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Foxfire_ posted:I'll take the survey officer. Hopefully I'll never have to go out exploring (in my games at least, aliens typically say hello by blasting a sensorless survey ship) Done. Ceebees posted:I'm presently too riddled with rhinoviruses to crunch numbers; could someone whose brain still functions please puzzle out completion times of the next two gate builders, and ETCs on their respective gate completion? UNAS Arthur C. Clarke should be finished around 28th April (for a total construction time of about six months/180 days). Thus, the final linelayer should complete in October 2036. By this time the Sol side of the gate to Roanoke should be completed. markus_cz posted:Oh, wow. This is... way more that what I've expected. Amazing, thanks. Kobata initially acepted my challenge to export between Aurora and SE and created the Aurora Space Engine Converter, and I've made a few updates here and there. It's not perfect, but it at least gets the bodies at the right size and in the right places. I went ahead and implemented your suggestions (removed oblateness entirely, commented out albedo until we can figure out a good way to translate Aurora albedo into SE albedo). Previous to this, they were hardcoded to only use those values (0.0 for bodies that don't support it, 0.367 for those that do). I also removed an explicit rotation period if the body is flagged by Aurora as tidally locked (some bodies that you'd think should be tidally locked are not, so setting the rotation period on them is still valid). What would be useful is a good set of rules to produce better looking planets. Many of the planets we've encountered so far are frozen terrestrial planets, a type not well supported within SE (at least as far as I can figure out). If you've got any ideas on how Aurora parameters can be mapped to SE planet types and config parameters, I'm all ears. You can PM me, email me (forum name @ gmail), or hop on our IRC channel. I don't want to clutter up the thread too much with technical SE-chat that will be of limited interested to the thread audience at large. Kommando posted:Dont put an officer on the ship and the gate will be constructed in a flat year. You can also assign an officer without a factory production bonus.
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Dec 12, 2013 19:41
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We should assign an officer with a small bonus, for plausible deniability, plus they might even fall for it, thinking we don't have a good one. If they pay us a bit more it'd be better to assign an officer with a medium-size bonus, but not our best.
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Dec 12, 2013 20:06
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Readingaccount posted:We should assign an officer with a small bonus, for plausible deniability, plus they might even fall for it, thinking we don't have a good one. quote:TO: FEAN simple. They're not giving us both leases and letting us keep our DSTS, so they dont get a quick gate. Considering what theyre sitting on, the leases around Saturn are a laughable pittance. Kommando posted:bgreman: Are the Odessa Accords still in effect as of Jan 2036? I'd like to know this, it pertains to the developments with Zhonggao and the Ruins Treaty.
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Dec 12, 2013 22:04
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Kommando posted:
Why wouldn't they be? They are a peace agreement and sharing treaty. Pretty much they'll always be in effect so long as we don't re-invade Mars. Peace treaties are kind of supposed to be permanent. Besides, the treaty specifically laid out that the ruin sharing portion of the original Treaty of Mars was to remain in effect. There were phases we were supposed to accomplish (like pulling out stuff), but with treaties, you an generally assume that anything without a time frame is more or less permanent. http://bgreman.com/AuroraLPWiki/Odessa_Accords
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Dec 12, 2013 22:53
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Jimmy4400nav posted:Why wouldn't they be? They are a peace agreement and sharing treaty. Pretty much they'll always be in effect so long as we don't re-invade Mars. Peace treaties are kind of supposed to be permanent. Besides, the treaty specifically laid out that the ruin sharing portion of the original Treaty of Mars was to remain in effect. There were phases we were supposed to accomplish (like pulling out stuff), but with treaties, you an generally assume that anything without a time frame is more or less permanent. If this is true then we are violating the Odessa Accords by not revealing the presence and location of the Belnar outpost. specifically the items in the Treaty of Mars
FEAN stated that they were wanting to amend the Treaty of Mars due to the UN pullout and new AoC 2035 treaty. If we wish to continue with this violation we should put forward a point to rescind the ruins sharing sections. Because at this moment I'm feeling like with this new info on New China and the JP Treaty ratified I should call to end the Ruins Treaty Moratorium and vote it down. But that wont make the Odessa Accords void.
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Dec 12, 2013 23:23
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Only Article 2 of the original treaty is still in effect. The Federation unilaterally withdrew from the Treaty of Mars at the beginning of the Mars Crisis and only reinstated Article 2, that being the article in reference to sharing technology gained from the Mars ruins. Article 6 of the ToM, which applies ToM to all other alien ruins, in considered null and void by UNEC as FEAN withdrew and did not reinstate this portion of the treaty. This was all discussed at length previously.
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Dec 12, 2013 23:25
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Gnooble posted:Only Article 2 of the original treaty is still in effect. The Federation unilaterally withdrew from the Treaty of Mars at the beginning of the Mars Crisis and only reinstated Article 2, that being the article in reference to sharing technology gained from the Mars ruins. Article 6 of the ToM, which applies ToM to all other alien ruins, in considered null and void by UNEC as FEAN withdrew and did not reinstate this portion of the treaty. AHA. I see. In my reading the whole section was quoted as standing in the Odessa Accords. So there is no violation. In that case.  UNITED NATIONS EXECUTIVE WHIP Using tiebreaking powers, UNEW Votes NO on reinstating or revising a Ruins sharing treaty.
