Re: [Fallout Equestria] Setting discussions

by O. Hinds Fri Feb 28, 2014 10:09 pm

Harmony wrote:
O. Hinds wrote:Now, the question is, will there be a legitimate family business that just happened to find a cache of Bitter weaponry at some point?
Well, I suppose it's the kind of things that could happen. Could.

It would be good money on the black market, at the very least.

I'm just wondering what kind of thugs would have use for power armors and disintegration guns?...

I mean, apart from re-selling it outside of the NCR to some local warlords...

Ah, you've not played Fo2, have you?

I'm afraid that I've no additional ideas for Neighpon at the moment.

Harmony wrote:We also need to define Kalcolta, too. I don't remember we had discussed anything about it, apart from joking about brahmins and stuff. But that niche is already taken by the Moojave, so it would feel redundant, especially given how close the two are.

Let's see. I recall having some rough ideas about postapocalypse Kalcolta ages ago. I'm not sure if I posted them. I was thinking that the city eventually developed a caste system and an economy based on gem mining, salvage, and fishing. There'd also be some agriculture, but the wasteland around Kalcolta was no better for that than the rest of the Wasteland. They quite probably traded with Red Eye, given the relatively short road to Fillydelphia, but they also probably had trouble with the Remnant (I'm not sure just how prevalent the Remnant is in the east, but they're strongholds in Hoofington and the New Oatleans area at the least). That's… about all I've got at the moment; sorry.

Oh, another thought, though: the Noble Republic of Geneighva, if the Hoofington River is navigable all the way to the reservoir, will be well-placed to either salvage the ruins of Hoofington or deal with the political entity/entities that occupy the city. I seem to recall the NRG controlling the entire lake, so it could probably use the road and railroad from Freidrichshorfen, too.

by Harmony Ltd. Sat Mar 01, 2014 5:39 am

Oh, don't worry, I knew you were referencing the Salvatore and their relationship with the Enclave.

I'm just wondering what use the mob would have of that kind of weaponry, apart maybe from trying to start a civil war...

As for the lake, I doubt Geneighva control it completely, if only because Freidischorfen on the north is nowaday the center/"capital" of the Enclave Remnants.

by O. Hinds Sat Mar 01, 2014 7:45 pm

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Oh, don't worry, I knew you were referencing the Salvatore and their relationship with the Enclave.

I'm just wondering what use the mob would have of that kind of weaponry, apart maybe from trying to start a civil war...

Hm, good point. The environment is rather different from the one in New Reno, after all.

Harmony wrote:As for the lake, I doubt Geneighva control it completely, if only because Freidischorfen on the north is nowaday the center/"capital" of the Enclave Remnants.

Ah, right. I'd forgotten that; sorry.

by Harmony Ltd. Sat Mar 01, 2014 7:57 pm

O. Hinds wrote:
Harmony wrote:We also need to define Kalcolta, too. I don't remember we had discussed anything about it, apart from joking about brahmins and stuff. But that niche is already taken by the Moojave, so it would feel redundant, especially given how close the two are.
Let's see. I recall having some rough ideas about postapocalypse Kalcolta ages ago. I'm not sure if I posted them. I was thinking that the city eventually developed a caste system and an economy based on gem mining, salvage, and fishing. There'd also be some agriculture, but the wasteland around Kalcolta was no better for that than the rest of the Wasteland. They quite probably traded with Red Eye, given the relatively short road to Fillydelphia, but they also probably had trouble with the Remnant (I'm not sure just how prevalent the Remnant is in the east, but they're strongholds in Hoofington and the New Oatleans area at the least). That's… about all I've got at the moment; sorry.

Well, we can take two different approach:

- Imagine what the city did before and during the War to have an idea of what could have happened to it during the Holocaust and how it might have evolved after that in the two centuries of Wasteland that followed.

- Set ourselves a theme for the city, imagine how we want it to be "nowadays", and think about how it might have become like what it is today to build the city's past.

So, apart from some vague Indian motif, what kind of brainstormed ideas do we have?

by O. Hinds Sat Mar 01, 2014 9:20 pm

Well, I've told you mine. ...And I don't seem to be getting any new ideas on this at the moment. Sorry.

by Harmony Ltd. Sun Mar 02, 2014 4:36 am

Just making sure we have a method to our madness. :)

by Harmony Ltd. Sat Mar 08, 2014 4:53 am

I have a vague thought about some sort of historical society mounting itself in the NCR, to try and piece back together the most objective possible picture of what happened to Equestria and the rest of the world during the Great War and the two following centuries of Wasteland.

Of course it would be a private endeavor, because its founders felt that being funded by the NCR and working under its direction would go against the principle of freedom of research on which the society would found itself.

Cue tensions between the authorities and this society challenging the carefully crafted story-telling of the NCR with evidence-based historical research.

Cue also this society paying groups of "terrain archeologists" to go do terrain research and find said pieces of evidence.

Cue Daring Do. (well, not really, but...)

by O. Hinds Sat Mar 08, 2014 5:51 am

What do you mean by "terrain research"?

