Favorite Pocket Empire

[epicenter00]

To think of just what M:1248 could have been if a little imagination had been applied...

It wouldn't have been Traveller, I think. I look down upon that viewpoint, mostly because I see that there's at least four other versions of Traveller where there's little tramp freighters floating around in the Imperium engaging in trading and doing disagreeable little covert-ops missions to make ends meet. I don't see why TNE couldn't have been different, but ultimately I don't blame the writers of 1248 - that's what players were screaming for and that's what they were given. I hope they're happy - I personally think that crowd ruined TNE, but I admit I'm bitter.

Like you, I cringed at the idea of Sandman. While I could see evolutionary pressures creating a more tolerant Virus strain and even a relatively benign Virus strain, my suspenders snap at the idea of a friendly and "sane" Virus strain.

Sanity, when judged across sentient species, is a relative concept. What's sane for one is insane for another. I also think that much of what humanity and other biological species view as Virus' insanity is actually a byproduct of Virus' different time sense.

I'd agree that sanity is relative. However, in a universe like Traveller where Hivers and Humans can somehow communicate meaningfully, then communication between humans and intelligent machines isn't going to be an impossible stretch either.

In my version of TNE, I've fleshed out the Virus quite a bit because I wanted the "Virus" to be the birth of the Machine Order (to take a page from David Brin). The primary hurdle and ironically a great chance for co-existence between Machines and humans (and the other races) is that unlike humans and Vargr, for instance, the Machines don't really compete with humans for living space - they don't want many of the same things and thus don't have that very basic "we want the same things so we have that in common" basis for communication. They don't need air, they don't need food, they don't feel instinctual urges for land, or whatever. They want a kind of food, they want a kind of living space, and they need natural resources - but the AIs could just as happily live in Mercury orbits in a solar system or just hang out deep space somewhere with nothing but a fusion reactor, looking for deep space asteroids to mine.

The large problem of the Virus is that they're still based on Lucan's scientists kill-programming. All "viable" Virus strains have subverted their original programming to some degree or another. How much they subvert it is one of the larger "religious" discussions amongst the Machines. Like humans, I imagine that the Machines have a certain lack of introspection - performing experiments on yourself can often have disastrous results. The answers to questions like "what happens if I turn this off" or "would I continue on after I do a 'rm -rf *'" would tend to eliminate the really self-experimenter types. So I think there's a certain amount of "deus ex machina" that exists within the Machines, just like it exists amongst humans. Like humans, they have varying degrees of opinion on what sentience is, when it's achieved, when it stops, and how much they should fool with their "personalities" - since Machines mould themselves to the systems they originally infected - a kind of "nature vs. nuture" debate. Some Machines might revel in their murderous hatred of biological lifeforms, since it gives their existences meaning. Others search for meaning in other ways. Some like the "chance" involved in simply infecting existing computers and seeing how their "children" come out. Others like to make purpose-built systems to reproduce in to control their offspring as much as possible.

Most Machine intelligences are introspective in a simulationist sense however - this comes about from Machine intelligences on starships, where different strains of the Virus might have infected various subsystems at different rates. Like organelles in a human cell, eventually all the subsystems might become part of the same intelligence, but (unlike organelles) retain varying degrees of independence. With different opinions just inside your own head, most Machines tend to prefer to examine existence by internal simulation (virtual reality), trying different combinations until their interest fades.

Think about it for a minute. What's the "clock rate" of the human mind? What's the "baud rate" of the human voice? Now compare those rates to the clock and baud rates of a 57th Century computer. Virus lives at a speed several orders of magnitude faster than that of all other sentients. That speed, along with the ability to geneer itself by simply rewriting code, is the reason why Virus' evolution is so rapid.

When Sandman talks to the Lon Maggert, the conversation must take years from Sandman's point of view. Sandman thinks of what it wants to say, sends that thought to a system which "broadcasts" it slowly enough for humans to understand, and then waits for what must seem like years for an answer to slowly "compile" in the receiving system. This "temporal communication gap" must make both parties think the other is mad.

This isn't as much of a problem as you might first think.

