[META][RFC] Updating the current "now" to 2022

[robkelk]

Since Mal started it with http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/sre ... -Air-Force]the VVS retcon/update...

I've pushed the Senshi forward to 2022. Tanith decided against standing for re-election, retiring to Luna to resume social work. They elected a war hero to take her place - Sailor Atalantae became Serenity II, and one of her first orders was to resume construction of the two Hornblowers that were mothballed in drydock since the end of the Boskone War. Tai Angmeng took over as leader of the A-Team, while Sailor Atalantae's sister filled her spot on that team.

If anybody has any objections to this, we can re-update the FenWiki with something else.

Next up (from me) - the Stellvians. As soon as I decide which company or companies Noah's going to buy out.
--
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

[HRogge]

As one of the few writers who worked in the 2014-2020 (Season 2) timeline, I am of course okay, with this. *G*

Always looking for other things to connect my own ideas to.

I had two major things planned for the 2019-2021... One thing should be centered about the moment when CIs working on "memory sharing" and "backups" become at least semi-public among some of the Fen factions. But I am still not sure how to pull it off, to become a good story it would need a LOT of input by other members of the Fenspace forum.

The other thing will be the 5 year anniversary party of Catgirl Industries in March 2020... which will have a surprise for the rest of Fenspace.

[Cobalt Greywalker]

The thing that bothers me about moving the 'NOW' date forward is that we haven't sorted out the critical events of the Boskone War. Admitedly it doesn't seem we'll ever do so at this point, but it seems like giving up.

What do people say to putting together a skelaton history that we can refer to?

And another thing. Beyond the exploration in Season 2, what other events do we have for the collective to get their teeth into? Not everyone can go sailing the stars you know, not without some major advances.

And in any case, I only have 2 possible things in the Season 2 timeframe that I have sort of plotted (maybe three, but that one REALLY needs some work).

[Dartz]

Honestly, the only reason I moved up to the 2020's myself was because, well it gave space to make the Knight Sabers seem like something that hadn't popped out of nowhere but had real time and almost dangerous obsessiveness invested in them, and a little space to play around a little without squashing anyone

Although, having Sailor Atlalantae as Queen does.... that does interesting things. It might give me an excuse to use a plotbunny I'd stored up for CiTD in the mainline.....

Meanwhile on Mars, the Mars Terraforming Council continues to expand its remit to issues that affect the entire planet as a whole, including planetary infrastructure such as inter-settlement railway lines, overland highways and an inter-settlement rescue service, and is steadily morphing into something that lies between the United Nations and the European Union. There're talks of setting up Martian Battlegroups and even a small standing army using units rotated out of factional security forces to provide rapid defense of any settlement attacked by raiders. Banditry is also on the rise in some of the remoter parts of the planet. There have been discussions on the terraforming council claiming specific sovereignty over the unclaimed lands of mars, ostensibly to regulate settlements and keep people from setting up home in areas due to be flooded within the next decade. These discussions have been virtriolic, vehement and are slowly grinding towards a consensus.

Atmospheric pressure outside has increased to the point where the average surface pressure is now above the Armstrong limit. By the end of the decade the atmosphere is expected to have reached the point where it is possible for an unaugmented human to be out of doors with only the aid of a respirator.

Martian population demographics have shifted more towards the mundane, with many of the latest settlers now emigrants from Earth seeing the potential of a terraformed Mars as something like the Unites States in the 19th Century. There's a lot of a space out there just waiting for someone to set up home on it. They have little to no interested in such things as factions or fandoms... most are just up because the work is there. The Martian Dream has been mentioned aloud in some parts of the world.

There have been noises about attempting to open up diplomatic relations with the United Nations of Earth, but no-one is quite sure how exactly to handle interplanetary diplomacy, especially when the individual member factions can barely agree on railway line routings or cometary impact sites. One thing is certain, however.... some form of communication will need to be established. Trade and emigration between worlds will need to be built up on some form of framework.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[classicdrogn]

The only thing I wanted to include but never more than touched on was the Gnarlycurl/suitcase bomb episode - during the formal organization post Crystal Osaka the ship is volunteered to become the fleet's mobile hospital bacause while it's spacious and all but invulnerable, it's damn slow (due to being obscenely massive for a mobile asset, 5.5mt) and unarmed bar landing on something to crush it. Bos ringleaders with weapon cartel links decide to test that claim and procure one of the semimythical missing
--
"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

[classicdrogn]

former USSR nuclear devices, plant it on the hull using heavy convention orbital traffic as a cover, hoping to demoralise the unified effort before it gets rolling, but it turns out 'invulnerable' is actually accurate enough, at least against a
--
"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

[Ace Dreamer]

My first reaction to this would be I'm not happy with the idea, but I can't immediately figure-out why.

