Plotbunny for sale - cheap

[classicdrogn]

Well, the "better than anything in space" aspect (and if you look at the stats, the Prommie has the same offense and shields as the Sovereign... just much less chance to survive anything that does get through and absorb casualties) would pretty assuredly be lost - it's about having something with a matching outline, still doing the three-in-one-thing, and fitting actual useable space in wherever you can manage it to get some kind of use out of the thing, and most likely is 'wave over sanded and primed wood, or even a wood frame with a canvas skin. That WOULD also make it DAMN light and hence possibly have a chance at preserving the title of fastest thing its size in space, but also means it's very fragile indeed unless they can get one of Mr. Morden's force field units - and I expect that very thing would be a goal near and dear to their hearts. Mainly, thouhg, what I need is an AI that Wave Convoy had an excuse to meet just about as soon as he went into space, and I already put him in contct with the Trekkies. AIs are not generally a Trek thing up until then, but there was one in the TOS novels (The ones with Harb Tanzer as the Rec Deck chief - either Diane Carey or Diane Duane wrote them) who was pretty cool, and I intend to base the one I need on my semidistant memories of her.SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[robkelk]

---

AIs are not generally a Trek thing up until then, but there was one in the TOS novels

---

Not just there - there were plenty of AIs in TOS episodes. "I, Mudd" was crawling with them, and one was installed on the Enterprise itself during "The Ultimate Computer", just to name two examples. Granted, Kirk was usually destroying the AIs instead of working with them, but the've been there for a long time... and it's a sure bet that some Trekkie Fen will remember this.
(Edit: And it's because of the "Kirk the Computer Killer" mentality that Noah won't let the girls anywhere near Trekkie-controlled installations...)

-Rob Kelk
--
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

[Feinan]

---

AIs are not generally a Trek thing up until then, but there was one in the TOS novels (The ones with Harb Tanzer as the Rec Deck chief - either Diane Carey or Diane Duane wrote them) who was pretty cool, and I intend to base the one I need on my semidistant memories of her.

---

*grin* Yes, she was a fun character, wasn't she? Her name was Moira, and she showed up in the Star Trek novels that Duane wrote. I believe the first one that we saw her in was The Wounded Sky, though I might be mistaken.

[classicdrogn]

Ah, Moira, that was it! I remeber reading Wounded Sky and ... maybe Memory Prime? ... and then suddenly getting all teary eyed, because I couldn't see any way she'd escaped either getting discovered and stuck in a hole with the other known UFP AIs on Memory Prime, or going down with the ship in Wrath of Khan. Moira is the Trekkie Chief Engineer who built the ship's direct inspiration for the AI aboard, but what he got calls herself Liza, having accreted around the classic psuedo-psychologist program Eliza due to the strong assosciations with human interaction and Recreation being considered part of the Medical department due to the implications for the crew's mental health. That and the fact that as I recall Moira also had roots in Eliza as well.
- CD Why do you feel Moira had roots in Eliza as well?SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[M Fnord]

---

On a different topic, are there any objections to the idea of a supporting character from the Trekkies having an SS scale (meaning under 250ft) version of the Prometheus, complete with free-roving-onboard "holographic" AI character? If so, how much better is a similarly scaled Reliant plus TNG (which the Reliant appeared often in) holodeck?

---

Seems kinda silly to me - the small-scale ships, not the AI, I mean. If the Trekkies are going to try and build working copies of their fandom's ships (and you know damn well they are) seems to me that they'd try and build, y'know, full scale replicas instead of going for toy-boat versions. Plus, it's a little early in the timeline for them to be churning out full-scale starships.
Thankfully, there's enough different types of shuttlecraft, runabouts, Delta Flyers and the like in Trek canon that would be in the prototype/flight-test stage in time for SOS-con and the zwilnik wars. (Same goes for the Warsies and their smallcraft, incidentally.)---
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!"

[Feinan]