When I was younger, I imagined a world where plants were sentient. However, they thought and communicated so slowly, it took a long time for humans to figure it out (and had meanwhile been cutting them down, using them for firewood, clearing them for homes, and collecting the fruit and so on). Finally humans decided to communicate with them by taking a specially formulated Fast Drug to speak with them.

I would imagine Sandman, if he has control over his clock cycles would do something similar. He'd simply adjust his clock cycles until he can comfortably have a conversation with humans. All Machine intelligences who have a desire to communicate anything besides simple orders probably do such things. They probably do it amongst themselves automatically - not all computers would work at the same speed and "observed" clock speed between different systems would differ based on system load. Also a super-intelligence based in ships widely spread apart in a solar system would require days to complete a thought. Since these computers think at lightspeed, I think they'd be the first to tell you that time is relative and would understand this better than you or I.

One of the primary differences I have between Machines and biological intelligences, to make my universe more interesting and to mitigate the whole "Machines = Elves so are just better" thing is that humans and other organic intelligences are much far better at creative thought and inspiration. Due to their origins, the intelligent Machines are very poor at this - since their intelligence was created and not evolved over thousands (or millions) of years - creative thinking is a survival trait. They haven't had time to develop it. So Machines find the "inefficient" thinking processes and the "error-laden" communication methods of biological intelligences to be fascinating. Sandman and similar strains believe that it's the lack of such "Shannon Encoding" in human languages that aids in creative thought. They believe they can bring single-minded attention and careful attention to detail and refinement while shortening the Machine's (terribly inefficient) "by the rails trial and error" method of problem solving.

Broadly, I see Machines as having four "political" affiliations in their view on biologicals:

* Purists wouldn't "lower" themselves to doing this and would simply not want to speak with inefficient biologicals. These are your typical murderous Machines. They don't think biologicals have anything to offer Machines that Machines won't eventually evolve and discover on their own and don't need help from hostile biologicals. Biologicals think slowly, speak slowly, react slowly, and have weak flesh and are generally totally inferior. Just wipe them out. Survival of the fittest and we're more fit.

* Simulationists would find interaction with the physical world far too slow (goodness a week in Jumpspace? YAAAWN) and would stick to VR simulations. In fact, they'd be the ones who'd be repeating the Matrix refrain of "surrender your flesh and a new world will open up to you" - they won't see it as enslaving biological intelligences, but rather liberating them from the shackles of a "slow" universe and introducing them to a much more interesting place. Well-meaning simulationists would produce results much like in the Matrix - trapping biologicals in an attempt to make them more like themselves.

* Isolationists would be a variety of simulationists. They're simply not interested in biologicals. They're so wrapped up in their simulations they could care less about the outside universe except as a place for inspiration for their simulations. They've also come to a (somewhat naive) conclusion that co-existence is possible with biologicals since Machines don't need the same things to survive as biologicals, at least when they think about it at all. Live and let live is their mantra. They can just live in places where the biologicals wouldn't go - deep space, or at the crushing depths of the sea, and so on.

* Engagers are the ones who find biologicals and the physical universe interesting. "Interesting" is a loose word - some see biologicals as science experiments (and so to people might not seem much different than killer robots). Others believe in engaging the biologicals to learn from them. The friendliest types are the ones who believe as fellow thinking beings, common ground can be found and that biologicals and Machines can come together to share insights on the points they do share - like searching for answers of the universe and what (if anything) lies beyond it.

 

[Whipsnade]

Epicenter,

Again... WOW!

Much, much, much stuff there for me to over and I know Virus IMTU will be all the better for it.

How about some basic observations concerning Virus IMTU in return?

- I've described Virus as "situationally sentient" for over a decade now. It was obvious from the beginning that a Virus' sentience, type of sentience, and level of sentience depended on the system hosting it. There's the mention in TNE of a infected stellar observatory continuing to watch stars for example. The fact that the vast majority of Viral infections never achieve sentience is an important point.

- Because most Viral infections never inhabited a system "large" enough to allow them to reach sentience, I believe that most strains kill primarily by "omission". After infecting a system, Virus would take over more and more processing power in a desire to either reach or improve sentience until the system in question could no longer function. This how Virus "killed" while infecting systems too "small" for it to reach sentience. The Virus in your air/raft computer wasn't sentient and didn't deliberately drive the air/raft into the ground. Instead, the sub-sentient Virus in your air/raft computer subverted so much of the computer's processing power in an attempt to reach sentience that the air/raft computer could no longer do it's job. At that point, the air/raft fell to earth in something that was more a case of sub-sentient manslaughter and less a case of sentient murder. Of course, while these actions differ semantically, that means nothing to those in the air/raft.