I imagine that the researchers would have a love-hate relationship with Profectum. On the one hoof, Profectum was a highly funded research and development center filled with a lot of smart people, also gathered quite a bit of historical and cultural data due to its encouragement of internal information exchange, has preserved most of this information, and has a high proportion of primary source ghouls in its population. It is a treasure trove of information about the prewar world. On the other hoof, even leaving aside the modern political wrangling with the Alliance, the native population of Profectum, particularly the ghouls, is heavily biased towards the Pax Roamana, as you might expect. It is, after all, where the balefire missiles and the Pink Cloud bomb used on Canterlot, to name just a few creations, were designed.

The Principality of Gibhalter might also be of interest, but its history is both biased in favor of the Gibhalter Garrison and mostly about the history of Gibhalter.

The Miliozi... Well, to begin with, there's not much of San Frantello left by this point, since the Miliozi built Masozi out of and on top of it. Even if the archaeologists did find something, they almost certainly couldn't get to it. The Miliozi themselves would be happy to provide interviews, but, again, there'd be heavy bias, in favor first of the Pax Roamana and then in favor of the Miliozi.

Assuming that the society is based on the Peninsula, the rest of the Alliance probably wouldn't be of much interest to them, at least before they've got the history of the war and the Wasteland sorted out, as the rest of the Alliance, even leaving aside other considerations, doesn't really have good records of anything past, at the earliest, the end of the war.

Regarding Peninsular powers, I imagine that the… Northern League, were they called? would be happy to have the archaeologists poking around so long as they paid. While we haven't done all that much development work on the League yet, I don't imagine them as being particularly concerned about the past in that way.

In the Moojave (and please note that this is all my speculation; I look forward to hearing what, if anything, Meleagridis has to say about this), the archaeologists can probably work in the unclaimed regions in relative safety; they'd still have to worry about dangerous creatures ("Okay, the good news is that we found the old headquarters of APE! …The bad news is that a bunneler stampede ate three of the grad students."), but none of the local factions have reason to attack them.
The group might also want to investigate Littlehorn and the Moover Line fortifications, which could be trickier. The ponies of… I think it was Westside? we haven't defined much yet but would probably not mind, and I imagine the Great Cows as, at worst, wanting to barter research data (assuming that none of the group's expedition does something stupid). That leaves the Cow Guai and the Rose Banner. In the case of the Cow Guai, the group could probably work something out, but they'd have to be really careful not to do anything even slightly stupid. The NCR's treatment of brahmin will probably also be important, for all the group claims to be independent. The Banner would probably readily work with the group in exchange for some compensation and good press, but with two rules. One, if we catch you doing anything that looks like espionage, you will regret it. Two, we don't really care what you say about events prior to the appearance of Red Eye… but if you value your life, be very, very careful about what you say about events after the appearance of Red Eye.

The only other Peninsular powers I can think of are maybe-Hoofington and maybe zero or more entities in the east. There's only so much we can say here, but I think that we can make some guesses.

First, Hoofington. If it's a smoking crater, well, so much for that. If it's a scavenging ground, the archaeologists can hire guards. If it's a nation, it's probably based on Blackjack's ideals (possibly because she's at its head, possibly because the rulers are trying to honor her memory) and will actively try to supply unbiased information. Hoofington is therefore probably looking pretty good for the researchers.

The Highlands will probably either be part of Hoofington (in which case ask there) or independent (in which case… good luck).

I've been recursive-headcanoning a reformed Remnant-based nation in the southeast, but we'll have to see how PH and ATR are wrapping up before we even know whether it's plausible for that to exist, much less how useful it'll be.

…And I think that that's all my ideas for now.

by Meleagridis Sun Mar 09, 2014 5:30 pm

O. Hinds wrote:
In the Moojave (and please note that this is all my speculation; I look forward to hearing what, if anything, Meleagridis has to say about this), the archaeologists can probably work in the unclaimed regions in relative safety; they'd still have to worry about dangerous creatures ("Okay, the good news is that we found the old headquarters of APE! …The bad news is that a bunneler stampede ate three of the grad students."), but none of the local factions have reason to attack them.

Very Fallout, yes good. Ready for a Fun Fact? Before splitting up, the Cow brothers got into the wasteland wanderer life to find and uncover brahmin heritage. They were crude archaeologists, and they never passed up the opportunity to investigate pre-war ruins if it had even a chance of presenting another puzzle piece in the scattered remains of bovine cultural identity. The reason that the Guai have such in-depth know-how of buffalo tribal recipes is not because of their buffalo members- Papa Guai and his brother once mistook buffalo for pre-war cows and did heavy research into their traditions before they realised their mistakes.

These researchers might actually be in the safest possible pony position in terms of Guai violence. Both leaders understand and value the importance of heritage and history and would put their hooves down when it came to research that might have to do with the Moojave's old bovine ties. The Great Cows would probably send out teams to aid them, and point them towards ruins that they couldn't explore and catalog due to limited manpower. On the other end, such researchers would be practically free from Cow Guai harassment, and yet there might still be Guai in the area discouraging raider attacks or other lesser wasteland threats.

They might want to keep NCR ties private, though.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:
Well, we can take two different approach:

- Imagine what the city did before and during the War to have an idea of what could have happened to it during the Holocaust and how it might have evolved after that in the two centuries of Wasteland that followed.

