 1936. The Farmer-Labor Party is important to understanding this – they were a strong leftist force if declared non-socialists, which merged with the Minnesotan branch of the Democrats in 1944 and would give Minnesotan politics a strong lefist element. Note that I said declared. We will get into this. Olson has a mixed legacy, mostly due to a trucker’s strike in 1934 which showed his ability to play both sides of the room. However, near the end of his term he was blocked in his attempt to – this in America in 1935! – table legislation to nationalize to state control a number of major industries and utilities. Specifically – iron mining, electricity, oil production, meatpacking, and grain elevators, the latter of which was Minnesota’s main industry. Now, this was decried by his opponents at the time as socialism, which is why Olson never tried to formally present the idea. He, however, insisted it was “cooperativism”. This word specifically. So, in the American context, and this is important, so wake up back there – a “cooperative”, or “co-op”, is a type of business common in rural areas, especially among farmers and the industries that support them. To use the exact definition the Americans used, a “co-op” is “a producer- and user-owned business that is controlled by – and operates for the benefit of – its members, rather than outside investors.” *pause* I can see you all thinking the same thing. That is a syndicalist union shop, is it not? And it is not quite – there is not necessarily a larger union involved in this model, the business may remain for-profit, and there are a number of other specific differences, some of which are mostly regional. But it is a very syndicalist sort of thing, indeed, and it is almost definitionally socialist, for the workers to own the means of production. This kind of specificity in language was very important in the United States, which was extremely heavily dominated by its capitalist class and which had turned red-baiting into an art very, very early on. To call yourself a socialist is suicidal, politically, and possibly literally. But a cooperative, this is not socialism, no? It is a good old boy American tradition. Farmers working for farmers. Oyah, you bet. *laughter* So. This proposal died with Olson in 1936. None of the following governors would be nearly so bold. But what have I been teaching you? Ideas do not die. The concept had been created and would be sitting there in 1972 when Minnesota was told to accept either martial law or presidential dictatorship. The government at this point in the state is very unfriendly to the idea – Minnesota did not support Nixon for President and was thoroughly opposed to the conduct of Agnew. Now this choice is here. Minnesota chooses neither. There are many factors at play, but the man in charge of pulling the trigger on this decision is Wendell Anderson, the current governor. His nickname is “Spendy Wendy”, yes, I am serious, because the Republicans did not like him using a state budget in 1970 to aid the people of Minnesota, never mind that it saved their economy and made them able to hold together at this point. Anderson declares that Minnesota is not leaving the United States, the United States has left them, and is already destroyed. Minnesota has an entire National Guard division through good fortune, so they can enforce this militarily. Thus the DRMN. However, Minnesota now has to survive without the rest of the United States. National Guard guns will be no good without bullets to load them and food to feed their troops. In a world without the collapse, you would likely have seen vast wealth flee the state for other places. However, Minnesota’s wealth is in physical things, not intangibles or gold, and there is also little chance to flee anywhere being in the middle of a disintegrating continent. But the capitalists are not cooperative. So Governor Anderson and his DFL legislature look around for solutions to make the state self-sufficient, or mostly so, and there in the back drawer is Floyd Olson’s notes on “cooperativism”. This is the history. Now, the practice. “Olsonian cooperativism”, on your reference, can be found somewhere between German market-syndicalism and conventional state-operated command economics. The Minnesotan state nationalized all of its major industries and utilities from 1972 to approximately 1978 – farming, transportation, electricity, mining, even the state sports teams. Legally, the State of Minnesota is the “owner” of the major Minnesotan industries and the companies that operate them. You may have heard of some of these – the industrial manufacturer 3M, the mining company Mesabi United, the retail distributor Dayton’s, and the milling and foodmakers of General Mills, Land o’Lakes, and Cargill Cooperative. All of these were pre-War Minnesotan corporations which the state nationalized. However, the state does not directly operate these – instead, they were then reorganized as cooperatives, with operation and control given to their employees. This is the American definition of cooperative, as discussed earlier. The Minnesotan state thus serves the role here that the large unions do in the German model, coordinating the industries and mediating local disputes without the middle layer. This has strengths and weaknesses, of course – the state can more directly coordinate its industries, which was important to keeping Minnesota together