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Dec 12, 2013 23:40
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Any way we could use the linelayer to deploy some sort of spy sat to ensure we can monitor all traffic to and from JP2? Or launch a probe on the far side to monitor FEAN activity on that side of the system?
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Dec 13, 2013 00:36
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Cheatum the Evil Midget posted:Any way we could use the linelayer to deploy some sort of spy sat to ensure we can monitor all traffic to and from JP2? Or launch a probe on the far side to monitor FEAN activity on that side of the system? My understanding of the way the game works is that unmanned vessels cannot make jump transits, so we'd need to have a ship already in their system to launch any probes. The most likely candidate for that--indeed, the only likely candidate for that--would be the linelayer stabilizing the gate from their end, and I can't imagine they would leave it unmonitored long enough for it to launch any sort of probe. Even if they did, as soon as the Federation found it, they'd know it was ours--not in the 'well, who else would do it?' sense but in the 'it is not mechanically possible for this object to belong to anyone but the United Nations' sense. It would, of course, be possible for bgreman to fluff something up in the way of a false-flag operation, but (a) I think it'd be best to stay within the rules of the game as much as possible and (b) any dirty tricks he lets us pull can be pulled by the Federation, Cornucopia, or yet-to-be-named aliens. As for putting something on our side of the gate to monitor it, the problem there is not monitoring it but doing so in a way they won't notice. We're not building some sort of giant ring we could hide sensors in; there's no material component to the gate at all. So we'd have to build something a fair distance away from the gate with passive sensors strong enough to (we hope) pick up anything that goes through the gate while letting us (we hope) be far enough away from the gate not to be caught if someone turns their actives on for some reason. That covers whether we can do it. As for whether we should do it, I see a lot of different attitudes on how we should treat the Federation in this thread, ranging from 'I for one welcome our new communist overlords' to 'as soon as we've overcome MAD, nuke them until they glow'. There's nothing wrong with differences of opinion, but it might be helpful for our policy decisions to be made from a more... coherent viewpoint. To this point, I am formally requesting (to the extent that someone who is ICly operating a meson base in the middle of nodamnwhere can do so) that the United Nations draft a resolution or policy or whatever it's called to determine the status of the Federation (and Cornucopia while we're at it) wrt diplomacy, warfare, et cetera--decide what is and isn't acceptable for us to do to them and for them to do to us. It can, of course, be revised as events warrant, but I think having a procedure in place to do so, rather than everyone spazzing out whenever they so much as twitch and suggesting everything from unconditional surrender to launching everything, would be a good idea. Whose duties would creating such a document fall under?
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Dec 13, 2013 01:34
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 Here's UNCAO's view: we lag behind the Federation in terms of resources, knowledge, and matériel. For some time that gap has been widening. It should be the UN's policy to take whatever action (or omissions to act towards the Federation) we can that tangibly narrows that gap. We should not take any action that risks antagonising the Federation to no meaningful benefit. Spying on Federation movement at Saturn and JP2 gets nothing of value. It hasn't in the past, it won't in the foreseeable future. It is not an idea that results in us getting anything we actually want.
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Dec 13, 2013 01:43
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I made a buttload of usability improvements to the Raw Viewer today, and also made it so that it properly reports the time it will take for survey ships and linelayers to do their things. In addition, I cleaned up the code for public release. You can find it here. Use at your own risk and READ THE README!
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Dec 13, 2013 02:20
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Cheatum the Evil Midget posted:Any way we could use the linelayer to deploy some sort of spy sat to ensure we can monitor all traffic to and from JP2? Or launch a probe on the far side to monitor FEAN activity on that side of the system? FredMSloniker already answered this, but I'd like to add that this is the reason we have an Endymion ship near that JP. No need to go all hiding sensors or whatever, since we have a ship capable of doing that in the vicinity. And the Saturnian moons lease is just for opening the JP gate from this side, right? I believe it would be nice if we can up the price considerably for when they want to make it a 2-way gate, but that's for a later date.
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Dec 13, 2013 03:10
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FredMSloniker posted:To this point, I am formally requesting (to the extent that someone who is ICly operating a meson base in the middle of nodamnwhere can do so) that the United Nations draft a resolution or policy or whatever it's called to determine the status of the Federation (and Cornucopia while we're at it) wrt diplomacy, warfare, et cetera--decide what is and isn't acceptable for us to do to them and for them to do to us. It can, of course, be revised as events warrant, but I think having a procedure in place to do so, rather than everyone spazzing out whenever they so much as twitch and suggesting everything from unconditional surrender to launching everything, would be a good idea. Whose duties would creating such a document fall under? UNEC as a whole dictates policy of this nature. In large part for minor incidents it falls to the UNEC specifically involved, but major incidents bring out a UNEC vote.
