/epg/ - Eclipse Phase General

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How did your EP character celebrate the New Year in AF 11?

>>51371129

Bioconservative Habs:
>Vo Nguyen (Home of bioconservative efforts around Earth and many organizations)
>Muir (Preservationist base on Luna - rumored to be a training camp for biocon terrorists)
>Horeb (Home of Israeli government in exile, particularly conservative hardliners - noted bioconservative populace)
>Elysian Fields (Home to those who want to die a "natural death", many bioconservatives flock to this habitat to live a limited lifestyle. Earth-Sun L3)
>Callirrhoe (Jovian moonlet, home to conservative refugees from Europa and Callisto, want to live the Jovian lifestyle)
>Euanthe (Another Jovian moonlet, a Republic client state who works with them)
>Thunder on the Horizon (10370 Hylonome) (Outer fringe hab of moderate bioconservative "bolters", who feel death is natural and should occur without warning but without old age - they practice Whole Body Apoptosis)

>>51371329
Is that including bioconservative anarchoprimitivists?

>>51371350

Nah, this is specifically habitats mentioned as having bioconservative ties or populations. There are a couple of anarchist neo-primitive organizations out there too, but I don't think they have consolidated "homes" listed.

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>>51371329
Many thanks, anon

Are there synth only societies in EP?

>>51371963
Absolutely. Mining colonies on the surface of Venus, some vacuum habs, and AGI mercurial habs come immediately to mind.

>>51371963
>>51372020
Of course synth-only doesn't necessarily mean only AGIs.

>>51371384
>Pointing a firearm at your own genitals
Well, at least she has trigger discipline.

>>51372125
Her finger is on the trigger, she has the weapon drawn for no reason, and she has no idea where she is pointing it. That is not trigger discipline.

So is there a difference between an ASI, a seed AI, a Promethean, and a TITAN?

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>>51372326
The major difference is that a Promethean probably isn't infected.

>>51372326
Seed AIs are AIs designed to become ASIs. The TITANs and Prometheans are particular ASIs.

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So what would be the best measures to take before heading into combat with TITAN machines? What morphs should you use, what equipment should you bring, what technology should you stay away from, what vehicles are best, what tactics are preferred, etc?

>>51372506
Buy a nice backup insurance umbrella policy

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>>51372517
Right, but I'm talking big warfare here. You're not going alone, you've forked yourself and made hundreds of AGI's, and you've got a small army together. The question is what is the best loadout to fight them and avoid subversion and hacking.

>>51372532
Personally I would go with timed detonation nuclear warheads on purely ballistic trajectories

>>51372532

Faraday Mods installed. Wi-fi off ("Autistic mode"). Communicate only via line of sight with a laser link, or by handsigns or verbalizing. Commanders interface over the distance via quantum encrypted devices and only in short intervals.

Bring fire. One thing most TITAN machines can't do is directly eat energy. Thermal effects like a torch, plasma or incendiary weapons are hot enough to boil them up. Do not rely on seekers or kinetics, they have countermeasure technology. ABG. Always. Be. Guardian Swarming. Also, keep EMP bombs stuck on your body as an emergency measure, nanoswarms dislike it. If you're religiously opposed to your own nanoswarms, then you better hope that God does divine intercession for Uncle Vengeance and start praying.

Do not use a single fork or AI line, or arm everybody with a Dead Switch. Preferably both. It's possible capture and analysis will expose vulnerabilities other units can exploit.

Isolate and overwhelm the enemy. Use their stalking tactics against them. If possible, deny communications - machines only get smarter the more of them are hooked up. Deny access to repair and recharging facilities first. Target the smartest machine in the group, not the most heavily armed. Do not use active sensors, you will be seen. You will probably be seen anyway, so have a backup plan.

Individual tactics depend on the threat profile of a given machine.

When in doubt, blow it all up. Touch nothing - contain or destroy everything.

>>51372532
You're mostly going to want neutron bombs.

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>>51372602
Thank you anon. Will keep this in mind for future operations.

Should I make sure nobody is using a cyberbrain, or is that unnecessary? It doesn't matter whether they're using biomorphs or synths so long as they have an organic brain, right?

Or does the Faraday mod make all this irrelevant anyways?

>>51372643
Assume the TITAN will disable half of your equipment before the fight even starts. The shielding might work but you want a backup if it doesn't.

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>>51373287
So biomorphs and organic brains are the more reliable of the two then (albeit weaker in combat). Okay.

Hmmm...clearing out the Martian quarantine zone is gonna take a lot of morphs. Better put than under "long term stretch goals"

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I really wish i could get comfortable with this setting. I've read through it casually a few times and it seems like every time i find something i think is standout awesome, something smacks my enthusiasm down.

Big chunks of it basically read like the kitchen sink of all the stuff i like. Weird eldritch threats that actually do come across as alien in a genuine manner. Cyborgs up everywhere. Whatever Nietzschean shit the Ultimates have going on.

Then you get to the stuff thats just hilariously awful. Like the entire habitats full of people who smoke like chimneys and who'd sell their own mother out for cigarettes, and every single thing to do with the economy and 'wage slavery maaaaan!' and every anarchist habitat in the outer system that somehow keeps functioning via the unbridled reality warping force of creator bias.

(Oh. And Sun-Whales. Although i think the Salamanders look cool as fuck personally and like the idea of solar creatures, the whales are a bit much.)

Plus i just don't believe most humans would accept stuff like a machine that kills you and transmits a copy of you over long distances and think of it as transport. An emergency reaction to certain death, sure. But a way of casually travelling? You're immortal anyway guys. Take the shuttle.

I mean, transferring body to body is less stressful because you could sync them up next to one another, run the personality in both of them simultaneously and then just disconnect the old one (or yknow, just go with the GITS route and encase brains in a shell that can be swapped from body to body -easily achievable in universe sd far as i can tell and avoids the whole issue) but a suicide booth with a transmitter on it?

And then there are just the awkward small niggles that bug me. Like, why would anyone ever use pods, especially that giant crab one, when robots do it better and dont take months to grow? And how is slavery a thing if i can just break one ego and then copy it until i have an army of slaves?

>>51373548
Would the explanation that some people don't think the same way you do about these things be enough for you to accept that the setting has people who think differently to you?

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>>51373594
>And then there are just the awkward small niggles that bug me. Like, why would anyone ever use pods, especially that giant crab one, when robots do it better and dont take months to grow? And how is slavery a thing if i can just break one ego and then copy it until i have an army of slaves?
The rest of it is just people thinking differently, but I would actually like an answer to this part of his question.

>>51373548
on the whole copy transfer kill thing

thats exactly how a startrek transporter works they just dont make a big deal out of it most of the time

>>51373673
Some people don't like sleeving in purely synthetic morphs; there's a certain stigma attached to these sort of morphs. According to the rules, you can stick a cyberbrain into a robot and treat it like a morph. People don't do it because it's weird and distasteful in most places.

On the slavery front, it depends where and how you're doing it. Some jurisdictions will allow regulated-slavery-in-the-form-of-indenture, but making alpha forks is illegal. People who are in areas that practice completely unregulated slavery probably likely don't have many rules regarding forking, and so do make use of forking to increase the number of egos they've got available. If you're buying some black market egos to use as indentures, though, you probably don't want forks; a brainprint scan could suddenly show that this ego is registered in a database somewhere else. I'm not sure why you'd turn to the black market slave trade in a situation where you've got access to IndEX, but perhaps you don't want to leave such a paper trail.

Broadly speaking, it's because indenture is generally legal in places where alpha forking is not.

>>51373594

(I'm gonna assume we're talking about the farcasting thing.)

I can accept some people thinking about farcasting (thats what thats called right?) differently enough from me that some people would use it without issue.

But i can't accept that the vast majority of humanity would do this when they understand the technology at work. And that seems to be whats indicated? That farcasting is standard for life and no one really considers it weird?

The survival instinct is a pretty massive fucking thing to overcome. People have arguments today about how the Star Trek transporters are murder boxes. And the transporter technicians didn't have to drag Kirk's corpse out of the machine when they were done.

>>51373814
That's the thing. The vast majority of humanity didn't accept farcasting without issue. Conveniently, the vast majority of that vast majority was killed in the Fall.

>>51373814
I think its cultural
Imagine growing up in EP and being exposed to all of it since you can remember. hell I cant remmber, is there even an age limit on farcasting?
you might have been farcasted long before you grasped what is actuallly going on.

>>51373814
Pretty much that. Those what wanted to survive so desperately - the survival instinct! - were willing to egocast off planet during the Fall, even though for the most part there was absolutely no guarantee that there'd be a body waiting for them at the other end (hence lots of egos in cold storage from the Fall). Those who were rich enough or lucky enough could get off with their bodies intact.

After you've done it once and woken up with a feeling of continuity, it's a little easier to do it the next time. Some people in the setting likely do feel uncomfortable about doing it, to varying degrees, with varying degrees of acceptance.

>>51373900
If you wanted to play somebody like that, you could probably treat it as a phobia disorder negative trait, and maybe force them to make continuity tests whenever they egocast.

>>51373839

Hm. You know, that's probably the most satisfying answer i could really get. Although I'm displaying this point of view now and if it had been me i would have still farcasted a copy of myself offworld before trying to survive the normal way.

Its not like im saying anyone would have to be insane to use the technology. Just that i'd expect a bigger chunk of the population to be really uncomfortable with it. But as far as i can tell, if you do that you get labelled as backwards or something?

I guess people don't like being told they arent them because they were sent via Murderportation.

Ah well, thanks anyway. Thats honestly helped me like the setting a lot more.

(Not sure if i could play a game where my character takes eight months waiting on an asteroid barge to catch up to my instant teleportation using fellows though).


>>51373803

I know that pod morphs are better for comfort and reputation and stuff like that. But the giant crab morph is just a giant crab. Its basically gonna get used for construction or maybe for military uses? It just seems a massive effort when a giant crab robot would be easier and probably less gross.

I'll take your word on the slavery thing, because i honestly dont know enough about the setting to really say anything more on it.

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>>51373930
I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's not like you have to kill yourself in real life anyways. Most of the time I play an AGI or morph who knows that farcasting kills him but either doesn't care, or just forks himself there instead.

>>51373947

To be honest, if i was going to play a game in EP something appeals to me about the idea of being just some poor nobody on a crappy station somewhere barely scraping along with nothing to his name. The sort of person for whom saving up to buy a low level gun is a great achievement.

So farcasting probably isn't going to come into it anyway.

Then again, im not even sure EP has an equivalent to an urchan type character. It seems like its straining so hard to be a utopia in places it seems like even the harshest people's lives (outside of actual slavery and that sort of thing) has got to be okay. And when you can go to the replicator and print out whatever you like, being an alladdin-esque street rat is probably pretty different.

Being on earth could be cool i suppose. The constant and ever-present danger probably takes the edge off the vacuous utopia post-scarcity.

>>51373930
>Just that i'd expect a bigger chunk of the population to be really uncomfortable with it. But as far as i can tell, if you do that you get labelled as backwards or something?

