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This thread...  Yeah gonna be watching this one.Incidentally someone mentioned a MoO2 LP, is there one going on I missed?
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Jan 21, 2015 10:49
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My first LP was a MoO2 LP, currently able to be found in the LP Archive, and, if you have forums archive access, on the forums. http://lparchive.org/Master-of-Orion-2-(by-nweismuller)/ http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3574884 I also just finished up a Master of Magic LP that's yet to go to the LP Archive, which can be found here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3612678
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Jan 21, 2015 10:54
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Ohhhh yeah. I remember that. Huh. I thought there was a new one.
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Jan 21, 2015 11:03
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To: Dr. Maria Valdez CC: CEO Morgan From: H. Grünfeld Subject: Re: Interested in cooperation? Dr. Valdez You seem to have misunderstood me, so Let me rephrase: I am well aware that you are planning on developing a maritime colony, which we at Tellus consider an admirable goal, so we are very much aware that any cooperation would be temporary. However the development of the required technologies still seems to be quite a bit away and even once we have reached the theoretical understanding required, it will take time to scout for a good base location, assemble the resources to establish this new outpost and the equipment necessary to defend such a settlement. So unless you are dead set on starting your expeditions from the eastern side of the colony I would invite you to join forces over here at Tellus until the time that Project Xochimilco is properly established as a self-sufficient outpost. I believe that if we combine our productive capacity with your understanding of maritime matters we can progress much faster than if we went alone. I have attached a rough outline for this project once the theoretical requirements have been met to this mail. Best Grünfeld step 1: building a naval unit to act as a scout unit, with minimal armor and a focus on mobility (temporarily dubbed skimships until a proper name has been decided) step 2: developing and building a sea-based equivalent of our former units, to be shared between Tellus and Xochimilco step 3: building a naval colonial module, to be escorted to the new site for Xochimilco which will hopefully have been identified by the skimship at the time of completion of construction
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Jan 21, 2015 14:45
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Dr. Kimberly, The beginnings of a coherent defense strategy against these... things is certainly a valuable piece of information, and you can be assured you will be rewarded for the implementation of the new equipment according to the contract. That said... I cannot share your optimism for a full model of the mechanisms of human consciousness yet. I have consulted with personnel from Atlas Neurosciences for their opinions, and I have been assured that we still require a systematic body of human behavioral data which we simply do not have yet to make any great progress on the problem. I retain hope that we will accumulate such a body of behavioral data, but so much remains as a challenge on this new world that little can be guaranteed. Still, keep up the good work, and tell me if you come up with any progress on how to sterilise these spores. These things that attack the human mind itself do us no favors in creating the world we wish to create. Nwabudike Morgan, CEO Morgan Settlement Interim Development Corporation and Morgan Industries For all the people clamoring for naval research and for secrets of the human brain- I can't tell you what our next breakthrough will be, but neither Secrets of the Human Brain nor Doctrine: Flexibility are possible for it. What we CAN discover next is Polymorphic Software, Doctrine: Mobility, High-Energy Chemistry, Social Psych, or Industrial Economics. nweismuller fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Jan 21, 2015 |
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Jan 21, 2015 16:42
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ManxomeBromide, Could you tell me a bit about the whole self-modifying code thing as it's used in real programming? It's outside my area of expertise, and I want to make sure I depict it in a fashion that's not utterly embarrassing whenever Polymorphic Software comes up.
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Jan 21, 2015 17:53
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To: Morgan Industries Xenobiology Department CC: Morgan Industries Food Production From: Dr. Maria Valdez Subject: Shroomskates We at Applied Maritime Solutions are working tirelessly to provide the colony with fresh sources of food from Chiron's seas, and we are pleased to report another addition to the menu. The Xenorajidae, nicknamed the Shroomskates by some of our less imaginative field research interns, is a group (possibly a genus or family, we're not sure yet) of native marine organisms very similar to the rays and skates of Earth, with a cartilaginous skeleton and, more importantly for our purposes, very tender flesh that pairs well with a butter and lemon sauce. Biologically, shroomskates are pretty boring: they seem to be scavenger/predators that scour aquafungus for crustacean and mollusk analogues and will happily pile into any soft, dead organic matter they come across. We've also observed them schooling on occasion, numbering into the hundreds easily and possibly thousands. Wouldn't have picked rays for an example of convergent evolution, but here we are. We'd really like to emphasize Exploration in research and de-emphasize Discovery for the time being, but for now we continue catching and trying to eat everything we can find out there. Marine xenobiology on a shoestring budget, ladies and gentlemen. Dr. Maria Valdez, Applied Maritime Solutions Ltd We kinda need Doc: Mobility and Doc: Flexibility, plus the other early game exploration techs once we also get Social Psych. Polymorphic Software isn't needed right now.
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Jan 21, 2015 18:42
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E: Never mind, I posted too soon.
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Jan 21, 2015 18:47
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nweismuller posted:ManxomeBromide, I think ManxomeBromide isn't giving the writing quite enough credit, so I'll steal the show a bit: "Polymorphic software" isn't a common technology term. A few things that are similar are polymorphic code (mostly used by viruses that rewrite their code randomly to avoid detection by virus scanners), self-modifying code (code that rewrites itself, mostly for performance - used in previous decades, now mostly obsolete because of changes in CPU architecture), and polymorphism (a fairly large field of programming techniques and programming language features). None of those have anything to do with the tech in the game, which is about self-modifying artificial intelligence. It's hard to place any sort of useful border between what's self-modifying and what isn't, since most AIs that are used to solve hard problems have a learning component anyway, so I'd probably just play it as something vaguely similar to AI research over the last couple of years - things like robots that can adapt to walk with broken parts, Watson, etc.. It's definitely more advanced stuff than compilers, which have been around since the fifties.
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Jan 21, 2015 19:13
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David Corbett posted:Oh my goodness. MoO2, Master of Magic and now Alpha Centauri? It's like a curated trip through some of my favourite games from my youth. I loved SMAC so much that I even wrote a fanfiction for it shortly after it came out and, in a fit of youthful stupidity, submitted it as a creative writing assignment. (Before anyone asks: all copies have been destroyed.) I loving wrote a Murder Mystery Party based on this game. This is like a second Christmas.
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Jan 21, 2015 19:21
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Fried Miltonman posted:I'd probably just play it as something vaguely similar to AI research over the last couple of years - things like robots that can adapt to walk with broken parts, I like how almost immediately that article jumps to the Terminator as it's logical extrapolation of how that technology could be implemented. 
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Jan 21, 2015 19:38
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Personal Log, Agent-in-Training Bootcha, Probe Team One posted:I miss showers.
