Forging Ahead (GURPS Interstellar Wars/Celestial Forge)

[Kildar]

Ultimately, this story is my second attempt at experimenting with the Celestial Forge format. And like all experiments, not everything you try works the first time. We'll see how it goes from here.

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So far its been brilliant to me, I always prefer the 'generic' perks that let 'you' do all the work.
Plus the slow drip feed lets us actually absorb the perks and then release the results over time, leading to the perks actually meaning stuff.
Ignoring the usual nonsense, most people would agree that the story has been interesting and is a fresh viewpoint of a slightly overused concept.

Beyond that.... I do think that if you changed that one line a lot of complaining would vanish, 'I got what you intended', But it took me two reads to get it and most appear to have not bothered.
Just my two cents.

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.

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I honestly thought you picked it because the 'OCP' was a math equation that led to most other things, so the 'math genius' could use that to handwave stuff.

Luckily you do have a fairly good way to slow things down.
You see just because you have a mental database, that doesn't mean you can use most of it.
One example is the programming, which would take you years to program out line by line, otherwise known as the tools to make the tools to make the tools.
So just use the ideas and see what the people you work with can do with them.

In hindsight, I begin to realize that I'd forgotten that most of my readers didn't grow up during the Cold War. Because this is so intuitive to me that I literally don't think about it anymore.

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...huh you know that does explain some things about your writing.
Some of the mental disconnects I mean, as I have occasionally noticed a few 'patterns' that can throw you out of a story mid read.
ie A>B>F...??? The 'CDE' here being things that you have lived through, that others haven't.

On the topic of Sofia's assignment, the part I found most interesting doesn't seem to have been pointed out yet. I can dream up all sorts of reasons why the GP might have drafted her and put her on a navy ship, but none of them seem consistent with the group's supposed mission.

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Yeah a lot of people have been complaining about it, or talking about how shes going to 'show them all'.... but thats honestly not the way Cliff writes stuff, since he doesn't write two D characters.
I figured they just wanted to see how she ticked, plus gain some legal authority over her. So it's all basically a test.... basically as her mental rant suggested.
All stuff within their mission.

 

[Prince Chrom]

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

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Which is literally impossible, because every human in Starcraft is Psychic.

 

[cliffc999]

On the topic of Sofia's assignment, the part I found most interesting doesn't seem to have been pointed out yet. I can dream up all sorts of reasons why the GP might have drafted her and put her on a navy ship, but none of them seem consistent with the group's supposed mission.

Click to shrink...

I'll actually spoil the plot foreshadowing here because the discussion is starting to get out of control. I hope doing this isn't a mistake, but I'll try.

And I'm amused at how close some people already got while still not seeing the final puzzle piece.

Spoiler: The reason the Genius Patrol put her on a starship

They have misidentified what kind of genius she is.

Consider that from an external POV she immediately went to a frontier outpost and despite being the most junior person there was able to organize and motivate the talents of other people to produce a major breakthrough in a stalled project. She then went to college to study advanced sciences and despite being entirely brilliant at mastering knowledge and passing tests, because she has an eidetic memory and incredible analytical ability, she produces no new innovations. (As far as they know.)

Because the research she actually did finish at MIT, she immediately burned without telling anyone. So far the only real technical genius she's shown externally is her computer talent, but that's apparently in the 'master hacker and app coder' way, not the 'will invent AI someday' way.

So to the best of their knowledge she's vastly brilliant, an incredibly hard worker, a genius intelligence analyst, and showing leadership potential... but no real creative genius. And she's already said that she thinks war is coming and she wants to devote herself to the defense of the Confederation as her primary passion. And that she thinks she should do science for a living for the obviously understandable reason she's the smartest person she's ever met, but seems to not be producing any new science.

At this point they actually do think they have the next Honor Harrington in the making, not the next Sonia Hemphill. And that this new wunderkind has not consciously identified her own best talent. So fuck yeah, put her in the Navy and hope to have the future fleet commander of the ages, or possibly the future Director of Naval Intelligence, twenty years on down the line.

They're entirely wrong, of course, but I try to make my characters' flawed decision-making believably wrong.

 

[Kildar]

I'll actually spoil the plot foreshadowing here because the discussion is starting to get out of control. I hope doing this isn't a mistake, but I'll try.

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Snerk... ok thats actually kinda funny Cliff.
Well done, I really didn't see that coming at all

It even fits so well with her perks, I mean just look at their sources.