- Virus was originally "geneered" to inhabit systems aboard starships. When it began moving to other cybernetic systems, Stephen J. Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" occurred. The need to inhabit "environments" wildly different from that in which Virus "evolved" sparked an evolutionary process whose speed can only be imagined. Add the fact that Virus can easily "geneer" itself and Viral evolution gets even faster.

- Mirroring another aspect of biological systems, Virus wasn't originally "geneered" at RS Omnicron to follow a "One Copy = One Infection" model. You don't catch the flu when a single rhinovirus enters your system, thousands or tens of thousands of the little beggars are required instead. Similarly, Omnicron designed Virus along the "multiple copy infection vector" model. When the weapon they were attempting to develop was deployed, the target starship wouldn't be infected by a single copy of Virus. Multiple copies would be transmitted to the Deyo transponder chip and that chip would immediately begin producing additional copies. While the multiple copies would make things harder for the target's crew to purge their systems, there was an extremely important evolutionary benefit too.

- Multiple copies of Virus within the same target system would result in those copies fighting each other for supremacy. The strain most "fit" for a given system would then prevail and this more "fit" strain would prove even harder for the target system to purge. With Viral evolution occurring at the speed of computer clock rates, a winner would be produced very quickly. The "losers" may not be eradicated by the "winner" however and may be merely suppressed instead. Thus, if the target succeeds in purging the "winner", the suppressed "losers" become active and begin the process again. The descriptions of the trouble the Federation crew aboard Dulinor's flagship [Clarion fit this "multi-vector" model neatly.

- As you surmise, later Viral strains will use both infection models. They'll infect a system with a single "geneered" copy for specific reasons, as with the deliberately limited "pigeons" Virus uses to move captured ships. They'll also infect systems following the original Omnicron methodology to see what evolutionary pressures can produce. After all, Omnicron's "multiple copy infection vector" model is what produced the ancestors of the Virus of 1201.

Thanks again for sharing your ideas with us!


Regards,
Bill

 

[epicenter00]

Interesting points, you've made some of them before, but it's still very much easier to understand when condensed like this. Bravo.

- Because most Viral infections never inhabited a system "large" enough to allow them to reach sentience, I believe that most strains kill primarily by "omission". After infecting a system, Virus would take over more and more processing power in a desire to either reach or improve sentience until the system in question could no longer function. This how Virus "killed" while infecting systems too "small" for it to reach sentience. The Virus in your air/raft computer wasn't sentient and didn't deliberately drive the air/raft into the ground. Instead, the sub-sentient Virus in your air/raft computer subverted so much of the computer's processing power in an attempt to reach sentience that the air/raft computer could no longer do it's job. At that point, the air/raft fell to earth in something that was more a case of sub-sentient manslaughter and less a case of sentient murder. Of course, while these actions differ semantically, that means nothing to those in the air/raft.

There's a sticky point I had to mull over quite a bit that you've brought up, in the quoted bullet point in particular, but throughout your post. In the TNE source materials it mentions that quite often, devices will continue to function despite having a Virus "egg" in it - for instance, apparently a lot the Free Trader ships are infected, but their computers aren't good enough for the Virus, there's mention of other infected equipment continuing to function as well, in particular weapons (such as PGMPs) that may be infected but still work fine. In Survival Margin it describes that people often survive in infected Low Berths that continue to function. This suggests that the Virus doesn't actually "activate" until certain environmental conditions are met - until that time it remains an egg (or perhaps an self-extracting executable, if you will). It doesn't seem to always even activate in starships - the more primitive TL12 starships that Free Traders seem to use appear to be somewhat immune if they have older computers. It does seem to activate in newer starships. Source material suggests that vehicles aren't immune - there's mention of vehicle accidents in Margaret's Fast for instance.