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Jan 21, 2015 21:42
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To: The Big Guy From: The Little Guy RE: Competition ain't fun Hey there Mr. Morgan, sir. This thing on? Gol'durn voice thingajiggies. Push that red button there. No the other one! Idjit. Ok let's try again. Hey there Mr. Morgan, sir. Name's Skeeter, that's my brother Cooter over there, and we's have a small problem. See you big boys is always runnin' over us lil' boys. Me an' Cooter run a small shop that fixes up Terraformas and maybe blings them out a bit, knowhatImean? Lotta them terraforma boys like them things lifted, or they want SpaceTruckNutz on'm. But your boys done set up a whole 'nother shop right across the street. Now I know you gotta make a buck, Mr. Morgan, but coming after us smallfries ain't too neighborly, and we hafta be neighborly on our new home. So could maybe find somewhere else fer yer shop? Love and Kisses, Skeeter & Cooter McCullough McCullough Mechanics Lmtd. PS: Please enjoy this picture of me an' Cooter. 
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Jan 21, 2015 22:05
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Hal Kimberley's Personal Log I am surrounded by idiots. Hmph. How many times have I opened a log with that statement? No, cancel order, cancel! I don't loving care! loving computers. I got my proposal rejected by Morgan today. Motherfucker. He says we need more sociological data before he can justify funding my project. I have no idea which of those Atlas assholes told him that, but he's an idiot. What can the soft sciences possibly offer that a hard examination of the human brain can't? "Oh, well according to this data plot 80% of people are like this while 20% are like that. Except in that other nation it's 70/30 unless they've got such-and-such an exception and--and--and..." loving hacks, the lot of them! And so Morgan asked me to figure out how to sterilize the spores instead of exploit them! Doesn't he know he's talking to the future Father of Human Psionics? Assuming Skye doesn't get there first. That bleeding-heart bitch will probably spend money on the project just to be "one with the worms" or some bullshit. And what does Morgan think I can even do about the spores? What sort of chemical or treatment would leave the brain safe and sound while it kills off radio-loving-sensitive viral spores that can survive for years in arid wastelands and a saline ocean full of motherfucking hemotoxic fish?! And how am I supposed to stop future infections when the drat things are as impossible to escape as human fecal bacteria? Hey, Morgan! Newsflash! The reason xenofungus is the dominant life form on Chiron is because it got all sevens on the motherfucking evolutionary slot machine! Now give me money so I can figure out how to rig it in our favor! In other news, the information Valdez sent me has given me exactly jack and poo poo. Well, it's a little more than that, but the favor I owe her will be puny indeed. Honestly, I'd rather send my own teams out there, but the xenobiology department's been understaffed since those Tellus hippies finally hosed off. I hate to admit it, but I lost some good microbiologists along with the whiners. Sigh. End log. Triple encryption, key to my voice, yadda yadda. Morgan, I'm disappointed to hear that you'll be placing priorities elsewhere, but of course as the man with the purse strings you've got more to consider than one specialized R&D department. Until such time that you can fund my proposals, I'll have my boys try to find out what can render the xenofungus spores inert. I can't make any promises, however; beyond the spore's own resilience (which is exceptional by any terrestrial standard), the human brain is a highly sensitive and chemically active organ, so any solution we discover will most likely have unacceptable side effects. For now I can only suggest that you tell our security teams to use the x-ray emitters when they can and otherwise consider the situation unlikely to change. Chief Hal Kimberley, Ph.D., Morgan Xenobiology Department
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Jan 22, 2015 01:58
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Dr. Kimberley, Good man. I appreciate the difficulty of the task I've placed in front of you, and do not expect the impossible. I simply know that if you can take steps to neutralise this contamination we will have taken an enormous step forward in making this world safe for human habitability. All this said, your continued work in xenobiology may someday make the difference in what we can accomplish on Chiron, and that which you accomplish shall be rewarded. Keep up the good work. Nwabudike Morgan, CEO Morgan Settlement Interim Development Corporation and Morgan Industries
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Jan 22, 2015 02:08
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Personal log, Dr. Maria Valdez Sufficiently advanced biology is indistinguishable from psychic powers. I wrote that on the intranet when after the first mind worm attacks. Evidence is continuing to mount of psionic capabilities among the native life, whatever "psionic" ends up meaning. Humans were the dominant species on Earth, a highly sophisticated animal perfectly evolved to conquer its native environment. Or divinely created to the same end, as you prefer. Humans shaped Earth to serve their needs, and that presence was felt at all levels of the planet, from geological to atmospheric. The planetary biosphere revolved around human needs and human actions, from the greatest ocean depths to the highest mountain peaks. On Chiron, one fact has become quite clear: the xenofungus is the dominant species here. Every alien species yet encountered interacts with the xenofungus directly or indirectly during at least some point in its lifecycle. We don't yet have the equipment or funding to start serious research on the aquafungus, but every species we've had the chance to study exhibits the same predilection. The sporefish is a hybrid organism of fish-analogue and fungal symbiont that feeds on plankton and is fed upon in turn by almost every carnivorous marine organism we've encountered. Shroomskates, far from the fungal predator parrotfish are on earth, instead seem to act more like cleaners of the aquafungus itself, keeping the growths free from parasites and eliminating organic detritus. Razor sharks lay eggs in protective hollows in the fungal branches, and their excrement is a potent fertilizer for native fungal life. Harvester shrimp collect spores ready to bud and bury them in empty sand. The complex growths of xenosponges around freshly buried buds create pockets of water with absolutely perfect chemical compositions for the fungus' growth. I wish we had the facilities for serious marine research, but even limited to a few electrically powered skiffs and a growing fleet of sailing craft we've built on-planet we're starting to get an idea of the marine ecosphere on Chiron. The fungus. It's always about the fungus. We've always assumed that a species capable of dominating a planet as thoroughly as humanity did Earth would be intelligent. Intelligence is how we conquered Earth. Chiron, though... Chiron seems to have a different idea. In a struggle between humanity and the fungus, right now I'd put my money on the fungus. Still, there's also the question of those monoliths. We clearly aren't the first intelligent species to come to this planet. Were they visitors like us, or was this their home? Where are they now? What happened to them? How did their monolith replicate the signal of a downed supply pod? Morgan, Kimberley, Grunfield, Kaapanda... if they're aware of the existential challenge Chiron is posing to the human consciousness, they don't seem to care. They see dollar signs. Business opportunities. Chances to grow and thrive. All missing the point. Skye isn't much better. Calling her a hippy, acting like she shouldn't be taken seriously, does her a grave disservice. Doctor Deirdre Skye is one of the most brilliant scientific minds of our age. But she seems to think that it's a living being in and of itself. She may be more right than wrong, but she's as single-minded in pursuit of her vision as Morgan. Maybe this is human nature. We finally get the answer to the ancient question of whether we're alone in the universe, and the only question that seems to be on anyone's mind next is 'What's in it for me?' Good Lord. Am I drinking too much or not enough? OOC: I'm running on the assumption that there isn't funding or facilities for real oceanic research until Doc Flex is researched. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 02:32
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You are indeed correct that before Doc: Flex we're a bit short on maritime resources. Talking about Deidre worshipping the planet is *slightly* premature, but I was planning to introduce the cult of the Stepdaughters of Gaia amongst the Pod 1 colonists next update- I viewed its development as likely a slow, rather than immediate process. Deidre *started* simply as a biologist ready to try and appreciate the beauty of the planet, but over time social changes begin to propagate.
