Forging Ahead (GURPS Interstellar Wars/Celestial Forge)

[preier]

I'd have to agree with this.

One of my earliest memories of what the Cold War meant was a TV advert with a ticking timer saying that by the time the timer ran out World War III could be over. Not began, over.

After a while, you just got used to it. I was a child, there was nothing I could do except go on with my life and hope rational adults would keep it from happening. I'd have slept worse if I'd known how rare rational adults are but... even if I had, I couldn't do anything except quietly go on with what I was doing anyway.

Click to shrink...

Thank you and Cliff for the reminder that 'normal' can cover an astounding range of situations.

 

[MadGreenSon]

Yeah, you can very much get used to the idea that the apocalypse could happen at any moment and there is nothing you can do about it.

 

[Narwhale]

I wonder if she will get technology from F.E.A.R. or Starcraft. After all Psionics aren't magic and even Battletech has some psionics, I think.

Click to shrink...

From what Cliff has said, Psionics are present in the Traveller universe even now, so the systems are compatible. It's just that, you know, no-one knows about Psionics yet, they get discovered later, so getting a techbase with them now would be a massive leg up.

Also, this does raise one question for cliffc999 regarding other universes and special resources they have, specifically naturally occurring resources from other universes, like Minerals and Vespene Gas from StarCraft or… uh, other ones that fall into similar categories as the two above. Will Zofia have to synthesize them, or will deposits naturally crop up as humanity explores more space beyond what they already have?

Edit: Phone formatting is fun.

 

[Prince Chrom]

Yeah, you can very much get used to the idea that the apocalypse could happen at any moment and there is nothing you can do about it.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, it's something that humans are really good at doing, and I can even understand why.

 

[Blade4]

I wonder if she will get technology from F.E.A.R. or Starcraft. After all Psionics aren't magic and even Battletech has some psionics, I think.

Click to shrink...

Yeah you dont want battletech magic. Which it functional is. There is some early installment weirdness but the closest is phantom mech ability which means no one can target you except you only can get through proper genetics and suffering a worm style trigger event. You absolutely know you are going to die and thus are dead to sensors in some "transcendent" state. Every confirmed case that survives that battle has a mental breakdown and take years to recover afterwards. Starcraft Psyker is probable the safest though if with proper training. F.E.A.R could work but our only examples are people who were literally experimented on till they went insane and/or died. Then got back up to keep eating people out of spite and crazy.

I could easily see mechs originating as power armour that slowly upscaled until said power armour was a story tall and someone went; you know what? Let's just stick the soldier in a cockpit and call it a day.

Click to shrink...

Eh sorta. Its more a desperate attempt to break the stalemates of the era with new weapons as old were outlawed by treaty. The big problem of battletech is people are assholes who refuse to learn from history with a terrible crab bucket mentality. When both sides have nukes and big powerful warships and armies and assume if they just push hard enough their enemy will break first it tends to lead to planets being turned to nuked out ruins. Instead of learning to stop using war as a first tool they codified it with the ares convention. War but with heavy restrictions and if you start to lose you cant just nuke the planet into oblivion with warships out of spite.

Battlemechs were made by the Terran Hegemony to give them a edge in this new environment though hilariously it was rigged. What made them so great was their next gen armor and weapons not the mech itself. Its been stated out that literally the only reason the first mech won its trials was because it was facing hamstrung tanks with obsolete tech who literally could not win.

 

[Kyrin Fireheart]

Yeah I have to completely agree with Cliff at this point. I wasn't that high up but I believe it was still in the top 10 slots for what was bombed first if the nukes started launching. Number 7 I believe. Was apparently too close to a Martin Marietta/Lockheed Martin to survive much despite it being built practically in the middle of nowhere.

All kinda fuzzy at this point. I was young and ECT really does horrid things to the old memory banks.

 

[TrueGuardian32]

Cliff getting argued over about how the story is written reminds me of other fics where the story wasn't going the readers' way, but it was still a good story. Imma go ahead and put my two cents in.

What you are doing right now does make total sense to me. A normal person wouldn't constantly splurge on cheap perks, especially when they don't know when they will get their next batch of CP. No instead they will do what the SI did. Save up points for a particularly good perk. The only time you would rapidly spend CP on cheaper perks is when you have an excess of points. The only thing I think you may be lowballing is the governmental reaction, but that can be chalked up to red tape and incompetence. Which the government has an excess of.

