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Forging Ahead (GURPS Interstellar Wars/Celestial Forge)

Discussion in 'Creative Writing' started by cliffc999, Nov 12, 2022.

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  1. cliffc999

    cliffc999 Connoisseur.

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    Actually, the 'low berth' or cryo capsule is a Traveller staple. As in, it's used in passenger ships as the equivalent of traveling in steerage. (Troop ships actually try not to use it because prolonged use leaves the recipient needing to exercise some to get his muscle tone back, which for obvious reasons you don't want happening in your space marines as you're shipping them out to a combat zone.)

    And I interpret the perk as the full setting tech database, yes.
     
  2. crazygrox

    crazygrox Versed in the lewd.

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    Didn't battletech once engineer a small population of fish-people on one world?
    Who then had medical problems and problems with breeding to a sustainment level in the face of increasing genetic problems, and slavers raiding them for exotic slaves, once the Star League fell, and pirates made off with all of the advanced medical equipment that explained how the project making them worked, and what sorts of genetic maintenance might be necessary to avoid medical.
    I think the goal of the project was to create a genetic therapy capable of transforming people to make it easier to populate water worlds. Or maybe do resource extraction on seafloors? I will admit to not being certain.
    It would be a convenient way to move populations avoid conventional orbital bombardment. Though it's not like that was a likely problem anyways.
    Maybe more useful in the context of that tendency to hide spaceships underwater like you mentioned. Letting crew get out and stretch their legs without giving themselves away, make external repairs. Or even easily build underwater settlements which can do shipyard things on earth colony worlds.
     
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  3. GAMB42

    GAMB42 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    ...I am seriously losing interest in this fic. I thought this was supposed to be a story about our plucky heroine equipped with eldrich knowledge fighting to change the fate of her interstellar nation through the power of mad science and out of context weaponization?

    Instead she just wasted more than a year of her life, when earlier she was extremely worried about time running out, for military style cadet training? After which she wastes even more time to learn how to operate sensors? WTF? I thought maybe this was done so she could network but nope, there is no mention of any other characters at all. That would leave character development or some nebulous long term test by the military brass to see how she reacts (why even include this segment on the fic?). Nope, no changes there either, so it really was a worthless waste of time since she is going civilian to get her enhanced FTL working and widespread.

    Which also contradicts the earlier assumptions she was trying to find a strategic advantage that the Vilani wouldn't just copy. Nope, she is going to use her networking from before the draft to finally finally get something done, better FTL.

    Taticaly it makes sense since it means earth can use the new range to expand itself away from the empire. But on the long term the Vilani are going to copy the enhanced drive and since their industrial capacity is so much higher the gap is not going to close.

    I'm generally a very chill dude with characters but Sophia utterly vexes me with how inconsistent, incompetent and idiotic she is being written. I get it, she has little agency and must step carefully around the system to acomplish anything. But how the hell am i suppose to believe she didn't check the Celestial Forge for months ? When she knows the damn options cycle ? When having the damn thing is the very reason all this is happening? Again WTF? And in all this time the best option available was from Battletech ? And after all this time what does she decides to do but to find the equivalent of Elon Musk to invest on her idea/prototype ?

    And then there is the narrative. The brass plan is to have her as a junior oficer specialized in sensors ? WTF ? She is a bloody recognized genius with freaking math and software acomplishements and the brass sends her to the frontlines ? Again WTF ? How the hell am I suppose to believe that ? If she was sent to a lab to play assistant I could get it. Maybe a actual FTL capable warship for networking and pratical application. But after the whole interview her posting and training is a gigantic waste of time. Again.
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2022
  4. IsaacTheAutobot1229

    IsaacTheAutobot1229 Not too sore, are you?

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    You
    Do you hear that? That's me cackling in glee from all the way over here. With all her perks letting her learn her universes technology as quickly as she does and having BTs to compare will be interesting to see how she utilizes that in the future. It is a lot easier to adapt something if you know how it works and she can probably get the most difficult parts of the industrial parts like factories for some things done fairly easily with help.
     