If this is to be done, then I think it would be sensible to have some sort of divergent history timeline - what things have happened on Terra in the Real World that did not happen in the Fenspace setting.

For example, space exploration will have gone differently, changes in Australian and maybe New Zealand politics, changing attitudes to the managing of global warming, the Large Hadron Collider...

Then there would be things happening on Terra in the Fenspace timeline that didn't happen in ours, that might be agreed on, such as handwavium 'black projects':

* why didn't various nations create their own space navy?

* are there secret slave AIs?

* are there attempts at superintelligent AIs?

Also, are there attempts to build medical technology, with manageable quirks, on Terra, to make a serious attempt to push forward the boundaries of medical knowledge:

* fast, cheap, DNA sequencing of all cancers? (to allow precisely targeted treatments; including monitoring further DNA changes)

* gaining a full understanding of how the immune system works?

* gaining a full understanding of neuro degenerative diseases?

* understanding the aging process?

Are there attempts to build global models of the environment of Terra?

Are there attempts to build a global model of the financial system?

Are there new religions on Terra to do with handwavium? Do these have extremist arms?

How does the existence of Fenspace affect the power and influence of the United Nations? The World Bank? The World Court (International Court of Justice)?

Is handwavium being employed to deal with disasters like drought or food shortage?

I'm not even touching on military or police uses, like AI in drones, or surveillance, or forensics, or profiling...

(I'm assuming that geo engineering with giant space mirrors, or messing with hurricanes, is minimal.)

Past a certain point I think there needs to at least be a sketch of the divergence - seven billion people with handwavium potentially giving them all sorts of new possibilities - I don't think that this influence on Fenspace stories should be sensibly ignored.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

The thing that bothers me about moving the 'NOW' date forward is that we haven't sorted out the critical events of the Boskone War. Admitedly it doesn't seem we'll ever do so at this point, but it seems like giving up.

I tried to start a thread about writing some stuff about Serenity Con last year... we got some material, but it died down before it become even close to be "complete".

What do people say to putting together a skelaton history that we can refer to?[/quote]
You mean more work on this: http://fenspace.net/index.php5?title=Timeline ?

And another thing. Beyond the exploration in Season 2, what other events do we have for the collective to get their teeth into? Not everyone can go sailing the stars you know, not without some major advances.

CI did "exploration", but more focused on the inside than the far away star. Their memory copying/backup tech is a result of this (and of course the new kind of society that is still forming at CI in 2020).

[classicdrogn]

device on that scale (tactical cruise missile/arty shell/steamer trunk) Everyone covers it up as a powerful conventional explosive that left dangerous residue requiring the cap material added over the scorch mark, which actually is to absorb the rays from trace radioactive residue fused into the surface, since no one wanted the 'danes up in arms over it. OGJ wiped out whatever badguy records existed when the Hellhole and the Black Tower fell.
--
"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

[HRogge]

device on that scale (tactical cruise missile/arty shell/steamer trunk) Everyone covers it up as a powerful conventional explosive that left dangerous residue requiring the cap material added over the scorch mark, which actually is to absorb the rays from trace radioactive residue fused into the surface, since no one wanted the 'danes up in arms over it. OGJ wiped out whatever badguy records existed when the Hellhole and the Black Tower fell.

Not sure a nuclear explosion of 5 megatons could be covered up (unless it happens VERY far out in the solar system).

[classicdrogn]

The SHIP is 5.5 million tons (5.4 from the 21.6 million cu. ft. of metal in the 10-30ft thick cybertronium hull) hence why it only got jarred by the blast. Not taking significant damage is why "no, really, it wasn't a nuke" vagely flies - along with having a timer long enough that the visit to Mars was over and it was in transit to the Earth/Luna system to do the refit with medical gear.
--
"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

[HRogge]

The SHIP is 5.5 million tons (5.4 from the 21.6 million cu. ft. of metal in the 10-30ft thick cybertronium hull) hence why it only got jarred by the blast.

I wasn't thinking about the damage but the initial flash itself... I would assume some Daneverse factions will have "early warning systems" to watch for nuclear explosions in Fenspace.