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Jan 22, 2015 02:42
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Has anyone else noticed that the Xenofungus seems to be a little bit too good at everything it does? I've been examining spores under various conditions and they always come out on top, and I mean always. No matter what kind of life you compare them to the Xenofungus is better. More than that it's neat! There's almost no waste anywhere I can see and for awhile now I've been staring at this stuff and a really nasty idea has been forming in my mind as I do so. We know there has been intelligent life on Chiron at some point, the Monoliths prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt. But what if the Xenofungus proves that too? Back on Earth there were plenty of thoughts and ideas as to what a fully genetically engineered organism might look like; I'm sure you all know we spent plenty of time engineering things to our advantage back home but we never built an entire new species from the ground up. Never had a reason to, or the capability. But I'm not sure the same is true for the intelligences who built the Monoliths, not anymore. It seems insane but the more I examine the Xenofungus the more elegant it appears, oh it's a little rough around the edges but that just tells me it was made a fairly long time ago and has mutated somewhat since then. Yes that's right I said made, I now believe that the Xenofungus is not at all natural. This stuff didn't just happen like we did, someone made it and my money is on the Monolith builders. Something, some part of this was done on purpose. That might even explain the absence of those builders; if they built the Xenofungus to be the 'perfect' life-form and then ended up wiped out by their own creation... Well we've written stories about doing that ourselves, don't think we ever expected we might find it happened to aliens though. Then again it might not, I can think of a few other uses for the Xenofungus if it was made by intelligence as I now believe and at least half of those uses are for weaponry. Imagine seeding a world with this stuff and then just sitting back to watch as it takes over, hideous. A lot more testing is needed, we have to get inside the Xenofungus' genetic code and take a proper look but I think I know what we'll find when we get there. It may well be worth looking at the Xenofungus not as a normal life-form but as a living tool, or weapon. Post on the Interdepartmental Sciences Forum; "General Xenofungus Discussion" thread by M.N. Gott.
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Jan 22, 2015 02:48
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nweismuller posted:You are indeed correct that before Doc: Flex we're a bit short on maritime resources. Talking about Deidre worshipping the planet is *slightly* premature, but I was planning to introduce the cult of the Stepdaughters of Gaia amongst the Pod 1 colonists next update- I viewed its development as likely a slow, rather than immediate process. Deidre *started* simply as a biologist ready to try and appreciate the beauty of the planet, but over time social changes begin to propagate. Ah, I was under the impression Deirdre was a neo-pagan type even back on Earth.
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Jan 22, 2015 02:49
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From memory some of the story stuff hints that the Planet cult is the result of psychic influence from spending too much time around Xenofungus and they're basically getting brainwashed by it.
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Jan 22, 2015 02:50
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Cythereal posted:Ah, I was under the impression Deirdre was a neo-pagan type even back on Earth. The impression I got from various materials is that she was a fairly normal (if slightly dippy) biologist before landing, but she became a bit too fond of the fungus, which has influence over human minds. E: Yes, exactly, what Neruz just said.
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Jan 22, 2015 02:52
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nweismuller posted:The impression I got from various materials is that she was a fairly normal (if slightly dippy) biologist before landing, but she became a bit too fond of the fungus, which has influence over human minds. Edited my post accordingly. Here's a wild thought - we've been assuming that the Monolith builders were humanoids like us, probably animals. What if they weren't? What if the Monolith builders never left, and we've already encountered them? You saw how much of the planet's surface is covered by the fungus, land and sea alike. If it were possible that this stuff is intelligent in some capacity, either in itself or as a tool for some other intelligence, the level of control the fungal biomass can exert over the planetary ecosphere would be far beyond any hypothetical weather control system humans might build. I really do think we must switch the emphasis of our research to Exploration. We have to learn more about this planet. I really don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say that human survival may depend on it. Post on the Interdepartmental Sciences Forum; "General Xenofungus Discussion" thread by M.L. Valdez. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 03:01
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Yeah I'm gonna have to chime in here and say that while all this nice fluffy talk about how the fungus might be this or that, the reality is that all of it is THEORY, and while I like the next guy would love for there to be a nice happy intelligence out there the fact is there's nothing to suggest that the fungus is nothing more than a noxious weed that houses some of the worst predators humanity has ever seen. By all means, keep doing your research, look into it, heck I'm an open minded guy and I'm sure that most of here would rather not have Chiron go the way of Earth with too much resource depletion or pollution, but I'm starting to worry that we're losing focus on making sure we thrive as a species by putting the needs of this fungus crap above our own species. In the meantime though, we should be directing our research efforts on more immediate needs, like finding better weapons to give our soldiers. In case you didn't notice, Santiago and Yang are still out there and I'd rather not have some jumped up junta type with a Darwinian complex or the guy who wanted to recreate Hobbes's Leviathan on our doorstep without an appropriate amount of fire power to send them packing. Plus too we have those worms to worry about! I know we haven't had any incursions since that fight with Rat Patrol, we need to be cautious. If you guys can find a way to keep those damned things from attacking us, fine, but until then, give us more lasers, hell lets figure out how to make some of those speeders that we had on Unity before Santiago got her claws on them. I'm sure our boys would appreciate some extra armor and some speed while they're out there. Plus if we can get some stronger tiring, we can drive over that razor fungus and keep scouting. Post on the Interdepartmental Sciences Forum; "General Xenofungus Discussion" thread by Marcus Li, I've played a ton of Alpha Centauri, but I'm having fun role playing a skeptic of things!
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Jan 22, 2015 04:40
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The Human Genome Project? Is that like a Wonder-equivalent? Seems weird to branch off a Tier 1 tech. Also, does that trade mean that we're probing Deirdre and vice versa, or is that knowledge of neighboring technologies some kind of base benefit or trade-screen mentalism?