 

[protoss16]

I'll actually spoil the plot foreshadowing here because the discussion is starting to get out of control. I hope doing this isn't a mistake, but I'll try.

Click to shrink...

Spoiler

I think they are not exactly wrong with her having great talent in those things, it is just a great waste of her potential. I see they tested her with probably one of the most ecm tricks they know of, and she figured it out.

Just looking at how her perks benefit her, Well researched helps her come up with solutions to problems such as how to win battles, Genius intellect makes her intelligent by super-science standards, Programing means that she can code pretty much the best logistics program possible, Inert ceph to be honest i do not know exactly helpful it will be in command, bolthole protocol would probably include reverse engineering Vilani strategy if using the Wikipedia definition of technology. "application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way."

Also, Terran computing technology is already better than Vilani even before her contribution to it, so they probably do not expect needing her help on it more. They will probably end up thinking she is a super mathematical genius with the new ftl theory she gave to the company.

 

[Kyrin Fireheart]

That's brilliant Cliff.

 

[Faralis]

So...

Spoiler

In the next interview:
"So we noticed we kinda forgot to ask you, what do you think is the subject you are most prepared to research?"
"Yes"
"What?"

 

[Serran]

I'll actually spoil the plot foreshadowing here because the discussion is starting to get out of control. I hope doing this isn't a mistake, but I'll try.

And I'm amused at how close some people already got while still not seeing the final puzzle piece.

Click to shrink...

I think this is quite brilliant and like it a lot more than my

Spoiler: wrong theory

of them being scared of the OOC Genius.

Although:

Spoiler: Human Error, the source of all problems

I think Sophia should check how far people are along on analysing her Math theorem and how it can be applied to Quantum physics as well as computing. From everything that was implied she put out revolutionary math and proofs that can be applied to Computer technology. And the GP does know about it, they did a hijacking of her meeting with the chairman of the Mathematics department. That is what Sophia knows.
[Sarcasm] So now I exercised my brain to jumped to the conclusion that the leading mathematicans, phyicists and microcircuity engineers didn't manage to land on this blindingly obvious next step and Sophia had too high expectiations of them. [/Sarcasm]

The only question remains if she is going to or has already integrated the math she worked out for the Quantum computing into the "Sophia" Jump Engine.

I kind of have the hunch that she is not going to be in the Tin Can for another two month. Even if she is there at launch.

 

[Monsterboy]

@OP

I like the premise with Celestial Forge in a different setting, and the general pacing of upgrades slowed down to actual real progression and quests, at least in principle, since that stems the old problem of describing and playing with new upgrades, which, by wordcount means that when that is finished with that you're almost up for another perk.

The premise of an emphasis on empire building simply hasn't materialized thus far, mostly due to being basically a college intern. There's no real conflict, risk, or actually plot development thus far, so this is basically a pure slice-of-life fic, and hence, bland and boring. There's no urgency, delicate (underground) negotiations, politics, combat, or any of that occuring, or at least involving the MC. The whole thing, despite all the worldbuilding, ironically feels quite shallow because of it. What would be far more interesting was If our MC was in a more independently directed position where she called the shots (a princess or some shit), on a warship ala that Voyager CF fic, or actually in a time where she can engage in empire building from scratch herself (while getting her feet dirty), instead of inserting herself into bland research position where she's functionally safe and doesn't really apply her tech herself (non-combat), and both can and will be a NEET forever leading to an infinite research loop. If you really want the Interstellar Wars setting, choose an earlier era where she can be far more influential and actually engage in real empire building on a fragmented modern Earth with an alien invasion and superior tech, which is far more compelling than what is going here. Remember, conflict is essential for almost any type of fiction, anything bereft of it is only palatable in small chunks as slice of life.

I also find you tend to be needlessly verbose, telling in paragraphs what can be said in sentences. Making the issue more glaring is a significant amount of fluff, autism-level tell-not-show worldbuilding, and digressions not quite at Victor Hugo's level, to the point where I can skip entire paragraphs without missing anything. Work on that editing and trim the blubber hard. The plot advancement is glacial because of it and there's little actual content that doesn't read like a wiki entry, though what is there is good. Some of that is the nature of world-building, but it needs to be broken down into more relevant chunks, and not giving the readers what is essentially the entire abridged history of the Confederation unless the parts are actively relevant.