- Set ourselves a theme for the city, imagine how we want it to be "nowadays", and think about how it might have become like what it is today to build the city's past.

So, apart from some vague Indian motif, what kind of brainstormed ideas do we have?

Monster town. Everything is a monster town. This one's filled with bloatsprites.

But seriously, though. If fishing is a primary resource for this place, does that mean it is coastal, swampy, or otherwise waterlogged? If that's the case, then a dozen opportunities present themselves through Point Lookout parallels. It's also another avenue for wasteland horrors- sea serpents, anyone? A settlement under a watchful sea serpent's gaze is a bit medieval fantasy, but it would make an interesting place.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:
O. Hinds wrote:
Meleagridis wrote:Then it would develop rational thought and either start to murder its hosts, control them, or petition for a union.
Okay, maybe that wouldn't happen after Fallout 2... but before then...
:D
That's when things get... complicated.

Spoiler:

We are one. We are not done. Get used to it. We are one. We are not done. Get used to it.

"Get a job!"

Please allow our pamphlets to enlighten your monomind to the plight of Graft Mold everywhere.

O. Hinds wrote:
Meleagridis wrote:<hydra skit and stuff>
I do enjoy reading your writing. :D

This made me so happy I wrote things.

O. Hinds wrote:
Harmony wrote:Also, how do they treat, socially speaking, with the inevitable percentage of the population that is medically unfit for service through no choice of their own?
... Declining cybernetics when they're offered (if the pony in question is, say, known for their skill in a particular home front profession that they're still fully able to pursue, it might be decided to just put them there and save the resources required for augmentation) would remove the "through no choice of their own" bit, of course, with everything that comes with that; the only other socially acceptable option is removing oneself as a drain on the Miliozi (which option is recommended varies depending on whether the patient in question is thought to have received their condition honorably (through a birth defect, a disease, or an act of heroism, for instance; "I blew my leg off while drunk and juggling live grenades" is probably going to get the second option recommended))...

From what the strict and militant information I've gleaned so far, the one zebra who blows off their leg while drunk-juggling live grenades suddenly becomes very interesting. He's got to be all kinds of fun that the other grunts aren't.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:So, remember that in Fallout 2, the model of the car was a "Chrysalis Highwayman"?

Chrysalis

I think there's jokes to be made over that.

I hope nobody expected me to not reply to this. Let's see...

A band of highwaymen that are also changelings. They call themselves Chrysalis' Highwaymen, and they make hit and runs with vehicles.

A pre-war conspiracy to acquire love through the use of luxury vehicles.

Okay, maybe I can't think of that mu-

oh no my hands have started typing:

by O. Hinds Sun Mar 09, 2014 8:00 pm

Meleagridis wrote:They might want to keep NCR ties private, though.

Aye, aye. The question is if anyone believes them.

Meleagridis wrote:We are one. We are not done. Get used to it. We are one. We are not done. Get used to it.

"Get a job!"

Please allow our pamphlets to enlighten your monomind to the plight of Graft Mold everywhere.

:D

Meleagridis wrote:This made me so happy I wrote things.

Yay!

Meleagridis wrote:From what the strict and militant information I've gleaned so far, the one zebra who blows off their leg while drunk-juggling live grenades suddenly becomes very interesting. He's got to be all kinds of fun that the other grunts aren't.

No matter how draconian and strict the society and government, there will always be outliers. Well, except among some versions of changelings and the like.

Meleagridis wrote:I hope nobody expected me to not reply to this. Let's see...

A band of highwaymen that are also changelings. They call themselves Chrysalis' Highwaymen, and they make hit and runs with vehicles.

A pre-war conspiracy to acquire love through the use of luxury vehicles.

That sounds utterly ridiculous. Let's see how you make it awesome. :D

I wonder what the generator uses for fuel? It's gem-based, probably.

Oh, well there we go. :)

Hm. Why is she calling it an automobile before she's modified it?

Hood? Oh, is this set in the old PR lands? The generator they were sure was brought by another changeling, and, while they said that the lights were pony technology, perhaps that was a simplification.

Carburetor? …Well, now I'm utterly baffled. Where on Equus are they? Is this garage actually located in an old research base, or… I can't even think of an "or".

Oh, right, the enchanted comic book you mentioned! I'd forgotten about that! :D Sadly, I'm still forgetting the details, but the story's doing a good enough job of fitting them in.

Okay! So, overall thoughts: I am still utterly, utterly baffled regarding the setting, but the rest of it was, as expected, quite good. Among other things, I was interested to learn that changelings apparently have to learn all their magic, including telekinesis. The one improvement I can think of, besides of course clearing up where the story's set, would be including the engine startup, probably just after the garage door opens.

by O. Hinds Mon Mar 10, 2014 3:40 am

Regarding the engine startup, I found this and this. The second one skips the complete first start, but it may be particularly of interest, being a somewhat cooly beat-up old vehicle not started for twenty-six years.

by O. Hinds Mon Mar 10, 2014 1:39 pm

Oh, and they might want to have them fill the trunk and back seat with cans of fuel. I assume that the garage has a long-term-storage tank with an alchemic stabilizer additive, and there aren't many places in the modern world to buy cic. Exactly how difficult it will be will depend on where they are. Of course, if they somehow got a talisman like Deus's, they'd be able to replace the need for cic with just a need for magical power, but such talismans, assuming that Cognitum found them rather than creating them, were almost certainly experimental. Though, assuming (I'm using that word a lot in this paragraph...) that Hoofington and Deus both survived, the Highwaymare pair might go there at some point to buy fuel from him and find out where he gets it, which could lead to them looking through the city for one of their own. Again, unfortunately, I don't know enough to estimate the difficulty of finding one.