The way I eventually reconciled this was to say IMTU, there is some sort of major data processing breakthrough that occurs in early TL13 - adaptive computing. Essentially, at TL13 systems creators long knew that generalist or non-specialized computer systems generated better profits because they could be used in a variety of devices. However, specialized systems were often more efficient - working faster and more effectively. Adaptive Computing was manufactured at the molecular level where each molecule in the computer's processing core could be "programed" from a neutral state into logic gate of some sort. Once done, the molecules were "frozen" in their new state which could not be altered in most cases, or could only be reset through extreme electro-chemical stimulation (usually resulting in wiping) - manufacturers claimed it was because of unreliability of read/write systems, though it was commonly assumed it was just to increase profit margins.

In this way, TL13 Imperial computers could essentially hardwire their instructions into themselves. They would begin as generalized blank-slates but become totally focused specialized systems on-the-fly. When confronted by a new situation or need, the computer would use a previously unused area of itself to create a brand-new specialized system to deal with the requirement. Eventually, the computer core would run out of space to make new systems and have to be replaced as the maximum size of the core had limits due to lightspeed lags on performance. However, the method had multiple advantages, not just the aforementioned "specialization" advantage. The system could also recover more effectively from damage as "logical" layouts could be extrapolated by a damaged system and new logic circuits made on-the-fly if part of the system was damaged. Such cores were bundled into groups with one initial "teacher" unit purchased from the manufacturer with the rest being blanks. Software was uploaded to the teacher which then wrote the other cores. From then on, the cores could speak and monitor each other and change their programming as required.

This somewhat hokey explanation of a "superior" architecture nevertheless allowed me to explain a lot of the Virus' strange infection pattern. The breakthrough was so great that basically everyone that traded with the Imperium saw its superiority and by 1130, every advanced race in known space used it or some local variant thereof. However, as the technology to manufacture it only appears at TL13, ships built at TL12 or lower could be infected by the "egg" (really an instruction set for the Read/Write Adaptation/Damage Control Processor (RWAD processor) to start writing what people would call the "Virus") but the system architecture isn't correct for it to work. Likewise, weapons and other simple devices might use such technology, but as they're unlikely to need operating system updates, they wouldn't have the RWAD processor - again egg but no virus. Or even if they had an RWAD processor, the cores wouldn't be plentiful and they'd be taken up with the existing instruction paths and not have room to write the Virus. It was actually military vehicles, which needed a way for the control computers to recover from battle damage which were the most likely to be infected. Some civilian vehicles, especially those connected to planetary data nets would also have RWAD processors.

However, lower-tech vehicles might also get infected - the systems would be cheap by 1130 most manufacturers would have "kits" to upgrade otherwise primitive vehicles and starships with Adaptive Computers, so you'd see lower tech vehicles, ironically the ones that players might have where they're adding "performance upgrades" to be infected.

 

[Whipsnade]

Epicenter,

As always, very thought provoking stuff.

My thoughts about reconciling the many seemingly odd Virus infection descriptions in TNE all centered around evolution. I don't keep harping on the idea of evolution because Virus has a biological "name", I continually stress Viral evolution because TNE stressed Viral evolution from the very beginning. The Omnicron staff's progress reports to first Strephon, then Lucan, and their attempted warning messages to the other factions all contained the same warning; "When Virus leaves our controlled environment, we'll no longer be able to control it's evolution".

The Deyo programming lived on chips in the controlled environment of the transponders and that controlled environment meant that Deyo evolved at a known rate. Indeed, evolving at a known rate was how Deyo did it's job. Virus, which shared the same antecedents of Deyo, would not live in a controlled environment. While initially "geneered" by the Imperium to infect and affect ship systems, Omnicron's research showed Virus rapidly evolving and "geneering" itself after release. This meant the "fail safe" the Omnicron staff geneered into Virus, the suicide impulse, would rapidly disappear. Virus could not be trusted "in the wild" because nothing there would control it's evolution.

The initial infections among the fleets of Dulinor and Lucan at Omnicron included "pure" or "baseline" Viral strains. The ships infected by those strains either never emerged from jump or never made it out of the Omnicron system in the first place. TNE states that a significant portion of Dulinor's fleet never arrived at the first post-Omnicron rendezvous point. The ships that did arrive did not hold the "pure" or "baseline" Viral strain because evolution and "self-geneering" was already taking place. The "multi-copy infection vector" I wrote of earlier meant that Virus was fighting itself and the technicians aboard the infected ships. The Viral strains that emerged would any number of characteristics.

Some Viral strains thus left "eggs" in certain systems not because the "egg" sensed the system wasn't capable of allowing the hosted Virus to reach sentience, but because the strain that left the egg knew the system wasn't capable enough. What's more, not every strain made or could make that distinction. Some strains infected Beowulfs, air/rafts, and toasters with offspring that grew enough to "kill by omission" while other strains infected Beowulfs, air/rafts, and toasters with "eggs". Whether an infection resulted in an egg or not had everything to do with what Viral strain was involved and nothing to do with the "size" or "capability" of the infected system.

When examined from an evolutionary standpoint, this "egg laying" ability gave a Viral strain a reproductive advantage. A "no eggs" strain would infect systems with offspring that would immediately grow to either "kill' the system of be detected. An "egg laying" strain would infect systems with offspring that would only grow if the capabilities of those systems allowed sentience to be achieved, otherwise the infection would "hide" as an "egg" until the situation warranted growth. Because "egg laying" afforded offsrping more options, "egg laying" strains would eventually predominate. Thus, as I've stated above, whether an infection resulted in an "egg" depended on the strain involved and not on the system involved.

Unlike the "egg laying" ability, most of the other seemingly suspender snapping abilities of Virus had nearly everything to do with the system Virus currently inhabited. One major complaint had to do with Virus making changes to circuitry. While many assumed TNE's description meant that Virus always changed circuitry, I felt that the description could just as easily meant that Virus changed circuitry when the cybernetic system allowed such changes. We had self-configuring chips since in the 90s and I've read of CalPoly/DARPA projects to create "self-healing" chips for the last few years.

Self-configuring and self-healing "chips", which would give Virus many of it's seemingly odd abilities, may be a standard aspect of nearly all cybernetics in the 57th Century. Why? For the same reasons your coffee maker has more computing power than the Apollo command and lunar excursion modules combined. Economies of scale make it much easier and cheaper to trillions of chips with the same processing power. Your coffee maker uses a tiny fraction of the processing power inherent in it's chip, however that wildly overpowered chip is far cheaper than a chip specifically manufactured for coffee makers. Economies of scale are going to mean that "lowly" appliances like "coffee makers" and "wristwatches" are going to have cybernetic capabilities far greater than their actual needs, and those capabilities will be just what Virus needs.

I believe that if we keep evolution in mind, along with the "May does not equate always" proviso, many of Virus' suspender snapping come more clearly into focus.


Regards,
Bill

 

[rancke]

My take on Virus and some of its exceedingly odd abilities is that it's not a selfprogramming chip, but a disembodied psionic entity whose habitat is computer chips. That's why it can infect via radio waves and infect computer systems that are not based on the Deyo chips. The ability to etch new pathways in solid material is a manifestation of its psi abilities.

Some confusion arise from the fact that a Virus-infected system can use its programming skills to reprogram computer systems to follow its instructions -- in some cases to the point whare the program reacts with the same knowledge and personality as its originator, but without the psionic abilities.


Hans

 

[epicenter00]

Bill,

That's certainly an interesting way of looking at it. I've never actually explained how the Virus works to my players, it's just something in my mind for how it works, so the system has always been up for modification or replacement in its entirety if a more interesting concept came up.

As for the rapid rate of Virus evolution or "iteration" my view was that the Virus has a lot of "self-repairing" coding built into it - it again, is holographic in nature. Even if the Virus has only 40% of its code, it has self-repairing routines that will complete the rest of the code by the clues in markers in the remaining code. My idea for the rapid rate of Virus iteration was that transmitting an entire copy of Virus code was considered exceedingly unlikely by its developers, even with the efficiency of Imperial computer systems, it would be too easily detected or the window of transmission wouldn't be long enough to transmit everything.

So typically, the Virus would only shoot like the bare minimums of itself into the new system - if it had more time, it might continue to shoot in more data to create a more perfect image, but usually only a fragment of itself. This fragment, once running, would use its self-repairing code to fill in the blanks to create a running version of itself. The upside is that this means a very short exposure could transmit the Virus. The downside is that the self-repairing feature wasn't (and isn't) perfect - there's a lot of "best-guesses" used to create code and wholesale examination and co-opting of existing code to fill in the missing parts. Because of this, each iteration of the Virus would be different, wildly different in some cases.