Here is one of the more egregious examples. She recognizes, Honor Harrington, then goes on a massive digression tangently related to it that just goes on and on and on. Most of it we didn't really need to know, and it could have easily been cut down into a single paragraph.

You're not a bad writer, you just need an actual plan, an outline, and to stick to it. Don't bombard the reader under worldbuilding, it's like salt, everything needs it, but once you reach a point it turns everything into a salt lick. Show don't tell.

Although as it turned out, the very first thing that particular perk had been useful for had been for giving me an existential crisis. Because "Honor Harrington" was a name I'd recognized.

One of the unanticipated effects of actually discovering intelligent life in the universe had been the withering away of the science fiction genre in both literature and popular entertainment. Before we'd begun to really see the galaxy, we could dream that potentially anything was out there and that the galaxy was ours to explore. But after we'd met the Vilani, we knew what was out there - and that the galaxy was already theirs, and they didn't want us out and about in it except on their terms.

We'd dreamed that the stars were ours, or at the very least that we'd be able to meet any 'friendly visitors' out and about in it on at least roughly equal terms - but the reality was that the Vilani had been an interstellar civilization since at least the Bronze Age, the current Vilani Imperium had codified in its final form at the same time as the Fall of Rome (or at least if you believed Vilani primary-ed textbooks, which he had no real reason not to at least for information that basic), and that the Imperium had over two thousand inhabited planets, several thousand more outposts and small settlements, and literal trillions of population. There were even actual alien aliens in it, and not just human variants like the Vilani that had evolved in parallel to us out of the proto-hominids that some hypothetical 'Ancient' species had apparently seeded all over the spiral arm.

And we couldn't even realistically dream of expanding in the direction away from the Vilani imperium we bordered, because Earth was caught in a pocket. At the maximum possible range of a jump-2 drive, only seventeen star systems were reachable from Terra at all without having to pass through Nusku or Procyon. And that was every star system possible to reach, including oxygen-less (for now) rocks like Peraspera or systems without anything even that barely inhabitable which were only useful because of their positions in space and could otherwise be settled only with asteroid or deep-space habitats, like Agidda. There were five more non-Vilani star systems you could reach after transiting Nusku, arranged in a little dead-end string of 1-parsec and 2-parsec jumps, but aside from that and the jump-route back to Terra, the only way on from Nusku involved entering the Vilani Imperium proper. And since we'd only taken Nusku away from the Vilani at the end of the Third Interstellar War...?

The other way out of the Terran pocket, through Procyon, at least had the potential to lead to an entire uncharted subsector - the Capella subsector, which lay just beyond the Vilani imperium's rimward border - that we were expanding into as judiciously and yet as rapidly as we dared, but any route to the Capella subsector would be cut off if we lost the Procyon junction. And the other jump-2 from Procyon led to Sirius - which although an uninhabited star system with no useful planets was still of critical importance to Confederation naval strategists, because there were two jump-1 routes leading from Sirius to Vilani space.

And that was all there was. Although the Vilani were coreward and spinward of us, Terra essentially being on one 'corner' of their space, all of the potential infinite and uncharted expanse of the galaxy that lay to trailward and rimward of us might as well not be there at all - because we couldn't get to it. Even the nearest stars in that direction were jump-3 away from Terra or farther. And outside of the core Terran pocket itself, even what stars we could reach beyond the seventeen I'd just mentioned would almost certainly all be cut off from us in the opening phase of any interstellar war. If we lost safe transit through Nusku - we wouldn't even have to lose the planet - then everything on the 'Nusku arm' beyond it would be cut off, and if we lost Procyon then we'd lose contact with the entire Capella subsector. Which didn't change that subsector from still being dotted with almost a dozen settlements and long-range outposts, but you had to have some serious testicles to volunteer for those expeditions. Of course, Terrans being Terrans, they'd gotten some volunteers anyway.

The practical upshot of all these hard realities of astrogration was that mankind had at one time dreamed of the wide open frontier of space... and then reality had shown up and slammed the cattle gate shut right in our faces. So it wasn't surprising that the more recent generations' had chosen to focus their taste for entertainment in other directions than the sci-fi genre. After all, the entire point of escapism was to not think about how unsatisfying your current reality was. And that's why although the sci-fi genre still existed, it was nowhere near mainstream anymore. Nowadays if you wanted to get your SF fan on then your only two real choices were either 'niche' or 'vintage'.

And my parents, and me along with them, had been devoted fans of the vintage stuff. Now admittedly massive cultural milestones like Star Trek were still in general knowledge (although sometimes I cynically suspected that that was largely because Loretta Strider, the captain of StarLeaper One, had actually written her frustration that her attempt to name it the Enterprise had been shut down into her official autobiography), but the other classics of the 20th and 21st centuries were ofte more obscure. Heck, less than half the kids at school had even understood what my Star Wars jokes were referring to.

And Honor Harrington had been the titular protagonist of David Weber and Eric Flint's long-running space opera series of the early 21st century. I'd wondered all along what the heck those names in the parantheses at the ends of perk names in the Forge's purchase menu had referred to, but since I hadn't had any way to figure it out at the time I'd just noted them and moved on. But with the Harrington revelation I was now quite certain that I knew what those parenthetical additions meant. And if further corroboration were needed then "Bolthole" was a name I had also recognized - in the Honor Harrington series it had been the code-name for the Republic of Haven's super-classified project to reverse-engineer and then mass-produce the superior technology of their enemies, the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

So either Robert A. Heinlein's "World As Myth" hypothesis that he'd used as a framing device to retcon several of his own sci-fi novel series as actually existing in the same multiverse all along was more real than he'd dreamed and fictional things actually were true somewhere and speculative-fiction authors were actually just transcribing events from elsewhere without knowing that they did so (or perhaps just by mind boggling coincidence, who knew)... or the Celestial Forge was some kind of massive reality-warping force that could selectively breach the boundary between reality and fantasy, even to the point of creating material objects in the real world. Or it was actually some nigh-omnipotent entity having the world's biggest practical joke on me, a la that 5th-dimensional imp from an old 20th-century comic book I'd seen once, but that would just be a subcase of door number one up there. Or none of the above.

Click to shrink...

 

[Potato and Chip]

I can't remember, and I'm hoping someone else does, but does the studying of Kearny-Fuchida physics require someone who is slightly touched in the head or drive normal mathematicians and physicians kind of loopy the more they understand it? I can't remember if that's just fanon people add to their stories for flavor or if that's an actual thing.

I know that AIs go insane during jumps if not turned off because a being that relies on mathematical precision to think suddenly being exposed to a dimension where math doesn't work either results in their "mind" breaking or causes the carefully aligned machinery that makes up their mind to break. I'm trying to remember if that applies to people trying to understand jump space as well.

I know it's something that shows up in fanfics a lot, but I struggle to think of a canon example.

I'll actually spoil the plot foreshadowing here because the discover ussion is starting to get out of control. I hope doing this isn't a mistake, but I'll try.

Click to shrink...

Well now I'm just super excited for the next update. I have to assume this means they're watching her very closely and even if KF physics/math doesn't require a genius or someone a few cards short of a full deck to understand I still have to imagine the people watching won't really get what Sophia is offering. This is also top secret enough that the genius patrol probably isn't going to start handing out any copies of her work they get their hands on for a second opinion.

So for the most part I assume they'll just keep watching and scratching their heads at whatever math Sophia shows off. I mean, Sophia has shown an ability to take computers and math based things and refine them. Like she did at the research station and again at university, they might just assume she figured out a refinement to the standard J drive?

Honestly, if this company does agree to build this thing, I wonder if they'll even fully understand what it is they're building. It might be entirely possible that they misunderstand and think they're just building a larger faster J-drive. They're both called jump drives after all, even when the way they function is completely different, and it's not like Sophia is going to be calling the thing the KF drive (ooo! Does that mean Sophia will get this drive named after her?). I assume a mega-corp has enough pull to at least learn that Sophia is of interest for the genius patrol, maybe not enough to know why, but enough to think, "We don't really get the math, but this girl seems to know what's she's talking about and the people our government specifically tasks with hunting smart people are watching her."

Also , something to think about cliffc999. I don't know how Traveler's FTL looks, but I do know you have two choices when it comes to Battletech FTL. The video game version, which involves a quick flash of light and then the jumpship is gone/arrived. Or the lore version which has the jumpship ripple slightly due to a distortion of light, lose focus, and fade out. At the same time at the ships destination the opposite happens with the out of focus ship slowly fading in until the ship regains focus, the light distortions are gone, and the jump is complete.