I've been thinking again (run for cover!).
This time, it was on why handwavium can act so differently with different people. And I came to the hypothesis that for them...it's different handwavium.
Here's my reasoning: first, handwavium must have some store of knowledge that it's using to build/upgrade items. I don't believe that it's just magically waving its arms to make things happen (if it had arms), and if it didn't have SOME sort of tech library to direct what it does, I can't see it doing anything but sitting there. Pretty much everybody can get the handwavium to access certain levels of that library - the 'general spaceship' level is at an 'all users' access level.
The thing is - the handwavium resonates with its users, and depending on who's using it, other levels of the tech library get unlocked. The Professor has free reign in the 'mad science' directory, with probably some odd access points here and there in the other sections. My character pretty much lives in the biology section. It might be random, it might be what resonates best with the knowledge/ideas that the character has...but for each person, handwavium acts differently because it actually IS different, in the knowledge that it can draw on.
This also has some fun ramifications when you have multiple people working on a single project. If the handwavium is unlocked for all of their sections, then you might get weird crossovers and synergies that you wouldn't see with just one person acting alone. Bob's ship...moon?...might be a good example. You have a lot of people who worked together to make it, and some very interesting quirks popped out in the end product. The synthesis of the wildlife making an AI sounds like a GOOD example of what you might get from wiccans and computer-inclined people working together, for instance. This has a fair bit of potential for interesting creations, I think - especially if you've got several people with wildly different access levels to the handwavium library. *grin* A good reason to keep the Jason and the Professor from working on any joint projects, most likely. Lord only knows WHAT you'd get.
So - feelings, opinions? This just popped into my head, and I thought I'd see what people thought of it.

[classicdrogn]

Um... you kind of answered your first objection with your second, Fnord. It's the product of a retired-at-thirty doctor/lawyer type who built himself a light plane before the 'wave hit, then figured what the hell, why not go whole hog? He gets together with the lacal fan club to have more hands to build and crew for when it goes to peices so it won't go all to pieces, they wind up with somewhere around the liveable space of a big delivery van or small camper in each section, and MAJOR geek cred with the Trekkies for having a Starfleet silhouette even if it is only more useful than a standard van conversion. The Beta hull (upper aft section, "warp nacelles" up) has room for a couple of Austin Mini sized shuttlecraft, and the large relative volume devoted to engines combined with light build means the thing can probably do a good rendition of a streak of greased lightning - given dominant Trekkie memes, it's probably one of the ships that spends its time ranging ever further afield to the next star to look for some sign of new life, civilizations, and/or Space Hotties with odd foreheads. That they're back in the region circa SauceCon is coincidental, and actually gives a better justification for a certain plot point now that I think about it.
But, here's the important point - they are not major characters. They show up for one thing, then they're gone again for the most part. The question is not, "do you want to hear all about them," but "are they too much to smile and nod and wave bye-bye to?" To put it in bullet form, they have the following Important Things:
* Female AI, Liza, focused on human interaction
* They were there ca. Valentines 2008 when Wave Convoy-tachi first hit orbit, Liza helped him adapt to life as a machine intelligence. Wave Convoy also helped her simulate and better understand the human experience by integrating the emulation of hunger and eating in her routines, with a holodate in a holopizzeria followed by a (flat) movie in a holotheater, etc. In cyberspace, since whatever ship the Trekkies may be on at that point, it's not built for people 25 feet tall.
* They are back again in 2012 when the SOS-dan calls their Con
The rest of the details don't really matter, because they're only there to provide justification for those events - which means being on a chibi-Prometheus is really not important either way, it's just that the Prometheus is a Trek ship I don't dislike (the other options are a Miranda Refit, Ambassador, or the Romulan Whitewind from the FASA tactical game) with known AI capacity to justify there being one.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--

"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Duane Peters]

---

The thing is - the handwavium resonates with its users, and depending on who's using it, other levels of the tech library get unlocked.

---

This is pretty much the assumption I've been using too; the stuff reacts to whatever its user wants on an unconscious level. (What that says about my psyche and the way the Bus annoys me is left as a thesis subject for a doctorate in psychiatry.) You can affect it consciously, but it takes either great concentration or an ego that's very close to it's id (just to throw in a little pseudo-Freudianism, there...)

[Duane Peters]

---

On a different topic, are there any objections to the idea of a supporting character from the Trekkies having an SS scale (meaning under 250ft) version of the Prometheus, complete with free-roving-onboard "holographic" AI character? If so, how much better is a similarly scaled Reliant plus TNG (which the Reliant appeared often in) holodeck?

---

Kinda figured that's what they're doing at Utopia Planitia. In Trek canon, it was the HQ for their biggest shipyard...

[Sirrocco]

For what it's worth, the Important Things are all *easily* doable. The only concern would be size and shape of ship. Building functionally flyable scale models is not entirely trivial, and it gets worse if you actually want them big enough for people to walk around in. Also, they almost certainly wouldn't *start* building until they had an idea of what handwavium could do and got inspired. You might find scale models, but "actually usable as a ship" probably isn't one of the features they would have included. Still, all you *really* need is to put together something that would be reasonable as an early Trekkie Large Ship In Space, and figure they had an onboard AI of appropriate type and a full-ship holoprojector.