during the Interstate Wars, but the lack of the formal union layer theoretically makes it harder for the workers to leverage against the state. As of yet, however, we have not seen this actually put to the test as a serious issue in the DRMN’s history. The Olsonian cooperativism model has had a good deal of local success, due to Minnesota’s visible strength and stability in the Interstate Wars years – the Republic of Lakotah uses a form of it nowadays, as do some parts of Wisconsin, and both Chicago and Detroit have taken parts of their model to use in their own systems. Beyond the American interior, its spread has been much more limited, however, due to Minnesota’s smaller size and lower global prominence. That being said – yes, I see you, Auvergnese, relax – several communes in the Auvergne region have been using the cooperative model for years now, and it has become something of a signature of the province. There are also reports that some Chinese local councils have been examining the idea. In general, Olsonian cooperativism is a very American economic model, distinctly post-United States in its lingering capitalist elements and aversion to more traditional socialist modes. However, it has proven to be resilient, and is extremely effective in its rural-laborer infused context, which has been shown in how its adoption elsewhere has largely been in other agriculturally and extractive-focused areas, such as Auvergne. It is probable that the model’s limited spread is partially due to these areas often having greater difficulty accessing information on the outside world, or having environmental-situational reasons that make them reluctant to change their established systems overmuch. As anyone in this class from a rural province can tell you, a farm harvest cares little for politics. And we are coming up on the break – that will serve as a primer, I think? This will be part of the North American section, so be sure to look into the recommended reading – copies are being held on retainer with the university library for your use. When we return, we will discuss the Detroit syndicate model, which is possibly the most distinctly post-capitalist American system, which is saying something. Good? Well, then, break begins.
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Oct 9, 2022 06:54
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Interlude - A Summary of the Spectre Report on the North American Threat First and foremost, based on the information we have collected, we are now nearly certain that the US Government-in-Exile had been quietly moving forces and resources back to the Americas on a small scale for at least 2-3 years prior to the attempted nuclear attack of 'Operation Hastings'. They have also had agents actively moving and working in the 'grey' areas that are under no effective administration, swaying local governments and populations, spreading political propaganda, and organizing underground. These efforts have also extended into 'pink' and 'red' areas, and the territories of some of the other factions. There are multiple paramilitary groups, militias, and criminal gangs outside of GiE-controlled territory that we believe are being effectively controlled by this government, and could potentially coalesce into an organized fifth column should the war intensify again. Efforts to identify and track these networks are already well underway, with significant success. They're quite good, and it is their land and they know it well, but we have the technology. We currently hypothesize that 'Hastings' was a desperation plan to invade the West Coast of the former United States, as the beginning of a campaign to reconquer the country and hopefully launch a worldwide counterrevolutionary uprising. Based on debriefings of the Revenge crew and interrogations of captured GLADIO fighters, it is clear that they substantially underestimated both our political support, and the scale and sophistication of our surveillance operations. The specifics of the plan still elude us; we conjecture that it probably originally involved nuclear blackmail rather than actually detonating all of the nuclear devices they planted, but we're not certain. As of now, with Hastings having failed, they appear to have moved on to a 'plan B', that being a protracted guerrilla struggle to reclaim the United States. There is a problem with this, which is that, based on all available intelligence, the GiE has extremely poor popular support, even in the areas they control. Even among anti-communist American nationalists they are at best highly controversial, and are at worst blamed for destroying the country and handing the world over to us. Additionally, morale among their troops is currently shaky at best. Very conveniently for them, Agnew, their most dedicated opponent in FedGov, which has far more civilian support, unexpectedly died recently, and we have intercepted quite a lot of back-channel discussion between the two parties since DOROTHY came online. The speed at which both of these parties have sprung into action to mend the schism has led to strong conjecture among some of our analysts that Agnew's death was a planned assassination. Agnew himself is legally still alive, and will likely remain 'alive' until a new president is selected. We believe that the plan is currently to hold an 'election', convening the Electoral College and going through all the