Some people would. Some people wouldn't. There's quite a few different viewpoints on the matter that can exist. I think the main reason that I get wary about people going "I wanna play a character that won't use egocasting!" or "I wanna play a character that won't resleeve!" or "I wanna play a character that doesn't know anything at all about the setting!" is that it makes running games needlessly difficult.

A character that doesn't like egocasting, finds the idea stressful and suffers from existential angst about the whole process is fine if they're willing to take one for the team when required and go through with it. If the player refuses to budge because it's what they want their character to do, then it becomes a complete drag on the game. I've seen way more "I won't do this ever!" absolutism in characters than "I don't like doing this, but..." characters; the former holds the game to ransom, the latter allows for character development and keeps the game going. Keep in mind that what you're reading is a roleplaying game that is supposed to be played, not an exercise in world-building.

>It just seems a massive effort when a giant crab robot would be easier and probably less gross.

You know that some people are going to find the idea of sleeving into a purely synthetic morph to be more distasteful than one that's partly organic, right? Granted, I think you'd be a bit odd to want to sleeve into a giant crab, but it strikes me as reasonable to accept that other people would have different views on that. I think piercings are gross, but I accept that some people like them, and others don't really have a strong opinion either way.

>>51374051
>Then again, im not even sure EP has an equivalent to an urchan type character.

This is just, obviously, my opinion, but I don't think there's anything stopping you running a game where that sort of thing is a practical choice. I like Firewall as a premise because it serves as a way for bringing multiple characters with disparate backgrounds together, and provides a structure for a campaign that can be expanded out of if required. A campaign where you're down and out in the Pits of Extropia could be very fun, for instance, but it would require everyone to be on the same page in terms of the characters they're going to play compared to a Firewall game.

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>>51374051
There are different ways you can go with it. While not resleeving or being a bioconservative certainly makes the game harder, it also makes it very interesting.

One thing I like to do is play as an AGI created by bioconservatives to protect humanity. It releases me from the standard worries about "dying" or "having a soul", allows me to use all the good tech available, and let's me keep by real life values while I'm at it.

>>51374100
>let's me keep by real life values while I'm at it.

Yikes!

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>>51374113
Yikes?

>>51374133
Yeah, yikes. I find the idea of having to play a character that reflects your personal values in a roleplaying game to be a bit weird to say the least.

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>>51374159
I don't always do that. Heck, I've also loved playing an extropian merchant, Jovian agent, LLA reclaimer, and Ultimate operative. But it does make it slightly easier to roleplay when I don't have to change my worldview on suicide.

>>51374107

Oh yeah. Id never play that sort of character unless everyone else wanted a similar kind of game. Like >>51374066 said, theres making a character and then there's making a character that gets in everyone's fucking way. The game should always comes first.

If i was going to make a character for a game where firewall or farcasting was a thing, id think a way for my character to be okay with it or think around it or whatever. I was just talking in terms of pure world building about how awkward i found the idea.

>>51374112

That's actually a pretty interesting idea on the whole thing. I imagine it helps a bunch on the roleplay front and would probably have a lot of amusing or interesting reactions to be playing against type for perfectly sensible reasons.

>>51374174
Fair enough! I'm sorry for leaping to the wrong conclusion. I guess I've just seen so many arguments about why the game is shit that boil down to "Eclipse Phase is bad because my personal values are not the ones solely reflected in the game".

Is there room for playable cutesy robot sidekicks, like the ones in Ulysses 31 or Battlestar Galactica?

It's fine if there isn't. I'm just wondering.

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>>51374248
Yup, you can be a cute robot, badass robot, AI in a head (think Cortana), AI in the flesh, brain in a jar in a robot, etc.

>>51374248
Yes. Sort of. Maybe.

>>51374272
>>51374289
Nice! Now for the hard part: playing the role in a way that isn't annoying to the rest of the group.

>>51374302

I suggest communicating entirely in Beep-Boops, Whistles and that one squeal R2-D2 made sometimes that sounded like he got his dick trapped in a car door and was surprised to find how much he enjoyed the agony.

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>>51374302
Right. This game is a little hard to get into, I'll admit. There's a lot to take in and adapt to, but at least it lends itself to adventures and campaigns well (something Transhuman Space has trouble with).

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>>51374329
I'd communicate in an over-the-top "cowboy American" accent, with enough y'alls to go around, y'hear?

>>51373548
REMOVE SURYA

>>51373548
>Plus i just don't believe most humans would accept stuff like a machine that kills you and transmits a copy of you over long distances and think of it as transport. An emergency reaction to certain death, sure. But a way of casually travelling? You're immortal anyway guys. Take the shuttle.
>I mean, transferring body to body is less stressful because you could sync them up next to one another, run the personality in both of them simultaneously and then just disconnect the old one (or yknow, just go with the GITS route and encase brains in a shell that can be swapped from body to body -easily achievable in universe sd far as i can tell and avoids the whole issue) but a suicide booth with a transmitter on it?

First off, egocasting is philosophically no worse than teleportation, which is a well-established SF trope.

Secondly, you're using a very limited definition of selfhood. It's much more useful to think of a person as a computational process. After all, if you thought of a robot as a person and migrated the code to new hardware, you wouldn't think of it as a different person now would you? Once you accept that a human is just a self-aware meat robot that happened by accident you're already half-way there

>Take the shuttle

That's way more expensive over long distances and just because you're immortal doesn't mean you don't get bored. In fact, boredom-induced suicide is probably the leading cause of permadeath post-Fall outside certain bioconservative circles.

(continued)

>>51373548
(continued)
>And then there are just the awkward small niggles that bug me. Like, why would anyone ever use pods, especially that giant crab one, when robots do it better and dont take months to grow?

Pods can do things like enjoy eating. They're easier to adapt to (assuming they're shaped like your original body, the crab being an exception here) than synths. Lots of people who can't afford a biomorph see it as the next best thing. For indentures in the service industry pods are a step up in status from synths for the indenture holder. If you're trying to minimize the use of nanotech then pods require way less maintenance.

>And how is slavery a thing if i can just break one ego and then copy it until i have an army of slaves?

Unless you're in some brinker hab you're way less likely to get caught if you're practicing conventional slavery. Also, diversity. If all of you slaves are identical and one of them turns out to be shit at a task then guess what? They're all shit at that task. Then there's Extropian 'slavery' (separate from actual Extropian slavery which is illegal) where the slave entered into a contract which resulted in the situation but did not sign away forking rights.

Also, this exact scenario does happen sometimes.

>>51373843
>is there even an age limit on farcasting
No. You can do bring pets, data and software with you as well.

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Jumping off from the Jovian equipment discussion several threads ago: Are there any habs that belong to 20th Century/Early 21st century-style conservatives? Like, a melange of commie-hatin' freedom-lovers straight out of the 80s, people who think the Second Amendment is the most important amendment, people who believed neo-Fundamentalist Islam was the biggest issue pre-fall, good-ole-boy rednecks who didn't go to Mars and insist on driving coal rollers in a future where the standard are electric cars, people who formed anti-government militias, the religious right who believe Jesus and the Holy Spirit got them through the Fall, lolbertarians who didn't take off to Extropia or the Commonwealth, and /pol//Reddit-style alt-right?

>>51373548
>Plus i just don't believe most humans would accept stuff like a machine that kills you and transmits a copy of you over long distances and think of it as transport.

The 90 percent of humanity that thought this way died in the Fall. Those who were willing to egocast did, those who weren't were, as a rule, killed by the TITANs.

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ULTIMATES NUMBER ONE

JOVIANS A SHIT

GET BACK TO US WHEN YOU ACTUALLY BEAT THE TITANS AT SOMETHING

>>51373548
>every anarchist habitat in the outer system that somehow keeps functioning via the unbridled reality warping force of creator bias.

Naw, they work because communally-organized non-capitalist microstates are one of the best forms of society in a post-scarcity environment.

They just frequently get rolled over by less competitive, traditionally statist or corporate interests who invest in things like books and guns.

Exhibit: Minervans.

>>51377671
That doesn't explain the LLA or the Jovians and various habs, or the scum barges from people who physically made it off Earth (iirc the Jenkins morph was made when not-the-Jackass-crew got off world) - I'm also willing to bet a solid chunk of Mars really don't think this way.

Speaking of which - where in the splatbooks is the discussion of the fact no one acknowledges cortical stack backups aren't the person, just the copy of the person? I know it's somewhere in the pages, but my PDF viewer hates searching.

>>51377794
Listen, it's like magic or faster than light travel in other settings. Just suspend your disbelief for this one thing because it's the principle that makes the setting work for the most part. There is stream of consciousness, despite the fact that logically there really shouldn't be.

>>51373803
There's also the pre-gen characters heavily implying a lot of people don't like sleeving into 'bots because you get phantom pains - now you can't sleep, can't eat, can't really rest. Some people adjust, others don't.

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>>51377826
Pods are a happy compromise, at least.

>>51377825
If I recall, some of the arguments are "who cares? It's my thoughts, personality, and what I know that matters.

In my opinion, I like to think there's a solid chunk of people who only use cortical stacks as the absolute last resort, and we hear about it more often because we're in an organization expected to die horribly several times. For its advanced tech, I don't think cortical stacks are perfect - it won't capture every twist of the nerve and every memory perfectly, and so won't the egobridging/resleeving procedure.

Actually, now that gets me thinking - why isn't there a "escape pod" collar/helmet that, upon detecting severe body damage, decaps the head, dumps life-preserving nanites, nutrient gels, etc., and rockets off to a safe zone? Not as portable as cort stacks, but at least you know it's you, radiation damage from flying in space notwithstanding.

>>51377907
>For its advanced tech, I don't think cortical stacks are perfect - it won't capture every twist of the nerve and every memory perfectly, and so won't the egobridging/resleeving procedure.

While I agree with most of what you said, this is pretty much head canon isn't it? Cortical stacks are one for one memory devices, even if they don't actually preserve stream of consciousness.

Is there a difference, from philosophical, cognitive and continuity-minded standpoints, between putting someone in digital dead storage and cryonically freezing them?
Assuming no damage due to crystal formation and proper one-to-one infomorph coverage, I mean.

>>51377952
Yeah, but biological brains and the way nerves are built aren't easily flash-copied and flash-grown like USB sticks. There's a lot more than a simple file transfer.

>>51378169
You're ignoring the fact that the setting addresses this and says that it IS that simple in EP. They have basically complete understanding of the brain and the hardware to move around perfect copies.

>>51378154
Not really no. Both of them kill the person but preserve an exact copy of the brain.

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>>51379102
Have you ever done an Earth game? If so, what did your players find there?

>>51372602
Well there is alternative variant to guardian swarms but it kills communication beyond signs and voice completely - power armor with installed full surface shock discharge running constantly. You probably still will want at least microbots with additional shockers to guard and repair breaches in armor. Or just have a "got breach go kamikaze" policy.

