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+--- Thread: [Infinities: Candle in the Dark] Thread for CitD (Needs Name) (/showthread.php?tid=2881)
- Terrace - 05-12-2014
Had a wonderful idea for humor during the actual invasion of Port Krin. When XCOM forces arrive, they send their jumpships in first. Vorax, seeing the jumpships, assumes they were sent by Frankenstein to deliver the first load of loot. The dropships land, and someone, maybe a turned MechWarrior, sends word to Vorax to "come see all the shit we brought back!" Vorax, his good sense overwhelmed by greed, personally goes to meet the dropships, and heads into one of the cargo bays. However, the sounds of dozens of rifles being cocked stops him in his tracks.
"Adrien Vorax, you are under arrest for attempted slavery, trafficking in stolen goods, aiding and abetting murder, and conspiracy to commit piracy."
Sadly, this is likely coming far to late to actually be included in the story.
- HRogge - 05-12-2014
Terrace Wrote:Had a wonderful idea for humor during the actual invasion of Port Krin. When XCOM forces arrive, they send their jumpships in first. Vorax, seeing the jumpships, assumes they were sent by Frankenstein to deliver the first load of loot. The dropships land, and someone, maybe a turned MechWarrior, sends word to Vorax to "come see all the shit we brought back!" Vorax, his good sense overwhelmed by greed, personally goes to meet the dropships, and heads into one of the cargo bays. However, the sounds of dozens of rifles being cocked stops him in his tracks.I don't think this will work...
"Adrien Vorax, you are under arrest for attempted slavery, trafficking in stolen goods, aiding and abetting murder, and conspiracy to commit piracy."
Sadly, this is likely coming far to late to actually be included in the story.
1st, a lot of dropships are missing, including the command ship (the overlord)... this will make Vorax suspicious what has happened.
2nd, it take days to get from the jumppoint to the planet... lots of time for radio communication, so this "you have to see this in person" sounds strange.
3rd, people like Vorax did not got to their place by being stupid... he will not come out in person just to look at some random jumper with important loot.
And yes, I think its too late for this anyways...
- M Fnord - 05-13-2014
Yeah, the basic battle choreography's been worked out and that's pretty much not in the game plan. As we've set things up, and if you look carefully at the end of Chapter 11 you can see more or less what the opening situation is, Vorax is going to have more interesting things on his mind.
Meanwhile, wanted to test this as a throwaway reference. If it tests well it might even be worth putting into the mainline somewhere. You can probably guess where my head's been for the last little while, too:
Quote:Excerpt from "New Galactic Urban Dictionary" (Internet distribution, 3030):Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
Thinker
Noun. Obscure Fen slang originating from the supers faction, used to describe a person with handwavium- or paranaturally-augmented mental abilities that aren't focused on science, engineering or other traditional "Mad Science" pursuits. Most often used to describe Secret Masters of Fandom and other people who're apparently too smart for their own good but don't build robots or death rays.
"Fucking Thinkers!"
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
- Berk - 05-13-2014
Ah Worm. Now THERE is a story that made you look a bit crosseyed at the super hero genre.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
- Rajvik - 05-13-2014
Haven't read a single worm story, thankfully I think.
- Berk - 05-13-2014
It's almost more impressive, as a body of work, in that it updated non stop for years on a weekly schedule. It has some weaknesses in delivery.. such in that it is literally a series of steady escalations from Street heroism to Cosmic shenanigans.. but it is an INTERESTING look into a world with super powers and maintains a glass-half-empty perspective WITHOUT going for the cheap heat of say, The Boys.
There are times that I get a distinctive Miracleman feel from the story and what the writer is TRYING to do...
This is a world where super powers and all the baggage that comes with them have made the old order irrelevant. But not everyone has QUITE gotten the memo yet.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
- Rajvik - 05-13-2014
Haven't read the boys either. And while sounding interesting doesn't seem to be my cup of tea. I prefer realist to optimist writing even in dystopia.