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Jan 22, 2015 05:45
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Fried Miltonman posted:I think ManxomeBromide isn't giving the writing quite enough credit, so I'll steal the show a bit: e: Holy crap I am wordy. Executive summary: This is all basically true, but their description muddies the waters a bit and Mr. Davidson isn't a totally unbiased observer. We managed industrial-scale products at the level they describe in the mid 200x timeframe, which was probably faster than they expected. Watson might actually be closer to Pre-Sentient Algorithms than it is to this. The cheap joke would be "lol, after 50 years we finally have enough computer power to actually run Java". Wordy academic stuff below I don't really disagree with any of this - however, the description of the tech in-game explicitly identifies it as "self-modifying code", which is mostly a performance hack or a way to get around lovely architectures. As an explicit example of this, most chips have a way to say "here is an address, jump to the routine at that address" and let that address be some value that isn't fixed at programming time. This is the fundamental building block of polymorphism, which is really a set of techniques more than a technology in the civ sense - but it *is* more RAM-hungry which is why I've been pitching "getting enough RAM that we can suddenly jump 100 years of CS all at once thanks to mass producting letting us run the Datalinks programs anywhere). Languages like C++ and Java let you attach a set of specific things-to-do to a hierarchy of "types". The classic example is that you have a list of shapes and you want to say "tell me the sum of the areas of all these shapes" and the function that does that doesn't have to care about what kinds of shapes, it just has to know "I can ask a thing at location X what its area is by calling the function at location X+2". If you're writing to an 8- or 16-bit chip, you probably didn't *have* a "jump to function at location X+2" command, so you just computed X+2 and shoved it into the middle of an ordinary jump instruction, because that would often be faster than storing the sum somewhere else and then doing the "jump to the location specified by that other location" thing. This is largely a lost art now, because "write a bunch of code to a place and then run that code" is step 1 of most of the system-takeover security exploits.  Modern systems tend to set "no-execute" bits on writable memory to defend against that technique, and that pretty much kills anything you could do with this anyway.But on the flip side, you have cases like HotSpot, the official Java VM, which compiles the half-compiled code that is "java binaries" into real machine code at runtime if it notices that code is being run a lot - and will tune it so that it's faster under some conditions than others (Depending on how you write the machine code, "Do X if Y is true" is often much faster in the case where Y is true than when it is false, so you can guess which one will be more common and make that one the one that's faster.) If it notices that those conditions aren't holding anymore, it'll recompile it to make the other way be the way that goes faster. That does, in theory, mean that you can outperform any hard-coded set of optimizations, as long as the input keeps varying enough. When writing as Davidson, I've been casting Polymorphic Software as being the point where they've hit full parity with what they had on Earth with respect to software, and then Optical Computers being where they start advancing past it - or at least that's his take on it. I'm fond of that reading because it makes a nice counterpoint to Synthetic Fossil Fuels, which explicitly was when the colonists finally get the ability to actually exploit their century of expertise with aircraft. He's got, if not an agenda, a bit of a narrow focus, though. Looking up the full text of the update, it's kind of a mishmash, actually: it opens with identifying the tech as self-modifying code that actually works, which is kind of lame (it always has, and it's been more an industrial technique than an academic one) - but then it goes into "widespread development of neural net applications that rewrite themselves in response to data inputs". That latter bit is pretty much exactly what advanced Just-In-Time compilation systems like Java and .NET do, albeit without the neural nets. So this may really just be, in the end, another case like GURPS where if you look at where we are now, we're no closer to interplanetary travel or laser pistols (scheduled for like 2010) than we were in 1973, but our computer tech is at a level they didn't grant civilizations until they were already multistellar empires. Also also: Chironic computer science clearly follows a very different path than one extrapolated from 2015 instead of from 1995. Davidson is in for a number of nasty surprises. 
ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 05:58
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While I agree with you completely that we need to improve the equipment of our away teams so they are not under as much risk from the worms I think you are jumping to unfounded assumptions Marcus. The only effective defense against the worms is to find some way to block their psychic influence; additional armor or better guns will not change the outcome when a soldier simply falls to unreasoning panic the moment they are within the influence of the ability. As such a defense currently eludes us the only other way to deal with the problem is to simply engage from a great distance, so looking into artillery would definitely be worthwhile. Finding out what the Xenofungus is is almost as important as learning how to defend ourselves against it however; if the Xenofungus is part of some kind of distributed intelligence then that fundamentally changes the way we need to interact with it and the way we can expect it to interact with us. If instead it is some weapon fired at this world by aliens ages ago that wiped out the previous inhabitants again this changes how we can expect it to work and how we must deal with it to survive, if it was some engineered servitor species designed to provide the creators with something in their lives which then either ran amok and killed them or broke free after they vanished this is again vital information. There are simply too many unknowns about the Xenofungus right now and unknowns are dangerous, the more we know what it is and how it works the more we can work out how to defeat it and protect ourselves from it but simply taping on thicker plates of armor and giving our soldiers laser rifles instead of kinetic ones will not have any meaningful impact on our ability to defend ourselves from worms or any other kind of native fauna and unless you are expecting Diedre to suddenly transform into Stalin I don't see us needing to worry about conflict with other humans right now. Post on the Interdepartmental Sciences Forum; "General Xenofungus Discussion" thread by M.N. Gott. ManxomeBromide posted:Looking up the full text of the update, it's kind of a mishmash, actually: it opens with identifying the tech as self-modifying code that actually works, which is kind of lame (it always has, and it's been more an industrial technique than an academic one) - but then it goes into "widespread development of neural net applications that rewrite themselves in response to data inputs". That latter bit is pretty much exactly what advanced Just-In-Time compilation systems like Java and .NET do, albeit without the neural nets. So this may really just be, in the end, another case like GURPS where if you look at where we are now, we're no closer to interplanetary travel or laser pistols (scheduled for like 2010) than we were in 1973, but our computer tech is at a level they didn't grant civilizations until they were already multistellar empires. Yeah, underestimating how fast computers would advance and overestimating how easy it is to do things in space are the two most common standout errors you get in old scifi. Nobody predicted how blindingly rapidly computer sciences would advance over the last few decades. Neruz fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 05:59
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Glazius posted:The Human Genome Project? Is that like a Wonder-equivalent? Seems weird to branch off a Tier 1 tech. Trade-screen mentalism, basically. And yes, the Human Genome Project is one of the earliest Secret Projects in the game, unlocked by Biogenetics. The Secret Projects we can currently build are the Merchant Exchange (generating significant revenue in one settlement, due to its renewed commercial importance, unlocked by Industrial Base), the Human Genome Project (converting one unit of population in each settlement from Worker to Talent- which is tied into the subsystems I'll discuss more later, unlocked by Biogenetics), the Virtual World (allowing every Network Node to also function as a Hologram Theater, unlocked by Planetary Networks), and the Weather Paradigm (increasing the speed at which our terraformers work by 50%, unlocked by Centauri Ecology). I tend to be of the opinion that failing to get the Merchant Exchange as Morgan is just embarrassing. nweismuller fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Feb 2, 2016 |