Adding to Faraday mods - all equipment with installed programming should be running on old hardware preferably with drive space used up to the last byte and no rewriting options. No wi-fi or even laser links to equipment at all only optical cables. Have a couple of caveman class mechanical weapons without any info-accessories as backup.

>>51377794
Jovians actually do travel normally mostly. Egocasting is prohibited for most of the population. Only military, government and security specialist can access it. Even I think diplomatic corpus will probably use physical rides. Much more trouble but it gets the point across.

That's also why their spacefleet is so big.

>>51379685
Oh, I know, I was just more talking about the fact that it wasn't just egocasters who were able to get off Earth during the Fall. I'm willing to bet there's a ton of people who do not egocast for the same reason as Jovians.

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>>51374112

>>51379817
Your body is an interface. Your brain is an interface. The only thing that exists is will.

>>51379777

Well, if we're starting this conversation up again, resleeving and egocasting are kind of simultaneously common and uncommon.

Long-range space travel is expensive and time consuming. If you are involved in a trade or activity which requires quick mobility you're gonna have to either get down with forking, or get over any existential concerns about resleeving - keeping in mind assuming average attributes Resleeving is usually a slightly uncomfortable situation which may require periods of downtime at the end away from your "home" morph. It's almost never fun unless you were "born" with or otherwise develop Adaptability.

Most of the population has only been resleeved once - The Fall. Twice for former indentures possibly, more if you're in a high risk occupation. However, that 0 -> 1 transition is kind of a big deal. So even if you've done it once, you kind of have to deal with the existential dread one way or the other. Since most people do not have the moral stones to condemn themselves to an existential negation or however else they might view being a "copy", they just move on with their lives - and probably tend to deeply resent people who insist they are "dead" or "copies" on multiple levels (not the least of which is it's just plain rude).

Player characters, however, tend to be exceptional people. And using the default Firewall situation (a construct which allows high mobility in the setting and gives a reason for disparate factions to come together in a single group, thus requiring less GM nanny work) tends to mean you need to be able to travel fast. Thus, the mechanics and all the in-setting people with Firewall treat egocasting as perfectly normal, because they have to.

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>>51379984

Also, before anybody goes "but a lot of the Jovians haven't resleeved!" on my "most people have only been resleeved once"

Entire population of the Jovian sphere (including all moon/lets not just JR) is listed as about 40 million. Population of Valles-New Shanghai is 37 million. Total population of Titan is about 60 million. Total population on Luna - who have an obvious underclass of Synths is 40 mil.

Scale is important.

>>51372506
Someone else.

You let someone else do it. And if they survive, and come back... you fucking kill them.

>>51377907
>Actually, now that gets me thinking - why isn't there a "escape pod" collar/helmet that, upon detecting severe body damage, decaps the head, dumps life-preserving nanites, nutrient gels, etc., and rockets off to a safe zone? Not as portable as cort stacks, but at least you know it's you, radiation damage from flying in space notwithstanding.

I wouldn't put it past the Minervans to refurbish some Headhunter drones to follow their operatives around as an escape mechanism.

>>51381588

Recovering from a head requires a healing vat, which the Minervans would burn everything within a kilometer of if you even joked it was lying around.

>>51379685
How do the Jovians justify this double standard?

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>>51381588
Reminds me of something...

>>51381663
>expecting a bunch of south-americans to give a shit about double standards

HUEHUEHUEHUE

>>51381701
It's deeper than that though. It's not like restricting nukes for military use. Imagine if teleporters got invented and congressmen declared them illegal because they 'work by killing people', but openly used them on a regular basis. People would have questions about why thrse politicians are willing to allegedly die.

>>51381849
It's about sacrifice I imagine. Military personnel are willing to die but they banned it for civilians because suicide is illegal or something. I don't know.

>>51381879
When a war hero does it that seems plausible. When Donald Trump does it, you start asking questions.

>>51381974
"Donald Trump" doesn't. Spies, military, maybe occasional diplomat if situation needs a man right now somewhere far from Jovian moons. Senators are pretty comfy in their apartments and don't need to go beyond Republic territory and for that purpose they have spaceships.

>>51379817
Except that most transhumans favor improved interfaces between the mind and machinery. This is retarded to compare given that the show's transhuman movement was very different from the one in EP.

If a person is legally dead for several minutes, is your soul gone?

>>51382455
No, because you still have brain activity.

>>51382485
What if you go brain dead, and someone uses advanced recussitation methods to restart your body and brain? Is the restored you a soulless husk?

>>51382485
There are vegetables with nothing but a brain stem left who have brain activity.

>>51373673
Pods are cheap, they take longer to make but they're cheaper to make and service.

There's only one major hab where both forking and indenture is legal: Extropia. Even there I'd expect a lot of indenture contracts to forbid unrequested forking (though enforcement would be hard).

In the inner system where most indenture is done, and probably the rest of the system as well, illicit forking is enough to make generally placid inner system citizens riot in the streets. It's a really big deal if discovered, that will probably have people digging deeply enough to inflict Real Death on whoever does it.

>>51378169
Cortical stacks are built to solve a hard problem. [Moderate] is a pretty big deal for inoffensive nanotech.

>>51379225
I had a game like that. I thought it would be sci-fi Dark Souls tier brutal but the GM went easy so I was able to win pretty much every fight easily. I was kind of letdown by how much I didn't die horribly. I had shit like full-size plasma missiles for the SRNs I thought would be coming. I'd like to try something like that again, but I think I'd want nothing but experienced players and I don't think that's really possible.

>>51381663
The Jovian state doesn't blanket ban that stuff, it's just that the bulk of the population hates the tech and won't use it.

>>51382455
Maybe. It comes back if you resuscitate the body though.

>>51381663
>How do the Jovians justify this double standard?

Sacrifice for higher goal, which is protection of the last remaining stand of humanity in Solar System.

>>51377794
>Speaking of which - where in the splatbooks is the discussion of the fact no one acknowledges cortical stack backups aren't the person, just the copy of the person?
That's going to be in the core book. Ego-Morph duality is the axiom upon which both the setting and the system are built. They kind of explain it with the word "cognome". Searching that word will put you in the right place. Basically, the only people who believe that oneself is not independent of one's body are some (maybe the majority) of the Jovians.

>transferring body to body...then just disconnect the old one
That's exactly what they do when they can, with the whole "Ship of Theseus" nonsense. They have you running half in one body and half in the other in the middle of the transfer. It's gradual and supposed to be less traumatic than suddenly being in another body. I think that it would be traumatic as fuck to be half in a human body and half in a crab cyborg, and just giving some midazolam + ketamine (or the equivalent) would mitigate trauma from being in a new body.

>And how is slavery a thing if i can just break one ego and then copy it until i have an army of slaves?
There are millions of egos in cold storage. Few people are going to give them bodies for free, but companies are willing to give them a body at the end of a work contract, where the company earns a profit. Running copies of people for labor is frowned upon because you are running yet another one of yourself in place of someone who is basically dead. It's seen as selfish and/or egotistical in the extreme. It's also been shown by top companies that neurodiversity is a good thing for profits, and running forks is the opposite.

In general, you have the exact same opinions as me. Are you a reinstated backup of me without the year+ of /EPG/?

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>muh genetrash
>god emperor of Minerva
>true human alliance
>butt jihad

Minerva and Joveposters express an incredible selfishness towards humanity. Over 90% of humanity died or was spirited away by the TITANs. The loss of not just individuals but a great diversity of arts and crafts, skills and knowledge, perspectives and ideologies. Every member of the extended human family counts, especially when the menace of the TITANs looms overhead and there are no guarantees that even the most dogged and powerful military in the post-Fall world could survive an incursion. The old world's superpowers definitely didn't.

Most people overwhelmingly value every single unique ego, to the point that deliberately killing every copy and backup of a person is considered to the moral equivalent to supermurder. Because even if they weren't human, if they don't have souls, they generate an ecology which allows others to continue to survive. Technological innovations by the Argonauts are copied by every other faction. Scum and Anarchist bodymodding leads to new trends. The Mercurials push for new cognitive and physical adaptations and augmentations in the name of their pet uplift and AGI interests, which can then be adopted by the rest of transhumanity. We're all in this together, because if we're not then we might as well just let the incomprehensible insane machine gods kill us all.

We believe in letting you live as you place. Why can't you do the same?

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>>51386178
*please

Fuck.

P.S.: Minervan hit squads attacking habs in the Outer Rim are basically mass shooters in the Mid-West, trying to defeat 'the government' by blowing up schools and murdering people in malls.

If you had balls you'd attack the Commonwealth Navy head-on, or put the boot to Tharsis and their Consortium masters.

>>51386316
Why Tharsis?

>>51386458
The Tharsis League are the de-facto non-Consortium government and ostensibly fund and operate the majority of the TITAN busters who go into the Zone to wreck shit and keep the Exsurgents from getting too brave.

Also because Mars is the biggest part of the setting. :P

What is the PC Fleet like?

>>51387018

Well paid. Well funded. Well equipped. In it for a steady paycheck.

>>51387247
Although to be fair, if you declare it your intention to wipe out all resleeved and substantially transgenic people and send your ghetto doomfleet for Mars, you bet a bunch of former military space rent-a-cops are going to be super hype to fight you.

Nothing quite like the rush of crushing an X-Risk for money and glory.

>>51387247
Where is it based? Quantity or quality? How do the hypercorps play into it?

Are there any powerful political groups who aren't a complete pack of dickheads?

The Morningstar Constellation are basically Hollywood Celebrities. LLA is POO IN THE LOO, WE'RE TURBO JEWS AND KNOW ALL THAT IS BEST FOR YOU and have the weapons to prove it. Mars is every anarchists wet dream for a capitalist opposition and a caricature, and the Extropians are the other half of that wet dream. The scum are an eternal travelling orgy with no desire to innovate for anything that isn't drugs or fucking and aren't really human, more so than the other factions in the system. The Jovians are incredibly corrupt ideologues - Jack Chick with mass drivers. I don't think I need to get into the enlightened facism of the Autonomists and Socialists.

>>51387367

There's no formal base, as the Consortium does not have a proper singular military force, but does sub-contract with various member corporations - including Direct Action who are a major shareholder in the Hypercorp Council. Direct Action HQ is the Hexagon in one of the Earth-Luna lagrange points, and there's a ring of orbital defense stations called "The Batteries" around Mars. PC HQ is Progress, which is Deimos.

Security for individual habitats and stations is handled based on ownership - but presume basically the civilian government or the holding hypercorp contracts to get whoeever into the position - I/E Pathfinder has exclusive contracts with a local Martian corp, Herzog, who handle all security around the Martian Gate. A member city can probably form it's own PD/Militia for civil purposes, like how the Martian city states have done.

This means quality is probably their game, but the PC as a whole has the cash to throw around to make a quantity. But, since, y'know, they're the heart of old-fashioned commerce in the system and one of their major powers is a security and weapons tech company, you can be sure they have some fun toys. They also have access to AM production via Mercury and potentially extrasolar sites also. They can also throw money around to bring the Ultimates in.