 

[Dhruv]

I think that the Genius Patrol decision to post her in a system defence boat has atleast some degree of practicality. Apart from keeping her mentally stable by staying close to her parents (no one would like a genius to crack under pressure), she is learning valuable info about what the confederation plan is in case of another war. The confederation is fairly sure another war will not happen in that generation so posting her on the border does not carry much risk. Our MC may be a genius but it is no good without knowing where to apply that genius. What she believes the confederation needs and what confederation believes they need can be different. By exposing her to active duty on the border, she is learning the confederation game plan and can more wisely decide what to focus on.

 

[Blade4]

Problem is she is a known R&D genius. They should have put her in a lab under some renowned scientist as mentor and guide and see where that went and now they will have to explain why they drafted her as a navy officer and put her on a boat when she was working on stuff like this. This is what she can do in spare time between duty shifts and training what could she have done in a lab if they could get that year back?

 

[Narwhale]

I think that the Genius Patrol decision to post her in a system defence boat has atleast some degree of practicality. Apart from keeping her mentally stable by staying close to her parents (no one would like a genius to crack under pressure), she is learning valuable info about what the confederation plan is in case of another war. The confederation is fairly sure another war will not happen in that generation so posting her on the border does not carry much risk. Our MC may be a genius but it is no good without knowing where to apply that genius. What she believes the confederation needs and what confederation believes they need can be different. By exposing her to active duty on the border, she is learning the confederation game plan and can more wisely decide what to focus on.

Click to shrink...

Problem is she is a known R&D genius. They should have put her in a lab under some renowned scientist as mentor and guide and see where that went and now they will have to explain why they drafted her as a navy officer and put her on a boat when she was working on stuff like this. This is what she can do in spare time between duty shifts and training what could she have done in a lab if they could get that year back?

Click to shrink...

I think both you you have very good points regarding Zofia's placement. Personally, I think both positions would be highly beneficial to her development. With the R&D path, she would've been able to leverage her research abilities to create and introduce new technology that is beyond what is currently available in setting, effectively kickstarting the technical revolution that the Terrans will inevitably need in order to win the war that am upcoming.

On the other hand, placing her in a military position first also brings with it some benefits. Namely, actually learning where exactly Terran technology is deficient, why it's deficient and how to improve on it. And how to make it usable for the average military Joe.

But yeah, she'll need to get more R&D resources, especially if she's going to be jumpstarting humanity's technological boom. So while her placement in the military wasn't a bad idea, the Genius Patrol had better start getting her R&D resources sooner rather than later. If only so she can get ideas from pen and paper to practice and production.

 

[Blade4]

Some military experience does help and might be a bit of a saving grace but the higher ups in the aftermath are going to be thinking she should not have been there at all or at least not on a patrol boat. She just created the equations for revolutionizing ftl both in a new drive and possible refining their current drives to maybe jump 4 or 5 and when they ask her if being in the military helped at all she can honestly say no it slowed her down.

 

[TrueGuardian32]

While everyone is making good points regarding finding out where the military is deficit and etc. I will point out something.

Her going to a corp with a new jump tech can and will change things massively socially. With the new tech the Corp she talks to will be able to gain a ton of reputation and money. Money that would have gone the state if they had put her into the right position. However that didn't happen. Meaning several things will happen. The corp they talk to suddenly gains a massive amount of corporate pressure and has their hands in the jar for being the strongest corp after only a year or two. The corp will also get a ton of political pressure if they ever need it. On the governmental side a lot of yelling will start because the government didn't get this tech first. Which would have solidified the citizens trust in the government more. As well as gain a lot of income from patenting the tech for when corps would use it. This losing them up to billions of credits per year. Simply because of this one mistake.

 

[Vrenze]

Simply because of this one mistake.

Click to shrink...

To be fair they had little cause to believe she would jump from terraforming to revamping space travel in what? 6 months post boot camp? For all we know they'd have pulled her or shuffled her to another posting at the end of a year to either get her in R&D or similar "this is the real world" posting

 

[TrueGuardian32]

To be fair they had little cause to believe she would jump from terraforming to revamping space travel in what? 6 months post boot camp? For all, we know they'd have pulled her or shuffled her to another posting at the end of a year to either get her in R&D or a similar "this is the real world" posting

Click to shrink...

True. But in that case, they would have put her in a position relative to civilian industry. Maybe a Civilizan-based R&D department.

 

[Narwhale]

Someone more familiar with Battletech will have to clarify for me, but don't K-F drive have a week long recharge time between uses? I mean, it isn't a big deal, considering the current FTL of the setting takes a week to travel 2 whole Parsecs, so it still is massively faster than any FTL that is currently in use.

 

[Panaka]

Someone more familiar with Battletech will have to clarify for me, but don't K-F drive have a week long recharge time between uses? I mean, it isn't a big deal, considering the current FTL of the setting takes a week to travel 2 whole Parsecs, so it still is massively faster than any FTL that is currently in use.

