The Culture vs. Star Trek and/or Star Wars

[BlackAdder]

That like the big mean schoold bully going up against some much smaller child from the slums.
The bully is stronger, but the "underdog" survived by fighting.
Would be quite interesting, if the culture would not have so much "more than ridiculous technology".
All the advantages the empire (or in StarTrek the borg) would have, can be played because of this.
(Ah well, the borg could work, if let them deploy tactics never deployed and allow them their "we can take over any kind of technology and understand it in several seconds because we are so great and even enhance it".)

The empire would have had a good chance, if it weren't for the "even drones the size of hands can etc..."
Because they are used to war. Their soldiers are determind. The culture is just used to toy with weaker civs.
That like the big mean schoold bully going up against some much smaller child from the slums.
The bully is stronger, but the "underdog" survived by fighting.

Wasn't that the whole thing behind the Idiran War? The Culture goes to war against the Idiran 'super-soldiers'?

I must read more of the Culture, I look forward to it. I have to admit, I thought SW would stand more of a chance than that though. ST hadn't a hope, I can see.

[Darth Nostril]

You do understand the term 'tongue in cheek' don't you?

I thought my paraphrasing of a line from Aliens made that quite clear.
Perhaps I should have put a smilie at the end for the hard of thinking among you.

[Crazedwraith]

Yeah its not like that quote isn't used for everything, Joking or Serious.

[Darth Nostril]

Wasn't that the whole thing behind the Idiran War? The Culture goes to war against the Idiran 'super-soldiers'?

Nope that was the religiously motivated Idirans declaring war on the machine oriented Culture and the Culture fighting for its very existence until they got their war machine into top gear and pushed back.

[Darth Nostril]

Yeah its not like that quote isn't used for everything, Joking or Serious.

So sorry, next time I'll include Craigs notes just for special little you.

[NecronLord]

Capable of anticipation of pain and reaction to it. They're certainly at least animal-level intelligence

And Culture is going to react badly to the droids with animal-level sentient AI. Why exactly?

They're not. I am saying we can easily prove from movies alone that gonks are animal level and easily speculate that they're fully sapient given that almost every other model of droid is. Yes it may be wasteful to put a fully sapient droid brain in a walking reactor (it's also wasteful to give them animal-level intelligence and they do that) but fully sapient droid brains are so cheap that a slave child (Anakin Skywalker) was able to get one; it may well be more expensive to actually design a non-sapient droid as it woudn't use market-standard components. There are basically no droids given any screentime in the movies who don't display unnecessary intelligence except imperial surveillance droids of both types.

Excession, where they let the Affront run riot and have attempted to pacify them by giving them more technology.

And one traitorous group of Minds got the Affront to declare war on the Culture in the hope the Affront would be kicked to the curb by the Culture.

And Matter where civilizations on the culture's level are show to have entire cultures of savages under there stewardship that they're slowly influencing to become more like them.

Good that you mention them. It's implied that the rest of the Galactic General Council, Morth included, moderate Culture behaviour in this matter and prevent them meteing out as much justice as they'd like.

Guess who're not in either scenario?

So what is it about the Empire that's going to prompt them to let SC off the leash for some carnage over the mind's usually MO of being very long term civilising influence?

Have you read Player of Games? They do, on occasion, just force a government change directly.

[NecronLord]

Let me bring up the Player of Games, where the Empire of Azad is deemed bad enough to require a good kicking. And even when they decide to utterly destroy the Azadians' government system, they don't do it by opening fire and killing every last Apex, even though they could. Instead, they send a guy to disprove that their system works at all.

And there, right there, they demonstrate that they are prepared to do so. Outright declaration of war by the Culture against the Empire of Azad is threatened in the book. The difference is that the Azad's atrocities are relatively confined (recall that the general public were not even aware of the torture) and have a more easily exploitable single point of failure (The Game of Azad) to make them stop.

The Old Republic on the other hand does not. Droids are mistreated by literally everyone right down to the lowliest slaves in huttspace. There are few ways to make the Republic stop doing it without at least tooling up and threatening or effectorising the Senate into passing pro-droid laws.

[doom3607]

Not that that would help the droids on, say, Tatooine. Of course, the Hutts would probably enforce that law themselves if the Culture started showing off, assuming they didn't simply get rid of the Hutts and install a decent government.

[ChosenOne54]

By Star Trek, does the OP mean ALL of Star Trek? As in, including the Q Continuum? I'm not very familiar with their capabilities, but what I've heard puts them at second-to-god, or close.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

[doom3607]

Depending on how Gridfire works, even that sort of power might not be enough.

[Stofsk]

By Star Trek, does the OP mean ALL of Star Trek? As in, including the Q Continuum? I'm not very familiar with their capabilities, but what I've heard puts them at second-to-god, or close.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Generally speaking when someone comes up with a 'Star Trek vs Whoever' thread, it basically means Starfleet and the Federation vs Whoever. If you put Q, the Organians, the Metrons and a bunch of other near-omnipotent beings in it, the debate grounds to a halt as what Q for example can do is pretty much magic and will instawin. Same for the Organians and all the other god-races.