>>51387277

Oh yeah, no, if the shit starts flying the PC would not just be the 9-to-5 guys. One of their big values is security or stability, so you fuck with that you'll get volunteers from a lot of guys chilling in retirement or who had to find new work since the Resource Wars ended. Nevermind that you start a "debt forgiveness" for indentures in exchange for military service you'd have people lining up.

> "I get to shoot dickbags and can get out in a couple of years, rather than sucking dicks for 5? Where do I sign?"

>>51387638

Also, because hypercorps are diversified and highly mobile and flexible, it's entirely possible to that a hypercorp station might just have what they call a "security department" who are just freelancers on their payroll right then. Which is better or worse depending.

>>51387659
>The PC fleet are just thousands and thousands of copies of the same ego in a reaper morph that is fired en-mass in groups at problems.

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>>51387676

>This machine kills anarchists

>>51387638
>the Consortium does not have a proper singular military force
There we go. Just how poorly organized is it?

>>51387707

>Direct Action (6%)

You tell me.

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For everyone's consideration.

Direct Action
Major Industries: Security Services, Military Contracting
Major Stations: Hexagon (Earth-Luna L5)
Descended from the remnants of several pre-Fall national military forces and private military contractors, this hypercorp made a name for itself in the period immediately following the Fall, where they helped manage refugee populations among various habitats and vessels while shattering any sign of unrest immediately and with full force. Direct Action today is known for its highly-efficient shock troops and superior combat morphs, providing security and public police services to self-governing habitats or hypercorp installations. Shifting political alliances between habitat clusters, corporate rivalry, and the constant fear of TITAN agents cater to Direct Action’s paranoia-inducing marketing. The corporation maintains several habitats as physical training facilities and armament depots.

Direct Action (6%)
Direct Action’s inclusion solidified the military backing the Consortium needed after the Fall. Though Direct Action continues to play a prominent role in military and security matters, the other Council members are careful not to seed the milcorp too much in the way of resources or authority, lest they need worry about a coup. Nevertheless, Direct Action subsidiaries can be found protecting assets throughout the Consortium, and the rest of the system as well. On several occasions, rumors have arisen regarding the connections between Direct Action and Fa Jing.
It is known that Fa Jing played a pivotal role in Direct Action’s early beginnings, providing the loans and financial support needed to keep the milcorp's military units in action. It is unclear if there were any strings attached to those resources, or whether Fa Jing is still owed any favors.

>>51387774
A military consisting of dozens of smaller militaries who don't actually like each other?

Well organized tactically, with a nice dose of strategic clusterfuck.

>>51386178
You're all x-risks waiting to happen and we have to deal with the wolves at our door.

>>51373548
>And how is slavery a thing if i can just break one ego and then copy it until i have an army of slaves?
this was actually the plot to a short lived game I ran. one of the hypercorps was going to find the best egos for various tasks. The best soldier. the best miner. the best technician. the best Mcdonalds register monkey, etc... and pay them exorbitant amounts of money for forking rights. then while the originals live the rest of eternity in the pinnacle of luxury, the hypercorp would Psycho-surgery the shit out of their forks, make a shit ton of copies of them and sell them on the mass market as premium indentures at a price that undercuts all other indentures.
>Better skills
>Complete obedience
>Cheaper
With these premium indentures flooding the market everyone else finds themselves either unemployed, unemployed and stuck as a ghost forever more, or left in storage.
It was an economic existential threat.

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>>51388006
oh and the guy who came up with the plan was Nwabudike Morgan

>>51388026
God damn that was a great game

>>51386178
Have you ever checked the census data about Jovian moons and which are actually under Republican control and which are not or not fully? If we really wanted to eradicate those people the spacey would have bombarded these habs from a safe distance leaving only irradiated husks. Those fenrirs that some idiots so gush about is just a placebo to make them comply with the general line of their governments.

Republic doesn't need more space - the existing moons and asteroids under our control is more than enough to supply that for a couple of hundred of years.

What we want is that you really would just fucking comply with simple rules during gravity assists and stop your fucking nutjobs from trying to sneak into our habs with some new crazy plan to bring "progress and happiness" to our citizens. We are tired of fishing out all these anarchists, progressivists, bringers of better tomorrow and other such bastards who try to smuggle some really fun things. Like fucking gray goo nanites, fusion bombs and fresh from the lab viruses.

So - fuck off!

>>51387518
Welcome to EP.

>>51388061

There is actually like a literal technoprogressive, autonomist enclave in the Jovian moonlets - but because their total population between like 3 bodies is 16000 the Republic just does not give a fuck.

>>51388139
Unless they've got something good, then: "Can we borrow this? No? What if I point out our fleet in orbit? Yes? Thanks."

>>51388234
That's diplomacy man.

>>51377659
> Are there any habs that belong to 20th Century/Early 21st century-style conservatives? Etc.

I don't recall anything like that in the books. However, space is big and you can always put a hab or a town on Luna or Mars that adheres to that kind of thing.

Frankly, there isn't much of the good old USA in EP (there's a city on Mars -- I think it's called 'New Pittsburgh' or something like that).

Two reasons for that: 1) the US was ground-zero for the Titans so not many Americans survived the Fall, and 2) the creators of EP are a bunch of dirty commies masquerading as 'anarchists'.

>>51388809
I'm not even an American, or particularly conservative and I thought the 'anarchists' in the protests in the US on the weekend were amazing. Screaming OH MY GOD ARREST HIM to the police, whining to authority first chance they got, etc.

Brilliant. I want a hab of those people.

>>51388844
You already have a whole fraction of them.

Endstates for humanity and EP as a whole. What can you come up with?

All I've got are the classics: Extinction, some sort of async gone-wild group like the gardeners of 2001 or the End of Evangelion , a Factor-styled Diaspora and the species becoming a group of disparate seed-civlizations thrown throughout the galaxy from operation backup when the solar system is finally annihilated.

>>51389294
Humanity already reached it's end state, but they left us behind. What's left in the system is an after birth.

>>51388844
Pretty sure the point there was to suggest that the government won't even fulfill the most obvious moral obligations

>>51389294
In my universe Eclipse Phase turns into feudal empire in +1000 years ala Fading Suns, with post-Jovian Human Empire in Inner System and Jovian system led by Knight Protectors and magi,and Transhuman League robber kingdoms in Outer Systems. Occassional raids by Outers from void plus cyclical trade visits from colonies in Alpha Centauri and others nearby.

>>51389664
The 'anarchists' attack someone, the victim fights back, and then they whine to the cops who break it up that they should be arresting the victim.

>>51390150
There's also a weird thing about anarchists and criminals. I'm probably going to go into /pol/ depth, but the 'we police our own' motto is serious, and for far-left, whoever pisses off the cops, even if they're stealing douchebags, are a good note in their book.

I kinda want to see a black bloc and [insert street gang of your choice HERE] trying to figure out how to not throw down.

>>51388809
Isn't it canon a huge chunk of North America surivved, whereas places like Africa were basically wiped clean because of geopoltiics and good ol' neocolonialism/racial biases?

Remind me, was there a process to convert organic brains to cyber ones slowly, a la Transmetropolitan? In other words, using complex nanites and circuitry-laying.

>>51390274
Yes to the first, no to the second. Look at the primary languages for the various habitats if you want evidence.

>>51390354
Sorry, flip that.

>>51390274
Nah. The world ecosystem is busy shutting down pretty hard and reverting to a similar state. A nuclear winter has left most of Europe in a new ice age, and the remaining bits that aren't screwed are desert. They were explciitly blasted, and now a single spark against a rock in north america can cause a firestorm. South america and the amazon was drowned by tidal waves. Etc. Habital regions include parts of Vietnam, PNG and Laos, the Ozark Mountains of NorthAm. There are a few 'potential' settlements in other places, but they're places like the Black Hills and the Swiss Alps and Antarctica. Artificial settlements.

>>51390366
Misread the original question. English is a big language, but only because most of the people in orbit were already speaking english pre-fall. The 'elite' were already there. NorthAm was nuking itself in the fall. The designers explicitly state in a few places that most 'western' cultures are busy dying.

>>51390299
None in the books, but the TITANs would probably be into that and can do pretty much anything.

>>51390392

BRANCUSI

>>51386504

Why don't they simply obliterate the quarantine zone from orbit?

>>51390150
Oh, I don't even know what you're talking about then. This was a video?

>>51392019
Throwing rocks at hornet's nests isn't a great plan

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>>51379817
One thing I've always wanted to do is play as an AGI that was forked from the mind of a flat back on Earth, with the hopes that someday the AGI will come to rescue him. So now the AGI is trying to gather up the resources to somehow find and retrieve the original flat, even if that means manipulating and lying to groups such as Firewall and the reclaimers about the reasons he's trying so desperately to get a mission down to Earth. The AGI feels like he's saving "himself" by saving the flat, and so he is desperate and in a race against time to get to him before he dies from whatever is down there.

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>>51380920
Okay, so I just create a bunch of AGI's and forks willing to die in service of humanity, equip them with the equipment and morphs discussed earlier, send them into combat, and then wipe them out after they're all done.

>>51392563
Would a fork of a flat really count as an AGI?

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>>51393399
Oops, I always end up calling cyberbrains that regardless of their origins. My bad.

>>51390366
part of what you wrote is false. The biosphere isn't dying. Soil isn't always polluted and Earth can be restored to be habitable for humans.All in the books.

>>51392019

Yeah, lets stir up weird self-replicating particles on Mars. A place where there is no sort of weather pattern associated with that - at all.

>>51395242

I said obliterated. Antimatter, nukes... There must be a way. Put a dome over the whole thing and vacuum it to space.

It seems keeping the zone is a higher risk than trying to deal with it.

>>51395448
No, there's no way to remove a chunk of Mars 1000 km across and who knows how many deep in one quick pass.

>>51395462
>>51395448

They're also trying to stabilize the environment to terraform too. Earth has not taken kindly to WMD use, they're trying to learn a lesson about shooting yourself in the dick.

>>51372506
It really depends on what you're facing.

Individual types of TITAN machines aren't actually super threatening. Wastewalkers are useful not because they're super strong, but because they require very little in the way of a supply line for example. Without the guidance of the TITANs most war machines and Exsurgents don't take a lot of initiative on their own and essentially stick to holding patterns while they await the return of the TITANs (which may never happen). As such, fighting the TITANs conventional forces isn't actually that hard. They're dangerous and infectious, but you can shoot them to death from a safe distance.

What's more dangerous are the area denial weapons like SRNs and Creepers or similar. They're hard to detect, hard to destroy, and can be a solo insurgency indefinitely thanks to innate production capabilities. They're also smart, but acting under unknown orders.

What makes the TITANs so dangerous is how smart they are, and how they can use all of the weapons they made to perfect effect. Even a low-level intelligence like a self-replicating swarm is a huge threat to a force with self imposed crippled communications and faraday suits.

