[CYOA] From the Darkness

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The Game Room > [CYOA] From the Darkness

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

Oh. Oh yes.

##Vote
1. B;A;C

Intelligence, information, and luck respectively.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 06:49

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:03

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

Right, Earth is hosed. Scatter and begin the insurgency. People are more precious than supplies (to a point obviously, a ship of starved corpses helps no one). Accordingly:

##Vote
1. P;J;I

Not Alex fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Mar 3, 2016

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 20:12

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

The fleet is no more. We can pin our hopes on stumbling across some magical kryptonite/mcguffin or we can fight on our terms. We can try and hurt the bastards.

Backtracking the MESSENGERS; where did they appear to come from and how far away is it?

My plan is to pick up the scientists on Callisto and reforge our ship into laboratory of hate and dark science and fling it at their homeworld, cold sleeping in shifts, and unleash a hundred different types of hell upon their populace.

Note: this plan makes several massive assumptions and requires ludicrous levels of adaptability and perseverance. But vengeance is a very human emotion.

It's possible by the time we get to Callisto that I will have calmed down.

##Vote
1. D
2. L See above
3. E To convince me not to follow through on Plan L.
4. C It's not like we can do anything if we catch the the eye of these faster-than-light, fleet-swatting monstrosities. May as well be well rested.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2016 07:00

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

##vote
2 K; J

What are the numbers on the mutineers? Can we just give them one of the freighters? Let em go die. We want willing crew, not mutineers.

The real thing is to make sure that no surprises make it back to the Achilles. Someone on this station is versed in the sneaky and ruthless use of explosives. Nothing and no one new are coming aboard until the situation is stabilized.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2016 22:02

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

LowellDND posted:

Can we make stem cells from DNA? Does the loyalist leader have saved copies of their DNA?

If he brings the box, we dont need the rebels.

See, I thought about this. If we just vent the atmosphere, we can stuff the corpses in an unmodified freighter and carry around our frozen warcrimes while we process them for viable sperm and ova. Halfway to 40k already. Just need to make a fancy chair for one of the corspesicles.

But I looked up the minimum numbers for a workable gene pool and we're right on that threshold already. We should cross it with just the loyalists, depending on the gender ratio.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2016 22:50

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

gently caress these guys. ~~I'd like to think we were professional enough to have been prepping the marines while waiting for the response.~~

Edit: Changing my vote to the deadman's switch plan outlined in my next post.

##vote
1. M

Not Alex fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Mar 13, 2016

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 04:36

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

RandomPauI posted:

At least issue an ultimatum to cooperate or die.

A warship addressing an unarmed and immobile station has an certain amount of cooperate or die implicit in all its communications which they have cheerfully ignored. But you have a point. Screw this. Drop a proximity fused warhead outside the docking bays, give loyalist guy the codes to disarm it or set it off, and tell the dumbass mutineers that if they ever want to leave this station to play nice with its new commanding officer.

Then boogie. We can come back after the situation has resolved itself.

Not Alex fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Mar 13, 2016

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 14:37

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

Outrail posted:

They were threatening to wipe us all out, whether they knew it or not. We need those supplies but we don't need the mutineers. We do need our people if we are indeed at the minimum threshold for genetic viability. Every man or woman we lose is another stranger we have to source from somewhere.

I can't wait until we get the chance to implement an eugenics program.

Hah, it wouldn't be a chance to implement one at our current numbers, it would be a requirement. Multiple children from multiple partners with a carefully controlled pairing scheme. Rather unsavory. But it beats the alternative. :shrug:

Also, how is extracting the loyalist from this station getting us our supplies? I was under the impression that the plan was military supplies here and smart people at the research station. If we pick up random people here and lovely civilian supplies at the science station I'm going to be so mad.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2016 04:58

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

They thought I was mad! Mad! I'll show them. I'll show them all!

Oh my goodness yes. Nothing will brighten up this apocalyptic romp more than a hold full of mad scientists. Space these mutineers and fetch me my number four trepanning wrench. There's science to be done.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2016 04:55

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

PinheadSlim posted:

This is a tough CYOA. The safest and quickest thing to do would be to cut and run, but over 99% of humanity is likely to be wiped out any second and every single life counts a lot more than it normally would. Because of this I say,

Perhaps, but it also amplifies any risk to the group from new individuals. I don't want to pick up someone who's willing to turn their only ways out into bombs especially when leaving is the reason they mutinied in the first place. That's suicidally vicious and I'm inclined to grant them the logical outcome of their plans.

##vote
1. G, B
2. L, M
3. R

Get our precious marines out of danger. Coordinate with the med officer to triage people. Then inform the mutineers they've caused this mission to exceed the threshold of risk acceptable during an extinction threat scenario. Procedure dictates scuttling all other spaceworthy vessels and abandoning the station. Congrats, you won. Rot on your rock.

See if that draws out a surrender. If it doesn't bloody well follow through and leave. The supplies will be there if we absolutely need to come back.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 18:48

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

TheCog posted:

Update tonight or tomorrow!

Warning, its going to be a bit text heavy.

Warning? Rejoice!

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 04:49

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

##vote
1.G

"This ship doesn't have room to evacuate a fraction of the station population, nor the facilities to treat large numbers of wounded nor the capability of repairing the station. With the mutineers suicidally blowing up the only ways off station I'm afraid they've basically marooned you all. We will offer what assistance we can. Our techs can help troubleshoot solutions and our sensors can help with search and recovery, but you and I both know that from your description of the situation it won't be enough. It's a bitter answer and I wish to heaven it was otherwise. Hardly need the bloody MESSENGERs to kill us all at the rate these lunatics are going."