- Foxboy - 05-13-2014
IIRC, The Boys is written by a writer who despises Superheroes but keeps getting paid big bank to write them.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
- Berk - 05-13-2014
Pretty much.
Which is why I lean towards Worm being more 'Beware the superman.' A'la Miracleman/Marvelman. The work of someone who actually likes the genre.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
- M Fnord - 05-17-2014
Today marks a milestone I never thought we'd reach: The end of the first arc of Candle in the Dark.
On to the next arc!
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
- HRogge - 05-19-2014
Great work...
*applaus*I still have the "Mads behind the technology curve" piece, which (I hope) will become a side-story of arc 1...
the rest is just ideas for some stuff for arc 2.
- nick012000 - 05-21-2014
So, I was reading the debate on what should be done with ComStar, and I was thinking: Warhammer 40k Fen aren't even a minor faction. So, given some comments you guys made about the faction of Comstar that honestly prays to toasters would be the best suited out of them for Handwavium use, what I was thinking was for a group of 40k Fen, tired of not being taken seriously by the other Fen, decide to build themselves a jumpship and proceed to defect to ComStar, taking a decent portion of their handwavium-based technology with them. They arrive, start syncretising their religion with the ComStar religion, and before you know it, a significant portion of ComStar has basically turned into this:
- robkelk - 05-21-2014
Is it our fault that the WH40k fans keep to themselves in Noctis Labyrinthus?
(Well, yes, it is. Somebody should write something about them. Then again, somebody should write something about the Potterites, or the Fivers...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
- Dartz - 05-21-2014
Partly yes.... and partly because the ones in Fenspace tend to be of the sort that understand all the GRIMDARK was originally meant to be a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the state of wargaming in the 80's. 40k's gotten worse the straighter they've tried to play it. (Matt Ward....so much Matt Ward). There're very few people willing to build a life around such things.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
- M Fnord - 05-21-2014
And the ones who do want to build a life around such things tend to be rounded up and sent to Azkaban for a wide variety of crimes against humanity. So there's that too.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
- Rajvik - 05-21-2014
And the few that can do grim dark without it getting to dark probably spend most their time with other factions or me.
- HRogge - 05-21-2014
Something I wrote both for Fenspace and for CitD... I would like to make it a central part of CIs mission to the FRR.
What do you think?
Compact Integrated Factory Seed
(also known as "Catgirl Industries Factory System" or "Cats Toy Box")
History
The CIFS is a successor of the factory system that grew on the Catgirl Industries space station Jenga between 2015 and 2022. The original factory was grown and chaotic structure, where the catgirls explored hundreds of different paths in their quest for creating new things. Most of them had to be changed or completely dropped in this process.
In 2022 Jet Jaguar proposed that Catgirl Industries should try something new with their fabrication system. Within the next three year, The catgirls began to have a close look at the chaos on Jenga and began to replicate the proven and useful parts in one of the old mining areas at 77 Frigga. After three years of hard work the Frigga Factory Complex was finished.
Still, the catgirls were not completely happy with the results.
It had taken a huge amount of time and resources to build the new factory, which was a blow to the idea of the catgirls to replicate the factory in other places for friends in the belt. Based on their experience during the three years, they started the Compact Integrated Factory Seed project.
The Seed
The Seed is an oversized Fen shipping container filled completely with all kinds of machines and special supplies, including a small group of Exocomps. It also contains a sophisticated computer system to control a small factory system.
The Seed is not a factory itself, but it is the minimal set of equipment and tools to setup a small factory complex that can produce everything Catgirl Industries ever produced, from tiny optical chips to a ship as the Normandy. This also includes new Seeds.
To use the Seed you need a fitting area to deploy the hardware and access to metal and organic resources to build the larger machines for the full factory. Depending on the available manpower and resources it can take up to a year to finish a small factory, which then can be extended over time to build larger things.
The control system dilemma
When the catgirls at Jenga built up their factory technology, they designed everything for being controlled by an AI. Cortana is omnipresent in Catgirl Industries facilities, so the question how to do it without her and the Exocomps hivemind never was asked… at least until the CIFS project started.
