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Oh, this should be interesting. MoO 2 gave me fits for years until I sat down with a bunch of LPs and strategy guides, and I still wouldn't say I'm any good at it. We have not yet recovered from the Great Blights, and in the absence of any known threats to defend against, we should focus on being able to increase the speed at which we build up everything else. We shouldn't be completely helpless, though. Anyone or anything could be charging down those space lanes. Star Base, Biology, Civilian Exploration.
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Sep 26, 2016 09:00
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Heh. It occurs to me that the Silicoids are nearly the opposite of the Chenjesu.
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Sep 27, 2016 07:12
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We've just been caught off-guard. Autofacs to get things up to speed faster, Economics to get things up to speed faster, Colony Ship so we don't have all our eggs in one basket, and Tarazad Prime because that's a mighty fine second basket there. I was actually tempted by Shaghar Prime, though, just to have a base to mine Shaghar II from. That was until I saw the spectrographic reports indicating that the atmosphere has somehow managed to maintain a reasonable amount of chlorine trifluoride. That stuff will set sand on fire. Back in the First Nuclear War they actually rejected it as an incendiary weapon because it was too unpleasant to deal with. Apparently they tried to use it as a rocket fuel after that. I have no records of that ending well. It would be lovely to get some kind of automated mining system down there that wouldn't immediately catch fire or explode, but not so lovely that it makes Shaghar Prime a better choice than Tarazad. --- Does NuMOO follow MoO1 or MoO2 with respect to toxic vs. radiated? In MoO 1, Radiated was the most difficult world type to colonize. I seem to recall that in MoO2 toxic worlds were permanently garbage, but Radiated worlds could be repaired by solving the radiation and lack-of-atmosphere problems independently. (Chlorine trifluoride brought to you by the immortal Things I Won't Work With)
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Oct 1, 2016 04:06
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Poil posted:Wait, so we might have bears sneaking around and gathering information on us without our knowledge? Colbert's prophetic warnings were lost in the Great Blight.
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Oct 4, 2016 07:39
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Libluini posted:Man, the Bulrathi are, like the other revived species of the remake, incredibly lucky to live in a parallel universe separate from the old games. MoO 1 and MoO 2, at least, and it seems NuMoO as well, are all essentially re-telling the same story. This idea that all of them running in series, with a brutal Pax Humanica and the rest, exists only in the MoO 3 manual. This may be why people who didn't play MoO 3 first give it so much side-eye, actually; it's kind of like if Civ VI were to try to justify its weird collection of civilizations and leaders by saying that this is the far future after Humanity nuked itself back into the stone age 5 times.
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Oct 6, 2016 08:07
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Is it actually possible in NuMoO to use spies as a true offensive weapon? My experience of them in the predecessors was that they really only served to let one play catch-up. That would be very interesting to see if it can be made to work. Likewise semi-permanent interdiction, which I can sort of see for MoO 1 but can't really make sense of for MoO 2 because of how planetary systems worked.
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Oct 15, 2016 04:30
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Speaking of economy, how hard would the Bulrathi have had to have been crippling their economy to build nine frigates? The tech on them sounds like they haven't actually gotten any non-starting tech, but I'm not sure how that shakes out.
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Oct 15, 2016 22:03
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Provisionally Friendly for now - we've got to make up our production that we lost to building warships instead of factories and research facilities. With nothing else really to do, keep team Alpha on Counter-Espionage. What would additional data gathering even get us? Xenobiotics for the tech. We almost wrecked Earth facing a single crisis, again. Let's not risk that on our colonies too. --- A side question: based on what we've seen on fleet sizes and now morale, how heavily did the Bulrathi early-invest in ships? Are we likely to keep enough of a force lead to keep them at bay? ETA: "The deadliest space weapon known to mankind [at the turn of the 21st century] is a bucket of sand in counter-orbit." ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Oct 24, 2016 |
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Oct 24, 2016 07:25
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I am amused by the fact that Humanity seems to be doing better, ecologically, than the Bulrathi here. From looking at the lore on the main website, their own backstory has Humanity rescued from ecological collapse by the Bulrathi as part of the backstory. This would seem to be yet another case of Humanity doing the X-COM thing of being better at the aliens' technologies than the aliens themselves. Neutron Collider if pollution is fine, otherwise Atmosphere Renewer Colony Ship, we need to make up for lost time The colony at Segel Prime should be named New Gobi. It is far less hospitable than the places we have sent other colonists, while still being relatively Earthlike. No opinion on research.
