SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread IV

[Chaotic Neutral]

And I have no idea what the natural rate of Espers in the population would be. Probably somewhere in the "low" range for 'normal' groups.

That's my point, 1:100,000 would leave me with 2.1 million. If the numbers start getting higher, like 1:1000, I get huge numbers like 210 million of them. That doesn't sound like a number that can be easily absorbed by an already limited schooling system.

Contemplates defense mechanisms to mitigate the effects of Karlack infestation so as to avoid having to write off entire planetary biosphere the moment a Karlack fleet reaches orbit

Planetary or theatre shielding? If you can crack a planet in half as was suggested by the pictures, it's not too crazy. But if you spend defense force money on it though, you could expect to be crushed if you don't win in space.

[Kartr_Kana]

Pictures aren't really "cannon" in this game unless your brain is a spherical mass of iron. They're just used to get a sort of an idea of what the writer envisioned. Cracking half a planet is something beyond what I think Steve and the other mods were envisioning as was planetary shield though theater is perfectly fine. Mods, more experienced players please correct me if I'm mistaken.

[Simon_Jester]

The pictures are an exaggeration; planetary demolition is ruled out in this game. In any case, I have other plans.

Planetary shielding, I'd say, is also ruled out... or if it isn't, it has to be practical to breach it given sufficient naval muscle- you could theoretically have your X-hundred points worth of system defenses be a planetary shield around the system's main inhabited planet as far as I'm concerned. But that's just me, and insofar as I can claim moddery, it's junior moddery.

The natural rate of espers in a population is going to vary wildly from region to region. Some nations have much higher percentages than others, and that's discounting the places that deliberately promote or discourage people from developing the abilities.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Erm yeah I mean, it's only a plasma reactor (read: High temperature fusion)...

[Chaotic Neutral]

The pictures are an exaggeration; planetary demolition is ruled out in this game. In any case, I have other plans.

I guess the comment about how the explosion destroyed the entire planets edible biomass for the Karlacks threw me off.

The natural rate of espers in a population is going to vary wildly from region to region. Some nations have much higher percentages than others, and that's discounting the places that deliberately promote or discourage people from developing the abilities.

I'll just assume 1:5000 for average humans; giving me 21 million of them.

[Kartr_Kana]

I think biomass referred to the IoM humans on the planet that the Karlacks didn't get to eat rather than the biosphere. Also this isn't as much of a numbers game as you keep trying to make it. It's more about the stories and the characters. Write a story about one of your people who just found out they have ESPer potential rather than worry about how many people have ESPer potential.

[Simon_Jester]

I'll just assume 1:5000 for average humans; giving me 21 million of them.

No one cares what you assume the numbers are, so whatever.

Some characters or activity beyond one or two paragraphs in the story thread might be nice though.

[KlavoHunter]

The Karlacks want noms! Run away mister bear!

To the Wiki! Here, I got us started.


And now, BEEEF!

[Dark Hellion]

@Shinn: Are the Gallian's being especially cautious about how they are hiring mercenaries or could pretty much anyone willing to kill in exchange for money be hired? I was thinking about introducing a few new characters by having them perform some live fire testing of weaponry and would rather involve them in an existing conflict than to manufacture one of my own, especially since it will tie into my other working story threads and would rather not open up a new one to have to tie up.

@CN: Since you still seem to be having trouble grasping this, let me attempt to give you an overview of how I tend to think of the dynamics of STGODs (mods correct me if I am wrong on any points). Generally, we are attempting to capture the feel of a crude representation of the first half of the 20th century. While there are a large number of total nations/factions that make up the world/galaxy, among these are a number of great powers who are the political movers and shakers. Some may be more influential than others, have stronger economies or more stable internal politics. Some may be ancient powers who have declined from former glory (Spain) or upstarts with vast untapped potential (US, Russia). This is all at the discretion of the player creating the nation. The one thing that they all have in common is that if any two were to attempt to engage in a straight forward, set piece war to annihilation the result would be a stalemate; either both sides running out of resources to continue the fight or exhausting themselves so much in the conflict that even if they win they would be too crippled to be influential on the international stage. Instead we have lots of limited wars, lots of political dealings, alliances and counter-alliances and espionage galore. So in the end it doesn't matter how many Espers you have. It doesn't matter whether you have a navy of AI controlled killbricks, giant biosphere consuming bioships, or interplanetary longships powered by machismo and latent homoeroticism. This is all fluff. This is all to make a good entertaining story.