Click to shrink...

The standard K-F drive needs a week between uses to charge if you don't want to run the risk of something going wrong. What we don't know is how the new hybrid drive Sophia wants to build will perform.

 

[TrueGuardian32]

A full-on train line is going to form with the week-long charge requirement. Like, I mean convoys will be traveling daily.

 

[Vrenze]

True. But in that case, they would have put her in a position relative to civilian industry. Maybe a Civilizan-based R&D department.

Click to shrink...

Not necessarily. Anything the government uses or makes inevitably gets used by the private sector in the same way that anything that private individual or groups pay high prices for luxuries inevitably becomes cheaper and filters down into less and less wealthy groups over time. Potentially the reason they put her specifically as an ewar specialist was because of her shown competence in coding that she displayed in fixing that math analysis difficulty at the terraforming site. They wanted to see what she could do to update or upgrade the current latest standard to be used in the latest class of defensive ship. Possibly only expecting a 5-20% boost in efficiency or scanning algorithm. A massively good thing to be sure. Her coming out and inventing a whole new drive system is gonna blow expectations out of the water not only because she's moved from math/programming to material engineering and physics but also because her previous accomplishment was at least entirely defined by her job. This comes so far from left field it is an entirely different sport and ball.

 

[ryune]

Zofia having actual naval experience is probably a really good idea on the GP's part. To reference Honor Harrington since it actually comes up in story itself, they want a Honor Harrington and not a Sonia Hemphill.

Sonia was a brilliant engineer and in "Basilisk Station" she developed a weapon that could be fitted to a destroyer that basically nullified the defensive shields of the setting if it hit and was even effective on the largest scale ships in existence. The weapon itself fulfilled that purpose masterfully... when it could actually be used. Problem being, Destroyers are fucking snowflakes before the star's worth of defensive fire those same large scale ships could put out. It was also a knife fight ranged weapon so they needed to get in close. So yeah, we have a weapon that is super effective when it actually gets into position to use it on a ship that will melt long before it can be used and takes up space that other weapons used to extend the life of the ship with defensive fire. Not a great combination that utterly cripples the ship it was mounted on.

Honor on the other hand spent decades on ships and was pretty much the only person that actually got that weapon to function, once.

In setting, the central conceit of the early books is that naval warfare hasn't changed for hundreds of years. This is a consequence of them finding a very special niche with missile warfare that it has become basically a chess game. There are plays and counter plays and even truly innovative maneuvers now and then but for the most part it's punishing the enemy for making a mistake rather than any brilliance on your own part.

On the saving up CP for a 600cp perk... it's a mistake that everyone makes with the forge. Zofia is very much falling into the trap that perks that cost more are "better" than cheaper perks. It's not a bad conclusion to come to simply because it's not exactly wrong. The problem with the logic though is that 6 100CP perks can end up being much more valuable than a single 600CP perk.

On the other hand, those small perks piling up tends to be very unsubtle. Joe's rapid construction perks are an example of this and Zofia is very much trying to fly under the radar so we have at least two classes of perks that she just can not grab. Short term we have items/resources because they just pop into existence and long term we have stuff like the entire speed domain because of just how fucking ridiculous they get. And that likely curtails her choices even farther than the already limited selection.

 

[Faralis]

I think there was a special Jump ship in Battletech with 2 FTL engines so they could do hit and run missions ... or I am mixing it with other game? I hate my memory...

EDIT: Ok, Blade4 I probably confused it with other setting...

 

[IsaacTheAutobot1229]

The utter political and financial screwup that I have now realized from others' replies makes it all the more satisfying. I think we all have a good enough idea of why they put her there but it still amuses me how badly they screwed themselves. They might even chalk the new drive up to utter frustration when interviewing the crew and how she practically examined the ship front-to-back to learn about it, along with the questions to the engineers about jump drives and the FTL courses.

That could easily highlight in their view how aggravated not being in R&D made her and so she threw herself into learning about ships since she was on one. It will absolutely be a good thing in the future for her to have this practical experience and as Cliff said a great way to organically introduce how space warfare works.

 

[Blade4]

I think there was a special Jump ship in Battletech with 2 FTL engines so they could do hit and run missions ... or I am mixing it with other game? I hate my memory...

Click to shrink...

No. Two KF drives interfere with each other causing a mis jump where your best hope is you coming out somewhere hopefully not fused into the wall and in known space. Worst case you are smeared across space-time. What allows two jumps is a lithium fusion battery which can store a separate jump charge. Jump rules are... funny like that. It takes a week to charge the batteries or they risk damaging the drive but you can dump a second charge directly into the core inside a minute of the first jump. Jokes that the Star League had no surge protectors abound. With their different tech and Sophia bullshit they could fix the primary problems of the drive.