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Oct 31, 2016 02:16
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MechaCrash posted:I don't expect to see bioweapons get shown off here for the same reason I don't expect to see any planets getting bombed clean, but at least now bioweapons are actually worth considering instead of a terrible boondoggle for puppykickers. This seems to be a return to form, then, because your description matches my memory of how they worked in Master of Orion 1.
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Oct 31, 2016 05:58
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I like the MoO2/NuMoO "make a choice" rather than the roll-the-dice approach of SotS. I'm also changing my vote to New Babylon. I figure this is its name amongst English speakers, and that it would be Nueva Babylon amongst Spanish speakers, and so forth.
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Nov 1, 2016 04:43
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I'll vote for broadening and empowering our industrial base, though ideally we should also try to clean up our planets a bit too. Deal with the spies quietly once. For all we know they've seen what we got up to, ourselves, but just haven't mentioned it unless provoked. Better to have them fire back with evidence of the IIA's own actions in quiet channels rather than shouted across the hyperlanes. Typo note: "macroscoping applications" should almost certainly be "macroscopic".
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Nov 21, 2016 06:18
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Stormgear posted:Have you ever heard of anyone drifting in a power armor? No, because we've never had the opportunity. Powered Armor will revolutionize sports as well as construction and infantry! Going back to my earlier vote to clarify it - I'm actually kind of in a haze about the way technology even works in this game. It seems like there are multiple menus that include techs and subtechs, and I'm unfamiliar with the game's tech tree. So I'm basically trying to reply "half-in-character." If it doesn't invalidate the vote, my vote is an abstention on which tech to pursue, but specialize the tech we go with for industrial applications if possible. If a primary vote is required, then I have selected Artificial Gravity as the "donkey vote" - it was listed first on the ballot.
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Nov 22, 2016 08:48
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That helps a lot. That's enough to firm my vote to Artificial Gravity, industrial spec for now.
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Nov 22, 2016 17:15
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I'm seconding wedgekree's general plan. Initiate War Plan Red, with military research. Spies should be Covert and our diplomatic policy should be Raven. The Bulrathi took peacefulness as weakness before. We must remain uncowed, and we must also hope that a determined show of force capability can serve as a deterrent. If it can, then all the better. If not, then better WAR PLAN RED than CASE NIGHTMARE GRIZZLY.
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Nov 24, 2016 08:14
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I'm actually going to suggest Galactic Trading so that we can have our nascent colonies up to speed faster.
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Nov 25, 2016 01:52
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Steam seems to be trying to make sense of them; I don't seem to be able to buy them on their own. Each individual race is "$N/A", trying to purchase one purchases the bundle, and the bundle's $10.
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Dec 5, 2016 00:33
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AJ_Impy posted:We want peace. Prepare for war. Dove, but yea on war economy, expeditionary force recruitment, the Peacemaker robo miners and defences on Niflheim. I am replicating AJ_Impy's vote.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:14
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Pliny seems to be winning the initial vote.
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Dec 6, 2016 08:23
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I'm not sure it rolls off the tongue well, to be honest; Scipio alone is pretty nice, and Alexander or Ashoka would seem to be in a similar vein. That said, I have to say that naming a "Peacemaker" class after Roman generals brings to mind the old Tacitus quote about how they make a desert and call it peace. Tacitus apparently took the game engine update.
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Dec 6, 2016 09:03
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Fortunately for eventual Human-Bulrathi assimilated coexistence, apparently both species metabolize the same alcohols and consider them culturally important.