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Dec 13, 2013 03:18
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Gnooble posted:UNEC as a whole dictates policy of this nature. In large part for minor incidents it falls to the UNEC specifically involved, but major incidents bring out a UNEC vote. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe you guys have been coming up with this stuff and I've just been missing it. In which case, maybe making things like this more visible would help. (Perhaps some links in the OP for important UN documents?) But maybe we don't have it, in which case I feel it'd be good to establish a formal policy for our relations with the Federation and with Cornucopia. Alchenar's statement would make a good start, provided it has the support of the rest of the UN (or at least a supermajority), but there are other questions that could be answered. Here's an off-the-top-of-my-head list, focused on the Federation (these questions could be largely reiterated for Cornucopia):
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Dec 13, 2013 07:21
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FredMSloniker posted:Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe you guys have been coming up with this stuff and I've just been missing it. I don't think you are; we had a push for a UN Office of Strategic Studies that ultimately got drowned out by the arrival of one crisis or another and also by the fact that people just have very strong opinions on what the right response to a particular event is, and much like real politics there was a lot of rationalizing around what little strategic discussion existed in order to get back to people's preferred conclusions. So yeah, let's bring back the idea of UNStrat, and as part of its charter provide it a document that answers questions like those in the list you presented, with a mission statement to provide assessment of various short- and medium-term goals vis a vis those policies and whatever grand strategy we devise. FredMSloniker posted:Alchenar has said, for instance, that we're trying to close a widening gap in 'resources, knowledge, and matériel'. Are we doing this because we fear the Federation will remove us from the interstellar stage? Because we want to remove them? I won't presume to put words in his mouth, but one reason I think that's uncontroversial assertion is that whatever goals we may have/set, that difference and the resulting power differential restricts our freedom to act in support of those goals.
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Dec 13, 2013 07:38
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FredMSloniker posted:What, ultimately, constitutes winning? I'd say rescuing CMDR. Sky Shadowing and the men of the Klondike and Kagayan constitutes victory. 
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Dec 13, 2013 07:38
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FredMSloniker posted:What, ultimately, constitutes winning? With that established, winning becomes playing our role in humanity's spread across the stars - and in facing those requisite challenges - as much as we possibly can. The Mind is still our biggest question mark, and if we want something to 'beat', that is what we should focus on, rather than Fred. With regard to our long term attitude toward Fred, it's impossible to say that because we don't exactly have open and honest communications with the other power - nor are we going to get them any time soon. Fred plays things pretty straight when they get their primary aims or we're talking about something easy to agree upon, but they have a habit of loving with us in rather underhanded and obnoxious ways if they're not getting what they want. Instead of, you know, being forced to get what they want elsewhere, like we have traditionally been. We could try loving with them right back, but again, we are at a mechanical disadvantage due to the setup of the two powers. I would argue it SHOULD be like this because otherwise we could get so absorbed in nuking Freddy's poo poo that we lose sight of the substantially cooler alien space opera. BG joked when the Belnar papers were released that, over a year in, we'd finally stepped knee deep into the main story. It's important to keep that concept in mind, I think. Fred is not the main story. They're another player at the DM's table. They just also happen to be That Guy to a large extent, which makes for an engaging day to day and adds a lot of urgency to Aurora that normally isn't there. Akratic Method posted:So yeah, let's bring back the idea of UNStrat, and as part of its charter provide it a document that answers questions like those in the list you presented, with a mission statement to provide assessment of various short- and medium-term goals vis a vis those policies and whatever grand strategy we devise. I would argue it is impossible for us to plan over the 5+ year term since so much changes from year to year. Here's a good quandary to illustrate: On our 5-year plan, are you going to presume that we solve the problem of peak Duranium? Or that we fail, and have to cut our D use by 50%? If you plan for both, you just open more cans of worms. What about the other minerals? What about other costs we may or may not accrue, depending on situations that arise? You'd end up being caught in endless planning and no actual doing at all. 'Planning' with regard to Fred is similarly impossible because they are completely inscrutable as to their overall goals, let alone their immediate wants and needs. If we want to get better at that portion of things we should be bothering Snark more often to keep filling in dossiers of big name Federation officers, like the current head of Earth and why he might've replaced his predecessor (who is currently ruling Mars). We still have a sneaking suspicion that Innocent_Bystander and I noticed like an entire game-year ago that the Federation is taking an acute interest in mineral collection - and, we think, specifically Mercassium. We don't know why. Good luck planning anything strategic if you can't answer basic questions like that. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Dec 13, 2013 |
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Dec 13, 2013 07:42
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FredMSloniker posted:What, ultimately, constitutes winning? We would like them to just lay down their weapons and go home.  Serious answer: I believe that the end-game would be that the U.N. becomes the foremost international organization that can help it's member nations attain the best standards of living, and give the opportunity to take the human race into new worlds, in a reliable and effective manner. The Federation would then be seen as a redundant organization, with more and more of their members leaving it for the U.N., maybe be reduced to just the 3 core members. Then it would be dissolved, or become a new entity like the European Union. I know we got the whole Sahara re-greening project, but we also should be doing other stuff to attract third-party nations to our fold. Like, helping them convert some of their CI to TNEs, give them some of our out-dated tech so they can also benefit from it, or do some new Millenium Development Goals: Millenium Development Goals posted:
Those are for 2015, so for the game's current time frame, it would be time to set some new goals. Off the top of my head:
The first one could be fluffed by saying that, once we put a number of Academies and Research Centers in a given region, the overall education level rises. The second one would be tied to the enviromental conditions and different kinds of industry each celestial body has.
