Plotbunny for sale - cheap

[Feinan]

M Fnord - first of all, thank you so much for the breakdown. It's much easier to follow like that.

---

* At least one wannabe zwilnik approached the top biomod expert in the Main Belt about working on thionite derivitives, and got his ship blown apart for his trouble. AFAICT, nobody except said expert (who's dealng with, ah, personal problems at the moment) knows this.

---

Well, after having a friend run energy calculations for me, there was probably less usable pieces left of the RV that I'd have thought at the beginning, so we didn't go to SSX Base. Since the zwilnik threatened friends and clients, and I can't be sure he was the only one, I'd have at least passed warnings of possible trouble to them. Closest friends - Megan the Cat Lady and Fred - would've been told the most. Other friends and single/small clients would've been warned of potential trouble, but no details. Larger clients - the Mars Terraformers - would not have been warned, since I'd view them as too large to target efficiently. So, I hope this helps.
For myself, I'd fall in the Non-aligned category, with the zwilnik encounter as part of my personal knowledge.
As far as breaking this down into our own forum...I lean towards yes, though I'd prefer to see one main thread continue for the story proper. Use other threads for ship info and discussions on tech and the like, but the energy behind the story seems to work better in a single thread, I think. If the thread starts to get too long, break it off and start a new one, just to keep them of manageable size.

[The Hunterminator]

I'd say we should at least split this up into IC thread and OOC thread. Maybe also make a 'Edited' thread to put in a more accessible version for reading and reference purposes.
Beyond that, though, I'm thinking that we should keep most of the actual story in a single thread so that it would easy for newcomers to see the progression of the story.

[CattyNebulart]

Insanly busy since I have to finish 2 projects in 36 hours but I somewhat disagree with the view of handwavium presented here, not that I have had time to read it all. Handwavium has something of a mind of its own, and it's easier and safer to understand Chutulu than it is to understand Handwavium.
But a few baseline things can be drawn, it dislikes boring (for a somewhat odd value of boring) and it will get to people who want to get their hands on it, whereas people that want to contain it have a hell of a time with it.
Handwavium has a strong bais towards spaceships, and an strong one towards saftey/harmlessness, for a given value of those two. Miyu can hose down a crowd with minigun fire and only leave some bruises behind, as well as a lot of property damage.
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."

[Sirrocco]

I would say this about the psychic handwavium aspect... It is certainly the case that some handwavium picks up on subconscious signals - we have evidence of a variety of quirks that are far too specific and otherwise unsourceable for it to be otherwise. However, it is also the case that handwavium is strange, has an arbitrary number of different strains, and mutates rapidly when not bonded into shape already (sometimes even when it *is* bonded into shape already.) Handwavium pulls in data from *everywhere*, and is by its nature inherently filled with impurities. It mutates fast enough that if you take a homogenous mass of 'wavium, feed it some appropriately processed biomass, and leave it in a dark room for a week, you will end up with a mass (somewhat larger, it's true) that has at least three or four distinguishable subtypes. It's true that you might get "lizard" out of a subconscious sweep, but it's at least as likely that the handwavium did a gene search, found the unused lizard-bits in the DNA, and thought they looked pretty. The stuff that you get may be drawn from you, it's true. It may be drawn from psychic echoes deep within the bowels of the ship. It may be drawn from local machine-readable data - or any data. It may be totally random. Don't limit yourselves.

Personally, I would hypothesize that part of what Makes The Professor Tick is that there are significant accretions of handwavium in his brain. This does a few things. First, his brain tends to resonate with whatever handwavium happens to be nearby. This gives him a strong intuitive understanding of what various kinds of handwavium are likely to do. It gives him absolutely *no* intuitive understandings of *why* - but he's good at coming up with rationales. This partially helps explain his habit of putting out seemingly contradictory explanations that all test true. Second, the handwavium resonates with his brain, which means that it tends to follow his lead a lot more than it follows the lead of most folks. Third, his brain is always excited, which means his brainwavium is always excited, which tends to cause nearby samples of handwavium of various sorts to *also* be excited, which causes any number of entertaining efects. Fourth, his brainwavium is always excited, which means his brain is always excited - and, specifically, always excitd about handwavium. That's just *my* theory, though.

