[Fallout Equestria] Setting discussions

Harmony wrote:I was thinking it may be used during a conflict as it is more mobile and easy to control than the ARCANN balloons (which, if I read it right, are dependent on the air currents to move around?).

No, they have thrusters, as I recall, but yeah, drones would be useful for that sort of thing.

Harmony wrote:For example, during a high tempo operation behind enemy lines, you may reach a point where balloons wouldn't have been able to keep up with your advance, and you'd be out of communication range.

Oh, you'd prefer to not move the balloons at all, if you didn't have to.

Harmony wrote:Which, if you're Elusive, might be a cause for concern.

Aye. Though he doesn't need constant contact with all his nodes, remember, and ones designed to go into combat potentially out of communication range would be, well, designed for that even more than most nodes.

Harmony wrote:With the planes you could be able to create an ad-hoc network just for the occasion, which wouldn't have to hover in place, and if you have the mass-budget for it, you could even put a camera on them to do a bit of recon at the same time. Although that could defeat the purpose of having an expendable data-relay asset...

Right. I already have the Alliance using drones for various purposes.

Harmony wrote:And yeah, I know the vetribi are intended to fill that niche of high-altitude recon, but given the cost in term of resource of the things, it's good to have an alternative at hand if push come to shove...

Oh, certainly, and the drones could also do low-altitude recon much more efficiently. One could also use Vetribi to deploy drones, if the drones are stealthy enough for the Vetribus to get away before they activate (that means carrying less direct sensor equipment too, of course, but the payload pays were already modular for just this sort of reason).

they have thrusters

Makes sense they would, yeah.

Oh, you'd prefer to not move the balloons at all, if you didn't have to.

Even more reasons why having an alternative to balloons could be useful. :B

Aye. Though he doesn't need constant contact with all his nodes, remember, and ones designed to go into combat potentially out of communication range would be, well, designed for that even more than most nodes.

Of course. Still, losing contact is probably not a desired outcome / event. Unless some really contrived operation was currently taking place...

Harmony wrote:Even more reasons why having an alternative to balloons could be useful. :B

Indeed. :)

Harmony wrote:Of course. Still, losing contact is probably not a desired outcome / event. Unless some really contrived operation was currently taking place...

Oh yes. More and higher bandwidth connections are definitely preferred.

Random question...

I was thinking on the mechanics of Balefire bombs, and I was wondering... Are they 1 for 1 equivalents of nuclear devices in the mechanics of their effects on stuff as they detonate (with the only difference being that they are based on necromantically modified/activated dragon fire breathe instead of nuclear fission/fusion); or are there some slight differences on their effect?

The Manhettan & Fillydelphia craters are at the very least source from the original Foe pointing to the balefire bombs having a strong blast effect. But I was wondering if said blast effects might have been less important than for IRL nuclear devices of comparable size / class. This could explain how "Wartime Equestrian Enginering" might have been able to whistand the days of fire as well as it did.


I dunno. Just some random thoughts. Any opinion on the matter?

I'm not sure, sorry. They do seem to do significantly more damage outside the immediate blast and flash radii, but it's also hard to tell how much of a contribution the cloud ceiling made.

Interestingly, the balefire bombs didn't oblierate Manehattan and Fillydelphia off the face of the earth like Cloudsdale. Smaller target perhaps? There is the obvious presence of mass radiation, and major damage was done to every building in Manehattan save Tenpony Tower. I doubt the pegasi had already made the cloud cover by the time Manehattan was destroyed. I assume the attacks happened in close proximit: Cloudsdale > Splendid Valley > Manehattan > Fillydelphia (and Canterlot during all that).

I feel a little awkward talking about this considering today is the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

Well, regarding Cloudsdale, it might also be that it was just easier to blow away.

Evilgidgit wrote:I feel a little awkward talking about this considering today is the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

That... Huh. That is an odd coincidence.

So, here's another idea to turn over: synthetic custom-variety starmetal. From talking with Somber, it looks like it could be possible even in PH's universe... just with the little problem of the R&D causing insanity.

Interesting. Can you develop this line of thought, please? Just so I'm sure what we're talking about exactly.

Well, part of this depends on just how much is known about starmetal, which in large part probably depends on how much information about it comes out of Hoofington. Which we don't know yet.

