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Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: General Battuta on June 19, 2017, 01:07:15 pm

Title: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on June 19, 2017, 01:07:15 pm
With BP's tenth anniversary coming up, and our minds still on our promise to finish this story one way or another, we think it's time to start revealing some of the secrets that await in the BP story.

I'll answer questions, although in an oracular sense. Ask anything. Yes, knowing what's coming could change the experience if we do ever finish Acts 4+5 and BP2 - but knowing is never the same as playing.

Fire away.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on June 19, 2017, 02:15:17 pm
In Steele's mind, assuming he wins, what kind of surrender/peace treaty would he want the UEF to sign?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on June 19, 2017, 03:57:40 pm
What's the situation regarding uef infiltration into the alliance command element?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on June 19, 2017, 04:15:07 pm
I only want a Yes/No answer, Were the Shivans made by a Boltzmann brain / Type-6 civilization / or are a subsystem of a higher entity?

It's obvious in hindsight.

Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Trivial Psychic on June 19, 2017, 05:32:24 pm
Will future installments remain with Laporte as the player's character, switch back to Bei or another previously-encountered character, or will we become a completely new character?
Will the next installment feature a significant increase in cap-ship command missions?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on June 19, 2017, 05:40:30 pm
In Steele's mind, assuming he wins, what kind of surrender/peace treaty would he want the UEF to sign?

Morpheus must proceed. Other than that the details are presumably in the hands of his superiors.

What's the situation regarding uef infiltration into the alliance command element?

Aside from sympathizers and potential defectors, they really need to worry about infiltration by someone else.

I only want a Yes/No answer, Were the Shivans made by a Boltzmann brain / Type-6 civilization / or are a subsystem of a higher entity?

It's obvious in hindsight.

The Shivans were calculated into existence as a necessity of a universe hospitable to any form of cognition.

Will future installments remain with Laporte as the player's character, switch back to Bei or another previously-encountered character, or will we become a completely new character?
Will the next installment feature a significant increase in cap-ship command missions?

You'd play Bei, Laporte, Nabirasul and maybe some walk-ons in BP3. Capship command would ideally become a possible approach to a mission rather than a mission type of its own, but who knows if that's achievable.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Snarks on June 19, 2017, 10:04:33 pm
What role will the Fedayeen (including its computation asset CASSANDRA) play in the final stages of the war?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Darius on June 19, 2017, 10:14:55 pm
Capship command would ideally become a possible approach to a mission rather than a mission type of its own, but who knows if that's achievable.

I think the framework that's there does allow for that. One Future was initially designed to be playable with either a fighter or a cruiser. The script was designed to trigger when the player is in a capital ship, rather than on a per-mission basis. Some of the cruiser-specific sexps in that mission probably still have leftover checks to see if player is a cruiser or a fighter.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on June 19, 2017, 10:22:43 pm
For your release plans, will Acts 4 and 5 of WIH be released individually (as separate releases) or will 4+5 be released together?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: FrikgFeek on June 19, 2017, 10:44:15 pm
So... the entire plan against the Wargods is predicated on the fact that the Imperiuse never left the system. The UEF thinks it leaves after its airwing gets smashed in Darkest Hour, but that's well before the Wargods were formed.
Was the Imperiuse just a lucky accident for Steele or did he intentionally keep it in system as part of a plan to get rid of a battlegroup that hasn't even formed yet?


Or is the implication here that the Wargods(maybe under a different name) were active at that time, disbanded when Simms broke, then were recreated afterwards? And they were seen as enough of a threat by Steele even before The Plunder.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on June 19, 2017, 11:18:53 pm
What role will the Fedayeen (including its computation asset CASSANDRA) play in the final stages of the war?

They'll be Laporte's prime movers to get the events of Acts 5 rolling, and the ones most directly privy to her plans. They won't be highly effective during Act 4 due to Steele's countermeasures.

For your release plans, will Acts 4 and 5 of WIH be released individually (as separate releases) or will 4+5 be released together?

If we ever make it to release on those the hope is to do them together. But episodic releases have worked nicely for us in the past, so who knows.

So... the entire plan against the Wargods is predicated on the fact that the Imperiuse never left the system. The UEF thinks it leaves after its airwing gets smashed in Darkest Hour, but that's well before the Wargods were formed.
Was the Imperiuse just a lucky accident for Steele or did he intentionally keep it in system as part of a plan to get rid of a battlegroup that hasn't even formed yet?

Steele 'palmed' the Imperieuse after the Blitz so he'd have an ace card to play when he needed to save a bad situation or pluck a really ripe target.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: JSRNerdo on June 20, 2017, 01:47:45 am
Is Ricardo cannon

Capship command would ideally become a possible approach to a mission rather than a mission type of its own, but who knows if that's achievable.

Is that a challenge?   :drevil:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on June 20, 2017, 02:43:39 am
Is Ricardo cannon


(Not the oracle, but...)

Loosely.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: FrikgFeek on June 20, 2017, 03:59:46 am
Why is the Myrmidon still so commonly used for space superiority even in TEI battlegroups? Is there a massive surplus of Myrm hulls as a result of some politicking in the Capella era? Is it supposed to be more noob friendly than the Perseus or Herc 2? With the Myrm's fighter-bomber update perhaphs bomber pilots are using it when pressed into CAP due to other squadrons not being available?

Is it a rite of passage for new pilots, having to survive enough sorties in the Myrmidon before being given real fighters?

Does command just hate pilots? :P


(I know I could be asking about future story bits here but I'm honestly just more interested in little bits of worldbuilding and backstory).
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Grizzly on June 20, 2017, 05:54:15 am
Is Ricardo cannon


(Not the oracle, but...)

Loosely.

I see what you did there.

@Oratuta:
Does the Vasudan Imperium have any special objectives in the Sol Theater, beyond what we have already been told?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on June 20, 2017, 07:35:10 am
Will we get to fly a support ship?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nyctaeus on June 20, 2017, 08:00:42 am
What's going on with captured GTVA ships by UEF? What is the super secret project that 1st Fleet is working on, with ships defected to UEF like Lambouchere and captured tech from logistic ship? Will we see beam-equipped UEF warships?

Will we see Sanctuary again? What is her role in further events?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on June 20, 2017, 08:57:27 am
Will we ever meet Brie or Kassim again?

And I assume that the next time Laporte contacts with Ken is going to be rather face-to-face? (Ending of UT2, "We can't speak ever again" or something suggesting that Laporte or Ken is being watched by someone from now on)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on June 20, 2017, 10:04:01 am
Why is the Myrmidon still so commonly used for space superiority even in TEI battlegroups? Is there a massive surplus of Myrm hulls as a result of some politicking in the Capella era? Is it supposed to be more noob friendly than the Perseus or Herc 2? With the Myrm's fighter-bomber update perhaphs bomber pilots are using it when pressed into CAP due to other squadrons not being available?

Think Super Hornet. It's filling a requirement for a long-lived and affordable space superiority design. Also it has six gun points.

@Oratuta:
Does the Vasudan Imperium have any special objectives in the Sol Theater, beyond what we have already been told?

They're more interested in the looming metaphysical/Shivan-related crisis than in the Sol theater, but they are engaged in that theater to the extent that it bears on said crisis: which, they're realizing, is a lot more than they thought.

Also the Hammer is a factor.
What's going on with captured GTVA ships by UEF? What is the super secret project that 1st Fleet is working on, with ships defected to UEF like Lambouchere and captured tech from logistic ship? Will we see beam-equipped UEF warships?

Will we see Sanctuary again? What is her role in further events?

The captured GTVA ships supplied vital reactor and power system knowhow to Project Shambhala, but perhaps their most important contributions were the records they gathered during their journey into the Sanctuaryverse. I don't think we have firm plans for/against UEF beams in very special cases (like a special bomber weapon, maybe) but they aren't going to be a huge strategic turning point.

The Sanctuary is full of people who've spent years hibernating under Vishnan influence. They'll definitely be important.

Will we ever meet Brie or Kassim again?

And I assume that the next time Laporte contacts with Ken is going to be rather face-to-face? (Ending of UT2, "We can't speak ever again" or something suggesting that Laporte or Ken is being watched by someone from now on)

No firm outline pinning exactly when Brie or Kassim will show up, but I think Brie at least will pop up again as a yardstick for Laporte's growth. And yes, Laporte's role as a deniable asset requires that Ken go pretty hands-off.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Jellyfish on June 20, 2017, 12:28:55 pm
Will new ships appear on either side? What would be their role?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on June 20, 2017, 01:04:54 pm
- Is the Murugan A Real Thing; will we see it in action in acts 4/5?

- What is Shambhala?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on June 20, 2017, 01:15:08 pm
- In BP cosmology there are things called the Dawn War, and the Brahman. Are these causal precursors of the Shivans?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nyctaeus on June 20, 2017, 01:22:25 pm
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/UEX_Maitreya

What is this?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Garfield on June 20, 2017, 01:51:50 pm
What exactly is the terminal protocol? How does it work? Who  or what created it?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on June 20, 2017, 01:59:24 pm
Will we get to see TEI era new Vasudan ships?

IIRC the tech room entry on the Hatshepsut said there is a newer class of destroyer out.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on June 20, 2017, 03:47:32 pm
Will we ever see Feds vs. Shivans? Will the Shivan lines recorded for the UEF pilots ever get used?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: GhylTarvoke on June 20, 2017, 04:43:43 pm
What is the Great Darkness?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Aesaar on June 20, 2017, 04:46:39 pm
Will we get to see TEI era new Vasudan ships?

IIRC the tech room entry on the Hatshepsut said there is a newer class of destroyer out.
If I can successfully model one yes for sure.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on June 20, 2017, 11:44:11 pm
Will new ships appear on either side? What would be their role?

Everybody will be getting more ships (except maybe the Vishnans?) Prominent highlights include next-gen Vasudans, the Tev drone bombers, and various late-war UEF wunderwaffen.

- Is the Murugan A Real Thing; will we see it in action in acts 4/5?

- What is Shambhala?

The motive behind question one is in a way the answer to question two: which is to say, Shambhala is an attempt to exploit the GTVA (and the player's) psychological fixation on victory through ship-to-ship combat in order to create a blind spot through which true Ubuntu victory can be achieved.

- In BP cosmology there are things called the Dawn War, and the Brahman. Are these causal precursors of the Shivans?

The Dawn War occurred when the rich early universe became divided between defect-strategy powers (Cixin Liu's 'dark forest aliens', though of course BP got there first...at least in English) and the powers that would become the Brahman: supercooperators who overcame the game-theoretic optimum of 'shoot first speak never' through resilient alliances.

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/UEX_Maitreya

What is this?

A necessary and possibly sufficient component of Shambhala.

What exactly is the terminal protocol? How does it work? Who  or what created it?

The terminal protocol is literally the Brahmans' dying design: the last-possible-aeon failsafe program by which their artificial noosphere was quarantined into diverging dissimilar universes, each isolated in subspace, 'gardened' by the Shivans. Imagine every computer on the Internet disconnected and air-gapped.

Will we ever see Feds vs. Shivans? Will the Shivan lines recorded for the UEF pilots ever get used?

Yes and yes.

What is the Great Darkness?

An emergent and inevitable property of metacognition in a rechnender raum incorporating the full Tegmark III ensemble. At the largest scales of computation, consciousness becomes a fatal pathology.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on June 20, 2017, 11:50:43 pm
I forgot, what is Severanti doing right now?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on June 21, 2017, 01:48:31 am
Is it likely that, at the culmination of the Sol War, both sides will believe that they have won?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on June 21, 2017, 03:10:38 am
 1: How will the heat death of the universe affect the Shivans?



This next ones a bit out there.   :drevil:

 2: Let's say I (out of spite) encrypted "Alpha 1 giving middle finger.png" into the DNA of a highly extremophilic Terran microbe artificially modified to live in the atmosphere of a Y-class brown dwarf; and thus allowing them to survive into heath death longer then any other form of life; would these "Terran lifeforms" survive the Shivans via technicality and be able to mock/insult the Shivans on a personal level via Alpha 1's angry likeness living on in their genetic code?

Or is this quest for galactic bragging rights just a hollow victory gone to far?   :p
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Grizzly on June 21, 2017, 03:38:49 am
If Baru Cormorant would be part of the BP universe, what would she be doing and how ****ed would the people she's doing it to be?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: JSRNerdo on June 21, 2017, 03:55:58 am
How's Bosch doin'?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Grizzly on June 21, 2017, 04:02:38 am
Is it likely that, at the culmination of the Sol War, both sides will believe that they have won?

Is both sides a fair assessment of the complexities involved or can the non human factions be seen as their own 'sides'?

What is Ken's goal?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: crizza on June 21, 2017, 10:09:42 am
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/UEX_Maitreya

What is this?
Considering your answer and the text on that site:

Is that a shipyard?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: FrikgFeek on June 21, 2017, 06:07:36 pm
Clearly not since it has defined rotation times and a max speed of 25m/s.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Garfield on June 21, 2017, 06:45:18 pm
What were the Vishnans trying to accomplish during the events of AoA? What are their overall goals?

EDIT:

Quote
An emergent and inevitable property of metacognition in a rechnender raum incorporating the full Tegmark III ensemble. At the largest scales of computation, consciousness becomes a fatal pathology.

Did the great darkness destroy the Brahmans?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nyctaeus on June 21, 2017, 07:52:36 pm
Clearly not since it has defined rotation times and a max speed of 25m/s.
Plus the shipyard model itself is longer than 2 clicks. I guess this is resized Vexor, or one of Cadius' models.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Trivial Psychic on June 21, 2017, 09:21:30 pm
An emergent and inevitable property of metacognition in a rechnender raum incorporating the full Tegmark III ensemble. At the largest scales of computation, consciousness becomes a fatal pathology.
Upon reading this, I am reminded of The Architect from the Matrix movies.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on June 21, 2017, 11:41:05 pm
Clearly not since it has defined rotation times and a max speed of 25m/s.
Plus the shipyard model itself is longer than 2 clicks. I guess this is resized Vexor, or one of Cadius' models.
...You guys, the description makes quite clear that it's based on the Murugan.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Snarks on June 22, 2017, 07:52:53 pm
What is it about Nagari tempering that enables the formation of the UEF and council of elders, which is hinted to be an unnatural development?

Who exactly are the Vishnans, and why do they exist?

How did Laporte end up playing such a seeming pivotal role in the conflict, and what happens if she were to die?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Gray113 on June 23, 2017, 03:21:30 am
Will we get the chance to take out any more of the major antagonist  TEV assets? Atreus, Imperieuse, Serkr team being the obvious examples but a certain Vasudan admiral also comes to mind.

Is a TEV victory in the war a definite FED defeat or will the finale be a bit more ambiguous than that?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on June 23, 2017, 03:58:04 am

To make things easier for battua:

Hidden Text: Show

I forgot, what is Severanti doing right now?

Is it likely that, at the culmination of the Sol War, both sides will believe that they have won?

Is it likely that, at the culmination of the Sol War, both sides will believe that they have won?

Is both sides a fair assessment of the complexities involved or can the non human factions be seen as their own 'sides'?

What is Ken's goal?

What were the Vishnans trying to accomplish during the events of AoA? What are their overall goals?

EDIT:

Quote
An emergent and inevitable property of metacognition in a rechnender raum incorporating the full Tegmark III ensemble. At the largest scales of computation, consciousness becomes a fatal pathology.

Did the great darkness destroy the Brahmans?

How's Bosch doin'?

What is it about Nagari tempering that enables the formation of the UEF and council of elders, which is hinted to be an unnatural development?

Who exactly are the Vishnans, and why do they exist?

How did Laporte end up playing such a seeming pivotal role in the conflict, and what happens if she were to die?

Will we get the chance to take out any more of the major antagonist  TEV assets? Atreus, Imperieuse, Serkr team being the obvious examples but a certain Vasudan admiral also comes to mind.

Is a TEV victory in the war a definite FED defeat or will the finale be a bit more ambiguous than that?

1: How will the heat death of the universe affect the Shivans?



This next ones a bit out there.   :drevil:

 2: Let's say I (out of spite) encrypted "Alpha 1 giving middle finger.png" into the DNA of a highly extremophilic Terran microbe artificially modified to live in the atmosphere of a Y-class brown dwarf; and thus allowing them to survive into heath death longer then any other form of life; would these "Terran lifeforms" survive the Shivans via technicality and be able to mock/insult the Shivans on a personal level via Alpha 1's angry likeness living on in their genetic code?

Or is this quest for galactic bragging rights just a hollow victory gone to far?   :p

If Baru Cormorant would be part of the BP universe, what would she be doing and how ****ed would the people she's doing it to be?

Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: praseodym on June 23, 2017, 12:34:41 pm
Any "chance" of a final battle between the two "big ships" (AoA)? ;)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nyctaeus on June 23, 2017, 12:55:24 pm
Clearly not since it has defined rotation times and a max speed of 25m/s.
Plus the shipyard model itself is longer than 2 clicks. I guess this is resized Vexor, or one of Cadius' models.
...You guys, the description makes quite clear that it's based on the Murugan.
I hope not. I guess this ship is quite important for the storyline, so it should be unique and recognizable.

Reverend oracle! Tell us what the future have for us! Is this ship based on Murugan?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on June 23, 2017, 01:28:04 pm
I formally object to antagonist being applied to TEV.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: crizza on June 23, 2017, 01:39:27 pm
Clearly not since it has defined rotation times and a max speed of 25m/s.
Plus the shipyard model itself is longer than 2 clicks. I guess this is resized Vexor, or one of Cadius' models.
...You guys, the description makes quite clear that it's based on the Murugan.
I hope not. I guess this ship is quite important for the storyline, so it should be unique and recognizable.

Reverend oracle! Tell us what the future have for us! Is this ship based on Murugan?
We know how the Murugan looks, that does not look like one.
For all we know, the hull was used, so it is possible, that the Murugan is Shambala and that thing is a mobile construction facilty.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on June 23, 2017, 01:54:42 pm
We know how the Murugan looks, that does not look like one.
For all we know, the hull was used, so it is possible, that the Murugan is Shambala and that thing is a mobile construction facilty.

Guys, the image caption on the wiki page says "Saab shipyards". That should give you a hint as to what you're looking at.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on June 23, 2017, 02:37:55 pm
I formally object to antagonist being applied to TEV.

Even if you agree with their actions, they are the antagonists of the War in Heaven story (well, the physical war part of it) by virtue of opposing the protagonist.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on June 24, 2017, 01:30:12 am
I thought Saab got blown up?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Darius on June 24, 2017, 02:12:50 am
The article also makes mention of Simak station.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on June 24, 2017, 05:28:23 am
the uex maitreya is an army of the angry ghosts of destroyed UEF stations
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Grizzly on June 24, 2017, 09:16:11 am
I thought Saab got blown up?

My understanding is that they are a subsidiary of Volkswagen.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on June 24, 2017, 11:07:13 am
Saab is destroyed in the epilogue of Darkest Hour ("Can anyone confirm the Saab shipyards are gone?" on FLEETNET), yup. The obvious conclusion is that the ship already exists.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: swashmebuckle on June 24, 2017, 02:10:38 pm
Is Ricardo cannon


(Not the oracle, but...)

Loosely.
On the next assiding episode of Ricardo Laporte's Exigent Adventures, our hero discover a corruptions in the fleet commands that go all the way to the top. To stop these bastardos, he most once again go rouge and infiltrate the Miami drag scene.

Spoiler:
ESTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELE!!!!!
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on June 24, 2017, 08:41:21 pm
I formally object to antagonist being applied to TEV.

Even if you agree with their actions, they are the antagonists of the War in Heaven story (well, the physical war part of it) by virtue of opposing the protagonist.

What you're saying is "antagonist" does not necessarily equal "bad guys", correct?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: FrikgFeek on June 24, 2017, 09:07:36 pm
Protagonist and Antagonist are terms that refer to perspective more than motivation. You can have a villain protagonist and a hero antagonist. For example, in a movie where you're following a mass murderer going around murdering people he's the protagonist while the detective trying to stop him is the antagonist.

Or in most multiplayer games you can take control of an 'evil' faction and fight the good guys. When you're playing counterstrike for half the game the Terrorists trying to blow **** up are the protagonists of that game and the CTs are the antagonists.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on June 24, 2017, 09:13:30 pm
I formally object to antagonist being applied to TEV.

Even if you agree with their actions, they are the antagonists of the War in Heaven story (well, the physical war part of it) by virtue of opposing the protagonist.

What you're saying is "antagonist" does not necessarily equal "bad guys", correct?

Correct.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Gray113 on June 24, 2017, 11:00:37 pm
Wow that escalated quickly
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: T-Man on June 26, 2017, 04:07:09 pm
I've always been curious about how much control the Elders are meant to have over the UEF, or how much of their power you'd imagine they tend to use?

The system on paper sounds almost dictatorial in that the Elders are unelected and seem able to overrule decisions at a whim, yet (from what is seen) the UEF people's feelings for them range from adoration to at least great respect, and for all their power they seem very hands-off and distant about the actual running of the Federation (which runs with elections etc IIRC). That diplomacy mission is the one occasion you see an Elder travel; would an Elder taking to the field like that be a rare event, or would tours of the Federation by Elders be quite common (assuming they can overcome their lack of mobility, if I remember a bit of text correctly)? What sort of relations do Federation civil servants and politicians have with the Elders?


What sort of things would you imagine Byrne being taught on his 'Philosophy of War' PhD (other than the obvious :lol:)? The objectives? Role of motivation and reasoning?


Given their seemingly peaceful ethos, why does the UEF have so many frigates and cruisers for protecting a single system? Is the GEF so powerful that a large fleet was warranted for a single star system? Was it in case the Shivans attacked? And I've always noticed the UEF seem to never deploy sentry guns; was there any reason for that or just a coincidence and they are in UEF use in canon?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on June 26, 2017, 07:46:55 pm
Is it likely that, at the culmination of the Sol War, both sides will believe that they have won?

At the moment of the UEF's formal surrender, both the UEF Council of Elders and the Security Council will believe they are on track to a victorious resolution, although their criteria are way different.