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Dec 13, 2013 08:02
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Coolguye posted:The current UNEC actually does a very good job of planning well over 12 months out. UNSA knows precisely what tech will be done, when, and how that affects the other organs of the council. UNIN knows precisely what its renewal schedules and dependencies are for our fleets. I know exactly how many souls I need where to fulfill dependencies for the other Council positions, and I have a pretty goddamn good idea of how long it'll take to fill these needs. Jimmy knows precisely how much IC we have, how much it consumes, and how he's going to apportion things. And that's to your credit! The EC and deputies are collectively doing a ton better now than circa the Mars Crisis. But very little of that is actually strategic. What goal set motivates decisions on which tech to get or what we're producing in those schedules? Coolguye posted:I would argue it is impossible for us to plan over the 5+ year term since so much changes from year to year. Here's a good quandary to illustrate: On our 5-year plan, are you going to presume that we solve the problem of peak Duranium? Or that we fail, and have to cut our D use by 50%? If you plan for both, you just open more cans of worms. What about the other minerals? What about other costs we may or may not accrue, depending on situations that arise? You'd end up being caught in endless planning and no actual doing at all. You don't necessarily plan for every possible contingency in decision-tree fashion. (Well, large countries actually do, for the most part, but as fun as this thread is I can't imagine getting the analytical manpower enjoyed by great power defense intelligence establishments.) What you do is develop a thorough understanding of your goals and then decide which activities you prioritize in case of resource or other constraints. You don't sit down and say "what happens if we lose this ship? What if it's this ship? What if it's these two other ships?" You just look at what you want to do and ask "if we didn't have enough ships to cover everything we want, which spots or TGs would give up class X first?" For minerals, it's something like "given what we view as most important, if we couldn't afford everything we wanted, what would we give up first?" Further out in time, we get more general; maybe we can't say which ship class or missile type we'd cancel, but we can propose changes to general fleet doctrine in the event that we don't have the duranium to support larger hulls anymore. We can decide whether the possibility of lacking the minerals to replenish our missile stocks would justify retargeting tech towards beam weapons that require no reload minerals. "But beam weapons are lovely!" Yeah, and strategic thought involves considering tradeoffs like having lovely weapons that at least we can afford to fire, because we think that saving minerals for Other Goal X is important and we can adopt a defensive posture or a pliant diplomatic line to avoid having a major confrontation and sparing our military is viable. Coolguye posted:'Planning' with regard to Fred is similarly impossible because they are completely inscrutable as to their overall goals, let alone their immediate wants and needs. If we want to get better at that portion of things we should be bothering Snark more often to keep filling in dossiers of big name Federation officers, like the current head of Earth and why he might've replaced his predecessor (who is currently ruling Mars). We still have a sneaking suspicion that Innocent_Bystander and I noticed like an entire game-year ago that the Federation is taking an acute interest in mineral collection - and, we think, specifically Mercassium. We don't know why. Good luck planning anything strategic if you can't answer basic questions like that. Ok, and this is why strategic studies often belong to the same agencies as intelligence gathering. I don't know if BG would house-rule hinting at his plans (with a possibility of false info?) in the event that Snark rolls some number to get insight into key officials' beliefs or intentions, but it might be worth proposing. And of course there's room for some contingency planning, especially if it's informed by an understanding of what really matters: if they turn belligerent over Issue Z We Don't Care about, we just roll over and let them have it and save ourselves for a more worthy fight. There, that plan's done, now we have extra time to consider what happens if they threaten Vital Project Q. But the best part about breaking it down that way is you realize that "their posture towards us" really isn't a thing. We have interests, which are based on our goals. They have interests, based on their own goals. If they do something because they hate us, but it doesn't affect our interests, then  . If love us but do something that affects our interests adversely, then we may have to act anyway. Instead of worrying about what they think of us, we should be thinking about what our interests are, and how they can be affected, and taking steps to minimize those possible effects. That's how strategic thought looks at the Federation.Anyway, we may not need a separate strategic bureau, but at least a clear charter of UN Grand Strategy would be a wonderful thing to have.
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Dec 13, 2013 08:32
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Akratic Method's beaten me to a lot of this, but I hate to just push delete, so you get it in my own words too.Coolguye posted:With regard to our long term attitude toward Fred, it's impossible to say that because we don't exactly have open and honest communications with the other power - nor are we going to get them any time soon. Furthermore, going back to the Cold War as we so often do, we didn't exactly have 'open and honest communications' between the US and the USSR for most of that period. Both sides still managed to make plenty of plans about how to handle situations both general and specific should they arise. How many of them were actually used? Probably not many. But every single day wasn't treated like the Cuban Missile Crisis, which it can feel like from time to time in here. And the US and the USSR certainly knew what they hoped to accomplish regarding each other. I'm not asking us to develop a 'five-year plan'. I actually don't care very much about that side of things, so long as we don't screw things up so badly that we wind up game overing because we didn't mine enough vespene gas or what have you. I'm asking us to develop some coherent idea about how we want to treat our fellow space powers--because right now I'm not sure there's even any consensus on whether the Federation is our rival, our neighbor, or our enemy. Having ended on that cool potential movie quote, I must proceed to then muck it up by continuing to talk. Coolguye posted:If we want to get better at that portion of things we should be bothering Snark more often to keep filling in dossiers of big name Federation officers, like the current head of Earth and why he might've replaced his predecessor (who is currently ruling Mars). We still have a sneaking suspicion that Innocent_Bystander and I noticed like an entire game-year ago that the Federation is taking an acute interest in mineral collection - and, we think, specifically Mercassium. We don't know why. Good luck planning anything strategic if you can't answer basic questions like that. Also I checked the raw data viewer to do some fact-checking and why did no one tell me I'd been assigned to the Galileo Galilei why are there two completely different dates on these transfer orders I need to pack aaaa
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Dec 13, 2013 08:36
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On the question of whether we put our best man on the Federation gate, no discussions around timescales have taken place. I believe that the vote to take the deal has been successful, so when we send our response to the Feds we can give them the deal as it currently stands and wait to see if they come back with timings. If they don't, we can inform them of our planned schedule once we've received their consent. On the minerals running out point (and tangentially the long-term planning point): radical action is required that doesn't just amount to putting the CONSOL mines on Callisto (which is not happening right now; they're being shipped from Titan to Ganymede. We are spending freighter time doing something pointless. TitanMineLift is to redirect to Callisto immediately. If there are outstanding contractual issues, please send immediate confirmation of our agreement to purchase all mines at £2billion/mine). We will require radical action. Now that my modelling has arrived in the same space as Magrov and Foxfire, I can begin to work out what that might be, and I will bring proposals to UNEC soon.