Also, Rob? I'm reading a whole lot of "I'm a badass!" and not much in the way of duct-tape in your story. in particular, that whole "get attacked for no good reason, deal with it without much sense of difficulty" thing was a little off, as was "I have grav-tech and no one else does except maybe the Professor, and who knows with him". There are other, lesser concerns as well. Admittedly, you had the post-combat stress thing, but between the fact that you apparently had deflector shields adequate to pretty much ignore the attacks, and the speed and ease with which it went from "threat" to "have a shot" to "no threat", I just didnt get any real feeling of danger there.
- Fuel pods are a bit too large size-wise for NASA to lift them into space trivially. There's a reason the shuttle invariably ditched the things on the way up. You could do it with handwave lift assets, certainly, if you could track down a ground-to-orbit specialist in the right timeframe, or you could slap engines on the things while they're on the ground and have them lift themselves. Making each of them technically capable of functioning as in independant if unwieldy spaceship probably isn't a bad idea anyway.
- Okay, on the re-read, I'm seeing the "serious post-combat stress reaction" and the "massive evil ugly paperwork" stuff, but... it's so short. You've got a couple of sentences on the one, and a short paragraph on the other. I literally skipped past it my first read through and didn't notice.
- Quirks are supposed to be quirks for *you* more than quirks for *them*. For them, these things are normal and natural. The fact that the Pinafore gets to hear her Captain's lovely singing voice all the time doesn't bother that ship's AI one bit. Trigon actively *enjoys* being megalomaniacal. So on and so forth. AIs tend to be happy being what they are. Even if someone made a wavium version of Martin, he'd be doing it because, deep inside, he just enjoys being miserable.
- having a few earth-orbit tourist stations certainly makes good sense for the Dane tourists, but you'ld not be likely to see much int he way of Fen tourism. If the Fen *do* want to go gawk at Danes for a while (and with the remarkably short timelie we're working under, that's pretty unlikely to begin with) they'll just go land in some legal spot. Australia's accepting, even if nowhere else is. If you want Fen for the Danes to gawk at (aside from the few you might get who are in it for the attention) you're going to have to give them some other reason to be there.

[Anpwhotep]

Seems to me like it's big enough to need its own forum, but, as other people have already mentioned, the story works better if it's confined to one thread, perhaps with someone who's crazy enough to move completed parts to an "edited" thread, and put the OOC discussions (like spaceship specs, how does handwavium work, etc.) in a separate OOC thread.--
Homepage: http://www.macmanusnet.net
Sailor Moon Fanfiction: http://crystal.macmanusnet.net
--
Homepage: http://www.macmanusnet.net

Sailor Moon Fanfiction: http://crystal.macmanusnet.net

[drakensis]

---

* Non-aligned characters (The Professor, the Explain Star crew, Morden, etc.) know only about the attacks on the asteroid mining facilities and a passel of wild rumors unless specifically sought out by SOS-dan.

---

Morden, who is usually pretty connected as these things go, only knew that a) thionite was a drug that involved handwavium (but not that it wasn't coming from Earth); b) that losses among asteroid miners are up (but there are always some).
At the Convention, he's had a heads-up from the Senshi and the DEA about Thionite; gotten some information from the SOS-dan (although not the full details that some have received) and is trying to find out the Hidden Asteroid's side of things. He'll have enough information on Day 2 to be able to verify much of what the SOS-dan announce though.
D for Drakensis

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

[drakensis]

transferred
D for Drakensis

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

[robkelk]

(Valles)

---

Frex, even the name 'Boskonians' as applied to these raiders is something that was only established after the con invite went out, and then would only be known within the ranks of the Pirates.

---

It is, however, a "natural" name for certain Fen to give raider-type pirates...

(M Fnord)

---

Non-aligned characters (The Professor, the Explain Star crew, Morden, etc.) know only about the attacks on the asteroid mining facilities and a passel of wild rumors unless specifically sought out by SOS-dan.

---

Wild rumours can cover quite a bit of territory, though - some of which may even be accurate. Somebody like Noah, who's already slightly paranoid, isn't going to take chances.
(As for what Noah knows, or has heard, about the Boskonians - not much. The piracy bit is pretty much it, and those rumours were overblown (or so he thought until he was attacked on the way to the Con - and was that really a Boskonian?); he's completely in the dark about the drug trade.)