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Dec 10, 2016 05:04
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quote:a set of metal exercises  I assume that was "mental", but you never can tell with those Earthfolk. Ion Fission. Yea on new colonization. Wait for the Chevalier. We seem to take steady attrition. No opinion on ship designs. Also, since I wasn't clear on this from the screenshots: Do troop transports show up as part of the in-game combat? How were they lost?
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Dec 13, 2016 07:59
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Does nuMoO do the same thing that MoO2 did where assimilation was different for different kinds of governments? I always thought that was a nice touch, even if it was a little bit odd at times. It didn't really come up your MoO2 Human Republic LP (which I liked a lot, incidentally), but while the Klackon get assimilated as fast as anyone else (and, indeed, Humanity is unreasonably good at assimilation of conquered species as one of their powers), Klackon are awful at assimilating anyone else. I seem to recall a factor of five or so in assimilation rate. That also said, the numbers here do fit pretty well with our envelope estimates for how long it would take for the xeno-relation scars to heal amongst the populace - assimilating 16 population units at 8 years per unit is 128 years... which is to say, about three generations of humans. ... so that kind of checks out, really.
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Dec 14, 2016 07:19
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Fun fact! Humans evolved from a species that used small items in their environment as improvised missile weapons. As a result every member of the species retains at least a basic ability to hurl arbitrary objects at relatively small targets. FAKE EDIT: Huh, that image embed didn't work because it's a video. Welp.
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Dec 20, 2016 04:09
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Ground Weapons, Bulra Last, Nay on rapid transport expansion. The third to enable the second. Our beef is with the Empire, not the Bulrathi. Ideally this means tearing down the Empire with Bulrathi troops. Molecular Compression next, that sounds like fun. Counterpiracy seems to be keeping us pretty busy, so it's not clear to me that the PInaka can be spared. B on the new xenocivilizations. If we're already friendly with the Mrrshan and standoffish with the Klackon, there's no obvious reason to go back on what steps we've taken.
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Jan 17, 2017 06:12
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Here's a possibly fun question that could be misinterpreted as a critique of lazy worldbuilding: how "alien" do these species consider each other? The Mrrshan, Bulrathi, and Humans are in an interesting situation, culturally, with respect to one another. They have very similar body plans (bipedal, four limbs, analogs to fat and hair for warmth) and it is easy to find high-level analogs between the three for many aspects of their physiology. Meanwhile, Sol seems to have been friendlier to liquid water than Fierias or Kholdan, and this may have translated into a broader biological diversity on Earth. As a result, Humans have some ready-made analogs for the Mrrshan and Bulrathi—who seem to be humanlike cats and bears—and a somewhat more tenuous analog for the Klackon (Earthly land arthropods never managed Klackon sizes). Meanwhile, the Darlok do not show their physical forms, the Meklar aren't "life" as Humans know it, and the Psilon have an unearthly body plan that is still at first glance quite close to the the meta-mammals. So here is my question: To what degree is this two-way? Humans bear very little resemblance to non-tool-using mammals and even non-tool-using primates, so actual evolutionary history isn't a reliable guide for this, but do the Mrrshan or Bulrathi consider Humans to be Mrrshanized/Bulrathized versions of one of their own native species? Have the decades of conflict between Human and Bulrathi altered any such metaphor? Does Kholdan even have mammalian-like life forms sufficient to provide these metaphors? FAKE EDIT: Man, and while I"m writing this up the Humans in the comments go wild with internet videos, so we know how Earth rolls...
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Jan 18, 2017 23:52
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I find it interesting how drastically different the Meklar are between MoO 1/2, 3, and NuMoO.nweismuller posted:The naked howler is a gregarious animal that nests in bands, can be friendly if domesticated, and has a near-preternatural ability to get into trouble between its high agility, good manipulative abilities, and possession of just enough brains to get itself firmly into places it shouldn't be. I can definitely see Humans acknowledging the metaphor as fair. This is also kind of interesting because—along with the other differences in ecosystems and natural talents—it implies that the athletic feat that is most distinctively human would be acrobatic gymnastics. Floor routines would be more common, but the more "arboreal" types like the uneven bars would fit the stereotype better and Human physiology might also simply be better at it. Rick_Hunter posted:I'm gonna go with the Star Trek answer: It's easier to portray alien races as humanoid because it's easy to slap make up or a suit on a human. "Because the creators were lazy/deliberately evoking lazy space opera" is indeed the most likely answer, which is why I was trying to avoid that answer by flipping the script. The Mrrshan wouldn't see themselves as the ones in the suits.