[classicdrogn]

The actual explosion would be in the sub-5 kt range (an RA-115, similar to the US Mk 54 SADM) and due to the circuituitous nature of orbital transfer mechanics, on the far side of the ship from Earth, and possibly "near" the sun or another energetic celestial object in the sky depending on whether it seems neccesary to be so. WC goes eva to investigate while everyone deals with bruises, tipped potted plants, etc., notices the rads and gets on the interwave with Mal, Noah, and boomy/secret agenty SMOFs PDQ
--
"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

[HRogge]

The actual explosion would be in the sub-5 kt range (an RA-115, similar to the US Mk 54 SADM) and due to the circuituitous nature of orbital transfer mechanics, on the far side of the ship from Earth, and possibly "near" the sun or another energetic celestial object in the sky depending on whether it seems neccesary to be so. WC goes eva to investigate while everyone deals with bruises, tipped potted plants, etc., notices the rads and gets on the interwave with Mal, Noah, and boomy/secret agenty SMOFs PDQ

LOL... somehow managed to read the "5.5 megatons" as the explosive yield of the nuke...

[Ace Dreamer]

What do people say to putting together a skelaton history that we can refer to?

You mean more work on this: http://fenspace.net/index.php5?title=Timeline ?
[/quote]The Timeline is a good start, but a lot of it is (obviously) for Fenspace - a Terra divergence timeline would hopefully show where a story shouldn't have "business as usual" by just using Real World history.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[robkelk]

Although, having Sailor Atlalantae as Queen does.... that does interesting things.

It shakes up the setting, for one thing.

There have been noises about attempting to open up diplomatic relations with the United Nations of Earth, but no-one is quite sure how exactly to handle interplanetary diplomacy, especially when the individual member factions can barely agree on railway line routings or cometary impact sites.

The precedent is for the Fenspace Convention as a whole to act as "the government above the ionosphere," with major diplomatic matters going through them.

I would expect that the Convention has applied for observer status at the UN by 2020. (Whether they get it is as yet undetermined.)

However, various subsets of Fenspace are growing... There are no doubt some noises about making the Convention the off-Earth equivalent of the UN, and the various Factions and other groupings into nations of their own. There are no doubt also some noises about making sure people have the choice to be not governed by someone else.

If this is to be done, then I think it would be sensible to have some sort of divergent history timeline - what things have happened on Terra in the Real World that did not happen in the Fenspace setting.

http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?title=Timeline]Here's the FenWiki page; let's update it with what we create here.

For example, space exploration will have gone differently, changes in Australian and maybe New Zealand politics, changing attitudes to the managing of global warming, the Large Hadron Collider...

We've already established that TSAB and Artemis have pretty much taken over the space-exploration and space-exploitation arms of NASA, and the Canadian Space Agency followed along.

I'll skip a bit here - those are things to answer in a story, not a forum post. Just keep in mind the Whole Fenspace Catalog.

Are there attempts to build global models of the environment of Terra?

I believe there are in our timeline; I can't see people stopping in the Fenspace timeline.

Are there attempts to build a global model of the financial system?

Good idea - I hereby declare that StellviaCorp is working on one. They don't expect to be finished for at least another decade, since so much of the necessary data is private and/or secret.

Are there new religions on Terra to do with handwavium? Do these have extremist arms?

Maybe not "religions" (except in the New-Age-charlatan sense), but various schools of ethics and philosophy will have their own views on handwavium.

Is handwavium being employed to deal with disasters like drought or food shortage?

Yes - that's the Blue Blazers' raison d'etre.

Past a certain point I think there needs to at least be a sketch of the divergence - seven billion people with handwavium potentially giving them all sorts of new possibilities - I don't think that this influence on Fenspace stories should be sensibly ignored.

US politics have been established as diverging in 2008 - Obama is still a Congressman, for one thing. Irish politics diverged somewhat later - the elections of 2012 were close to identical in both timelines.

WC goes eva to investigate while everyone deals with bruises, tipped potted plants, etc., notices the rads and gets on the interwave with Mal, Noah, and boomy/secret agenty SMOFs PDQ

Noah refers WC to Kohran, Kohran calls Lebia, and before the end of the same day there's a half-dozen Tachikomas in "bunny suits" taking care of the cleanup on Gnarlycurl.