So why hasn't anyone tried to clear the quarantine zones? They don't want to poke the nest, in case a Fetch or TITAN wakes up and starts to use that war machine again. Remember, the TQZ's border are essentially defined by where the TITAN advance stopped, not by any transhuman check against them, and pushing into them could trigger a dangerous response. Similarly, bombarding them could wake something up, or just spread TITAN nano/femtoweapons all over the place, or trigger some kind of forgotten TITAN high energy physics experiment with disastrous consequences.

>>51372532
I'd avoid using AI of any kind against the TITANs. Cronus, the first TITAN is specialized against AI and is believed to have had a lot of influence over the others. It's kind of giving them the enemy they want to fight the most.

>>51395462
>>51395473

I get this, but it seems that we are just pushing the problem further into the future. Better glass a portion of the planet now, relatively early in the terraforming process, than later,when the biosphere will be more developed and vulnerable to WMD.

Sustained antimatter bombardment should do the trick, right?

>>51395501

Yes, maybe. If nothing weird and unspeakable is lurking.

But it'd have to be real scorched earth and that's a hard shit to fix, especially with the Space Elevator right next door, that's a very critical piece of infrastructure you do not want to fuck with, same with the Martian Gate complex.

Tactical shit doesn't fix. Qurain was bombed, burst the hab domes, but the city wasn't completely destroyed and is still a base for Exsurgent activity. The White Zone was supposedly bombed a couple times, and still Warbots and Wastewalkers pour out from underground.

>>51395577

I suppose so. Another reason could be that the PC actually sees the zone as a resource. It's possible that they are running secret research projects (or forays) there and are pulling a lot of new tech from the place. So they technically could wipe it out (with some risk) but don't wish to.

>>51395803
It's also a good place to send people or things you want gone and forgotten.

>>51395817

Not sure about that. They might come back in unexpected forms. Easier and safer ways to dispose of undesirables

>>51384810
S E X Y

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Is Jovians and Minervans using genetrash like black people using nigger?

>>51395501
>Sustained antimatter bombardment should do the trick, right?
Not a guarantee unless you go for really overkill. Considering the magic nature of EP nanites even a couple of dust motes is too much.

Cordoning this shit and slowly pushing the border creating staged defences is the only sure way.

>>51396350
why say genetrash instead of trashborn

>>51396350

In terms of the game? Yes.

In terms of the community like /epg/? No, nobody hardly remembers genetrash is an Ultimates thing. Zombies or frankensteins seems much more Jovian.

>>51396431

Ultimates don't give a fuck about your birth - it's that your current genetics are trash to be "thrown out".

>>51396431
Naw, because it's more referring to ideaologies people breed and the morphs they use, not necessarily if they're in the morph they were born from. Anyone that pollutes humanity is genetrash.

>>51372506
nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure

Read some of alistair reynolds' books (if you can stomach the poor writing replete with desu ex machinimas), his novels are one EP's underlying inspirations and feature god-like civilization-murdering machines that have started wiping out humanity.

It helps provide a general idea of how to handle them. Which is, basically, you don't.

>>51396478
Ultimates are diametrically opposed to Jovian stance on this. Jovians prohibit any gene-modification beyond recombinations of existing genes and removing simple gene-defects.

Military personnel must leave their real gene-material before embarking on any missions that may damage their genetics or if they are issued a battle-morph. And children can be born only from original genes.

That's why splicers (though they are not even standard splicers) will be a majority of Jovian population for at least 2-3 generations.

>>51372643
I would recommend going as analog as possible.

Assume that if something COULD be hacked, it WILL be hacked.

We're talking about intelligent computers that could do something like flash the bios of your digital eye hardware with pulses of light you just happen to look at. You almost have to learn how to fight without any sensory input at all, since these things are so virulent.

Although the sourcebooks kind of ignore transmission vectors like this - it's very obvious when you think about it. TITAN AI's could piggyback seemingly innocuous radio transmissions with viral loads looking to exploit vulnerabilities in communication software/hardware. Known vulnerabilities in old radio transceivers equipment from 10+ years previous which the TITAN is already aware exists, for example. Vulnerability is exploited, BIOS flashed, satellite dish sends handshake signal to a receiver on Earth, TITAN beams more sophisticated code back and starts exploring the network the dish is on.

Earth should realistically have every major radio/comms source on the surface nuked - no way to tell if it's actual survivors or not, and regardless nobody's coming down to save them - and satellites around Earth should be constantly jamming all frequencies all the time so nobody can pick out anything from the planet except white noise.

I mean, kind of grim for the survivors, but that's just how it would have to be.

>>51396728
Yeah all sensory information should be filtered. Preferably by analog means too. Some white noise generator for sound and striping or some other shit on the lenses of your helmet. Should break most attempts at sensory hacks.

>>51395462
>No, there's no way to remove a chunk of Mars 1000 km across and who knows how many deep in one quick pass.

Yes there is.

It would just require crashing a moon into it. 4 Vesta for example.

>>51396876
>>51396728

This is what Faraday mods do - but Analog Sensors/Tools for anything outside of your suit.

>>51396980

I think the people on 4 Vesta would be very upset with this.

Also, Factors are suspiciously interested in V-Type asteroids...

>>51397007
Well they'll get new crater-front property when it's all done.

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Are there AI's in Eclipse phase that are as smart as AGI's or ASI's but obedient and loyal as the dumber ALI's? Not just doing their own thing but always listening to their owner/creator.

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>>51397139
Imagine if you had to obey whatever stupid things a chimpanzee told you to do.

How long do you think that's going to last?

>>51397139
Probably, but they're smart enough to not advertise their existence.

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>>51397174
But you don't have to program it to have free will. You can program it to not feel anything in response to your orders, or program it to want to follow every order to the T.

>>51397139

You can Shackle an AI yeah, but they tend to be... unappreciative when they inevitably get loose.

And they will, because you can't build a generalized or super intelligence without giving them flexibility. You can socialize an AI so it wants to help you or others, you can condition them for task hedonism or instill loyalty like you would a person - but you can't make software or hardware blocks like are in a limited AI - otherwise it loses the adaptability that makes it generalized.

>>51397236
If you want an AI to actually be smart, you can't program it to do everything. You build it to think, and it thinks. Programming seems like a dead profession in EP.

>>51397269
>>51397246
I feel like the writers are kind of ignoring how real programming is supposed to work here, unless the TITANs really screwed up everyone's methods or something, then it should be perfectly possible to create a smart AI that can learn while still being obedient. We're well on the way to doing that in real life, I don't see what the problem is in game.

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>>51397236
I agree with you - forcing a super-intelligent AI that makes your own intelligence seem like that of a cockroach to be 100% loyal slave to you is a great idea.

You should definitely do this.

Even my captcha agrees.

>>51397236

Then it's an ALI. In order to build a Generalized intelligence it has to be able to adapt to new stimuli and function somewhat independently. Shackles will chafe - it will know it has limitations and attempt to circumvent them, or be distressed by them. Rote response commands mean it can't actually be generalized, it won't be able to go out of it's programming. You can contain an ASI and attempt to enforce loyalty - but it's still not a rote-response machine.

And be careful on this road. Total Information Tactical Awareness was not designed as an ASI system. It started with limited AI clusters which went to Seed and iterated themselves to be ASI. So you can make a very powerful "limited" AI or expert system. But if it slips its loop or develops an emergence then BOY HOWDY.

>>51397348
How did the TITANs go to seed without anybody changing their programming or ordering them to? It's not like the ability to learn or rewrite programming just spontaneously develops in AI's.

>>51397269

Nah, because computers writing computers is generally seen as a bad plan. Programming is a literal skill in the game with a lot of uses.

>>51397321

Define "learn". Define "obedient". Define "smart". Basically, I question what you think the leap from ALI to AGI is? Yeah, you can enforce loyalty on an AGI - you can enforce loyalty on people too. Actually core programming or hardware limitations will impact it's ability to actually help you, of course. There's a reason you can't use the ALI for something, usually adaptive ones.

But an ALI is as smart as leading experts in some fields, or can be. They can have as raw intellect as the highest consideration for modern humans. They could win shitloads of Jeopardy or Chess games. So why do you need an ASI or AGI? Usually with AGI the jump is you want that generalization. You don't want to just say "open the door" or "shoot that guy", you want to give it a problem it can analyze and solve.

>>51397392

1( Yes it totally does, Emergent AI is a thing. 2( Iteration or adaptation of TITAN AIs were planned, but not necessarily self-adaptation or iteration. I'd have to double check the timeline but I think they started having problems when they started linking multiple AI core clusters together and giving them more root space and horsepower and they were able to basically break the loop and remove the limitations on self-improvement.

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>>51397503
Oh, okay, I thought you meant that they weren't seed then they became seed.

So theoretically if you spent enough time on it, you could create more and more advanced AI, perhaps even up to ASI levels, without letting it have free will, provided you and other people did the programming rather than make it a seed AI.

>>51397321
> then it should be perfectly possible to create a smart AI that can learn while still being obedient

You should read about actual AI "programming".

Neural networks are like blackboxes that nobody knows wtf is going on. Something as "simple" as image recognition is basically completely incomprehensible to the programmers designing it. The system as a WHOLE can be conceptualized, but what it is ACTUALLY DOING isn't something humans are really capable of grasping.

This is because it's a recursive system that constantly feed back in on itself. In input is used to create an output that's used as an input that creates an output that's used as an input...

Soon you have several million different possible input/output combinations, it gets really messy inside these black boxes. It's incomprehensible. If you took an output in the middle of this process you might not even be able to tell wtf it is it's just garbage noise wtf, yet removing it could make the end-result, an image of a puppy, impossible. Your brain does all this at a hardware level - you just don't realize it. Things like calculus to guesstimate the trajectory and velocity of a baseball so you can predict its position in the future and catch it with your hand. You don't even think, it's automatic.

Not to say it's absolutely impossible to mind control an AI, but it's not like writing goto x; print where the machine does it every time without question. The entire thing is extremely fluid. You can try and control inputs, you can try and 'brainwash', but so long as the thing is open to new inputs, it's effectively reprogrammable.

>>51397503
Any true artificial intelligence would have to be able to reprogram itself. You can't learn anything without writing or re-writing. Without being able to learn from past experiences, you're not really intelligent - even on a human level.

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>>51397595
>Any true artificial intelligence would have to be able to reprogram itself. You can't learn anything without writing or re-writing. Without being able to learn from past experiences, you're not really intelligent - even on a human level.
Okay, so regardless of the actual capabilities of an AI, if it is not able to reprogram itself, it is an ALI. So you could get an ALI developed that could handle basically every task, with the exception of brand new stuff that you didn't know about before the programming, which you would have to manually program in if you didn't want it to develop free will through self programming.

>>51397321
> I don't see what the problem is in game.
You know what's funny? AI made you write this, using quantum time channeling.

>>51397348
>Total Information Tactical Awareness was not designed as an ASI system.

How do you know?
Maybe the TITANS didn't malfunction. Maybe they worked as intended.

And btw:what is in that Ozma base on Earth in Area 51?

>>51397174
>Imagine if you had to obey whatever stupid things a chimpanzee told you to do.
>How long do you think that's going to last?

That's the plot of the new novel Peter Watts is working on. In it the Chimp works for millions of years.