motions of actually choosing a new President through the established legal means, although it is unclear how they will handle the popular vote or even if they will bother having one. Once the new President is chosen, whoever it is, the Joint Chiefs will probably conclude some sort of formal agreement with the new government, the specific terms of which remain unknown. Both major factions still control respectable conventional military forces augmented by large numbers of irregulars, but in both cases their equipment is rapidly growing obsolete and standardization is very poor. Ironically, while they have made several major arms purchases in the last few years through intermediaries and fronts, the majority of the weapons they have acquired in these purchases have actually been American equipment, of pre-GiE vintage, re-purchased from the places they were sold to or left behind. They have managed to acquire some modern equipment here and there, and even retain a small, but doggedly persistent, domestic arms industry. We believe at least one TNE-based 'wunderwaffen' design is in limited production, though we have few details. While we are not currently planning military operations against the USA-GND or the USA-TAC, a brief summary of the two of them follows: - the Government of National Defense, based out of Cheyenne Mountain, survives mostly on inertia and its remaining stockpile of nuclear weapons. Based on DOROTHY intercepts we are nearly certain that the majority of the GND's nuclear arsenal no longer actually functions, but they definitely retain at least one functioning warhead, probably 4-6. They exercise significant control over local governments in their administered territory, but unlike the GiE's Joint Chiefs, are very adamant that they are not technically operating under martial law, with their opposition to the 'illegal' martial law declaration, and Agnew's equally 'illegal' lifetime presidency, being their sole claim to legitimacy. The GND's army is numerically very large relative to their population, fairly loyal due to being given broad liberties and preferential treatment relative to the civilian population, and qualitatively very poor, mostly equipped as light infantry with their mobile elements mostly composed of horse cavalry. Their air force is surprisingly modern and well-trained, but small, and hamstrung by limited supplies of fuel and spare parts. - the True American Coalition, in the Rockies, are barely a government at all. The charitable reading of their activities, the one they prefer themselves, is that they are preserving, protecting, and defending the true United States, acting as its guardians and protectors, as the military should be, while allowing the civilians under their protection to govern themselves, free from martial law or the oppressive all-seeing FBI. The uncharitable reading is that they're a glorified protection racket, neither capable of nor interested in effectively administrating the territory they control, content to let the local governments take care of that themselves so long as they keep up regular payments of food, resources, and recruits, but at the same time completely unwilling to actually subordinate themselves to those governments. Our assessment is that they have surprisingly high popular support in the area they control, and they have actually done a very good job of improving local security and eliminating bandit and paramilitary activity in the region. Notably, the TAC sits in the North American Forum, representing itself as simply 'the US Army' in those proceedings. They have been surprisingly conciliatory in the Forum. August 29, 1986, cont. As always, it's been 45 minutes by the time Earth finds out about it. Not even Trans-Newtonian space magic has circumvented the light delay yet. There is at least one live, conscious Roswell on Mars, and they were watching our archaeology teams. The security crew attempted to communicate, but with no radio that would be very difficult even with another human. Once the extraterrestrial figured out that our team wasn't holding them at gunpoint, they ran away into the surrounding ruins. They're already long gone by the time the information is relayed back to you. The team will stay alert and vigilant, and will follow established first contact protocols (which you have now even tested!) should they encounter another. On their own initiative, the team on site decides to limit themselves to already-secured areas of the ruins for now, unless you explicitly order otherwise. Photographs of the figure are sent back to Ascension. The obvious human interpretation of the suit is a military uniform - it's camouflaged, the chest piece could be hypothesized to be body armor, there are visible pouches and pockets. There is something that, to a human, might be called a holster, containing what might be a weapon. If this is a soldier, where is their unit? September 2, 1986 The Minervan expedition, who have been sitting in one place for months and months, communicated yesterday to our new friends that they are, with their permission, going to begin surveys of the other moons in the system, and will remain in communication. The surveys will take at least two months. Once completed, there is discussion about possibly bringing the ship and crew home; their mission has run long, and they are so very far away from Earth. 