 

[Panaka]

I think there was a special Jump ship in Battletech with 2 FTL engines so they could do hit and run missions ... or I am mixing it with other game? I hate my memory...

EDIT: Ok, Blade4 I probably confused it with other setting...

Click to shrink...

There is mention of a ship with 3 drives in one of the rpg books, but it was retconned out of existence and is not considered canon.

 

[Organmonkey]

Battletech definitely has an alternate route for a lot of tech development. For all the impressive stuff they have they are always missing a thing or two that would make it way more functional.


Also quick aside into the psychic stuff.

BT Psionics aren't limited to just phantom mech.

There are essentially three independent psychic effects. One of which is tech based and the others not.

1. Clanner precog/postcog/telecog drugs, the Nova Cats canonically have drugs that can let you see past, future, and current events across space and time. The issue is you don't really choose what you see.

2. Phantom Mech- Induced by trauma as people have said so not replicable

3. Combine Psionics - It is one of the (could be true could not be) things but effects have sort of shown up in books. Basically used for physical enhancement to pull off physics defying wire fu stunts.

At the very least the drugs are possible to make and verifiable to some degree. You would just need a lot of people using them all the time to get any utility out of them.

 

[Blade4]

There is mention of a ship with 3 drives in one of the rpg books, but it was retconned out of existence and is not considered canon.

Click to shrink...

Yeah the way KF drives works is a multistage process with the initiator actually punching the hole into hyperspace but the germanium titanium core propagating and tuning the jump field to encompass the whole ship and any dropships. Two or more near each other causes wild fluctuations throwing the fields and maths off causing mis jumps. Even carrying germanium is difficult because it has to be alloyed into a hyper inert form or it will cause problems. Of course there are work arounds. There is a semi lost technique involving 16~ synchronized jumpships used to jump large masses. As long as you dont care that the mass is going to arrive pretty shredded. Very useful pulling water ice to worlds before DOME with its techno wizardry and advanced filter tech showed up.

1. Clanner precog/postcog/telecog drugs, the Nova Cats canonically have drugs that can let you see past, future, and current events across space and time. The issue is you don't really choose what you see.

2. Phantom Mech- Induced by trauma as people have said so not replicable

3. Combine Psionics - It is one of the (could be true could not be) things but effects have sort of shown up in books. Basically used for physical enhancement to pull off physics defying wire fu stunts.

Click to shrink...

1. is very unreliable to the point of near uselessness. The scorpions are basically worthless drug users and the nova cats visions lead them to self destruction allying and partnering with the combine some of the most rabid xenophobes in the Inner Sphere.
2. Possible replicable but high human costs and the IS lacks to the tools to even understand what they are seeing. Does have work around of manual aiming can still work.
3. Never heard of that but is possible but again probably early edition weirdness but high end spec ops teams can pull all sorts of weird things.

 

[Tazered]

except it is stated in the mechanics post that no magic is available and I suspect that includes any perks that changes her enough to not be considered human anymore.

Click to shrink...

Her intelligence, analysis and information retention is already at the 'not quite human' stage though. A fiat backed effect like spontaneous, functional cybernetic implants, perfect internet or can't have a fatal lab accident might get through depending on the author.

 

[Vrenze]

or can't have a fatal lab accident might get through depending on the author.

Click to shrink...

Which might lead to a funny running gag when someone notices her labs record low accidents and investigates to only be told "I have perfect memory and OSHA guidelines! The real question is you people keep fucking up!"

 

[Ovid]

Everyone else is going ga-ga at the shiny tech, but my first thought is BT's logistics.

I dont remember the specifics, but didnt the SLDF put down a bunch of automated factories to fuel their conquests? That were also buried/hidden, but could take inputs and output finished goods? Would that kind of automation help in the Traveler verse?

And what about asteroid mining/yardships? I recall from fics that (I think the canon Taurians) had some sort of asteroid harvesting and orbital manufacturing mobile platform called the Snowden. And the SLDF had mobile shipyards, though they are freaking huge, like a Hiigaran mothership.

https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Yardship
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Snowden

And as much as Cliff has points about Mech's utility in combat, would Industrial Mech's be useful in land/space/sea resource extraction?

also, Cliff, how does Traveler treat smallcraft like fighters and bombers? Some settings make them viable, others make them useless. But if Traveller allows for smallcraft, would the Aerospace craft of BT be useful in some way?

