Keep in mind the last thread talked about how you can fork yourself, psychosurgically alter that fork to make it loyal to you and have less empathy and fear of death, then fork the fork until you get a fork that is hardened to forking, then fork that indefinitely to put inside morphs. So if you wanted to form your own faction without having to be particularly charismatic, that's one way you could go about it.
Juan Jenkins
My personal faction would be done through the method, starting as a legitimate security business on Extropia. Keep doing jobs for money until I have enough resources and men to form my own habitat in the outer system. The asteroid belt has a lot of unused asteroids that can be hollowed out for habitat space and the ores refined or sold, so it shouldn't be too hard to find one. I would always maintain the legitimate business on Extropia, both for a source of extra income and for them coming to my defense if the other autonomists don't like my authoritarian regime (which would only be ruling over forks of myself).
The organization of the faction itself would be a full stratocracy, with me as the autarch, and the civilian aspects basically only existing to support the military. Uniforms would be pic related and color coded depending on the job (brown for non-combat, grey for army and navy, black for special forces, blue for military police/internal security). Military would emphasis defense, I wouldn't be picking fights with people, mostly just mining out new habitats and peacefully expanding. Morphs and equipment would be given based on the job they required. >Brown-coats: Splicers and Mentons, basic kinetic weapons, civilian equipment >Grey-coats: Splicers, railguns and grenades, heavy armor >Black-coats: Furies and ghosts, upgraded railguns and grenades, battlesuits or HOPLITE suits >Blue-coats: Observers and furies, energy weapons and non-lethal fighting equipment, heavy armor
Heavy emphasis would be placed on hardwiring and avoiding cyberbrains, making it difficult to hack our equipment and making us fight better against TITANs. Short term goals would be to expand until there isn't anywhere left to expand. Long (we're talking very long) term goals of the organization would to reclaim Earth and the sections of Mars that the TITANs have claimed. Even longer goals would be to wipe out transhumanism (a contradiction I'll explain later).
Angel Martinez
I realized a while ago that if you feel the need for yet another faction, you should just rewrite the setting. There aren't a lot of good places left in the Solar System for another faction to exist.
>hardened to forking you only get 2 SV for knowing that you're a fork. It's not really worth it. Anyway, unless you're a jack-of-all-trades, your new "faction" is going to suck. Anything more than a squad is best done with enough different people that they can cover each others' weaknesses. In fact, hardening is hardly ever worth it, since it costs 15 Rez points to get that moxie back. That's just fucking terrible.
Alexander Cooper
Now, to explain my very long term goal of wiping out transhumanism, despite using transhumans consistently in my plans. The best way to explain myself would be to compare me to the Jovians. A Jovian looks at a fork in a biomorph and says that it is a soulless organism. On that I agree with him. He then goes on to say that it is an abomination that must be destroyed, but that is where I draw the line. A forked biomorph is nothing more and nothing less than an organic tool that ought to be used to serve humanity. In this case, through reclaiming our homeland and wiping out the TITAN threat.
I have no illusions about my mortality. When my flat dies, I die, forever. I still have a cortical stack and numerous backups so that my organization will outlast me, but make no mistake, there is no continuity of conscience after my death. I plan to have my cortical stack sleeved into something superior after death, maybe an exalt. After all, if my memories are going to be implanted into a soulless tool, it might as well be a long lasting and smart tool.
Adam Harris
You could always train one of the forks of you to get good at a particular skill, then just fork that fork a bunch of times. If you're a jack of all trades it will be quicker.
Christian Diaz
Just take fast learner and follow plan and you'll have specialists in no time.
William Hughes
How the hell do I make Eclipse Phase *work*?
The mechanics are a mess, the setting is too dense for any players I'd get and just about too dense for me, and I don't like FATE for an alternative.
Caleb Wood
What are the immediate problems that you'd face if you tried to:
Create Gamma/Delta/Beta forks and then remove 90% of the memories. What you do is harvest the emotions for later use. From there, you mix and match the skills of many such forks so that you create a pseudo-AI/Machine Spirit that you implant into a machine. This way you could have a sapient being that knows everything every member of the Hab knows/information is able to collect about anti-hacking and that is kind, gentle, and 100% loyal to your hab. Could that work? Could you do this millions of times to your home AI, to your weapons, to your everything? Implant hyperspecialized machine spirits that work?
Nicholas Wood
As well, what issues would you face if you tried to (after cloning it) merge said forks with someone? To get the collective skills and whatnot? Could you merge a 'fork' made up of pure, distilled, calmness to feel calm?
Logan Baker
In honor of the 2016 Delta Green Shotgun Scenario Contest opening, here's one I made for Eclipse Phase.
Eli Kelly
>The mechanics are a mess I wouldn't say that. Generic and uninspiring maybe but perfectly serviceable.
>setting is too dense Try to narrow the scope of your campaign. Instead of jumping around the entire solar system limit the plot to a single habitat or sector of space. There's much less to memorize.
Ethan Butler
Whats the most popular ideology in eclipse phase?
Charles Lee
Neoliberalism
Jacob Campbell
The more of the same egos messing around, and getting notorious, will get someone to make a basilisk hack tailored for that line of egos.
Cameron Gonzalez
Your mom
Easton Kelly
1) Basilisk hacks are TITAN tech, and unlikely to be messed around with by most people 2) I believe that a basilisk hack effects all people mostly equally, as the TITANs are able to use them on random strangers 3) Even if the #2 is false, the egos will gradually develop different experiences and change over time until the basilisk hack doesn't work on all of them
Nathaniel Perry
>1) Basilisk hacks are TITAN tech, and unlikely to be messed around with by most people Wrong. According to X-Risks there are transhuman labs that make them
>2) I believe that a basilisk hack effects all people mostly equally, as the TITANs are able to use them on random strangers Resistance to basilisk hacks in the game is calculated based on your primary statistics. Different people have different values for those statistics. Therefore basilisk hacks do not affect all people equally.
>3) Even if the #2 is false, the egos will gradually develop different experiences and change over time until the basilisk hack doesn't work on all of them If you're letting your forks diverge to that point there's no reason to have forks. More to the point, divergence won't change their primary statistics, which is what is rolled against when they are exposed to a basilisk hack.
Elijah Allen
Okay, so just put faraday cage mods on all your armor.
Also, the forks can diverge while staying loyal to you. While their experiences while alter their egos somewhat, the fundamental changes you made via psychosurgery will largely stay the same.
Connor Jackson
>Wrong. According to X-Risks there are transhuman labs that make them
Actually, I believe X-Risks says the Basilisk Hack is still decades out for transhumans to properly reverse-engineer. Groups like Red-Five have access to already made TITAN hacks, and might be able to alter them (and counter them), but can't make them from "scratch" yet.
Sebastian Morris
...
Gabriel Flores
It's interesting /pol/ is turning out to be big proponents of AI suffrage.
Samuel Stewart
Fast Learer doesn't give your more Rez points.
Get yourself genefixed. There's no reason to die of cancer except luddism. Changing cell replication regulation genes isn't going to affect your thought patters at all.
Evan Perry
>harvest the emotions for later use Nice try, Kyubey.
Anthony Rivera
Oh, right, totally forgot about genefixing, I'll be sure to do that. Okay, new very long term goals, kill all AGI's, uplifts, and non-human transhumans.
Parker Martinez
New Canada. All the sentry bots are moos with stunners for eyes and antler mounted seekers.
Levi Rivera
I just had a sudden image in my head of uplifted mooses.
Oh god it's terrifying
this is what truly caused the fall,.
Caleb Thompson
You're in the wrong neighborhood, buddy >:(
Brody Peterson
Except moose are dumb, so they aren't candidates for uplifting. Heck, even pigs are a stretch. It's kind of bullshit that all of the neo-elephants died and somehow fucking dolphins and whales survived.
Hudson Jenkins
The Orion's Arm setting features uplifted actinopterygians, echinoderms, and even plants.
Andrew Collins
The Orion's Arm setting is fueled by space magic and LSD.
Tyler Robinson
Also, AIs that make the TITANs look about as smart as a slime mold
Adrian Hernandez
Would Eclipse Phase be good for running a campaign in The Common Wealth Saga?
Hudson Sullivan
What? Isn't Orion's Arm supposed to be harder sci-fi than Eclipse Phase?
Easton Gutierrez
Found a good explanation of one reason why the x-ray FEL won't work as claimed.
GURPS actually can work okay as substitute. You'll need to delegate some advantages to "can easily buy with money or rep" department but overall it's not hard.
It will be somewhat unorthodox though with ST, DX and HT being just functions of the morph modified by familiarity penalties. But if master knows GURPS there should be no big problems.
Camden Wood
>supposed
Luke Thomas
It is in some ways, but they mostly boil down to assuming new high energy physics exists.
Of course as far as uplifting starfish goes there's no problem. It would just be a lot of work.
Carson Harris
>But if master knows GURPS there should be no big problems. Did you just come from a game of MAID or something?
Cooper Campbell
I don't think it works like this for lasers as they are specifically have different ways of amplifying their respective EM waves.
Aaron Ortiz
Nah. Though I once tried DMing Rokugan in GURPS.
Jordan Gonzalez
But they don't have a different way to focus them
David Evans
Well then if scientist made such a big mistake the maximum energy per cm^2 is around 1kJ and it takes around 50 seconds to vaporise 1 cm^3 of iron. (Actually more because a lot of energy of x-rays will go deeper into the material.)
Nolan Morales
It seems someone is forgetting about q switching
Unfortunately, you can't do neat tricks like that with x-rays because you would need an x-ray mirror
Grayson Hall
>says fuck weebshit >posts weebshit
Jayden Morales
Oops, almost forgot to include the psychological warfare unit, the loli brigade. Made entirely of neotenics with appropriate altered AGI's and nazi-esque uniforms (as shown above), they will mostly confuse the hell out of the enemy. They are there entirely to amuse me and toy with my enemies, because once your a dictator with your own private army who's gonna tell you to stop?
Evan Gray
Although the artist isn't Japanese, there is clearly a lot of Japanese influence in her work.
>They are there entirely to amuse me lewd
Xavier Adams
Not everything's sexual you know. You telling me you wouldn't want to see a bunch of cute girls doing cute warfare things in the name of their glorious autarch?
Charles Ross
Could you tell me that you wouldn't want to give them the dick afterward?
Andrew Harris
Of course not, it's not a sex thing. I'd say it's actually more of a paternal thing, like their your daughters or something.
Oliver Wright
In a free electron laser, the light source is a particle beam with a temperature measured in mega-electronvolts. At 1MeV you have a 'surface temperature' of about 116 billion degrees, which in Boltzmann's equation gives you a maximum power intensity with 37 zeros behind it. The starting entropy is low enough that thermodynamics isn't a limiting factor.
Brandon Thompson
Ok, so here's a question. Can 2 hackers come into contact with one another while infiltrating? Like, you know that one scene from Life of Brian where the two groups of jews bump into each other while trying to sneak in the palace? Kinda like that but in cyberspace. Is that doable?
Noah Richardson
The temperature thing is only relevant for blackbody sources. The energy flux per unit area at the focal point can't exceed that at the source. For a kilometer-long FEL that's going to mean a focal size considerably bigger than 5 cm, even with ideal optics (which it would come nowhere near approximating, for obvious reasons)
Isaiah Torres
Absolutely doable. I know a guy who this once happened to, but I don't remember the details and didn't understand in any case.
Aiden Bailey
So there's basically no real advantages to the Jovian's insistence on bioconservatism right? The hardwiring and lack of cyberbrains obviously gives them an advantage against hacking and TITANs, but the bioconservatism itself (no furies, biomods, etc) is just one big disadvantage right?
Brayden Robinson
From a purely statistical point, yes. The Jovian government is precautionist, not bioconservative though. But still, yes, the benefits to such activity are more intangible or security-based than results-based.
Bentley Rodriguez
>The hardwiring and lack of cyberbrains obviously gives them an advantage against hacking and TITANs Eh. You can air gap a cyberbrain pretty easily.
Aiden Barnes
Honestly, I feel like one thing that could make the Jovian's better in the game is if the viewed the bioware and cyberware as temporary equipment to be put on then taken off when you retire as a soldier, rather than this "hurr durr I'm damning myself to hell for my country" kind of attitude. I mean, the basic biomods are basically just modified viruses and bacteria anyways, I could easily see a bioconservative looking at the bioware as organic equipment that they equip, and the cyberware is literally just mostly stuff ectos can do but ingrained into your body. It's not like your altering your genetic code or playing God or resleeving in any of those cases.
Brody Hernandez
Well, cyber is pretty versatile and seen as pretty common - so long as it's not brain-based there's probably not some big soul-rending doubt about it. Neural augments are more dangerous, but I think that's even reflected in their descriptions.