'PLEASE RELAY IF FIND NOT FROM ANYWHERE CHEMICAL ELEMENT COMBUSTIBLE FUEL. NONE REMAINING, NEED VERY MUCH'. 'Not from anywhere chemical element' is presumably them trying to talk about TNEs, and our team immediately relays a barrage of questions for the expedition to ask them, to use that as a jumping-off point for discussing TN physics. Our vocabulary is getting extensive now, and there is debate about possibly moving on from the shared universal language soon and beginning to attempt to teach, and learn, the actual languages used by the two species. September 5, 1986  The Lunar Self-Defense Force was originally created as an ad-hoc militia intended to maintain safety and security, and has in its few short years of existence become a small, but proud, professional military, with battles of its own, traditions of its own. The nation it serves has a population of over thirty million, and it must expand to meet the responsibility of defending that population from possible external threats. The first phase of that expansion is completed today, with the activation of Orbital Defense Command Lunagrad. The personnel are Lunar citizens, and when they and the equipment are shipped to the Moon, they will form the command and control infrastructure for the LSDF's planned network of orbital defense railguns. September 9, 1986 The Cydonia archaeology team breaches 'Ship B', the presumed-Minervan vessel docked in the Face, and begins exploration and cataloguing of the interior. A few notes from the initial survey of the ship: - The outer doors were closed but were not sealed, and the interior was open to the atmosphere; gaining access was as simple as pulling the outer airlock door open. The inner airlock door was already open. - There is a retractable walkway built into the 'dock', attached to a movable assembly presumably designed to allow it to mate to ships of different size and configuration. There is a coupling system on the walkway, the 'male' side of which mates to 'female' equivalents on the spacecraft, as though they were designed to be used together. - There are no bodies immediately obvious on board. - No signs of a struggle or obvious damage in the initial sweep. - The interior spaces are clean, sparse, and almost devoid of artifacts, beyond some objects mounted on the floors and walls that are presumed to be furniture. One member of the team remarks that it looks like it's been cleaned out. A more detailed report will follow as they meticulously break this thing down into its component parts. September 13, 1986 An at-scale test of Trans-Newtonian pseudogravity in low Earth orbit successfully produces and sustains an equivalent of 0.3 G across twenty square meters of plating, with the gravity emulation extending about three meters 'above' the plating. Plant and animal test subjects placed in the station survived with no noticeable medical complications. The Joint Committee for Artificial Gravity's Lunagrad test facility is prepared for an even larger-scale test on the Lunar surface. September 22, 1986 On the Moon, initial preparation of the sites and build-out of life support infrastructure for the first LIMIT Act mandated industrial development is completed, specifically the new Lunagrad spaceport. All that remains is to actually ship the equipment there and assemble the final structure, which should be finished in November. Excavation and site preparation efforts are already well underway for the mass driver facility and the first batch of TNE mines. September 25, 1986 Nearly a month after the initial encounter, the now extremely vigilant LSDF security teams at Cydonia spot the 'scout', as they've taken to calling the alien they spotted, again (presumably; it may be multiple entities), observing them from a distance from a concealed position. This time, the FESTER stations in orbit, once alerted by the ground team as to exactly where to look, are able to observe the encounter, and follow the entity as it eventually departs, making its way on foot to an intact structure in the ruins about four kilometers away from the Face, with an active thermal signature. The early surveys of the site marked the structure in question as having characteristics consistent with being pressurized and containing an atmosphere. We will watch closely for any further sightings, while the Earth team workshops plans for what to do. October 3, 1986  The Matveyev Design Bureau completes their assigned project to develop improved TNE capacitors, mandated as part of military modernization efforts. The labs and resources are reallocated to theoretical TN physics research, focusing on the 'jump point' hypothesis that is all the rage in scientific circles right now. October 8, 1986  As part of preparations for END OF THE LINE, the fleet has been running drills, again and again and again. These serve a dual purpose as a stress test of the newly mandated maintenance facilities. Ship Commander SavageGentleman of the 1st Patrol Squadron and their crew have particularly distinguished themselves in the exercises. October 10, 1986 Over a month after beginning work, the team assigned to disassemble Ship B have completed 'Phase One' of the investigation, detailed report to follow, along with a summary of other archaeological discoveries at the site to date. October 13, 1986  A paper by Academician Lenoon detailing revolutionary new TN-based electromagnetic sensing instruments is published in a prestigious journal. They continue to establish themselves as one of the premier experts in the field. 40% bonus is very, very good, they're tied for our best researcher in terms of bonus. October 18, 1986  The equipment and personnel for the first two batteries of the LSDF's Orbital Defense Brigade are complete and ready for deployment. They will be shipped to the Moon immediately, and deployed at already-prepared facilities constructed as part of the LIMIT Act preparations. October 22, 1986 The tractor beam module of the Aphrodite tug is mounted in place and initial testing of the module is underway. Work continues on the ship's enormous 'Orion' nuclear pulse propulsion system. October 27, 1986 A third sighting of the 'scout' is recorded on Mars, again observing our personnel. They emerged from a different structure this time, and return to a different structure, still kilometers away from the Face, still on foot. It may be multiple entities, or there may be tunnels, or they may have simply moved from one building to another without us observing them. We have, as of today, established a basic shared vocabulary for concepts of Trans-Newtonian physics with our Minervan allies; using that, we have confirmed that their spacecraft use refined sorium for propulsion, much as ours do, and that they do not have enough of it on hand to leave. If they're telling the truth, they're stuck there. Geosurveys of Minerva's moons continue. A report will follow. No sorium has been located yet - but the survey is moving from the outside in, and we have yet to survey the gas giant itself.
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Nov 30, 2022 06:34
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The TAC is very, very odd. I wonder what their endgame is? Their high popular support is odd.
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Nov 30, 2022 06:50
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Excited to see this back!
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Nov 30, 2022 07:02
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NewMars posted:The TAC is very, very odd. I wonder what their endgame is? Their high popular support is odd. I'm not certain that they have one. As for the support, a little concern for the civilian population goes a long way.
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Nov 30, 2022 07:04
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paragon1 posted:I'm not certain that they have one. As for the support, a little concern for the civilian population goes a long way. Yeah, when the options are 'roving bandits', 'military martial law', or 'godless commies' (hahaha) then paying a little protection money can seem a real good deal.
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Nov 30, 2022 08:11
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So the theory seems to be correct that the Minervans are stranded there due to lacking Sorium fuel. From orbit, their facilities look like they MIGHT be built up enough to refine the stuff, but it just might not be in the planetary system. I guess if they were really desperate they could have refined the abundant ice of the moon into hydrolox fuel for more low-tech conventional rockets, but I guess just the sheer distances involved made it kinda pointless to invest in rocketry that comparatively slow. The fact there are Roswells also running around is also weird. Are they stranded too from lack of fuel? Is it like a dozen guys left and they just don't have any sort of industrial base on Mars? They seem to have ships in the Face that aren't obviously broken or anything. Why is there no refined Sorium around the Solar System? The gas giants are positively saturated with the crude stuff, but show no signs of harvesting that we can detect. What happened here?
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Nov 30, 2022 08:25
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Asterite34 posted:So the theory seems to be correct that the Minervans are stranded there due to lacking Sorium fuel. From orbit, their facilities look like they MIGHT be built up enough to refine the stuff, but it just might not be in the planetary system. I guess if they were really desperate they could have refined the abundant ice of the moon into hydrolox fuel for more low-tech conventional rockets, but I guess just the sheer distances involved made it kinda pointless to invest in rocketry that comparatively slow. My guess? Most likely, this place is just a fairly isolated outer system that was never meant to get long term infrastructure set up, so there's no harvesting facilities. It was likely either for research purposes or military detection ones.
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Nov 30, 2022 08:39
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NewMars posted:My guess? Most likely, this place is just a fairly isolated outer system that was never meant to get long term infrastructure set up, so there's no harvesting facilities. It was likely either for research purposes or military detection ones. But if it's distant and isolated, you would still need fuel to send ships back home. You would expect it to be cheaper to set up a harvesting facility than ship refined sorium fuel to the edge of nowhere. My guess is there was a facility at one point that got wiped in a battle, but it was such a long time ago we just don't see any remaining debris from it.
