Bluemage - about your ship

[M Fnord]

(posted here to keep discussion out of the Registry thread)
Um. Dude, while the SS Katamari idea has some merit, grabbing the ISS - which we've established in-story as still being there - plus a brace of LA-class subs is reaching somewhere beyond the Line. It's too much, man.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[drakensis]

If you really want submarines then I'm sure a couple of Russian diesel jobs could go missing from a breaker's yard or something.
If you're wanting nuclear... well I'll not say it's impossible, but nicking nuclear-powered naval vessels isn't exactly like shoplifting. You could probably kludge together a nuclear reactor if you can come up with the fissionable material.
If you want a space station, it's likely that there are a couple of Fen stations that were abandoned due to such gross problems that the owners decided to start over. You could certainly salvage one of those and the old owners might even be less upset than the 'Danes would be about losing the ISS.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Sirrocco]

Also, moving planets 'round the solar system (let alone moving the sun) is *awfully* world-breaky - and you seem to be describing purpose-built weapons (admittedly, they're *quirky* weapons, which isn't as bad, but they're still purpose-built.)
Suggestions:
- Instead of purpose-built weapons, have one of the devices he came up with be a chaos generator. Given that it sounds like your personal strain of handwavium goes for "strange and surreal" this is totally appropriate. Figure out some way of justifying it that doesn't require frobbing the laws of probability directly (field of "gravity goes all wonky here for a bit", for example, would be well within the currently available tech envelopes) and then have him tweak it until either he can project the effect at some range or he can reproduceably craft it in projectile form, which he then fires with either hardtech or further modified wavetech (and it's a lot easier to modify the wavetech this time, since it doesn't have to be fired at weaponlike velocities.) Actually, if you wanted to go with the "gravity goes all wonky" version, you get a spiffy bonus effect - given that speed drives work by surfing the local grav-nuetral, getting a hit close enough to the drive room can do *interesting* things to a ships trajectory.
- You don't really need the international space station or submarines for any real reason (except perhaps "Look at me! I'm cool! I've got the ISS!" which doesn't count.) Also, grabbing that amount of stuff would be enough to *really* hork off the 'Danes - perhaps enough for them to actually send someone up after you - and you don't want that. Also, the ISS just isn't going to change all that easily into the Architecture By Esher design that you're describing. That sounds more like "contents of a junkyard, a whole *lot* of handwavium, and an acid-fueled consecration orgy by discordians" or somethig similar. 'Danebuilt spaceworthy craft and installations are *very* ordered.
- If you really *are* playing the SS Katamari game, then how do ships leave your little chunk of home after they arrive?

[Norgarth]

---

You don't really need the international space station or submarines for any real reason (except perhaps "Look at me! I'm cool! I've got the ISS!" which doesn't count.) Also, grabbing that amount of stuff would be enough to *really* hork off the 'Danes

---

you specified that the subs were _not_ decommissioned, therefore they would have at least a skeleton crew aboard who would not take kindly to you hijacking US Navy property. And they would have onboard weapons lockers.
Hell, that would piss off the rest of the Fen, as you would be greatly angering the 'Danes and generally making the other fen look bad.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Bluemage]

Well, I didn't expect this to be so controversial. There are some really good objections here, so I'll clarify what I meant on some of the less objectionable parts, scale back the crazy ones, and try to sort this out cleanly.
First- I didn't know the ISS was established as still being there. That's blatantly non-canon (my idea, not it still being there), and it'll have to go. I'll need *something* to collide with on the way, as that's the in-plot genesis of 'SS Katamari'-esque dimension of my ship, though- maybe a satellite or three? A heckuva lot of space junk? The bottom section of Apollo 11, which a quick moon trip could pick up? Suggest, and I shall edit- if there isn't quite enough mass, I'll have him swing by a car junkyard or two to even things out.
Heck, drakensis' idea, with the abandoned fen stations being added, is perfect for that: if I'm allowed it, I'd be honored to steal- er, *use* it.

As for *why* the ISS, I was going for it for a couple of reasons. First, all these fen are escaping Earth without any (navigation) problems: wouldn't having somebody botch the trip into space be different and interesting. Second, to answer Sirrocco's objection of 'not becoming Architecture by Escher too easily', the thought was that that would be an evolutionary process, taking time to fully realize. The station would gradually beccome unrecognizable, except for a few bits here and there: in the interim, it would've been an organized structure to build the Katamari bits around.