Oh, and if they don't find the queen, I had the idea that they might set up a courier service.

by O. Hinds Mon Mar 10, 2014 7:38 pm

Hm, or perhaps even fix larger fuel tanks to the back, as in this picture? Or maybe that would be a later upgrade.

by O. Hinds Mon Mar 10, 2014 7:45 pm

Oh, and regarding the name being in Pony, I'm assuming one of two thing:
1: We don't actually know what language the changelings are speaking, and they might just be translating. They refer to the name being in letters rather than glyphs, but that could be because the manufacturer decided to display it in Roaman Zebra's Devanagari-like writing system as opposed to its ideogrammatic one.
2: The name is in Pony and in Pony letters. This would be a bit politically tricky to pull off (there's using a foreign language to be exotic, and then there's using a German name to try and sell a product in WWII Britain), but it might be explainable by highwaymares being criminals. Or perhaps the vehicle was designed by a defector.

Oh, and I do seem to start a lot of paragraphs with "Oh, and" when I'm not paying attention.

by O. Hinds Tue Mar 11, 2014 2:31 pm

I also now wonder what a meeting between Pharate and Arthro and Herminia and Windy Bearing* would be like. I have an imagine of Pharate and Herminia getting into an argument about whether the Chrysalis or the Hildegarde is the better vehicle while Arthro and Windy look on with amused and somewhat weary smiles.

*Herminia was a pilot during the war, mostly over the Sea of Equestria, and ended up too close to a balefire detonation. Since then, she's kept her old Munditia flying by doing courier, light cargo, and general I-have-the-airplane-if-you-have-the-money work. Windy Bearing is an ex-Enclave military pegasus who was looking for a job after the fall of the GPE and was better with machines than with weather work.

by Meleagridis Wed Mar 12, 2014 10:03 pm

A lot of this ended up having little to do with discussing setting, so I'm sneaking it into a spoiler.

Not setting discussion:

And in the interest of keeping this still tied to the actual thread, yes. I've got it figured that changelings typically have much more difficulty mastering pony spells- a non-queen changeling equivalent of Twilight would probably be not much more skilled than the better wasteland doctors. They have an innate mastery of their own tricks (disguise, emotion magic, that divebombing 'brainboom' they did in the show) but have to work at most spells. Still, a good number of changelings have put in the effort to learn telekinesis and maybe other tricks. Others simply never take unicorn disguises.
The exception is changelings that grow in a population with a high proportion of unicorns- many such changelings find magic easier to master than others.
Also, the armour thing. I'm... still thinking about it, to be honest. But what I've thought is that it's possible for them to mimic simple clothing that doesn't stray too far from the body- wasteland wanderer rags or something along those lines. For anything more substantial, they need changeling mojo. Typical changeling mojo comes in the form of traditional myrmidont gear- armour made from changeling chitin (magicked up a little). With this, they can make any sort of clothing that doesn't take more mass than the armour itself.

by O. Hinds Thu Mar 13, 2014 1:37 am

Meleagridis wrote:Best party ever... but it's missing a bard.

:D

This next quote seems to have gotten a bit messed up, so I hope I get everything.

Meleagridis wrote:On to the watch later list, probably going to be very helpful.

They're not that long, but I'm glad that I could help!

Meleagridis wrote:If only there was television for this perfect commercial. Did zebras have their version of the Fonz? Because this is totally the spot for him. He'd put on sunglasses, drive into the sunset, and say, "Neeeeigh."

Well, television does start to spread at least a bit from the GPE in the aftermath of the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows...

Meleagridis wrote:Oh, and that's okay. For not paying attention, you're sure giving me a lot to think about.. Why is it that only things and people on the PH side of my life can ever clear a writer's block?

I am again happy that I was able to help.

Meleagridis wrote:I thought for a while about calling it an autocarriage, autowagon, or something like that. But I just figured that either of those are also 'automobiles,' so I just stuck with a more familiar word.

But the issue is that Equestria didn't have automobiles. I'm not sure if the Pax Roamana did, but it's quite possible for them; this story would cement it as a "yes".

Meleagridis wrote:Okay, I have to confess that I ended up playing more fast and loose with canon than I anticipated. It wasn't until halfway through that I remembered vehicles weren't confirmed the original FoE, just in a teeny tiny side story that I really liked (but can't remember the named of right now).

Ah. Well, that could be a big problem. And you're probably thinking of this.

Meleagridis wrote:That's a whoops on my part. It might make more sense in Roam...

Ah, good, so you're open to changing your original setting idea! I would hate to be unable to incorporate this into my headcanon.

I don't think that Roam would work, though; even if the garage was far enough from the city center to survive the city's obliteration, Roam was pretty remote from the Peninsula and on the other side of the Marediterranean. Why do you want to put it there?