---

So. You guys up for breaking out of the one thread, or would you rather keep this contained?

---

Either works for me, but I'm the "new guy". A separate subforum would be more convenient for splitting the fic and analysis, though.

(Sirrocco)

---

Also, Rob? I'm reading a whole lot of "I'm a badass!" and not much in the way of duct-tape in your story.
...
Okay, on the re-read, I'm seeing the "serious post-combat stress reaction" and the "massive evil ugly paperwork" stuff, but... it's so short.

---

One advantage to having a shipload of money. Seriously, there's only so much I can cram into an introductory scene without looking like I'm trying to take over the story. Noah does have problems, I just couldn't work most of them in yet. (And Noah's trouble with relating to other people was only hinted at in the vignette, where he couldn't remember the name of the new employee.)

---

that whole "get attacked for no good reason, deal with it without much sense of difficulty" thing was a little off,

---

I suppose I should go back and insert a line about who created the weaponry. (As Bob once called the character, "Li Kohran, Cabalite of Technology". And if the implication of that isn't a problem for Noah, I don't know what is...)

---

as was "I have grav-tech and no one else does except maybe the Professor, and who knows with him".

---

Considering that we've seen other people (not just The Professor) use what appears to be gravtech, Noah's obviously wrong there.

---

Quirks are supposed to be quirks for *you* more than quirks for *them*. For them, these things are normal and natural.

---

Again, that'll be addresses Real Soon Now. The very next scene I write, actually...

---

having a few earth-orbit tourist stations certainly makes good sense for the Dane tourists, but you'ld not be likely to see much int he way of Fen tourism.

---

Which is why the Fen treat Stellvia as a trading outpost: "it gives me a steady source of 'dane income, which gives me the ability to buy all the lovely 'dane toys that so many fen enjoy." I guess that wasn't as clear as it could have been. Sorry about that...

-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

[M Fnord]

---

As far as breaking this down into our own forum...I lean towards yes, though I'd prefer to see one main thread continue for the story proper. Use other threads for ship info and discussions on tech and the like, but the energy behind the story seems to work better in a single thread, I think.

---

I certainly have no objections to keeping the story in its own thread - if nothing else it helps keep the energy level up. My problem - and the reason I think the forum idea is a good one - is that we've got around four or five different meta tracks running at the same time here, so we're looking to add that many new threads if we just break them out. So, in order to avoid confusion & losing threads to churn in OPF it seems to make sense to dump the whole lot into a new forum.---
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!"

[Duane Peters]

I agree. Putting it in it's own forum would make it easier for all of us to get the details straight as well; f'rinstance, I originally thought SSX was for "Space Ship, eXperimental", not a specific designation for one group of Fen. (So this is by way of my apology to whoever; I need to reread the thread again...)
Still and all, here's another vote for Bob: "Please sir, we wants some more forums, please...."

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, first things first. Since folks seem to be leaning toward a subforum, I'm perfectly willing to set one up. I suggest the following organization:
* General -- discussion area. Where the nitpicky details are hammered out
* Gazetteer/Encyclopedia: for timelines, histories, bios, tech descriptions, etc. Glossary goes here, pinned to forum top.
* Ships Registry -- ship descriptions and only ship descriptions.
* Stories and Vignettes
* Story commentary
(I'm probably going to nuke TK1940 while I'm at it, since it seems to have died the great death.)
Are we settled on "Fenspace" or something like that for the name of this project? I'd just like to know what to title the subarea.
Once I create the forum, I recommend folks scavenge this thread and repost their contributions in the appropriate places, creating new threads as necessary. I'll leave the organization up to you guys, whether it's all one big thread or split out. I just have one request -- when you do so, please empty the original message and leave a "moved to new forum" note in it; that way, I'll know when to delete the original thread.

Second, a quibble on terminology. For the various groups within Fenspace, people have been repeatedly saying "fractions". I think the word you're all looking for is factions. You might want to make that correction during the transfer over.

Finally, my own contribution, pending its transfer to the new forum. Inspired by the recent move the Avins-Pinkham household made to West Virginia, I present to you:
SS Grover's Corners
((EDIT: Revised and updated ship entry now posted in the Ship Registry thread.))