There really isn't a difference between the two, they can both take several seconds or minutes depending on the distance. But the second one does involve the ship being observable at two different points of the universe at the same time for a few moments. Which is cool and might be fun to write reactions for if you're interested. It is less flashy then the video game version though.

 

[Cheetored20]

@OP

I like the premise with Celestial Forge in a different setting, and the general pacing of upgrades slowed down to actual real progression and quests, at least in principle, since that stems the old problem of describing and playing with new upgrades, which, by wordcount means that when that is finished with that you're almost up for another perk.

The premise of an emphasis on empire building simply hasn't materialized thus far, mostly due to being basically a college intern. There's no real conflict, risk, or actually plot development thus far, so this is basically a pure slice-of-life fic, and hence, bland and boring. There's no urgency, delicate (underground) negotiations, politics, combat, or any of that occuring, or at least involving the MC. The whole thing, despite all the worldbuilding, ironically feels quite shallow because of it. What would be far more interesting was If our MC was in a more independently directed position where she called the shots (a princess or some shit), on a warship ala that Voyager CF fic, or actually in a time where she can engage in empire building from scratch herself (while getting her feet dirty), instead of inserting herself into bland research position where she's functionally safe and doesn't really apply her tech herself (non-combat), and both can and will be a NEET forever leading to an infinite research loop. If you really want the Interstellar Wars setting, choose an earlier era where she can be far more influential and actually engage in real empire building on a fragmented modern Earth with an alien invasion and superior tech, which is far more compelling than what is going here. Remember, conflict is essential for almost any type of fiction, anything bereft of it is only palatable in small chunks as slice of life.

I also find you tend to be needlessly verbose, telling in paragraphs what can be said in sentences. Making the issue more glaring is a significant amount of fluff, autism-level tell-not-show worldbuilding, and digressions not quite at Victor Hugo's level, to the point where I can skip entire paragraphs without missing anything. Work on that editing and trim the blubber hard. The plot advancement is glacial because of it and there's little actual content that doesn't read like a wiki entry, though what is there is good. Some of that is the nature of world-building, but it needs to be broken down into more relevant chunks, and not giving the readers what is essentially the entire abridged history of the Confederation unless the parts are actively relevant.

Here is one of the more egregious examples. She recognizes, Honor Harrington, then goes on a massive digression tangently related to it that just goes on and on and on. Most of it we didn't really need to know, and it could have easily been cut down into a single paragraph.

You're not a bad writer, you just need an actual plan, an outline, and to stick to it. Don't bombard the reader under worldbuilding, it's like salt, everything needs it, but once you reach a point it turns everything into a salt lick. Show don't tell.

Click to shrink...

There's a CF voyager fic? Link please?

Edit: God damnit autocorupt CF not CD!

 

[Monsterboy]

There's a CF voyager fic? Link please?

Edit: God damnit autocorupt CF not CD!

Click to shrink...

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/inspired-voyage-st-voyager-si.791005/

Dead, but long and excellent. Also lots of Janeway bashing, but, to be frank she made plenty of questionable and hypocritical decisions throughout the show.

 

[Cheetored20]

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/inspired-voyage-st-voyager-si.791005/

Dead, but long and excellent. Also lots of Janeway bashing, but, to be frank she made plenty of questionable and hypocritical decisions throughout the show.

Click to shrink...

That's inspired inventor not CF. It's pretty good tho.

 

[Monsterboy]

That's inspired inventor not CF. It's pretty good tho.

Click to shrink...

I associate the two in my head. Whoops.

 

[Kildar]

So I've been thinking about how Earth could lose in the next war and maybe spotted something interesting.

As far as I can tell the Villani have never actually sent a proper "war fleet". It's always been a local policing/raid style affair, using the local forces. So it would likely have a lot of lighter ships and would rely on logistics that use shipping to supply the fleet.

My reasoning being that the local areas don't need "real" capital ships or the capacity to transport all their supplies with them. It's also a control mechanism to stop any rebellions.

So that's what earth has faced and its entire strategy is based around it. So what if an actual war fleet is sent? The last admiral is currently playing political games, what if he's trying to get permission to actually use one of the Emperors battle fleets?

Said war fleets would be used either beyond the borders or inside them to put down a rebellion, so they would need to be completely self contained supply wise.

If such a fleet exists, then it would basically invalidate the entire strategy earth is using as the "raiders" would have nothing to attack and heavy capital ships could just keep going, all the way to earth before politics could interfere again.