Basically, though, starmetal can be a very, very useful material, and it can also come in different types (from different stars) for even more versatility. Problem is, natural starmetal is a: rare and b: kind of already owned with potentially very nasty side effects resulting.
So why not try to make starmetal of your own? You can make as much as your resources support (however much that is) and can have it have whatever properties and (absence of) side effects you can figure out how to give it. You can even produce multiple varieties. Imagine the "Use the Tokomare to rebuild the Wasteland" plan from PH without the tiny little complication of the eldritch horror.

But how would you go about synthesizing it in practice? We know the EoS can turn soulstuff / moondust into starmetal through a controlled reaction (if I recall correctly?), but do we know the mechanism behind it?

And the particular properties of the various "brands" of starmetal... I had been left under the impression that they dependent on the "imprint" of the Soul of their parent star.

Wouldn't than mean that, somewhat like crystals, you need a natural "bud" to grow them over?

I don't currently know/have ideas to propose for the details, I'm afraid.

Thought this might be an interesting general-purpose resource:

Map of damages done to Hiroshima by the nuclear bombing

It's a bit difficult to make out, but neat; thanks.

Basically, we can see that the flatter / obstacle free a zone is, the further away the blast damage spread. Conversely, the hills seems to have acted as a barrier, reducing damages beyond them.

Of note, Hiroshima was an Airburst, as was Nagasaki, in order to maximise the destructive range of the device.


Now, let's compare to Manehatten. As far as we know, it was a single bomb, and a ground-level / shallow-underground detonation.

Manehatten, from my impression, was also choke full of skyscapers, acting as so many obstacles for a blastwave.

I'd hypothesize that most of the damage ghat happened to Manehatten was from:

1/ the high-magnitude eathquake provoked by the the (under)ground detonation.
2/ the fireball and subsequent firestorms all over the city
3/ the radiations

Given the size of the crater, and given how far the destruction spread from ground zero (reference - toppled over skyscrapers at least 8 kilometers away from Ground Zero, most likely 10 or more), that must have been one heck of a bomb. Like, if I had to come up with an H-bomb yield, I'd say 10 MT or above.

I just realized that Derpy is basically Harold pre-Fallout 3.

I mean:

Have seen lots of shit in their time, and have been dealt quite a difficult hand yet remain cheerful and optimistic, and continue to believe in the good nature of their species even after having witnessed first hand the worst they had to offer.

Influential and respected members of their community.

Always in the background to help the "actual heroes" fight the good fight.

Ghouls.

Oh, also

Used to hang with one of the setting's big bad before they became the Big Bad (Twilight IS also the Goddess).

Oh and also is basically the setting Universal Grandparent (at least that's how I see Harold, as a grampa)

...Actually, wow.  While looking for details for or against my memory of the bomb's location, I found this:

FoE wrote:The cold, dead bones of Manehattan loomed ahead, still at least a day off.  But even this far out, the balefire bomb’s destructive power had been felt.  The flames had not reached anywhere near here, but the massive shockwave had flattened trees and caved in homes.

It is followed by "At this distance, damage from the bomb couldn’t have been more than that of a strong windstorm, but it had weakened the other side of the home enough for the decaying effects of age to ravage it.", but still.

Trixie's cottage is about forty kilometers away.
According to this, a designed-yield (100 Mt) Tsar Bomba detonated at the optimal air blast airburst height of 15.1 kilometers has "At 5 psi overpressure, most residential buildings collapse, injuries are universal, fatalities are widespread." out to a distance of... 37.1 km.  Without any magically shielded buildings to get in the way.  Now, granted, as above, the damage to the area of Trixie's cottage appears to be significantly less than that, but still.  For a 100 Mt groundbust, the 5 psi air blast only goes out to around twenty-three klicks.  This was a very, very powerful bomb.  And small and inconspicuous enough to be snuck into a major metropolitan area; at the very least, it had to fit in a railcar, maybe even just a cargo wagon, and it might even have been pony-portable.

You know, the other day, it occurred to me to worry why there wasn't more raiding of Profectum's vaults for the Final Assault.  I thought that perhaps there was just so much in the vaults that the Final Assault couldn't make use of them all, but I wasn't sure where evidence that anything was used might be.  There's the possibility that the Pink Cloud system used against Canterlot was from there, but, um, yeah, with this bomb, I think we may have another example.

Ah, and on the thing I was actually looking for, the information doesn't seem very clear.  Could have been a ground level blast, then, a shallow underground (subway) detonation, or a low-altitude airburst (going up a skyscraper), then.

Oh, nice points about Ditzy.  :)

In that case, it's truly yet another testament to Wartime Equestrian Engineering that so many of Manehatten's building's were simply toppled over or maybe broke in half; rather than being simply vaporized or turned into piles of so much rubble.


Which, when you think about it, leads to believe that the job of cleaning up all those ruins in order to reclaim all that real-estate in the Geeater Manehatten Metropolitan Area is going to be -really- labor-intensive. Might easily explain how even after over two decades of constant work, something like only under 20-30% of the overall metropolitan area has been cleaned up: I'd say mostly in the Tenpony borough (because money), Princesses' Height because of the needs of the expanding industries there, and the area between the Crater and the coast in Downtown Manehatten because that area was largely rubble and easier to clean. There wasn't much work to reclaim Riverside, as I tend to imagine it was less vertically built to begin with, and more some kind of suburban sprawl.

At least this gives a great justification to a line I had written about (current day) Manehatten's "thriving construction industry".

Given Manehatten is set to reclaim its old title of most important urban center on the Equestrian Peninsula (in term of economic acrivity, excluding Masozi), what with it being the only real harbor of the (Trottingham doesn't count there as it linked to the rest of the NCR through the sealane with Manehatten); and also the point of contact for most if not all exchanges between the Alliance and the NCR.

Basically I predict that in a few decades it'll be the most populated city in the NCR (currently it's the third, behind the Junction City / New Canterlot conurbation and New Appleloosa), as more and more industries and businesses move their activities there, or are even simply being created / launched locally. This due to a combination of cheaper access to foreign goods and resources from Zebrica, and an aggressive campaign on the part of Manehtten's masters (mostly the businesses behind the Twilight Society) to bring back the city to its former economic and cultural glory (and also, I suppose there may be some more or less subtle push on the part of the Elusive Society, what with A-Town existing and all).

Harmony wrote:In that case, it's truly yet another testament to Wartime Equestrian Engineering that so many of Manehatten's building's were simply toppled over or maybe broke in half; rather than being simply vaporized or turned into piles of so much rubble.

Harmony wrote:Which, when you think about it, leads to believe that the job of cleaning up all those ruins in order to reclaim all that real-estate in the Geeater Manehatten Metropolitan Area is going to be -really- labor-intensive. Might easily explain how even after over two decades of constant work, something like only under 20-30% of the overall metropolitan area has been cleaned up

Harmony wrote:At least this gives a great justification to a line I had written about (current day) Manehatten's "thriving construction industry".

Aye.

Harmony wrote:Trottingham doesn't count there as it linked to the rest of the NCR through the sealane with Manehatten

Well, there might also be that undersea tunnel, but if that's still usable, it probably comes up in Northern League territory.

Who are the Elusive Society, again? Sorry for the memory fault.

Elusive Society... I mean, Elusive Corporation, or whatever commercial conglomerate that Elusive is at the head at (not the Alliance, just his own faction)?

I'm gonna feel dumb when I remember the exact name I feel.

Ah, yes, the Elusive Company.

No problem; I forget an embarrassingly large number of details about the things you come up with. :)

Bother. Equestria did have oxygen talismans. In my defense, they were only mentioned only three times in PH and not at all in the original, but still, I ought to have remembered to check even if I didn't remember the fact. I am very greatly sorry for this error I have made. Okay, the rockets are still salvageable, though. Oxygen talismans take power. Furthermore oxygen atoms are heavier, which may mean that each oxygen atom takes more power to produce than each hydrogen atom. A reactor small and light enough to fit in a rocket can only provide so much power. If the reactor cannot fuel enough biprop production to accelerate the rocket at more than 1g, the ship still can't SSTO or definitely safely make a powered descent. A LOX tank is less versatile, but this was to be a temporary design before moving on to better rockets; it was also intended, I assume, to only make planned trips to Equus orbit and the moon. A cooling talisman for the LOX tank is presumably much cheaper in terms of energy. And might lead to the overall system being cheaper in cost (during wartime) than building ships with powerful enough reactors using the technology of the day, if that was possible at all. That's a... somewhat iffy support, but I think/hope that it's good enough.

I see. It's all about compromises, then.

Wouldn't shock me to see such "awkward" solutions being used. We've seen far worse engineering compromises in the history of aerospace engineering. (See: hydrazine tanks in the F-16 and the need to have an external pressurized air generator in order to be able to start the engine)




As an aside, random idea:

Stories about archeological expeditions sent to explore the ruins of the Old World, in places that were previously too hazardous to contemplate exploring pre-GoE. Possible lead to the discovery of the Stalliongrad Complex?

Also, I'm just thinking that with the element generating talismans and the technology behind Stalliongrad; the FoE setting basically has the tools to build Replicators.

And yet another way to tie Fallout Equestria to Equestria: The Next Generation

Harmony wrote:I see. It's all about compromises, then.

Wouldn't shock me to see such "awkward" solutions being used. We've seen far worse engineering compromises in the history of aerospace engineering.

Aye, that sort of thing happens a lot. I'm glad that you don't think it's a problem here.
(Also, sorry about that error SilentCarto caught and that I've already edited out here.)

Harmony wrote:hydrazine tanks in the F-16

[looks up]
Oh, wow, I didn't know about that.

Harmony wrote:Stories about archeological expeditions sent to explore the ruins of the Old World, in places that were previously too hazardous to contemplate exploring pre-GoE.

Interesting. And while I'm not sure it's late enough, that did bring to mind this.

Harmony wrote:Possible lead to the discovery of the Stalliongrad Complex?

Possibly!
Oh, and while we're talking about it, Bronode recently mentioned some ideas he had that might be relevant to the Complex. I'm afraid I'm not presently sure how relevant, though, or how much I ought to say.

Harmony wrote:Also, I'm just thinking that with the element generating talismans and the technology behind Stalliongrad; the FoE setting basically has the tools to build Replicators.

And yet another way to tie Fallout Equestria to Equestria: The Next Generation

:)

I've got some shopping I need to do today, so I'll get to analyzing what can be "salvaged" from the epilogue for our own purpose tonight.

If anyone read this thread apart from us both, this is going to get spoilery, so, well... catch up and read the thing?

Righto. I might be a bit delayed getting to things Saturday, too.
Good luck with the shopping.

Okay, going from memory of what I read earlier today, a first attempt at looking at what we can keep from the Epilogue...


The Lunar Commonwealth: Not exactly sure why the "Lunar" was chosen. Probably as an homage to Luna, her redemption, and the role the Moon played in general in the destiny of Hoofington? I don't know.

Anyway, it is said to be a "City State" (fiercely) independent from the NCR (to the point that the NCR may consider going at war to annex it) in Somber's timeline. I like the way it's said to be organized, so I propose we keep it, unless you have an objection? [in some ways, it could almost play the role of Geneighva; may makes me reconsider a few things in that direction]

Now, in this setting's timeline, the Bitter War happens. What happens with the Lunar Commonwealth in play? From this answer we can kind of reconstruct the present-day state of the region.


The Astrostable: Destroyed / made unusable in Somber's timeline. So this removes a few possibilities on that side. On the other hand, it's obvious it wasn't completely destroyed / everyone died, given what we see in the Epilogue. So this means there may be a group of survivors trying desperately to survive in the wake of Horizon firing. I suspect "mad science" occurred, using what was available (didn't they have a state of the art genetics lab?).

Add to that the possible Space Race to the Moon in the future of our own setting, and some interesting interactions may be had.

Thoughts?


Apex: Who is that supposed to be? Timeline suggest it happened in the timeframe leading to the reactivation of the Gardens of Equestria, so a few months after the end of chapter 77 if we go with the idea that the Gardens were activated less than a year after the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows.

Can we use it? How?


Boo: Would she already be close-enough to the degree of maturity (in several senses of the term) that she displays of the epilogue by 30 SR? Depending on that answer, can we use her? How?


"The Eye Of The World": What about it? Could it be the giant storm BJ saw from space over Zebrica? Something else completely? Could this be some kind of plot hook we could link for an interaction with the Alliance? I mean, if Scotch, Majina & Pythia got to Zebrica, odds are high they interacted at some point with the Alliance.


More questions to come later