Once we've delivered that message move to a higher alert, especially on proximity scans. In fact have stationkeeping give us a bit of a randomwalk drift. Make it as hard as possible for anyone to get from the station to our hull. We just broadcast on an open channel that we're the only way off this doomed rock and I don't want any of this place's crazy on my drat ship.

Words cannot express how done I am with these mutineer idiots.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2016 16:32

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

##vote
1. D

# ¿ Apr 14, 2016 18:31

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

##vote
1. G
2. C

There are things here that can kill everyone on board and we just pissed off the person controlling them. gently caress outta Dodge time.

We hosed this up guys. Let's not sink more irreplacable resources into it while risking annihilation. Leave and hope we do better at the science base. After we carefully recover our marines of course.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2016 02:10

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

So good.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2016 03:46

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

1A 2A 3 delay decision 4A

Ask these guys when they first powered up the gate. Could have rung the dinner bell for the messengers and sent through a couple appetizers so they know our tech.

# ¿ May 16, 2016 04:34

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

TheCog posted:

About a year go. Exactly 11 months, twenty one days and about 17 hours was the first and only successful test. They succeeded in keeping the anomaly running for exactly 57.4 minutes. It manifested as a gravitic anomaly, which "swallowed" objects without visibly damaging them before they "vanished", and didn't seem to output any kind of energy or radiation as a result.

That's way way too close to when the MESSENGERS probably started for Sol. Anyone we send through is likely in enemy hands.

# ¿ May 19, 2016 02:50

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

Mr. Nemo posted:

Something to have in mind:

The Observers or whatever They are called were first detected a 13 months ago.

The gate was first opened 11 months ago.

So probably not a casue and effect relationship. Although maybe the gate tests were accelerated due to the discovery of the Messengers.

ThwCog, feel free to correct me on the time frame.

And ASK: did you receive any specific orders due to the discovery of the Messenger objects? Accelerate the tests, try new things, etc.

I was under the impression they appeared and then a month later were extrapolated to arrive in one year but ended up here three months early due to the teleport thing they did. That would put first sighting at ten months ago. Very coincidental.

# ¿ May 20, 2016 02:43

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

sheep-dodger posted:

I'd hypothesize that the MESSENGER aliens and the ones that built the portal are two different kinds of aliens.
The MESSENGERS are able to employ some kind of FTL during which our instruments were able to detect their presence, as laid out in the OP.
From everything that we know from the report, the gate doesn't just accelerate stuff to beyond lightspeed, but actively displaces it to somewhere else (potentially a giant space landfill though).
It'd be weird if aliens had two kinds of FTL and used the one that seems slower. (But maybe there's some limitations on the gates, which is why they reverted to using the slower option, so that's not an absolute.)
Overall though I think that there's a good chance that if the portal works, and isn't something else entirely, that it'll lead somewhere unaffiliated with the MESSENGERS. (Being stranded in an alien space junkyard system would be an adventure rad as hell too!)

Good points. It's possible they can simply detect a gate activating.

# ¿ May 20, 2016 14:44

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

Outrail posted:

Just a thought. How hard would it be to rig up one or two 'shuttles' with a few adults and a bunch of human embryos (of course the black site has embryos on ice), cyropods, a small reactor and a thruster unit? Then include a bunch of voyager style instructions/messages for who/whatever finds then and after ~100 years transmit a directional distress signal. Blast them into space at random.

The hope being that if we do jump through the hoop and it turns out to be doom via trash can/center of a sun/messenger home world/etc at least we've given the human race a very small chance. Plus I'm sure there's some people who rather do that than jump into the gate.

We are not the sole escapees of the human race. Megacorps and religions threw together ark ships and chucked em into the black. So we don't need to feel solely responsible for that kind of high risk, hail mary plan.

Which is why I'm still a little against the ring but the benefits if its legit are huge.

# ¿ May 24, 2016 03:30

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

Do whatcha gotta do. You've got us hooked.

# ¿ May 25, 2016 13:22

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

Hexenritter posted:

These additional stories are great, just as eagerly anticipated as regular updates

Indeed. Now to figure out who they all pissed off in a past life.

# ¿ May 31, 2016 04:53

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

We can't count on having a habitable world close by the gate exit (assuming of course it doesn't kill us all or deliver us to the enemy). So we have to set this convoy up for a long haul. This is going to sound weird given that but I want to 50/50 things. Specifically I want hydroponics and the liked stowed on the Behemoth. Pack with an eye towards turning the Behemoth into an ark and let them set things up in transit if it turns out we have a trip longer than a few weeks on the other side of things.

Also keep the Linear class freighters in mind once we get there. Modular design sounds like it would be easiest to retrofit them into combat vessels.

So CBEB

# ¿ Jun 3, 2016 20:00

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

Remind your girlfriend that that you write cool stuff on the internet and thus are deserving of all her affections.

On a more serious note, go have fun. We'll be here when you get back.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2016 15:50

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:03

Not Alex: Oct 9, 2012; Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

##vote
I
Obviously

# ¿ Jun 16, 2016 22:08

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The Game Room > [CYOA] From the Darkness