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Dec 13, 2013 09:18
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Just wanted to assure everyone that there is absolutely zero chance of running out of the TNE's used in missile construction. Tritanium and Gallactite are the ones we have in ridiculous abundance. As for the question of strategic planning we have about the next two years major economic and scientific projects planned out. Beyond that is a lot more questionable as we begin proper extrasolar colonisation at that point and exactly what happens depends on a lot of factors. As for boosting mineral production after the CI -> Mine conversion is done a lot of capacity will be directed to Mine -> Automine conversion which will allow us to begin large scale deployment to asteroids and uninhabitable moons. Finally I would like to request the construction of a final Aberdeen from the ISS. We still don't have enough freighter capacity and this will be exacerbated once the Titan minelift begins in earnest. Saros fucked around with this message at 09:43 on Dec 13, 2013 |
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Dec 13, 2013 09:31
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Aethernet posted:On the question of whether we put our best man on the Federation gate, no discussions around timescales have taken place. I believe that the vote to take the deal has been successful, so when we send our response to the Feds we can give them the deal as it currently stands and wait to see if they come back with timings. If they don't, we can inform them of our planned schedule once we've received their consent. Absolutely not! The reason we have the CMC going to Ganymede is because that's outside the sensor radius for the Federation to see whats going on on Callisto. The Federation is using their own freighters to ship the CONSOL mines here. Sending them to Callisto using Fred freighters is just tantamount to opening up our Colony for them to look at. As the guy in charge of coordinating with CONSOL and all our companies I will be vetoing any action like that. As for people asking what our deal with the Federation is, we had a discussion about this a while back. The general consensus is that the Federation is our rival, we don't like them, but we're not actively seeking to wipe them out. The Fed's are pretty clear in their goals. This goes way back to the analysis's on the two governments (ours and theirs). The Federation is a unitary government focused on building up a super national state on Earth which supersedes the previous notions of "borders" and predefined territory to incorporate all its members as one nation, representative of humanity. The UN conversely is an organization that seeks to preserve the uniqueness of its members by having more of an intergovernmental approach. Each state is still semi-sovereign and has some autonomy, we just pass directives to be delegated. Basically the Aurora Federation is a lot like the Star Trek Federation, except without the unrealistic utopia aspects to it. We made a lot of joke about that since technically the Federation is seeking to abolish all the old concepts of borders and nationalities to move towards a united human identity that emphasizes the more humanistic aspects of our species that bring us together united, while we seek to respect the old differences. We're basically the old guard if one were to really look at it critically from a point of view of people in the Federation. The Federation would love to integrate us, just like how we would like to integrate the Federation, but just like us, they realize that's probably not going to happen, or if it does it has to happen incrementally by chipping away at member support.
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Dec 13, 2013 09:41
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Kal-L posted:We would like them to just lay down their weapons and go home. Yeah, I think the ultimate objective for the UN should be something like "Uniting humanity through diplomacy into a single institutional body that facilitates development of extra-terrestrial and extra-solar resources while defending it from any external threats." In the medium-term, I think we manage relations with the Feds to avoid power struggles in Sol and focus instead on winning the colony race in other systems. So long as we are able to neutralize the K2 aliens and hopefully salvage at least some kind of technological advantage from what they leave behind, I think that is certainly doable. So: Short Term: Defeat the K2 aliens. Medium Term: Explore K2 and neighbouring systems and colonize them. Try to keep relations with the Federation cool if not cordial, focus on economic expansion rather than military muscle. Super-Long Term: Hard to predict but possibly achieve re-integration of some or all Federation member states as memories of the war fade. I think we should focus on infrastructural development, at least in the medium term. The reality is that the majority of the human populations of both parties will remain concentrated on Earth for a long time to come. This makes a full-scale war unthinkable for either party. For this reason, we do not necessarily need to pursue full parity in terms of military strength, so long as we retain sufficient deterrent power to discourage brinksmanship. We are not in a competition for scarce resources in Sol. Instead, we are competing to establish access and utilization of resources outside the system, and who controls what body in Sol itself is relatively unimportant in the long term, apart from prestige. It doesn't really matter that the Federation has Mars in the long run, because there are hundreds of potential Marses completely uncontested in extrasolar systems. Establishing firm boundaries with the Federation in terms of diplomatic norms will help us channel conflict into an external, long-run development competition that, unlike a war in the near-future, is winnable for us.
