Forging Ahead (GURPS Interstellar Wars/Celestial Forge)

IIRC that's not true? Once the Manties figure out how to make better, smaller fusion plants, they also figure out how to mount those weapons on the LACs that become their fighter craft for their status quo shattering carrier dreadnoughts later on in the series that Honor and Hemphill developed together.

 

Actually the one thing they probably can get off the ground is the FTL comms. Which on their own present a massive advantage in knowing when the enemy is coming in and having a week to prepare because you know they jumped and got word before they got to the other end. The black boxes can likely be deployed much faster but the HPG will also be prioritized simply for the raw advantages it can bring. Even in the unlikely event that the military doesn't immediately grab it with both hands the corporation WILL.

Someone in the real world spent about $300 million to put a private fiber optic line in a straight line between New York and Chicago because it gave a few milliseconds advantage on trading futures between the New York stock exchange and the Chicago exchange (VERY valuable). What would a Corporation do for a 1 week (edit: Minimum. Assuming only one jump. Multiply by number of jumps) time advantage over their competitors?

Edit: I thought I would take a moment to expand on this. I am not just talking about stock market manipulation here. Let us look at logistics for a minute. If you are 6 jumps away from someplace and you want to order something it will take at least 12 weeks to get it to you. 6 to fly someone there to make the order plus another 6 to get the order back to you. and that assumes the item is in stock and the ship it is traveling on makes maximum haste back to you. This is the same with information gathering or any other activity.

If you have ftl comms at both locations that time is immediately cut in half for physical goods. You can make the order the same day you realize you want it and the people at the other end can immediately start working on getting it to you. If what you want is information, then the answers are far faster.

So lets pretend that earth is the center of culture and you run a store that is the subsidiary of megacorp. A new fashion trend/toy/game craze takes over earth and starts moving outwards. Headquarters on earth finds out in real time and sends out a bulletin to all stores. Stores review and make purchasing orders in short order. The bulk order starts making its way to your store 6 jumps away. Everyone else is in the dark. The news will take 6 weeks to get to them due to jump times.

6 weeks later the news arrives. And so does your order. The day the new fashion trend/toy/game hits your world you already have them in stock in your stores. Your competitors will have to wait 12 weeks for the round trip order before they can have it in their stores.

By the time their orders arrive you have already sold everything you have and have more on backorder. Backorders you were able to "fax" in the same day. Edit 2: depending in when you ran out of stock you might be able to get the second order delivered before your competitors get their first order in. Massive Profit. Your competitors are left with what few people were not able to buy in the first (and possibly second) wave. Too bad. So sad.

This works for everything. You know the price differences between systems and know where to buy low and sell high before you ever calculate a jump. Do you know there is a shortage of metal/widgets/lefthanded screwdrivers on some critical project on Planet Krishna? You can have negotiations before anyone else, and you can have it there in half the time your competitors would take.

Empires are made with advantages like this. Their competition will make a move and always find Megacorp there first. They wont just beat the competition. They will crush them. Those who have access to FTL comms will run roughshod over those who don't. And they are not stupid people. They won't give this advantage up lightly.

And now the government that could have controlled this from the start is going to find themselves having to give concessions to the Megacorp. Concessions they would never have had to make if the genius patrol had just set her up in a government lab somewhere.

 

No. The breakthrough with the LACs was using fission plants that take up far less space than fusion plants to charge capacitors to power grasers, the energy weapons typically mounted on capital ships.

 

So I feel like I need to clarify something. Sonia doesn't know WHEN the next war is only that it is coming. But even if she knew it's not like things would have changed much. Again, she got drafted. You don't go against that. Everything before this was done specifically to put her into a position to start building things to save the world and isn't a waste of time. Sure the drafting thing could be argued as a waste of time but....YOU CAN'T GO AGAINST THE DRAFT. And that includes her first mandatory posting on Perspera that was supposed to last four years but got dropped to one.

 

What ? No that is not correct at all. The LACs main weapons were grazers/lasers and missiles, not grav lances or force torpedoes.