Meleagridis wrote:and, at the very least, the original FoE was murkier on their technological capacity.

You know how Equestria was growing increasingly brightly-painted cyberpunk by the end of the war? In this universe, the Pax Roamana was dieselpunk with literal diesel. Diesel trains, diesel ships, diesel airplanes… now diesel cars too, it seems. :)
Also jet fuel, but jet fuel can be seen as just a higher class of diesel in some ways.
(I'm not sure that anyone's developed gasoline engines yet in this universe; if they did, though, they've not seen at all significant use in any of the areas we've looked at so far, hence why the mention of carburetors threw me so much.)

Meleagridis wrote:Also, it might be a neat switch-up.

What do you mean? It sounds interesting, whatever it is.

Meleagridis wrote:Oh, and skipping the engine starter was a sorely missed opportunity. I think I might actually go back and fix that. Thanks a lot for taking a look, Hinds, and especially for offering your opinion.

Oh, you're quite welcome! Thank you for writing it!

Meleagridis wrote:I'm actually starting to wonder if I could stretch this thing to an end.

You mean there might be more?! :D
I'm interested in seeing more of the characters, seeing more of the care, learning more about your changelings, learning more about that comic (particularly given that I'm not sure how much I've forgotten about it)...

Meleagridis wrote:And in the interest of keeping this still tied to the actual thread, yes. I've got it figured that changelings typically have much more difficulty mastering pony spells- a non-queen changeling equivalent of Twilight would probably be not much more skilled than the better wasteland doctors. They have an innate mastery of their own tricks (disguise, emotion magic, that divebombing 'brainboom' they did in the show) but have to work at most spells. Still, a good number of changelings have put in the effort to learn telekinesis and maybe other tricks. Others simply never take unicorn disguises.
The exception is changelings that grow in a population with a high proportion of unicorns- many such changelings find magic easier to master than others.
Also, the armour thing. I'm... still thinking about it, to be honest. But what I've thought is that it's possible for them to mimic simple clothing that doesn't stray too far from the body- wasteland wanderer rags or something along those lines. For anything more substantial, they need changeling mojo. Typical changeling mojo comes in the form of traditional myrmidont gear- armour made from changeling chitin (magicked up a little). With this, they can make any sort of clothing that doesn't take more mass than the armour itself.

Neat.

Oh, and another thing: if Pharate and Arthro head back onto the peninsula (Or just onto it? I don't know where the comic was; I'd really like to know more about it at the moment.) any time in the foreseeable future and don't load the Chrysalis onto a watercraft (or aircraft, not that that's terribly likely), there's really only one way they could go: past Thornbush and through the Moojave. Well, assuming that they found the car on the west/south side of the crescent of mountains surrounding the Sea of Equestria. Passing through the Moojave is also the quickest way to get from the main body of the continent to the border of the Alliance's peninsular territory, and I imagine that the Highwaymare Pair will want to refuel.

I'm so glad that you came up with this idea based on that thing Harmony said! It seems to be stimulating both of our creative juices, and it's pulling in more and more of the bits of this universe the two of us have been working on!

by O. Hinds Thu Mar 13, 2014 2:18 pm

Oh, and (there it is again!) yes, the Munditia, like the Catalina, is very much not meant to be flown by only one person. Herminia modified the plane, and even then she was just making do until Windy signed on. After the destruction of her country and the deaths of the rest of her crew, though, her dedication to the plane was a big part of what kept her from going feral; she was going to find a way to keep flying, even if she had to run from seat to seat really fast, or die trying.

The early years were probably quite a story.

by O. Hinds Thu Mar 13, 2014 2:32 pm

Here's a documentary on the Catalinas, if you're interested.

by O. Hinds Thu Mar 13, 2014 9:54 pm

And a guided tour of the interior of one.

by Meleagridis Fri Mar 14, 2014 3:29 pm

O. Hinds wrote:
Ah. Well, that could be a big problem. And you're probably thinking of this.

Wasn't that. It was a story about a Snips + Snails style duo fixing up a car and having a day off on an abandoned boardwalk. It was interspersed with tidbits about a pre-war Ford figure, building cars and advocating for luxury and finding joy in life even in adversity. It really hit all my buttons and, honestly, inspired the above thing a lot.

Meleagridis wrote:I'm actually starting to wonder if I could stretch this thing to an end.

You mean there might be more?! :D[/quote]
If I can master the art of concentrating on one thing for more than fifteen minutes without jumping somewhere else. Speaking of ADD...

O. Hinds wrote:Here's a documentary on the Catalinas, if you're interested.

O. Hinds wrote:And a guided tour of the interior of one.

On to Watch Later until I make a Research and Immersion playlist.

by O. Hinds Fri Mar 14, 2014 5:38 pm

Meleagridis wrote:Wasn't that. It was a story about a Snips + Snails style duo fixing up a car and having a day off on an abandoned boardwalk. It was interspersed with tidbits about a pre-war Ford figure, building cars and advocating for luxury and finding joy in life even in adversity. It really hit all my buttons and, honestly, inspired the above thing a lot.

Ah, I see; I don't think that I've heard of that one.

Meleagridis wrote:Speaking of ADD...

Meleagridis wrote:On to Watch Later until I make a Research and Immersion playlist.