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Dec 13, 2013 10:09
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Can-O-Raid posted:Yeah, I think the ultimate objective for the UN should be something like "Uniting humanity through diplomacy into a single institutional body that facilitates development of extra-terrestrial and extra-solar resources while defending it from any external threats." Honestly, why stop at humanity? Wouldn't an ideal end-game be something like that, but for all sentient species capable of deciding to join under our banner? Yeah, the K2 ships have been a failure of our attempts to contact other potential intelligent life in the galaxy, but we're only just now beginning to explore, and we know of at least one other intelligent species that may or may not still exist in some capacity. Have we determined what to do if we encounter other intelligent life that is pre-TNE? I know some discussion like this came up at one point or another, but I can't remember if anything came out of it in regards to official UN stances on the matter. Are we going to abstain from the matters of other species as much as possible, or are we going to wade in and share our knowledge with them? These are reasonable long-term questions we should be asking, especially now that we're aware of more than just the Belnar. We've attempted contact with the K2 ships and failed, but what's to say the next time we encounter someone that we don't figure out how to talk to them, or vice versa? Other challenging questions the UN could address: How do we feel about large-scale manipulation of the human genome (something we could very well be researching right now)? It opens the possibility of human life on many more worlds, if we're willing to invest the research, but I imagine that something akin to creating new life would go over poorly with a large amount of our population. What will we do if we encounter colonizable planets that have already evolved life in some form or another? While we've made the decision that losing some biodiversity on Earth is okay in the long run with the Sahara re-greening project, what about life that evolved in different conditions? Is human comfort worth potentially destroying a functioning biosphere? How will we respond to other powers doing these things if we decide we won't? Would we condemn, say, Cornucopian scientists working to adapt their population to the conditions on 2 Pallas? The UNEC has generally been reactive to most of what has happened, since a large amount of it wasn't predictable, but now that Sol isn't our limit, we can start looking at some potentially long-term questions and develop answers before the potential crises crop up. If we're going to speculate, may as well speculate on something interesting, in my opinion.
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Dec 13, 2013 10:42
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Jimmy4400nav posted:The Federation would love to integrate us, just like how we would like to integrate the Federation You convinced me--I'm voting to join the Federation.
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Dec 13, 2013 11:29
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FredMSloniker posted:That covers whether we can do it. As for whether we should do it, I see a lot of different attitudes on how we should treat the Federation in this thread, ranging from 'I for one welcome our new communist overlords' to 'as soon as we've overcome MAD, nuke them until they glow'. There's nothing wrong with differences of opinion, but it might be helpful for our policy decisions to be made from a more... coherent viewpoint. To this point, I am formally requesting (to the extent that someone who is ICly operating a meson base in the middle of nodamnwhere can do so) that the United Nations draft a resolution or policy or whatever it's called to determine the status of the Federation (and Cornucopia while we're at it) wrt diplomacy, warfare, et cetera--decide what is and isn't acceptable for us to do to them and for them to do to us. It can, of course, be revised as events warrant, but I think having a procedure in place to do so, rather than everyone spazzing out whenever they so much as twitch and suggesting everything from unconditional surrender to launching everything, would be a good idea. Whose duties would creating such a document fall under? Considering this is the Coldest War, perhaps we should implement a sort of DEFCON system.  I'm sure the particulars would be worked out by UNIN but something like: 5: Normal readiness 4: Heightened readiness, ships update loadouts. 3: Alert. Task force training cancelled. Ships form up into combat groups. Active sensors. 2: High alert, ships should expect deployment and assume aggressive posture 1: Attack posture, all out war imminent.
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Dec 13, 2013 13:37
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viewtyjoe posted:Honestly, why stop at humanity? Wouldn't an ideal end-game be something like that, but for all sentient species capable of deciding to join under our banner? Yeah, the K2 ships have been a failure of our attempts to contact other potential intelligent life in the galaxy, but we're only just now beginning to explore, and we know of at least one other intelligent species that may or may not still exist in some capacity. Not unless we find Xenos species that hold substantially the same values that we do and with whom we can communicate readily. Even then, they would have to accept a very subordinate role in the galaxy, we don't need competition down the line from the warlike ancestors of the friendly aliens that we'd met generations before. My ideal future is one of unquestioned Human dominance with intelligent Xenos kept in reservations. Many of you will note that that's a basically imperialistic vision, which is something that we rightly condemn when it's applied to other human societies, but the race for the stars will be a vicious, brutal conflict with precious little quarter given. Our first contact with Xenos resulted in the loss of both survey ships involved and their crews, and I expect that same sort of reaction in the future. My vision, although fundamentally unjust when applied to Humans, is probably the much more humane than the treatment that we'd get at the hands of other races.
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Dec 13, 2013 15:53
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Yo, regarding Titan Mine Lift, those are all CMC-owned mines that will be reintegrated to CMCs when they get where they're going, right? I vaguely remember all this and I want to make sure I'm not misremembering and creating a labor shortage.