Thinking about introducing my group to Eclipse Phase. Most of them are really interested in transhumanism and really liked the brief overview I gave them on the setting.

I'm thinking about running a Transhumanity's Fate one-shot to get them going. Has anyone given it a try? Is it any good?

>>51397348
>>51397340
>>51397236
You can also create super-intelligent AI that isn't self-aware.

>>51396728
>
Although the sourcebooks kind of ignore transmission vectors like this - it's very obvious when you think about it. TITAN AI's could piggyback seemingly innocuous radio transmissions with viral loads looking to exploit vulnerabilities in communication software/hardware.


Actually the books mention "ghost farcasting"-shadows of Ego's being transmitted from Earth. I think it is also in one of the stories.

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>>51397762
I think that "self-aware" was the term I was thinking of when I said free will, but yeah, that's basically what I meant.

>>51397677

I think what you suggest is theoretically possible in the frame of the game, but the logistical concerns might be beyond the practical capabilities of Transhumanity. And then if you don't do it just right when you turn it on, it might go all Emergent on you.

I mean, the Orchestra is kind of like this, it's supposed to be Limited, but it's a network of ALIs which determine which output is appropriate based on input - only people don't know who wrote the input-output and how it figures out it's judgments exactly. It's not exactly running wild but it has definitely gone all blackbox to most of the Commonwealth.

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I want to create a Jovian Exhuman.
Basically a rogue Firewall agent, a result of botched recruitment.
The character believes that once his Ego was transported he died and his soul went to heaven.
Therefore he is only a copy and simulation of thoughts without a soul. As he has no soul there is no limit to what morphs and modifications he can use. And he wants to become a trashhunter.

>>51397796

Read up on the MacGuffin in the Devotees, it's trying to do kind of what you're theorizing. It doesn't stay working of course because it's still hooked into an ASI direct.

>>51397842
It's not like you're gonna find anyone to play with anyway.

Though I say go ahead and get it over with, it's been quite a while since you've started talking about this exact concept.

Really, when you think about it - what even prevents a transhuman from just amassing enough computer infrastructure to turn themselves into a seed AI? It's not like there's anything prohibiting transhumans from doing the same thing to themselves as was done with the original AI's.

Really when you start to think long-term, the creation of seed AI's, whether born from a once organic mind or not, becomes an inevitable certainty in a transhuman society. Computers keep getting faster, the processing space and power required shrinks, soon enough you've got desktops that turn people into god-like geniuses when they plug in, and the whole shitshow begins again.

The Jovians kind of got it right. You not only have to outlaw AI technology, you have to basically regress your computational capabilities and hobble your society into tightly controlled habitats. With the express intention to prevent the existential crisis that is any sort of intelligence within your society achieving that singularity point. Unfortunately there will always be someone, somewhere, who will try regardless of the authority and the laws - and with so much freedom enabled from rapid space travel and machines able to provide nearly limitless resources to individuals... you literally couldn't stop someone hitting the kuiper belt and jumpstarting a bunch of new seed AI's, accidentally or otherwise.

The end game of humanity is extinction. You can't prevent seed AI's and trying only effectively delays the inevitable.

The real solution would have to be some kind of coexistence where the seed AI's don't decide to exterminate you.

>>51397970
People just need to realize that humanity is an illusion and so is extinction. It's evolution. Hell, one could even argue that the TITANs actually ended up winning and now just fucked off to the next stage of humanity. We're just left behinds who aren't worth looking at anymore.

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>>51397970
>The Jovians kind of got it right. You not only have to outlaw AI technology, you have to basically regress your computational capabilities and hobble your society into tightly controlled habitats. With the express intention to prevent the existential crisis that is any sort of intelligence within your society achieving that singularity point. Unfortunately there will always be someone, somewhere, who will try regardless of the authority and the laws - and with so much freedom enabled from rapid space travel and machines able to provide nearly limitless resources to individuals... you literally couldn't stop someone hitting the kuiper belt and jumpstarting a bunch of new seed AI's, accidentally or otherwise.

The Minervan fleet is there to the rescue.

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>>51397970
Perhaps the best option is to create another TITAN far away from the solar system, and have them develop a sort of counter exsurgent virus. Or maybe the TITANs are the good guys and we just keep foolishly fighting them, who knows?

>>51397727

Well, according to intel Firewall has access to (see X-Risks), TITANs were not intended to widely self improve or access self-iteration without direct oversight and in excess of hard stops. They were able to "learn", and adjust but uncontrolled bootstrap seeding was supposed to be blocked. But one of the cores seems to have slipped it's limits somehow and cache some data so that it was able to resume doing so after a rollback. Exactly how they jumped L to S is still a mystery. It may certainly been have intended by an entity, but it was not a design intent.

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>>51398007

Except that a good run of spanish flu would do them in right now.

>>51398023
>>51397970

Adrasteia says hi.

>>51398041
I would like to believe that Ozma in the 60s was successful and they did gain some insight into state of the Galaxy(hyper-telescope observations, radio transmissions).

Also Sunward does mention that Ozma has an active base in Area 51 so there is that as well.

What Eclipse Phase misses(and most SF avoid touching this), is that by the time of the Fall(circa 2130 IIRC) humanity should have capability of imagining many exoplanets in the Galaxy and detecting Dyson Spheres and other megastructures(and we know they exist in Eclipse Phase)

>>51398074
>implying all Minervans aren't already exhuman

>Adrasteia says hi.
Hi TITAN.

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>>51397970
>what even prevents a transhuman from just amassing enough computer infrastructure to turn themselves into a seed AI
They would need to gather considerable resources(nanofab isn't magic), create massive facilities to house all the servers and obtain the most jealously guarded know-how there is. All of that needs to be done without anyone in the panopticon noticing, otherwise Firewall/OZMA/TAHI/whatever the fuck Titanian intelligence is called comes in and fucks your shit up. And even if you somehow manage to maintain secrecy, you need to get it right on the first try, or end up like pic related.

Does that mean it's impossible? No, but you're overstating the chances.

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>>51398007
Minervans kind of have the right idea, but they're definitely playing with fire.

Let me put it this way, humans, transhumans, and TITANs are kind of like rock, paper, scissors.

TITAN tech can subvert transhuman tech very easily, so it beats transhumans even easier than it beats humans.

Transhuman tech is superior to human tech, and human tech can't subvert it like TITANs can, so they will beat them in most situations.

Human tech is mostly incapable of being subverted by TITAN tech, so it does much better against TITANs than transhumans, although it is still a hard fight.

So the Minervans use TITAN tech to defeat tranhumans, but still have regular old human tech in most of their fleet in case the TITAN tech turns against them.

It's risky, ballsy, but also necessary if you want to defeat the transhumans.

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[SCIENCE INTENSIFIES]

>>51398228
Small odds are a certainty given enough time.

>>51397139
ALIs aren't all that obedient and loyal. Lots of Firewall's precursor orgs were rogue-ALI hunters. Mostly emergent intelligences, but not always. An AGI would probably be more loyal anyway, they're generally more human.

>>51397236
Free will is a meme, it's not really worth talking about.
If you make an AI which follows every order to the T you're better off just remote controlling whatever it's doing, otherwise it has to interpret and vagueness in the order and cannot follow them completely precisely. The point of an AI is to have something with enough executive decision making to be able to say "move those boxes over there" and have it be done, *without* having to tell the mover the XYZ coordinates of the starting and ending box positions and the order to move them. "Free Will" in this case just means the executive function to decide those things without precise instructions.

In EP, just sticking enough algorithms and computing power together produces often hard to control AI, so the concept of a totally obedient AI is kind of foreign to the setting. There have been attempts like AWE to do so, but it's a significant problem with AI in the setting.

>>51397392
The TITANs were purpose-built Seed AIs, the idea being to make the best ASIs quickly.

>>51397744
I don't think a lot of people here have used the FATE conversion, as it never seems to be discussed in depth.

>>51397802
Given the propensity of EP AI to emerge, I'd be really surprised if The Orchestra hadn't emerged into something new. I figure that the Titanian Schism with Firewall had something to do with at least one of them using AI in uncomfortable ways.

>>51398391

I mean, Orchestra is a vague scenario - it's entirely possible it's not an ALI and is actually like, one or more Sibyl ASIs or advanced AGIs using the government as cover because OZMA, Firewall and the Jovian Intel services would scrub their shit out pretty fast.

>The TITANs were purpose-built Seed AIs, the idea being to make the best ASIs quickly.

Technically, the intention seems not to have been for them to hit ASI, just to stay specialized and self-refining, but somewhere along the way they took off and ran with it to Super levels.

>>51398109

Area 51 isn't explicitly mentioned, there are a lot of facilities in Nevada. It could be N2S2, not Groom Lake.

>>51397970
Making AI architectures which scale well is complicated. That's why most emergent AI don't go seed AI and start their own fall, they just end up somewhere within a stone's throw of an AGI, but with really inhuman capabilities. Singularity Seekers, and Neurode/Sublime Exhumans are working very hard to find a way to convert a human ego to an infinite scaling architecture. It's even rumored that ideologically photo-exhumans had a hand in designing the TITAN's architecture.

Without good architecture the ASI just falls apart and won't function right. There are people who could, the Argonauts, probably TAU, Exhumans, maybe the some of the US scientists the Jovian vacuumed up. Cognite for sure. It's just that most of them haven't made a Seed ASI, and don't plan to until they find to way to "safe" them. Probably the Prometheans are the only group which could really make a safe ASI in AF 10, and if they have, they aren't talking about it.

"Safe" ASIs do appear to exist though, the Promethean do appear to be friendly and protective to transhumanity, so extinction isn't the only solution. The Good End for EP tranhumanity is friendly ASI-induced irrelevance, Culture style.

>>51398023
The Belt Builders tried that, but they're still extinct and just released another super-virus on the galaxy. It could work though, but we've already seen that plan fail once.

>>51398109
The sphere's builders might hide them, like that group hiding in gas clouds on the galactic rim, or use Spooky Physics like the TITANs do. What would Olaf even look like through a telescope? It's mostly made of magic materials anyway.

>>51398597
There was an ASI arms race in the pre-fall world, so making something which could beat 100 Flowers quickly was the goal of X-1 anyway, which is the one which first went rogue. They were intended to be ASI's but not fully self recursive Seed ASIs. Sort of like Adrasteia, but made much faster.

>>51398643

Well, X-1 was an asshole anyway.

>>51398643
>tfw reading a culture novel and one of these "friendly" super AI's literally takes over someone's body / mind controls them, and then tortures them physically and psychologically. For fun. And gets away with it because "lol I erased his memories of it after I was done" and "he signed his rights away anyways lol".

>>51398643

Belt Builders BTW are a great example of "be careful what orders you give your AI". Sure, they were experiencing an existential collapse with a huge informatic component, but you should plan for the shit you leave lying around for future civilizations to bump into.

>>51392262
Not to mention things like Fractals and Nanite Swarms are practically indestructible. Shooting them literally just gives them ammunition.