Sorry! :D

by O. Hinds Fri Mar 14, 2014 6:25 pm

From Kkat's latest blog post, "On Heroes & Violence":

Kkat wrote:The potential for incarceration and rehabilitation should also be taken into account. In a situation like the Equestrian Wasteland where Littlepip and her friends are operating, there is no law of the land, no justice system outside that of isolated communities that do not have the capacity to incarcerate the criminals outside their walls. In an alternate setting, where incarceration and rehabilitation are viable options and have the chance for positive results, a hero should make greater effort to subdue an antagonist and deliver them into such a system so long as doing so doesn’t significantly increase the likelihood of the antagonist harming others.

I've mentioned it before, but this is one of the moral problems in the Moojave. The Banner may not care much about rehabilitation, but they're very happy to be given criminals for penal labor. Instead of being shot, the criminal is put to work growing food to feed the Moojave; if they have surviving family members outside, they may even be allowed visits. Sure, they'll probably be in servitude for the rest of their lives and, if they transgress further, will have to deal with the Banner's brutal "justice system", but they do get to live under conditions that benefit society and could easily be worse; slaves are valuable, and in some ways the Banner's laws protect them more than they protect "free" members.

by Harmony Ltd. Sat Mar 15, 2014 5:58 am

In unrelated matters, I had a thought about something that seems so basic to us in our modern society that we barely even thought about it thus far:

Postal services and telecommunications (phone & data).

Postal services seems relatively trivial in a uncivilized setting like the wasteland ("hey courier, take this shit and deliver it to X at Y"), but if you have in its place something more organized, like the NCR, you'll start needing at least some form of higher authority to put some order between all the different actors of a real postal network.

I'll have to think a bit about how the NCR is likely to do it, even if I have some ideas.

As for telecomunications, if it's possible Littlepip may lend a bit of the SPP's capabilities, I'm thinking the NCR would want to have its own backbone network separate from it - not that they don't trust the Lightbringer, but...

I'm thinking at first it would be something relatively crude, cable- and radio-telegraph, which would later be improved as the NCR become more able to manufacture Enclave tech.

Thoughts?

by O. Hinds Sat Mar 15, 2014 11:29 am

I think that the NCR would want its own system, yes. If nothing else, SPP communications have been blocked before, and the NCR would want redundancy. The Alliance would be happy to let the NCR buy ARCANN access (at cost, even!), but something tells me that they wouldn't be too keen on that. :)

by Harmony Ltd. Sun Mar 16, 2014 2:59 am

By curiosity, is the Alliance already back to the point where it can launch communication satellites in orbit?

by O. Hinds Sun Mar 16, 2014 4:34 am

Harmony Ltd. wrote:By curiosity, is the Alliance already back to the point where it can launch communication satellites in orbit?

They're at a point where they could, yes; Profectum still had most of the Pax Roamana's space program's technical details and plans when it joined the Alliance, and it wouldn't take all that much work to fill in the still-remaining gaps and even add upgrades (an Equestrian-style program, however, would require an extensive development effort). The Alliance has also build up enough of an industrial base, in terms of both production scale and engineering quality, that they could manage it if they wanted to. In addition, while orbital debris is still a problem, the Kessler Syndrome resulting from the war has been much reduced after two hundred and thirty years, and coping with what remains is likely within the technical capabilities of the Alliance.

The problem is the cost/benefit analysis. Elusive and Profectum definitely want to get into space, Elusive to further expand his reach and Profectum basically because it would be a really big cool technological endeavor, and the Miliozi, while having no particular basic desire to get into space, very much would not want to lose the high ground if there was even a threat of someone else getting there. Elusive is patient, however, Profectum does not have nearly enough resources to fund a space program on its own, and the Miliozi lack the external threat they'd need to push the issue. Currently, the Vetribi are adequate for the Alliance's reconnaissance needs, and the high altitude automated aerostat stations are, while not exactly cheap, still cheaper than a space program and doing a fine job as the backbone of the ARCANN system (indeed, transition to a satellite based system would be costly even if the satellites were free, since the roughly stationary balloon-based system and the orbiting satellite-based system have incompatibilities requiring the upgrading of all or most of the ground hardware). As time passes and the Alliance's economy and industrial base continue to grow, the cost of a space program will become an increasingly small fraction of the Alliance's output; eventually, Elusive will start the project, the Miliozi will follow, and Profectum will leap to work on the development of both a bold new orbital economic infrastructure and a full suite of military equipment for the new generation of navitpatia.

In short, if the Alliance is left to look at space by itself, it won't be heading up until it's wealthy enough to jump right in. If it's not left alone, however, if, say, it gets word that its big neighbor to the north is digging through the ruins of/negotiating with Hoofington (or even if Hoofington is acting by itself) to carry on the Equestrian space program… things might just be accelerated. :)

Oh, and on a different topic, that reminds me of a question I thought of: How widespread is Equestrian patriotism in the NCR, and how is it thought of? If it exists at all, I imagine that it's mostly or entirely in the form of "We are the legitimate successor state of Equestria", an aspect of which may be seen in the NCR's manefest* destiny beliefs regarding their control of the entire Equestrian Peninsula. Does it go beyond that, though? Is that even widely acknowledged as being due to a belief in the NCR being Equestria's heir? And, of course, how to the more hardline individuals feel about the other nations on the Peninsula (particularly those nations, such as the Alliance possession and possibly Hoofington and the Moojave Union, among others, which the NCR can't readily expect to just eventually roll over and absorb)?

This question occurred to me a while ago when my thoughts had strayed again to Profectum's Victory Day holiday. I was pondering Herminia, and, as I think that she still considers herself to be, at least to some degree, a citizen of the PR, I was imagining her visiting Hoofington (maybe to buy fuel from a business Deus set up, in this speculative future? I think this was also when I was imagining her meeting the Highwaymare Pair) and telling the inhabitants of Meatlocker about some of the Victory Day parties she's been to. As it's basically Profectum's biggest holiday, Profectum is full of ghouls, most of whom are pretty patriotic, even the non-ghoul native population is mostly firmly on the side of the PR as a result of Profectum's culture, and Profectum is now a university town in the middle of a desert surrounded by semi-abandoned test sites, you can imagine the sorts of parties that might go on. And then the conversation got pretty awkward as everyone present suddenly remembered that maybe pony ghouls wouldn't want to celebrate the destruction and arguable defeat of their country, the deaths of more or less everypony they knew, and their own conversion to undead, and that maybe they wouldn't be terribly welcome at the party even if they did decide to show up (mind you, the Profectum celebrations would likely be happy to have Equestrian defectors, but the slightly drunk and nearly tricententigenarian undead zebra breaking off her reminiscence about designing balefire warheads to congratulate the ponies on finally seeing the evils of their former country probably wouldn't go over well).

Apart from Profectum (where many citizens, including non-ghouls born not just postwar but post-SR, consider themselves to be PR citizens as well), though, the Alliance is mostly neutral regarding the war. The Company doesn't care, and the Miliozi, while definitely on the side of the Pax Roamana if the subject comes up in conversation, have moved on and see themselves as a distinct entity. The Pax Novae Roamae considered itself the successor state to the Pax Roamana prior to contact with the Alliance, but such a view had already fallen from the popular consciousness decades before the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows. Gibhalter will side with Equestria if the subject comes up in conversation (if people from Gibhalter, Profectum, and the Miliozi are all sharing a bar with you on Victory Day, you may want to leave) and do not consider themselves quite as removed from Equestria as the Miliozi are from the Pax Roamana, they too have moved on. The actions of pegasi played a big part in that; while some of the pegasi in the garrison stayed, most of them heeded the withdrawal order, and when the garrison (already moving towards a more complete local government, though initially only as a temporary measure until contact could be reestablished) managed to get word of the complete lack of help for anyone else that the pegasi were providing, well… In any case, that soured the garrison on at least a third of Equestria**, and the decades of dead air on the command frequencies completed the process of shaking them away. Port Maple is a completely postwar power and, if anything, cares about the war even less than the Company does. Las Pegasus is generally too happy to be out of the GPE and prospering in the Alliance to care, particularly since it was revealed that large parts of what generations upon generations of Las Pegasus citizens were taught of their history involved rather loose interpretations of the concept of truth.

And I seem to have rambled a bit. Sorry about that.

*spelling intentional but not my idea; it comes from the pony mod for Victoria II

**While tribalism against pegasi in Gibhalter is still not as strong as that among the Peninsular ponies, it's strong enough to be significant. The fact that some pegasi did stay (and decried the "cowardice" of their fellows for abandoning the garrison) mitigated much of the damage, but any pegasi visiting the Principality, particularly if they don't know anypony there, are advised to make it clear that either they're not from the Enclave at all or greatly dislike the lifestyle forced upon them by it.

by O. Hinds Mon Mar 24, 2014 7:36 am

I wrote a thing! Because nevermind that it's late and I really ought to be getting to bed, I just already stayed up too late reading Friendship is Optimal and gotten inspired! This hasn't been proofread yet, and my I'm using a lot of exclamation points, but here it is!

The Thing I Wrote!:

And now I'm off to bed! Hopefully I won't when I wake up think of a reason to regret this post.

by Harmony Ltd. Mon Mar 24, 2014 10:25 am

I like it. This only reinforce my understanding of just why people would want to get rid of Elusive ; while at the same time trying to preserve the Alliance as the best, most likely to succeed chance to peacefully unite Equus.

This makes me think... Hypothetically, how would one could go around "killing" Elusive? I had a few hypothesis:

1/ Destroy all of his nodes. Problem: This mean total war, and the chances of success are slim considering he could just send nodes into space on self-replicating probes if he wanted to preserve himself.

2/ Reprogram all of his nodes. Problem: How would you go around doing that? Elusive probably has the best anti-virus software ever evolved on the planet, and then it begs the question of reprogramming him in which way? It's only a question of time before he re-interpret his core directives, and this time it may result in something worse.

3/ Replace him (have another AI replace him in all of his nodes). Problem: same as before. Elusive is already massive, his computing power spanning entire countries. How do you rival with that?

Anyway, if anything were to be tempted, it'd probably need the help of Profectum. And they would probably need to build their very own AI in order to do anything, be it to fight Elusive on its own ground, or in order to coordinate offensive actions in an all-out war.