Second- The subs. Too much for what I really wanted, anyway. For one thing, nuclear is totally unnecessary. For another, I badly underestimated the size of those suckers when I came up with that part. Third, it'd be too hard to get, as Timote mentioned, three of the LAs, or any modern sub, while they weren't crewed. Say some half-decent mothballed Russian diesel, a random retired European design, and an American Coast Guard ship? Part of the reason for the subs was the torpedo launchers, which could be used for probe launches, deploying hardtech missiles carrying nanites, and many other useful things.

So that you don't think I'm too nuts, let me explain what I was thinking, so that you can get it to manageable proportions. First, when I said 'not decommissioned', I meant still in active service: I was thinking along the lines of grabbing subs in the yards for repair, during the middle of the night. That was what I meant. As for honking off the 'danes, that was half the purpose.

I think the random thefts will work *better* for that, especially since this'll have multiple countries all irritated at the same guy, but (with the ISS still there) not quite enough to send somebody after him. That was more the level I originally wanted, so that'd work out.
Third- weapons. Understand, these *aren't*, as Sirrocco suggested, purpose-built, or anything of the sort. I'm fully aware of the rules on *that*, and did things this way as an honest attempt to work within the 'weapons' rules.
My character spends his time doing three things: seeking/archiving data, tinkering with wavetech (and what little-but-slowly-expanding hardtech he understands), and everything else. That's written the way it is because it reflects his priorities- he spends a *lot* of time inventing, 'waving, tinkering, working on his station, etc. My defensive system ideas are, in-story, experiments of his that he's figured out how to use to prevent others from attacking him- utility devices adapted into defensively capable form. Take the Eiffel Tower example given in the first version of my writeup: that can be explained as a variety of nanomachine swarm under the control of a 'waved computer that absorbed a few books of famous monuments. It's essentially a variation on the nanofac/grey goo idea, let loose on a pirate ship (either through a space torpedo collision, or some exotic variation on a tractor beam).
While I can agree that was a fairly extreme concept, I will remove it if desired, say that it won't work again (that whole one-shot weapon rule proposed a while back), or tone it down. Still, it wasn't designed as a weapon, and it destroyed nothing, using no explosions of any sort. That's the sort of defense I'm talking about: no destruction, but a reconfiguration of existing matter into inconvenient forms.
Fourth- the 'moving planets' part. Think about this- my station is an insect, in stellar terms. Stars and planets are big. If my station tries to move an object, both move, according to physics, a distance proportional to their masses. It's like launching a rocket- the gases a rocket engine expels push upon the Earth, but does it move? Microns, if at all- but the rocket sure does. By pulling a star to it, my station creates an immeasurable, insignificant difference in its position, while pulling _itself_ far closer to the star. Same principle with pushing planets: they don't move enough to measure, but my ship does. It'd take a few millennia of constant use to have any sort of measurable effect on any one stellar body. This isn't planet-moving equipment (that would be munchkin), but a different way of moving my ship. Does that make it clear/acceptable/possible, or am I totally off base?
Finally, Sirrocco- about the 'how do ships leave your little chunk of home after they arrive' question: no ship that the Katamari effect is applied to leaves unchanged. The only thing similar to that that I've mentioned is my runabouts, and those are essentially modular sections of the junkball and its habitable/functional sectors, altered to _be able to leave_ and function as elementary shuttle-like constructs on their own. No ship docks and leaves, in the 'dane (or general SF) sense: it's a temporary detachment of part of the ship. The Katamari effect (which I originally thought of as an eventual armor concept, but will probably make a quirk of the original car) would make standard docking difficult. This, I'm not quite sure of, and will update in a generally more friendly way later today, along with all erroneous entries on other threads.
I apologize for crossing the Line, and thank all of you for giving me constructive criticism to remedy the breach. Hopefully, I've given you an understanding of what I was trying to accomplish, how I wanted to do it, and how unintentional it actually was.
If any of the proposed edits/clarifications contained here are still objectionable, feel free to respond, and we'll hash out a compromise that stays behind the Line, but true to the base concept I was going for. I have and will continue to work consciously to create interesting ideas that still work within the paradigm here- anything that crosses that Line was not deliberately so, and was either a loophole that needs to be clarified, or ignorance on my part.Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines...