SS Salvage I
Creator: Bob Schroeck
Base Hull: Cement-mixer crew capsule atop tanker-truck body
Drive Type: Speed
Owner of Record: The Warriors Group, Ltd.
Main Use: Shuttle, cargo
Known Crew: Bob Schroeck, Peggy Schroeck
SC Saturn 0
Creator: Bob Schroeck
Base Hull: 2002 Saturn SL1
Drive Type: Speed
Owner of Record: Bob Schroeck
Main Use: Personal shuttle
Known Crew: Bob Schroeck, Peggy Schroeck
(There are at least three or four other spacecraft, but I haven't determined them yet.)
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

[M Fnord]

Re forum organization: I'm leaning towards something a bit more pared down, maybe a single GD area, or a GD area and a story area at most. Just a thought to keep the activity from getting too diffuse too quickly.
Re: Name: The general consensus seems to be Fenspace, so I guess that's what we'll stick with.
Re: Grover's Corners: Dude, a spindizzy! I haven't seen a spindizzy reference in years! That's brilliant!---
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!"

[CattyNebulart]

I think a single forum would be good, with no sub area's. We are unlikly to use more than a dozen threads which is too many for the fanfic forum, but to few for the multitude of forums you suggest.
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."

[Ebony]

---

SS Salvage I

---

But Bob, you don't look like Andy Griffith.... Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[Black Aeronaut]

As much as I kinda hate to say it, Fnord has a point with dumping it into a new Forum, despite how much fun and envigorating this "Sand Box Mode" is. (You know, you got a bunch of kids playing with plastic soldiers in the sand box and they kibitz about the possibilities even as they move their troops through the sand.)
Maybe in the new forum we can keep this up, but after we fill a page with RP and commentary, all that get's dumped into respective IC and OOC threads. This will make it easier on both fronts: Newbies because it's easier to follow up on what's going on, and us because we only have to deal with a couple of pages of raw RP at a time.
Thoughts?

---

Black Aeronaut Technologies Group
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News
of this kind a danish requires."

---

[Foxboy]

I'm game. I'm having difficulty finding my old posts already to make sure there's continuity...
''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

[Valles]

---

I woke up in a bed with a cute blonde cheerleader type passed out on my chest. So, understandably, it took me a moment to realize that this scene wasn't occuring in the usual room.
Unlike me, Stacy's a light sleeper. To this day I've never managed to sneak out of bed without waking her up, and that occaision was no exception. "Mmm? 's too early..." she mumbled, then paused and jerked upright. "You're awake!"
"Yeah. How long...?"
SMACK!
Ow.
"Don't you ever do that again, you crazy bitch! You almost died!" Hmm. Slapping. Tears. Yelling and profanity. Desperate embrace.
...damn. She was really worried, wasn't she? I leaned up off the bed and wrapped the arm that didn't have an IV in it around her. "But I didn't," I said, as reassuringly as I could, and never mind that I hadn't done anything to cause this in the first place. Once she'd calmed down enough to've listened she'd also've figured that out for herself.
"Am I interrupting something?" asked the redhead in the doorway.
I raised my head a little from Stacy's shoulder and glared at the girl. "Yes," I said, infusing the word with the strongest undertone of 'fuck off and go away' that I could manage.
She laughed and waltzed in anyway.
Bah. I never was very good at being intimidating.

---

Mrrrg. Scene's not coming. Bleh. I'll just put this up for now. Come back later.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[drakensis]

transferred
D for Drakensis

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

[CattyNebulart]

Well I'm doing well on my paper (about one page more to write and 15 hours to do it...) so I thought I'd get some replies in before I become overwhelmed.

---

Personally, I would hypothesize that part of what Makes The Professor Tick is that there are significant accretions of handwavium in his brain. This does a few things. First, his brain tends to resonate with whatever handwavium happens to be nearby. This gives him a strong intuitive understanding of what various kinds of handwavium are likely to do. It gives him absolutely *no* intuitive understandings of *why* - but he's good at coming up with rationales. This partially helps explain his habit of putting out seemingly contradictory explanations that all test true. Second, the handwavium resonates with his brain, which means that it tends to follow his lead a lot more than it follows the lead of most folks. Third, his brain is always excited, which means his brainwavium is always excited, which tends to cause nearby samples of handwavium of various sorts to *also* be excited, which causes any number of entertaining efects. Fourth, his brainwavium is always excited, which means his brain is always excited - and, specifically, always excitd about handwavium. That's just *my* theory, though.