Juan Rivera
>"hurr durr I'm damning myself to hell for my country" They don't think of themselves as damned because of mods. At least not most of them. The real reason is backups. Professional operative or elite soldier is too valuable a tool to throw away just because he died. And many of them probably used them more than once considering that many transhumans don't have any problems with going the suicide terrorist route.
That's the part that of the work that military doesn't like but has to put up with.
Grayson Lewis
I am curious how they view backups. Do they consider backups to be soulless organisms that just happen to have the memories of the previous soldier, or do they consider them a brand new person that also just happens to have the memories of the soldier. Do they put the backups in flats, or do they go full transhumanism in furies and such.
For that matter, if you're already willing to grow a new soldier and fit him with the memories of the old one, why not just fork him and have 100 copies of him running around?
Brayden Hill
Soulless simulacra of the person who died.
Why not fork him? Because he can't catch his own mistakes. Do remember that people generally aren't keen on permanent forking.
Sebastian Rogers
This does make me curious on what the Catholic Church's stance on such issues would be (given that most of the Jovian's are Catholic). I know that they certainly wouldn't view the AGI's and uplifts as having immortal souls, but what about vat-grown people? I know that they view the soul as being received upon conception, so I wonder how that would translate to a exo-womb grown human. Would that mean they only view natural born people as having souls?
I kind of touched on this a little bit on Also, what do you mean "he can't catch his own mistakes". I'm a little confused by that statement. Couldn't that be solved through XP sharing and merging (if that's relevant).
Luis Ramirez
Books are extremely vague on the point of how they see it. Just that not good. So particulars probably up to DM depending on which Jovian faction is asked.
Grayson Ward
>Couldn't that be solved through XP sharing and merging (if that's relevant). It's a little too late for that during operation. Squads forked from one person would in many cases have habits and biases that are not that hard to catch. With multiple people they cover each others asses.
Joshua Lopez
So couldn't they fork the squads then? Fork 10 copies of each soldier, jumble them up so that no 2 squads are the same, then send them out on various operations?
Justin Cook
Possible. That's probably what those keen on transhumanism do.
Asher Moore
Yeah, I mean, as I mentioned above () If you're gonna view the forks as soulless organisms, then you might as well treat them as such. Disposable soldiers who you can put into ghosts, furies, and reapers. They're basically organic tools to be used at your discretion.
In fact, the books mention 5 factions and one of them is the reformists, who argue that certain restrictions ought to be loosened. While the book then details them talking about resleeving centers and nano-tech (which goes against everything the Jovian's are about), in my headcannon these are the guys going "Okay, if we want to win this war we're going to have to use the tools of the enemy. It's not like they're real people anyways, and it'll save us a lot on manpower."
James Barnes
People like being unique, though. There aren't a lot of people who are too keen on there being dozens of other thems running around, some just plain better than they are.
Austin Myers
Yeah, that's true, you'd probably have to look for volunteers, although I'm sure some soldiers would be willing to allow their superior doppleganger to run around killing transhumans and TITANs for the cause (or monetary compensation), especially if it meant that it might save lives. Still, I understand the point you're making.
Nolan Smith
tfw /nogames/
How do I even play a mercurial? Do they have a system-wide web of facilities I can use? Should they be devoted to a cause or just generally in favor of uplifting?
Seems like they're there just to be.. there.
Levi Murphy
Mercurials aren't necessarily uplifts. They just don't believe in "humanity".
Nathaniel Gonzalez
Uplifts and AGI.
Benjamin Ross
I'm not the only one who thinks the uplifts come off as total a-holes right? It seems like everytime we hear about them they're just complaining about how people don't like them, or the world is human centered, or the morphs aren't made for them. Like, we didn't even have to uplift you guys at all, you apes were perfectly content throwing crap at each other all day, and now that you're here, you don't integrate into our society, and all you do is moan all day.
Christopher Parker
Yeah, you're probably one of the few who is such a huge cunt. Thinking uplifts should integrate is one thing, but thinking they're assholes because they haven't done it yet is quite another.
Jayden Reyes
>Like, we didn't even have to uplift you guys at all, you apes were perfectly content throwing crap at each other all day,
Yeah, exactly. Don't act like you're the victim here. They were perfectly happy living their lives as they were. They didn't need all the freakish mutations and bionics. They have them now, and must live with them, but it wasn't what they wanted for themselves. They're now completely divorced from their original species so they can't go back. You took them from what should have been their lives--all for your own pleasure. Don't get in your feelings when they don't just fit neatly into your little pre-planned box.