1: How will the heat death of the universe affect the Shivans?

There's not likely to be a heat death in current cosmology; the Big Rip should come first. The Shivans wouldn't be badly affected by the universe coalescing into a bunch of black holes, although their manifestations would change wildly.

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This next ones a bit out there.   :drevil:

 2: Let's say I (out of spite) encrypted "Alpha 1 giving middle finger.png" into the DNA of a highly extremophilic Terran microbe artificially modified to live in the atmosphere of a Y-class brown dwarf; and thus allowing them to survive into heath death longer then any other form of life; would these "Terran lifeforms" survive the Shivans via technicality and be able to mock/insult the Shivans on a personal level via Alpha 1's angry likeness living on in their genetic code?

Or is this quest for galactic bragging rights just a hollow victory gone to far?   :p

As long as they're not a threat to cognitive diversity they should be just fine.

How's Bosch doin'?

Bosch said he knew humanity's future lay with the Shivans, that a tragic era of hatred and misunderstanding was coming to an end, and (later) that Laporte had to destroy the GTVA. His encounter with the Shivans was obviously violent, but Bosch and several others were taken away to form a component of an apatic anima. If Bosch genuinely believed in Neo-Terra (a dubious proposition), could the destruction of the GTVA somehow serve that goal? Could Bosch still usher in the end of an era of hatred and misunderstanding, presumably to be replaced by the absence of hatred and the presence of understanding? Understanding of what?\

What were the Vishnans trying to accomplish during the events of AoA? What are their overall goals?

Intervene in the development of the Terrans and Vasudans to keep them on course for the role the Vishnans wanted them to play: as worthy inheritors of the Brahmans. The Vishnan intervention altered the invasion of the UEF and brought the Sanctuary survivors over to the 'prime' universe.

All Vishnan intervention in our worlds is deeply limited by their faculties. When interfering at a particular set of coordinates in space-time, they are required to use only information that's more or less local to those coordinates — they can't bring information in from far in the future when they instance at a specific time.

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Did the great darkness destroy the Brahmans?

Tough question. One answer would be that the Brahmans destroyed themselves to avoid the Great Darkness. Another would be that the Brahmans became the Great Darkness.

Any "chance" of a final battle between the two "big ships" (AoA)? ;)

Yes.

Will we get the chance to take out any more of the major antagonist  TEV assets? Atreus, Imperieuse, Serkr team being the obvious examples but a certain Vasudan admiral also comes to mind.

Definite yes on the Imperieuse. Probable no on the others, just to control the branches that have to be accounted for in BP3 — although by the end of that story, who knows!

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Is a TEV victory in the war a definite FED defeat or will the finale be a bit more ambiguous than that?

The Tev victory conditions do not entirely exclude some of the UEF victory conditions. And different factions within the UEF will have different victory conditions by that point.

What is it about Nagari tempering that enables the formation of the UEF and council of elders, which is hinted to be an unnatural development?

The fact that the Elders have been in communion with the Vishnans means that they are able to make decisions which guide their society towards enlightenment and eventual union with the Vishnan Great Psyche. It is, so to speak, 'against the rules' for the Vishnans to interfere in the development of species this way, but the Terminal Protocol is failing, the universes are running out of viable places for life to grow, and something has to be done.

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Who exactly are the Vishnans, and why do they exist?

The Vishnans are the post-physical intelligences who have passed through the 'filter' of the Terminal Protocol, emerged as cooperators, and been enlightened into the Great Psyche — a redoubt in subspace that is causally isolated from the quarantined remnants of the noosphere. Some of them may be Brahman survivors.

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How did Laporte end up playing such a seeming pivotal role in the conflict, and what happens if she were to die?

Laporte has been engineered to provide the Shivans with a capability they can't provide themselves. If she were to die the Shivans would lose that capability and would need to fall back on more basic methods.

I've always been curious about how much control the Elders are meant to have over the UEF, or how much of their power you'd imagine they tend to use?

The system on paper sounds almost dictatorial in that the Elders are unelected and seem able to overrule decisions at a whim, yet (from what is seen) the UEF people's feelings for them range from adoration to at least great respect, and for all their power they seem very hands-off and distant about the actual running of the Federation (which runs with elections etc IIRC). That diplomacy mission is the one occasion you see an Elder travel; would an Elder taking to the field like that be a rare event, or would tours of the Federation by Elders be quite common (assuming they can overcome their lack of mobility, if I remember a bit of text correctly)? What sort of relations do Federation civil servants and politicians have with the Elders?

I don't want to step on this too hard, in terms of closing out creative range, but my feeling is that the Elders are basically grandparents to the UEF, if the UEF were a healthy adult: you don't have to listen to them, but you're on good terms and you respect them so much that you'll give their opinion a lot of weight. Plus they have money, and probably political strings to pull, and a legally ordained rule as a long-term steering committee — and they're good people who have earned the public's love. And as things have gotten more intense, strategically, the Elders have been forced to be more and more heavy-handed.

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What sort of things would you imagine Byrne being taught on his 'Philosophy of War' PhD (other than the obvious :lol:)? The objectives? Role of motivation and reasoning?

That war must always be considered as a means to a humane end, or else war is not worth conducting.


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Given their seemingly peaceful ethos, why does the UEF have so many frigates and cruisers for protecting a single system? Is the GEF so powerful that a large fleet was warranted for a single star system? Was it in case the Shivans attacked? And I've always noticed the UEF seem to never deploy sentry guns; was there any reason for that or just a coincidence and they are in UEF use in canon?

The Shivans might come back! Sentry guns aren't super useful for defending against 'soft' infrastructural attacks like sabotage, bombings, misdirection, and even theft by unarmed noncombatants. The UEF fleet is probably small in proportion to their economy: consider that their economy matches the entire GTVA, then compare fleet sizes...
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on June 26, 2017, 08:23:42 pm
Since Severanti was kicked out of Sol, how is he doing as a teacher?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on June 26, 2017, 11:03:04 pm
 
1: Speaking if universes dying; The tech description for the Vishnan Proximity Gun says that it uses Metastable Vacuum Decay to operate. . . Why Isn't the universe destroyed when I press the fire button?

I don't doubt the Vishnans could somehow contain the quantum chain-reaction, but. . . what if the fighter's weapons subsystem is damaged? or It's hit by an EMP? or the gun jams? they would LITERALLY be betting the universe's existence on the infallibility of a flak cannon's safety systems. . .




2: Also, there is a 18-year gap between the Capella supernova and Age of Aquarius, and Samuel Bei has severed the GTVA for it least that amount of time if not more, and he is just a lieutenant commander?
Is he just a bad pilot or did something happen, and if so, what?


Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on June 26, 2017, 11:29:08 pm
2: Also, there is a 18-year gap between the Capella supernova and Age of Aquarius, and Samuel Bei has severed the GTVA for it least that amount of time if not more, and he is just a lieutenant commander?
Is he just a bad pilot or did something happen, and if so, what?
...You mean besides the incident actually covered in AoA that resulted in his estrangement from his father, who is an influential admiral?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on June 26, 2017, 11:44:32 pm
From whats been said so far it kinda sounds like a lot of species have since been om nom nommed by the summed psyche thingy.  Why is it so critical that more be manufactured?  Is there some critical mass that they need to reach for some reason?  Alternatively, is absorption into the summed psyche mutually exclusive with being 'worthy interhitors of the brahmans'?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on June 26, 2017, 11:48:22 pm
2: Also, there is a 18-year gap between the Capella supernova and Age of Aquarius, and Samuel Bei has severed the GTVA for it least that amount of time if not more, and he is just a lieutenant commander?
Is he just a bad pilot or did something happen, and if so, what?
...You mean besides the incident actually covered in AoA that resulted in his estrangement from his father, who is an influential admiral?

I am aware of that but I did not think one admiral could be able hold back one pilot for that long. Especially sense he is implied to have been in a different fleet under a different admiral. . . And only flew under his father again* once he joined the Sol expedition.
+ His father was a captain when it happened, his influence would have been far more limited at that point in time. so. . .  :confused:  How influential are we talking here? :p


EDIT: *I looked into it, Bei was originally with the 3rd fleet.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on June 26, 2017, 11:50:38 pm
Is it really that crazy?  Im not overly familiar with the ranks involved here, but as I understood it unless there was a lot of attrition to the command structure then advancement would be fairly rare.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on June 27, 2017, 09:22:13 am
Bei probably just didn't have the heart to make it. He was pretty ****ed up and I doubt the GTVA has 'up or out' policies, so he could languish a while and stew in his own guilt. Doesn't AoA imply a little about his recent service? Not sure.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: FrikgFeek on June 27, 2017, 09:54:05 am
Some of the Granite Hunter files say he basically only made it due to his excellent flight record and popularity amongst pilots he flew with. He had no motivation to move up and his psych exams were probably a complete mess. He would've been discharged if the GTVA didn't need more good pilots.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on June 27, 2017, 10:16:36 am
Why I bet those damn Vishnans were pulling strings at the promotion board
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nyctaeus on June 27, 2017, 11:43:55 am
Where are the remnants of other races destroyed by Shivans? I'm talking about their potential noospheric remainder. Through the milions of years they were probably thousands of destroyed races, and some of them were probably Nagari-sensitive like Terrans and Vasudans. If Bosch and his fellows were enough to merge their consciousnesses into entity known as Ken, they were not the first. The Nagari should be quite "populated" with such beings, but it's rather empty. Is this caused by Great Darkness?

What was UEF's emergency protocol if Shivans return?

Will we see Orestes and Temeraire again in actual missions?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: T-Man on June 27, 2017, 01:09:23 pm
Oh yeah here's one that I need to know because it drove me bloody loopy in real life; who the [BEEP] was 'Truth'?

I had two theories; Laporte (quickly worked out was not the case) and Christopher Snipes (because he seemed the sort to know a lot and it occoured to me one of his lines in FS2, 'they didn't save me because they like me' before Into the Lion's Den could be interpreted as saying he does not massively like his side).

I worked my butt off for them, became unable to trust anyone and ended up so deep cover I became suspicious of myself! Whoever they were, they bloody owe me a pint (...annnd maybe political asylum... I kind of just blew my cover... will work for food...)! :lol:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on June 27, 2017, 01:38:29 pm
Someone on IRC advanced the theory that they were a leaker within GTVI, which seemed very convincing at the time.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: perihelion on June 27, 2017, 10:57:59 pm
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The Shivans were calculated into existence as a necessity of a universe hospitable to any form of cognition.
Calculated by what?  By the multiverse itself?  I'm getting hints that direction re: Rechnender Raum, "Calculating Space."  My superficial research into that term isn't bearing a lot of fruit, though, because I'm not sure what you mean to imply by it.

Is the multiverse being simulated on some other substrate we can't see?  Or is the multiverse itself the its own substrate, the calculating space?  What is it calculating?  Why should it calculate anything at all?

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but the Terminal Protocol is failing, the universes are running out of viable places for life to grow, and something has to be done.

Why is the terminal protocol failing? Why is there manifold necrosis evident in the SABADA YEAR data?

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Peripherally, SNRI teleonomic analysis of structures in the Lanieakea supercluster suggest the presence of an engineered object of unprecedented magnitude. Unfortunately, neither the funding nor manpower for further analysis of this signal has yet determined itself necessary.
Ok.  I got to know.  What does the Great Attractor have to do with all of this, or was that just a throw-away line?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Gray113 on June 28, 2017, 08:52:59 am
Will the elders be allowed to remain free after the surrender of the UEF or are they all heading to Guan-Laramis bay for further study?

Would the elders sacrifice themselves in order to ensure the success of Shambhala?

Discounting hostile aliens does the GTVA even have a long term future?

But unlike the Council of Elders and the Ubuntu Party, which had been only a minor splinter faction at the time of the Lucifer’s destruction and earned power by popular appeal, the GTVA had been reborn as a primarily economic and political entity, rather than a cultural force. This focus on ‘hard power’ and military defense had left the GTVA vulnerable to internal ideological rifts, first during Reconstruction and then during the turbulent Neo-Terran Front rebellion. The Terran identity had become characterized by militarism and fear, and – as one Elder put it – these were traits that could sustain an army, not a people.

The capture of Sol may relieve some political pressure in the short term but it looks as though massive changes are required to the GTVA command structure. That is before we even get to see whether the promises match the reality regarding the benefits of annexing Sol.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Snarks on June 28, 2017, 09:31:13 pm
Maybe I missed this, but what is the Terminal Protocol?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Garfield on June 29, 2017, 03:55:28 am

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What were the Vishnans trying to accomplish during the events of AoA? What are their overall goals?

Intervene in the development of the Terrans and Vasudans to keep them on course for the role the Vishnans wanted them to play: as worthy inheritors of the Brahmans. The Vishnan intervention altered the invasion of the UEF and brought the Sanctuary survivors over to the 'prime' universe.

All Vishnan intervention in our worlds is deeply limited by their faculties. When interfering at a particular set of coordinates in space-time, they are required to use only information that's more or less local to those coordinates — they can't bring information in from far in the future when they instance at a specific time.

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Did the great darkness destroy the Brahmans?

Tough question. One answer would be that the Brahmans destroyed themselves to avoid the Great Darkness. Another would be that the Brahmans became the Great Darkness.


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Who exactly are the Vishnans, and why do they exist?

The Vishnans are the post-physical intelligences who have passed through the 'filter' of the Terminal Protocol, emerged as cooperators, and been enlightened into the Great Psyche — a redoubt in subspace that is causally isolated from the quarantined remnants of the noosphere. Some of them may be Brahman survivors.

I... think I understand BP's cosmology now. The only missing piece is the Shivans

Some questions about the Shivans:
-How were the Shivans calculated?
-The Shivan entity in Universal Truth says the Shivans "slept beneath the waves" before the dawn war. What does this mean?
-How did the Shivans become involved in the terminal protocol?
-What would happen to the Shivans if the terminal protocol failed?
-What is the Shivan Alternative to the terminal protocol?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Vidmaster on June 29, 2017, 02:22:30 pm
Oh benevolent Oracle, share thy wisdom!  :blah:

How aware are the elders of the actual, global involvement of the Vishnans and particularly the Shivans?
We have the surviors from the initial invasion attempt, we know that there is a plan involved and that there is at least sporadic contact of unknown nature. But for example, the Fedayeen do seem to act independent of the general control of the elders and they have a semi-live Shivan which is probably not known to them. And of course, there is Laporte and the threats made by the GTVA condemning them to be under outside influence.

What exactly is the nature of Earth's non-spaceship defenses? Considering that both orbital- and lunar-defense "bombed"  ;7 pretty hard...

Are we going to see the Elder's Guard again, hopefully not doing a knight-in-shining-armor routine?

What is the ACTUAL development state of BluePlanet? No finger pointing, just a summary of were things are at.

Is the next Baru Novel going to be as brilliant as the first? By the way, please accept some late birthday congrats. And stop twittering so much nonsense and give me more cat pictures  :hopping:

Want to see more BluePlanet, with great gameplay and writing  :nod:  The sooner the better  :nervous: But alas, all of us know how modding works and what a regular job does to a free-time based development hobby.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on June 30, 2017, 06:51:58 pm
To Battuta:

Yes or No can suffice.

1) Is Project Shambhala something that can break through the Vishnan quarantine and compromise their existence, leaving them vulnerable to the Great Darkness?

2) Is The Great Attractor a manifestation of the Great Darkness? Does it exist in parallel universes?

3) Can The Great Darkness be summarized as a though-consuming cancer?

4) Were the Ancient Monologues remnant echoes of the Ancient presence in Nagari, or were they faked by the Vishnans or Shivans?

5) Since consciousness is a fatal flaw at higher computational levels, should we interpret the Great Darkness as "less" than we are? Can it be compared to Bacteria (It being alive) or a Virus (No Metabolism, No waste, No stimuli, must assimilate something that is "alive" to replicate)

Sorry my questions aren't interestingly phrased, I tried to boil them down to essentials.

PS: The writing has my congratulations! This is way better cosmicism than H.P. Lovecraft ever made.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Azrael15 on July 01, 2017, 04:54:48 am
Do the UEF computers run on Ubuntu?

Does Cassandra?

What about Shambhala?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on July 05, 2017, 12:06:23 am
Sorry I let this slide, I was finishing my book! I'll try to get back to it soon
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: docfu on July 05, 2017, 04:45:49 am
I could only think of one really serious question...

If and when war in heaven and bp3 are finished, what are the chances I will be left without any real closure and forced to rage quit FS?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Azrael15 on July 05, 2017, 06:47:47 pm
A question about the Indus.

So, at the end of BP2, the Indus was a broken ship with her future being either scrapped or in a dockyard for a long time. There is, however, a tech room mention of refit Karunas. What's the chance of Captain Sorensen riding in on an Indus MK2?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on July 05, 2017, 07:18:49 pm
Can you explain a few probably obvious things to someone slow of thought? :P

So, the Shivans are are a natural growth, so to speak. They "cultivate" the gardens of individual... universes? They wish to preserve cognitive diversity, right? So they cull groups that get homocidal, like the Ancients and now the Tevs. Is that why they took Bosch and his officers alive? As samples of diversity?

Earlier you said that the Vishnans "...are the post-physical intelligences who have passed through the 'filter' of the Terminal Protocol, emerged as cooperators, and been enlightened into the Great Psyche." So the Vishnans aren't so much a species as a collective of reborn "intelligences" from other races that were once Humans, Vasudans, etc. but have now been enlightened? Isn't Bei technically now a Vishnan?

And if the Shivans are there to preserve cognitive diversity, why are the Vishnans called "Preservers"? Are they just an anti-Shivan failsafe?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on July 05, 2017, 09:07:21 pm
Remember that all the "Great Preservers" bull**** was told to Bei by the Vishnans mind****ing him into compliance. For all we know, the Vishnans are actually part of the problem. There is talk about not polluting the great psyche, but what if it already is? What if the Vishnans reached a critical mass and that's why they are breaking the terminal protocol by interfering with forcing Ubuntu on Sol?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Azrael15 on July 05, 2017, 11:01:37 pm
Can you explain a few probably obvious things to someone slow of thought? :P

So, the Shivans are are a natural growth, so to speak. They "cultivate" the gardens of individual... universes? They wish to preserve cognitive diversity, right? So they cull groups that get homocidal, like the Ancients and now the Tevs. Is that why they took Bosch and his officers alive? As samples of diversity?

Earlier you said that the Vishnans "...are the post-physical intelligences who have passed through the 'filter' of the Terminal Protocol, emerged as cooperators, and been enlightened into the Great Psyche." So the Vishnans aren't so much a species as a collective of reborn "intelligences" from other races that were once Humans, Vasudans, etc. but have now been enlightened? Isn't Bei technically now a Vishnan?

And if the Shivans are there to preserve cognitive diversity, why are the Vishnans called "Preservers"? Are they just an anti-Shivan failsafe?

I can't answer for Battuta. However, in regards to that last point, I think the title Preservers for the Vishnans is inaccurate and maybe even a deliberate falsehood.

I'm just about certain that Ken says something to Laporte in her UT along the lines of: "Miss Laporte, remember that we are the Great Pres-" just before Bei intrudes upon the connection.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on July 06, 2017, 12:07:45 am
I'm just about certain that Ken says something to Laporte in her UT along the lines of: "Miss Laporte, remember that we are the Great Pres-" just before Bei intrudes upon the connection.
In an earlier version, the line was "Miss Laporte! The Great Preservers! Remember, we are the Great -", which I always interpreted (the first part) as "The Great Preservers (are interfering)!" Perhaps because of this potential ambiguity, in the current release the line is "Miss Laporte! The true preservers! Remember, we are the true -". Also, in Ken, he says (while still using Vicmouth's voice) "To preserve, you must destroy."

EDIT: And of course there's the classic line from the FS1 end cutscene: "The Shivans are the great destroyers, but they are also the great preservers."
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: crizza on July 06, 2017, 04:48:18 am
A question about the Indus.

So, at the end of BP2, the Indus was a broken ship with her future being either scrapped or in a dockyard for a long time. There is, however, a tech room mention of refit Karunas. What's the chance of Captain Sorensen riding in on an Indus MK2?
AFAIK, the Feds don't have the time and resources to repair and refit the Indus to MK2 standards.
Granted, it would be great to have the Indus kill the Imp in the end.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on July 06, 2017, 05:01:30 am
Al'da-wa says it's possible, but that may have been to encourage Laporte by analogy rather than a statement about reality.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on July 06, 2017, 06:19:39 pm
1: Speaking if universes dying; The tech description for the Vishnan Proximity Gun says that it uses Metastable Vacuum Decay to operate. . . Why Isn't the universe destroyed when I press the fire button?

There are advantages to the perspective the Vishnans have upon universal physics. The proximity gun conjures higher vacuum states through quantum fluctuation. These states then nucleate and collapse back to our vacuum state. As the energy state inside the bubble rolls back to our vacuum, the contained energy is released, creating violent gravitational waves and a ring of virtual particle creation.

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2: Also, there is a 18-year gap between the Capella supernova and Age of Aquarius, and Samuel Bei has severed the GTVA for it least that amount of time if not more, and he is just a lieutenant commander?
Is he just a bad pilot or did something happen, and if so, what?

O-2s (lieutenant JGs) are often 23-25, whereas O-4s (lieutenant commanders) are often in their 30s. Bei isn't too far behind the curve. He's clearly lagging a bit but it's not unbelievable.

From whats been said so far it kinda sounds like a lot of species have since been om nom nommed by the summed psyche thingy.  Why is it so critical that more be manufactured?  Is there some critical mass that they need to reach for some reason?  Alternatively, is absorption into the summed psyche mutually exclusive with being 'worthy interhitors of the brahmans'?

The Great Psyche is in quarantine. If no new species rise up to take on the mantle of the Brahman, to create a new great cosmic order, if in fact the universe falls entirely under Shivan 'gardening' and the Psyche remains eternally aloof and isolated, what future is there for great thought? What high thoughts will ever be thought again? Eventually even the Psyche will run out of possible states. Can you imagine that future for cognition? That dead, sterile end?