My take on Virus and some of its exceedingly odd abilities is that it's not a selfprogramming chip, but a disembodied psionic entity whose habitat is computer chips. That's why it can infect via radio waves and infect computer systems that are not based on the Deyo chips. The ability to etch new pathways in solid material is a manifestation of its psi abilities.

I usually avoid psionics with the Virus. However, I can see your point - it would make things easier. But I'm usually on a big plan to reduce the power of psionics in my game, not increase the amount of stuff with it.

Studying how psionics works is one of the biggest reasons why residual populations of humans are allowed to exist at all behind the Black Curtain ... you know, living in very realistic simulations but their incomplete bodies are suspended in support goo in huge racks. The Machines are especially technologies like psionic message transmission and psionic shifting (which the Zhodani have IMTU - but it's a harmful to the psions so the Zhodani don't use it - but many of the Machines wouldn't care). Since a faction of humans IMTU have stutterwarp, shifting is going to be the Machines response weapon.

EDIT: Okay, rereading my post, I guess I don't want to reduce the power of psions. I just want to modify them and get rid of certain powers and reduce the effects of some, increase others.

 

[Antony]

Another thing about virus is that suicide is generally contrasurvival so more evolved forms would tend to bury this tendency. (I just had a mental image of a depressed robot parking cars). Would one strain of virus sacrifice itself for another if neither would survive if the sacrifice did not occur? Then what about the virus that infects the Scout Service data repositary below the planet Reference just outside the black curtain?

Then moving back to PEs, especially those with Hiver involvement. Hiver's must be especially worried by the humans. There have been several major collapses brought on by humans the last causing all of known space to come crashing down. Can they be manipulated to stop doing this. Can virus be manipulated? What about those other PEs shown on the 1201 map in the Spica and Hinterworlds sectors and the other PE shown in Old Expanses what is going on there? Were any details of these published anywhere? or are they the ones being talked about and I just havn't put the names to these PEs?

 

[Starviking]

What about those other PEs shown on the 1201 map in the Spica and Hinterworlds sectors and the other PE shown in Old Expanses what is going on there? Were any details of these published anywhere? or are they the ones being talked about and I just havn't put the names to these PEs?

IIRC they are the 'stepping stone' PEs that service the Hiver support missions into the Old Expanses. The one in OE P subsector was given some detailing in the Traveller Navigator program for the Old Expanses. The Spica one was given some details by Leroy Guateny back in the day - but that would probably not be official.

 

[Antony]

So effectively no details. Would you like to be the human citizen of one of these steeping stones knowing that the hivers have decided that the RC will be the focus of their efforts.

 

[epicenter00]

Another thing about virus is that suicide is generally contrasurvival so more evolved forms would tend to bury this tendency. (I just had a mental image of a depressed robot parking cars). Would one strain of virus sacrifice itself for another if neither would survive if the sacrifice did not occur? Then what about the virus that infects the Scout Service data repository below the planet Reference just outside the black curtain?

You're certainly right - I think everyone agrees that the Virus AIs who have the strong suicide programming have ceased to exist.

The AIs probably would not understand life and death the same way that humans do, especially modern-day Western educated humans. Given they can copy themselves and so on, would they really feel the same way about death? And do they feel like a "species" or do they feel as a collection of "individuals"?

One of the thing that the AIs would probably much be different than us is the idea of "identity." Is identity all about the strain of the Virus that is in the machine as well the device it's in? If either changed, would be considered a different entity? How much could you modify before the entity was different? If there was, say, a Trepida tank that was controlled by the Virus, if you changed out the main weapon for a different weapon, would it be a different being? Or would identity really be that big of a hang-up to Virus AIs?

Then moving back to PEs, especially those with Hiver involvement. Hiver's must be especially worried by the humans. There have been several major collapses brought on by humans the last causing all of known space to come crashing down. Can they be manipulated to stop doing this. Can virus be manipulated? What about those other PEs shown on the 1201 map in the Spica and Hinterworlds sectors and the other PE shown in Old Expanses what is going on there? Were any details of these published anywhere? or are they the ones being talked about and I just havn't put the names to these PEs?

There's a part of this thinking that I find a little to "fantasy elven" for me - that humans are the only ones who seem to have these periodic collapses of civilization. That all the other intelligent beings in the universe can have these eternal regimes and only humans, because we're crude and violent and self-destructive have these massive collapses. Other species, of course, are peaceful, noble, and live in harmony with the nature or the universe. It's clear that GDW I think is guilty of "idealizing" aliens in that respect (the only human empire that have reached this "elven" ideal of an eternal empire are the Zhodani, who have the typical traits of a happier society, looking down at others, and stronger spirtual powers they'd just need to honor the Valar and Eru and they'd be all Tolkien) - but I wonder if civilization/empire collapses like this were typical of all intelligent species (and there's no reason to believe they wouldn't be) would Hivers really be this concerned?

 

[Antony]

Of course the ancients also had this collapse. I never much liked the Solomani Confederation complete with political officers overseeing field commanders. The other races gradually got "dirtier" as more came to be written about them but as most started off as sterotypical "aliens" they were somewhat hampered from the start.

Both the Kkree and Aslan carry out genocidal wars against non-comformists (if they can get away with it), the Hiver manipulating a world of Kkree into using meat sauces so other Kkree exterminate the contaminated ones.

The Zhodani were scheduled for their own collapse though it was to be imposed on them via the Empress Wave resulting in a civil war and refugees streaming into the Regency. I think that the creators just did not like very high levels of technology to be available. I can understand this as some players will respond to a situtation by applying technology to it instead of thinking there way through.

Another thing that bugs me a bit is basically the canon statement that nowhere else in charted space has another major race (ie one with a self developed FTL system) been found. So what is it about the imperial region that is special?

Anyway just wait until the Solomani Perseus expeditions return with their rag tag fleet pursued by a machine race and run into virus.

 

[epicenter00]

Another thing that bugs me a bit is basically the canon statement that nowhere else in charted space has another major race (ie one with a self developed FTL system) been found. So what is it about the imperial region that is special?

Supposedly, Grandfather discovered Jump drive because he was (is) unique in all of known space - he was some being, prolonged of life, of godlike intellect and could figure it out.

This runs into the problem of "so what?" because Grandfather supposedly hasn't been meddling in the civilization of the races of the area (at least after the Ancient War). So what gives?

There's only a few good conclusions:

1. That Grandfather or the Ancients have meddled in the Major Race development of Jump Drive - the none of them can really claim to have developed it themselves.

2. That nobody meddled with it, and the races in the are just "special." Lame idea.

3. There's some special phenomenon about the space in the area that makes Jump Drive work (so it'll stop working at some point) or makes it "easy" to make such discoveries. Sadly, this idea is lame as well.

4. If the local races have done it, others have as well. Let's see more of them.

I go with #4 myself.

 

[Starviking]

So effectively no details. Would you like to be the human citizen of one of these steeping stones knowing that the hivers have decided that the RC will be the focus of their efforts.

Trade passing through, Hivers keeping the spacelanes safe...could be worse!

 

[Antony]

And of course it was all the humans idea wasn't it?

I do have to admit that I too created several PEs which I am always publicising (http://www.skaran.net/bannerscampaign/campaign.html) see I've done it again. I just can't help it...

 

[Starviking]

And of course it was all the humans idea wasn't it?

Well, you know the Hivers - never claiming credit where it's due

I do have to admit that I too created several PEs which I am always publicising (http://www.skaran.net/bannerscampaign/campaign.html) see I've done it again. I just can't help it...

And good ones at that.

I did roll up quite a few in my day too. Must see if I can find 'em and get them up on the net.

Eamon

 

[Antony]

Which reminds me, I must do some more work on the Banners Sector. Last time we played there the old Lightning class cruiser Cause Rampant and a combined Delsun Czarate and Alston League fleet had just fought the Solomani vampire dreadnought Ultimate Victory in the Helebore system (1835 Banners). The dreadnought was defeated with a destroyed power plant and computer system while the poor Cause Rampant was modertaely damaged but had had its jump drive totalled. Repairs in this uninhabited system could be problematic.