  5. cliffc999

    cliffc999 Connoisseur.

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    Yeah, the series of posts immediately after I put the chapter up has only led me in very quick hindsight to the realization that I picked something with a lot more oomph than I'd originally estimated.

    Welp, time to improvise. Which, to be fair, is a lot of how I write normally.
     
  6. opne

    opne Getting sticky.

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    This chapter was all about the steps she took to avoid that long term. She is about to do an end run around the deliberate delays and ensure she can't be ignored like this again.

    Remember she is working in a society. She is playing within the rules of that society. She cannot simply go off on her own and sit and build without significate consequences. This isn't the usual power fantasy with a self inset who has all the powers and can equal the might of an interstellar government on their own with zero outside support. Other people have options. This chapter was their attempt to use those options. The end of this chapter is simply the lead up to her forcing them to recognize she has options too.

    Edit: Minor corrections and clairifications
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2022
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  7. IsaacTheAutobot1229

    IsaacTheAutobot1229 Not too sore, are you?

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    That's a 600 CP Perk for ya! Now you can write her as not only a mathematical and coding genius but as a... scrolls the wiki.. however many engineering and technological fields that is genius as well!
     
  8. crazygrox

    crazygrox Versed in the lewd.

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    It also occurs to me that BT tech is at least somewhat blackboxed, I think the explanation for why techs got rarer was that they or the factories to make them, required parts which could only be manufactured in places controlled by comstar, and technology had been set up like that deliberately back in the days of the Star League to make the periphery and house lords dependent on the worlds closer to earth and the economic concerns therin. With part of that engineering being to make it hard to reverse engineer those critical components.

    I don't know whether the Villani reverse-engineer stuff, but if they do BT stuff is likely to be a little more difficult than average.
     
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  9. Velk

    Velk Brok3n1s

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    Aka: A Polymath.

    Like, a comic book genius is basically a polymath by default. Richard Reeds is the goto example.
     
  10. SirBino

    SirBino Getting sticky.

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    Well, at least BT tech has got a lot places where an engineer would just look at it and ask why would anyone build it this way. To quote the BT/Clancyverse Round Robin from Space Battles: "First and most critical is that in a lot of ways, the lasers used in ‘B-Tech’ technology are the most insane mixture of nineteen seventies castoff tech, and thirty first century technology." This applies to all advanced technology in BattleTech to some degree, and some of it a lot more than the lasers.
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2022
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  11. IsaacTheAutobot1229

    IsaacTheAutobot1229 Not too sore, are you?

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    Exactly, I was laughing at the last part because that's how you stop playing nice and flip the board. They played stupid games in her opinion and now they get to play by her rules now with that stunt.

    That is actually a good point, she now knows how to do that, and with the reverse engineering perk undo it as well.

    I get that but still, an entire interstellar tech database of all steps needed to make it is a whole fucking lot of shit.
     
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  12. GAMB42

    GAMB42 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    I understand she is working in a society and has limitations. My problem is that she has been behaving like an utter moron all the damn time in this latest chapters. But it seems she finally, finally, going to get out of her damn ass and actually commit to doing something.

    And unless the Celestial Forge has been nerfed beyond my wildest dreams this fic is going to end up being a power fantasy. For better or worse Sophia is going to end with more perks. Get enough of them and she is going to end up becoming something else entirely from a baseline human.
     
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  13. Setras

    Setras I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    A small suggestion, when you use unusual words like "dtons" that most people aren't going to know unless they have a prior interest in shipping, it can help to use the full name the very first time you use it - that way people can connect the abbreviation to the intended words. Especially in this case in particular - I was aware of the unit ahead of time, but the extra disconnect of applying it to space vessels was enough that it still took me half the chapter to connect the dots :V

    Great chapter otherwise, looking forward to some building... And am now wondering if the terrans achieving higher jump numbers will be the reason a war starts? :sneaky: or even if they'll jump that gap away from the Villani and run into an even more hostile species and the Villani will become unlikely allies.
     
  14. BlueRanger O-Doom

    BlueRanger O-Doom Not too sore, are you?

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    So after reading the comments, is there anything else from BattleTech that would be a game changer in Traveller? Laser/ballistic AMS, Screen launchers, PPCs, functional power armor, etc?
     
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  15. D-Red

    D-Red Getting sticky.

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    Caspar drones.
     
  16. cliffc999

    cliffc999 Connoisseur.

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    In partial response to all the complaints that Sophia should have made different choices, I will remind people that she was drafted.

    Twice. She was drafted twice. Her initial Public Service tour and her current Navy time.
     
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  17. crazygrox

    crazygrox Versed in the lewd.

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    The current round of complaining seems unreasonable to me. So not everyone is in on it.
     
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  18. IsaacTheAutobot1229

    IsaacTheAutobot1229 Not too sore, are you?

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    The main problem was if the government and military tell you to go somewhere and you're just some average Joe? It doesn't matter how genius you are, you're going to do it whether you like it or not. She had to prove that she was actually capable of what she said she can do and then they tested her further to see if they actually wanted to give her that kind of power. Then they found out they actually have no freaking clue how to deal with someone like her and put her near her family because she had what looked like a serious mental breakdown out of nowhere. This was her finally stopping giving a shit and making a statement.
     
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  19. EntropyEnginear

    EntropyEnginear Experienced.

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    Missiles, lots and lots of missiles? And many different types of lasers and other Mech weapons. There’s a lot of tech people can probably scrounge up but it’s kind of hard to say off the top of my head… or some vague surface level looking online either.
     
  20. Mizu

    Mizu Software Developer

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    Battletech isn't a franchise I'm familiar with, but an entire tech database from another interstellar humanity is sure to come in handy regardless, when put to use as anti-invasion technology. The tech fusion she thought up is already gonna be useful on a massive scale for ship movement, and I imagine numerous other bits of tech can prove just as game-changing.

    As for people complaining about the protagonist 'being boring/stupid' for not idly checking her perks and choosing X over the six months of boot camp and space-navy training? I just assumed she was busy focused on learning stuff, or didn't wanna invest her banked CP without an opportunity to put the new skills to use. And while I haven't been in the military, I have heard they like to know what their soldiers are up to in pretty close detail. Shore leave with her folks was likely the first bit of relative privacy the protag had, in that timespan.
     
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  21. Ralyx

    Ralyx Versed in the lewd.

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    Cliff, take ten seconds to go back and read the actual sentence in question that you actually typed, a few times:
    What you likely meant to say is 'no worthwhile purchase options appeared in the last six months, not that Sophia would have had time to spend on anything she purchased during training anyway'.

    That, however, was simply not what you typed.

    The message that you actually typed was 'Sophia did not have time to check the Forge for six months'.

    That's it. We understand what you meant to say, we're just trying to point out that what you actually typed makes no sense.
     
  22. TroyX

    TroyX Connoisseur.

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    I'm really curious why they assigned her to the Gladstone, and clearly everyone else is too. I've seen some decent guesses - I'm certain that proximity to her parents is at least a partial factor but likely not the full one - but a conspicuous lack of answers from Cliff. I take this to mean that he is going to reveal the reasoning later on, and I look forward to that.

    I enjoyed reading the military exercise scene. I do enjoy the brisk pace of the fic, but pausing to have character interaction scenes is something else I enjoy. It's also good to see Sophia not alienated or bullied by her peers on the ship.

    Speaking of character interaction, I look forward to the conversation Sophia is about to have. I suppose you might skip briskly past that to the end result, which is fine if you want to do that, but I would enjoy some scene where people are just completely blown away, and it's often even more satisfying if they start out skeptical, only for the maths to check out as she shows her proofs or whatever.

    I like how she's trying to blend the best of the techs available to her. I mean, that's a CF staple, combining tech bases, but this one is a bit unique in that she's combining CF-given tech bases with tech bases available to her home setting (aka Confederation and Vilani).

    So, brother on the way, huh? Did her parents have her and Michael particularly young? Or does the Confederation's greater advancement in biology and medicine mean that common longevity is a thing, complete with a greater time period of viable fertility for women? Regardless, I'm glad that her parents are enjoying greater prosperity and fulfilling an old dream of theirs. It's a bit of natural happiness in Sophia's determined quest to save the Confederation.

    I've seen a couple readers complain that the Navy bit was a complete waste of time narratively speaking. I don't see it that way. It's more organic. Things are actually happening with people having actual reasons to do X instead of conveniently choosing to do what an all-knowing narrator would have them do. The Patrol had her join the Navy and go to the Gladstone for whatever their reasons are, and Sophia acts in response. Even if the Navy stint is a "waste of time" (which I doubt, since Cliff is clearly keeping their reasons close to his chest for now and I suspect it will matter later), it actually contributes to the narrative by making Sophia and her world feel more real and alive.

    Carry on, Cliff, I'm looking forward to the next chapter :)
     
  23. cliffc999

    cliffc999 Connoisseur.

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    Ralyx, take five seconds to stop and reflect on where you fucked up if you wanted me to actually accomodate any request you made.

    Both. Although her mother is starting to come up on the age where if she wants more kids, she'd better get started.

    And one purpose of the mlitary exercise scene was so that I can at least begin to introduce my readers to how Traveller space combat works without making it a lecture expodump. :p
     
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  24. Fellgar

    Fellgar Connoisseur.

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    Huh... guess you didn't hear how the Japanese declaration of War got delayed. It was supposed to given an hour before pearl harbor but there was a delay for that meeting so they gave it over late.
     
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  25. IsaacTheAutobot1229

    IsaacTheAutobot1229 Not too sore, are you?

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    The main things I can think of are HPGs, Blackboxes aka the other ftl communicator, ftl drive, a wide variety of power armor that can be put into multiple fields of use or even modularized, caspar drones aka robot warships and other automated ships, general ways to make things last a stupid amount of time, the iron wombs as a fallback for "Oh shit, they are literally genociding us" possibilities,

    the neurohelmet used in ways like piloting ships or aiming weapons, artificial limbs or vat-grown replacements(?), some pretty good material sciences like endosteel, terraforming, geoforming, ASEW Missiles, a lot of vehicle mounted weapons based off the mech ones, robotics for sure since I remember things like small farming and security robots. That's all I can think of that would be useful from memory and a quick skim of the technology part of the wiki.
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2022
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  26. Tazered

    Tazered wut...

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    But then you have constellations of stealthy observation satellites spread throughout the system and equipped with hypercoms to give the targeting info to the gunner.
     
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  27. Potato and Chip

    Potato and Chip I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    To minimize the amount of research you need to do, and to keep this story from becoming a purely Battletech/Traveler crossover, maybe Sophia could focus on the highlights of the techbase. Aka the jumpdrive and FTL communications, and then offload the development of the rest of the techbase onto the general Commonwealth itself.

    What I mean is; the Battletech game has rules for making your own power armor, mechs, vehicles, spaceships, aircraft, space stations, buildings, and super vehicles (think mobile anti-orbital fortresses). Sophia does not have the time to literally write down and re-invent everything for the Commonwealth, I'm sure she wants to move onto other techbases, but the entire Battletech techbase would provide a great general boost to the Commonwealth. Yet, as she noted in this update, she doesn't really understand the needs of the Commonwealth. So, why not have Sophia work around this?

    Have her deal with the invention and building of the jumpdrive and FTL communications while also inventing Battletech materials. Things like ferrocrete (super concrete), myomers, and endo-steel, its stuff she'd probably need to "invent" to build the first jumpship anyway. Maybe she could write a series of "How to books". How to build a vehicles/dropships/spacestations whatever with current and newly invented materials. She doesn't need to sit around drawing up the next big thing, just give other people the tools necessary to design the stuff they know they need. It wouldn't eliminate development time but it would probably greatly decrease it.

    Then you, as the writer, can just "steal" designs from the Battletech wiki and say someone in the Terran Confederation developed something similar. No need to learn the Battletech creation rules, no need to create a reason for Sophia to abandon the Battletech techbase, and no reason to tie yourself as a writer or Sophia as a character to the Battletech knowledge. It can just be something in the background that slowly grows on its own.

    Who knows? Maybe later she returns to Terra and at the bus station she sees little sign saying the bus is fusion powered. Maybe the she sees buildings like this being raised in the capital.
    [​IMG]

    She doesn't have to abandon the Battltech techbase, but she doesn't have to chain herself to it either. Just developing the various unique materials of the setting and releasing guideline books would do wonders without her supervision.

    Well... Sophia does have the knowledge of how to make iron wombs now. So that might help?
     
  28. Amrynel

    Amrynel Wat.

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    Oh holy shit yes.

    The HPG (Hyperspatial Pulse Generator) tech - i.e. real-time instantaneous interstellar communications so long as you're willing to throw enough computing and electrical power at it - have already been mentioned, along with the weaponisation of it. Black Boxes have already been mentioned (but they have drawbacks in that both they have less range and the more they're used the more their signals saturate hyperspace until they jam themselves and all other Black Boxes).

    Better-than-fusion Fusion - already mentioned.

    Command Circuits - in Traveller all cargo travels X parsecs per week with no way to speed it up, but in Battletech (because the jump charging period is long but the jump transit itself is instant) you can with enough ships get important cargo (e.g. VIPs) from planet A to planet B as quickly as you can transfer them between ships and clear the jump zone.

    Medical - Battletech has artificially engineered merpeople (canon, The Periphery sourcebook, page 40) and the famed Canopian catgirls (not specifically mentioned in canon AFAIK, but the Magistracy of Canopus canonically has medical tech enough to clone-grow replacement limbs almost casually or even resculpt your body - or someone else's body - to spec if you pay them enough money so various otaku fantasies are almost certainly out there for real somewhere). For a more insidious example, House Liao replaced Prince Hanse of House Davion with a duplicate who thought they actually were Hanse down to the memories but subconsciously worked for Liao, fooling even the medical tests of the Prince's own physicians.

    Artificial Intelligence - CASPAR drones etc. Not sure if BT ever cracked stable AGI in secret, but the Star League certainly managed stable VI to at least the Halo / Mass Effect level (albeit more "fits in a building" rather than "fits in a personal drone").

    Terraforming - mostly lost to the "modern" era, but the Star League could terraform entire planets. What we just saw Nowak help with? That's a Tuesday afternoon for the Star League DOME (Department of Mega-Engineering); Venus went from hell world to garden world in a few centuries, and this included such feats as building planet-sized solar shades to cool it and repurposing part of the atmosphere as reaction mass to accelerate the planet's rotational period. Honestly, DOME are one of the real MVPs of the Battletech setting.

    And that's just the big ones that immediately come to my mind.
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2022
  29. IsaacTheAutobot1229

    IsaacTheAutobot1229 Not too sore, are you?

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    That's a glorious idea actually, getting real-time updates across a solar system is broken as hell in space combat. having them at strategic points across it for maximum coverage would be one of the first things they would likely do after getting communications set up on all their colonies.
     
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  30. cliffc999

    cliffc999 Connoisseur.

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    Native Traveller does not have FTL communications or sensors.

    This is why the HPG is a huge thing, if introduced.
     
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