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Dec 13, 2013 16:48
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Aethernet posted:On the minerals running out point (and tangentially the long-term planning point): radical action is required that doesn't just amount to putting the CONSOL mines on Callisto (which is not happening right now; they're being shipped from Titan to Ganymede. We are spending freighter time doing something pointless. TitanMineLift is to redirect to Callisto immediately. If there are outstanding contractual issues, please send immediate confirmation of our agreement to purchase all mines at £2billion/mine). We will require radical action. Now that my modelling has arrived in the same space as Magrov and Foxfire, I can begin to work out what that might be, and I will bring proposals to UNEC soon. The mines are going to Ganymede to prevent worker shortage while we sorted out the CONSOL deal. Fluffwise they're already on Callisto, just inactive, all contracts for mine purchase were completed a long time ago, and CONSOL just needs to reply to Jimmy's latest letter to reactivate them. In regard to long term planning, most of the UNECs are now planning between 5 and 10 years ahead. Most of the stuff that comes up catches us by surprise and so we react to it, but at least in regards to Cornucopia, UNEC has set policy. We sell no military and only assets we can be reasonably assured the Federation already possesses, and trade on the basis of formal contracts only. Essentially we regard them as a trade partner who we don't trust. In the case of the Federation, each UNEC has their own view on how to proceed, but in general we would like to integrate the Federation with the UN as the senior partner. As Alchenar said, we are trying to close the gap between our capabilities to make that more likely, but to be honest, integration for either side is an extremely long term goal. As UNIN, violations of UN sovereignty can be met with force, but other actions should be resolved diplomatically. I'm trying to work with the Federation as much as possible (see Sol Defense Agreement) without dropping my guard too much. I don't particularly expect that another major war will be fought with Fred, more likely, in my opinion, is that we will be fighting alongside them. Gnooble fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Dec 13, 2013 |
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Dec 13, 2013 17:16
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Aethernet posted:On the minerals running out point (and tangentially the long-term planning point): radical action is required that doesn't just amount to putting the CONSOL mines on Callisto (which is not happening right now; they're being shipped from Titan to Ganymede. We are spending freighter time doing something pointless. TitanMineLift is to redirect to Callisto immediately. The mines aren't actually going to Ganymede, Jimmy's explanation aside. They are going to Ganymede because there is no population there to run them, so you won't get free production from them while they're in the process of being transferred. To transport them, I had to split them up into their constituent mines. They will be reconstituted as CMCs on Callisto directly (no transfer from Ganymede required) once the deal is finalized. I did something similar when you were pulling out from Mars: I moved evacuated infrastructure to Phobos so your dumb civilians wouldn't keep trying to fill the empty infra with new bodies.
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Dec 13, 2013 18:03
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Ladies and gentlemen of the UN, I give you Zhongguo, the winner of the prettiest star system so far. Look the blue near-Earth with the rings (planet IV), the most likely candidate for a Federation colony. Marvel over the striped gas giant. Wonder about the purplish tone of the rocky planet (IX) locked in between the gas giants. And look at the planet-sized moon of the outermost giant.  (Click here for a HD version - huge!) - You can also find HD versions of all systems so far here.
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Dec 14, 2013 14:12
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markus_cz posted:Ladies and gentlemen of the UN, I give you Zhongguo, the winner of the prettiest star system so far. Impossible. The Zhongguo system is marred by an insidious deformity, the infestation known as... Communism. While the Roanoke system may not be the most asthetically appealing on the outside, it is far beautiful when you realize that it is the only system in the galaxy certified to be 100% pinko tyranny-free.  (Please report all disagreements with the above statement to the toll-free Senator Joseph Macarthy Memorial Counter-Espionage Hotline.)
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Dec 15, 2013 03:53
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The Feds aren't actually dirty commies. Come on guys, we've been at this for a year and a half, can we get that one fact down? You're free to nail down a term for what they actually are and call them that, though.
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Dec 15, 2013 11:09
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Do they have mass elections, and how much weight do they put behind them?
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Dec 15, 2013 11:30
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Innocent_Bystander posted:The Feds aren't actually dirty commies. Come on guys, we've been at this for a year and a half, can we get that one fact down? Rhetoric doesnt usually reflect whats true, rather what is easily understood and consumed by the public.
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Dec 15, 2013 18:07
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Innocent_Bystander posted:The Feds aren't actually dirty commies. Come on guys, we've been at this for a year and a half, can we get that one fact down? If the PRC can call it's current economic system "Communism with Chinese characteristics" then we can call the Federation's economic system whatever we drat well please. They speak Russian and Chinese and their flag is red, what more do you want?
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Dec 15, 2013 19:21
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The Chinese call it Socialism with Chinese Characteristics though, since they're supposed to still be only in what has pretty much been retconned into 'primary stage socialism', with 'communism' being some kind of end form. The ideological concept behind this is they had tried to skip over a number of Marxist stages unsuccessfully by: A. accepting the role of a vanguard party in the dictatorship of the proletariat, like in Leninism, and B. making out the peasants to be the prime members of the proletariat instead of the working class according to Mao Zedong Thought. Now the party is back to seeking truth from facts, and the people have to become rich (1) before they can transcend to the secondary (?) stage of socialism (2) so (3) happens and then... profit. This is a massively hypocritical position so fluff away.