---

I do like your theory, however you have overlooked that:
1) for about 300 days of the year the Prof works 24/7 with handwavium, always attempting to expand the boundaries of his knowledge. And he has been doing this for over 2 years. (the other 65.25 days are the time lost doing 'useless' things like sleeping, or attending worldcon etc.) If practice makes you any better then the Professor would be the best by dint of this alone.
2) The Proffessor has better equipment than most fen, getting the occasional shipment of expensive scientific or manufacturing equipment. Sent by his scientific contacts or because he spends a fair chunk of change on them, more than most fen would. And having a world class laboratory/workshop available to you probably does make a bit of difference.
3) Few others can be as indescreetly prolific with their tinkering as the Professor is, because the professor will always get new material to experiment on, either from fen who volunteer for an experiment (they want a specific biomod) or who just donate raw materials to the Professor in the hopes of getting something nifty back. The Professor is always gald to run an experiment that will push the boundaries of science, and if you have some use for his previus experiments he will ussually just give them out. Not always, but often enough. The Professor never manufactures something, he always makes prototypes (something handwavium is well suited to) Though he does post the specs of his experiments on the web (free exchange of ideas helping science and all that. Plus what good mad scientist doesn't have theories that are scorned by his peers?), it's just that for most they are hard to replicate. He does keep a few things quiet though, like any good mad scientist he keeps a surprise ace in the hole (though in this case it's more like a few decks)
but personally I prefer not knowing the exact why and how, it makes it easier to keep the ability mysterius.
Though this does make a good suggestion for the limits of what handwavium can do. Personally I am unhappy about the proliferation of weapons through fenspace. The reavers should have them, and the ninja's might have a few, but I would stop the spread of weaponry beyond that until a few weeks at least have passed since the convention.
Another thing Vales mentioned is having ships being near each other limit each other to atmospheric speeds, which I disagree with, since it isn't nessecary for dogfights at all, since if two speed based ships are reasonably close by they will have the same 'zero-point' and therefore can dogfight perfectly well, just at a significant fraction of c (Which jsust seems way cool). Also for our purposes it does not matter much if it takes an minute or five to get up to top speed so this is something else that fighters and race-ships could use to diferentiate themselves from regular ships, faster acceleration.
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."

[robkelk]

Taking into account the feedback from my first vignette, here's the second...

---

(Edit: Ripped and replaced - see page 23 for new version.)

---

That is, of course, an invitation for anyone else at or near the Costume Competition to cross subplots with me. I don't have an IM account, so if you're interested, we'll have to do this by e-mail (robkelk -at- gmail -dot- com). If nobody's interested, I'll go with Plan B...
(Also, I'd prefer that whoever the SOS-dan send to Stellvia not be established Haruhi characters - the midway base is somewhat important, but not that important (unless Haruhi decides she wants to vacation there, in which case the entire top echelon will show up). Any suggestions for who they'd send after the Con?)

---

Borrowing an idea from GRIT, here are capsule descriptions of the characters I've introduced.
(Edit: Ripped and replaced - see Character Thread for new version.)

-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

[Sirrocco]