It's easy to paint the Vishnans as parasites, manipulators, or creepos. But they are enlightened. They do in truth have access to planes of cosmic knowledge we don't. Trying to grasp their motives is a bit like an ant trying to figure out why a scientist is gene splicing it.

Where are the remnants of other races destroyed by Shivans? I'm talking about their potential noospheric remainder. Through the milions of years they were probably thousands of destroyed races, and some of them were probably Nagari-sensitive like Terrans and Vasudans. If Bosch and his fellows were enough to merge their consciousnesses into entity known as Ken, they were not the first. The Nagari should be quite "populated" with such beings, but it's rather empty. Is this caused by Great Darkness?

That's an awesome question! The Shivans are intrinsically hostile to cognition and would probably degrade such remnants over time, but it'd be cool to see what's out there.

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What was UEF's emergency protocol if Shivans return?

Their protocol was to prevent that return. Failing that, fight with very little chance of success, and probably scatter Sanctuary-style. SHAMBHALA's material component was originally thought of as an anti-Shivan countermeasure.

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Will we see Orestes and Temeraire again in actual missions?

Yes!

Oh yeah here's one that I need to know because it drove me bloody loopy in real life; who the [BEEP] was 'Truth'?

A disenchanted GTVI officer or affiliate (maybe a contractor or intelligence-adjacent personage). Or so I surmise.

Calculated by what?  By the multiverse itself?  I'm getting hints that direction re: Rechnender Raum, "Calculating Space."  My superficial research into that term isn't bearing a lot of fruit, though, because I'm not sure what you mean to imply by it.

When the Brahman instituted the Terminal Protocol they needed a countermeasure, an immunity, to hold back the Great Darkness. The Shivans satisfy that need.

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Is the multiverse being simulated on some other substrate we can't see?  Or is the multiverse itself the its own substrate, the calculating space?  What is it calculating?  Why should it calculate anything at all?

After the Dawn War finished the Brahmans rose up towards enlightenment. In the process they created the panontos, a space built from multiple universes within the multiverse and optimized for thought. At higher levels of understanding it is possible to treat the universe computationally, and to render it more suited for computation. Causality flowed freely between what we would now call universes, and causality itself could be massaged. Subspace is an example of a computational convenience: it is highly energetic and allows information to move faster than it could in the ordinary universe.

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Why is the terminal protocol failing? Why is there manifold necrosis evident in the SABADA YEAR data?

This is a good question. One answer is the problem of tolerances. If the Shivans generate too many false positives, they exterminate all incipient life. If they generate too many false negatives, the universe is overrun by defect-strategy hegemons which wipe out diversity and inevitably compromise the interconnectedness of the subspace network (because they use destructive firewall strategies to try to protect their portions of the node network). But worst of all from the Shivan perspective is the survival of a species which should have joined the Summed Psyche, a 'creator of communities', a befriender of enemies. Because what happens if one of those takes over a given universe?

It ends up in manifold necrosis. They become vectors. You can see this in Universal Truth 1, where the Shivans and Vishnans argue over the propriety of allowing the humans to survive: the Shivans say they're destroyers, the Vishnans say they're creators, that they have 'potential', that they can equate to the Brahmans of old.

The Vishnans want to give the humans a chance at enlightenment. They want to rebuild what was lost. The Shivans think it's a completely unacceptable risk.

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Ok.  I got to know.  What does the Great Attractor have to do with all of this, or was that just a throw-away line?

It's a big thing out there and someone made it.

Will the elders be allowed to remain free after the surrender of the UEF or are they all heading to Guan-Laramis bay for further study?

MORPHEUS must proceed.

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Would the elders sacrifice themselves in order to ensure the success of Shambhala?

Absolutely.

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Discounting hostile aliens does the GTVA even have a long term future?

The capture of Sol may relieve some political pressure in the short term but it looks as though massive changes are required to the GTVA command structure. That is before we even get to see whether the promises match the reality regarding the benefits of annexing Sol.

It's possible: I don't think the GTVA as it exists now would be an enduring government, but it's certainly a pragmatic response to a very hostile universe. I would go so far as to say that the GTVA's soft power crisis is one of the greatest reasons the Elders expect SHAMBHALA to succeed.

Some questions about the Shivans:
-How were the Shivans calculated?

They are a characteristic of universes with good immunity.

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-The Shivan entity in Universal Truth says the Shivans "slept beneath the waves" before the dawn war. What does this mean?

The Shivans have in a sense always existed: the Brahman 'summoned' or 'computed' them more than 'creating' them. You can discover a new prime number, but you can't say you made it.

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-How did the Shivans become involved in the terminal protocol?

The Brahman set them up as gardeners.

Quote
-What would happen to the Shivans if the terminal protocol failed?

There would be no more life for them to garden.

Quote
-What is the Shivan Alternative to the terminal protocol?

Ah, now you're asking the big questions. It would, in a sense, be the FreeSpaciest future possible: the Vishnans would have no part and the Shivans would be the absolute arbiter of the right to exist.

Oh benevolent Oracle, share thy wisdom!  :blah:

How aware are the elders of the actual, global involvement of the Vishnans and particularly the Shivans?

Highly aware, in the sense that they communicate with the Vishnans.

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What exactly is the nature of Earth's non-spaceship defenses? Considering that both orbital- and lunar-defense "bombed"  ;7 pretty hard...

I wouldn't want to pin anything down precisely, but presumably there are lots of weapon platforms and missiles. At a point, though, you've got ask what use stationary orbital defenses are in space: it's not like on the ground where a fixed position can carry a lot of extra armor and guns since it doesn't have to move.

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Are we going to see the Elder's Guard again, hopefully not doing a knight-in-shining-armor routine?

They're a chivalric order, but you'll see them again. The Elders are very interested in moral ways of conducting violence.

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What is the ACTUAL development state of BluePlanet? No finger pointing, just a summary of were things are at.

Some missions and a lot of prototypes for Act 4. A full story outline right through the end (with plenty of wiggle room in case we hit some fun ideas).

To Battuta:

Yes or No can suffice.

1) Is Project Shambhala something that can break through the Vishnan quarantine and compromise their existence, leaving them vulnerable to the Great Darkness?

No.

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2) Is The Great Attractor a manifestation of the Great Darkness? Does it exist in parallel universes?

No, and assuming you mean the Attractor, yes, it has a multiversal component.

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3) Can The Great Darkness be summarized as a though-consuming cancer?

Yyyyes. It is of thought in the way that cancer is of flesh.

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4) Were the Ancient Monologues remnant echoes of the Ancient presence in Nagari, or were they faked by the Vishnans or Shivans?

I'd take them as authentic evidence.

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5) Since consciousness is a fatal flaw at higher computational levels, should we interpret the Great Darkness as "less" than we are? Can it be compared to Bacteria (It being alive) or a Virus (No Metabolism, No waste, No stimuli, must assimilate something that is "alive" to replicate)

The Great Darkness is the epitome of consciousness. It is nothing but awareness, awareness of nothing, achievable only by the highest possible orders of thought.

I could only think of one really serious question...

If and when war in heaven and bp3 are finished, what are the chances I will be left without any real closure and forced to rage quit FS?

BP3 had a couple planned endings and at least one of them provided satisfying narrative closure for the great arcs of FreeSpace. Don't expect to Solve Everything Forever: I think it's important that an ending respect the effort the player has put into learning the rules of the universe, not rewrite all those rules.

A question about the Indus.

So, at the end of BP2, the Indus was a broken ship with her future being either scrapped or in a dockyard for a long time. There is, however, a tech room mention of refit Karunas. What's the chance of Captain Sorensen riding in on an Indus MK2?

I think it'd be super dope. The Indus is probably severely ****ed up and maybe a bit radioactive and what better frame for a revenge ship? It'd be like a radioactive death cyborg.

Can you explain a few probably obvious things to someone slow of thought? :P

So, the Shivans are are a natural growth, so to speak. They "cultivate" the gardens of individual... universes? They wish to preserve cognitive diversity, right? So they cull groups that get homocidal, like the Ancients and now the Tevs. Is that why they took Bosch and his officers alive? As samples of diversity?

Shivans are per-universe, Vishnans are intra-universe, and to the extent that Shivans talk between universes it's kind of a covert faculty between animae.

Bosch got the Shivans' attention. They consumed him to create a bridge between their 'intelligence' and ours.

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Earlier you said that the Vishnans "...are the post-physical intelligences who have passed through the 'filter' of the Terminal Protocol, emerged as cooperators, and been enlightened into the Great Psyche." So the Vishnans aren't so much a species as a collective of reborn "intelligences" from other races that were once Humans, Vasudans, etc. but have now been enlightened? Isn't Bei technically now a Vishnan?

Yes and maybe, wouldn't that be interesting?

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And if the Shivans are there to preserve cognitive diversity, why are the Vishnans called "Preservers"? Are they just an anti-Shivan failsafe?

Both sides see each other as the Great Destroyers and themselves as the Great Preservers, and, also, vice versa. To preserve you must destroy, to destroy you must preserve, etc etc.

The FS1 outro makes it clear the Shivans are both: equally, the Vishnans 'preserve' the worthy but also order the cull of the unworthy.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on July 07, 2017, 01:11:25 am
Oh, I might get it, at least some of it, maybe, please hear me out.

So the Shivans are a necessary property of a universe that allows diverse cognition to exist, as per the definitions of the exceedingly gentle and friendly Brahmans (who implicitly annihilated their enemies completely and utterly a long time ago during the dawn war, but lets not worry about that).  The Vishnans are only interested in universes that have the Shivans or something like them.  Perhaps they went so far as to erase the universes that lacked that.  Hence the Brahmans 'calculating' the Shivans.  They computed which universes would have the properties they wanted, and they found the Shivans as a result of that computation.  Literally they found the universes that just so happened to have Shivans that spontaneously formed.  Presumably there are various (infinite?) structurally unique Shivan analogues that are equivalent as far as the Brahmans are concerned, we just haven't seen them.

The great darkness on the other hand, is a runaway attempt to understand everything.  Its only defining property is that every time it finds some new concept to consider it tries to consider it.  Runaway recursion.  Presumably its snowballed lots of various assets both in and out of the noosphere to pursue this goal, from various sources.  I mean, I reckon thats a 'perfect solution' style trap that would cause totally unrelated elements to converge towards the same goal, so there is presumably an unimaginable variety of stuff that has joined it at this point.  I get the sneaking suspicion that there is more going on than that however, Battuta mentioned 'they can only achieve what they have at high orders of cognition', so I feel like I am obviously missing something since what I have described could happen at any level more or less.



e: Also this is a speculation piece, I don't really expect Battuta to struggle through the effort of turning this into an answerable question and then answering it.  I would feel bad if that happened.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on July 07, 2017, 03:57:53 am
Will the Orestes feature the original command crew upon its return?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: captain austin on July 07, 2017, 10:36:09 pm
Kind of amazed this hasn't been asked:

What is the canonical fate of Freespace 2's Alpha 1, alive or dead? If alive, is he (almost positive it was a he) Steele or another named character in BP so far?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on July 07, 2017, 10:42:48 pm
On ^that note, could it be possible for FS1 and FS2's Alpha 1 to meet up?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Snarks on July 07, 2017, 11:31:01 pm
Isn't FS1's Alpha 1 the founding member of the Al-da'wa consciousness?

Also, I believe there was a floating fan theory that Captain Al'Faddil from AoA was FS2's Alpha 1.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Gray113 on July 08, 2017, 07:01:30 am
Admiral Petrarch's brief from the start of Blue Planet is the alpha 1 MIA monologue. As a result I always thought canon wise theFS2 alpha 1 stayed in Capella. 
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on July 08, 2017, 09:11:26 am
Thanks for the answers Battuta. :)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Homura on July 08, 2017, 04:15:35 pm

Also, I believe there was a floating fan theory that Captain Al'Faddil from AoA was FS2's Alpha 1.

Wow that sound awesome.

"Take my old Lady (Erinyes)" in the last mission briefing... I played FS2 Main Story hundreds of times and was in love with the Erinyes. I am so moved right now  :(

Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: ^Graff on July 09, 2017, 05:37:02 pm

Also, I believe there was a floating fan theory that Captain Al'Faddil from AoA was FS2's Alpha 1.

Wow that sound awesome.

"Take my old Lady (Erinyes)" in the last mission briefing... I played FS2 Main Story hundreds of times and was in love with the Erinyes. I am so moved right now  :(


That would explain why they went rogue to save him.  They've been flying together for 18 years.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on July 10, 2017, 12:55:30 am
I hate killing Xinny and Zero :(
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Azrael15 on July 10, 2017, 01:23:06 am
The only good Tev is a dead Tev. I'm from Earth and I say kill 'em all (in a way that aligns with our Ubuntu principles, praise the Elders).
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Homura on July 10, 2017, 01:56:33 am
Is it known which Admirals are the High Command?

Who did think of Morpheus?

Steele is just the commanding officer of the invasion, its not that he is the leader of the Tev's right? So who is at the Top?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Azrael15 on July 10, 2017, 07:50:08 am
Is it known which Admirals are the High Command?

Who did think of Morpheus?

Steele is just the commanding officer of the invasion, its not that he is the leader of the Tev's right? So who is at the Top?

Secretary-General Torqueville I think is the name.

However, I think at the end of Tenebra, the Fedayeen mention that Steele has been given unprecedented authority to prosecute the war, even able to dictate things to the civilian government. So maybe, at the end of Tenebra, Steele could be considered the leader of the GTVA?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on July 10, 2017, 11:43:27 am
The only good Tev is a dead Tev. I'm from Earth and I say kill 'em all (in a way that aligns with our Ubuntu principles, praise the Elders).

Dammit, Kassim...




I could get behind the Alpha 1 is Al'Fadil theory. I've also heard speculation that FS1's Alpha 1 might be Kovacs - "at least they didn't ask me to fly into the [enemy flagship with massive forward beams that is extremely hard to kill] 's hangar" and all.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on July 11, 2017, 07:03:44 am
Another few questions, if I may -

As I understand it, in the BP universe, cognition/conciousness at its highest level is just computation?

So the Vishnan-Shivan-Brahman circle is just a bunch of computations from a universe that favors cognitive diversity?

But our minds are so small that we can't comprehend such "big numbers" so we view the Vishnans/Shivans etc. as metaphysical or godlike?

Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rear_Admiral_Tarsus on July 13, 2017, 07:51:41 pm
Got some questions if it's not too late:


Thanks for making such a great game btw. It helped me during hard times. ;)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on July 13, 2017, 09:33:14 pm
I don't think any of the governments (UEF GTVA etc) officially view them as metaphysical, but both exist to try to serve that function.

I think the general idea is its technically possible to get rid of either group, its just firmly in the 'never gunna happen' category.

Also, the Shivans seem to avoid high order metacognition in order to avoid becoming a great darkness style tumor.  I think thats the idea anyhow.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on July 14, 2017, 02:25:22 am
  • Why is UEF so different in terms of tech and tech naming? I would assume they would have continued with the Apollo and made more old boxy f and such.
  • As this is Vietnam in space, have you considered low tech efficient solutions could work. I feel that the UEF should have a more duct-tape vs 3d printer approach to their fighters.

The UEF's tech is a consequence of the environment in Sol. Their military planning was based around the assumption that expeditions through the node network are generally a thing of the past; the UEF Navy is essentially designed for peacekeeping ops in Sol and the (assumed low probability) event of a shivan incursion through the node network. Its ships and their armaments are essentially "coastal" (as opposed to the GTVA's "blue water" approach); it is assumed that they're always able to retreat to a safe position for repair and rearm, which is why their weapons are heavily projectile-based and more maintenance-intensive than their GTVA equivalents.
In addition, the UEF hasn't been able to make beam weapons work; the recoverable bits and pieces of the Lucifer they got their hands on weren't enough to make replicating that tech feasible.

As for "Vietnam in space": That analogy is highly misleading. The GTVA aren't the US and the UEF isn't the Vietcong; a more "duct tape" approach wouldn't make sense for an economy like Sol's, which as we've said repeatedly is at least equally as advanced (more advanced in some areas) and as powerful as the GTVA's. The GEF are the people to look at when it comes to duct-taping their ships and using low-tech approaches.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: tomimaki on July 14, 2017, 08:53:03 am
Will we see destruction one of Solaris-class destroyers?  ;7
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on July 14, 2017, 09:35:00 am
Will we see destruction one of Solaris-class destroyers?  ;7

s/Solaris-class/TEI/
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on July 14, 2017, 01:13:03 pm
Yes and very probably yes.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on July 14, 2017, 03:19:39 pm
Will there be a dreamscape 10 released free to all?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Grizzly on July 14, 2017, 03:56:25 pm
  • Why is UEF so different in terms of tech and tech naming? I would assume they would have continued with the Apollo and made more old boxy f and such.
  • As this is Vietnam in space, have you considered low tech efficient solutions could work. I feel that the UEF should have a more duct-tape vs 3d printer approach to their fighters.

The UEF's tech is a consequence of the environment in Sol. Their military planning was based around the assumption that expeditions through the node network are generally a thing of the past; the UEF Navy is essentially designed for peacekeeping ops in Sol and the (assumed low probability) event of a shivan incursion through the node network. Its ships and their armaments are essentially "coastal" (as opposed to the GTVA's "blue water" approach); it is assumed that they're always able to retreat to a safe position for repair and rearm, which is why their weapons are heavily projectile-based and more maintenance-intensive than their GTVA equivalents.
In addition, the UEF hasn't been able to make beam weapons work; the recoverable bits and pieces of the Lucifer they got their hands on weren't enough to make replicating that tech feasible.

As for "Vietnam in space": That analogy is highly misleading. The GTVA aren't the US and the UEF isn't the Vietcong; a more "duct tape" approach wouldn't make sense for an economy like Sol's, which as we've said repeatedly is at least equally as advanced (more advanced in some areas) and as powerful as the GTVA's. The GEF are the people to look at when it comes to duct-taping their ships and using low-tech approaches.
Would it be fair to say that the GTVA's position is a bit like that of Japan in WW2, where they basically had to win the war in one year or otherwise face a fully mobilized war economy?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Snarks on July 20, 2017, 02:25:06 am
I don't think there's any real world direct equivalent to the war in Sol. I think a more ept comparison would be something like the United States (GTVA) vs the European Union (UEF). The US has a vastly larger and more advanced military compared to the European Union and much of it is spent on power projection across the globe. By comparison, the EU's militaries are primarily concentrated within their borders, with very limited power projections. Economic-wise, the US and EU are comparable in GDP, reflective of the GTVA and UEF. If given time to prep for a war, the EU could certainly match the military power of the US. But if the US invades immediately, then the EU won't have a chance to mobilize.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: captain austin on July 20, 2017, 04:45:34 pm
I don't think there's any real world direct equivalent to the war in Sol. I think a more ept comparison would be something like the United States (GTVA) vs the European Union (UEF). The US has a vastly larger and more advanced military compared to the European Union and much of it is spent on power projection across the globe. By comparison, the EU's militaries are primarily concentrated within their borders, with very limited power projections. Economic-wise, the US and EU are comparable in GDP, reflective of the GTVA and UEF. If given time to prep for a war, the EU could certainly match the military power of the US. But if the US invades immediately, then the EU won't have a chance to mobilize.

I second this. That's probably the best real-world analog there is, with the attendant political dimension that both the EU and the US have a long history of cooperation. A war between them would certainly be hard to stomach for both sides given that shared history, which is similar to the GTA experience uniting the UEF and Tevs.

Going back to the Japan-US comparison, I think the problem is that Severanti was obsessed with crippling military infrastructure before Steele arrived, and it's hard to use your shipyards when they're constantly being bombed. Th UEF has very little strategic depth to take advantage of their economic potential, and they seem to be utilizing most of it for Shambhala.

In other news: "The Vishna...er, Oracles have stopped speaking to us! They're angry at us, Laporte..."
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Hopeful on July 21, 2017, 11:46:24 pm
What's the 'how' by which the Nagari process plays with the human brain? I never saw much about how it stimulates the human brain aside from 'Quantum particles LOL'. I recall that a peer-to-peer conversation happens between Bei and Laporte but I can't recall how their brains are communicating.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on July 22, 2017, 03:18:41 am
Brainskype
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Cyborg17 on July 22, 2017, 09:46:34 am
Facebrain
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: perihelion on July 22, 2017, 10:24:57 pm
Neurotwitter.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on July 23, 2017, 08:34:03 am
Google Plus but evil.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Erebus Alpha on August 01, 2017, 02:04:45 am
With BP's tenth anniversary coming up, and our minds still on our promise to finish this story one way or another, we think it's time to start revealing some of the secrets that await in the BP story.

I'll answer questions, although in an oracular sense. Ask anything. Yes, knowing what's coming could change the experience if we do ever finish Acts 4+5 and BP2 - but knowing is never the same as playing.

Fire away.

ANYTHING?!

Okay, give us the spoiler to rule all other spoilers: When will War in Heaven acts 4 and 5 be released? :p
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Neptune on August 01, 2017, 04:04:19 am
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Everybody will be getting more ships (except maybe the Vishnans?) Prominent highlights include next-gen Vasudans, the Tev drone bombers, and various late-war UEF wunderwaffen.

oh great oracles please bless us with more info on these ships

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They'll be Laporte's prime movers to get the events of Acts 5 rolling, and the ones most directly privy to her plans. They won't be highly effective during Act 4 due to Steele's countermeasures.

Can we get any details on the countermeasures Steele has taken against the Fedayeen? Or, rather, any besides just rolling over the Masyaf with beam bombs?

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In addition, the UEF hasn't been able to make beam weapons work; the recoverable bits and pieces of the Lucifer they got their hands on weren't enough to make replicating that tech feasible.

Didn't they get the front end, where the beams came from, though? (Well, not the claw beams). Wasn't the tail end left in Delta Serpentis, and somehow the GTVA managed to make beam weapons from that?

I mean, I could buy the front end blowing up so badly that there's nothing scannable and recoverable, even though it looks fine in the .anis. But then how did the GTVA make beams with the bit that had no beams? Scan data from that one mission? Wouldn't the Sol part of the GTA have had that data too?