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Dec 15, 2013 20:11
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Foxfire_ posted:I'll take the survey officer. Hopefully I'll never have to go out exploring (in my games at least, aliens typically say hello by blasting a sensorless survey ship) Done. Earth: UNFI HQ, Lausanne, 19th November 2035, 10:23 UTC   FROM: UNFI HQ To: UNEC Re: Federation Contacts Sirs, yesterday we detected a thermal strength 70 signature from a Moskva 31 inbound toward Mars. Its backcourse put it at the Zhongguo jump point, but we received no contact report from Endymion. The vessel has just settled into orbit around Mars. Message ends Elsewhere, CMDR GladRagKraken, CO of a Dragons Teeth beam defense base, attends a week-long seminar at the Void Command School. Task Group WAYFARER, UNTJS 004, 20th November 2035, 21:54 UTC  UNS Alan Turing jumps back into UNTJS 002 to relay that a successful squadron transit has occurred into a new system, designated UNTJS 004. Turing reports that the squadron emerged 36,000 km from the far side of the jump point, waited for the jump trance effect to dissipate, and then reformed on the point. At this point, Bohol and Shambhala began astrographic survey duties, while Turing returned to UNTJS 002 to report. Turing relays this information across a tenuous chain of jump tenders all the way back to Sol: UNS Edwin H. Armstrong from UNTJS 002 to Roanoke, and UNS Galileo Galilei from Roanoke to Sol. Elsewhere, an UNCAO representative embedded with UNS Avalon forms a friendship with Avalon's CO, CMDR djw175, as the ship continues its gravitational survey of the Roanoke system. Jimmy4400nav posted:
From: Eric Russel To: Councilor Jimmy4400nav, UNIEB Re: CMC Sales In this case, given the loss of revenue anticipated from being forced to exclude the Republic of Cornucopia from our mineral exports, we are willing to pay €1.25 billion per CMC. Task Group WAYFARER, UNTJS 004, 21st November 2035, 7:30 UTC  The first astrographic reports from UNTJS 004 come in via the jump tender chain. UNTJS 004 is a quadrinary system 170.16 parsecs (555 light years) from Sol at 20h24m right ascension, declination 21.51°. The system primary is a bright F-class star 40% wider and more massive than Sol, and 280% as bright. The primary itself is orbited by a few asteroids between 40 and 800 km in diameter. The B and C components of the system both orbit the system primary at distances of 24 and 5 AU, respectively, taking 71 and 7.2 Earth years to orbit. The B component is similar to the primary, though less massive and only about 72.5% as luminous. The C component is similar in size and mass to Sol, but is only about 60% as bright. The D component, a small white dwarf about 0.01% as bright as Sol, orbits the B component at a distance of 4 AU. The D component has no orbiting bodies. The B component has a small planetary system consisting of a terrestrial planet (B I) orbiting a scorching 12.9m km from the surface of the star. With a temperature of over 1000 K, the surface is expected to be partially or fully molten in many areas. Further out at 32m km, there is a Venus-style world (B II) twice the size of Earth, with an atmosphere consisting of nearly 131 atmospheres of carbon dioxide. Its surface gravity is well beyond the upper limit thought to be capable of supporting human habitation and its surface temperature is a broiling 1375°C. Finally, at 146m km out, is a small airless planet (B IV) about a third the size of Earth. Its surface gravity is a comfortable 0.42 g, but its surface temperature is a steamy 76°C, too high for long term settlement. The C component has the most extensive planetary system of any of the stellar bodies, though it is still rather small in comparison to Sol or Zhongguo. The innermost planet is a Jupiter-sized, moonless gas giant (C I) orbiting extremely closely to the star (14.7m km). Next out is another Venus-style world (C II), choked with a carbon dioxide / nitrogen dioxide atmosphere of nearly 200 atmospheres and with a surface gravity 288% higher than Earth's. Between C II and C IV, the next planet out, is a small asteroid belt with sixteen notable bodies (including one with a diameter of over 1000 km), between 48m and 156m km from the C component. The outermost planet of the C component is another Venus world, with a thick (138 atm) carbon dioxide / nitrogen dioxide atmosphere. The planet is about twice the size of Earth, with nearly three times the surface gravity, making it further unsuited for human habitation. However, it possesses three moons, one with a diameter and surface gravity about 1/4 that of Earth. While it has no atmosphere, its surface temperature of -16.8°C is the closest to human-tolerable temperatures of any body in the system. The addition of a breathable atmosphere would reduce the colony cost of the body to a paltry 0.3, the lowest of any known body outside of Earth. The entry jump point from UNTJS 002 is 357m km from the A component at bearing 221°. Imagery  Fig. 1: An overview of UNTJS 004.  Fig. 2: A detail of the inner system, with the A and C components in view.  Fig. 3: Detail of the planetary system of the C component.  Fig. 4: Detail of the B component's planetary system, with the D component white dwarf visible.  Fig. 5: Futher zoom on the B component's planetary system. The updated CW-SE config pack can be found here Currently, this system has some issues: some planets are being converted to the wrong planet type. I'll be investigating.
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Dec 15, 2013 23:07
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| # ? May 20, 2024 20:47 |
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A bit underwhelming, but at least it has the potential for some mineral deposits. As an aside, can the UNEC formally come up with a naming scheme for new systems? I think right now it is up to UNCAO to manually name them all?
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Dec 15, 2013 23:18
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