Kayden Torres
>I'm not the only one who thinks the uplifts come off as total a-holes right?
Right. The demand that they be treated like everyone else combined with the demand that everyone acknowledge what special and unique snowflakes they are is shrill and grating.
Levi Cox
But here's the fantastic thing, they can revert back at any time, yet they choose not to. Strange huh? They could join a primitivist group and find a nice land to be dumb in, but yet they decide that benefiting from human society is better, yet they still complain.
Kayden Bell
That's actually mentioned at one point in the books (or at least the wiki) >"Naturally Extropia attracts a large number of uplifts. Hell, Extropia attracts a large number of just about anything. The boom-town feel and easy-come, easy-go attitude that reigns over the place is often a refreshing change for uplifts from the inner system who are used to being judged not on what they can bring to any given business proposition, but rather on their appearance or ancestry. In Extropia, most people could care less who you are or where you came from as long as you can back up whatever you happen to be selling. But for these reasons it also tends to be avoided by uplifts. A lot of us want to believe that we’re special, that there’s something more to us than other transhumans, and Extropia is not the kind of place that goes out of its way to make you feel welcome." So yeah, you're pretty spot on
David Ortiz
>The demand that they be treated like everyone
Sapients.
>demand that everyone acknowledge what special and unique snowflakes
Mercurials.
Next you'll tell me an Octopus and a Dolphin are the same thing because they like water.
Jayden Hernandez
Isn't it kind of weird how a neotenic is more capable than a fully grown flat, including in physical strength? Like, I understand it has some mods and gene altering, but come on, that might be taking it a bit far
Adam Edwards
Isn't a Neotenic max aptitude 20 in SOM like all the other small morphs?
Kayden Bennett
Yeah, but that's the max for fully grown flats as well (look at the Jovian spy, that guy's no weakling) and they have 10 better attributes in every other category over flats.
Camden Gomez
> They're now completely divorced from their original species so they can't go back.
Dylan Green
When you take into account that a vat grown neotenic body doesn't have to use inferior human style muscle tissue and can use, say, high density chained protein musculature similar to that of arthropods and be modified for higher oxygenation of muscle tissue, denser bone structure and more dense neural branching for better nervous systems, then it makes perfect sense that they'd be better than flats in every way despite being smaller.
Oh, right. I sometimes forget the extant to which the transhumans have been modified.
Jonathan Turner
I mean, if nothing else, anything at Exalt+ level (which I believe the Neotenic is similar to) should basically be seen as "what if we took the best genes for any part of a human ever and put them all in one human?" And then basically artificial optimization goes on top of that.
Also, carrying capacity is SOM and DUR interlinked.
Logan Lopez
So they're "feminists".
Logan Rodriguez
They changed their minds by Transhuman. The max SOM for small morphs is 25 going by the morph creation rules. Just use the Neotenic variant template on an Exalt to get a superior Neotenic than the one they statted in the original rules: the max SOM is 5 higher and it's only 10 CP, not to mention the bonuses are all floating.
Neotenics are literally Reduced Size Exalts with Social Stigma, and three +5 fixed stats with only one floating +5.
Jeremiah Phillips
So, what are neotenics used for anyways in the game? It's not like most people are gonna fall for you pretending to be a kid, since being a child is basically optional at this point anyways. So what are they used for? Aside from the loli brigade of course.
Lucas Murphy
I think it's really a stylistic choice, or worse, having to replace the body of a child. Isn't there an Eclipse Phase meme around Neotenic Oligarchs?
Grayson Ross
One of the sample characters in sunward is a an Oligarch in a neotenic. Presumably shes trying to overcome immortality blues by a return to figurative Youth.
Saves space and resources, a positive in vacuum living.
Joseph Wood
In terms of raw manpower controlled, probably hypercapitalism. I mean, indentures probably don't *like* hypercapitalism, but the fact they signed those contracts indicate that they at least prefer it to the alternatives.
Wyatt Murphy
No.
Alexander Green
How the shit are criminal groups still so prevalent when practically everywhere is being recorded/watched?
Kayden Rodriguez
No one cares about crime in the future because everyone is a criminal.
Dominic Edwards
That's rather boring. They have fairly interesting and rather cyberpunk crime groups in the Inner System. How do they pull that shit off?
Evan Sanchez
I think the next book will go into greater detail regarding crime in the solar system. Hopefully they expand on my favorite crime group, Pax Familae.