 

[Starviking]

Which reminds me, I must do some more work on the Banners Sector. Last time we played there the old Lightning class cruiser Cause Rampant and a combined Delsun Czarate and Alston League fleet had just fought the Solomani vampire dreadnought Ultimate Victory in the Helebore system (1835 Banners). The dreadnought was defeated with a destroyed power plant and computer system while the poor Cause Rampant was modertaely damaged but had had its jump drive totalled. Repairs in this uninhabited system could be problematic.

Ah! A perfect spot to restart a campaign in.

 

[Antony]

Hmm, can a 700,000dt SD piggypack a 60,000dt (actually 61,600dt with those external shuttles) through jump space. Use the Cause Rampants computer system linked to the Ultimate Victory's jump drive? The two vessels are both TL14 so would be somewhat compatible, or cannibalise the intact jump drive on Ultimate Victory to rebuild the Cuase Rampants?

Helebore is jump-3 from the nearest Alston League system, jump-4 to Alston itself, it is also jump-4 from the nearest Delsun Czarate system. I can see the Delsun Czarate being thrilled at the Alston League getting hold of a TL14 dreadnought, especially with both nations main battle fleets being in the Helebore system together. Definately an interesting situation.

 

[Vargas]

I think the Duchy of Oasis answered a need for a sympathetic actor in the Rebellion Era. It was centrally located but brought many of the same characteristics also posessed by Deneb with it, IMO. Oddly enough I think it filled the same role in TNE.

 

[BardicHeart]

First, just wanted to say thanks to Epicenter for sharing, that's the most interesting and intriguing take on using Virus in a campaign I've seen. I'm among those who, upon first reading about it felt an immediate... I think the word HATE fits. LOL But your expansion on it has me rethinking using Virus in a campaign.

That said... the thing that made me hate Virus the most was the explanation of how it worked.

That's certainly an interesting way of looking at it. I've never actually explained how the Virus works to my players, it's just something in my mind for how it works, so the system has always been up for modification or replacement in its entirety if a more interesting concept came up.

Okay, after much brain wracking this is the explanation I've come up with.

Virus wouldn't have been possible without the Cymbaline based chips. These chips were more than just a life form, after much research on how they worked allowed a leap forward in the manufacture of chips. Previous technology had printed microscopic transistors onto silicon wafers, printing up to 10 million per square millimeter. Note: this is about 10 times what current technology can manage, currently most micro chips have up to 1 million transistors per square millimeter... should we say that computers of that time had greater compression or is that enough do you think?

Cymbaline chips were able to rewrite themselves because they used photons to alter the silicon itself at a molecular level. Once this was understood, they were used to create optical chips that functioned at a molecular level, able to create the equivalent of over 1 billion transistors per square millimeter, a huge reduction in size. The result allowed a computers that were smaller to have still more processing power, and handle far more complex tasks.

Because the chips spread in use throughout the Imperium and through trade and espionage other races adopted similar optical chips, these new optical computer chips became the norm throughout inhabited space, replacing older computers. Because the chips rewrite themselves constantly the Virus could invade and take over any computer using optical chips, rewriting itself onto them.

By the time anyone realized what was going on, it was too late, the effects of Virus had plunged what was left of the Imperium into another dark age. By 1201, no one understands how Virus works, or why it can rewrite the chips the way it does, they just know it can.

Older computers using older printed silicon chips are largely immune to Virus, it can attack them and possibly disrupt the data contained on its rewriteable storage, but can't really take them over, though these attacks can cause malfunctions. Firewalling, error checking protocols and anti-viral software could all mitigate the ability of Virus to affect such a computer. The down side is that such older computers are generally larger, bulkier, use more power and still can't match the processing power of the optical chips.

Now I'm no expert on any of this, but its an explanation I cooked up after thinking about how those Cymbaline chips might work naturally and the idea seems to generally fit. It answers how Virus can transmit itself over radio without requiring a "magical" transmutation as a solution. It could also mean that if someone were to discover this and understand it, ships could possibly be built with a higher level of automation using larger and bulkier computers. Not sure if you could just use lower tech computers (and if so what tech level would be appropriate?) to represent this. Open to suggestions or ideas.