[M Fnord]

How about a Defiant? It's about the same size as the larger refitted 'danecraft, compact enough that sufficiently motivated Trekkies could build the spaceframe without worrying about extra support...---
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!"

[Feinan]

I know some people aren't in love with the idea that handwavium is intelligent, or even possibly symbiotically intelligent by connecting with its users. Now, I tend to anthropomorphize my representations of the stuff, just because it's fun, and I have this image of it in my head. But here's a thought on how handwavium might work that doesn't require it to be intelligent at all. Just able to perceive a large portion of its environment, and to have a tropism for certain perceptions of that environment.
So - we've decided to make a spacecraft. Here's what might be happening, on a metaphorical level:
Imagine a HUGE wall. Not infinite, but extremely large. Across every bit of the wall are lights - untold numbers of them (Bill-yuns and Bill-yuns...*thwap of a rolled-up newspaper* Shut UP, Carl.). A light can be dark or brightly lit, or a gradient in between. And each point of light represents data from the environment.
You're applying handwavium to the engine. The wall is what the handwavium perceives. Exactly how much it perceives might be based on the strain, and certain users might unlock the ability to perceive more data points, or odder ones. So strain, tech types by user, whatever else we might decide is important - all of this changes the points on the wall.
There's a HUGE bright spot on the wall that represents the engine data - that's what it's being applied to, after all. The things say - gas-run, does this, does that, fair repair - everything to represent the engine. Clustered nearby would be data points from the user - his perception on what the engine is/does, what he WANTS it to do, and so on. All in various intensities of light/dark.
Other lights would be environmental data - music, temperature, what other conditions in the room, the knowledge programmed into the 'wavium, including special technical data that a specific user might unlock. All told, it generates a HUGE mottled form on the wall - a picture in light.
And the handwavium has been programmed with a tropism for light - it reacts to light by approaching it. The effect inside the handwavium is for it to be attracted to the brighter sources and settle there on the metaphorical wall. When it's all settled and it cures, it forms a permanent representation of the wall - as the device it was creating.
So, if you replicate conditions/devices/user/strain as close as possible.....you can make a similar device. But there will still be differences, just because you can't replicate the wall exactly. You can get close, but there WILL be differences.
Some things will be easier to make/replicate than others - spaceship parts of the wall are easy for most handwavium to perceive, so when attached to a device that can become a ship, those parts stand out. Other bits are more obscure.
Each handwavium item is a sort of metaphorical representation of the environment around the handwavium in question when it made the device.
No intelligence needed - it simply reacts as programmed, as a tropism. But this still allows generating all sorts of odd devices. Quirks might represent points of light that fired up because of an environmental condition or thought from the user...and so on.
Thoughts?

[Sirrocco]

This is a decent (if a bit distant) metaphor for the way I've always seen it work, anyway.

[CattyNebulart]

Meh, to me the question if handwavium is inteligent is meaningless. There is just no good definition for it, ask 3 AI researchers for a meaniful definition and chances are you will get 5 or 6 different definitions of inteligence.
However handwavium isn't human and doesn't think like a human if it does think. Here is a question for you, does a computer think?
People can't even agree wether cats think so I don't think we'll get a meaningfull awnser to it.
On another topic, we should use the real planet positions in fenspace, they are easy enough to lookup if you have the right tools. Most planetarium software can do it, personally I like KStars, but I have been trying to find an online resource that everyone can use. and ideas? Otherwise I'll just post somne images showing the current planet positions.
Doesn't need to be precise but if Jupiter and saturn are on opposite sides of the sun it would make sense to stop by earth on the way between them, etc.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Bob Schroeck]

---

On another topic, we should use the real planet positions in fenspace, they are easy enough to lookup if you have the right tools. Most planetarium software can do it

---

Agreed. I was just thinking the same thing this weekend, only focused more on moon phases because of Feinan's new story. It shouldn't be hard to get a table of moon phases set up once we have a specific month for the Con. Planetary positions will be harder to get across in an easily-digestible form, but we can try.
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

[CattyNebulart]

space.jpl.nasa.gov/
can do it, it's not great but ussable. anyone know of anything better?
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Bob Schroeck]

Check Fnord's Orrery thread.
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

[drakensis]