Bam. Earth loses.

So isn't it lucky that the MC has the tech to allow smaller ships to attach to larger ones? So those SDBs could actually be gathered in one place to actually do something useful? Combined with superior FTL and communications, then things could still work out.

Although having something to deal with really BIG ships would still be useful.

 

[Vrenze]

I'm over here doing my little internet happy dance for being so close to their reasoning. Looking forward to the interview!

 

[Blade4]

I'll actually spoil the plot foreshadowing here because the discussion is starting to get out of control. I hope doing this isn't a mistake, but I'll try.

Click to shrink...

Spoiler

This honestly just makes me feel worse for them because a good number are going to get hard drunk or something and might just resign not just because it is "offered" but out of feeling they have lost their touch. They probably think she is a solved problem with only minor monitoring from a actually very nice training crew and then they will get a surprise bat to the nuts that she went to a mega corp with a new ftl she made in her spare time.

That she could have made sooner if not for their drafting.

And now apparently assumes the government is uninterested in letting her tinker and research so working with said mega corp until her damn draft is up and she can work full time with them presumable.

Its like a cluster fucks of nat 1 and nat 20 rolls....

 

[Mgunh1]

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

Click to shrink...

The humans of Starcraft aren't that grimderp. They instead figured out a series of tests they could do at a very young age to identify people with psionic potential, which is kinda random and doesn't really follow bloodlines. And even before a true psionic awakening, those with potential will have... odd things happen around them, they'll levitate things a tiny bit when they're very young, or be a bit too lucky. Not unlike an untrained force user, really.

Get to them early and train them from a young age and you can avoid an explosive psionic awakening. Miss them and, yeah, they're literally walking bombs.

I'm not sure how they missed Kerrigan, but Nova was hidden by her family from the psionic testers because she was their only child and they didn't want to lose her to the Ghost program. They weren't actually aware she was psionic, but they really didn't want to take the chance and they were wealthy enough that they could get away with it. Until she exploded and killed them.

Which is literally impossible, because every human in Starcraft is Psychic.

Click to shrink...

No.

Edit: Yeah, all humans have some potential, otherwise it couldn't manifest at all. But actual psionics in humans only comes about because of exposure to the weird mutagenic properties of Vespene Gas.

How that results in children being born psychic when they or their parents shouldn't have been exposed to the gas, I don't know, but that's the lore. Maybe humans have been exposed to so much of it over the generations that it's just in their blood now?

 

[Vrenze]

Spoiler: quote snip

they will get a surprise bat to the nuts that she went to a mage corp with a new ftl she made in her spare time.

Click to shrink...

Spoiler: response

in her spare time in a position that notably NEVER has spare time

 

[Blade4]

I'm not sure how they missed Kerrigan, but Nova was hidden by her family from the psionic testers because she was their only child and they didn't want to lose her to the Ghost program. They weren't actually aware she was psionic, but they really didn't want to take the chance and they were wealthy enough that they could get away with it. Until she exploded and killed them.

Click to shrink...

Nova was worse than that iirc. Her name is a cruel reminder because her awakening was a literally nova that liquefied the minds of like a hundred people including her whole family and she experienced every one of their agonizing deaths. When she joined the ghost program she demanded the mind wipe.

 

[Mgunh1]

Nova was worse than that iirc. Her name is a cruel reminder because her awakening was a literally nova that liquefied the minds of like a hundred people including her whole family and she experienced every one of their agonizing deaths. When she joined the ghost program she demanded the mind wipe.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, although she was a outlier due to her sheer power (which rivals the Protoss). Most psionics don't go off quite that spectacularly.

Even Kerrigan, iirc, didn't go off that hard.

 

[Ame]

I'm honestly looking forward to the next update. Not looking forward to people's responses as they never want to let cliff have a few chapters to let things develop..

 

[Mgunh1]

I'm honestly looking forward to the next update. Not looking forward to people's responses as they never want to let cliff have a few chapters to let things develop..

Click to shrink...

I think the problem is that people come for the power fantasy, but Cliff isn't quite well known enough for people to recognise that his strength is in world building and characters, which is naturally a slower burn, rather than rampant power fantasy like, say, Dritch. So they get pissy that their power fantasy is ramping too slowly for them, despite that kinda being the whole point of a Cliff fic.

 

[Narwhale]

Nova was worse than that iirc. Her name is a cruel reminder because her awakening was a literally nova that liquefied the minds of like a hundred people including her whole family and she experienced every one of their agonizing deaths. When she joined the ghost program she demanded the mind wipe.

Click to shrink...

Her name is November Terra, it's just shortened to Nova because November is a fucking mouthful to say in an everyday context when not referring to the month and because Nova is a dope name.

I'm not sure how they missed Kerrigan, but Nova was hidden by her family from the psionic testers because she was their only child and they didn't want to lose her to the Ghost program. They weren't actually aware she was psionic, but they really didn't want to take the chance and they were wealthy enough that they could get away with it. Until she exploded and killed them.

Click to shrink...

Pretty sure they missed Kerrigan because she was born on a more Backwater world. That, and I'm pretty sure Kerrigan was one of the first Ghosts, or at least she was taken right near the start of the Ghost program. That's what the wiki says.
Edit:

Yeah, although she was a outlier due to her sheer power (which rivals the Protoss). Most psionics don't go off quite that spectacularly.

Even Kerrigan, iirc, didn't go off that hard.

Click to shrink...

Kerrigan didn't explode in the same way as Nova, but her situation was much different. Nova was, IIRC, in a life or death scenario after having watched her parents die when her Psionics woke up so to speak, so she fucking blew up. Kerrigan had killed a butterfly, got a bit upset that she did so, and accidentally blew her mom's head apart and permanently damaged her father's brain.

If she was placed in the same situation as Nova, she would've probably outright levelled a City.

Remember, Kerrigan was strong enough Psionically that they had to redefine the scale that they used to measure how powerful Psionic individuals were. Nova was a 10, Kerrigan was an 10 pre Zerg, 12 post Zerg and Undefined when she god Primal Zergged.

 

[Prince Chrom]

Edit: Yeah, all humans have some potential, otherwise it couldn't manifest at all. But actual psionics in humans only comes about because of exposure to the weird mutagenic properties of Vespene Gas.

Click to shrink...

I definitely remember some canon source that all humans in Starcraft are at least a small amount psychic, but most of them don't have enough power to really do anything with.

 

[Kyrin Fireheart]

Jesus you people are seriously pissing me off with all your complaints. If you don't like the story STOP READING IT AND STOP BOTHERING US WHILE YOU'RE AT IT. Power fantasy not ramping up quickly enough? Too much world building? Character not doing what you want? JUST LEAVE ALREADY!

The majority of us here like and appreciate Cliff and his stories but there's a couple of you mouth breathers that can and will ruin it for the rest of us by pissing him off with all your whining. It's happened before and I know of at least one of his threads that was shut down because of all the arguing...with the author and original poster of the thread....who was just trying to write his story.

TLDR; STOP BEING ASSHATS OR LEAVE.

 

[Sonifri]

I have to wonder if a Hyper Pulse Generator can be used to remotely communicate with ships already travelling in FTL space.

If so, that also means an HPG could be used to communicate with the systems of enemy ships travelling under FTL and catch them with their pants down. Who in that universe really expects to suddenly be engaged in electronic warfare while in FTL space?

If nobody ever gets word out, nobody can discover a solution to defend against the problem. All the Vilani know is that ships heading into Earth space go into FTL and don't come out the other side.

 

[Blade4]

Maybe? If they can talk to people in hyper that itself would be a huge thing because it violates the whole if in hyper you are untouchable thing. If you can talk to someone in hyper you should be able to touch them somehow to.

 

[Dextority]

Spoiler: Genius Patrol Spoilers

I am slightly disappointed that it's merely a misunderstanding over what genius she is, though it is rather understandable. I still hope that Cliff can demonstrate that the Genius Patrol isn't some entirely virtuous group and does have its ambitious people in it. Seems like a waste of a perfectly good plot point to not have someone try to coopt Zofia into their schemes and fail miserable.

 

[Vrenze]

Spoiler: Genius Patrol Spoilers

I am slightly disappointed that it's merely a misunderstanding over what genius she is, though it is rather understandable. I still hope that Cliff can demonstrate that the Genius Patrol isn't some entirely virtuous group and does have its ambitious people in it. Seems like a waste of a perfectly good plot point to not have someone try to coopt Zofia into their schemes and fail miserable.

Click to shrink...

I'd think that the GP would get screened specifically for that among other things. At least if the people above them are any sort of competent which seems to be how most of Cliff's writing goes. Not to say it's impossible though.