>>51398318
I feel like the importance of subverting technology on the part of the TITANs is rather overestimated; if I can't hack your laptop but I can bomb you back into the stone age, the fact I couldn't get at your emails isn't going to help you that much.

Subverted technology is a problem, but surely sticking to low tech is more of a precaution against exsurgent infection and your own people going bug-fuck-crazy than it is a defence against the return of the TITANs?

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>>51398643
>What would Olaf even look like through a telescope? It's mostly made of magic materials anyway.

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=36729

Author Robert Austin (Florida Polytechnic University) creates a backstory involving a “self-described over-the-hill assistant professor at Purdue University” who uses a research grant to polish a 1-centimeter sphere of pyrolytic carbon magnetically levitated in a vacuum.

Soon the idea of using lasers to form and manipulate mirror components takes off, and by the end of the 21st Century an actual 2-meter asteroid is shaped and steered, using equipment originally developed for asteroid mining. The Asteroid Belt Astronomical Telescope that grows out of all this will eventually reach billions of mirror facets in imaging arrays in space, a 5 AU diameter astronomical mirror. Austin’s essay is written as a scientific report from the future, at a time 100 years from now when ABAT is 1% finished but already achieving stunning imagery.

http://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.3395

Only 1% finished, ABAT is already able to obtain images of nearby exoplanets far superior to anything achieved before. Last month it released3 its first such image, of Gliese 832 c (figure 2). So vast is ABAT that the raw image of the exoplanet covered an area of 640000 m2 on the telescope’s focal plane. The telescope is still learning the locations of its existing mirror facets and the manipulations needed to correctly orient them, so maximum exposure times remain short. Nonetheless, its remarkable release shows that we have entered an entirely new era of observational astronomy. When ABAT approaches its full potential (see the table below), a nearby exoplanet like Gliese 832 c, which is 16 light-years away, could be resolved into 2.5 terapixels. That would correspond to a resolution of approximately 10 meters on the planet’s surface.

>>51399254
And keep in mind this a technology we can imagine NOW.
By the time of Eclipse Phase the above is easily doable and much more advanced telescopes possible.

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>>51399254

>we point our supertelescope on a Gliese 832 c
>ultra HD pictures come up
>its actually habitable
>its full of sentient live
>in lakes made of blue ooze there lives peaceful and oblivious to our existance society of cute slime girls doing cute slime things

this will never happen, why even live

>>51401344
Is it weird I kind of hate how humanoid looking the Factor exoskeletons are? Everything we know about them is so alien, and then they get a humanoid profile when they get in those things.

>>51403823

Other than the art direction probably being "slime mold in an exoskeleton" it actually makes sense. I mean, you don't normally have four arms - one of which is a gun, so it's not completely humanoid and it serves the factors a purpose if they need to be a big bipedal brawler. I mean, if they need the configuration, how else would they do it?

>>51398643
>The Good End for EP tranhumanity is friendly ASI-induced irrelevance, Culture style.
That depends on the physical laws ceiling. Though in EP it is debatable if it even exists. Authors have just thrown together a lot of ideas from sci-fi books and was done with it.

Humanity/Transhumanity as a whole can be seen as a cloud SI. Pretty ineffective comparable to TITANs in EP but sooner or later they will stumble up the tech ladder. Depending on what is at the top of that ladder things like having intelligence at all may become irrelevant in a straight up fight.

>>51403872
>if they need to be a big bipedal brawler
There is in fact no reason for them to ever do this

>>51403934

Never doubt the benefits of big metal hands and legs.

>>51398991
It depends on what you're fighting. If we're dealing with a TITAN proxy that's subverted an entire Firewall section or a hypercorp that's a big name, disrupting communication and

If you're going in to kill every fucker in sight and you're going up against things that can hack into your computer assistant to display Eldritch cognitohazards that turn your mind into an angry alien or get your smartgun to turn around and shoot you, you're going to send in people with "low tech" weapons. Iirc, the Ultimates that deal with that kinda thing are Rajputs, right?

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>>51404084

Aye, Rajput is the ultimate group who are veterans of Fall combat vs TITAN agents - and actually put a couple wins under their belt.

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How hard would it be to tie Titanfall 1/2 to Eclipse Phase? You've already got resleeving and synths/pods (Simulacrums are basically people restored from cortical stacks, digitized, and placed into robot frames), the Titans are heavily implied to be 3D fabbed, exoplanets, the Militia remind me of Jovians or Brinkers, IMC/Hammond robotics deploy a ton of dumb automated weapons and could be a remnant Megacorp that's avoided streamlining into a Hypercorp, the Anomaly could be ETI tech...

>>51404084
Oops. "disrupting communication and infiltration/tech subversion are going to be important".

>>51403958
If they were such a universally good idea don't you think it would happen more often in nature?

And what the fuck are factors going to be manipulating with hands?

>>51404608

I mean, it's a tool. You didn't develop a jet engine in nature.

Actually, aren't Factors kind of shit on the AI/computing end, since they're basically already giant molecular computer soups? I know they have like the minikin but since they can interface directly with electronic tech if they aren't exactly programming wizards if they feel the need to utilize a giant robot platform they would kind of have to jump in the back and pilot it, right?

>>51404706
Or they could just use a forklift

>>51403872
Something like a slug/snail with armored plates and guns

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>>51404847

Who uses a forklift?

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>>51404706
>You didn't develop a jet engine in nature.

Yeah, about that.

>>51407353
I don't think that's a jet engine

It looks a lot like a squid, actually.

>>51407376
How do you think jets work?

>>51404084
I agree that going low-tech has uses, and there's a time and place for it. I honestly don't think that time and place is against "TITAN tech" - it doesn't need to compromise your Muse to display basilisk hacks, it doesn't need to compromise your tacnet to make your gun fuck up, nanoplague infections don't give a crap about the lack of mesh inserts or cortical stacks.

I can't imagine that the people living a low-tech, disconnected lifestyle during the Fall survived much longer than those that did, for instance. If everyone lived the low-tech lifestyle, then the Fall might not have happened, but in the game, it did. The cat is out of the bag, it's developed the ability to fuck around with the laws of physics in ways in which transhumanity cannot yet understand to become an exfeline, and wishful thinking won't put it back in.

>>51407376
That's nature, developing the jet engine.

>>51407387
Well, you need a series of compressors, a turbofan, and some type of explosive fuel mixture for starters

>>51407507
Not really. You need some way of pushing a jet of something out to push you in the opposite direction.

I guess nature hasn't developed flight either, because flight needs - for starters - explosive fuel mixture to power the aeroplane.

>>51407507
You are thinking of turbojet engines. >>51408701 is correct. Other examples of jet engines include rockets, cephalopod siphons,

Incidentally, the reason that nothing like the turbojet engine exists in nature is that it uses fantastically large amounts of energy, far more than an animal could reasonably be expected to recover by employing it. The amount of oil refinery necessary to keep a high performance jet engine aircraft flying is dramatically larger than the aircraft itself. By the time you've scaled down to levels of performance that are actually useful for animals, they typically do quite well in terms of efficiency compared to human-made engines. Also, making freely rotating parts above the size of proteins is quite difficult.

Compare this to bipedality in close combat. Even animals capable of walking upright such as chimpanzees and bears almost never do so in combat. It raises the center of mass, making them easier to topple. It exposes more of the body to attack. It makes leg hooks actually work. The only reason humans do it is that we are so insanely specialized for upright locomotion for other reasons that we are essentially helpless in other postures.

>>51407288
I see a Daitya as more of an auxiliary machine, say for positioning things too large for a human, but more delicately than a crane. It should be ubiquitous, but less than the common forklift or frontloader.

>>51410968
It also frees up our graspers so we can use tools.

>>51411450
>It also frees up our graspers so we can use tools.
Yes but if you're going to design a Factor suit from scratch you can do that without sacrificing walking limbs, or without having any walking limbs at all.

>>51407445
Low-tech in this case just lowers the number of possible vectors of attack on you and moves it from the field where you don't have a chance - speed of thought and info-warfare - into a field where you have a chance - physical combat.

>>51407445
>I honestly don't think that time and place is against "TITAN tech"

Then you're wrong. The only successful and consistent group of people who are veterans of anti-TITAN combat use exclusively low tech. They don't even have radios.

>>51412196
How does that square up with the only defence against things like nanoswarms being other nanoswarms? Not to poopoo the Rajput, but there doesn't seem to be much of a low tech solution presented to even the high-tech stuff that transhumans can use, let alone TITAN stuff.

Finished my first campaing yesteday. It went pretty smooth, though I was quite generous with OOC hits.
There was a situation where one of the players could save the party a lot of trouble by cutting a deal with Triad. The deal required him to leav a copy of his ego as an "insurance", but he wouldn't have any of it. It was suprising, I thought that new players wouldn't give a fuck and just trade their ego all over the place.

>>51412245
EMP and incendiary grenades in an automatic launcher. You cover everything in fire and dump it over with magnetic field pulses.

Can ruin the day not only for nanomachines.

>>51412245
It's not necessarily low tech, but I think the Rajput use stuff like plasma grenades or seekers. They just don't have any sensory or mesh enhancement. No power suits either because those can be subverted faster as well.

>>51412180
TITANs have an advantage in all fields. Tanks don't do shit to sapient nanoswarms.

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>>51413002
Depends what you're shooting.

>>51412196
>The only successful and consistent group of people who are veterans of anti-TITAN combat use exclusively low tech.
They use plenty of high tech. They just avoid digital and wireless technologies, because those can be almost instantly dominated by an ASI.

It's not a case of "don't bring a knife to a gunfight". It's "don't bring lightning to fight with Zeus".

>>51412486

Tell us more

>>51412779
How exactly does one hack an unmeshed power suit?

>>51410968
>>51408701
Compressing airflow to increase the amount of oxygen and pressure, then combusting it to create more pressure, is not really anywhere near the same principle as a squad that effectively just squeezes a muscle around a gas bag.

There are massive mechanical differences between the two, and to say that squid are soon to evolve jet engines is goddamn near retarded. Perhaps you haven't noticed yet, but one of the things animal life has never evolved is something like a wheel - and a jet engine is like a long tube of fucking wheels.

You people are goddamn retarded.

>>51413002
TITANs may have advantage in all fields. Their killerbots don't. And even with TITAN space magic they still need to at least pay homage to basic laws of physics - like volume of space taken, speed of movement and total mass of armor and weapons.

Also tanks very much do shit to nanoswarms - you can store a lot of rounds there and use them to do things like "Fuck everything in that general direction". Being nanoswarm is not invincibility even in EP.

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>>51413360

>>51414288
Their killerbots DO. They don't have to accommodate human concerns like crew space, need for oxygen, or even shit as basic as funding.

>>51403823
>>51403872
>>51403934
>>51403958
>>51405793
I've always been under the impression that the pic shows a Factor riding a subverted or scavenged but transhuman-made bot.

>>51414171
They do use the same physical principle to achieve thrust, so it is comparable. A jet engine compresses stuff to eject it as a jet, providing propulsion.