I'd also appreciate clarification on a few things from earlier on - apologies if they've been answered somewhere before and i've just failed to find the answer in the fiction

-What were the Fedayeen doing before they found Laporte? Al-da'wa begged the council to antimatter bomb Beta Aquilae on day 1 of the war, but what's he been up to since then? It mentions in the fiction text that they have access to "significant resources", after all, and we can see that with things like the Custos-X - surely they haven't been just cooking mystery space meat over the radiator coils? What details on their operations can we get?

-The debriefing at the end of UT2 implies that the Fedayeen were unaware of the existance of the Vishnans until that point - or if they were, it was only basic knowledge. What level of knowledge did they possess on the Vishnans?

-Why was Severanti left in command for so long? There was an entire thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=93376.0) on this topic not long ago, but it never went into much detail about this. If Sol's economy and population is about as equal to the entire GTVA (Or, at least Terran half) - and they know they can't fight the Shivans with pure military might - shouldn't it be a priority to get access to the resources in Sol? Why would Command continue let Severanti fight a slow war of attrition, possibly causing more casualties and resources, as opposed to just blitzing Sol outright and incorporating it into the GTVA as soon as possible? There's complexities with drawing elements from other areas to fight in the Sol theatre, but given it's pretty foolhardy to fight the Shivans with force of arms, it shouldn't matter anyway and the short term positional loss for the long term quicker gain and solidification of Sol should be worth it, right?

-Does the Solaris really sit in Earth orbit surrounded by a bunch of Narayanas and cruisers and such?

-Is it just me, or does Byrne really come off as useless?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on August 01, 2017, 04:36:05 am
For all my life I have thought that:
1. The rear part of Lucy got totally vaporised inside the node when the subspace-space rift collapsed on the superdestroyer and that the energy produced from vaporising that chunk (probably including a few reactors blowing up) destabilised the node,
2. Lucifer's beams are completely different tech than typical GTVA armament or FS2 Shivan beams. I was under the impression that while normal beam weapons fired a flood of plasma at its target, Lucy's beams were pushing a stream of some exotic particles, insulated from any outside matter until they hit their target. And that these exotic particles (or even antimatter) dealt ridiculous damage to the enemy when they reacted with hulls, compared to typical plasma beam.

And recovery of equipement from Lucy might have been problematic too, since it would seem that in the piece that made it to the other side some kind of reactor failure was triggered and everything went boom. And to catch out the fragments GTA would need a lot of ships, which seems that were unavailable at the moment. War and stuff. Plus, there weren't many Vasudan reactor engineers on the Sol side of the node, that's why it seems that UEF doesn't have the same energy output of their ships compared to Tevs.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Neptune on August 01, 2017, 06:11:10 am
For all my life I have thought that:
1. The rear part of Lucy got totally vaporised inside the node when the subspace-space rift collapsed on the superdestroyer

That's always what I would have thought happened too, but I do remember reading somewhere (I must stress somewhere, since it's been a long time, and a lot of mods/posts, and i've forgotten a lot that I used to know) that the other half ended up in Delta Serpentis otherwise, giving the GTVA stuff to reverse-engineer beams and such from. If someone has a source to say otherwise, i'd love to hear it, as i'm only citing from my failing memory.

That does raise a good point, though - if the Hades was able to equip itself with beams with only scans to go on, shouldn't the UEF have been able to have theoretically been able to produce beams as well? Wasn't GTI Headquarters in Sol?

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Plus, there weren't many Vasudan reactor engineers on the Sol side of the node, that's why it seems that UEF doesn't have the same energy output of their ships compared to Tevs.

While that's true, isn't that also a result of UEF ships not needing as much energy output, because of the nature of their ballistic weapons (and not needing to invest as much in ships because they're not being chased by an angry army of 80 saths)?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on August 01, 2017, 02:44:16 pm
I mean, they had Orion destroyers, which were shown to mount green beams just fine with their terran-bog-standard rectors.  I don't think power output was a problem.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Aesaar on August 01, 2017, 02:48:36 pm
Quote
Everybody will be getting more ships (except maybe the Vishnans?) Prominent highlights include next-gen Vasudans, the Tev drone bombers, and various late-war UEF wunderwaffen.

oh great oracles please bless us with more info on these ships
The Murugan is one.

Quote
I mean, I could buy the front end blowing up so badly that there's nothing scannable and recoverable, even though it looks fine in the .anis. But then how did the GTVA make beams with the bit that had no beams? Scan data from that one mission? Wouldn't the Sol part of the GTA have had that data too?
The possibility of another war with the Shivans was a strong incentive for the GTVA to develop better weapons with which to fight them.  Total isolation in a system full of resources provided no such incentive for Sol.

Quote
-Why was Severanti left in command for so long? There was an entire thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=93376.0) on this topic not long ago, but it never went into much detail about this. If Sol's economy and population is about as equal to the entire GTVA (Or, at least Terran half) - and they know they can't fight the Shivans with pure military might - shouldn't it be a priority to get access to the resources in Sol? Why would Command continue let Severanti fight a slow war of attrition, possibly causing more casualties and resources, as opposed to just blitzing Sol outright and incorporating it into the GTVA as soon as possible? There's complexities with drawing elements from other areas to fight in the Sol theatre, but given it's pretty foolhardy to fight the Shivans with force of arms, it shouldn't matter anyway and the short term positional loss for the long term quicker gain and solidification of Sol should be worth it, right?
Severanti's strategy was effective.  It was slow, but it was excellent at minimizing risks to Allied warships and preserving infrastructure.  By contrast, since Steele's taken theater command, infrastructure damage and civilian casualties have increased significantly, which Steele believes is offset by the speed with which he'll achieve victory.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on August 01, 2017, 04:43:00 pm
How many Orion combatants remain in service, and in what capacity? What about Typhons?

Do the Vasudans have a next-gen destroyer?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on August 01, 2017, 10:58:16 pm
How many Orion combatants remain in service, and in what capacity? What about Typhons?

Do the Vasudans have a next-gen destroyer?
The tech room provides partial answers:
Quote
Some Orions remain in service, including the storied GTD Carthage, now a Combat Evaluation Destroyer with modified jump drives.
Quote
The Typhon-class destroyer is a veteran of the Great War, an old soldier still doing the Emperor's work.
[...]
Modern doctrine keeps the Typhon as a garrison destroyer, watching over the buzz of Vasudan trade and intrigue. A number of Typhons also serve as arsenal ships, armored with heavy ship-to-ship torpedoes.
Quote
The Hatshepsut serves as an elegant front-line combatant alongside modern heavy warships such as the iKhemu-Sek.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Neptune on August 02, 2017, 03:33:43 am
The Murugan is one.

So we actually get to see Murugans out in combat? And there's more then one? Here I was thinking from this description (http://hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/UEX_Maitreya) that it got byrne'd.

This is a good day.

Quote
The possibility of another war with the Shivans was a strong incentive for the GTVA to develop better weapons with which to fight them.  Total isolation in a system full of resources provided no such incentive for Sol.

So the UEF could have made beam weapons, but just didn't (because they didn't see the need)?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Darius on August 02, 2017, 03:50:05 am
No, it definitely got Byrne'd.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Neptune on August 02, 2017, 04:11:09 am
No, it definitely got Byrne'd.

Just when you guys build my hopes right up you shatter them to the ground again. Truly the masters of stealing men's feels and making them your slaves.

Byrne is like that one guy on your team that goes off and does his own thing, hogs all the resources to himself, and then when all of your bases are in ruins, he goes "What? No, you guys are the ones that didn't follow my plan." And he never did anything all game to begin with.

E: Guess I shoulda brought Byrne heal
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Gray113 on August 04, 2017, 12:03:39 pm
I remember a thread where Battuta said we would get the back story for the Phoenicia regarding the actions of the C.O. during bear-baiting and the reputation/service record there after of the vessel. Any chance this could get posted soon?

Also did Steele suffer an event linking his mind to the Shivans in a manner similar to Lieutenant Ash during the events of Capella? Are the Vishnans, Vishnan influenced Feds or Shivans actually trying to contact Steele in his dreams or is he just really that paranoid?  :nervous:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Darius on August 04, 2017, 12:32:17 pm
That's quite an uncharitable description of Byrne.

Calder's the warrior hero who fought off the Gefs and is currently dealing the most damage against the Alliance but Byrne is the administrative expert. Calder wins the battles but Byrne keeps the military alive. If your aim is to delay the enemy long enough to initiate a time-critical plan while holding a defensive advantage, the last thing you want to do is spend assets on offensive actions.

Though it's true he could be less vague to Calder and Netreba about the nature of his victory plan though.

The Murugan was a white elephant that at the time wasn't worth the cost when compared against cost equivalents for multiple cheaper smaller ships (given the vastness of space needed to defend, and the lack of hard targets that the Fleet was expected to face). She would have been sold for scrap long before the Tevs arrived in Sol.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: captain austin on August 04, 2017, 03:44:46 pm

What is the canonical fate of Freespace 2's Alpha 1, alive or dead? If alive, is he (almost positive it was a he) Steele or another named character in BP so far?

Bump on this, which got lost in the echo!

Unless....the oracle has spoken, and Alpha 1 = BYRNE  ;7
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Homura on August 04, 2017, 04:13:01 pm
The most common belive is that Alpha 1 is Al Fadil from the Orestes.

In My brother, my enemy, Laport is against some SOC named Xinny and Zero who flew with Alpha 1 in Shivan territory to discover 8 more Saths.

These pilots came to save Al Fadil from Feds.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Erebus Alpha on August 05, 2017, 03:55:06 am
If Steele is Alpha 1, I will switch sides and root for the Tevs!

...Unless Al'dawa is the Alpha 1 that helped blow up the Lucifer.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on August 05, 2017, 08:26:49 am
The most common belive is that Alpha 1 is Al Fadil from the Orestes.

In My brother, my enemy, Laport is against some SOC named Xinny and Zero who flew with Alpha 1 in Shivan territory to discover 8 more Saths.

These pilots came to save Al Fadil from Feds.

I've also heard a theory that it's Kovacs.

EDIT: Oops, wrong Alpha 1! Don't theorize before coffee, kids.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Neptune on August 05, 2017, 10:56:26 am
That's quite an uncharitable description of Byrne.

Calder's the warrior hero who fought off the Gefs and is currently dealing the most damage against the Alliance but Byrne is the administrative expert. Calder wins the battles but Byrne keeps the military alive. If your aim is to delay the enemy long enough to initiate a time-critical plan while holding a defensive advantage, the last thing you want to do is spend assets on offensive actions.

Though it's true he could be less vague to Calder and Netreba about the nature of his victory plan though.

The Murugan was a white elephant that at the time wasn't worth the cost when compared against cost equivalents for multiple cheaper smaller ships (given the vastness of space needed to defend, and the lack of hard targets that the Fleet was expected to face). She would have been sold for scrap long before the Tevs arrived in Sol.

I think that's the thing. Byrne has his own Agenda and he pursues it but he doesn't give Calder and Netreba much to go on, apart from "Do what I say and trust the elders". If he gave them more of a reason why, then they'd be more inclined to do what he says. After all, they want to win the war and reclaim their system, and unless Byrne has some kind of super plan or something up his sleeve, they're totally right in thinking that a defensive battle of attrition would just get them wiped out eventually.

I've been replaying WiH part 1 - and perhaps this is because it's from the perspective of Laporte, who is all about Calder's philosophy of striking back of the tevs? - but to me it seems to make Byrne out to be this guy that's just sitting there doing nothing. Worse still is that he only deploys the bare minimum of assets - which makes sense from his point of view, but he gives no reason for why he's doing it to anyone else, which seems to cause a lot of needless casualties from everyone else's point of view. Furthermore, unless you plunder the depths of the techroom - which not everyone might do, and if they don't, it's their loss - you don't that much indication that Byrne's an "administrative expert", except for mentioning his MBA and his "Management skills". For comparison, you never have to read the techroom to get the impression Steele is a badass ruthless tactical genius, or that Calder is the man, and he gets stuff done by shoving torpedoes down the throat of the nearest tev he can find.

Was it intended to be written this way (because of the perspective of Laporte), or is this my faulty interpretation?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Darius on August 05, 2017, 11:09:26 am
Byrne's actions are definitely supposed to be interpreted as frustrating -- from the perspective of the player as Laporte and as an active agent with the gameplay's emphasis on action (the Tevs are out there! All we need to do is go out and shoot them til they die!)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Neptune on August 05, 2017, 11:26:50 am
Byrne's actions are definitely supposed to be interpreted as frustrating -- from the perspective of the player as Laporte and as an active agent with the gameplay's emphasis on action (the Tevs are out there! All we need to do is go out and shoot them til they die!)

Ah, right. Thanks for clearing that up, i'm glad I didn't slip up too badly on that front then - the clarification is much appreciated, as i'd been wondering about some of the command choices on both sides (granted, they both had their own agendas, but still.)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on August 05, 2017, 09:41:14 pm
Almost as if we need you to resent Byrne as much as Laporte herself does!
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on August 06, 2017, 07:15:14 am
S-s-s-stupid idiot Byrne! It's not like I b-believe he has something up his sleeve, you baka! :p
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: manwiththemachinegun on August 18, 2017, 01:23:38 am
Obviously the scope of the Shivans, the GTVA, and the Freespace universe has been given a tremendous degree of depth in the BP universe.

We already know from Morgan in the Shadows (although that is not an exact parallel), and some answers here about Feds fighting Shivans, that the Feds and Teves aren't going to murder each other back to the stone age. At SOME point, the greater battle against the Shivans/Darkness is going to return.

It's already been stated that the Shivans are in essence, a force of nature or a galactic immune system, one essentially impossible to destroy. Not counting the ongoing existential threats to the universe.

That being said, this is also a space game where the player character has to make some kind of impact with all the shooty and exploding space ship bits (I don't expect the BP story to be "all for nothing," you guys are better writers that that).

A lot of prefacing to ask the following: can we expect a CONCLUSION to the Shivan threat in a Third Incursion? Whether humanity's reunification to face a common enemy convinces the powers that be there is still virtue and valor left in our races, or decide simply going out guns blazing, a lot of fans, myself included, do view BP as sort of the epilogue in spirit to the Freespace story. That's not to say you guys don't have the right to tell your own story, but rather, the fans would like a satisfactory moment of catharsis against a race of cosmic destroyers. It's a fight we never got to finish due to the end of Volition.

Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on August 18, 2017, 09:31:14 am
A lot of prefacing to ask the following: can we expect a CONCLUSION to the Shivan threat in a Third Incursion?

Exactly this.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: manwiththemachinegun on August 18, 2017, 02:55:29 pm
<3

I would wait another ten years to see y'all finish BP. :D
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HandOfCheese on August 28, 2017, 08:36:56 am
Four questions, oh mighty Oracle:

1) As conventional arms are so unlikely to tip the war in favour of the UEF at this point, will Laporte/Calder succeed at moving the pieces in such a way as to force Steele into accepting a conditional surrender, or maybe even a white peace?

2) Will this kind of outcome happen because the GTVA forces on Shivan-watch spot something (or a lot of somethings)?

3) If CASSANDRA "dies" in the attack, will there ever be new Fedayeen, or at least new ones on the level of Kovacs, Falconer etc.?

4) What is the name of the book you're writing :)?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Grizzly on August 31, 2017, 04:54:56 pm
4) The Monster Baru Cormorant, follow up to the formidable The Traitor Baru Cormorant
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Kestrellius on September 08, 2017, 08:44:41 pm
4) The Monster Baru Cormorant, follow up to the formidable The Traitor Baru Cormorant

"The Formidable The Traitor Baru Cormorant (a novel)".

Hm..."Baru Cormorant; the Formidable, the Traitor"?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on September 11, 2017, 05:06:33 pm
I've re-watched a clip of UT2 playthrough and a couple things got me interested.

Ken says to Laporte that "There have always been others". As in, other people like her. While she seems to have been the best "design" of them all, therefore the most successful one... Others? I once figured that Simms might be one of them, but... nah. Any tracks of these other people we'd like to know of? I don't think any of Beis would be related, the same for people speaking in Ken.

One of the background tracks (addamb2) seems to be a modified "Voice of the Jupiter" (for reference: https://youtu.be/-MmWeZHsQzs?t=34). Is that a relation to something?

Plus, one of the madness debriefings (the ATATATATA... one) looks a bit... familiar. A genetic sequence?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: starlord on September 11, 2017, 05:24:48 pm
I'm actually more concerned about the great darkness than the shivans at this point. Will the story offer a conclusion at what that eldrich is exactly? Can humanity be instrumental in its destruction? Can it actually be destroyed? If so how? Clearly the shivans know the answer...
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on September 12, 2017, 09:10:52 am
It should be possible to get a complete idea of the Darkness' nature and origins by now.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: starlord on September 12, 2017, 11:50:22 am
The former is somewhat clear to me, however whether humanity can address this problem isn't really. Then again, maybe some things have escaped me.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Gray113 on September 12, 2017, 01:26:16 pm
So could Bosch's dream of a Terran/Shivan alliance be a realistic possibility?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Kestrellius on September 13, 2017, 03:12:36 pm
It should be possible to get a complete idea of the Darkness' nature and origins by now.

What it is, I think I understand. Why it's something to be avoided, I don't quite get. Why try to prevent what's effectively the birth of God? How does an ontological intelligence explosion equate to the end of intelligence?

Or is the idea that since any system can be subverted, then if all intelligence is made part of the same system, if something goes wrong everyone's screwed?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on September 13, 2017, 09:58:12 pm
Because there is no point. That "God" cannot think. It's just a replication matrix. It has no creativity, no evolutionary capacity, nothing to do. It is a prion, it subverts and destroys things into more of itself for the simple purpose of replicating itself. It is a dead end to life.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on September 14, 2017, 12:47:59 am
Because there is no point. That "God" cannot think. It's just a replication matrix. It has no creativity, no evolutionary capacity, nothing to do. It is a prion, it subverts and destroys things into more of itself for the simple purpose of replicating itself. It is a dead end to life.


So sort of like Peter's father, Ego, from GOTG 2?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Kestrellius on September 14, 2017, 01:00:19 am
Because there is no point. That "God" cannot think. It's just a replication matrix. It has no creativity, no evolutionary capacity, nothing to do. It is a prion, it subverts and destroys things into more of itself for the simple purpose of replicating itself. It is a dead end to life.

Ah. I think I misunderstood something Battuta said. I interpreted "At the highest possible scales of computation, consciousness is a fatal pathology" to mean that some property of consciousness results in sufficiently large-scale consciousness being horribly destructive to reality. I guess what he actually meant was that consciousness is inefficient compared to non-consciousness, and so gets outcompeted by viciously efficient automatons, which then constitute the Great Darkness? Apparently 'defect-strategy hegemons' such as the Ancients inevitably (or, well, it wouldn't need to be inevitable, just non-trivially likely) destroy their own consciousness in pursuit of survival, and would end up destroying any other civilizations that didn't?

Pretty relevant to my interests, then...I've often thought about the fact that evolution is ultimately a murder-cycle with no actual end goal or objective, just more murder.

(The Great Darkness mostly seems to be a potential future event, rather than an entity or object, but WiH definitely indicates that there's an extant thing of some kind out there. 'Deepness that stalks the cold roads', etc.)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on September 14, 2017, 01:12:38 am
The Great Darkness is consciousness. It is self-awareness and nothing else. It is thinking about itself. Read that again, and understand. It is thinking about itself.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on September 14, 2017, 01:17:27 am
The most terrible thought in the universe is the perfect awareness of being aware: and the beauty of the trap is that it cannot be detected or foreseen until one possesses the godlike power and scope of awareness which makes the metadamnation inevitable.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Garfield on September 14, 2017, 01:54:06 am
The most terrible thought in the universe is the perfect awareness of being aware: and the beauty of the trap is that it cannot be detected or foreseen until one possesses the godlike power and scope of awareness which makes the metadamnation inevitable.

Here's a question: If the Vishnans are a high-level consciousness, how do they avoid being consumed by the Great Darkness or becoming a new one?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Kestrellius on September 14, 2017, 02:56:56 am
The Great Darkness is consciousness. It is self-awareness and nothing else. It is thinking about itself. Read that again, and understand. It is thinking about itself.

Hmm. Is it thinking only about itself because it knows everything and therefore anything it could think about would be considered part of itself, or because it's unable to perceive anything outside of itself?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Trivial Psychic on September 14, 2017, 08:08:48 am
OK.  I've mostly tried to avoid getting into conversations regarding this high-level consciousness stuff, mostly because the terms getting thrown around are outside of my vocabulary, but I just came up with an analogy that might simplify it.

The Great Darkness is a massive computer AI, and the various intelligent races within the universe are subroutines within the AI, but as the computer program works, the subroutines are constantly improving and updating.  At some point one of them expands to the point where it becomes a miniature AI itself, aware of what it is, but not of the fact that it is within a larger AI.  This sub-AI begins making its own decisions, which threatens the effectiveness of the large-scale AI.  It therefore employs other programs to either curtail or eliminate these offending subroutines.  The Shivans act to destroy it or attack it enough to keep it contained.  The Vishnans act to try to rewrite the subroutines to keep them on track and prevent their expansion.  If they can't, then the entire memory block has to be formatted and the AI rebuilt, loading critical software and subroutines from protected backups.

Am I close?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Darius on September 14, 2017, 08:18:28 am
Thought cancer is a good analogy, because there are no failsafes to redirect its thought away from itself. All resources are directed towards propagating its own thoughts of itself, subsuming all consciousness in the universe into itself. It is the natural conclusion of the conscious manipulation of reality.

Like cancer, the only way to eliminate it is excision and quarantine, and screening for precancer (?precursor hyperconscious thought)  in the healthy tissue.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Delta_V on September 14, 2017, 12:01:30 pm
Would AI rampancy in Halo be an accurate small-scale comparison?  Not necessarily how it was potrayed in Halo 4/5, but in the earlier books.  Basically, a smart AI is constantly learning and getting smarter, but over time, they begin to devote more and more processing power to thinking, instead of normal functions, and eventually "think themselves to death".  I think one analogy they used was "thinking so hard you forget to breath".