After long experiments it turned out that the necessary technology can be used without a sentient AI controlling them, but the factory system is much less efficient without one. Which gives the owner of a new factory complex three options.
First, the factory can be run in 'basic' mode, which means that only the non-sentient expert system is used.
Second option is to setup your own AI system. It takes a construction interested A-class AI to run a factory complex at full efficiency. This is quite hard to do because CI's optical circuits are specially designed to to develop AIs on their own.
The final option is to call up Catgirl Industries and ask Cortana and Serina if they want to watch over your new factory. While this is a very efficient solution, it also requires enough trust and enthusiasm in open source production. On the other side being part of the Open Seed Community provides free updates regarding the factory and its software.
Educational software
The computer system of the Seed is equipped with state of the art learning software, allowing people to learn the background of the machines and products of the factory system. When equipped with a full AI, some factories provide school like education for children related to their products.
Catgirl Industries consider this software work-in-progress and is constantly improving it with the help of other education interested parties in Fenspace.
Trivia
- The factory needs access to asteroid resources (metals, organic elements, water) as a bare minimum. Hydrocarbons help to speed up optical circuit production.
- A factory seed normally comes with a Interwave transmitter connecting it point to point to its 'parent' factory for communication.
- Fen who asked Cortana and Serina to run their factory reports that they sometimes get visits from 'foreign' Exocomps when lots of work has to be done.
- While in theory a large factory could run without any humanoid participants and be considered full Von Neumann, it normally doesn't work out in the end.
Transhuman control system (Infinity/CitD)?
Many users of the Factory Seeds were not happy about their options to run the factory with or without an AI. Running a factory without an AI is a lot of hard work and asking Cortana and Serina is not a valid option for a many Fen.
Waving their own AI is often even worse, because you could easily get an AI that doesn't want to work with you or has some crazy ideas what products to make.
To resolve this issue Catgirl Industries added another options to the Seed package, the TCS or Transhuman Control System.
Before the TCS can be used, the person has to run a number of mental tests, making sure it is considered stable and mature enough to run something as complex as the factory system.
The TCS combines a biomod with a special cybernetic implant to network the brain of a human being together with the computer system of the factory to form the necessary entity to control the factory at full efficiency level.
The computer system provides a lot of support in form of knowledge providing expert systems and runs background tasks while the human brain is providing creativity and long term planning capacity.
In theory the implants could be removed again, but it would require a monthlong slow withdrawal of the computer enhancements and a lot of therapy. Some people might just become mad.
Trivia
- It takes an acclimation period of weeks to get used to the TCS for a new user.
- It takes even longer to reset the factory to a new user if the old one should become disconnected. The longer an user is connected to the factory, the longer it takes to reset it.
- Rajvik - 05-22-2014
Interesting and usable
- DeputyJones - 05-22-2014
Reposting jwolfe's stats for the Zaku MS-1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Type/Model:
Zaku MS-1
Mass: 65 tons
Tech Base: Fenspace
Chassis Config: Biped
Production Year: 3021
Chassis: Zaku Standard type 1
Power Plant: Tellus Fusion Engine
Walking speed: 60 km/h
Maximum Speed: 85 km/h
Jump Jets: Tellus Industries Starhoppers Type 1
Armor: Unknown Commercial Armor equivalent
Standard
Armament for 1A (trooper) configuration:
1 Gearheads Variable-Fire AC-10 Module
6 Spotlight Medium Lasers
2 Starshot Laser CIWS
1 Heat Hawk Vibroaxe
2 Integrated Cargo pods w/ CASE
Standard
Armament for 1B (gunner) configuration:
1 Gearheads 175mm Coil assisted Heavy Rifle Module
6 Spotlight Medium Lasers
2 Starshot Laser CIWS
2 Integrated Cargo pods w/ CASE
Manufacturer:
Unknown
Primary Factory: Unknown
Communications System: Unknown
Targeting and Tracking System: Unknown
Overview:
While the
fictional mobile suit that the mech is based (the Zaku II) on did not have any
built-in weapons, the creator fortunately realized that an effective mech was
better than one that was 100% faithful to the original work. Four medium lasers
are mounted in pairs on both arms with two more placed in the upper left and right
torso with enough heat sinks to fire constantly provide good medium and short
range firepower while the laser CIWS systems can deal with infantry and
missiles.