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Bob Schroeck]

---

I was thinking along the lines of grabbing subs in the yards for repair, during the middle of the night.

---

The only problem with that, Bluemage, is that it takes considerably more than "overnight" to saturate a craft with 'wavium and then let it react. Even if you're applying it with a paint sprayer or something.
Now if you had a tug or other powerful ship that could grab them out of their berths and carry them to somewhere you could work at leisure, that might be justifiable.
Or you could work with mothballed subs, or museum displays, or anything else that is not going to have paranoid people with guns on them more far often than your mean preparation time.
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

[Bluemage]

---

Now if you had a tug or other powerful ship that could grab them out of their berths and carry them to somewhere you could work at leisure, that might be justifiable.

---

That's more like what I was thinking- grab them, take them far enough away, 'wave them, and then start the remodeling/occupation. I might still grab my Russian sub that way, after I get enough of the rest of the station body and propulsion, especially since I could just take it (with a powerful enough engine) into space, and let it explosively decompress. That'd take care of a lot of the "angry guys w/ guns" issue, and make the sub fit the 'mobile junkball' look better, too.
Consider these ideas in queue for the plan- I'll be doing the rewrites/post edits tonight.Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines...

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[M Fnord]

On the most recent pass, your timing is way, way off. If you launch Calling Port nine months after Grover's Corners then you hit Fenspace a good eight months after the "now" point in the timeline. Unless that's deliberate, it puts you completely out of the action for the first season.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Bluemage]

You're right, and there's a very bad reason for this.
I don't know the timeline yet, or too much of the geopolitical stuff, and it changes faster than I get a handle on it.
As a handwave (pardon the pun) for this ignorance, you'll notice how little my character knows about what's going on. I'm going to be changing this, but it's going to take time to fix: more than that, my character'll need time to get the _Port_ to the state my ship writeup will reflect. To be honest, I think I'm better off working up to a 'second-season' character, as I'm obviously a second-string writer, and late-comer to boot.

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Sirrocco]

Voice of practicality:
Also worth noting - grand theft on this scale, this late in the game, *will* do some damage to Fen/Dane relations, and will, in turn, result in many of the other fen rather disliking you. The fact that you naturally steal anything that touches you will result in them disliking you *more*. So far as I can see it, the major responses to your character will be...
- Will do their damndest to keep from getting too close to you. If they cannot move at least as fast as you can, they will gather together the most effective improvised weapons they can come up with as soon as you get near and warn you off. If you *do* manage to hook on to them, they are likely to walk through your ship looking for the initial car. If they ever find it, they will turn off the drive, in the hopes that this will stop the gluing effect. If this works, they will break the drive with a wrench.
- As above, but also want to hunt you down on behalf of various planetside interests/loyalties. They might not send anyone after you, but you can *bet* there's a bounty on your head - or three.
- Think you're cool, because of the way you stick it to the 'Danes - but still don't want to get too near to you.
It's also worth noting that getting bigger means you go slower. Swallowing a space station will mean you're pretty much down to a crawl. Swallowing a space station and then sneaking back down to the surface for a bit of late-night raiding? Well, they *may* not be able to effectively blow their way through the wall o' junk, depending on how thick it is, but they will certainly be hitting you with a fair amount of highly explosive rounds in all sorts of varieties.
Essentially, assuming success at the snatch-and-grabs, for whatever reason, I could see this character being a really interesting NPC/bizarre and dangerous encounter - particularly as one of the Strange Happenings In Season II - but with the degree of difficulty he'd have just in interacting with anyone, let alone makign money and acquiring basic food supplies, I'm not sure I can see why you'd want to run him as a main character.

[Bluemage]

Take him, then- have fun, ask me on characterization if you feel you ever need it, and make Cool Stuff happen.
A few last suggestions- make the Katamari effect time-delay: the more mass it envelops, the longer new mass takes to adhere. Then, there'll be a certain critical mass, after which most junk, visitors, etc. end up gone fast enough to avoid it.
Second, the station layout and equipment changes after every visit/use of the character. I was planning on something similar, but for an NPC, it's easier to 'wave that. Missiles are his primary active defense mechanisms (with random 'waved experimental results as payloads- unreliable, with random effects), but his repulsion drive can be used on ships.
Third, Allen rarely, if ever, initiates events. He generally wants two things: junk to 'wave, and new concepts/ideas/information. If he engages in other people's events, it's because his services were requested and paid for out of the above, or because he wandered into a preexisting problem area.
Fourth, he launched in Spring '08. I'll change the relevant posts tomorrow, fixing the date to 'earlier in the game', and relinquishing my authorship.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines...