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Jan 22, 2015 06:05
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Esteemed Chairman - Attached find Lovelace Machines proposal for mapping the human genome with distributed software analyzers. It includes information on how to monetize that data in the form of prenatal screening, genetic therapies, and aptitude testing. Also included find a cyphered message to discuss the information security protocols I suggest for my proposed domestic counterintelligence forces. They don't contain the protocols: they contain a 50 joule giftcard code for the restaurant where I'd like us to discuss them. If it's invalid, then, well, we have our first recruit and I'll introduce you. Won't I? Sincerely, Asa Wright
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Jan 22, 2015 06:06
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nweismuller posted:Trade-screen mentalism, basically. And yes, the Human Genome Project is one of the earliest Secret Projects in the game, unlocked by Biogenetics. The Secret Projects we can currently build are the Merchant Exchange (generating significant revenue in one settlement, due to its renewed commercial immportance, unlocked by Industrial Base), the Human Genome Project (converting one unit of population in each settlement from Worker to Talent- which is tied into the subsystems I'll discuss more later, unlocked by Biogenetics), the Virtual World (allowing every Network Node to also function as a Hologram Theater, unlocked by Planetary Networks), and the Weather Paradigm (increasing the speed at which our terraformers work by 50%, unlocked by Centauri Ecology). I on the other hand am of the opinion that the Merchant Exchange is one of the most ignorable projects in the game. The Weather Paradigm and Virtual World are amazing, and the Human Genome Project is good but not extraordinarily so. The Merchant Exchange just isn't that good - it really isn't "significant revenue" except in the earliest parts of the game, and there are many cheaper options to rapidly increase energy income by much more than the Merchant Exchange will ever provide, one of which is enabled by the Weather Paradigm. The Weather Paradigm, though, is in my opinion one of the best five projects in the entire game (four without Alien Crossfire) that I always, always try to nab. Terraforming is incredibly powerful in this game, and the WP both speeds it up dramatically and gives early access to advanced terraforming effects not normally accessible until later in the game. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 07:07
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Again, I'm not outright dismissing the possibility that the xenofungus could be more, indeed, I understand that due to the unique alien ecology of this world, the drat stuff might be quite important for the long term ecosystem of the planet, and hell I'll even be willing to concede that it does behoove us to learn more about the stuff if we're gonna be stuck with it. BUT, until we know more it is a threat, and Gott, while you may argue that this means we need to drop everything and start studying the stuff, I'm, saying that doing so would be the irresponsible act. By all means, dedicate some o your own lab time, work with Valdez and the others, but for the main laboratories of Morgan Industries, we should be focusing on more immediate techs, like the speeders, better lasers, and more armor. You say that it won't matter against the worms, I'm saying as someone whose had to fight the drat thing, YES THEY DO! We had to take those drat worms on with spacesuits that had only a few ceramic plates and some surplus NATO rifles, and it was a completely unknown situation. You can bet your rear end things would have been different if we had some more armor, some heavier weapons and maybe a speeder or two (have I mentioned how useful speeders would be?). True those things screwed with our minds, and yeah a lot of the squad might have been incapacitated, but if we had the heavier gear, we could have poured more fire on the bugs and saved a few more guys. And my worry isn't about Skye, she's a loopy tree hugger. My worry is about the other groups we haven't run into yet. Lal and Zackarov were at least reasonable and somewhat amicable when we parted ways so I'd be happy to run into them again. But Zhang, Santiago, Godwinson, have you forgotten about those three? Hell Santiago is the main reason we're all scattered to the four winds, and I know those survivalist types, they're not picky about whose property is what so long as they can grab it. If we run into them, we're gonna need a strong force because if there's one thing I remember when the US collapsed, it was that the looters came right for the companies and businesses when it hit the fan. Zhangs the type who wants everyone under hit tent, weather they want to or not and Godwinson? You remeber those sermons she shouting over the intercoms when we were getting ready to leave? We got lucky to have Skye as one of our neighbors, but it pays to be prepared, we'll want some decent force to protect our colonies from both the Worms and whatever this planet has in store, but also from the other groups that are out there. Once we have a secured border and a decent standing force, then I say, go hogwild with your fungus poking. Post on the Interdepartmental Sciences Forum; "General Xenofungus Discussion" thread by Marcus Li
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Jan 22, 2015 07:54
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Mr. Li, back on Earth did you ever read the book World War Z? Say what you will about most of it, but one part of that book sticks out in my mind: that insisting on conventional weapons and tactics against an unconventional adversary is not a good idea. Tanks would do you no good against mind worms. Training and mental discipline would, in the absence of figuring out how their psionic assault actually works. Want my two cents' worth? Spend less time on the rifle range and more time learning to focus and ignore distractions. Discipline and focus look to be our best bets against psionic attack, not kevlar or machine guns. The exploration teams already got you lasers. Either way, in order to mount a meaningful defense or equip our forces better to deal with it, I think we first need to understand what is attacking them and how. At this point the worms might as well be waving magic wands and shouting Avada Kedavra for all we understand of their attack. As for the other pods, we haven't seen any sign of them. Maybe we'll get lucky and Yang will get eaten by mind worms. That guy creeped me out more than the fungus does now. Post on the Interdepartmental Sciences Forum; "General Xenofungus Discussion" thread by M.L. Valdez.
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Jan 22, 2015 08:10
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I certainly wouldn't be surprised to discover that one or more other pods came down in or near a large area of Xenofungus and was overwhelmed by worms. It was largely pure chance that allowed our soldiers to survive the assault, I shudder to think what would have become of any pod that came down in the wrong place on this planet. It doesn't matter how thick your armor is Marcus; once anyone is within range of the worms psionics its all over. Until we know how to stop them from transforming men into gibbering masses of fear there will be no reasonable way to confront the worms in direct combat. I know you really want to go out there and shoot worms like some kind of space marine but even if you somehow managed to come up with armor the worms can't get through you'd probably just end up entombed inside it while you slowly went mad. And I wouldn't even count on being able to come up with armor those worms can't get through; have you seen the teeth on those things? Those teeth make our mining drills look like child's toys in comparison and I don't even know what they're made of but its harder than diamond and goes through ceramic and steel plates like they're not even there. Right now we simply have no way to defend ourselves effectively from worm attacks Marcus; that is the simple truth of the matter and hiding behind bigger guns and thicker armor won't change that truth. We need new tools to deal with this new environment so would you please just calm down and let us work out what tools we need so we can build them, you can go stand on top of a rock and heroically fight off worms after we figure out how to stop you from hallucinating that spiders are crawling out of your skin every time one looks at you funny. Post on the Interdepartmental Sciences Forum; "General Xenofungus Discussion" thread by M.N. Gott.