Meanwhile, Noah also calls Yayoi, Yayoi calls her girlfriend Ginny, Ginny reports to her CO, Tom Dodge reports back to COMSUBLANT, and a week later a specialist group from the USN come to visit WC...
--
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

[Ace Dreamer]

The SHIP is 5.5 million tons (5.4 from the 21.6 million cu. ft. of metal in the 10-30ft thick cybertronium hull) hence why it only got jarred by the blast. Not taking significant damage is why "no, really, it wasn't a nuke" vagely flies - along with having a timer long enough that the visit to Mars was over and it was in transit to the Earth/Luna system to do the refit with medical gear.

Is cybertronium immune to point-blank nuclear plasma?  That would suggest that it isn't made of atom-based material in the same way any hsrd tech would understand - maybe something like open-lattice neutronium?
(I just invented 'Open-lattice Neutronium', some of the properties of (stabalised) neutronium, but much, much, lower density, BTW.)
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

Are there attempts to build a global model of the financial system?

Good idea - I hereby declare that StellviaCorp is working on one. They don't expect to be finished for at least another decade, since so much of the necessary data is private and/or secret.

Might be another thing that stands between Stellvia and the Soviets (and other groups like CI)... Stellvia might like to "fix" the global financial system (or at least be able to play it ^^)... the Soviets and others would like to replace it with something different.

[classicdrogn]

Not quite immune - it melted a bit, hence why bomb material got mixed into it and needed to be capped with something to make it safe. Fortunately the 'wave likes disposing of hazardous material. As for what precisely it is... before being waved, asteroidal Ni/Fe, while the seibertron wave was working similar alloying and crystallization patterns to steel were observed... it's like Captain America's shield. More directly, it's the feet thick wavesteel to that hair thin layer of wavepaint that makes your car
--
"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

[classicdrogn]

mod immune to micrometeorites (or 20mm aircraft cannon, and that when it hadn't fully set) and reentry. Working completely through the thickness of the 30ft thick base of the pyramid is projected to have finished by 2015, but the other walls were solid by this time late 2013ish.

ETA- Any idea what the Navy guys would have to say? Political Technothriller isn't my genre. If it's the cybertronium itself they're interested in, he sent samples to Dow & Caterpillar ca 2010 so TSAB probably already has them...
--
"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

[HRogge]

TSAB with access to breedable Cybertronium? Why do I think this might become a problem in a later plot.

[classicdrogn]

Cybertronium doesn't breed, it's the result of using seibertron strain 'wave on steel. That's not some thing WC or those Gearheads closely enough affiliated with him to have on hand pass out so easily, since selling or trading the products treated with it is a primary wage earner, and the obvious military applications of the mecha and materials it likes to make.

Kinda got away from the stated topic, though, so to make it official, I have no objections to moving 'now' to 2022.
--
"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

[classicdrogn]

Oh, one more thing to add to the timeline, though- when the Miranda returned in Dec 2014, Liza, the Starbase One AI who transferred aboard to be the ship's majordomo, reveals that the slowdowns that required putting an aux processor node online during the mission were due to a child process spawned from code exchange with WC during SWtA1b. With a proper independent laser core it developes into a full sapient and takes the name Hotseat after having a fembot/sportscar chassis built. She has a similar color
--
"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

[classicdrogn]

scheme to G1 Hot Rod, and gets along very well with "big sis" Tigre, as KITT10 renamed herself upon being rebuilt to transform in the buildup to the end of OGJ. Both wear the Autobot logo as well as the Gearheads'.

--
--
"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

[Cobalt Greywalker]

In timeline terms I was thinking more along the lines of plot points for various events people can refer to.

e.g.:

Serenity-Con T minus 2 days: Using the large movement of people as they start travelling to Serenity Valley to hide, Boskone start gathering their fleet.

...

Serenity-Con - Day 4: Boskone fleet gets into position, then cuts the com-links via trojan satellites. A.I.s notice, work through jamming to see fleet. Everyone in their ships and autonomous ship minds scramble. etc...

Sorting out the divergance in Terran history is also useful, as well as plotting out the timeline for Fen.

Are there attempts to build global models of the environment of Terra?

Leonard has tried predicting the weather in a global scale, but found 'Dane models to be inaccurate. So he made accurate ones. The 'Danes ignored him.

---

In general, we need something specific as an overarching plot for the Season, much like the establishment of Fenspace (and the characters) is for Season 0 and The Boskone War is for Season 1. BUT, in my opinion only, Season 1 isn't solid enough to build upon at this time.

There's an awful lot of stuff to sort out before I think we would be ready to go that far into the future.