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Sirrocco]

Actually, to be perfectly honest, on later reflection, having the duration to integrate go up with collected stuff makes the whole thing a *lot* more friendly to Fenspace at large. You'd still have a bunch of Danes unhappy at you, but, well, they're Danes - and there's a lot of people who climbed out of the well to escape them. Type A still wouldn't like you much, but probably wouldn't turn on you too badly, in much the same way as how they don't turn on the professor, in spite of the really quite impressive sums on *his* head (though with a bit less intensity on all parts). Type B would consider you just another Fen, if rather odder than most. Type C would *still* think you were cool, and wouldn't be nearly as worried about getting close to you. significantly friendlier all around.
Killing a submarine crew in cold blood just to get the ship, though (or any other ship's crew, for that matter) will get you in a world of trouble with *all* the wrong people. If you're wiling to take one without nuclear technology on it, that makes things easier, as they are not neccessarily under guard in the same way. Also, what kind of a monster are you?
The planetpuller as described more fully isn't actually breaky - particularly if you say that it can't target anything other too small to have a gravity well.
Stealing ships still isn't going to be *trivial*, mind you, especially since your primary craft at that point is quite large, and therefore slow. Speed drives don't work so hot in atmosphere, and larger still means slower. It also means more visible on radar. You'll have a lot of mass they'd have to chew through, but it might well not be handwaved yet. Of course, many of these issues go away if you wait until after you've had some time to develop in space, and have one of your runabouts built.
Actually, it might work better, to fit into the theme of "accumulation by mistake" if you were to start by flying parallel to the surface of the earth, rather than perpindicular, as you intended. Hit a reasonable-sized boat that either has nobody on it, or everyone on deck. If theyre on deck, they can leap into the water as the boat starts flying away, and be close enough to shore to survive until rescued. Upon hitting the boat, you make a course correction, and head straight up... hitting an abandoned space station.
Gray goo is a bit scary for this universe, especially as a combat thing. If you could find some way to make it, though, it might be a reasonable explanation for the Katamari effect, though, and for the slowdown. For this batch, you started with a lot of them, but they don't reproduce, or only reproduce slowly and with specific limits. The more ship there is, the further spread out they are, the slower they work. Order of work is to first secure any new junk, then seal, pressurize and connect (if and when possible environmentally), then modify for fit. Over time, you get the Escher effect, but that's only if you haven't absorbed anything recently.
On the other side, given that, it would be reasonable for "stores" to include handwavium. If you had somethign set up to keep adding to the available supply, it seems reasonable that the friendly nanites might handwave the things that they found (if not already handwaved) in the bits that got absorbed. Of course, people wouldn't really know what the things were until after they went exploring You're character would probably have a pretty good intuitive grasp, though.
In general, things that violently reshape entire opposing ships (assuming they haven't crashed into you) feel a bit extreme to me. I'm not *sure* about this one, though, so I'd like feedback from others.
I dunno. I'd have to look at it in full again to be sure we'd caught everything, but it looks, at this point, like a viable character. There certainly aren't any more problems with the fundamental theory of the thing.

[M Fnord]

---

Killing a submarine crew in cold blood just to get the ship, though (or any other ship's crew, for that matter) will get you in a world of trouble with *all* the wrong people. If you're wiling to take one without nuclear technology on it, that makes things easier, as they are not neccessarily under guard in the same way. Also, what kind of a monster are you?

---

This would also attract the attention of the Star Patrol, especially if it really starts happening after the reaver conflict. Part of the Patrol's mandate is to keep the peace, and that means "catching our crooks before we give the 'danelaw an excuse to do it for us." A rash of high-profile hijacks by an obvious fenship is going to have the 'danelaw screaming for the Patrol to Do Something Or By God We Will. Mistake or not, that sort of shenannigans tends to attract attention from our doughty band of space heroes...---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"