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Jan 22, 2015 08:32
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I knew I should have avoided this thread, if only for my own personal sake, but this has finally become too much. I simply cannot believe the gall of some posters here telling a man who was actually there during the attack what he needs or doesn't need in regard to mind worms. Perhaps better armor wouldn't have helped, but better weapons and training certainly would have. I imagine they would have also helped my son and his squadmates. The idea of focusing even more of our limited resources on the hypothetical possibility of "understanding" this menace is ridiculous. We barely even have a functioning society. Let's work on that, then we can worry about this pie-in-the-sky nonsense. Post on the Interdepartmental Sciences Forum; "General Xenofungus Discussion" thread by KaapandaD (OOC Disclaimer: I know only morale matters with mind worms, and I know more tech is always more better. I just think that's how my current character would approach this discussion, and I also think that we should stay focused on Discover and Build technologies, since a lot of them play to the Morganites' strengths and help mitigate their weaknesses.)
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Jan 22, 2015 09:27
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I apologize if I've somehow misunderstood some detail about how the setting and/or the business world works in my attempt to generate fluff. I haven't exactly got much experience being a CEO! From: Fred Sloniker (ceo@dreamland.com) Subject: Can you be the hero Dreamland Games needs? To: Nwabudike Morgan (ceo@morganindustries.com) Mr. Morgan: Dreamland Games is the most prominent developer of multiplayer online games on the face of Chiron. From our lowly beginnings resurrecting old text-based mainframe games to our latest simulators, role-playing games, and first-person shooters, we have consistently and vigorously pushed the envelope of what available hardware can do with the aim of providing our customers with the best entertainment value for their credit. Now we're striving to take things one step further. Virtual reality technology has come a long way from its primitive origins of strapping a bulky helmet on your face and squinting at images barely clear enough to form a 3D image while sitting in a chair and trying not to pull your computer's graphics card out by the interface cable. Even with the technological setbacks accompanying Planetfall, augmented reality is still accessible to the average consumer. Now, with advances in available hardware and software, we believe we're ready to produce something truly unique: not just a virtual reality game, but an entire virtual world, where people can enjoy activities and experiences the real world could never offer them. The project is, of course, ambitious. We would need to hire hundreds more employees, assemble a server farm an order of magnitude larger than the one we currently possess, and develop and deploy a full VR system at a price the average consumer can afford. (At the moment, we're focusing on a rental model, with the equipment included in a monthly fee for accessing the Virtual World.) All of these issues, however, are ones that we can address. What we cannot address is bandwidth. At the moment, we are offering, among our other games, over two dozen play-by-email games and a handful of text-based MMOs. Why? Because the network infrastructure is that primitive in much of our fledgling nation. We pride ourselves on giving the best experience we can, even in these conditions--but we want to do more. To that end, I would like to discuss with you the possibility of emphasizing completing the robust, high-speed network that is still in its infancy. Once the bandwidth to push the necessary data out to individual homes and colonies is available, Dreamland Games can spread its product across the nation. Aside from the obvious financial benefits, I believe this would significantly improve the quality of life for everyone involved--long hours and hard work are easier to bear when you can come home and relax in a virtual paradise, and the ability to sculpt virtual environments will spur creativity and ingenuity in a way that staring at a screen cannot equal. Obviously I'm not expecting you to do this from the goodness of your heart. We would require a lot of high-bandwidth, low-latency network capability, and we would pay you accordingly. I'm also willing to discuss additional financial incentives and/or investment opportunities. Get in touch, and I'll get you a business plan. Sincerely, Fred M. Sloniker CEO, Dreamland Games 'We make your dreams come true' I'm not sure what justification you plan to use for the Virtual World project's effects being limited to the faction, long-term. Maybe Morgan decides that he wants to be the one to make (and own) the VR rig, or he'll buy out the company if it does well, or something. I leave that up to you, should you decide to use this fluff! Also, if me using my own name for the character offends, let me know and I'll swap it out for some random name.
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Jan 22, 2015 09:35
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@ Valdez Really, you're going to invoke zombies as a reason to not pursue military strategies against the mindworms? I have a news flash for you doctor, our old earth military tech isn't working, which is why we need better weapons and armor. We don't just need some surplus rifles, we need some of the newer laser weapons, or hell I've seen talks about particle impactors, though from what I understand those are more theoretical at this point, but still imminently more tangible then trying to commune and work with the bleeding worms. More discipline? Have you even been to a training range, three fourths of what we do is focus on discipline, making sure we have the right training to operate under fire and stay calm in the event of war and to make sure we don't make mistakes. We run a tight ship here, and yet those worms still screw with our minds because, according to several documents I read, they're able to create some kind of chemical interaction with our brains! And you're claim that tanks would be useless has no merit, we had no tanks when the worms attacked! Like I said, it was just us, spacesuits and whatever bits of ceramics we could strap on. You're literally taking one instance of combat where we were fighting a strange creature we never saw before with minimal equipment and unilaterally declaring all military technology useless. Again, I'm all for understanding the worms and the environment, but only AFTER we figure out how to effectively kill these things and give ourselves an effective edge. Also we've only been on this planet for a few years, I'm not surprised we haven't run into the other pods yet given that this an entire world. But just blithely assuming that the other, less desirable leaders got their pods destroyed dangerously dismissive. @ Gott You're drat right we got lucky, I may not be in Rat Patrol any longer, but all those boys and girls fought their damned hardest to hold the line. Let me tell you this though Mr. Gott, I don't want to go around shooting the drat worms like some "space marine", I don't want to be anywhere within a hundred meters of those things. If I could, I'd love to have some long range artillery for us to bombard the drat things from a distance so no one is in direct contact with them. I'd love a lot of things ,but unlike some of the scientists here, I acknowledge the reality of the situation. We don't have the long range technology to make those artillery pieces, so baring that, I'm asking that we have more potent weapons and armor so if those worms come back, we can at least put up a fight and give a better showing. I have a news flash for people who keep saying that because the worms paralyzed most of us that conventional fighting is out of the question. Not All Of Us Got Knocked Out! Some of us managed to fight off whatever the hell happened in our minds, and you know what we did next? We poured the fire on, we shot until our mags were empty and then we had to pick up the guys next to us to keep at it. There