Unlike most mechs, this design like the mobile suit it is based on, sports a
heavily armored and enclosed torso mounted cockpit while the head contains the
main sensor array, the dual laser CIWS which is based off existing PD lasers on
Fen ships along with enough dedicated heat sinks for extended fire. What is an
interesting part of the design is the multiple secondary sensors mounted over
the rest of the mech (front and back torso, on the arms in the same direction
as the lasers etc) that allow the machine to continue fighting even if the head
is completely destroyed. Jumpjets mounted on the back and feet allow for
respectable assisted jumps and a high speed skimmer-like movement as needed.
Sufficient space and weight was allocated to provide good armor coverage, but
when the mech was first introduced Tellus had not mastered production of
Standard grade Armor. This resulted in the Zaku being more fragile then its
armor weight would suggest.
The main armament of the mech is entirely modular by design and connects via a
plug-and-play type system in the hands/palms enabling power feed, targeting sensor
readings from the weapons etc. The first two weapon units produced were another
call back to the original design but served very well in close quarters and
medium range combat.
The ranged module is a variable-fire (single shot, burst, full
auto) AC-10 with a detachable magazine. While the ammo pod on the rifle module
does not has enough munitions for extended combat, the mech has armored storage
pods at the waist that can contain multiple additional magazines and/or one
shot anti-mech/personal munitions (grenades etc).
The second module of the set is a mech scale Vibroaxe that can be holstered at the Zaku's waist when not in
use. While of limited use in open terrain combat, this weapon shines in
close-quarters city fighting where the Zaku can use its high speed and jump
jets to close and begin dismembering opposing mechs before the enemy pilot even
knows what hit him.
While new modules can be designed for different weapon load-outs the true value
of the unit is the ease at which parts and systems can be swapped for repairs,
upgrading or conversion to different roles. This greatly speeds turnaround in
repair bays where damaged armor, weapons, limbs etc can be quickly swapped with
spare ones and the damaged parts can be worked on which the mech heads back
into the field.
Variants:
The Zaku-1B configuration discards the axe and machine gun in exchange for a
massive coil-assisted rifle and serves as a second-line sniper mech. While difficult
to fire on the move and possessing a fairly low RoF, the long range and high
accuracy of the rifle make it a deadly threat against any mech that dares stick
its head up out of cover.
- DeputyJones - 05-22-2014
And a bit for tossing into the story should Mal decide it's okay:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
IBC News Anchor: "Mishima Heavy Industries announced today that it has leased its Leo and Bushnell production lines to outside interests to be converted to be one of the facilities constructing the new Zaku MS-1. This is in exchange, of course, for a percentage of the profit of those units produced in its factories and is likely caused by the projected radical loss of demand for the models when faced with the new design.
"At the same time, the Seele Council and Anaheim-Zeonic have announced that they have together secured the right to produced a general labor and services version of the Zaku. The Worker Zaku will be produced under the 'Konpeitoh Solutions' brand name. When design is finalized, production will be performed at Anaheim-Zeonic's new Axis facility in the Belt..."
- robkelk - 05-22-2014
The http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?titl ... ace_Agency]Solomon Space Agency might object to that company name - which side gets to hire Phoenix Wright?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
- DeputyJones - 05-22-2014
*chuckles* How about 'Konpeitoh Solutions', then?
Edit: Changing above now...
- Bob Schroeck - 05-30-2014
Out of curiosity, when does the second arc go live?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
- M Fnord - 05-30-2014
When it's ready. I'd give you a more concrete answer but.. yeah.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
- Terrace - 06-18-2014
Wild ass guessing here, but Victoria Steiner is gonna be a mage, right? She's apparently called the Witch-Queen of Tharkad, after all. Can't believe it took me this long to think of it.