These descriptions of the Great Darkness reminded me of this, but on a civilization/universal scale.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Kestrellius on September 14, 2017, 02:49:51 pm
Thought cancer is a good analogy, because there are no failsafes to redirect its thought away from itself. All resources are directed towards propagating its own thoughts of itself, subsuming all consciousness in the universe into itself. It is the natural conclusion of the conscious manipulation of reality.

Like cancer, the only way to eliminate it is excision and quarantine, and screening for precancer (?precursor hyperconscious thought)  in the healthy tissue.

Okay, yeah. That makes sense. But...again, what's the problem? Why is this something to be avoided at all costs? I don't know if I'd call it ideal, but it doesn't exactly sound like a fate worse than death.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on September 14, 2017, 03:40:37 pm
It seems like there's a point at which a consciousness is so powerful, that it can't grasp itself and goes mad/completely unstable and destructive. Or maybe at some point out of its awareness over 100% of it is needed to sustain awareness of itself... and something happens. And it stops being aware, just malignant, unaware of its actions and so powerful it can immediately incorporate other awarenesses into it. This seems paradoxal, but it's also very interesting.

That would totally confirm the phrase "The deepness that stalks the cold roads", not "darkness". Possibly comparable to a black hole, just on a psychical level. Once you get too near it, it sucks you into itself and you simply won't get out no matter what. It would also seem that any psyche that gets sucked in becomes some kind of no-shape blob, just like the matter in a black hole.

It also seems that calling it God or God-like seems to make sense. Since it seems that it's being attracted VERY quickly by any thought about it, which would mean that either it sees everything in the open spaces of Nagari network simultaneously, or there's just some magic summoning it to whoever thought about it. Since witnessing such thing seems to be VERY traumatic, it would also seem that Ken in UT2 actually didn't only place a firewall between Laporte and it, but also actively erased Laporte's memory of it. Because if he didn't, she would almost instantly think of it.

So it seems that Shivan's role is to remove any single entity that's even remotely close to becoming such a thing, while Vishnans seem to convert entities they seem fit into parts of the Great Psyche, which is either separated from the rest of Nagari... somehow, or whatever is in the Psyche isn't aware at all.

It also seems very paradoxal that human awareness was developing quite slowly if at all, and the actual reason for it to be able to reach Nagari or whatever's in it were the Shivans themselves. The research about Nagari became because of them. So if their goal is to prevent civilisation from reaching an awareness threshold, they seem to be doing it very wrong by providing tools like Nagari for the humanity. I think that's Vishnu's idea.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on September 14, 2017, 03:55:06 pm
Because the Universe is a diversity factory and this is the antithesis of it. The darkness propagates and erases all sources of diversity. Without diverse thought, it will never be able to gain the capacity to escape something as simple as:

1:
Goto 1

Because it is impossible for the darkness to comprehend or care that there is more to existence than that though.

Since the darkness assimilates, it makes all other things have only that though. There is no point to its existence, it contributes nothing to the universe and steals thought from literally anything else in existence to make that goto statement become the only thing everything in reality is. Realty becomes a ****tily coded goto statement because it can no longer be conceived by anything to be anything else.

Imagine if something made your body redirect all of its autonomic nervous system's computing power into baking pizza. What are the obvious, immediate, fatal consequences of that?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on September 14, 2017, 04:47:01 pm
A delicious meal.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Darius on September 14, 2017, 09:32:26 pm
Okay, yeah. That makes sense. But...again, what's the problem? Why is this something to be avoided at all costs? I don't know if I'd call it ideal, but it doesn't exactly sound like a fate worse than death.

As An4x deftly outlined, there is no problem if you don't mind the universe being pizza  :o
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on September 15, 2017, 05:43:31 am
Honestly its starting to sound like its just another hegemonising swarm rather than some completely different thing as had been implied up to this point.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on September 15, 2017, 08:46:36 am
Not rly.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: GhylTarvoke on September 15, 2017, 11:09:35 am
The Great Darkness is consciousness. It is self-awareness and nothing else. It is thinking about itself. Read that again, and understand. It is thinking about itself.
The most terrible thought in the universe is the perfect awareness of being aware: and the beauty of the trap is that it cannot be detected or foreseen until one possesses the godlike power and scope of awareness which makes the metadamnation inevitable.
It also seems that calling it God or God-like seems to make sense.

This reminds me of God's name in Exodus. "I AM WHO I AM."

As an aside, I wouldn't equate consciousness with self-awareness. Consciousness isn't inherently recursive. For example, I think there are conscious people who never think about consciousness.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on September 15, 2017, 11:34:10 am
They have qualia, though - they know that they exist, their states are paired with a subjective experience of being in that state.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: GhylTarvoke on September 15, 2017, 04:41:49 pm
I agree with everything except this part:

they know that they exist

Some people (those with Cotard's syndrome) believe the opposite. Others (e.g. those in vegetative states, or in states of intense concentration) don't think about "self" or "existence".

Even if you know that you exist, this knowledge is only part of consciousness; many qualia aren't related to this knowledge at all. Qualia are tied to the self, but only in the same sense that noses are.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on September 15, 2017, 05:38:49 pm
Alright, so why does that result in 'the universe being dinner'?

e: For instance, if it is purely thinking about itself and only itself, then why is it a problem for anyone else?  At most it seems like it would occasionally ingest additional matter at random if it figures it needed that to continue its work, but even then if it is purely thinking about itself, then how could it have any ability to interact with the outside world in an organized way?  It would just be this free floating entity that ignores everything because those things are not part of itself.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on September 15, 2017, 06:49:14 pm
Because no matter what precautions you take, some idiot will touch the xenomorph egg.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Soulrheever on September 15, 2017, 08:01:38 pm
Perhaps I'm misreading things here, but it feels like a lot of people are mistaking the Great Darkness for something that exists in a real and/or physical sense... I've always understood it to be more conceptual, a state-of-being more than an entity... But then, I could be entirely wrong myself. The nature of the thing seems to be pretty difficult to explain/understand.  :doubt:

On a related note:
Just finished playing through Tenebra again, and was extremely disappointed to find a bug where in the Darkness didn't do it's cool creeper thing... was just blackness the whole way.  :(


Question for the Oracle though:
Federation POW camps - In "My Brother, My Enemy", it's mentioned that the TEVs look at interment in a Solus Lacus (sp?) camp as a "fate worse than death" and go to pretty great lengths to release their imprisoned captain. Ubuntu culture would, in my mind at least, treat their prisoners with the utmost respect and humanity. I had previously assumed the fear was entirely a product of the TEV propaganda machine, but during "The Plunder" Levi (think it was Levi) mentions the camp in a way that makes me think there might be something else there...
So the question is: Which side is doing the heavier propaganda about the conditions in a Fed POW camp? Or, more simply I suppose, what are the conditions there like?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on September 15, 2017, 08:51:40 pm
Lacus is full of Nagari VR sets that put you in contact with the Teletubbies Vishnans.

In a more serious post, some of the things that they go through there might involve some form of brain washing, I'd argue more in the sense of expunging the source of someone's violent or militaristic tendencies.
I'd also bet that such a procedure could also be non-permanent/flawed in a way that permits someone to go back to their original frame of mind or a new damaged one. Hence permitting castoffs of Ubuntu to exist.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Azrael15 on September 16, 2017, 10:12:03 pm
I've re-watched a clip of UT2 playthrough and a couple things got me interested.

Ken says to Laporte that "There have always been others". As in, other people like her. While she seems to have been the best "design" of them all, therefore the most successful one... Others? I once figured that Simms might be one of them, but... nah. Any tracks of these other people we'd like to know of? I don't think any of Beis would be related, the same for people speaking in Ken.

I believe there is one part in UT2 (where you're fleeing from the Vishnans) that has a bunch of jump nodes that are named after characters in Blue Planet. I always took them to be characters who were Nagari sensitive. IIRC, one of them is Simms but when Laporte goes through it it is just silent. Unlike, say, the Steele one that has him repeating a mantra as a defence against hostile neural incursion.

edit:
Ivan Genady, Chiwetel Steele, Lorna Simms, Ehud Levi, Etomgi Kyrematen, Dmitri Toqueville, Svetlana Henriksson, Martin Mandho, Thea Carey, Anita Lopez
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on September 19, 2017, 03:25:30 pm
why would it have gates leading to dead people...
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on September 19, 2017, 04:30:31 pm
The argument of conciousness isn't really quite fitting here - I suppose GD is just about how huge and powerful the mind that it became from was. At some point this conciousness got so excessively powerful that it crumbled under its own strength - so omnipotent that it could not even grasp itself anymore. I thing this entity is so keen on eating whatever it finds because of the last thing that happened, last memory before the proccess was irreversible: I'm losing control. I need more strength. More resources. And the zombielike thing the GD is, it is just following that last memory even when it doesn't make any sense. This also kinda reminds me of Transcendant, he also was subverted to a process that made his mind a such... thing. And it started to yield very, VERY strange stuff, with changing the universe to be as much alike his last memory as possible. Perhaps Great Darkness IS actually Transcendant, who somehow transferred himself to another universe and started consuming stuff until he became too huge and converted into GD. This would make for a very interesting plot right there.

I also need to point out that in BP's texts there is a mention of a Vasudan called Jester, he seems to have had a contact with or at least a view of the Great Darkness. That's probably why he is basically nuts/in need of lots of psychotic medicine.

@Soulrheever: What creepy thing? You mean in the empty void, or during Bosh's monologues?

Dead people? Genady and Kyrenmaten are dead, but Simms is only unconscious and Levi is actually only presumed dead. I mean, I think there wasn't a scene of him dying in Delenda Est, just charging at the enemy. If Tevs captured him, he might be prisoners of war (not really likely) or they may be using him for something related to MORPHEUS (more likely). The rest of that pack should be fine (Lopez depending on your choice in HFH), but presence of high-ranking Tevs in their midst is... puzzling.
I also would like to suggest that since Nagari is non-local in space, it might be also non-local in time, too. It isn't the first time when someone grabs an echo of dead people - either it's how Nagari works, non-locally in time, or this can be a kind of a remnant after a long gone mind, just like the Ancients. Or their minds are actually stored by something in the network for some reason. All three possibilities could be handy for extracting info thought to be long gone.
By asking about the "others", I rather meant people engineered in a way similar to Laporte - and with similar hidden goals to accomplish. I think Levi and Kyrenmaten would fit here (as replacements/complements to Laporte), but not Simms. While I wouldn't want to use non-canonical sources (Morrigan stories), I still think Simms is different in that regard to these two.

I've also found a thing that could be somehow related to Shambala. It could be hinted here (http://blueplanet.hard-light.net/icanus1.html) or there (http://blueplanet.hard-light.net/icanus2.html).

Since we've got quite some info on GD, I suppose couple of us theorists here should take a long walk back with that knowledge to the beginning of this puzzle, to look at things in another context, since there's a lot more information to use and search for hints.

I also wonder what exactly do these people in UT2 say - a shame but I don't really have the time to replay UT2 dozen more times or to manually search for text in mission files. By the way, is the hull integrity of Indus actually indicating the mental state of Laporte when you get to that segment of the mission? That would seem like a cool feature.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Kestrellius on September 19, 2017, 04:46:22 pm
I also need to point out that in BP's texts there is a mention of a Vasudan called Jester, he seems to have had a contact with or at least a view of the Great Darkness. That's probably why he is basically nuts/in need of lots of psychotic medicine.

According to a chat log posted...I don't remember where or when, exactly,
Spoiler:
we will be playing as Nabirasul (a.k.a. the Jester) during Blue Planet 3. Which makes me slightly furious that it isn't out yet, because that sounds awesome.

Quote
I've also found a thing that could be somehow related to Shambala. It could be hinted here (http://blueplanet.hard-light.net/icanus1.html) or there (http://blueplanet.hard-light.net/icanus2.html).

we figured it out guys

shambhala is a machine that creates a crossover with inferno
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on September 19, 2017, 05:44:41 pm
it should be noted that ken's warning during your scrape with the great darkness is very, very specifically worded:

Quote
If you turn around, you will never see anything else again.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on September 19, 2017, 05:46:53 pm
the chatlog mentioned is http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86605 by the way
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on September 19, 2017, 06:07:52 pm
Quote
Quote
I've also found a thing that could be somehow related to Shambala. It could be hinted here (http://blueplanet.hard-light.net/icanus1.html) or there (http://blueplanet.hard-light.net/icanus2.html).

we figured it out guys

shambhala is a machine that creates a crossover with inferno

Blue Planet was originally conceived as an Inferno FanFic.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Azrael15 on September 19, 2017, 07:06:41 pm
why would it have gates leading to dead people...

Those gates are also different to the alive ones. I want to say they are red as opposed to green. You definitely don't pick up on any thoughts when you go through them like you do for everyone else. Simms is also the only one to have something unusual. Which, IIRC, is <silence>.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Azrael15 on September 19, 2017, 07:08:31 pm
MitoPL, I'll grab what you get from the nodes in a bit.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Azrael15 on September 19, 2017, 07:18:17 pm
So, here they are.

Spoiler:
LOPEZ: I couldn't let Steele abandon abandon those people. I couldn't abrogate my duty to them. I paid the price. Was it worth it? I don't know. I hope so.
TOQUEVILLE: How could we accept a leadership, no matter how benevolent, controlled by an alien power? With the information gathered from the Vassago incident...we had to strike. Morpheus was the only option.
SIMMS: <silence>
CAREY: The needles. The needles. A crown of them, like thorns. All the drugs so clear like water, like glass. Did I know the Carthage information was a trap? Did I know? I don't know. I don't know anything.
STEELE: Watch the perimeter. Check your six. They sneak in through dreams. Watch the perimeter. Check your six.
MANDHO: Byrne is sure Shambhala will work, whether in the first stage or the second. All the simulations agree. But I wonder...are we too late? Is the verdict passed? Perhaps the second Wanderer will know...

The others all don't give you anything. They could be deceased Nagari sensitives. As to the why? Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Laporte's traversing the network -- those are just all dead pathways, roads to nowhere.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Doko on October 19, 2017, 04:06:53 am
My main question:

- Are the shivans slaves to the vishnans?

If yes, are the shivans even aware of it? (the 3rd signal) then what triggered them to openly rebel against the master's wishes during AoA
If no, why aren't they the sole arbiters of who gets to live already?

Wouldn't mind some oracular answers to these too :D

- Is the great psyche on a clock? They seem to be trying too hard at saving their investment when they could just a few wait a few thousand/million/billion years or hell, just see what the vasudans end up doing.

- Is processing power the only thing stopping the great psyche from becoming a thinkaboutme, or an inherent property of it being composed of many different starting parent races?

- Noemi's character has grown very dark from when we first met her, yet we are constantly told by our wingmen how good we seem to be at killing, ken makes her sound like she herself is a shivan. Do you think of her as a sociopath that never fully matured due to ubunto way of life and is now blooming or the result of what she has endured?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on October 19, 2017, 11:49:11 am
No, they're not slaves, but they do have a Protocol-defined role.

The Protocol is failing, and the Vishnans are taking more direct action. This caused the Shivans to say '**** you'

The Great Psyche is on a clock. The Protocol is failing, the universe is running out of good candidate species, and the Vishnans need to work with what's left.

The Great Psyche isn't in danger of going metastatic — the processes which lead that way involve recursive self-improvement, and the Psyche's not in that business. And yeah, their cognitive diversity is a big part of that.

I think Noemi is an extremely effective killer, but not a sociopath: she's able to empathize with and care for others. Falconer has a lot of thoughts on this topic. Noemi has full human experience, but is able to perfectly recruit that experience for combat.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on October 19, 2017, 01:30:57 pm
I'm not sure if this is the right thread for it, but I do have a question on the BP universe:

It seems Ubuntu has taken over as a religion.  Do faiths like Christianity and Islam still exist in BP's Sol?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on October 19, 2017, 01:47:22 pm
I'm sure they do. Ubuntu is a worldly philosophy as well as a spiritual one, and I'm sure there are interfaces between Ubuntu socioeconomics and religion, just as modern Christianity has interfaces with capitalism or communism depending on where it exists.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: FrikgFeek on October 20, 2017, 01:34:04 am
I'm not sure if any communist country was ever all that Christian. Most of the cold-war era communism didn't exactly encourage religion because that would diminish the power of their glorious leader.
Religion was mostly allowed but it would be much easier to get anywhere politically if you weren't religious. The common folk were still pretty religious but it wasn't exactly tied into communism, it was very separated.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on October 20, 2017, 08:54:29 am
Liberation theology tho
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: JoeBalls on November 01, 2017, 12:30:36 pm
I hope I can ask a question and I'm not too late.

In Universal Truth 2 there is a passage which i can't understand fully:

In the information pocket about why the Luciver attacked the Terrans and Vasudans, you get these informations:
("regional diversity minimized by pangalactic defect-strategy hegemon culled at present minus eight eight zero zero"
("bipolar defect-strategy conflict underway: anticipated xenocide and defect-hegemon outbreak (protocol failure). retrajectorize for mass upload to safe strata or exterminate incipients."

I understand, that a defect-strategy hegemon is a spacefaring species, who wages war instead of cooperating, like the Brahmans did. In this case, this were the Ancients.
If the Shivan encounter a "protocal failure", they have two options: Culling and "retrajectorize for mass upload to safe strata".
I always thought, that the Vishnan consciousness in subspace ist the "safe strata". But after reading General Batutta's informations about the Vishnans, this can't be the case. Only species, who aren't protocal failures can "become" Vishnans. So what is the safe strata?

Is the safe strata maybe an isolation of a species in a part of the universe? This propably could explain the supernova in Capella.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on November 01, 2017, 02:14:46 pm
Huh. So this "minus eight eight zero zero" might indicate the time Ancients got eradicated. The ruins in Altair were about 8k years old, at least according to FS canon, right?

Quote
CAREY: The needles. The needles. A crown of them, like thorns. All the drugs so clear like water, like glass. Did I know the Carthage information was a trap? Did I know? I don't know. I don't know anything.
That seems a bit like an interrogation, to be honest. And with UEF being the interrogators.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on November 01, 2017, 04:37:03 pm
Quote
CAREY: The needles. The needles. A crown of them, like thorns. All the drugs so clear like water, like glass. Did I know the Carthage information was a trap? Did I know? I don't know. I don't know anything.
That seems a bit like an interrogation, to be honest. And with UEF being the interrogators.
Carey passed information to the UEF and now GTI is interrogating her to see what else she might have done; the fact that the information she passed was a trap prepared by Steele doesn't change the fact that she still gave classified information to a wartime enemy.

If the Shivan encounter a "protocal failure", they have two options: Culling and "retrajectorize for mass upload to safe strata".
I always thought, that the Vishnan consciousness in subspace ist the "safe strata". But after reading General Batutta's informations about the Vishnans, this can't be the case. Only species, who aren't protocal failures can "become" Vishnans. So what is the safe strata?

Is the safe strata maybe an isolation of a species in a part of the universe? This propably could explain the supernova in Capella.
"retrajectorize for mass upload to safe strata" doesn't mean the mass upload will happen immediately; it means they're being put back on the path towards that outcome. In other words, by ending the Terran-Vasudan War, the Shivans "retrajectorized" them towards "mass upload to safe strata".
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 11, 2017, 11:29:44 am
I'm not sure if any communist country was ever all that Christian. Most of the cold-war era communism didn't exactly encourage religion because that would diminish the power of their glorious leader.
Religion was mostly allowed but it would be much easier to get anywhere politically if you weren't religious. The common folk were still pretty religious but it wasn't exactly tied into communism, it was very separated.

As a History major I back this up. Battuta is right in that Christianity is involved with socioeconomics, but communist systems have typically been heavily anti-religious (communism typically forms it's own cult of sorts, you get "hero" worship like with Lenin, etc.). Soviet Russia was rife with persecution, as was/is Vietnam, and North Korea. The common folk's religious practices were in spite of communist rule, not interfaced with it.

Not that this really has any bearing on how Ubuntu works, though. It can work how the BP team wants it to work.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: qwadtep on November 15, 2017, 03:31:57 am
Does the Great Darkness think itself the only thing in the universe, or does it think itself the entire universe? Cogito Ergo Sum or Laplace's Demon?

Did anything in particular trigger the appearance of the Great Darkness in UT2, or was it simply the ghost of the Brahma drifting the Nagari-waves?

Is there a danger of the Great Darkness entering the Shivan network via Ken, who is based on Terran cognition?

Isn't revealing the existence of interdimensional travel to the GTVA itself an unacceptable risk to the quarantine?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on November 15, 2017, 04:21:40 pm
All it thinks about is thinking about itself and everything it touches joins in because itself is very good at making things think about itself.

The Shivans are hostile to organized thought and hopefully immune.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on November 15, 2017, 06:10:04 pm
Isn't revealing the existence of interdimensional travel to the GTVA itself an unacceptable risk to the quarantine?

Battuta stated earlier that the Multiverse is running out of "the right type" of life to achieve the objectives of the terminal protocol. In addition, Shivans do exist in all universes, so no matter what, there is, literally, nowhere to run.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on November 21, 2017, 02:34:10 pm
Is Ricardo the great darkness?


Is the BP multiverse infinite? then the multiverse should never run out of universes with life, or great darknesses, or anything else.
Doesn't that make the Shivans goals unattainable?

Or are there a limited number of universes? and if so, why?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on November 21, 2017, 10:53:29 pm
Is the BP multiverse infinite? then the multiverse should never run out of universes with life, or great darknesses, or anything else.
Doesn't that make the Shivans goals unattainable?

Or are there a limited number of universes? and if so, why?
There's a third possibility: the number of universes is infinite, but the number of universes containing usable life is finite.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 22, 2017, 08:59:14 am
Is the BP multiverse infinite? then the multiverse should never run out of universes with life, or great darknesses, or anything else.
Doesn't that make the Shivans goals unattainable?

Or are there a limited number of universes? and if so, why?
There's a third possibility: the number of universes is infinite, but the number of universes containing usable life is finite.