The problem with dogfighting at significant fractions of c is that humans just don't see fast enough. Any weapon has to be aimed by a high-end AI somehow or other or it'll never hit. Any visual of the situation has to be the zoom-out view. It's maybe an interesting idea, but you totally lose the immediacy of it.
Oh, and rob - a few other issues with the dogfight. First of all, due to the limits on handwaved weapons, your railgun pretty much has to be hardtech, as do the missiles that the enemies are using. Otherwise this is suddenly a *much* bigger deal than some paperwork. People significantly restructure their planning because of *rumors* that the professor has weapons-grade handwavium. This is going to cause them some *serious* difficulties in terms of penetrating 'waved hulls in the first place. Second, depending on how the speed issues work out, the relative speed from your ship to the railgun slug imay pretty much have to be significantly less than the speeds with which you and the raider are hurtling across the battlefield, alone or by comparison. Third... why is it a crime to fire railguns out as far as you were? Maybe I'm missing a bit out of one of the history posts, in which case, please correct me, but I'm not getting this. Earth doesn't care enough to include it in a treaty because it's a railgun slug - it's not like it can penetrate the atmosphere anyway. Generic Danelaw doesn't apply out that far in space, and even if they tried to force the issue, the folks over at UP wouldn't be enfocring it. The Fennish Conventions certainly aren't going to be doing the moral equivalent of taking away people's right to bear arms, and even if they decided they wanted to, they wouldn't care about it being close to earth or not unless the Danes were going to get *really* uptight about it - which they wouldn't. Fourth... how big was that slug, anyway? I'm not seeing how it could possibly have both size and muzzle velocity enough to even *pretend* to make a handwaved hull care and still be even a little concealable.
With respect to the Prof, and Why He Is What He Is - well, yes. I *did* put it in as a hypothesis rather than a Truth, and I totally agree that 'tis better to leave it entirely up in the air - right up there with *most* questions about Handwavium and How It Works (What It Does is somethig we do need to establish from time to time, but the many versions of How, I think, it is beter to leave uncertain, or, if that cannot be the case, All Of The Above Unpredictably.) Even the stuff that the Professor knows, he ain't... well, no. That's not quite right. He *is* telling, with great enthusiasm, and at great length, to anyone who shows enough interest, or even gets caught in the blast radius. It's just that they ain't *understanding*.
Later edit: Rob! Very Important! The very first limitations that we put on the Plot Devices, back before we knew *anything* about them, was that they *could not be blown up for Great Justice*. Period. Dead stop. I am sorry for the required rewrite, but no Kaboomite for you.
Also... I think I see the problem with your generation of the girls. I hate to say this, because of the damage it might do to the character concept, but it's entirely too controlled. AIs are not something that you can generate like you want them to be. You can put in guidance, certainly, and have a decent chance that the guidance will have a degree of influence, but then you put the goop in and the goop does what it wants to. Your robots couldn't possibly be perfect builds off of established characters except totally by mistake. If they could, we'd have a simple, straightforward way for the Danes to build reliable, predictable AI, and this would Break The Universe in a bad way. On the other side, you did pump in a lot of guidance. Your robots *could* reasonably be the characters as seen in (take your pick of) strongly biased fanfic. Ranmastrong, for example - and not in the "sweet, lovable, kind, perfect" direction. It would be possible to amp up Li's pyromania to the point where she'd fit (I've not seen the source. It's *possible* she's there already) (Unfortunately, as noted above, she'd be limited to hardtech-level booms, and that doesn't leave much space for mad science.) (This degree of pyromania would, incidentally, pretty much require that people either exert effort to stop her from blowing up things she Really Shouldn't, or get creeped out by her dreamy monologuing on the subject.) Yoriko's Gossip would need to be at similar levels - to the point that you'ld have to stop and go back and get her a time or two while walking through the crowd at a Con if you were moving significant distances across the floor from an established point A to an established point B. Yayoi needs at least one quirk of similar intensity. Sora's sensitivity would need to be strong enough to trigger a fairly intense fight or flight response. Basically, quirks should be extreme enough to be funny. A man restraining his car, because it was driven into a homicidal rage when someone dented it through carelessness? That's funny. A guy having to lock his ship down because otherwise it might try to recreate a Star Wars tunnel run through the halls of the Con? That's funny. A mad scientist whose companions are constantly and unintentionally foiling each others attempts to kill him? You get the idea. Also, Loyalty to the primary character never counts as a disad in a bought minion. Actually, in this world, Loyalty doesn't count as a disad at all, and nearsightedness is minor enough that it counts as a one-pointer. The reputation is a 'not so much' too, given that few if any of his enemies are likely to plot against him specifically in the long term, let alone go into enough detail to first find out these things about his assistants and then dig through the (as you've pointed out, not all that popular) source material for psychological clues to use against them.
Also, Haruhi question... there *is* a Haruhi manga/show in this universe, right? If there is, how would you justify that the writers got so much correct, given that Kyon and co seem to Really Want to keep some of this stuff under wraps?
Oh, and Bob, love the concept, but... How? If you've got that much land to hide it in, I guess I can see having plenty of time and space to grow handwavium without anyone really bothering you. Sure. It's your land, you can take it with you, sure. Given the right style of goop, you could even goop the dome segments before you set it up, and let them fuse after, sure...and use some other kind of goop that did the permeate and saturate thing with the ground, even, to bring along your little chunk of topsoil... but how you you set up a geodisic dome that big in the first place? What kind of building materials would you use? What would you do for labor? The thing's enormous!

