I think I remember that topic. The answer should always be that it ends up doing whatever it needs to to make the plot work. And if the collective finds that the plot doesn't work, then handwavium can't do that.
I still like the idea of there being drawbacks to being modded, beyond the risk of rolling up a Joker. You gain certain powers, but you loose important things. Whether that's the ability to have children, or to fundamentally decide to change yourself in some way, to break out of the mould of your life. The modded might find that just a bit harder. People like Ford who's steadily found herself becoming more and more like Rally Vincent, solely because that's what people expect when they look at her - even if she never knew what a Rally Vincent was when the wave got her. In ten years, she's gotten to the point where it's basically bang-on hotrodder gunbunny - and it does irk her no end. She even has a Minnie-May now.
Daryl Haur's just starting down the path, to what end time will tell. Crack Space Pilot/Warrior?
It's something of a Faustian pact.
Nobody's actively discussed it in-universe, but I think the idea would make a lot of people uncomfortable to the point where it's swept under the carpet and just ignored. Nobody really wants to think about it, but it seems like something some people might think about a lot.
On a related note, I've started to wonder if the wave itself isn't alive in some way. Not like Worm alive - more like something mindless and unmalicious, without any intent. But, as written, it spreads like bacteria. It breaks out. It always finds a way around. It spreads like a lifeform. And everything it does can be explained simply as a survival strategy..... wavium that leads to civilisational annihilation does not spread far, so dies out. Wavium that's useful and gets used by a civilisation, spreads through the galaxy. Like all life, that's all it wants to do. And it works by fucking with the mind and memetics somehow. It doesn't have to be intelligent at all, or guided by an invisible hand beyond simple natural selection. It's a symbiote - a useful one that somehow finagles the guidelines of physics, but still alive and with consequences for the infected. Not something I ever think there should be a ruling on, just a thought I've been having - was planning to introduce is as an opinion of a biologist in a story I've been doing.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
I still like the idea of there being drawbacks to being modded, beyond the risk of rolling up a Joker. You gain certain powers, but you loose important things. Whether that's the ability to have children, or to fundamentally decide to change yourself in some way, to break out of the mould of your life. The modded might find that just a bit harder. People like Ford who's steadily found herself becoming more and more like Rally Vincent, solely because that's what people expect when they look at her - even if she never knew what a Rally Vincent was when the wave got her. In ten years, she's gotten to the point where it's basically bang-on hotrodder gunbunny - and it does irk her no end. She even has a Minnie-May now.
Daryl Haur's just starting down the path, to what end time will tell. Crack Space Pilot/Warrior?
It's something of a Faustian pact.
Nobody's actively discussed it in-universe, but I think the idea would make a lot of people uncomfortable to the point where it's swept under the carpet and just ignored. Nobody really wants to think about it, but it seems like something some people might think about a lot.
On a related note, I've started to wonder if the wave itself isn't alive in some way. Not like Worm alive - more like something mindless and unmalicious, without any intent. But, as written, it spreads like bacteria. It breaks out. It always finds a way around. It spreads like a lifeform. And everything it does can be explained simply as a survival strategy..... wavium that leads to civilisational annihilation does not spread far, so dies out. Wavium that's useful and gets used by a civilisation, spreads through the galaxy. Like all life, that's all it wants to do. And it works by fucking with the mind and memetics somehow. It doesn't have to be intelligent at all, or guided by an invisible hand beyond simple natural selection. It's a symbiote - a useful one that somehow finagles the guidelines of physics, but still alive and with consequences for the infected. Not something I ever think there should be a ruling on, just a thought I've been having - was planning to introduce is as an opinion of a biologist in a story I've been doing.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?