So there are infinitely more lifeless universes than universes with usable life?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: perihelion on November 22, 2017, 11:22:41 am
Only universes containing Shivans or something equivalent to prevent intelligent life from developing into metastatic think-about-me’s haven’t been amputated. But the remaining universes are running out of viable candidates for... and this is where I run into a wall. Candidates for what?

It has been said that the universe is a divirsity engine. But how does that tie into Shivan imperatives? They are hostile to high level cognition. Easiest way to eliminate that is to eliminate life entirely.

The Vishnans want us to become “enlightened” so we can be uploaded to the Great Psyche. What do the Shivans want that is within our power to give them?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on November 22, 2017, 06:45:30 pm
Perhaps BP's multiverse is infinite, but there's a certain number of universes "closest" to our one that Vishnans can realistically interact with, and beyond that they just don't have the abilities to? If that would be true, perhaps Vishnan Summed Psyche thingy is actually anchored to one of universes near our one, and they just can't extend themselves away from it further than that certain amount of universes?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: perihelion on November 22, 2017, 09:00:26 pm
I don’t think that’s it. We’ve been told that the Vishnans can pass between universes. May have even been told that they exist in subspace in the walls between universes, but I can’t be sure I’m remembering that correctly.

The Shivans don’t. They are ubiquitous in all universes that are still of concern. Impression I have isn’t that they exist across universes so much as they are a prerequisite of all universes that are capable of supporting intelligence of the kind the Vishnans are interested in.

What I don’t get is what stays the Shivans’ hands from just wiping out all life everywhere and be done with it. Advanced cognition, if left untamed, accelerates towards becoming pathologically self-referential. So why hold back? What do they want? What do THEY get out of this relationship with the Vishnans?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on November 22, 2017, 10:32:47 pm
They're bound by the Protocol but not happily (as we see in AoA).
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on November 22, 2017, 10:47:34 pm
They get nothing. The Shivans were forced into the position they exist on by the precursor to the Great Darkness (Brahmans). An ego, forced the egoless to submit. There is no answer to the problem.

BP has a dualistic system: Thoughtless or Thoughtful.

If you are thoughtless, you have no ego.

If you have thoughts, you do, and inevitably drift towards it. Your Ego has an event horizon to which you grow closer and closer by living. Once you cross it, you are in an inescapable great darkness.

Here come the Shivans. By removing things that become the darkness, you allow other life, Non-Shivan life, to have a chance. But, inevitably, they will become a great darkness too, and so they must be removed, so that life other than them can live.

The Vishnans are an attempt at circumventing the system. And that is why they will never win. They are aiming for a 2 when the only possibilities are 0 and 1. Or if I had to put it another way, Trying to be Shivan while they are the anti-thesis of them. The only middle "solution" is apathy, which we have already seen, they are incapable of fulfilling.

Life in BP's universe is damned, it can only inevitably become its own end.


Sorry if come of as rambling, I really should be sleeping at this hour.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 24, 2017, 04:31:21 pm
Life in BP's universe is damned, it can only inevitably become its own end.

So... the BP story is ultimately pointless?

Thorough? Sure. Complex? Sure.

But in the end, there's no point?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on November 24, 2017, 06:29:49 pm
I think that's an oversimplification. "Endless cognitive growth is at least in certain cases disastrous" is more true, much like "burning increasing amount of fossil fuels is disastrous."
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: perihelion on November 24, 2017, 06:32:11 pm
Maybe I missed it, but what makes the Vishnans immune to pathological recursive cogitation?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on November 24, 2017, 06:37:20 pm
They're quarantined from the infected ruin of the Brahman noosphere and they aren't trying to attempt it themselves (nor do they have NEARLY the scale and unity of thought the Brahman did). From the beginning the Vishnans have been trying to find an inheritor for the Brahmans of old.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: perihelion on November 24, 2017, 07:17:00 pm
Are the Vishnans inherently unable to reach that level of cognition, or is that restriction self imposed as part of the Terminal Protocol?

Why is finding an inheritor to the Brahmans desirable?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Cyborg17 on November 25, 2017, 08:51:35 pm
I feel like after that "rambling" post I finally understand BP.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on November 25, 2017, 11:20:17 pm
I disagree with claims that its pointless if we will eventually die.  If you delay the destruction of the species for say 200 years, thats still totally worth it and is valuable.  Existing on into infinity is certainly desirable, but just because it has infinite value doesn't mean that anything else must have 0 value.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on November 26, 2017, 08:31:28 pm
Existing for existence's sake is pointless. The longer we remain, the likelihood of becoming a great darkness approaches one. What should matter is not having more time, but how we spend the time we do have.

Quote
Spoiler:
Everything dies. Even humanity, Laporte supposes. Maybe how you live should count for more than how long you last.

EDIT: OFF-TOPIC: Didn't expect to find this. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Dickinson)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mammothtank on November 26, 2017, 11:45:52 pm

EDIT: OFF-TOPIC: Didn't expect to find this. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Dickinson)


Er... Oookay? Gfy?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on November 27, 2017, 03:33:10 am
Oh hey, batts has a wiki page.

e: Also, isnt existence for existence' sake supposed to be the driving purpose behind us and everything else alive on this planet?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: qwadtep on November 30, 2017, 12:17:10 am
e: Also, isnt existence for existence' sake supposed to be the driving purpose behind us and everything else alive on this planet?
More or less. That said, it's a question that philosophers have been struggling with for thousands of years.

Bringing it back to BP:

As I recall, Steele started his career as a fighter pilot. He was injured as a member of the 99th Skulls during an attack on a Shivan supply convoy during the Second Incursion, then immediately switched to command track and climbed the ranks to Admiral.

What actually happened? I don't buy SOC casually handing out medals for botched freighter hunts.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on November 30, 2017, 12:53:22 am
I don't buy SOC casually handing out medals for botched freighter hunts.
Er... what botched freighter hunt? He was injured in the course of completing a successful mission, as the record clearly shows (http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Blue_Planet_intelligence_data#Admiral_Chiwitel_Steele).
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: qwadtep on December 01, 2017, 01:25:05 am
I don't buy SOC casually handing out medals for botched freighter hunts.
Er... what botched freighter hunt? He was injured in the course of completing a successful mission, as the record clearly shows (http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Blue_Planet_intelligence_data#Admiral_Chiwitel_Steele).
I'm being facetious. Valuable SOC units being risked on meager supply raids? Either it was a slow day at Command or that mission was a lot more valuable than the public record implies.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on December 01, 2017, 09:22:38 am
I think that's an oversimplification. "Endless cognitive growth is at least in certain cases disastrous" is more true, much like "burning increasing amount of fossil fuels is disastrous."

Aha, I gotcha. Makes more sense now.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Grizzly on December 04, 2017, 06:22:51 am
I don't buy SOC casually handing out medals for botched freighter hunts.
Er... what botched freighter hunt? He was injured in the course of completing a successful mission, as the record clearly shows (http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Blue_Planet_intelligence_data#Admiral_Chiwitel_Steele).
I'm being facetious. Valuable SOC units being risked on meager supply raids? Either it was a slow day at Command or that mission was a lot more valuable than the public record implies.

I think it's not a stretch to say that the SOC doesn't conduct supply raids in order to destroy said supplies but in order to capture them. They've got to get their SF Maras from somewhere.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on December 04, 2017, 12:06:28 pm
They also write "supply raid" on medal nominations so they don't have to tell everybody what was really going on  ;7
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Grizzly on December 04, 2017, 04:45:47 pm
"Steele was nominated for this medal after a daring raid against a weather balloon"
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on December 04, 2017, 06:31:45 pm
Is Steele FS2 Alpha One?

Kovacs drops clues that he might be FS1 Alpha One, so it wouldn't surprise me.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on December 04, 2017, 06:46:38 pm
Esmar al-Fadil is a more likely candidate, if FS2A1 didn't die in the supernova.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Asteroth on December 20, 2017, 03:22:15 pm
If the Shivans were to refer to themselves as a single english word roughly meaning a group of individuals (such as commune, or family or association, like how Humans refer to themselves as an 'alliance' or the Vasudans as an 'Imperium'), what word would they use?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rheavatarin on December 20, 2017, 03:34:08 pm
They wouldn't, but I posit that the Hobbesian phrase, "state of nature" would apply.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on December 20, 2017, 03:34:49 pm
A "murder"
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: emark4 on February 17, 2018, 08:21:39 pm
Not sure if this was already touched upon but...

Its been like around 3 to four years since WIH 2 came out. Now, I can imagine progress is slow cause of real life stuff. Im just wondering, is there anything on the technical side of things that is also holding WIH act 4 & 5 to be released?


Also, I am unsure of the significance of that Vasudan transmission Noemi got from the vasudans.  That part im really confused...
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on February 18, 2018, 08:21:18 am
BP is a lot of work and the devs have lives (I think one's a doctor now).

The transmission from the Pesedjet contained schematics that let the Fedayeen hook CASSANDRA up to the wider Nagari network, allowing UT2 to happen.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: emark4 on February 18, 2018, 03:51:32 pm
BP is a lot of work and the devs have lives (I think one's a doctor now).

The transmission from the Pesedjet contained schematics that let the Fedayeen hook CASSANDRA up to the wider Nagari network, allowing UT2 to happen.

I aware that RL is important too (didnt know one of em is a doctor) though i was talking about the technical side of things, problems with the current FS  open build, just curious.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on February 18, 2018, 05:11:00 pm
There are no real technical obstacles, though improved perf in big missions is always dope.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Hellstryker on February 19, 2018, 06:57:00 pm
Is Laporte a relative of FS1A1 / is Nagari sensitivity hereditary?

What was threatening the Orion Arm arteria to such an extent that it necessitated 100 Sathanas class juggernauts to form a uh, Transabyssal Connection?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on February 20, 2018, 08:33:21 am
No, and it was the GTVA's pressure which gave the Shivans the reactive impulse which the anima hijacked to build the transabyssal connection in Capella.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Hellstryker on February 23, 2018, 12:22:13 pm
Sorry, suppose I didn't word my question clearly enough. What I was asking was why was the transabyssal connection formed in the first place? The Sathanas fleet was there due to the GTVA, but the connection was formed in response to something else.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Cyborg17 on February 23, 2018, 03:18:11 pm
I think he is saying that the shivans built the bridge as a response to the GTVA. 

What is the specific effect that the anima is trying to accomplish by building the connection?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on February 24, 2018, 10:20:56 am
What does "nem.now" in the Shivan tech room entries mean?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on February 24, 2018, 10:38:40 am
It's short for NEMESIS NOW, which, as I understand it, is the GTVA's attempt to model Shivan behavior while minimizing inbuilt assumptions, to avoid repeating the mistakes in pre-Capella analysis of Shivan behavior. I'm pretty sure NEMESIS NOW is how they were able to come up with things like introns and promoters for the different ship designs.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: crizza on February 25, 2018, 05:25:55 am
So, how would've the http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/UEFg_Murugan (http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/UEFg_Murugan) fared against Tev assets?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on February 27, 2018, 03:22:29 pm
What does "nem.now" in the Shivan tech room entries mean?
Go to http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/The_GRANITE_HUNTER_Files_(BP) (http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/The_GRANITE_HUNTER_Files_(BP)) and search for "NEMESIS NOW".
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: PIe on February 27, 2018, 03:53:16 pm
Go to http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/The_GRANITE_HUNTER_Files_(BP) and search for "NEMESIS NOW".
http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/The_GRANITE_HUNTER_Files_(BP) (http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/The_GRANITE_HUNTER_Files_(BP))
You left the closing parentheses off.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on February 28, 2018, 02:22:37 pm
Go to http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/The_GRANITE_HUNTER_Files_(BP) and search for "NEMESIS NOW".
http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/The_GRANITE_HUNTER_Files_(BP) (http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/The_GRANITE_HUNTER_Files_(BP))
You left the closing parentheses off.
No I didn't, the forum's autolink algorithm did.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on March 01, 2018, 07:10:20 am
So, how would've the http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/UEFg_Murugan (http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/UEFg_Murugan) fared against Tev assets?

The Murugan is, essentially, a really huge Karuna. It doesn't have some of the Karuna's drawbacks, given that most its heavy guns are mounted in turrets and thus have much larger firing arcs than the Karuna's fixed mounts, but on a fundamental level it's still a Federation design and as such is not able to compete with GTVA ships in terms of pure shock damage potential. It's certainly capable of ending fights faster, but it's still built around the concept of capital ship fights being boxing matches while the GTVA builds its ships around the idea of ending a battle in the first salvo.

It also has one massive drawback: As a more or less pure big gun Battleship, it lacks integral fighter cover and thus is only really deployable in Sol's "coastal" environment; if it goes on an expedition, it will need a lot of escorts.
This, of course, means that if one were to deploy it, it would be used in much the same way the USN used its big-gun battleships during WW2: As dedicated escorts and support ships for carrier strike forces. Having a Murugan ride shotgun on a Solaris, where the Murugan could serve as a close-in escort for the Solaris while the Solaris' fighters and smaller frigates do the "real" work is certainly a powerful deterrent against an enemy trying to kill the carrier .... but, of course, this is all still within the limits of the Federation tech base. No escort ship, no matter how badass and bristling with guns, can effectively protect a carrier against a well-executed shock jump.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Homura on March 02, 2018, 01:08:49 am
Has anyone also problems with the wiki? The table format is bugged and every image files are missing.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on March 02, 2018, 04:18:12 am
Quote
No escort ship, no matter how badass and bristling with guns, can effectively protect a carrier against a well-executed shock jump.

Can't it, though? Sure, if Steele (or whoever) commits a shock jump against a Solaris, I doubt there's much the destroyer's escorts could do about it - but they could smash up the attack force pretty well. Here's a hypothetical: A Murugan against a Titan that's already fired its opening salvo at something else; what happens?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rheavatarin on March 02, 2018, 05:36:54 am
The shock jump is a powerful tactic, but it isn't unbeatable. The goal is to prevent them in the first place. Hit and run. ECM and ECCM. Keep the enemy off balance, unaware of your next target, and away from their own supplies. Shock jumps require careful coordination, and if you can scramble it, then it is possible to force a slugging match or slip past a counter attack.

A Solaris, and to a lesser extent the other Fed ship classes, have a significant problem compared to Tev warships because of the lag time for their missiles to move downrange. They have a frightening DPS, but it takes 45 seconds for them to start dealing it at range. Since a Murugan's primary armament isn't its missiles, it could start damaging its opponents immediately.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Hellstryker on March 02, 2018, 10:12:46 pm
The tevs wouldn't shock jump a Solaris without accurate intel showing they've got an opening. I sincerely doubt they'd field Serkr or a Titan against a destroyer with Murugan escort.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on March 02, 2018, 10:43:05 pm
Quote
No escort ship, no matter how badass and bristling with guns, can effectively protect a carrier against a well-executed shock jump.

Can't it, though? Sure, if Steele (or whoever) commits a shock jump against a Solaris, I doubt there's much the destroyer's escorts could do about it - but they could smash up the attack force pretty well. Here's a hypothetical: A Murugan against a Titan that's already fired its opening salvo at something else; what happens?

The Murugan's crew scramble to bring their guns to bear on the Titan in a desperate attempt to kill the beam emitters before they recharge.
Alternatively, they jump away immediately, if there is no way to bring enough guns to bear to guarantee the destruction of those emitters.

The tevs wouldn't shock jump a Solaris without accurate intel showing they've got an opening. I sincerely doubt they'd field Serkr or a Titan against a destroyer with Murugan escort.

They would, though, if the outcome is sufficiently likely to fall in the GTVA's favour. Taking a Solaris off the board is a price worth losing a few corvettes or risking damage to a Destroyer over.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: emark4 on March 20, 2018, 06:32:33 pm
Esmar al-Fadil is a more likely candidate, if FS2A1 didn't die in the supernova.

Oh wow, I think I may have doomed fs2 alpha 1.. whoops....
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Hellstryker on April 02, 2018, 01:07:11 pm
This one actually hit me the other day as I was re-reading the Granite Hunter files and the Shivan ship descriptions - did any other races come so far in their study of the Shivans? Introns, promoters, pilot integration, nightmare turbines.. how much of this stuff had the Ancients or anyone else figured out, if they did at all?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Torchwood on April 02, 2018, 02:34:49 pm
Does it matter? If the GTVA's understanding about the Shivans is correct, they are infinitely mutable, endlessly adaptable. Meaning no matter how much one learns about them, it will always be summed up as "not enough".
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on April 02, 2018, 05:29:59 pm
Esmar al-Fadil is a more likely candidate, if FS2A1 didn't die in the supernova.

Oh wow, I think I may have doomed fs2 alpha 1.. whoops....

Al-Fadil...

Al-Fa...

Alpha...

And there's only one of him. Checkmate, atheists.



Quote
Does it matter?
Ken's implied that humanity matters somehow, and I wouldn't be surprised if our understanding of the Shivans relates to the reason why.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: ShivanSpS on April 03, 2018, 07:25:25 pm
Esmar al-Fadil is a more likely candidate, if FS2A1 didn't die in the supernova.

Oh crap... that would explain the two possible endings to that mission.

buuut wouldt FS2A1 have a capital ship at this point? It has been 18 years since FS2, and FS2A1 is a hero. The Samuel Bei, the ensign who did not know to target bombs first in the 2nd shivan war already qualified as a ship captain in the middle of AoA. FS2A1 was already the captain of a elite squadron before the war ended.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on April 03, 2018, 07:32:22 pm
Pilot captains aren't interchangeable with ship captains.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: ShivanSpS on April 03, 2018, 08:02:01 pm
Then the dialogue on AoA is wrong, it says once you get to the rank of captain you can choose to be a squadron leader or ship captain.

Here you go, 2:55:50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arg4vZffYwU


Also in real life navy pilots can become ship captains after they were squadron leaders as far as i know.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Snarks on April 03, 2018, 11:56:32 pm
Then the dialogue on AoA is wrong, it says once you get to the rank of captain you can choose to be a squadron leader or ship captain.

Also in real life navy pilots can become ship captains after they were squadron leaders as far as i know.

Maybe the implication there is that he chose to remain as a squadron leader. And squadron leaders certainly aren't interchangeable with ship captains. I think there's a false assumption that every pilot eventually wants to be an admiral going on here.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on April 04, 2018, 03:19:40 am
It's possible to change one's MOS--Steele did it, but, going off the personnel database, that's an uncommon occurrence. My guess is that people who want to be captains get on the command track, not the pilot track. Steele's MOS change happened right after Capella--maybe something happened during his run with SOC?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Snarks on April 04, 2018, 04:09:36 am
Aken Bosch was also a pilot during Silent Threat. I would say the offer at Captain rank to be squadron leader or ship captain isn't hugely biased towards either side, being largely dependent on what the pilot ultimately wants. The only time this discrepancy is really brought up is when you are made squadron leader as Alpha 1 during Freespace 2. Of course, it can be argued that the player agreed to be a squadron leader (thanks silent protagonist) beforehand or that the extreme circumstances of the Second Shivan Incursion removed that luxury of choice.

There probably is a way to directly be a ship captain without going through the pilot route as well, but being a wing leader tends to build up quite a bit of leadership skills, which are undoubtedly useful as a cruiser captain.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: ShivanSpS on April 04, 2018, 01:58:27 pm
im petty sure you will need to be squadron leader first, and there you will show if you are worthy of command, you just cant really go from pilot to ship captain like that, even if you are a wing leader.

Now if a pilot with excellent leadership skills that he already is a aquadron leader can turn down the promotion or not we have no idea. You would still be a squadron leader if you were not skilled enoght trought.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Homura on April 05, 2018, 11:08:54 am
Guys, you kinda forget the thousands of crews onboard the ships who never even touched a fighter. In todays military you dont have to be able to pilot something to be a captain, general or something higher.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on April 05, 2018, 12:54:19 pm
I kinda assumed a squad lead would go straight into a corvette since those tend to have authority over the fighters in their area.  Then cruisers would typically be an academy graduates path into bigger ships.  Getting a squad lead killed in some rickety ass cruiser seems like a waste of destroyer killing talent.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: xenocartographer on April 07, 2018, 08:15:40 am
What happened to the (original) crew of the GTC Duke when the Vishnans were done with them? Did they ever recover?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on April 07, 2018, 01:45:27 pm
Pilot captains aren't interchangeable with ship captains.

um explain steele then??!?!
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on April 07, 2018, 03:47:51 pm
The database explicitly stated that Steele requested and received a change of MOS, and it's a safe assumption that doing that is non-trivial (as in real-world militaries).
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Snarks on April 07, 2018, 07:03:01 pm
Was it ever specified that Steele was a squadron leader though? He could have easily been promoted to a cruiser captain from a pilot, without ever being squadron leader.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on April 07, 2018, 07:23:34 pm
He actually went from something in the 99th Skulls to XO on the GTCv Bretagne, per the Database. The record for his Medal of Valor citation says he was a Wing Commander, but given that he was flying with a black ops squadron, who knows how much of that is the truth.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Snarks on April 07, 2018, 07:45:11 pm
Wing leader != squadron leader though. And with the 99th Skulls, they might have an unconventional command structure to begin with.

Going from pilot -> wing leader -> SOC -> XO on a cruiser/corvette doesn't seem too far fetched though.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on April 08, 2018, 12:22:44 pm
The database explicitly stated that Steele requested and received a change of MOS, and it's a safe assumption that doing that is non-trivial (as in real-world militaries).

that was basically the joke tbh
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: T-Man on May 04, 2018, 12:09:18 pm
Here's a question I have wondered. The UEB Vajradhara (http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/UEB_Vajradhara); where would they launch from? I've always had a feeling they're too big for the frigates or even Solaris-class to house them (but I am perhaps wrong in thinking that?).

Oh yeah and GTVA 'red asset'; what's 3 divided by 0? *waits for red asset to implode* :pimp:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Darius on May 04, 2018, 07:01:49 pm
From a technical perspective, the solaris destroyers are so huge because it's the mininum size needed to launch the vajradhara.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Damage on May 05, 2018, 02:24:32 pm
We know that most (if not all) light-speed communications coming out of Sol are classified; what about those going in?  Does the UEF (or Ubuntu Elders) classify those as well?  Do the Gefs intercept them?  Does the GTVA even allow regular messages, such as routine star chart updates, to be sent in?  Does Radio Free Alpha Centauri beam messages in periodically?  (Or a Vasudan group of similar mind)

I mention star charts specifically as a lead-in to my next question--I seem to remember Noemi (or at least some in-game fiction) mentioning Capella at some point before UT2.  Does the general population of Sol know about Capella, or just the military and Ubuntu leadership?  The light from that disaster hasn't gotten to Sol yet, so my assumption is that it's not common knowledge yet.  And what will happen when it becomes such?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on May 05, 2018, 04:05:26 pm
My vague understanding is they were given official histories by the GTVA as part of propoganda, which was not cracked down on by the UEF to any huge extent.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on May 07, 2018, 03:15:54 pm
Does Radio Free Alpha Centauri beam messages in periodically?  (Or a Vasudan group of similar mind)
If memory serves, the Vasudan pilots who helped destroy the Lucifer had contact with the Hammer of Light via transmissions to/from Alpha Centauri.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: rubixcube on May 11, 2018, 09:26:34 pm
In terms of dead, wounded, MIA etc, what are the current casualty counts of each side at the end of Tenebra?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Damage on May 14, 2018, 11:25:15 am
My vague understanding is they were given official histories by the GTVA as part of propoganda, which was not cracked down on by the UEF to any huge extent.

Just off the cuff, that seems like counterproductive propaganda.  "The Shivans destroyed the entire Capella system--we look like weaklings!"  But after a moment's reflection, I can see the Tevs making that kind of statement and using it to try and put the fear of Shiva into the UEF populace.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on May 15, 2018, 12:17:29 am
Yeah, they also have their actually somewhat successful evac operation that the UEF probably wouldn't have had the firepower to pull off, including the ability to meson bomb jump nodes, which the UEF also cant do.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Erebus Alpha on June 14, 2018, 04:46:28 am
Is retail FS2 Alpha One ever confirmed as a character in BP canon?

I heard that it could be Al'fadil, and there is certainly a lot of data to back up that assumption. But as far as I am aware, Al'fadil was never canonized in BP as the squadron commander for the 70th Blue Lions, at the time of the Capella supernova.

It's also possible that Steele could be FS2 Alpha One - but again, I cannot find any hard data that confirms this. Only that he was a pilot in the second Shivan incursion, who then transitioned to warship command.

It's somewhat relevant to a campaign I am building.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on June 14, 2018, 08:29:49 am
It's also possible that Steele could be FS2 Alpha One - but again, I cannot find any hard data that confirms this. Only that he was a pilot in the second Shivan incursion, who then transitioned to warship command.

Steele is not FS2 Alpha One. Yes, he was SOC during the second incursion, but he was wounded during it; Alpha One, as far as we know, never got so much as a scratch :)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: JoeBalls on July 05, 2018, 09:37:04 pm
I was wondering the other day if the Vishnans have more than one goal.

The goals of the Shivans are explained "clearly" in Universal Truth 2:
"secondary: selective pressure for resumption of panontic function." -> The Brahmans created the Panontos. Only species that cooperate should give a new cosmic order.

"secondary: suppression of destructive firewall strategies": -> The universe is a "computer". The subspace was calculated to create computing capacities. Defect hegemonies seal off areas of the universe, including subspace. The two objectives are therefore to cull or redirect xenocidal species.

"PRIMARY: imperate! metastatic ontovoric acatalepsis event!" -> Avert the Great Darkness.

We don't have telemetry data on the Vishnans. In this thread it was only clarified that the Vishnans are looking for a successor for the Brahamns. This corresponds to the secondary goal of the Shivans. So my question is whether the Vishnans also have a higher ranking goal and whether it also has to do with the Great Darkness.





Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Abaddon on July 16, 2018, 12:28:26 am
Does the GTVA have some kind of beam-jammer-defeating device either in development or already deployed? It seems like it would be the perfect secret weapon, for Delenda Est on an even greater scale -- take some strategic losses, bait out a Solaris into an AWACS/jamming-based assault, then boom, turns out the Serkr corvettes can circumvent the jamming somehow.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on July 16, 2018, 12:32:10 am
ECM is a constant arms race. The Tev ECM defeat capability is always being upgraded and so are the UEF's countermeasures.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Aesaar on July 16, 2018, 02:03:46 am
You can see the Marcus Glaive half-defeating beam jamming in the Tenebra intro, where it misses the Eris with two of its beams and hits with one.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: GhylTarvoke on July 23, 2018, 05:04:47 am
Been out of the loop for a while. Here's what I've gathered:

Through evolution and self-improvement, life tends to produce more intelligent life. With greater intelligence comes greater self-awareness. Unfortunately, all such paths of enlightenment, regardless of their starting points, converge to the same godlike entity at the highest level of cognition: the Great Darkness. The ultimate dead end.

The Great Darkness is the pinnacle of self-awareness. It exists to ponder its own existence. It acts as a sort of black hole in the Nagari network, enlightening (assimilating) all life forms that discover it. A life form capable of recognizing the danger is already doomed, because to comprehend the Great Darkness is to become a part of it. The only universes not consumed by this "thought cancer" are those that contain the Shivans.

The Shivans are a property of all interesting universes - a cosmic immune system that culls civilizations before they produce the Great Darkness. Due to constant internal conflict, large-scale Shivan behavior is chaotic and diversified, allowing them to adapt to any threat. Their existence was exploited by the Terminal Protocol: a final attempt to contain the Great Darkness by quarantining universes conducive to intelligent life.

The Vishnans are a multiversal amalgam of civilizations that have stopped short of the Great Darkness, thereby evading the cull. They initially believe that with Nagari intervention, the UEF is worthy of ascension to the amalgam. The Shivans believe that the risk of a hard takeoff singularity is too great. The GTVA believes that the infectious, Vishnan-influenced UEF philosophy will leave everyone defenseless against the Shivans.

Here's what I'm still fuzzy on:

The Vishnans have lost faith in us for some reason (possibly involving the war). The Elders have an outside-context endgame strategy (possibly involving ascension to the amalgam). The Shivans have an alternative to culling us (possibly involving tighter control of intelligent life). Ken thinks that we have something to offer the Shivans (possibly involving self-awareness, which the Shivans lack by necessity).
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on July 23, 2018, 07:40:29 am
The Vishnans have lost faith in us for some reason (possibly involving the war).
The Granite Hunter files speculate that the Vishnans went dark because of something that happens in the future; it's my understanding that the most probable event is Laporte attacking the Vishnans in some capacity.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on July 24, 2018, 06:59:40 am
Well, Vishnans actually made contact with Laporte via Bei. At the moment, they may know more than we think.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: rubixcube on July 24, 2018, 07:16:49 pm
The GTVA believes that the infectious, Vishnan-influenced UEF philosophy will leave everyone defenseless against the Shivans.

I never quite understood this, I mean, the UEF isn't all that pacifistic; they do have a military after all. I find it hard to believe they'd push the GTVA to totally abandon its defense of periphery systems, or its focus on military R&D.

The GTVA's disdain for the Ubuntu ideology seems to stem from distrust of the Vishnan's themselves, the reasons for which are not totally clear (and may or may not be justified).
I have a suspicion the Shivans might want the GTVA to win
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on July 24, 2018, 07:39:25 pm
Probably the Vishnans don't mind if their ideology isn't applied 100%, as long as the general direction is correct.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: manwiththemachinegun on July 25, 2018, 04:47:14 pm
Alpha-1 should stay the mysterious god figure that he is, the answer to some questions is never as satisfactory as the mystery itself.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Snarks on July 25, 2018, 05:50:11 pm
I never quite understood this, I mean, the UEF isn't all that pacifistic; they do have a military after all. I find it hard to believe they'd push the GTVA to totally abandon its defense of periphery systems, or its focus on military R&D.

The UEF isn't going to force the GTVA to do anything, since I'm fairly sure they're content with just being in their home system. The concern is that Terrans are going to start questioning their relatively austere lifestyles. Despite being roughly equal in economic capabilities, the Terrans are spending probably at least 10 times as much as the UEF is on its military just in terms of fleet maintenance and production, probably a lot more if we consider R&D.

The Second Shivan Incursion basically left the Terrans in a state of total war for a couple of decades, and its leaders probably want to keep it that way. Ubuntu threatens that with its relative pacifism.

But I wouldn't say this is the primary reason for why the Terrans want to remove the Ubuntu government. Morpheus makes it clear that the Terrans are aware of the Vishnans, and there's a lot of distrust (perhaps even rightfully so) to be had with them.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: rubixcube on July 25, 2018, 06:29:57 pm
But I wouldn't say this is the primary reason for why the Terrans want to remove the Ubuntu government. Morpheus makes it clear that the Terrans are aware of the Vishnans, and there's a lot of distrust (perhaps even rightfully so) to be had with them.

That seems to be the main sticking point, I've been trying to think of reasons for this.

One clue might be the ancient monologues which say "we retreated to our home system, abandoned our empire", hinting perhaps the Vishnans began influencing the Ancients to become like the UEF, but the Shivans still said F**K you, and killed them anyways.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Farkas on July 26, 2018, 03:55:50 pm
Alpha-1 should stay the mysterious god figure that he is, the answer to some questions is never as satisfactory as the mystery itself.

I second that. Alpha One is a godlike creature, that can respawn infinitely, can alter time if something happens that she/he doesn't like and do everything in the sake of her/his entertainment. (aka Player) :D
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Woolie Wool on August 17, 2018, 01:35:33 pm
In the GRANITE HUNTER files, what do the code names stand for? Who wrote whatever (Vasudan?) poem being quoted in the first post? What is the Complicated Place?

As far as I can tell, CELTIC TRIPLE is the NTF Iceni (and possibly Bosch personally) and BLACK DOVE is Lt. Commander Snipes. Other than that, I don't know.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: manwiththemachinegun on August 18, 2018, 06:50:53 pm
Ok, here's one for you.

In the tech entries there's a huge leap forward of understanding the basics of Shivan ship and decision making, and comprehension of how they actually operate. Reacting organically to each new situation rather than preplanning. How did the GTVA acquire this knowledge? Spook work? Experimentation? Decryption of the ETAK project or of Shivan comm nodes?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: starlord on August 19, 2018, 12:19:39 am
Actually in regards to the tech descriptions, a number of shivan organisms are describes like anodes, killers etc... According to this model, what are the shivans encountered in the FS1 captured azrael?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on August 19, 2018, 01:08:42 am
I don't remember right now! Is there a particular word that seems to match up in the NEM.NOW files? Maybe just 'crew'?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Woolie Wool on August 29, 2018, 08:54:51 am
If the Maitreya is (a) part of Shambhala and (b) based on the Murugan, is it therefore intended to do with Erebus- and Titan-class destroyers what the Erebus-class is meant to do with Sathanas juggernauts, playing keep-away with superior speed and subspace maneuverability and whittling the enemy down, thereby causing unacceptable casualties, tying ships down as they try to pursue her, and forcing the GTVA to the negotiating table?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rogue Assassin04 on September 15, 2018, 05:56:56 pm
I had a few questions. Sorry if its irrelevant....

1) shivans are transparent and direct. and  vishnans are mysterious and manipulative. Are the shivans more trust worthy than the vishnans?
2) What's the difference between aspect swarm and nagari? and is nagari cognitive?
3) If laporte heard from the shivans(via ken), and bei heard from vishnans, does nabirasul hear from brahmans/Ancients? whos asenath?
4) why does Ken have different objectives from the Shivans? Why did shivan tactics change after Bosch made contact with them?

When i meant hearing from ancients, i meant like Alpha 1 in FS1 who received the ancient monologues... And Battuta told that Asenath is a princess...


Quote
15-Sept-2018 +0530 GMT Kolkata, Chennai

22:42:58
battuta: asenath is a vasudan princess
22:43:00
battuta: and your wingmate in bp3
22:43:05
battuta: iirc

These are my questions...


Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on November 23, 2018, 08:00:02 pm
Hi guys!

I am about to do a full Blue Planet continuity binge over the next few months because, why not.

I want to make sure I do not miss any campaigns, or play any out of sequence.

So far, I have worked out the following campaigns are part of the continuity, and chronologically should be played in this order.

•   Ancient Shivan War acts 1 and 2 (Any resemblance the ancients ships have to the Vishnans is purely coincidental  :lol: )
•   FS1 via FS Port Media VPs.
•   Trimurti
•   Silent Threat: Reborn
•   Operation Templar.
•   FS2 / FS Blue
•   Vassago’s Dirge
•   BP: Battle Captains.
•   BP: AoA, WiH etc.

Is this correct? Did I miss any? Are any of these not in the continuity? Are any in the wrong order?

The Granit Hunter files mentions something code named SADABA YEAR that “went into early stand-down after an internal event and the loss of some assets and personnel, however post mission…” is this relating to a campaign?

Any advice greatly appreciated 😊
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 23, 2018, 08:53:31 pm
I'd recommend playing the tattered remains of ASW act 3 as well.  ;)

Lol, bit of a joke, not necessary at all. But there are a couple playable missions and others partially done that shed some light on where the plot was to go.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on November 23, 2018, 09:14:55 pm
Ooh, I didn't know there was any playable ASW act three stuff about. Do you know where I can download ? Will I need to use WXLauncher for it? Cheers 🙂
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on November 23, 2018, 09:40:03 pm
I don't know if that qualifies, but The Mantle by Kestrellius is based on the BP modpack. Friends and Foes: Retribution made by bomb3rman is a War in Heaven side-story set between the events of AoA and WiH, but from the side of civilian... ish population.
If you also tried out some of Universal Truth 2 failure endings, you might have (presumably) found references to Transcend.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on November 23, 2018, 10:20:43 pm
Ooh, I didn't know there was any playable ASW act three stuff about. Do you know where I can download ? Will I need to use WXLauncher for it? Cheers 🙂
https://sectorgame.com/fsfiles/?dir=uploads/Modifications/Miscellaneous&s=asw

You'll need to install it manual though.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on November 24, 2018, 04:06:44 pm
Hi guys!

I am about to do a full Blue Planet continuity binge over the next few months because, why not.

I want to make sure I do not miss any campaigns, or play any out of sequence.

So far, I have worked out the following campaigns are part of the continuity, and chronologically should be played in this order.

•   Ancient Shivan War acts 1 and 2 (Any resemblance the ancients ships have to the Vishnans is purely coincidental  :lol: )
•   FS1 via FS Port Media VPs.
•   Trimurti
•   Silent Threat: Reborn
•   Operation Templar.
•   FS2 / FS Blue
•   Vassago’s Dirge
•   BP: Battle Captains.
•   BP: AoA, WiH etc.

Is this correct? Did I miss any? Are any of these not in the continuity? Are any in the wrong order?

The Granit Hunter files mentions something code named SADABA YEAR that “went into early stand-down after an internal event and the loss of some assets and personnel, however post mission…” is this relating to a campaign?

Any advice greatly appreciated 😊

ASW isn't BP canon, it doesn't really mesh with how BP envisions the Ancients. I think we'd go a lot more capital-a Alien, something like the Prime from Peter F. Hamilton's Judas Unchained.

Strictly speaking the Absolutely Canon, 100% real stuff is:

•   FS1 via FS Port Media VPs
•   not Trimurti, exactly, but Trimurti is so good you should play it anyway (I only caveat it because BP's depiction of Shivan 'interiority' may differ a bit)
•   Silent Threat: Reborn
•   Operation Templar I guess, you're not going to get much out of this...
•   FS2 / FS Blue
•   BP: AoA, WiH etc.

Then there's nods/connections to:
•   Vassago’s Dirge
•   Transcend
•   Derelict

And cool side fanmade campaigns:
•   Mantle
•   Friends and Foes: Retribution

And Battle Captains is there if you want to give it a shot.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on November 24, 2018, 06:02:04 pm
Awesome, thank you :-)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on November 24, 2018, 07:45:59 pm
Hey, does anyone know what VOTC (Vengeance of the Cosmos) - Serkr's Story campaign is? Seems to be quite recent and its description refers to United Earth Federation.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on November 24, 2018, 09:39:06 pm
Then there's nods/connections to:
•   Vassago’s Dirge
•   Transcend
•   Derelict

It should be noted that the connections to VD are much more concrete/'real' than the Transcend/Derelict ones. I can more or less believe that Vassago's Dirge all literally happened in BP canon; Derelict very clearly didn't, but a couple of names and concepts are there as homages; Transcend (and Sync) are somewhere between the two, in that I doubt they literally happened but some BP material suggests something quite similar did.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on November 25, 2018, 11:16:10 pm
Hey, does anyone know what VOTC (Vengeance of the Cosmos) - Serkr's Story campaign is? Seems to be quite recent and its description refers to United Earth Federation.

I haven't yet found any info on where it came from, but its quite fun.  Currently its a single capship command mission you need to load up from the mission simulator.  I would recommend giving it a try.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 26, 2018, 03:52:21 am
We always get into dangerous territory when the concepts "sync" and/or "transcend" meet with the concept of "canon" or "what actually happened"  ;)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on November 26, 2018, 09:08:39 am
I remember there was a mission in ST-R that also gave nods to a few campaigns, it says more about the campaign designer than the actual campaign. :D Also, if Derelict was BP Canon than what about the rest of CE it is linked with?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on November 26, 2018, 10:29:59 am
SPOILERS!!!

I don't recall anything in BP mentioning the Nyarlathotep Lucy 2 from Derelict. Perhaps I just missed it, but finding a second Lucifer would have been big news. Pretty sure something that significant would have been mentioned somewhere, either in game, in the tech room/database or in the BP wiki / Granite Hunter / NEM.NOW filess.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on November 26, 2018, 12:12:12 pm
I remember there was a mission in ST-R that also gave nods to a few campaigns, it says more about the campaign designer than the actual campaign. :D Also, if Derelict was BP Canon than what about the rest of CE it is linked with?

Again, Derelict is unquestionably not BP canon. There was not a gigantic third Shivan incursion a couple of years after Capella in BP canon.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on November 26, 2018, 12:57:21 pm
Basically any campaign that features Shivans post-Capella and pre-AoA is not BP canon, since all the info files make it pretty clear the GTVA had no contact with the Shivans after Capella went supernova. Presumably this is partly the reason why we still have so little hard info on them by the start of AoA. (And as a player, almost zero extra info if you have not read the NEM.NOW / Granite Hunter / this: https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Blue_Planet_intelligence_data and possibly this https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Blue_Planet_intelligence_data)  ;7
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on November 26, 2018, 01:52:13 pm
I remember there was a mission in ST-R that also gave nods to a few campaigns, it says more about the campaign designer than the actual campaign. :D Also, if Derelict was BP Canon than what about the rest of CE it is linked with?

Again, Derelict is unquestionably not BP canon. There was not a gigantic third Shivan incursion a couple of years after Capella in BP canon.
I didn't doubt that.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on November 26, 2018, 02:35:44 pm
Basically any campaign that features Shivans post-Capella and pre-AoA is not BP canon, since all the info files make it pretty clear the GTVA had no contact with the Shivans after Capella went supernova.
Not exactly true - using Homesick as an example, there might have been contacts but were not registered by any GTVA official. Also, doesn't the lore state that Shivans have some way of interaction with humans similar to how Vishnans do?

E: Okay, Homesick is pre-Capella, but I suppose the point stands. Mantle would be a better example.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on November 26, 2018, 02:44:05 pm
Basically any campaign that features Shivans post-Capella and pre-AoA is not BP canon, since all the info files make it pretty clear the GTVA had no contact with the Shivans after Capella went supernova.
Not exactly true - using Homesick as an example, there might have been contacts but were not registered by any GTVA official. Also, doesn't the lore state that Shivans have some way of interaction with humans similar to how Vishnans do?

Haven't played homesick yet, its on my 'to play list', but that list is verrry long, and appears to be growing even longer than I can get through it. Curse you free mods and steam sales  :lol:

Re contact, I was referring to 'contact' in the military sense, I probably should have made that clearer. But yes your right, there probably was some vague nagari contact.

Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on December 10, 2018, 10:01:53 am
At the risk of either great spoilers or not getting answers at all, I have a few questions:

1. How does SHAMBHALA work? I understand that it's supposed to exploit the player/the GTVA's expectation of victory through ship-to-ship combat. How does it do that?

2. In Universal Truth II Ken talks about "the assassination of our mutual foe." Is this referring to the Vishnans, and if so how would that be achieved?

3. What is the in-universe explanation for the apparent focus by the Vishnans and Shivans on the Terrans, and not the Vasudans? Are both species in the running for becoming the new Brahmans/getting incorporated into the Summed Psyche? If they're both out, what was the trigger for the Vasudans?

4. The big one: What is the endgame? What does the universe (or at least the part we as the audience would recognize) look like at the end of BP3?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on December 10, 2018, 12:58:52 pm
Hi there. Bit late to the party, and this may have been done already, but I haven’t the time to read through all 16 pages 😉

So, the Great Darkness, ‘GD’ is something so dangerous that the Shivans consider wiping out whole civilisations on the slight chance they might bring it about is wholly justified. But we do not know what it is (yet).

Here is my guess. A species that is expansionist and has discovered subspace could theoretically cover much of the galaxy, or even multiple galaxies, and possibly even multiple galaxies in multiple parallel universes. This could result in a population of trillions, which might be quite homogeneous with subspace travel – especially if aided by long range Knossos type technology.

This species, lets call them ‘Species X’ ‘SX’ may then discover that the subspace medium can be used for cognition, and that minds can be ‘uploaded’ to it by technological means. (This possibly being what Shambhala is about) thus granting the species a form of immortality and near limitless cognitive power.

If a significant percentage of this homogeneous civilisation were to be uploaded, it could create a very powerful and homogeneous Summed Psyche – which we will call SXSP. Such a Summed Psyche will eventually get to the point where it understands everything, even if it takes billions of years to do so.

At which point the only thing it does not fully understand is its self, so it starts contemplating this. It becomes a ‘think about me’.