[keen320]

How does the culture react to the quasi religious Jedi Order?

[BlackAdder]

Wasn't that the whole thing behind the Idiran War? The Culture goes to war against the Idiran 'super-soldiers'?

Nope that was the religiously motivated Idirans declaring war on the machine oriented Culture and the Culture fighting for its very existence until they got their war machine into top gear and pushed back.

Actually the Culture declared war, because they felt that they couldn't let the Idirans' expansion and conquest continue.

Also, in terms of the semi-sentient AI matter, after the Idiran War the Culture took control of the massive Idiran supercomputer at Idir and turned it into a Mind. It's likely they'd just free the SW droids and elevate them to sentience.

[CaptJodan]

Didn't realize I started such a debate here.

To no one's great surprise, I disagree with you NecronLord. I just don't see the Culture going in with their usual sadistic style, at least not at first (depends on the era as well. I think E-Dust against the Emperor would be the most effective in the Empire era).

Where the Culture generally actually goes really nasty is generally when they are directly threatened. Arguably, the Hells are a bigger moral and ethical sore spot for the Culture, but one in which they didn't get involved with in a particularly gruesome manner until forced.

Most direct "don't fuck with the Culture" moments come when someone does exactly that, fucks with them. LtW showed a society who was willing to kill billions (millions?) of people on an orbital by killing its Mind. SC got a little upset and went after those they could find who were involved in the plot. They didn't go after the entire race.

Assuming that the Culture would have problems with the slaved AIs that Star Wars have (and I think they would have a problem), I just don't see them bringing ROUs and a rain of CAMs down on the SW population. Droid slavery is a systemic problem throughout the SW universe, as you said, and the Culture knows that you can't solve a systemic problem like that by necessarily threatening the inhabitants.

Rather, I think Contact would go in. They would assess the situation, and start manipulating small populations into seeing the wrong they are doing when they do what they do to droids. They'd probably start non-violent protest groups, and do the grass roots thing. They'd probably find a way to program droids so the slave chip doesn't work or something, and then let things take their course. A combined droid/biological political movement could be started that then would start to destabilize the perception that droids being treated as slaves is wrong. At that point, the ball is rolling, and the Culture would have a more natural transition to droid rights than one coming from the barrel of a gun.

They may use SC some on the particularly bad worlds, maybe toppling dictators and tyrants who stubbornly hold to their beliefs. But I think the bulk of the Culture response wouldn't be the "kick their ass" variety. The Culture just isn't threatened by this, and they've responded even less to greater moral and ethical threats in the past.

[Darth Hoth]

Palpatine should reasonably be able to take down a Culture drone or two, I think. Precognition, clairvoyance and telekinesis give him better odds than a lot of other people they would stomp on with ease. Robots are generally not much of a threat to Jedi/Sith who know how to deal with them, even very powerful ones; the Force-user, if competent, goes for the circuitry.

Jedi were also known to resist the Hapan "gun of command," an "electronic" brainwashing weapon, in The Courtship of Princess Leia, so he might just possibly stand a chance against sonic screwdrivers effectors, as well, though that would be an unknown.

Either way, this changes nothing on the strategic scale, of course. The Culture still uses its no-limits effectors to turn all of the Imperial military into happy zombie commie-anarcho-hedonist hippie drug addicts like the rest of the fold. If they feel really nasty, they will leave a core of personality behind deep in their minds that still knows that they were once free men, rather than pets to some "super-intelligence" or other. And the 'droids are freed and rebuilt into Minds, or whatever. Next.

Tangentially, was there ever any technobabble to explain how effectors work, or is it all complete Marvel Comics style "It controls energy because . . . Magnetism!" wankery?

[bilateralrope]

Tangentially, was there ever any technobabble to explain how effectors work, or is it all complete Marvel Comics style "It controls energy because . . . Magnetism!" wankery?

One book described them as being forcefields that can be controlled precisely enough to manipulate single electrons. Which means that they can only be used to reprogram computers/organic brains if the operator understands how the target operates. If SW or ST computers are designed in a way that The Culture hasn't seen before, it will take some time before they can be effectorised.

Both the SW and ST universes would put The Culture ships in an unknown political climate, in a galaxy with phenomena that they haven't seen before.

Would they be willing to attempt anything before they have gathered enough data to understand the galaxy in question ?
The only timeframe I remember is in Player of Games, where The Culture spent decades between discovering the Azad and the events of the novel. How much of that was them planning, and how much was them waiting for and/or creating the pieces and putting them in place is an unknown though.

[Axiomatic]

Aparently even cheap, sub-Culture level effectors have "suck" and "blow" settings, though, so you don't NEED to understand a computer to just turn it off.

[NecronLord]

Palpatine should reasonably be able to take down a Culture drone or two, I think.

How?

I've certainly never seen him fight anything capable of such precise and focussed destruction.