EDIT: random find on Sarna. A mobile food harvester/packaging vehicle meant for food harvest on low population planets.
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Saturn_Harvester

 

[Kris-71854]

I don't mind that each scene we pretty much see a year and half to two years of her life go by.

At first, the only thing that I disliked was that ceph nanotech. It was biting off far more than she was ready for. She also had no experience with it making stuff so there was a risk in how that would happen.

I didn't really mind her college stay. Her boot camp was meh could have been summed up in a sentence that it happened. The ship tour was meh.

What actually drags me down is the entire genius patrol. I'd actually like it if they lost her. They knew of her, but she was going to her public service so shouldn't really be back for 4 years or so. She seemed to get through that in a year.

I don't like that they met her on Earth. I'm fine with her doing a speed run through college. She already seemed to have 90% of it done. It was more one of those need to fill out a half year of required courses or a full year at worst. I can see the full year applying only because most schools would want the student having so many credits at their school rather than transferring in, and graduating like that.

Anyway, I dislike the entire chat with that rep from the GP. Didn't like it at all. Didn't really like her moralizing over getting rid of the sample she bought, but meh. Something Cliff's MCs always do.

I'd have liked her to have finished college and been now what? She was speed-running through things. She had her public service and college degree done. Now, she either needed to get hired by a local company ASAP, a megacorp, or join the military.

Sure, with her mind she should have been able to run her own company or been employable anywhere. Being drafted and sent to the same system as her parents wasn't needed. I could see her not having the money to visit them, missing them dearly, and not having any contacts to get an R&D job that she wants. So the choice would have been to take whatever job she could get ASAP to get by in life. Then she could figure out how to sell tech. Once she had a nest egg, she could start releasing more without having to work.

The only reason I could see her not staying on Earth is them going through a minor depression at the moment and hiring being difficult without the right contacts. Not something anyone likes to hear. She could spend an evening researching and being irked that joining the military was her best bet easily getting employed and also stationed where her parents were. She just needed to sign a short 5 year tour and it would have been over before she knew it.

Also, once she was out, she'd have a nest egg, be near her parents, and hopefully be able to take something to megacorp that would help things.

I'm not getting the Cold War stress factor. Something that I missed when I grew up in the 80s. Every time we see in her head, she is utterly panicked about this other human empire. That got old quick. The thing is that also makes us that have little knowledge of the setting think that next war will roll around in just a couple of months or maybe a year or two. Not like a decade or two out.

I can actually see her damn near forgetting about the forge. Or at least trying really hard to pretend it doesn't exist. She's not checking or anything mainly because that would mean having to think about it. Better to save those points for some massive future purchase. It's not like she really needs to buy anything right now anyway.

I'd have loved for the GP to only found her years later. You know after looking into why such and such megacorp was testing a new FTL method. Turns out that one of the people that they were supposed to be keeping an eye on was hired/contracted. So that's where she went!

Actually thinking about it, the GP would think that she was still in college somewhere. No sense for them to think she was speed-running through things.

 

[Blade4]

Everyone else is going ga-ga at the shiny tech, but my first thought is BT's logistics.

I dont remember the specifics, but didnt the SLDF put down a bunch of automated factories to fuel their conquests? That were also buried/hidden, but could take inputs and output finished goods? Would that kind of automation help in the Traveler verse?

And what about asteroid mining/yardships? I recall from fics that (I think the canon Taurians) had some sort of asteroid harvesting and orbital manufacturing mobile platform called the Snowden. And the SLDF had mobile shipyards, though they are freaking huge, like a Hiigaran mothership.

Click to shrink...

For the first yes they have automated factories or can. The clans later on bring mobile factories they use as seeds to make full up complexes that can make most anything and that is a refinement of Star League tech but logistics is handled by the fact warships are also cargo haulers to the tune of 100,000 tons of cargo space or even 300,000 tons. Warship is a lose term in BT generally denoting a ship with a compact jump drive which allows room for something beyond the ships vitals and dropships. The Star League used their warships as mobile oppression palaces smashing opposition in space and then close orbital support for ground divisions dropping supplies as need just on time.

That and just fuel long patrols. KF drive is far better than travelers but the Star League by itself was more than a thousand lightyears across. Even jumping once a week 30 lightyears it takes a good while to get anywhere and patrols need enough cargo to actually stay out any length of time.

As for the second sorta not really? Why mine rocks in space when you can just move to the next world with a shirt sleeve atmosphere and pick at its resources. Sounds retarded but that was the mind set. The Taurians were odd in actually heavily mining rocks though Terra does have a belter community of people who are born, live, and die in space without ever touching a planetary surface. They wisely keep quiet and try not to draw the crazy ground side people attention.