[CattyNebulart]

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The problem with dogfighting at significant fractions of c is that humans just don't see fast enough. Any weapon has to be aimed by a high-end AI somehow or other or it'll never hit. Any visual of the situation has to be the zoom-out view. It's maybe an interesting idea, but you totally lose the immediacy of it.

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But dogfights at a significant fraction of c are fun! It also doesn't get much more imediate than closing in on each other at a relative .9c or so and see who chikens out first. it also makes munane weapons nearly useless and most weapon ideas. Which would hopefully stop the arms race currently occuring, yes the Reavers have weapons, but that's why they are reavers. Why does anyone else have them?
Pretty much the only viable non-ambush weapon I can think of is ramming speed and considering that the smaler vehicles are faster than the larger ones it's pretty damn unlikly unless someone chooses to go kamikaze.
As to whatever the Professor 'knows', keep in mind it might not be correct and it's certainly not internaly consistent.
EDIT: Oh and as for the handwavium blowing up. It is possible, but rare. One of the major reasons that the Prof is rumored to have weapons grade handwavium is because stuff around him keeps blowing up (well that and his sensetionalized death rays. Esspecially the one on the eifel towwer.) but what people don't notice is that no-one gets hurt by more than a slapstick effect. People tennd not to notice such things when their system is flooded with adrenalin and they have some light bruises after narowly dodgin an explosion. They think it's luck.
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."

[KJ]

Just a sudden thought on the Reavers, and ship-ship combat. Was there sign that they're growing weapons grade handwavium and related ship/ship weaponry? It'd take a leetle while to dig through 18 pages of thread on my crummy connection.
At any rate, the thought that occurs to me is that how much of this couldn't be explained by boarding actions? After all, given speed drives under computer control, less massy things are going to have top end edges... so what's to keep a small but heavily manned boarding craft from chasing down larger prey? And there's going to be things that'll penetrate even wavetech hulls/hatches when they're touching...

[CattyNebulart]

Reaver probably attack from either ambush or boarding action I agree. Or considering how much of the tech relies on handwavium they have something that neutralizes handwavium for a bit. Losing pressure, communication (seriously, hardtech comminicators that can reach over light seconds are big and expensive), lifesupport, engines and a bunch of other things in an instant got to suck.
Boarding actions would make for some nice drama, so that gets my vote for what the raiders are doing.
EDIT: Oh and to awnser your question, no I don't think we have setteled on a way that the reavers attack.
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."

[KJ]

*nod* Thought it hadn't, but not sure. Boarding actions also... well, some of us are going to have personal weapons (okay, maybe a *lot* of us PCs) and that's cool. Some might even have hardtech weapons bolted to their vehicles (*cough*Heinleiners*cough*) which may or may not be legal on Earth but... well, up in the black, who cares? But at this stage in the evolution of things, nipping the whole "effective ship-ship weapons" armsrace in the bud seems advisable.
Part of that is just interest. Given the velocities involved, the manuverability of speedrives and whatnot, anything that's not an outright surprise/desperation attack is just going to be a matter of telling your AI (if, as handwavium constructs, they'll commit violence; another debate p'raps) or computer to engage, watching the stars whirl around crazily as your ship manuvers far faster than human reflexes can comprehend, then either dying or waiting for a message that the target got destroyed.
... which is boring. Now, boarding actions? Not boring. That's ignoring the societal implications of a bunch of us having weapons which (by dint of the fact that they can hole handwavium hulls) are capable of annihilating anything the mundanes can field. Which might be a fun story, but I don't think that's what *this* story is about.
And, for reference, I write all of that as a fairly hardcore sci-fi space opera fighterjock buff.