Edit: Ninja'd

 

All that talk about Honor Harrington kind of makes me want to have the "Foraker-Hemphill" Perk from Honor Harrington. I know it is unlikely, and adding yet another FTL as well as another Paradigm shift of combat to the setting is going to kick up anthills beyond what Sophia might want to deal with in the near future.

Getting a Perk that lets her innovate better or faster the Foraker Hemphill or for example Pioneer (The Games We Play) would be interesting. Admittedly, given Sophia's current abilites and knowledge it might be, possibly, unnecessary.

Something I would be interested in is how you are implementing perks and if similar enough ones are going to stack. If she gets another Genius perk does it just add a notable increase to her abilites, or is only the stronger one going to be considered, or is it going to stack straight.

 

You know, I don’t think we’ve actually gotten a description of what Zofia looks like and for whatever reason, I’ve got it in my head that she looks like Suletta from the new Gundam show, I have no clue why.

 

I just had to delete a post about asking about another setting's Perk and FTL. Unles Cliff asks, then let's not be annoying. Let's not suggest perks. Do not annoy the Fic's Author and all that.

 

As chapter 2 briefly alludes, she's a little over five feet and is lucky to get up to 110 lbs soaking wet. I haven't mentioned any other characteristics yet - in fact, physical descriptions of characters is one of my weakest areas as a writer.

In my own mental image of her she's usually been blonde, though.

 

Can you at least visualise or are you aphantasic? Because I believe I may over compensate with descriptions in my original works due to my Aphantasia, so at least you don't go in the opposite direction.

 

...
...
Joe would have found a thousand reasons to do nothing except sit in his warehouse and jerk off sleep hypothesize nonsensical reasons to justify why sitting around and doing nothing was the right choice. Oh, and whine about how bad it was to have a somewhat controlling mother who wouldn't even let him keep his shrine to a mass-murdering terrorist, so triggering!

MC here does things. She'd already outmatched Joe in every way that mattered the instant she decided to actually use the knowledge from Well-Researched to achieve some good scores instead of hiding it and letting herself be tossed into the usual grunt pool because of imaginary reasons.


edit: on further thought... this was a weird place for my reaction to this thursday's chapter to finally erupt. I can take it down if this is a problem, I guess.

 

Let’s not turn this into a “Reasons we don’t like BCF” thread, please. I understand there are reasons why people dislike BCF, but here is not the place to talk about them.

Cool off you hate-boner and talk about this story.

So how I’m seeing is Five foot two or so, maybe shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes (given Poland has nearly 50% of it’s population with blue eyes). And given she’s Polish, she’s probably also white.

 

Neat idea! Someone should make that.

 

lol. Might actually be a good idea, so I don’t have to see people complain about the same shit whenever I scroll through the actual thread.

Either way, we should try to keep discussion to the threads actual topic, being this story. Then again, I’m no mod, so all I can do is ask nicely.

 

You can't tell me what to do, you're not my Dad!

 

Wouldn't it be uncomfortable to find out your Dad was posting on the same porn forum as you?

 

...

...yes

 

Well, I’m in a tank and you’re not.

 

TBH I fell off of Brokton's Celestial Forge when their original discord got overrun with nazis and bots and everyone who wasn't affiliated with them ran off to another discord that I couldn't find an invite for.

Is he still doing the thing where he gets a new perk, and he spends enough wordcount talking about the potential of said perk to afford a new perk that he then spends enough wordcount on to afford a new perk and so on and so forth while the story only advances a couple of hours in real time?

 

Try this link, it worked for me a few weeks ago.

https://discord.com/invite/d4xkc99RNx

I second the call to let's not turn this into the BCF discussion thread. But hey, the Discord awaits.

 

Ah, the Turkish uprising, I remember it well. Fun times.

Remember friends, never download Itch.io porn games. Without some sort of malware protection.

 

Close-cropped hair now, given that Navy grooming standards include the need for any crewman to be able to wear a vacc suit at need, but other than that you nailed it.