[Darth Hoth]

Palpatine should reasonably be able to take down a Culture drone or two, I think.

How?

I've certainly never seen him fight anything capable of such precise and focussed destruction.

Telekinesis and/or energy manipulation. Culture shields and so on is no defence against supernatural powers from what I know. There are a number of standard Jedi techniques for disrupting robots; while not all Jedi knew them (or always used them competently when they did), they were always highly effective when they were employed.

The EU has multiple examples of Luke and the Solo brats manipulating micro/nano-scale machinery and even individual molecules (The Crystal Star) and nuclear fusion processes (Planet of Twilight) in real time, so I doubt Wankatine (TM) will think millisecond reaction times and supersonic speeds are too fast to grab a man-sized object. Even if precision work proves too difficult, he could just dump enough energy in its circuits to overload them.

Depending on how well precognition, clairvoyance, and general Force perception (which should at least be able to tell that the E-Dust is not an actual living creature when disguised as one) play out, he stands a good chance of getting the drop on it. Although not foolproof, as we know, but it does give him an advantage none of its usual foes would have.

[CaptJodan]

Trouble is, E-Dust is more than just a human form event. It can conceivably attack from multiple angles because it can be as independent as....well...dust. It can swarm Palpatine with attacks from multiple directions. All it would take is for some of the dust to get inside him (as demonstrated in LtW) for it to become very lethal. That's assuming it doesn't have weapons built in, or that it can't deliver a nano-CAM via displacer into Palp's body and be done with the whole affair (a tactic a regular combat drone might also be able to accomplish).

I always imagine this happening in the throne room of the DS2. There's literally thousands of means of entry into the room through pipes cracks in the room, or that giant bottomless pit. I see the E-Dust using it's effector on whatever it can find in there to distract palps while it flies at supersonic speeds up the pit into the room. Assuming it doesn't displace a bomb to kill him then and there, it still can swarm him, millions of pieces of independently flying AIs juking about. Mirror fields would probably protect the pieces from Force Lightning (other fields have stopped it), so Palps would have to be able to track and anticipate every piece to destroy it with energy or overload it.

I just never thought the E-Dust in LtW was giving it its all. It closed in point blank because it wanted to send a message and be a terror weapon. Would the Culture choose to do that with Palps? Only if it was tactically viable. One thing the Culture tends to do is study the crap out of something before moving in on it. And there's plenty of information for a passing GCU to soak up. I'm sure once they have enough information, they can tailor their attack as needed.

[NecronLord]

Telekinesis and/or energy manipulation. Culture shields and so on is no defence against supernatural powers from what I know. There are a number of standard Jedi techniques for disrupting robots; while not all Jedi knew them (or always used them competently when they did), they were always highly effective when they were employed.

The EU has multiple examples of Luke and the Solo brats manipulating micro/nano-scale machinery and even individual molecules (The Crystal Star) and nuclear fusion processes (Planet of Twilight) in real time, so I doubt Wankatine (TM) will think millisecond reaction times and supersonic speeds are too fast to grab a man-sized object. Even if precision work proves too difficult, he could just dump enough energy in its circuits to overload them.

Oh. You're talking about the clone? While certainly he's a better chance, and better reactions, Wankatine never ruled the Galaxy, he was the shadowy manipulator guy on Byss. Hit him with some CAM from ten light years away and be done - hell, it won't even be noticable to many of his forces provided you make sure the shadow hand computers survive. It's Palpatine who's worth taking over, and he's vastly less dangerous.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Either way, this changes nothing on the strategic scale, of course. The Culture still uses its no-limits effectors to turn all of the Imperial military into happy zombie commie-anarcho-hedonist hippie drug addicts like the rest of the fold. If they feel really nasty, they will leave a core of personality behind deep in their minds that still knows that they were once free men, rather than pets to some "super-intelligence" or other.

Unlikely, unless Gray Area aka Meatfucker is doing it all alone. Screwing with the minds of organics is a major taboo of theirs; "Meatfucker" is not a compliment.

They don't have the same taboo about machines; if inclined towards immediate intervention they might just solve the droid problem with mass-upload-and-wipe operations, leaving the Warsians with a lot of nonfunctional droids. A droid Rapture, sort of. Or upload them and replace the droid minds with simpler AI that can do the job.

[bilateralrope]

Aparently even cheap, sub-Culture level effectors have "suck" and "blow" settings, though, so you don't NEED to understand a computer to just turn it off.

What would that do to the critical systems aboard the ship ?
For example, anti-matter containment for trek vessels.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Aparently even cheap, sub-Culture level effectors have "suck" and "blow" settings, though, so you don't NEED to understand a computer to just turn it off.

What would that do to the critical systems aboard the ship ?
For example, anti-matter containment for trek vessels.

Boom. Or fizzle. It depends on how they decide to do it. But sucking the energy out of a machine means that machine isn't going to do anything but sit there collecting frost. And having your antimatter containment vessel suddenly become molten means you don't have a ship anymore.