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Jan 19, 2017 03:07
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Rick_Hunter posted:I mean it's the most likely answer for 20th century TV but I wonder if it's a psychological thing that humans have developed over thousands of years. Just like a fear of the dark or anything having more than 4 limbs, maybe it's a comfort to the human mind to imagine unknown things in their shape if they're from the stars/sky/space. Well, if we want to go that route, Humanity has associated animals with various traits and aspects of humanity for as long as we've been human. We also domesticated dogs before we worked out agriculture. The idea of humans getting along with some animals, to the point that they are basically family, is older than all our civilizations and a definite Trait Of Humanity That Isn't Guaranteed To Be Universal. Fictional cat aliens aren't far from no-longer-credible cat spirits.
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Jan 19, 2017 09:28
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Crazycryodude posted:TL;DR - when it was just us and Space Bears, it was pretty easy to ignore the hard questions. Now that we're confronted with a strange and wonderful galaxy, it may be time to realize that our 18th century ideology is outmoded (or at least needs needs a major overhaul). It's certainly the case that we have tiers of alienness. It's also interesting because some of the crosscutting lines don't match them. TIER ZERO: Humans, Bulrathi. They already share a polity, albeit not entirely by choice. But still, they can. TIER ONE: Mrrshan, Psilon. Bulrathi were Tier One before the war, too. Each society at this tier has a wealth of examples from its own history of how to deal with other such civilizations. It would be a dire mistake for any civilization here to think of members of the other species as being basically just like them, but variation within each species is significant enough that it's a natural error to make. TIER TWO: Meklar, Klackon. The mental and social worlds of these species is sufficiently inhuman that no direct analogues can be identified. Even the most basic of interactions needs to be carefully mediated to ensure, not merely that offense is not given, but that communication happens successfully at all. UNCLASSIFIED: Darlok. Taken at their word, they would really like to be considered a highly-compatible Tier One society with humans. However, given how they went about doing this, they managed to actually give offense by mimicking some of Humanity's historical societies of which they are least proud. The presence of analogs, albeit uniformly negative ones, would put them into Tier One, but the possibility that this was a tremendous xenological fuckup on their part is evidence that they should be treated as Tier Two. There are some interesting commonalities across the known species of the Galaxy, and they don't always neatly match alienness. First, it seems we all run on carbohydrates, and everyone who isn't the Meklar also uses relatively similar proteins and fats as the building blocks of their bodies. It is possible for all of our species to profitably learn from one another's agricultural techniques, even if the crops themselves are different. Second, two species seem to have been the result of intentional creation: the Psilon and Meklar. Of the two, the Psilon seem far more culturally similar to Humanity. Third, alienness matters. We have had two incidents of armed confrontation with our scouts so far, and the Human reaction has been far more forgiving with the Mrrshan. This isn't just because that confrontation had no casualties; had there been deaths on either side, it is quite easy to imagine some appropriately solemn joint statement and ceremony that would satisfy both Mrrshan and Human senses of justice while carefully not blaming anybody for anything. It is much more difficult to see the Darlok replicating that feat, precisely due to the lack of any shared context.
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Jan 20, 2017 06:10
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The real question is whether the Darlok tender a statement that hits all the exact notes we'd accept as reasonable had it come from the Mrrshan or pre-War Bulrathi, acting in the assumption of a common ground they clearly do not have. That also said: we got that spy fix. Let's see if we can figure out what they're up to before doing anything too rash. It'd be super-embarassing if these guys had been being vague to keep alien species from accidentally awakening Galactic Cthulhu.