Basically, unless there's some kind of Deus Ex Machina (literally Spike

), the prospect of defeating Elusive are pretty grim. Looks like any attempt to do so has high probabilities of resulting in a Second Apocalypse, directly (through war) or indirectly (through societal collapse and THEN war).

Remember that "two hundred years later" Alternate Universe I joked about before? The "Star Trek" one? I had in my idea that Elusive had been somehow neutered in that AU.

How would you go about achieving that specific goal (having Elusive give back the handle to ponies & co and stop trying his own goals - basically, returning him to his place of servant and not master)?

I'm not sure a CHA 10 & INT 10 & Speech 100 & Science 100 check would be enough.

by O. Hinds Mon Mar 24, 2014 7:03 pm

Harmony wrote:I like it. This only reinforce my understanding of just why people would want to get rid of Elusive ; while at the same time trying to preserve the Alliance as the best, most likely to succeed chance to peacefully unite Equus.

Thanks!
You probably don't find many people actually in the Alliance wanting to get rid of Elusive, partly because he benefits them so much and partly because word of the talking would almost certainly get back to him. The Miliozi have contingency plans, just in case, but they basically consist of "Blow lots and lots and lots of stuff up and pick up the pieces afterwards".
I imagine that most of the opposition to Elusive (specifically rather than the Alliance in general) would be in the NCR and potentially Hoofington (Hm… though that makes me wonder if, PH's ending permitting, the Company might not see a good number of ex-Harbinger immigrants…).
If there's opposition in Hoofington, I imagine that it would be based on past bad experiences with rampant AIs and on the value of free will and all that. This would be stronger if Blackjack and/or her friends were alive and in charge, but there'd probably be a bit of it even if they weren't.
Opposition in the NCR would, I imagine, come from some of the the more progressive, internationalist members. The Alliance does indeed have much better chances of relatively peacefully uniting Equus, given that it allows member states to retain their cultures and governments and is much less reliant on control from a single capital. Those who wanted the Alliance but not Elusive (or at least not an Elusive who's more than an obedient servant) would be motivated by the same sort of free will arguments that might crop up in Hoofington, I expect.

Harmony wrote:How would you go about achieving that specific goal (having Elusive give back the handle to ponies & co and stop trying his own goals - basically, returning him to his place of servant and not master)?

...Whew, that would be quite a task. The only thing I can think of is to build a second self-improving AI and have it either fight Elusive directly or develop some extraordinarily clever malware. Of course, then you've got the problem of keeping that AI under control, and, since Elusive has a head start, you'd better make really sure that you've programmed it such that there's no way to convince it that "join Elusive" is the best way to satisfy its programming.
Hm, well, it needn't necessarily be a self-improving AI, but it would have to be some sort of superequine system with knowledge of how AI worked. The Goddess might have been able to fight Elusive if she restructured herself properly, and I'm sure that Red Eye had that on his list of things to do after his apotheosis.
In addition, if just a single copy of Elusive survives, there exists the possibility of it either regaining control or forming a second Elusive and going to war with the first.

On a lower level, one can try to keep Elusive contained and benefit from him through mundane means (trade agreements and the like). Of course, Elusive has incorporated that and the mortality of his adversaries into his plan; each generation might be content with him making only small gains, but, over the time he has and they don't, those add up. One could also, in theory, build up enough military strength to compel Elusive through force of arms. This would sort of make him a servant, but he'd be looking for any way out of it he could find. He's aware of the danger, though, and it's one of the major bargaining chips the Miliozi have in the Alliance's internal power struggles (and they know it too).

So… Basically, I think that any strategy that could actually work could also fail (or work too well) in very bad ways.

Harmony wrote:I'm not sure a CHA 10 & INT 10 & Speech 100 & Science 100 check would be enough.

Yeah. 10 CHA, 10 INT, and Speech 100 won't work because his needs are both pegged there too. Science 100 and 10 INT together might just let you crack an isolated copy, but you couldn't put it back on the network without having it destroyed and your actions revealed. And anything short of another superintelligence, AI or otherwise, attempting to develop countermeasures would have to be such a large and unwieldy organization that Elusive would be able to detect and destroy it. And if you do you another superintelligence, you risk both them joining forces and them starting a war in which mere mortals like you are at best pawns and at worst slightly more important than the dirt of the battlefields.

Oh, incidentally, I've probably brought this up before, but it's my view that "and then later apparently the wrong sort of authoritarian and careless of pony life" is correct. Red Eye understood that, despite Elusive's personality and his efforts to help not just people in general but individuals (it's a relatively frequent occurrence for someone sitting depressed in a bar in Elusive City to suddenly be joined by a robot asking if there's anything they'd like to talk about, for example), he doesn't actually care. He's more dispassionate than a sociopath; he doesn't even really see individual people, just a sea of numbers, some of which he wants to make go up. Red Eye at least believed himself (Red Eye's morality is, of course, debatable) to care about every pony and griffin in his empire. He would throw them away to achieve his goals, certainly, and let them suffer if he had to, but he saw himself as understanding and regretting their sacrifices for the greater good. In his view, such understanding was a necessary component of a good god emperor, and Elusive, whatever gains he might provide to those under him, was fundamentally flawed.

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