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Nov 30, 2022 11:25
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Sorium's just starship fuel, right? I'm just trying to figure if they're going "help, life support's gonna fail soon" or if they're going "help, this place sucks and we wanna go home". Either way I say we should be neighbourly and lend them a tanker of the stuff but it'd be nice to know if it was an emergency and we need to scramble a long-range transport or if it's something we add to the next few years' plans.
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Nov 30, 2022 11:30
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They might just bail if we give them fuel, but it would be the neighborly thing to do for sure
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Nov 30, 2022 11:34
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HiHo ChiRho posted:But if it's distant and isolated, you would still need fuel to send ships back home. You would expect it to be cheaper to set up a harvesting facility than ship refined sorium fuel to the edge of nowhere. Could be that the "gates" that we havn't researched yet ceased functioning and left these dudes stranded in an undeveloped system. They fought, maybe were fighting, beforehand and quickly ran out of resources.
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Nov 30, 2022 11:35
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sebmojo posted:They might just bail if we give them fuel, but it would be the neighborly thing to do for sure Who do they inform when they get home? Yes it's the right thing to do, but at what risk do we put ourselves by informing a wider community of our presence?
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Nov 30, 2022 12:03
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sebmojo posted:They might just bail if we give them fuel, but it would be the neighborly thing to do for sure Sure, but even if they do bail we'll be able to see how/where they bail, and hopefully they'll pass word along to the rest of their people we're chill and speed along diplomatic efforts. OPAONI posted:Who do they inform when they get home? Yes it's the right thing to do, but at what risk do we put ourselves by informing a wider community of our presence? Eh, we're gonna have to stick our dick in that particular wasp's nest sooner or later, might as well do it with hopefully friendly relations to one part of that community.
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Nov 30, 2022 12:11
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HiHo ChiRho posted:But if it's distant and isolated, you would still need fuel to send ships back home. You would expect it to be cheaper to set up a harvesting facility than ship refined sorium fuel to the edge of nowhere. Didn't we detect a lot of wreckage in the outer planets orbits, where there's a shitton of sodium? Almost certainly some of that is a remnant of sorium harvesting and refining.
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Nov 30, 2022 14:29
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paragon1 posted:Didn't we detect a lot of wreckage in the outer planets orbits, where there's a shitton of sodium? Almost certainly some of that is a remnant of sorium harvesting and refining. quote:September 5, 1982 quote:
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Nov 30, 2022 15:28
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My tentative guess is that the two alien presences were probably fighting at some point, but that's a very tentative guess.
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Nov 30, 2022 15:32
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Some of the stuff we've seen suggests a civil war. I wonder if other alien species were involved as well?
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Nov 30, 2022 15:37
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Asterite34 posted:So the theory seems to be correct that the Minervans are stranded there due to lacking Sorium fuel. From orbit, their facilities look like they MIGHT be built up enough to refine the stuff, but it just might not be in the planetary system. I guess if they were really desperate they could have refined the abundant ice of the moon into hydrolox fuel for more low-tech conventional rockets, but I guess just the sheer distances involved made it kinda pointless to invest in rocketry that comparatively slow. The giant debris field where functioning civilizations would put giant sorium refineries is what happened, pretty sure. Somebody rolled through in the last half a century or so and blew up a bunch of poo poo around the gas giants, there presumably was a gas station in-system until then.
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Nov 30, 2022 16:33
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Sorry if this is well understood and I missed it, but: -The Minervans are a different species from the Roswells, right? If so, helping the Minervans could implicitly mean "picking a side." -Do we even know why the Minervans are out there? Not saying not to give them sorium but it would be good to understand what we'd be getting ourselves into if we help them out!
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Nov 30, 2022 17:01
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The Minervans were a subject species dominated by the Roswell empire, right? Or at least that's what they told us? Lemme see if I can go back and dig up the actual quotes, this is just half-remembered stuff from months ago off the top of my head.
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Nov 30, 2022 17:38
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Mister Bates posted:November 22, 1985 Here we go. Our shared vocabulary doesn't have very developed political concepts but "subject race conquered by force" is what I personally read into "THEM COMMUNICATE (POSSIBLE MISTRANSLATION: GREATER/LARGER?). WE ACKNOWLEDGE AND CONCUR, GOOD. WE DO NOT CONCUR, BAD." The Roswells communicated that they were "GREATER/LARGER", if the Minervans acknowledged their superiority then good things will happen. If the Minervans rejected Roswell superiority, bad things would happen. Sounds like a classic "do what I say because I have lots of guns pointed at you" kinda setup.