were only a fraction of us and we kept fighting to keep the worms away from the guys who went down. We only had those crappy surplus rifles, do you know how many rounds it takes to put down a boil? I would have killed to have one of our lasers there! The scythe fire it's capable of I know for a fact could have saved a few more lives when we had lines of sights on distant boils, but not enough fire power to take en down before they were on some of the guys. And armor, yeah the worms have sharp teeth, but an extra layer, or better armor, buys precious seconds and often that's all you need to pull a worm off someone or line up the shot to save the guy whose down. Again, if you guys are so adamant on figuring out the worms, fine! Hell if you can find a way to block that chemical that works our brains, I'll personally sing your praise on the internet. But until then, all we have to protect our colonies are guns and armor and the only tangible gains we can immediately prove in the short term are making bigger guns and thicker armor. @KaapandaD Thank you for your support. Your son sadly was not in my squad, but the scuttlebutt is he's the reason anyone from 5th squad walked away from that fight alive. Post on the Interdepartmental Sciences Forum; "General Xenofungus Discussion" thread by Marcus Li
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Jan 22, 2015 10:22
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(Just checked the tech tree and it didn't have quite the dependencies I thought it did - I had two techs confused. Better do this while it still makes any sense.) From: hdavidson@lovelace To: bspektor@lovelace Subject: Re: No hard feelings No hard feelings here either - I half-expected this was coming once we got far enough. I can see enough of where things are going from here to know that I'm not going to be a lot of use directly on the projects, and the severance is generous well-enough that I should be able to afford some serious retraining. Haven't actually decided what, yet, though. Bioinformatics seems like I'll get stuck in a race to catch up just in time to be rendered irrelevant again by the next revolution. I'll have a better chance of helping make the revolutions if I go back to fundamentals. I know the softer sciences have been screaming for help, but we haven't yet seen if there's anything there yet. Heh, yeah, I know, imagine me as an undergrad again at 40. Maybe the anti-agathics will make that less outlandish as time goes on. Anyway. I'm completely on board with burning no bridges - I'll almost certainly end up reapplying later after retraining finishes and in the meantime if you ever have something that you want my help on, let me know and I'm sure we can work out some kind of contract. --Harv PS - the last uncommitted work on my branch can probably be tossed; I was working with the population dynamics stress test and just added maglev trains everywhere. Kind of silly results - every base we'd found suddenly ends up selling out nearly all its real estate basically instantly. Good for a laugh, I guess, but the performance numbers for the network nodes don't change so it's not super-helpful. I guess if you need more data points you might keep it, but there's nothing at all critical there.
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Jan 22, 2015 12:53
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Overheard at a Bar posted:"See! I done tol' you they don't care 'bout us." The Little Guy gets passed over again. 
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Jan 22, 2015 13:34
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Why are you still going on about this, people?! One, it's been over ten years, and not another hint of a single mind worm spotted anywhere. Two, this is not hosted on a lonely secure workstation in Morgan Labs anymore, you realise that, right? And that there's practically no security in our current networks? Anyone with access to this ramshackle "internet" can see and read this. For fucks sake, Lovelace search engine gives me this as the first result when I try to review our data archives on xenofungus. Three, yesterday my neighbour - a lovely lady that works as a foreman in some factory, and had never even seen a glimpse of the fungal forests - went on an aneurysm-inducing rant about how we need to arm our colonies and teach our kids to use weaponized lazers to survive the oncoming mind worm apocalypse. I blame all of you. ALL OF YOU. My kid was standing right there and he has enough of an unhealthy attachment to all things military. And finally, if you want to argue about survival tactics and protection against those worms that are apparently oh so close to beseiging our prefabs, would you at least care to straighten your facts out? Based on what some of you are saying, several people here have had access to the tac cam footage of the incident. I understand why you would want to be circumspect and try to avoid the specifics, but the rising Santiago-like hysteria these discussions brought on tells me it's time to talk about what truly happened out there in the fungus. @MarcusLi, would you care to tell the nice scientists why are you really so adamant about the need for military upgrades? Or maybe you'll want to tell us why you left the Rat Patrol immediately after that fight and never tried to contact those left in the unit? Why you and several others never came to to the funerals? Tell us how Sonja Callahan and Shi Daiyu died. Tell us why Mark Petersen's body had a knife in an eyesocket while there was zero evidence the worms came anywhere near his face. I have little confindence in Hal Kimberley and thus no hope that the footage of our first (and only) encounter with the mind worms will ever be released to the public (unless, of course, someone with access leaks it). But I've seen it. In fact, I've seen most of it on the day the bodies and the evidence were brought back to Morgan Industries. Rat Patrol wasn't attacked by the worms. Furthermore, the first body dropped before it was possible to spot any of the worms. Come on, people, use your common sense. There are several publicly available photos of the worm autopsies. The biggest specimen we got was at most 9.5 cm. They're small and nearly indistiguishable in colouring and form from fresh xenofungus growth. It's nigh impossible to see them in the fungus until they are right there in your face. I'm not saying that the Patrol started killing each other for no reason. Yes, the worms and the fungus can somehow overpower or take control of human nervous system. What I'm saying is that not everyone in the Patrol started shooting their comrades, whatever "psionic" influence was there. And I'm saying that all the damage caused to the bodies by the worms happened after these bodies were already injured or dead and lying on the ground. And I'm also saying that not all of the bodies bore signs of contact with the worms. I'm saying that the reason Mr. Li wants better guns and thicker armour is not because it'll make him safer from the worms, but because it'll make him safer from his own squad members - and those squad members safer from himself. That might even seem a resonable assumption, until one remembers that we have no idea what the fungal/worm infection can do to human behaviour. Sending heavily armed and armoured people into the fungus may very well end with heavily armed mindless killing machines coming out towards us. Until we know what this contagion is and how it functions, the best defence we have is to be as inoffensive to the fungal ecosystem as possible. Next time someone starts calling for bigger and better guns to protect us from the worms (while we haven't encountered them in over a decade, remember?), keep in mind the fact that the worms aren't an enemy. They are a contagion vector. And the only reason to bring heavy artillery to a medical problem is if you want to kill infected people from a safe distance and be very certain they're completely dead. How's that for bringing zombies into this discussion, Mr. "If I could, I'd love to have some long range artillery for us to bombard the drat things from a distance so no one is in direct contact with them" Li? Post on the Interdepartmental Sciences Forum "General Xenofungus Discussion" thread by Zhilin.P.