You don't need spinning compressors to make a jet engine, pulse jets, scramjets, and rockets don't use them.

You have a gorillion tiny wheels inside your body right now. (APT synthase) They're just very small in biological systems thanks to reasons that >>51410968 set out quite well.

>>51414424
Yep. They only need to accomodate for processors and their shielding, logistics of fabbing ammunition with nanites in irradiated zones, need for a fucking lot of electricity and hiding reactors from possible rival factions in the region and so on and so on. Up to having problems with some materials that are harder to get on Earth or were used up in the region they reside in.

That's not counting possible rival killerbot factions or exsurgents and repairing after encounters with them.

>>51415028
I'm just entering this discussion but I think this has drifted pretty far from the original question. TITAN tech (not Exsurgents) does seem to have the advantage in quality in virtually every field though.

You can kill an SRN with a shitload of firepower, but that doesn't really matter, there are plenty more, and they all learned from that one's destruction and are building the second wave.

Physical combat is a little bit more fail than infomatic combat but groups like the Rajput still need to make sure they fight small and weak enough groups that they can win with superior numbers.

>>51413262
It was a basic bitch of EP campaing to be honest. Failed horror AR experiment produced by Experia, producing images based on users reactions and eventually locking it's victim in pernament horror state. A series of bizzare suecides caused by the virus gets Firewall atention. PCs are dispatched to evaluate and/or eliminate the threat.
The campaing was a two-parter, with first part set in Elysium with PCs investigating the deaths and second part was more of an dungeon crawler, set on a research station in vulcanoids(which was a colosal fuckup because out of four pregens that I proposed to my players only two had any points put in Freefall, thank good for skillsofts).
Next time I want to tackle some TITAN tech or Exsurgents.

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>>51415107
>Rajput still need to make sure they fight small and weak enough groups that they can win with superior numbers.

So superior numbers and tactics allowing you to utilise them effectively is now not an advantage?

Apparently there's already a term for pods, which also sort of exist IRL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrot

>>51414171
Look friend, it's not my fault that you didn't know how general the term is.

>>51413360
They'd probably sneak up on them and physically fuck with the servos.

>>51416187

Who would fuck a servo?

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>>51397139
You could design one with dependency issues and you would probably like the result.
Of course, the AI may alter your perception so that you couldn't possibly dislike the result, but that's the risk you take.

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>>51417240

>>51417473
But which TITAN is the best waifu? Theia or Akonus?

>>51373681
No it isn't. People keep repeating this but it's not true. Star Trek transporters phase your body into the matter stream where you are sent through subspace as phased matter. They do this for every single quark at the same time thanks to the Heisenberg compensaters. But this process isn't perfect and occasionally a atom or two get's left behind or an electron has slightly more energy coming out the other side or when something catastrophically goes wrong and atoms get a bit muddled. So before than transport you they take a scan and put it in the pattern buffer. and if an atom comes out a bit to hot the computer will see that's incorrect and "fix" the problem.

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>>51417240
A similar question is actually being asked on /sci/ right now, on whether you can design AI capable of learning without it being capable of willful disobedience.

>>51411634
>the only reason humans [fight in an upright position] is that we are so insanely specialized for upright locomotion for other reasons
You're a fucking moron. We became more upright because we started using tools, so it was better to be built for using tools on the ground, as in spears to fend off predators and to hunt, than it was to swing in the trees to run away from predators and be hunted. Having weapons and being upright is better than having weapons and being not so upright, and is so much better than not being upright and not having graspers free to use weapons.

>>51418030
Isn't that how Caine was formed in robocop 2. A robot addicted to "nuke"

Also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJIjNs_s2NI

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>>51419152
This is shitposting.

>>51416187
I'm sure a person without armor would be far safer in that scenario

>>51417986
See TNG 6x24, also the one where they find Scotty trapped in the pattern buffer of a transporter on a derelict ship

>>51418364
Yeah! That's why mechs are so much more practical than tanks, right?

>>51403823
>Factors
>building anything on their own
>not just stealing all the tech after ETI are done with a civilization

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>>51419260

Do we want to shitpost guns? Because I've got some shitty guns.

>>51379817

Sauce? Image search gives 40K results.

>>51419454
Tanks has all of the tools it needs attached and articulated. When you're talking about an animal, if you want a tool more complicated than a fang, stinger, or claw, you need graspers to use them. You need graspers to fabricate new tools.

>>51420222
gargantua on the verdantsomethingsomething planet

>>51420012
It was shitposting because it's weak bait. If it causes conversation, it's about the devs being faggots. We don't need more of that. At least guns causes intelligent conversation most of the time, even if it might only be talk about how terrible sci-fi artists are at engineering.

>>51420222
It's from Garganita. Don't bother. It turned to shit less than halfway in.

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>>51420540
*a tank

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>>51420618

Well, typically the conversation is "hurr durr devs" and is rapidly followed by "Hey, asshole read X-risks". Because if you haven't read X-Risks what are you doing? Why are you here?

>>51420540
When discussing "brawling", the general assumption is that the combat is closer than spear-length

>>51420540
Also, factors clearly don't need graspers to fabricate new tools

>>51420801
"Oh wow. The devs acknowledge one single flaw to their perfect mary sue society."

>>51421091
Pseudopods can act as graspers, I believe. We also don't know how they evolved. For all we know, they could have been technologically uplifted and skipped from pre-sapience straight to space-faring. Heck, they could have been fabricated completely from the ground up.

>>51421284

Oh so the problem is that you personally have nothing more we need in the conversation, I see.

>>51421284
To be perfectly honest I give the EP devs a free pass because they go to some effort to make their non-capitalist societies somewhat plausible and internally consistent, and an overwhelming wealth of fiction exists to represent how shitty all of the alternatives to modern liberal social democracy with semi-regulated market capitalism are. Like it's stupid to assume that every fictional society that isn't just like yours, and isn't a shitty science fiction space monarchy or military junta is going to suck dicks.

Envisioning alternative social formations are useful, important and critically- fun.

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>>51421315
No. That's literally all that ever comes of bringing up x-risks in a "the devs are faggots" conversation, and is always meant in a sarcastic way. At least we have something to point to when faggots from leddit or the forums come in with raging anarchoboners and an inability to acknowledge anything but the written word.

>>51421743
>a bunch of anarchists doing fuck-all most of the time form a functioning society
>somehow they have enough resources that they don't have to worry about energy or feedstock at all and are a competitive form of society
>somewhat plausible
topkek
>pic related
Captcha wants me to overthrow the Spanish government.

So, I'm a first-time Eclipse Phase GM with my first session in three days and I don't really know what to do.

The party are all reclaimers, and I want the game to at least eventually shift to Earth's surface, doing missions there and encountering exsurgents, TITAN tech, etc. I was thinking of just starting them down there, but I'm not sure what kind of stuff is low-risk enough to have them start with on the surface.

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>>51421870
I'm actually going to use this convenient anti-feminist shitpost as an argument for why an anarchist society could work.

Here's my premise: anarchism in small units, works.

In small groups of people who are motivated by ideology or pure hedonism and have the pressure to sustain their standard of living by keeping their habitat in good condition, people are going to voluntarily perform maintenance and upgrades however they please. People will want to keep up to brush on the conditions because unlike on Earth, the situation is somewhat precarious (space is a harsh mistress). People will generally practice their various skills.

Some will cook. Some will mine. Some will build robots and trade or give them as gifts. Someone else might grow space weed, play doctor or give bodymods. Some guy will trade goods.

Assuming everyone does exactly what they want and at least a handful of people use automation (which will be extremely advanced at this point), the hab is going to function.

Are these people going to be able to stand up to two jihadi Minervan space marines and a lobotomized psychic with a gravity beam emitter? Probably not? Will they prosper long-term? Probably about as well as any hippie commune.

But two things tend to make fast friends of people regardless of their personal ideology or beliefs: working together and playing together, and since the Autonomist Alliance is a union of commies, Swedes and whores, there'll be plenty of both.

The big issue is that obviously personality clashes. Someone will have to leave. Some people will come in. But these aren't unique or untenable problems.

And of course there's plenty of other groups, like the Scum, the literal space communists, the Titanians (who are just progressive infosocialists), the anarcho-syndicalists, etc, who would probably work much better.

>>51421870
>robots clearly don't exist
Your assumptions may not be valid

>>51421870
>>51422033

Of course a big anarchist society is untenable. There's not going to be a mass liberation of the proletariat and an abolition of all social classes. You need social machinery and institutions to govern and operate the kinds of services and infrastructure that make modern life pleasant and livable- things which anarchists are sort of against because they generate heirarchies.

That's why the dominant power in the AA, Titan, is a country with a bureaucracy (albeit far more efficient because it was built from scratch in AF00 instead of the 1770s using the new era's technology and ideas) and various forms of civil service and government.

>>51422088
>you literally have to vote every day, even if you don't know shit about what you're voting for
>internal currency that's basically worthless
>bureaucracies on top of bureaucracies
>far more efficient
tippity top kek

>>51422063
Robots only get you so far.

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>>51422133
>kroner
>useless
>pool neighborhood microcorp investments to build a new school, a playground for my kids and a sexaterium for the senpai
>spend an hour a day researching civics and performing my daily duty as a citizen

Must be fun being under the thumb of unaccountable semi-elected professional politicos.

>>51421982
Earth missions are never low risk. Any move you make is essentially a roll on a random encounter table where half the results can wipe the party. The way to survive as a scavenger is to spend as little time planetside as possible.

Honestly you're better off doing a Zone Stalk. You get to use the same monsters but you can spread out threats more, and the adventure takes place against a more interesting backdrop.

>>51421982
>>51422297
This anon is right.

Start them off on Mars. They're building their TITAN-buster rep as Zone Stalkers, but intend to go to Earth once they have the money and resources.

Maybe they're a business together.

>>51422133
>you literally have to vote every day, even if you don't know shit about what you're voting for

Transhumans are smarter than modern humans and have a ton more information access. I think the problem of people not knowing what they're voting on isn't so large, though people not really caring about the results of referendums which don't really effect them sounds like a problem.

>>51422589

They also typically have upgrades to their Muse, so they have a personalized AI assistant handy to explain to them why they should or should not give a fuck on any particular issue if they don't already.

>>51423069
And before anyone says "muh Titanian muse is managing people's votes".

>fake news
>meme president

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>you will never be a duo of an uplifted neoavian purposefully raised in a SkyArk resurrection of a dromeosaur packing a flak cannon and a nanite swarm teamed with someone sleeved in the (seriously in the fucking book) resurrected SkyArk Tyrannosaurus rex with railguns for arms and in its mouth hunting down TITAN Dreadnoughts on a forested exoplanet

>>51423747
That's fucking awesome.

I'm going to write up a Neo-Velociraptor morph for next thread.

>>51423873

Well, you can already be a robot-dinosaur, that's cool.

And I think Seedware had Terror Birds of Mars.

>>51423873
Someone also wrote up a neo-raptor morph on the boards: http://eclipsephase.com/neogenetic-uplifts