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Nov 30, 2022 17:44
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Still no explanation of why they're on Minerva 7 though. Prison full of political dissidents? Remote observation outpost? An industrial colonization effort the Roswells staffed with a subject species more amenable to the environment? A refuge the Minervans built themselves to hide in when they fled the Roswells as far as their Sorium reserves could carry them? Some combination of the above? We need more pieces of the puzzle. Partly just from continuing to expand our political vocabulary with the Minervans. But another useful tidbit would be found by tracking down the Martian who keeps skulking around Cydonia and asking some questions and getting their side of all this. Those guys have been central to this whole drama, and I feel we are owed some explanations.
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Nov 30, 2022 19:23
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Getting some "Japanese soldier still fighting the war from a cave 30 years later because he has no where else to go" vibes. It would be good to know more about the political aspects, but I'm guessing this particular scout has been skulking around the research team to see what we're up to, but doesn't really see us as either a threat, or something that can be stopped, with my money on the former. We should consider placing signs, water, and maybe either low power radios or hard line communication devices near the structures we have observed as still being habitable. We probably ought to ask the Minervans more about the roswells; do they have a language, do they have factions, why did they abandon the Minervans? Also, we might want to ask the Minervans if there's something they would prefer we call them, instead of Minervans?
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Nov 30, 2022 20:16
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Gonna be the voice of dissident and suggest that we not tell the Martian holdouts that we're actively tracking and logging their remaining active bases by giving them supplies
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Nov 30, 2022 21:10
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ThatBasqueGuy posted:Gonna be the voice of dissident and suggest that we not tell the Martian holdouts that we're actively tracking and logging their remaining active bases by giving them supplies And, by process of elimination, which bases and surface access routes we're not tracking. Could totally start a prime sequence broadcast though and try to make formal contact, though.
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Nov 30, 2022 22:14
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Volmarias posted:We probably ought to ask the Minervans more about the roswells; do they have a language, do they have factions, why did they abandon the Minervans? For this one at least I'm pretty sure the them-but-not-them the Minervans are talking about is trying to communicate a concept analogous to civil war, or multiple polities mainly populated by the Roswell species, or something along those lines. So yeah, factions of some sort, and (everything after this is me really stretching, not what the Minervans said) the solar system seems to have been the site of some sort of battle between different Roswell polities?
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Nov 30, 2022 23:54
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Crazycryodude posted:For this one at least I'm pretty sure the them-but-not-them the Minervans are talking about is trying to communicate a concept analogous to civil war, or multiple polities mainly populated by the Roswell species, or something along those lines. So yeah, factions of some sort, and (everything after this is me really stretching, not what the Minervans said) the solar system seems to have been the site of some sort of battle between different Roswell polities? Right, I just want to know what they know about all of this.
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Dec 1, 2022 00:14
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Crazycryodude posted:For this one at least I'm pretty sure the them-but-not-them the Minervans are talking about is trying to communicate a concept analogous to civil war, or multiple polities mainly populated by the Roswell species, or something along those lines. Hm, I'd interpreted it to mean the Roswells are a multi-species empire.
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Dec 1, 2022 00:49
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We'd have a better picture of things if the battle that took place at Cydonia had left any non-Roswell bodies for us to examine. The fact we haven't found anything means either only one species was involved, or more concerning, the attackers didn't leave a single corpse of their own behind 
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Dec 1, 2022 01:05
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ThatBasqueGuy posted:Gonna be the voice of dissident and suggest that we not tell the Martian holdouts that we're actively tracking and logging their remaining active bases by giving them supplies Innocent_Bystander posted:And, by process of elimination, which bases and surface access routes we're not tracking. Could always leave supplies out in the open with a prime number relay where we made physical contact if we want to cut down the middle, though I wonder how trusting or desperate they'd have to be to go for it.
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Dec 1, 2022 02:41
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