Dodge Chargers this old don't come with car alarms, so I'd had to do some refitting but when I laid the fob against the Destrier's hull, the LED went from amber to green and the sunroof slid open smoothly. I entered feet first, and felt the seat below me when I was a bit more than hip-deep. Since I'd never actually entered any car like this before, I took it slow and before long I was sitting down in the seat, it's contours adjusting to the shape of my skinsuit and when I placed the fob against the correct panel, the sunroof closed above me.
American cars of this era are quite spacious, but there was only enough room inside the Destrier for one, one-and-a-half maybe if someone lurked behind the seat or sat on the pilot's lap. The only seat was along the centre line, with a manual gear between the occupant's knees and an assortment of controls laid out in easy reach of both hands and feet. Several more could be unfolded at need, but were stowed most of the time, like a keyboard. And right where the steering wheel should be, a helmet rested on the dashboard.
Before I tried that, however, there was the rest of the start up. One end of the fob was a cap over the built in USB port. I removed this and connected the fob to the matching connector underneath my seat. There was a clicking sound and then the windscreen lit up with an HUD, the sunvisors flipped down to reveal video screens and the rest of the controls came to life. From behind me, the life-support began to purr and a tool on my belt confirmed that the Destrier was now pressurised with a viable atmosphere. I unclipped my skinsuit's helmet, then realised that there was nowhere really suited to hold it and ended up cramming it behind the seat. The air was fresh as the day I'd bottled it, and smelt slightly minty for some reason.
A nudge of my foot against one of the pedals sent Destrier jetting forwards and I moved the gear stick to second gear, pulling the nose up and moving through a slow loop until I could see the Saint Bernard again. It looked like the manual controls worked in the right general fashion. That left the... other... controls.
With great care, I lifted the helmet from the dashboard and placed the cables connecting it to the roof of the car so that they lay comfortably over my shoulders. Then I fitted the helmet over my head. It restricted my vision more than the skin-suit helmet did, since the visor was only a horizontal band a couple of inches high and maybe ten inches long, wrapped around my face at eye level. It made a seal with the rest of the skinsuit however and I breathed a sigh of relief. At least the compatability worked.
On top of the dashboard, where the helmet had been, was an old-fashioned lightswitch, the jutting switch pointing away from me. I reached forwards and puleld it back towards me.
For a moment nothing.
Then for a fleeting second I could see everthing...
and it exploded!
D for Drakensis

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

[Feinan]

I need a bit of info, guys, in order to determine the Jason's reactions to things. I know that the SOS-clan is supposed to be going public with data on Day 2. What can I find out about things after that? I'd offer information on the zwilnik that approached me to the group, so that they knew about that problem as well. What I really need though is to know: a) whether or not any of the vanished miners, shinobi, or others that might have been attacked count as fenkinder - really, if there are any under age 20. The Jason will react either way...but the difference will be like that between a raging forest fire...and Krakatoa. b) Once I find out this info, I'd also be wanting a list of the vanished if at all possible, and whatever information I can get on them. I have...a reason for it.
So, I need to know what, if any of that, I can obtain - either through the SOS-clan, or the various fen. Can anybody tell me? Thanks in advance.

[classicdrogn]

On a related note, just how far in the past have these incidents been occurring as part of a recognisable pattern? I have an as-yet-unintroduced character who's eight as of SOScon that's slated as a sole survivor when the Good Guys got there after the last minute, and want to put the attack involving him just far enough back that it didn't seem related until the SOS-dan put things together and laid it on the table. Months at least, no more than a year or two. I need this to pin down the timing of the second Wave Convoy story, so he can progress to the SauceCon time frame.
Also: Kokuten and/or Bob, do you want to take over KITTEN/Faith-as-KARR since you've pulled out the Knight Foundation? She could perhaps even be a rouge like canon KARR - I basically thought of the idea and considered it too cool to pass up, but had only the most preliminary of ideas to involve her - She's got the storage and processing power of a machine intelligence, and remembers the date she first came online (sometime in 2010) but also remembers a life as the factional character on BtVS right up until heading out to keep the Sisterhood of Jhe from opening the Hellmouth (or rather, to close it again) in "Night of the Zeppo..." and as a machine intelligence, she found that she was quite good at internet and hacky things, and that while there's no "Sunnydale CA" and nothing she can verify as real supernatural activity, there is at the very least a Willow Rosenburg who still complains in her blog about obsessed fans of a show she hated bugging her years after it ended, and records for a Faith LeHane to be found in Boston, listed as a runaway...
Hence, days or weeks after finding that tidbit and slipping away, a black trans am with a scanner light on the hood causing a major disruption in traffic and several fatalities among the members of a particular gang known for being enforcers of a particular prostitution ring. Whether the local, "real" Faith LeHane is in redeemable condition or even still alive is somewhat up in the air, and for that matter so is the base concept of real versions of characters from a recent show that existed in-'verse.

- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows