Extent of Virus
- Thread starter gchuck
- Start date
BackworldTraveller
SOC-13
No idea...but what would cause it to peter out? Provided R>=1 it just keeps going until it runs out of hosts.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Can the Virus infect a vacuum tube computer?
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
Running out of hosts and hitting those "evolutionary" endpoints that cause it to stop looking for hosts.
In the rimward direction, my feeling is that it would hit the wall of too little traffic by the time it was approaching one sector-width beyond the official map. That would make those systems extraordinarily dangerous to enter, what with an unknown local population of impatient Virus waiting for a target to come along.
I would say no, since as a form of silicon-based life its propagation is tied to its ability to "write/overwrite" itself onto a silicon chip using the already existing silicon-based AI-hardware in a ships transponder box.
No, it can't.
The problem is that tube computers aren't very useful since most of the utility of a computer comes from its density.
Who's to say if a tube computer that can, say, calculate a Jump route, is even practical.
It may even be the case that for something "routine" like a Jump calculation, a mechanical solution may be more reliable, compact, and/or energy efficient than a tube version.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Indications are that we're moving into carbon based chips.
Rules as written? if it's big enough to count as a model 0, it can;. if it isn't, it can encapsulate a base code in just about any computerized device to infect the next big enough one.
The way the rules work, it can imprint on any big enough computer it's in electronic comms with.
The only way this makes sense to me is if the virus is psionic and uses telekinetics via a radio or wired comms focus to function.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Psionics isn't needed to explain Virus, the original authors never suggested that Virus had any psionic component to it at all. They did state that Virus could take control of machines that can replicate psionic effects though 
It is simply silicon based life that we can not understand at our current TL. The 'DNA' from said lifeform can be encoded as data - much like a human DNA pattern could be encoded as data.
If the data can be unpacked and run on a suitable computer then it can replicate the silicon organism within the machine and become the machine.
What is the architecture of a TL9+ computer? Is there any silicon in it at all?
Consider this - how does a wafer overwrite the memories and personality of a host brain and take control of it? Is that psionic? Or is the wafer personality temporarily replicated within the host by remapping the neural structure of the host brain. How does the host brain remember its original patterns once overwritten?
Virus is the computer analogue of wafer technology.
As to its range and extent I would imagine it would spread as far as ships could carry it and therefore the whole area of charted space and then a few worlds or subsectors beyond providing there is a technological society sufficiently advanced for computers hosts to be available.
I can't help but think that some Virus strains will evolve that seek to explore the galaxy...
It is simply silicon based life that we can not understand at our current TL. The 'DNA' from said lifeform can be encoded as data - much like a human DNA pattern could be encoded as data.
If the data can be unpacked and run on a suitable computer then it can replicate the silicon organism within the machine and become the machine.
What is the architecture of a TL9+ computer? Is there any silicon in it at all?
Consider this - how does a wafer overwrite the memories and personality of a host brain and take control of it? Is that psionic? Or is the wafer personality temporarily replicated within the host by remapping the neural structure of the host brain. How does the host brain remember its original patterns once overwritten?
Virus is the computer analogue of wafer technology.
As to its range and extent I would imagine it would spread as far as ships could carry it and therefore the whole area of charted space and then a few worlds or subsectors beyond providing there is a technological society sufficiently advanced for computers hosts to be available.
I can't help but think that some Virus strains will evolve that seek to explore the galaxy...
Proneutron
SOC-13
Fortunately all my ship electronic components weren't of silicon but rather gallium arsenide and thus were immune.
Uh oh. This changes Everything.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
It's not the silicon that is important - it is the data stream that contains the personality and memory of the lifeform.
Proneutron
SOC-13
Not according to the RAW. SILICON was required. Unless you have rules I haven't seen that you'd care to quote.
Proneutron
SOC-13
Do you also use the germanium-based Oc Dollar?
Ya lost me there. I'm getting old I guess.
This explains the huge computers then: they're hydro-mechanical, like WWII gun-laying computers.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
You quote yours, I'll quote mine.
The original lifeform is the Cymbeline silicon based organism, but the data stream that is Virus can infect any Imperial era computer system - as per the rules as written. Are Imperial era computers based on silicon?
We know that silicon is still used in some computer architecture since it says so in the adventure, but nowhere do we learn what a TL15 computer is made from as far as I can find. If you have some quote that can shed some light of TL15 computer technology I would love to be pointed towards the reference.
Proneutron
SOC-13
Cool, where is your quote from?
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Signal GK which explains the boost that the Cymbeline chips received thanks to the computer chips of a crashed Terran ship, three thousand years before the events of the adventure...
So that ship definitely uses 'crystal' in some of its computer chips, but it was a Terran ship of the Interstellar Wars era, so a TL9 to 11 tops computer architecture.
Of note is that it mentions crystals a lot, but fails to say they are silicon crystals although the implication is there it is not explicit and so grants some handwavium room.
So that ship definitely uses 'crystal' in some of its computer chips, but it was a Terran ship of the Interstellar Wars era, so a TL9 to 11 tops computer architecture.
Of note is that it mentions crystals a lot, but fails to say they are silicon crystals although the implication is there it is not explicit and so grants some handwavium room.
From Blish's Cities in Flight, where the collapse of the germanium standard led to a galactic depression. Guess he didn't believe in fiat currency. Even the new currency was anagathic-drug-based--leading to real problems for the traveling cities who needed the drugs as drugs, not as inflated-value currency.