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Jan 20, 2017 06:28
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nweismuller posted:For the person who was wearing a tinfoil hat because the Darlok home system is 'Nazin'... given their visual design in MoO1, I am reasonably sure what 'Nazin' is is an allusion to is 'Nazgul'. In MoO1, they were portrayed as seemingly immaterial cloaked beings with glowing red eyes. Their military representative for when they captured technology by military means even wielded an Ominous Rune-Etched Sword!  (image courtesy the Alien Species wiki) Not only that, one of the default Darlok emperor names is "Nazgur".
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Jan 24, 2017 09:18
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The Solarian Republic now controls two worlds that were cradles for sentient life. To properly integrate the Bulrathi into a single workable civilization will be the work of at least another generation, maybe two. It is our position that the Bulrathi are culturally similar enough to Humanity that we may easily share a single Republic. We have no reason to believe this will scale to the Galaxy. Some other solution must be found to ensuring a stable shared prosperity throughout the Galaxy. Human and Bulrathi interests will be best preserved if individual self-determination is a widely held or at least respected value across the Galaxy—to this end the Mrrshan and Meklar are our natural allies while the Klackon and Darlok are particularly problematic. The Psilon are a relatively unknown quantity with good prospects for coexistence but very little hard data. The "Alkari" civilization is a complete unknown. I support the following priorities in domestic and foreign policy. from most immediate to most long-term: Minimize ecological cross-contamination between Sol and Ursa. This is most immediate primarily because one cannot unscramble an egg. The biodiversity of both homeworlds should be treated as precious, and medical research may require as well-preserved a source ecosystem as possible. Human and Bulrathi biology is known to be at least partially compatible—invasive species are a genuine risk for us all. Maintain IIA at a high level of vigilance. The Imperial spy agency is broken, but there are many more players now aware of our existence and of one another. Republic law should continue to hold over captured spies, but we must be sure of our targets. Actively Pursue a Non-Aggression Pact with the Mrrshan. We have already had several accidental confrontations. A clear delineation of rights and responsibilities will help avoid unpleasant incidents. We do not recommend a full military alliance at this time unless they actively request our assistance—immediate hostilities against the Klackon are not in our interests. Aggressively pursue information about unknown species. We should be trying to find the "Alkari" civilization, and we should be attempting to survey the Darlok civilization to see who exactly these beings truly are. It is impossible to assess the wisdom of confrontation without knowing more about their strength. It is inconsistent with Republic ideals to launch first-strike attacks against the unknown, so a peaceful but wary attitude towards the Darlok is our current recommendation. Investigate agricultural exchange with the Meklar. Humans and Bulrathi alike prize sugar as a cash crop, both in its own right and when refined or fermented. The Meklar, however, have been using sugar-bearing plants as their agricultural staple. If this crop is compatible with metamammalian biology it may improve our colony seedling kits. Begin laying groundwork for some kind of pan-Galactic forum for diplomacy and conflict resolution. This is presently premature given the current state of interstellar travel and communication, but it should be possible sooner rather than later.
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Jan 26, 2017 05:40
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I would like to note that Ars Technica wins the prize for finest illustration of this publication.
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Jan 27, 2017 05:49
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The new information determined about the Darlok does not alter our suggestions of a wary peace and high levels of IIA vigilance even with the Imperial spies gone. Furthermore, if leaked reports about the price the Quanta wanted for passage are true, we suggest a deprioritization of exploration in the Far Quadrant. The previous is the position paper published by the think tank in question. The following was presented to the Republic Senate Committee on Xenological Relations and has been tentatively classified as CONFIDENTIAL until further review. Disclosure to adversary forces could result in embarrassment or complications in achieving diplomatic and economic objectives. Senators and Observers, I am here to deliver the remainder of the report you requested. Given the current widespread distrust shown by both the Humans and the Darloks interviewed outside the Cabal's purview, our overall conclusions are being kept to this session. Furthermore, due to the lack of independent verification of our sources, all of our conclusions should be considered tentative. We have reasonable confidence in our assessments but they are only as good as the information we have received. It is our understanding that tentative agreements have already been made—we project with low but nonzero confidence that this will not materially improve relations between average citizens. We assess with higher confidence that past honoring of agreements with the Darlok are less likely to predict future compliance or cooperation; however, the degree to which the Cabal will defer short-term advantage for long-term gain remains unknown. Available evidence indicates that the Darlok are unsettled by both Humans and Bulrathi, and vice versa. There is very little hope in overcoming this in the near future. The Darlok prize secrecy and their diplomatic and trade proposals also strongly suggest that they are culturally nocturnal. Humans and Bulrathi are both creatures of daylight, in both the physical and metaphorical senses. It is interesting but probably not relevant that their biological history also runs in a manner counter to the species in the Republic. The Darlok relied on ambush and patient opportunism, while the Bulrathi relied on strength and Humanity on endurance and willpower. We assess with moderate confidence that the Republic is viewed as foolish and easily led, but extremely touchy and possessed of a terrible wrath if angered. This can be exploited to maintain a certain level of peace, but it will be a fragile one. We assess with moderate confidence that if the Darlok were to attempt acts of terrorism or economic sabotage against us that they would attempt to deflect our retaliation against the Meklar or Mrrshan. As a diplomatic think tank we have no information regarding evidence of covert operations by the Darlok within Republic space. However, we can assess with very high confidence based on their behavior in diplomacy and trade that they are passively absorbing all information they can about every other species in the Galaxy. Any information available via open sources must be assumed to be in the hands of the Darlok and obsessively analyzed. Treatment of our diplomatic envoys suggests that this is not two-way, and we will require SAPINT and aggressive SIGINT to achieve similar levels of understanding. Overall we are not optimistic about the prospects of long-term peace between the Republic and the Cabal. The Galaxy has thrived best in the open, and its greatest tragedies have been forged in the shadows. Our best hope for achieving a true long-term peace would be via the establishment of a broader framework of Galactic order that allowed both polities to operate in their comfort zones. Breaking character—I can totally see ways to make the Darlok and Humans be natural allies, but rigidly controlled communication and strict secrecy against an nweis civilization are a big hurdle to that. Add to this a predilection for spying and subterfuge and at least two of the three Galactic wars in this iteration of interstellar civilization being caused by blowback from black ops and it's hard to see a comfortable way forward. Despite being far more, well, human, I think most people would see the Darlok as more Klackon-alien than Mrrshan-alien. ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Jan 27, 2017 |
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Jan 27, 2017 07:18
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Siegkrow posted:While I see this as morally questionable, I will say that, if we could uplift dogs so they would serve as trackers and detectives, we would without a single thought. You could make a case that we did, but dog domestication is older than agriculture. You could thus also claim that human and dog have faced history together. The Mrrshan have been noted to domesticate animals in earlier fluff here, but the Galaxy's civilizations seem like they'd diverge on this. The Psilon and (apparently) Alkari were uplifted, the Meklar gain no real advantage from animal companions, the Klackon don't seem to form bonds in this way at all, and who knows what the Darlok do. Earth may be unusual here for its degree of interspecies cooperation and bonding.
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Jan 29, 2017 01:13
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I've just been calling it "The Republic." (Some (Most?)) Bulrathi have had the vote for many years now.
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Feb 1, 2017 20:17
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This question is only obviously relevant for the Mrrshan and Psilon, both of which seem to be relatively culturally compatible with the Solarian species. The Mrrshan's system is feudal, but feudal ties seem to provide a broader level of freedom for the Mrrshan than they did in Human or Bulrathi history. We also have had some success in working with them already. The Psilon Quanta is very distant, but they seem to be run largely as an administrative state where debate is the primary mode of persuasion. It is not clear either would thrive in the Republic without cultural and structural adjustments to the result, but the concerns of citizens of all three seem like they would be broadly similar. The Meklar are extremely alien, to the point that "individual rights" would be a complicated concept to even define. "Individual" is a more fluid notion for neural gel. However, the Meklar practice of self-exile homesteading would seem to indicate that they have a notion of independence as valuable. If our exact notion of sapient rights doesn't exist in their culture, it could easily be communicated. For their part, the Meklar would be able to model Sol-type cultures as isolated groups of moderately powerful sapients that must coexist but which cannot form more specialized Combines for advanced decision-making. We would be inefficient, slow, and fractious, but we would also have had to—by necessity—develop some useful heuristics. (To touch on an earlier point, the Meklar might also see our domesticated animals as mapping in some sense to low-sapience drones—and we do indeed legally protect our dogs from motivations beyond biodiversity concerns!) The Klackon have a similar problem with a definition of "individual". Sol-type cultures would want the "individual" to be whichever unit of Klackon life produced the strongest levels of independent willfulness in their own right, and it is not clear from our xenological studies whether that is "individual", "pod", "hive", or something more subtle. Individual lives clearly have enough volition to seek comfort and maintenance but if this hinges on their broader telepathic connections definitions of concepts like "dissent" get more complicated. The Darlok Cabal's approach to information control and dissemination makes it extremely obvious that the Cabal is no friend to Solar values. An unavoidable consequence of this is that we know too little about the Darlok to be able to reasonably work out whether this incompatibility is intrinsic to the species or a cultural artifact. It is conceivable that they could function acceptably in a Sol-type civilization. However, it is also conceivable that the closest notion they'd have to individual freedom would be something more along the lines of "that state in which nobody can stop you" than a notion of mutual respect of boundaries. Cultural adaptability seems to be a hallmark of most Galactic sapients, so the former is more likely than the latter. ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Feb 2, 2017 |
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Feb 2, 2017 06:14
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Two setting questions based on the variation in our contributions and the clarifications you're making: 1. I'd been operating on the assumption that the minds of the Main Combine Cycle were strongly superhuman intelligences, while the "average Meklar" had roughly human-scale intellect, and a variety of other beings existed with animal-level intelligence while still having the neural gel infrastructure. What is the distribution of intelligences amongst the Meklar? 2. The Bulrathi Empire has fallen, but counterinsurgency is still a concern of the Republic, while many billions of Bulrathi are productive members of our society. What is the governmental situation here? The approach the Republic has taken to the Empire does seem to be in the general vein of "we broke it, we bought it", but do Bulrathi in the long-standing colonies have the vote? Do they send representatives to Sol itself? How much power has been devolved? Cracking the fourth wall a bit, how does NuMoO handle mixed-race polities/planets?
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Feb 2, 2017 09:17
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Siegkrow posted:Sanity check: didn't we have some guy who was RPing as some kind of Space Donald Trump during the Alpha Centauri LP? I don't recall one, and it wouldn't have fit the fiction if there was. The Morganites were being run in the "decentralized social control increases freedom and wealth" mode and all the major characters played along with that. There was one guy trying to run a character based on the Ferengi-meets-40k dudes from Warframe but it didn't really go anywhere. (The only reason I remember that at all is because I had been quietly pushing a more subtly sinister take on the same mechanic in my own posts.) ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 07:49 on May 14, 2017 |
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May 14, 2017 07:46
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nweismuller posted:Subtly sinister take on the same mechanic... are you talking about how you were setting up for Future Societies with Davidson? I think the person he might be thinking of for Space Trump would have been one of the early RSP politicians, who was definitely trying to stir up added fear about the Gaians over the southern border. (To be fair, the Gaians pretty well proved they were indeed a threat before too long.) Ah could be, I was thinking the "tacky, gilded, openly worshipping Money" version of Fundamentalism. My preferred variant was future-sci-fi social engineering, based on "Secrets of the Human Brain", and wielded by profit-maximizing advertisers disregarding the broader side effects of their compaigns. Meaningless product differentiation means less actual innovation (-SCIENCE) but the resulting arbitrary and artifical cultural cohesion making outsiders stick out more (+PROBE), I think. Those types of characters or even social forces never really appeared in the thread though so it didn't show up much if at all in-character. E: grammar, clarity ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 20:47 on May 14, 2017 |
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May 14, 2017 20:42
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