 

That's why I would normally recommend Xcom psionics. It is supposed to be rather powerful at the upper end (though we never truly see its potential) and capable of interfacing with technology, with no downsides to its use (like Starcraft's human psionics having the tendency to explode like a ton of TNT when they first awaken). Unfortunately, the version of the Celestial Forge Cliff is using doesn't have a good Xcom tech perk in it, as the Jumpdoc that gave you the setting's tech (including psionic research) as a perk only came out relatively recently.

Its actually kinda weird, the two previous Xcom jumpdocs either lacked any Xcom tech perks or nerfed them. A shame, really. I mean, you kinda get that with the Peak ADVENT perk, but it specifically rules out genetic manipulation and 'anything that gives away their dark secrets'... which means no psi-tech.

 

cliffc999 I'm seeing Sophia telling the rep that she was going to ask for 900 billion to develop Jump 9 and then offer ftl comms as a proof of concept for a mere 1 billion in funding.

 

With Peak Advent, it does give you access to Psionic Technology. What it doesn’t give you access to is stuff like the Avatar project or the Chosen, so you can’t liquify psychic humans to become a god tier Psionic operative. But given that Advent Priests(or whatever they’re called) are a part of normal Advent forces, normal Psychic stuff is a-okay.

As for StarCraft Psionics the options for how awakening occur are either, A: Become a fucking bomb or B: Straight up liquify people’s minds in your general vicinity. Depending on stress, I believe. Then again, the only two Psionic Terrans we see awaken their powers in any onscreen way are Nova and Kerrigan, the former was being attacked by assassins and the latter just accidentally exploded her mom’s head because she killed a butterfly.

 

I think it be a good idea to not be restricted to what perks are in the forge and make your own custom ones.

 

I have been considering expanding the perk list to include things that fit the theme of the Celestial Forge but are in jump-docs that have come out since the v2 document was compiled, but that is a decision I am still quite undecided on.

 

I made a couple of Metroid perks that are only in aeons version of the forge so far if you want it. Ones 600 and it's a chozo database with all there tech and lessons for that tech, and another one is 400 and is an automated testing facility, that developed the wave, ice, and plasma beams by itself. That being said it's a warehouse attachment that doubles as a security system. Reminder that Metroids are sentient, and also chozo tech.

Edit: I stand corrected, the knowledge is directly applied for 600, AND you get the database for free. There's also a challenge chamber for 200.

Chozo Remenaint (600): You know all the base theories of chozo tech, not only how they work but how to work them into other things. At this level of aplication you can make Samuses power suit, or something similar. With enough reaserch you can mass produce them easily. You also have the assention theory....just dont get stuck in a ghost form like those other poor chozo. (Note, you can choose whether or not you are a Chozo for free, or get an alt form of one with this perk)

Chozo Database (400, free Chozo Remenaint): A heavily encripted database that unlocks based on the users understanding of the tech stored inside, complete with warnings against things that really shouldnt be tried. You can also choose weather or not to let someone else be able to use in on an per individual basis. Returns within 24 hours if lost or damaged. (Damaged is typo, supposed to be destroyed)

The Tower (400): This weapons/armor testing facility if fully automated, and recycles at a 95% efficiency rate. It developed the standard versions of the beam weaponry, and can probably do the same with any esoteric effect you give it given time. It includes self repairing testing drones that will work security in a pinch, after all there should be more than one TESTER in such a facility. (Author note: the 95% rate is supposed to be upgradeable with more tech and not fiat backed, just stupidly efficient tech)

Edit 2: found the challenge chamber

Chozo Challenge Chamber (200): This room adjusts size shape whatever for your testing needs, it can even provide dummies for target practice....live fire dummies, just make sure you don't go in there without anything to test, or it might just try to test you.

 

And it is very important to remember that Nova and Kerrigan are literally the two most powerful Psychics that humanity has every had.

 

If every awakening was that bad they would be treated like 40k psykers and they and any blood kin killed.