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Jan 22, 2015 16:49
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The Stepdaughters of Gaia   By 2123, heavy investment into network and informational infrastructure in the Morgan settlement led to the settlement having the infrastructure in place to support a comprehensive local network, with nearly all firms and habitations wired in to this network. Although still only a pale shadow of Earth's Internet, the improvement in communications and easy propagation of ideas proved a major boon to scientists and researchers in the settlement. The construction of cable to link this settlement with the Torrson settlement further south with greater bandwidth continued, slowly helping reduce the subjective distance between the Pod 5 settlements.    In 2126, Doctor Skye, representing the Pod 1 colonists, attempted to demand technical information to make their data on long-range networking protocols more than academic. Morgan, acting as de facto leader of the Pod 5 colonists, refused this without an equitable exchange of information, but Doctor Skye was unwilling to share the psychological data that had been accumulated by certain researchers in the Pod 1 colony. More concerning than Doctor Skye's attempts to get something for nothing, however, was the slowly accumulating evidence of a new social movement growing amongst the Pod 1 colonists. The so-called 'Stepdaughters of Gaia' were a quasi-religious movement, venerating the planet in explicitly spiritual terms, and with their own slowly developing canon of prayers and rituals. Although they remained, at the moment, a minority of the Pod 1 colony, perhaps a fifth of the population in total, they counted Doctor Skye herself as their leader and as the person 'most in tune with Planet'. The Pod 1 Governing Council remained split between secularists and Gaians, with many of Skye's inner circle of biologists, geologists, and civic leaders refusing to accept this new religion. Only one Governing Council member, one Doctor Hanson, resigned her post in response to the growth of this social movement. Following her resignation, she emigrated from the Pod 1 colony, making her way across Pod 5 territory to the Tellus settlement.  Despite the refusal of the Pod 1 colony to share their accumulated psychological data, their work was swiftly replicated on the Pod 5 side of the border, with mathematical models that could predict the distribution of behavior of populations in response to specific events based on prior data on the population. Although the degrees of precision involved were not great, nonetheless the mathematical models were robust and accurate enough to prove an invaluable aid to market research by firms that made use of them.    In 2129, citizens of the Tellus colony reported sightings of an assembled mass of 'mindworms' in the xenofungal forest southwest of the settlement, which soon enough swarmed out of the fungus and over the land towards the Tellus settlement. Due to their early warning, the Tellus security force was ready for this, and the first field test of an x-ray emitter apparatus proposed by the Morgan Industries xenobiological research staff was made against the worms. The coordination of the swarm seemed to falter under the x-rays, and although the Tellus security forces were still assaulted by horrific visions and suffered a number of losses to friendly fire or to mindworm infestation, the unit largely kept in good order. The results of this battle seemed to prove that there was some internal communication within a mindworm swarm mediated by x-rays, and the use of x-ray emitters against worm swarms was rapidly confirmed as standard doctrine amongst Pod 5 security forces preparing for the next assault. With the worm swarm burnt away by incendiaries, a remarkable find was made amidst the ashes. Small nuggets of thorium doped with precise traces of other elements survived where the fleshier portions of the worms were burnt away, which, across the whole swarm, added up to a remarkable amount of wealth for the reactors of the colony. Mindworm boils that are destroyed when another unit attacks them, rather than being destroyed in their own attack, leave behind 'planetpearls', concentrations of rare elements that give some bonus energy credits to their destroyers. The Pod 5 Colony as of 2130   The Pod 5 colony's reserves of industrial materials have been heavily depleted by the breakneck pace of work to complete the Morgan settlement's network infrastructure and the terraformers operating out of the Tellus settlement. The Rat Patrol, exploring north, has found evidence of another Unity cargo pod, while Talon Security Solutions, exploring east, has found a valuable lode of metals in some rocky bluffs on the eastern coast of the Freshwater Sea. Although nominally within Pod 1 territory, a new settlement near the bluffs would almost certainly have a more solid and legitimate claim on the rich mining in the bluffs, which could be a crucial asset to a new settlement. Such a settlement would also be near a region of exceptionally good fishing in the already nutrient-rich Freshwater Sea, which it might be able to exploit for a rich source of food. The beginnings of a freight railroad running alongside a highway for vehicle and foot traffic runs for a distance between the Morgan and Torrson settlements, terminating at one end at a small ferry facility to shift cargo and travellers onto the river, and trailing off at the other end in front of the rocky outcroppings south of the Morgan settlement. In the Freshwater Sea, a Unity cargo pod sends forth its beacon, although the resources to recover it are not yet available. Borders can and will get redrawn based on new settlements being established. The mineral resources are obviously at the far outer edge of Gaian influence, and not near a settlement of their own to make a clear claim. The green vegetation icon in the Freshwater Sea represents rich nutrient resources, so we have now seen all three unique resource icons. Units following either roads or rivers need only spend a third of a movement point to move along the road or river.  The Morgan settlement is a busy center of activity, processing the wealth of both nearby monolith complexes and supporting the best network infrastructure in the colony. Work has almost been completed by several small firms on a series of reprocessing units to break down organic waste for supplementary biofuels, fresh water, fertilizers, and industrial chemicals. With survival on Chiron so precarious and resources so short, even human and animal waste and rotting plant material represent a small but valuable source of resources.  The Torrson settlement has a small 'suburb' of thorium sifters, hydroelectric generators, and farmland just downstream, helping supplement the resources from its own monolith complex. Although doing reasonably well as a settlement, there is room for increased productivity from a better-educated workforce that better applies the wealth of the settlement. There is a strong opinion amongst many of the workers and investors of the settlement that the opportunity to be found in establishing an eastern settlement near the metals-rich bluffs on the shores of the Freshwater Sea could be enormous, and proposals of organising a mission have been circulating. Inefficiency drains off some of the energy production of a settlement, growing worse the further from the center of the faction it is. Better EFFICIENCY ratings can help mitigate these losses.  The Tellus Cooperative itself has enthusiastically invested into waste reprocessing plants, and hopes to enjoy their benefits soon in the future. The Tellus settlement has begun to work modern farms east along the penisula, and its terraformers have begun to establish thorium sifters amongst the farms. Although still the most modest of the Pod 5 settlements, it has a somewhat more secure food situation and should enjoy greater wealth in the future. Through the efforts of the Pod 5 colonists, Chiron is slowly becoming a more suitable home, although it still suffers from many hardships and difficulties. What the rise of the Stepdaughters of Gaia will mean in the long run is yet to be seen, although it seems an ominous development. nweismuller fucked around with this message at 17:19 on May 31, 2016 |
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Jan 22, 2015 17:11
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This will be the last update until at least Saturday, as this is the start of my weekend, and I will be out without access to saves, as usual. I will still be able to read and respond to the thread, however. Volunteers for the IDC for the eastern colony will be taken, and I will name the colony accordingly. Thanks for everybody's participation so far, you have all been great.
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Jan 22, 2015 17:15
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