You should stop worrying about how to manipulate the numbers because all nations are set at ~=1, so even if you have 100 of x you still end up with 100x ~=1. Please, start trying to respect the spirit of the game. Had you done so and read the various pre-game threads you would have seen that I picked my spot because it was remote and requested other players not set up next to me. Given the metagaming you have already attempted to engage in it seems like it would have been a good idea not to set up next to the player with deicedal robots who specifically wanted to be in a lonely corner of the galaxy.

[Simon_Jester]

The one thing that they all have in common is that if any two were to attempt to engage in a straight forward, set piece war to annihilation the result would be a stalemate; either both sides running out of resources to continue the fight or exhausting themselves so much in the conflict that even if they win they would be too crippled to be influential on the international stage. Instead we have lots of limited wars, lots of political dealings, alliances and counter-alliances and espionage galore. So in the end it doesn't matter how many Espers you have. It doesn't matter whether you have a navy of AI controlled killbricks, giant biosphere consuming bioships, or interplanetary longships powered by machismo and latent homoeroticism. This is all fluff. This is all to make a good entertaining story.

That is certainly the intention of this STGOD. Previous STGODs have done things a little differently, with countries of very different sizes, and sometimes with more in the way of destructive conflict among the nations. Future STGODs will no doubt do it differently too. But yes, here and now, that's the key concept.

If you want to wage a war in this game, my recommendation would be to demonstrate superior writing skill: write a more compelling narrative of the war. Make people want to believe that the way you describe events is the way things happen, giving due credit to both sides. Incorporate your opponent's activities, show them succeeding or failing on their merits, and so on.

That's the real key: writing a national narrative, with interesting characters and intriguing ideas, making the country live. If you can do that people will like you, even if your nation is monstrous (Bragule); if you can't, at best no one will remember who you are.

Obsessively cataloging all the things your nation has in an attempt to establish how mighty and impressive it is... that's a useless and time-wasting endeavor. The closest to that I've come is rough, off-the-cuff estimates I used to guide my thinking, and I kept those estimates to myself, for future reference, rather than strutting around and waving them in everyone's faces.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

@Shinn: Are the Gallian's being especially cautious about how they are hiring mercenaries or could pretty much anyone willing to kill in exchange for money be hired? I was thinking about introducing a few new characters by having them perform some live fire testing of weaponry and would rather involve them in an existing conflict than to manufacture one of my own, especially since it will tie into my other working story threads and would rather not open up a new one to have to tie up.

East Gallia's willing to hire anybody willing to kill for money, which is half of why they have Volkslanders working for them. While West Gallia can't really afford to be too picky, they won't hire just anybody; for instance, they won't hire regular Bragulan mercenaries, but they might hire JEW BEARS.

[Ryan Thunder]

The natural rate of espers in a population is going to vary wildly from region to region. Some nations have much higher percentages than others, and that's discounting the places that deliberately promote or discourage people from developing the abilities.

I'll just assume 1:5000 for average humans; giving me 21 million of them.

Those won't all be overwhelmingly powerful individuals. I believe the power scale is more or less logarithmic.

Also, that said, 1:1E6 is probably more reasonable.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, power scale may be logarithmic, or near-logarithmic; hard to say. One in a million might be a bit low for some societies- you can't really have a tyranny of the psychic like the Centrality without a larger number of mental overseers. And for nations that rely heavily on the use of psychics to defend against psychic intrusion, you'd really need better coverage than that.

Then again, for other concepts, one in a million is quite reasonable, though even I didn't push it that low and Umeria's supposed to be an esper-poor state, with relatively few and (mostly) relatively less powerful psychics. It's one of the reasons we can get along fairly well with Shepistan, aside from the occasional false alarm when they hiccup and we think they're going to kill us all.

[Dark Hellion]

And Shroom proves to us that even in a galaxy of mass drivers and anti-matter warheads there are still more extreme ways to make a planet flaming than orbital bombardment.

[Shroom Man 777]

Squig jerky! Exploding janitors! PEAK WAAAGH! Oh boy, this is gonna be funs.

[Siege]

Well, power scale may be logarithmic, or near-logarithmic; hard to say. One in a million might be a bit low for some societies- you can't really have a tyranny of the psychic like the Centrality without a larger number of mental overseers.

While I generally agree, it might be possible for an oppressive psykocracy to function even with very limited numbers of psions if the government manages to convince the thralls it has way more psykers on its payroll than it actually does. Which they might be able to pull off if those few espers appear sufficiently omnipresent and all-knowing, say, by aiding them with tons of mundane surveillance technology.

[Force Lord]

Hey guys, my post count here has declined somewhat since the computer's in my sister's room and she's keeping the door to her room locked recently. I've only been able to post when she's not around.

[Steve]

The Karlacks have been busy bugs this game year. This is the second Earth-like planet they've trashed. Granted, it's in Wild Space, which will dilute the effects, but I think there may be some interstellar attention regardless, since one of the key elements of the setting is the relative sparsity of Earth-like planets.

[Simon_Jester]

A lot of these worlds may be partial-terraforming jobs: habitable with an oxygen atmosphere, but with plant and animal life extending only over limited areas of the planet. Outside the zones where the colonists live, the highest forms of life might be lichen, bugs, and rats.

I'd argue that this is a good way to explain, in a given setting, why you have Planets That Look Suspiciously Like Monument Valley everywhere. Much of the planet looks like a rocky wasteland because when you found the place it was still in the Precambrian, and there wasn't any land based life.

In this case, it could also explain why the Imperium base self-destructing "denied" the Karlacks the planet's biomass, or much of it: irradiating all organic life within a few hundred kilometers of the base actually *did* contaminate a respectable fraction of the biosphere, unless the Karlacks want to waste time trying to strain the oceans for algae soup.

Hmm. Steve, I do think there's a bit of a problem with the 'organic life is rare' model combined with the very existence of the Karlacks; unless they have efficient ways of extracting carbon from barren worlds, their entire model would be problematic. I'd recommend making something of an exemption in light of that- plus, fuck it, it's the Koprulu Zone, and this story was honestly more entertaining than "desperate struggle over one of the last planets in the sector" would have been.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Personally, I think Karlacks are fairly resilient. Some of their core worlds are literally lava worlds wit rivers of lava.

[Simon_Jester]

They surely are resilient, but they must also have viable ways of extracting the resources they need to keep their... (civilization? culture? feeding frenzy?) going. That means either having access to plenty of organic worlds (the Tyranid solution), or being able to make Karlack bioforms out of raw mineral crystals and Vespene gas (the Zerg solution).

Not my place to say which.

Anyway, I do like the new BEEEF update, Shroomy.

[Steve]

A lot of these worlds may be partial-terraforming jobs: habitable with an oxygen atmosphere, but with plant and animal life extending only over limited areas of the planet. Outside the zones where the colonists live, the highest forms of life might be lichen, bugs, and rats.

I'd argue that this is a good way to explain, in a given setting, why you have Planets That Look Suspiciously Like Monument Valley everywhere. Much of the planet looks like a rocky wasteland because when you found the place it was still in the Precambrian, and there wasn't any land based life.

In this case, it could also explain why the Imperium base self-destructing "denied" the Karlacks the planet's biomass, or much of it: irradiating all organic life within a few hundred kilometers of the base actually *did* contaminate a respectable fraction of the biosphere, unless the Karlacks want to waste time trying to strain the oceans for algae soup.

Hmm. Steve, I do think there's a bit of a problem with the 'organic life is rare' model combined with the very existence of the Karlacks; unless they have efficient ways of extracting carbon from barren worlds, their entire model would be problematic. I'd recommend making something of an exemption in light of that- plus, fuck it, it's the Koprulu Zone, and this story was honestly more entertaining than "desperate struggle over one of the last planets in the sector" would have been.

I didn't say "organic life" is rare, I said "Earth-like" planets, that is planets that are fit for Human habitation or are within the terraform-capable range.

And i also said relatively rare even there, with up to five such per sector. We have 900 sectors, so that's roughly 4,500 worlds in known space alone. And that doesn't include life-bearing planetoids, dwarf planets, moons (think Pandora), or worlds with organic life but which have some kind of issue that prevents full terraforming (though not partial).

Granted, originally we were looking to keep the scope of inhabited systems closer to B5 levels (At least that's what I recall of discussions with other STGOD players back in April and May when this STGOD concept was first broached), but I'm not against widening the scope a bit more.

[Siege]

Quick fact check: Wild Space in the K-Zone even when defined in the absolute narrowest possible way (i.e. only those sectors directly inbetween the five major polities in the Zone) covers at least 15 full sectors. So if we take the '5 planets per sector' as inflexible, unalterable Gospel that still means we have 75 planets to annihilate before we run out.

As for myself, I'm assuming that one way or the other there are a lot more podunk worlds out there with people on them, because Wild Space wouldn't be very wild if there wasn't anybody living there. And I'm not so sure the loss of a colony or two should attract attention, because this is a region where historically this sort of thing happens all the time. Granted Nova Genoa was a bigger affair with lots of ships from four nations involved so that's bound to raise a few eyebrows once people hear about it, but I imagine the nations of the galaxy have other things to care about than the local K-Zone sport of blowing-shit-up.

It also bears keeping in mind that regardless of what may have been intended we've moved from a B5-type setting to something more akin to ST, in that apparently colonies fail all the time all over the place. I'm not adverse to RP'ing the effects of the unruly K-Zone attracting attention from other nations, but such attention should at least have some kind of plausible and preferably rational basis given the galaxy we're in should count literally hundreds of worlds full of people who aren't part of a bigger nation and a whole bunch of those are no doubt fucked-up places. So would UN dogma be that they don't care about atrocities etc. as long as the place doesn't go up in flames entirely?

[Simon_Jester]

I didn't say "organic life" is rare, I said "Earth-like" planets, that is planets that are fit for Human habitation or are within the terraform-capable range.

And i also said relatively rare even there, with up to five such per sector. We have 900 sectors, so that's roughly 4,500 worlds in known space alone. And that doesn't include life-bearing planetoids, dwarf planets, moons (think Pandora), or worlds with organic life but which have some kind of issue that prevents full terraforming (though not partial).

Granted, originally we were looking to keep the scope of inhabited systems closer to B5 levels (At least that's what I recall of discussions with other STGOD players back in April and May when this STGOD concept was first broached), but I'm not against widening the scope a bit more.

Siege is right; we wound up more on the Star Trek end of the scale. The spacing between inhabited planets is pretty substantial, or can be, but the decision of numerous players to write little random 'shitworlds' in the gaps between the major nations indicates that there are a lot of minor colonies, second and third-wave worlds settled from non-Earth planets, failed Diaspora-vintage communities, and so on. And these are clearly what Star Trek would call "M-class," if you will: planets where human beings can walk about on the surface without being baked, frozen, asphyxiated, dissolved, or otherwise killed horribly.* They may not be "fully terraformed" in the sense that there's a large stable biosphere with a human carrying capacity in the billions, but they're there. And people can live on them without being stuck in a habitat dome all day.

Moreover, the history of our nations often implies that there are a lot of worlds that can be brought up to this standard given a few centuries of investment and work... which in turn makes the loss of a planetary ecosystem on one of these marginal worlds less of a big deal. If reterraforming a bombarded planet to prewar standards takes 100 years**, and there are 50 planets in a given region of space you really can afford to write off a few of them a decade without the entire region winding up stone dead.

The recent destruction of the Majella and Nova Genoa colonies might be noted as an uptick in violence in the Koprulu Zone, but I suspect it'll be more like "this is the worst violence we've seen in the Zone in over twenty years," not "OH MY GOD THEY'RE GOING INSANE! Stop them before they destroy us all!"

*At least until Bragulans or Karlacks show up.
**Purely for example.

[fgalkin]

Quick fact check: Wild Space in the K-Zone even when defined in the absolute narrowest possible way (i.e. only those sectors directly inbetween the five major polities in the Zone) covers at least 15 full sectors. So if we take the '5 planets per sector' as inflexible, unalterable Gospel that still means we have 75 planets to annihilate before we run out.

As for myself, I'm assuming that one way or the other there are a lot more podunk worlds out there with people on them, because Wild Space wouldn't be very wild if there wasn't anybody living there. And I'm not so sure the loss of a colony or two should attract attention, because this is a region where historically this sort of thing happens all the time. Granted Nova Genoa was a bigger affair with lots of ships from four nations involved so that's bound to raise a few eyebrows once people hear about it, but I imagine the nations of the galaxy have other things to care about than the local K-Zone sport of blowing-shit-up.

It also bears keeping in mind that regardless of what may have been intended we've moved from a B5-type setting to something more akin to ST, in that apparently colonies fail all the time all over the place. I'm not adverse to RP'ing the effects of the unruly K-Zone attracting attention from other nations, but such attention should at least have some kind of plausible and preferably rational basis given the galaxy we're in should count literally hundreds of worlds full of people who aren't part of a bigger nation and a whole bunch of those are no doubt fucked-up places. So would UN dogma be that they don't care about atrocities etc. as long as the place doesn't go up in flames entirely?

Yeah. I mean, you'd think that this would have come up earlier in-universe, what with the Karlacks' goals being pretty well known, and no one caring except for their immediate neighbors.

Since the UN had every chance to get rid of them, yet they failed to seize it every time, I imagine they simply don't give a shit.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin