Author Topic: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?  (Read 8406 times)

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Offline Mito [PL]

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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
The "how quickly" here differs between possible outcomes a lot. With a stellar body of that kind of size the Gef asteroid has got, at 5km/s it would probably partially burn down in Earth's atmosphere and result in some (a lot) of casualties, perhaps similar to debris falling after Darkest Hour.
But the same body at 25-35 km/s could just glass half a continent worth of land and cause Earth to enter something alike a post-nuclear-war winter.
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Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
This is the fundamental problem with subspace as presented in-game: as far as we can tell, there is nothing stopping anyone from using any subspace drive as a massive kinetic weapon, and yet it never happens (that we know of), even by accident. This is (AFAIK) why BP tries not to examine the specifics of subspace in any in-depth way beyond how it applies to the strategic situation, because otherwise one wonders why SSMs don't just slam into targets at c-fractional velocities.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
The Gef asteroid shears apart when it jumps, suggesting that objects this large can't safely be moved by subspace across such a huge velocity gap (at least with Gef tech).

 

Offline DefCynodont119

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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
The "how quickly" here differs between possible outcomes a lot. With a stellar body of that kind of size the Gef asteroid has got, at 5km/s it would probably partially burn down in Earth's atmosphere and result in some (a lot) of casualties, perhaps similar to debris falling after Darkest Hour.
But the same body at 25-35 km/s could just glass half a continent worth of land and cause Earth to enter something alike a post-nuclear-war winter.

Well, this rock is huge, it's a good deal bigger then the highest mass estimates of the one that killed the dinos, correct me if I'm wrong but even at <5km/s and after braking up into several pieces post jump as Battuta said; my educated-guess would be that even under the best circumstances, glassed continents and a nuclear winter are gonna happen no mater what.


So it's not so much "how quickly" but "how permanently" Either Earth gets a mass extinction similar to the ones it's had in the past; or Earth gets turned into a more or less sanitized ball of magma.
As far as the Terrans are concerned, Earth is gone either way so yeah.





So, in that spirit, I think it is more interesting to consider the political and social effects of the cataclysmic destruction of the vast majority of Earth's population and non-space infrastructure instead of trying to figure out exactly how quickly the aforementioned population and infrastructure get destroyed.


Yeah, that kinda was the original point when I posted the OP.
But me being the massive nerd that I am, I may have derailed my own thread with my own physics talk.  :nervous:  :lol:
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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
Well, the political and social effects of this doomsday scenario are dependent on how bad the extinction is.

Best-case scenario, Earth gets lucky, the subspace window opens in the upper atmosphere, relative velocity is minimal, much lower than an asteroid impact, and a shotgun spray of cometary ice messes up a continent.

That would throw a massive wrench in the UEF's plan to win the war, and it would do nothing but benefit the GTVA. Hell, the Tevs might even consider broadcasting "Our Gef allies dropped a giant comet boulder on your puny heads! Surrender, or we will send more!" After all, in this scenario, it wouldn't be any worse than several dozen nukes going off, and without any of the nasty side effects of radioactive fallout. You might have some mild crop failures, but the short term effect of losing population and infrastructure is going to be a lot worse than any debris the impact propels into the atmosphere.

The Tevs initially set out to hold Earth hostage with orbital bombardment. That's why command sent Bei & his multitude of beam cannons. It's pretty reasonable to assume that if the Vishnans had not interfered and dragged them into alternate-reality Shivanland, Bei & company would have followed through on the threat, and would have started vaporizing cities.

Aside from being much more random in its distribution of destruction, the comet strike would be mostly the same as a post-bombardment Earth. The Tevs are now in a great position to begin landing and annexing the planet (though it's stated somewhere that there are not enough marines in the whole GTVA to occupy even one continent on Earth).

Now let's consider the worst case scenario:

The cometary debris smashes into Earth at 60+ km/sec,  possibly the highest-velocity impact Earth has ever seen. The blast vaporizes a continent and propels a measurable percentage of Earth's mass into various suborbital trajectories. The fireball boils off a decent fraction of the oceans, wrecking all the shallow ocean biospheres. The heat wave encircles the planet, igniting everything flammable. Plant life fails on a global scale, and the fires burn off the last of Earth's precious oxygen.

This planet is no longer worth fighting over. Everything the GTVA came here to do was a massive waste of time. On top of this, the dream of returning home to Earth that propels the Terran half of the GTVA is forever shattered.

Crushing debt alone will probably force the Terran half of the GTVA to implode. Maybe Khonsu II can save them all, maybe Khonsu II can deal with the inevitable Terran backlash & NTF-effect. Maybe the Vasudans just detach from the husk that used to be the GTVA, and go do their own thing for a while.

The Tevs can actually gain a lot from this if the physics (or lack thereof) cause the impact event to be not-that-bad. But as the damage inflicted by this event increases, it starts to get disadvantageous for the Tevs.

Of course, it could be even worse than that:

...This is (AFAIK) why BP tries not to examine the specifics of subspace in any in-depth way beyond how it applies to the strategic situation, because otherwise one wonders why SSMs don't just slam into targets at c-fractional velocities.

If subspace can be used to induce c-fractional velocities...hoooooooooly crap. A measly 0.01 C, or 1% lightspeed, is almost THREE THOUSAND km/sec.

This is death-star-level destruction. There would not be an Earth after this.

...But as it concerns the Tevs & Buntus, an impact of that magnitude is no better or worse than the 60+ km/sec impact. Earth is equally useless & unusuable as either a sterile ball of rock, or a pulverized mess of vapor, dust, and asteroids.



PS, I do use subspace drive shenanigans to propel things to crazy-high velocities in my upcoming mod. The GTVA doesn't do it because of accuracy issues (can't hit the broad side of a sathanas) or strategic value (planets are worth more intact). The Shivans, on the other hand, used to do it all the time, until they invented more efficient and destructive strategic superweapons.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2017, 04:55:42 am by Erebus Alpha »
"Obviously the meson bomb is a form of cat-toast-device, with the buttered toast inverted, so that the cat and toast both fly in the direction of gravity much faster than expected. By introducing artificial gravity, a pair of cat-toast perpetual motion accelerator units can be made to collide with one another, and they produce an unimaginably devastating explosion. Both cats are named 'Meson'."

 - Wikileaks 2383

 

Offline Mito [PL]

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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
Kinetic energy of an object is equal to 0,5 x m x (v^2), that's why what looks like a marginal (under these circumstances) speed difference may have very different possible impact energy. In this case, between 5 and 35 km/s, the worst case impact would release about 50 times more energy than the best case scenario. In Wikipedia article of Chicxulub Crater, it's estimated that a 10km diameter planetoid with a mass of 1000 billion tons crashing at a speed of 20km/s would release about 4 x 10^23 Joules of energy. A quick calculation, that would be 16x the energy of the best case, and about 0,33x the energy of our worst case scenario.

So, if the planetoid (I suppose we assume that both the past extincion rock and the Gef asteroid are very similar in size) carried over all the momentum through the jump... Yeah, Earth is basically totally toast, as it's assumed that that planetoid from 60 million years from before caused all of Earth's biosphere to totally burn out. Now, 16 times less energy might not be very much. But I decided to take a look at this, impact of that kind of rock at 11km/s has got conditions for many people surviving down to about 300km from the center of the crater, while at 35km/s the fireball would outright cook everything in the radius of a little bit above 1000km. Not considering long term damage here.

And 30km/s compared to c=300000km/s is only 0,01%. But I imagine how that kind of warfare would look like - grab or make an object, push it on an orbit far below Mercury's orbit and when it gets the speed it needs, engage its jump drives to carry it to the target. At the radius of 0,0045 AU from the Sun (period of 1 Earth day) it would have about 450km/s, which is about 0,15% of c... Which I wouldn't really consider c-fractional yet. I suppose one would need to teleport objects from other star clusters or even other galaxies to have that 1% c available.

Either way, if such an event occured, it would be a blow for both sides. UEF obviously can't continue the war with Earth blown up just like that, while the GTVA's pursue of taking over Sol becomes a massive genocide, not a war. Not to mention that Tevs wanted to take over Sol economy, not destroy a half of it and make the other half crumble. Oh, and in the end Shivans kill everyone.

The thing I'm contemplating is how much of an influence MacDuff could actually have in the Vishnu/Shiva "conflict". We're discussing a way by which he could stop the Vishnans from achieving their goal even as effectively as Tevs can. It also seems harder to intervene in this particular case to prevent him from toasting Earth.
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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
Idk, the Vishnans could probably have swept the rock away, where it would have crashed into alternate-reality Lucifer-burned Earth.

Of course, it also begs the question: If the Vishnans can design a civilization to their specifications (Ubuntu/UEF)...could Kostadin be a Shivan-designed civilization? Macduff might be the product of Shivans playing with Nagari sensitives. You know, a contingency in case the whole Ken/Laporte thing did not work out.

Macduff doesn't play around with any silly occupation, or annexation, or cute little orbital bombardments like the tevs do. His approach is straight and to the point: Blast the enemy into extinction with subspace ****ery, and damn the consequences!

Kostadin Cell being a product of Shivan design makes a disturbing amount of sense.

EDIT: If you want to achieve a high percentage of C using a subspace drive, enter subspace while at/near the periapsis of your orbit around the sun, well inside the orbit of mercury. Re-emerge from subspace a few million km higher, pointed back at the sun for another high-speed descent and slingshot maneuver. Rinse and repeat until you achieve your desired velocity. Or to the limit of your reactor & drive endurance, whichever comes first.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2017, 08:55:41 am by Erebus Alpha »
"Obviously the meson bomb is a form of cat-toast-device, with the buttered toast inverted, so that the cat and toast both fly in the direction of gravity much faster than expected. By introducing artificial gravity, a pair of cat-toast perpetual motion accelerator units can be made to collide with one another, and they produce an unimaginably devastating explosion. Both cats are named 'Meson'."

 - Wikileaks 2383

 

Offline Snarks

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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?

Of course, it also begs the question: If the Vishnans can design a civilization to their specifications (Ubuntu/UEF)...could Kostadin be a Shivan-designed civilization? Macduff might be the product of Shivans playing with Nagari sensitives. You know, a contingency in case the whole Ken/Laporte thing did not work out.

Macduff doesn't play around with any silly occupation, or annexation, or cute little orbital bombardments like the tevs do. His approach is straight and to the point: Blast the enemy into extinction with subspace ****ery, and damn the consequences!

Kostadin Cell being a product of Shivan design makes a disturbing amount of sense.


Considering that Laporte is being directed by the Shivans through the Ken anima, it seems contradictory to the Shivan's objectives. In general, I don't think the Shivans have the capacity to influence an entire civilization. I think that's more of a Vishnan thing. Shivans and Vishnans both rely on Nagari, but otherwise seem to differ quite a lot.

 

Offline DefCynodont119

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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
Considering that Laporte is being directed by the Shivans through the Ken anima, it seems contradictory to the Shivan's objectives. In general, I don't think the Shivans have the capacity to influence an entire civilization. I think that's more of a Vishnan thing. Shivans and Vishnans both rely on Nagari, but otherwise seem to differ quite a lot.


True, but it does not exclude the possibility that Macduff is a Nagari sensitive; If he is, he could be aware of the larger power's agendas, but focused on using their actions to profit for himself. . . Somehow. . .
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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
There's absolutely no reason why Shivan animae (I'm not sure if the term applies to Ken, but for lack of a better one) would have to cooperate, or even be particularly likely to. Think about our own brains - different brain structures compete all the time, and for that matter, so do different somatic systems. I'd argue, and am considering writing an essay arguing, that internal contradiction is an inherent property of Darwinian systems, and the Shivans are definitely evolved. If Ken is optimized to solve the problem in Sol, his methods almost certainly would diverge from the larger Shivan heuristic response.

Alternatively, One Future could be a particularly direct implementation of an interuniversal fitness function. Either is compatible with a Shivan-designed Gaian Effort.

 
Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
I don't think the entire Gaian Effort is the result of Shivan manipulation of Nagari sensitives. The Gefs consist of a bunch of seperate cells, with varying agendas, and most are not as hardline & extremist as Kostadin cell.

During Age of Aquarius, Steele gives us a hint. It might be true, it might be false: "Could the enemy weaponize cognition? Could the Hammer of Light's religious awe be the result of external stimulation of the temporal lobe?"

I think it's more likely that the Shivans are doing to Kostadin cell what they did to the Hammer of Light, and there is a decent chance that Macduff himself is a Nagari sensitive.

...Even if it turns out to not be the case, it's still a fascinating thought. This is what I love about BP: There is a practically infinite amount of plot fuel, and any number of very awesome & exotic things can end up happening, because there are more questions than answers. Although our baseless speculation, in many cases, is completely story-worthy, the writers of BP canon have never failed to deliver an even more impressive experience.

I cannot help but wonder if the story of the BP universe is finished, or still in development. Does the BP team use our wild speculation for cultivating and testing story ideas?

The BP team might be Shivan! :eek2:
« Last Edit: August 04, 2017, 04:25:08 pm by Erebus Alpha »
"Obviously the meson bomb is a form of cat-toast-device, with the buttered toast inverted, so that the cat and toast both fly in the direction of gravity much faster than expected. By introducing artificial gravity, a pair of cat-toast perpetual motion accelerator units can be made to collide with one another, and they produce an unimaginably devastating explosion. Both cats are named 'Meson'."

 - Wikileaks 2383

 

Offline Snarks

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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
I can't remember where, but I recalled that the Elders might be keeping the Gef around, as a final contingency for humanity's survival, should the Shivans annihilated everything else. The Gef's adaptation to living in fringe space would give them the best ability to survive without actual colonies. I would suppose that this factor, at least for non-Kostadin, non-suicidal Gef, would work against the Shivan's interest of destroying an entire species.

 
Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
As I understand it, the Shivans in the BP canon are basically cosmic gardeners, exterminating species that pose a threat to future development, so that lots of new & different things exist in the future. And they appear to use subspace & Nagari as a mechanism for target detection.

I know that's a gross oversimplification, lol. And it does totally ignore the Vishnan side of the equation.

Consider this though: Any species that expands through the cosmos without faster-than-light travel, such as the Gefs, are off of the Shivans' radar. This might not be a flaw at all. If a species is wholly incapable of becoming a hegemony, because it lacks FTL travel and communication, then would genocide be necessary?

It makes sense that a society (Kostadin) shaped by Shivan nagari interfacing would (1) be capable of persisting over the long term without requiring the Shivans to wipe it out, and (2) recognize the necessity of violence and destruction, like the Shivans do.

This would also paint Ken as a hopelessly naive idealist in the Shivan system, trying to macgyver some way that humankind can continue to exist. Perhaps because in the long run, nothing short of extinction or total subspace deprivation would satisfy the Shivan anti-hegemon imperative.

Who knows, the Shivan manifesto may demand nothing short of total extinction, which would also make Kostadin the hopelessly naive pet project of some poor Shivan idealist.
"Obviously the meson bomb is a form of cat-toast-device, with the buttered toast inverted, so that the cat and toast both fly in the direction of gravity much faster than expected. By introducing artificial gravity, a pair of cat-toast perpetual motion accelerator units can be made to collide with one another, and they produce an unimaginably devastating explosion. Both cats are named 'Meson'."

 - Wikileaks 2383

 
Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
I can't remember where, but I recalled that the Elders might be keeping the Gef around, as a final contingency for humanity's survival, should the Shivans annihilated everything else. The Gef's adaptation to living in fringe space would give them the best ability to survive without actual colonies. I would suppose that this factor, at least for non-Kostadin, non-suicidal Gef, would work against the Shivan's interest of destroying an entire species.

Al-da'wa can mention this in the fourth(?) dreamscape.

 

Offline QuakeIV

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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
I mean, as I understand it, its perfectly possible for humanity to survive as long as it doesn't threaten the cognitive diversity of the universe.  Any macgyvering would probably be centered around the fact that humans are too easily driven into a genocidal rage, and how can we keep humanity from doing something that will get it killed.  Its my understanding that Shivans dont just wipe out everything that is big enough and has subspace technology, they do in fact have restraint.

 
Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
I had a few questions. I apologize if it seems too lame/non-relatable.


*If earth did get destroyed, what would the alien races think about it? How will it change their secret agendas?

*Also, if the GTVA and the UEF had terra forming equipment, why didnt they restore Vasuda Prime?

*Would this affect the development of Shambhala?
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Offline QuakeIV

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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
I'd personally suppose vasuda prime was a bit too far gone to be considered a viable terraforming candidate.  You could pick the vaguely decent mars-alike place, or the radioactive, geologically unstable place with **** tons of dust clogging up the upper atmosphere for the next few centuries.

 

Offline Snarks

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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
Wasn't the terraforming of Mars something that took decades? Plus, it likely seem to be something that was done before subspace travel was developed. If you could just find a more suitable planet, it's likely far cheaper to settle than to try to turn a barren wasteland into something useful.

 

Offline QuakeIV

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Re: [Spoilers] What would happen after a GEF Victory in "One future"?
As far as I know thats mainly what they ended up doing, in the sense that I recall most of the surviving vasudans getting shipped to their remaining colonies.