However, similar to how some say ‘the one thing the human brain cannot fully comprehend is itself’, SXSP cannot fully understand itself. It is using its near limitless cognitive power to attempt to solve an equally limitlessly complex problem, so it can’t do it. In an attempt to do so, it absorbs more ‘stuff’ (be that matter, energy, minds, the substrate of spacetime / subspace itself etc.) to give it more cognitive power.

However, by absorbing all this ‘stuff’ it has made itself more complex, so it still cannot solve the problem. It then absorbs yet more ‘stuff’ to try to solve the problem, but becomes yet more complicated in the process.

It then gets caught in this loop, never being able to catch up with itself, all the while absorbing all around it, like a cognitive black hole. It has become the GD. Theoretically such an entity could swallow up the whole universe if given enough time. Therefore, extincting whole civilisations is a comparatively very small price to pay to prevent such a catastrophe.

The Vishnans were not sufficiently populace or homogeneous enough when they became a Summed Psyche, so there is little risk of them becoming a GD. The Shivans are too chaotic to ever become one. The ancients could well have become one – so they had to go. Humanity and Vasudans had the potential to become the GD, BUT humanity at least has the potential to become…whatever the Brahmans were. The Vishnans view this as desirable.

Perhaps finding a successor to the Brahmans, Brahman Successor (BS), is in some way essential for the universe in ways we are not yet aware of. Therefore, there is perhaps a balance between the risk of a civilisation becoming a GD and the need for a BS.

The Vishnans allowed humanity, and presumably the Vasudans too, in the parallel universe to be sacrificed, so that they could alter the minds of the sleepers in the Sanctuary. They then engineered events with the 14th Battlegroup so that the Sanctuary would end up in Sol in our reality, amongst a population that was already being influenced by the Vishnans. 

Perhaps the humans of Sol were being groomed to become the BS. However, the war with the GTVA threw a spanner in the works. The GTVA, at least the Human part aka the ‘Tevs’, are far more war like, and thus far more likely to become a GD.

*When it appeared that the Tevs were going to win, the Vishnans cut their losses and ordered a cull of humanity as a whole to prevent the risk of a GD. They could perhaps try again at fostering a BS with a different species at a later date.
 
If the UEF wins, the Vishnans may call off the cull and continue to groom the UEF. This could be why the UEF losing the war would mean the extinction of humanity.
Quite how this all fits with the Vishnan’s supposed ability to see the future I’m not clear. Perhaps they can see multiple futures, but due to quantum uncertainty, they cannot know for sure which one it will be, so it acts more like highly developed predictions.

There appears to be a conflict of interests between the Shivans and the Vishnans. The Shivans are perhaps less concerned with a BS being created. Perhaps by their nature, their continued existence is not predicated on it. However, their continued existence IS predicated on preventing a GD. They are perhaps willing to go along with the Vishnans to foster a BS to an extent, but will go against them if their cost/benefit algorithms suggest the risk of a GD is too great.

This is possibly what happened between them in the alternate universe, the argument between Kalki and Vishnu in Universal Truth. The Vishnans were prepared to give humanity a chance of becoming the BS, but the Shivans felt the risk was too great, and that another species would be better suited.

By War in heaven the Vishnans appear to have changed their mind. (See above*)
It is possible a full-blown GD has existed before. The ‘Granit Hunter’ files suggest the multiple universes were once combined. However, an event named Tau-Break occurred some billions of years ago which split them. Perhaps this was a form of quarantine, trapping the GD in one universe so the others might survive.  The question is, are we in that universe?

I love the big existential and philosophical questions this creates. It mirrors the ‘For the earth to survive, should humans cease to exist?’ question, but on a pan-galactic scale. Therefore, even if you are playing as the ‘good guy/girl/alien’ your heroic actions could be dooming the whole of existence. Something to think about when you are earning all those medals for all those Shivans you killed 😉
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on December 14, 2018, 11:52:15 pm
One quick question: why the centrifuges on the UEF ships if artificial gravity exists? Is it to save power?


Or is it just because the centrifuges look awesome as heck because they do.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: tomimaki on December 15, 2018, 05:11:43 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6fgZP7jP4o&feature=youtu.be&t=195

:nervous:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on December 15, 2018, 07:51:01 pm
My understanding is there are vague retroactive excuses but originally it was because cool and still is.  UEF capships got spinny bitz.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on December 15, 2018, 08:51:44 pm
They're melee anti-fighter weapons.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on December 15, 2018, 10:13:20 pm
They're melee anti-fighter weapons.
I thought they were attachment points for using Artemis Station as a melee weapon. :P
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on December 16, 2018, 01:39:42 am
 :lol:  Plot twist: all UEF capship designs are modified GTSC-Faustus spaceframes.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on February 25, 2019, 03:17:32 am
:bump:

So what happened to the Orestes command crew? (Complete self-interest serving question)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on February 25, 2019, 07:44:40 am
:bump:

So what happened to the Orestes command crew? (Complete self-interest serving question)

Come to think of it, what happened to the 14th BG as a whole? Unless I missed it they are not mentioned in WiH (I'm about two thirds the way through my second play-through of WiH, so if they are mentioned I may not have got there yet. My first was over a year ago so I may well have forgotten, age catching up with me  :lol:)

The post 'Journeys End' text suggests there were large scale defections to the UEF. Were these all fighter craft and escaping shuttles, or did any warships defect wholesale too? I any did, then I imagine the UEF would be all over those ships trying to reverse engineer them, which would account for them not being pressed into service flying UEF colours.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: crizza on February 25, 2019, 09:13:06 am
The GTL Fortune, GTCv Labouchere and GTC Duke defected after the mission ended. So the UEf got their hands on an Anemoi, a Chimera and a Hyperion. (This is from the wiki post of Jurneys end.)

The 14th Battlegroup or what remained of it has been most likely been quarantined, onboard software been purged and every member being screened for Nagari influence.
The ships themselves would've been most likely gotten a new crew and put on active duty again.
I doubt the GTVA can afford to let an Erebus, Titan, etc languish in a dockyard or something like that.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on February 25, 2019, 12:04:24 pm
In particular,  my character......that's who I'm chasing up ;)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on February 25, 2019, 12:33:47 pm
The GTL Fortune, GTCv Labouchere and GTC Duke defected after the mission ended. So the UEf got their hands on an Anemoi, a Chimera and a Hyperion. (This is from the wiki post of Jurneys end.)

The 14th Battlegroup or what remained of it has been most likely been quarantined, onboard software been purged and every member being screened for Nagari influence.
The ships themselves would've been most likely gotten a new crew and put on active duty again.
I doubt the GTVA can afford to let an Erebus, Titan, etc languish in a dockyard or something like that.

I forgot it was on the wiki. Thank you for reminding me.

I agree with your assessment on what happened to the crew and ships. If I were one of the big wigs in the GTVA it is what I would do  :lol:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on February 25, 2019, 03:58:09 pm
Battuta said we could ask about plot details since it's years (if ever) before Acts 4/5 get released.


In Act 4 (I'm just thinking about that before moving on to the final act), did either side lose a destroyer?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on February 25, 2019, 04:11:39 pm
Yes.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on February 25, 2019, 08:29:36 pm
Yes.

Did the GTVA or UEF (or both) lose one and which one was it?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on February 25, 2019, 08:30:55 pm
The Eris is knocked out, the Toutatis is destroyed, and the Imperieuse is reduced to a hulk in a four-way fight between Eris/Toutatis and Imperieuse/Atreus.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: crizza on February 26, 2019, 11:17:17 am
Guess the vid of the beginning of that battle is on Youtube, but not sure.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colt on February 26, 2019, 01:22:04 pm
Guess the vid of the beginning of that battle is on Youtube, but not sure.
I remember seeing that video and being utterly in awe of the visuals. I also thought the UEF were in the early stages of building a Demon destroyer in the background (turns out it's just a shipyard :lol:).
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on February 26, 2019, 02:51:22 pm
The Eris is knocked out, the Toutatis is destroyed, and the Imperieuse is reduced to a hulk in a four-way fight between Eris/Toutatis and Imperieuse/Atreus.

Did Calder go down with the ship?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: JoeBalls on February 26, 2019, 03:25:45 pm
How does shambala literally work?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on February 26, 2019, 04:55:29 pm
The Eris is knocked out, the Toutatis is destroyed, and the Imperieuse is reduced to a hulk in a four-way fight between Eris/Toutatis and Imperieuse/Atreus.

Did Calder go down with the ship?

Yes.

How does shambala literally work?

It's a two-stage plan, with the failure of the first stage promoting the success of the second.

The first stage is military: a nodeship to lock down the Delta Serpentis node and freeze the GTVA out of Sol.

The second stage is purely ideological and sociopolitical. The Elders have determined that the GTVA expects certain patterns in war, and they're trying to cater to those expectations. The nodeship is a 'dragon' for the GTVA to slay; once they've brought down the enemy's final weapon they will see the UEF as beaten and accept a peace. (This rhymes with the way players expect a juggernaut/supership at the climax of a campaign). The Elders believe that this is the best way for Ubuntu to survive, and for the UEF to ultimately 'win' through subtle acculturation.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on February 26, 2019, 05:07:33 pm
I feel like the GTVA's so called morpheus contingency, if not tuned to counter that specific plan, is ostensibly a counter to that general possibility?

I had been left with the impression that at the very least its their response to their fear that alien influences will gain control over human society.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on February 26, 2019, 05:17:03 pm
Morpheus is exactly why the Elders feel they can't just surrender.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on February 26, 2019, 05:27:11 pm
OwO whats this

Perhaps the elders hope the GTVA political leadership will end the war with the death of the proverbial dragon, but otherwise actors other than the political leadership might do something horrible to them?

What would mission success for morpheus look like, and where did the original idea come from?  (i wanted to be edgy and use 'ideated' but couldnt figure out how)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on February 26, 2019, 05:43:43 pm
Ubuntu is too useful for the GTVA to throw out wholesale. The Elders accept that they're going to be figuratively decapitated, but they want the body to live on without the head. The best chance of that is to convince the GTVA that the UEF's been defeated in its final gambit, and to give the softer factions in the GTVA a chance to assimilate Ubuntu.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on February 26, 2019, 07:28:46 pm
Didn't they consider that UEFs possible ideological influence upon GTVA was one of their reasons to go to war with them?

At the 'destroy the node' thing - why should the GTVA be unable to restore it a couple hours later with their Sol Gate?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on February 26, 2019, 07:56:15 pm
Because the Sol Gate wouldn't be online at that point.

Your other question is answered above.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: FrikgFeek on February 26, 2019, 10:04:52 pm
So if  Noemi is tasked by Ken to "destroy the GTVA" would a post-Shambhala cultural victory count?

And how well would Ubuntu philosophy cope with the constant existential threat of the Shivans? It seems even the Sol conflict is causing it to break down among the people actually doing the fighting.

Is fear of a third incursion likely to influence the surrender terms with the GTVA being more lenient once they've "slain the dragon" and feel like they've won just to get the war over quicker and return to a higher state of readiness?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: JoeBalls on February 27, 2019, 03:55:18 am

It's a two-stage plan, with the failure of the first stage promoting the success of the second.

The first stage is military: a nodeship to lock down the Delta Serpentis node and freeze the GTVA out of Sol.

The second stage is purely ideological and sociopolitical. The Elders have determined that the GTVA expects certain patterns in war, and they're trying to cater to those expectations. The nodeship is a 'dragon' for the GTVA to slay; once they've brought down the enemy's final weapon they will see the UEF as beaten and accept a peace. (This rhymes with the way players expect a juggernaut/supership at the climax of a campaign). The Elders believe that this is the best way for Ubuntu to survive, and for the UEF to ultimately 'win' through subtle acculturation.

This is fantastic writing. It also explains why Admiral Calder and Admrial Netreba were left in the dark about Shambala.

So if  Noemi is tasked by Ken to "destroy the GTVA" would a post-Shambhala cultural victory count?

Maybe the GTVA can be destroyed afterwards?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on February 27, 2019, 06:50:05 am
So if  Noemi is tasked by Ken to "destroy the GTVA" would a post-Shambhala cultural victory count?

Maybe the GTVA can be destroyed afterwards?

It is not saied that the destruction of GTVA is carried out by Terrans. :nervous:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: crizza on February 27, 2019, 11:00:51 am
Is the node-buster ship designed around the missing hull of Calders white elephant aka the Murugan?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: JoeBalls on February 27, 2019, 12:57:01 pm
Is the node-buster ship designed around the missing hull of Calders white elephant aka the Murugan?



http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/UEX_Maitreya

What is this?

A necessary and possibly sufficient component of Shambhala.

Sufficient if stage one works, necessary for stage two.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on February 27, 2019, 03:24:05 pm
So then, does Shambhala get deployed, and if so, does it work? If not, what goes wrong?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on February 27, 2019, 03:44:31 pm
It's deployed and, in fierce fighting, reaches the node. But at the same time Earth's final lines of defense crumble, and Steele attains bombardment positions over Earth. After a Mexican standoff, Byrne orders Shambhala to stand down and surrenders.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on February 27, 2019, 03:49:24 pm
Where is Laporte/Simms/the Fedayeen in all of this? Prepping for a run to Capella?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on February 27, 2019, 04:03:10 pm
In VR  playing wings of dawn.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on February 27, 2019, 05:30:26 pm
Where is Laporte/Simms/the Fedayeen in all of this? Prepping for a run to Capella?

At all the battles we've talked about here, namely the big destroyer brawl and fighting Shambhala to the node.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on February 27, 2019, 10:55:01 pm
I feel like if the other UEF admirals were only briefed on the first phase of shambhala (assumedly at the last second), then they would regain a modicum of respect for byrne.

Is that defeat an adequately convincing reenactment of the GTVA's military history to avoid morpheus?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Shrugger on February 28, 2019, 02:31:55 am
What exactly does the Morpheus Contingency entail?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on February 28, 2019, 12:41:58 pm
(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/montypython/images/f/ff/Spanish_Inquisition.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20180629171423)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Gray113 on February 28, 2019, 01:41:09 pm
Would the UEF surrender be end of act 4 or during act 5?

Were Caulder and Netreba willingly sacrificing themselves for the node ship to reach its target or did they just F things up?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on February 28, 2019, 01:54:47 pm
Gonna bet act 4. We've known the act names for ages, and 5 is called Revenant. As in, after the death of the UEF. Also, Morrigan in Shadow is basically a de-Vishnaned rewrite of act 5 AFAIK.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on February 28, 2019, 02:00:09 pm
Would the UEF surrender be end of act 4 or during act 5?

Were Caulder and Netreba willingly sacrificing themselves for the node ship to reach its target or did they just F things up?

End of Act 4. The Eris and Toutatis get knocked out/destroyed earlier, during the Fall of Mars. Calder goes out doing exactly what he wanted - fighting an all-in brawl with Steele, no subspace speed chess, no ECM wizardry, no Just As Planned for Steele to dance away unscathed.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on February 28, 2019, 06:56:04 pm
Did Admiral Netreba survive the Eris getting heavily damaged and knocked out of action?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on February 28, 2019, 07:25:44 pm
Yes.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nalin Srivastava on February 28, 2019, 11:36:27 pm
Are glowpoint overrides ever going to be added in the game again like they were when act 3 was newly released in 2014
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Shrugger on March 01, 2019, 01:52:22 am
Calder goes out doing exactly what he wanted - fighting an all-in brawl with Steele, no subspace speed chess, no ECM wizardry, no Just As Planned for Steele to dance away unscathed.
If Calder gets the exact situation he wanted, then why does he lose? Incompetence, bad luck, suicidal tendencies, or did he willingly engage with his fleet at a disadvantage? If the latter, why?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on March 01, 2019, 02:12:43 am
If Calder gets the exact situation he wanted, then why does he lose? Incompetence, bad luck, suicidal tendencies, or did he willingly engage with his fleet at a disadvantage? If the latter, why?

The situation he wanted was a brutal brawling match between his Destroyers and Steele's. He is, in many ways, very GTVA-like in his thinking: Where the GTVA is looking for a Lucifer or Sathanas whose destruction will mark, if not the end, then at least the turning point of a conflict, Calder is looking for Steele. He wants, metaphorically speaking, to have a battle of champions to decide the war.

Calder thinks he has a chance to win this fight. He believes that, if he can get into a close-range fight, he can nullify the GTVA's advantages; Using his superior maneuverability and (individually) superior strikecraft to suppress the immense forward firepower of Atreus and Imperieuse long enough for his ballistic weaponry to inflict crippling damage on the other side.

Unfortunately for him, Steele is just as adept at reading a tac plot and coming up with countermaneuvers as he is -- And unlike Calder, who has to keep the GTVA ships in range and under fire for a long time to inflict significant damage, Steele only needs a small window of opportunity to do the same to the UEF vessels.

The moral of the story is that, even when you do manage to create the most favourable situation you can, victory isn't assured.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 01, 2019, 02:18:29 am
That's an age old immutable fact. 

So steele survived Calder?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 01, 2019, 07:22:13 am
Calder goes out doing exactly what he wanted - fighting an all-in brawl with Steele, no subspace speed chess, no ECM wizardry, no Just As Planned for Steele to dance away unscathed.
If Calder gets the exact situation he wanted, then why does he lose? Incompetence, bad luck, suicidal tendencies, or did he willingly engage with his fleet at a disadvantage? If the latter, why?

When you're losing the deterministic war, your only hope of victory is to take chances.

Plus, at this point Calder's motive wasn't so much to win the war as to make Steele hurt - to remind him that war isn't just a chess game where victory is all that matters. He forced Steele into the kind of fight Steele doesn't like, and made him pay for it.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Gray113 on March 01, 2019, 10:26:33 am
I'm starting to think hope that this thread is a false flag by the team and we will have the glorious release of BP war in heaven acts 4 & 5 next week featuring a completely different plot, followed by act 1 of Blue planet 3..........


A man can dream right?  :confused:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Gray113 on March 01, 2019, 10:34:22 am
Quote
He forced Steele into the kind of fight Steele doesn't like, and made him pay for it.

So we get to kill Serkr team? Wohoo  :D
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 01, 2019, 11:27:34 am
I'm starting to think hope that this thread is a false flag by the team and we will have the glorious release of BP war in heaven acts 4 & 5 next week featuring a completely different plot, followed by act 1 of Blue planet 3..........


A man can dream right?  :confused:

1. Learn/improve your FREDing
2. Join the team
3. Make it happen

See? There are no excuses. ;)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on March 01, 2019, 01:56:18 pm
That's an age old immutable fact. 

So steele survived Calder?


It was said earlier Steele was able to get into bombardment positions over Earth so I'm guessing yes.


Also GB, to echo another question here, what did happen to Serkr?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Fully on March 01, 2019, 02:34:46 pm
How did steele deal with the Fedayeen? What's the head/ship count for both sides at the end of the act?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on March 01, 2019, 09:40:56 pm
Did the masyaf get exploded at the end of act 3?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 01, 2019, 09:50:08 pm
Did the masyaf get exploded at the end of act 3?

No. Knocked out for a bit though.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nalin Srivastava on March 02, 2019, 05:22:27 am
Are glowpoint overrides ever going to be added in the game again like they were when act 3 was newly released in 2014
Can someone please tell
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on March 02, 2019, 11:36:58 am
>ponders for a day or so

Does the Indus ever return to some kind of service?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 02, 2019, 01:13:50 pm
>ponders for a day or so

Does the Indus ever return to some kind of service?

That might depend on how irradiated it was. I doubt many crews would volunteer for a ship that glows in the dark 😜
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Gray113 on March 02, 2019, 01:43:50 pm
Quote
1. Learn/improve your FREDing
2. Join the team
3. Make it happen

See? There are no excuses. ;)

Fair point, I should give FREDing another bash now the kids are a bit older  :)

One last question just to be greedy, would the players choice regarding the fate of the Carthage have had a direct impact on plot/gameplay?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 02, 2019, 02:59:21 pm
>ponders for a day or so

Does the Indus ever return to some kind of service?

Yes.

One last question just to be greedy, would the players choice regarding the fate of the Carthage have had a direct impact on plot/gameplay?

Possibly! Probably nothing huge though, it might alter available intelligence in some mission, or a diplomatic outcome.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rogue Assassin04 on March 03, 2019, 04:07:17 am
Any status on Solaris and 1st Fleet wrt to the War perspective?
Why arent the Fedayeen using the CASSANDRA for the predictions? Why didnt Al Da'wa push CASSANDRA to limits and tell that Calder was about to die?

IIRC, all the time, it was told that the loss of a Solaris class Destroyer would be a major loss for UEF. The destruction of the Toutatis is a blow, why wasn't it tried to stop? Why didn't Laporte advise Calder that Steele was a mind messer?

If Al Da'wa had planned well along with LKFV, like in Tenebra, they could have used the experimental weapons and tech to turn the tide of the war. Why didnt that happen?

How is the sanctuary involved with Shambhala? What happened to the civilians on board the Sanctuary?
Why arent the shivans getting involved and entering the GTVA space?

Does Shambhala use GTVA Tech?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Logrus on March 05, 2019, 04:09:04 am
What is Laporte's fate after failure-success of Shambala's first stage? Would she still be a protagonist of Act 5? If not she, then who? Will she get her armada eventually?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 05, 2019, 08:14:39 am
Something has occurred to me recently. The Shivan’s Modus Operandi  as preservers seems a little inefficient. If they only intervene when a civilisation; A) is hostile to others and B) has access to subspace, then potentially worthy species may get wiped out.
 
The ancient’s monologues suggest they had wiped out civilisations before they discovered subspace. It was only when they continued wiping out species after they discovered subspace that the Shivans got involved and wiped the ancients out.

What if one of the species the ancients wiped out could have gone on to become the ‘new Brahmans’?

Is this due to the Shivans having limited resources and being unable to be everywhere at once? If so could they not seed the galaxy with  self replicating von neumann probes which would alert them if a species evolves in that system, 2001 style?

Or is it due to some other reason or criteria, such as pre-subspace species being considered too insignificant to bother protecting or some such?

What would happen if a peaceful species has to become warlike due to the aggression of another, this other species being immune to any attempts at peace, co-operation etc? Would the formally peaceful species also be attacked by the Shivans due to being forced to take up arms to protect themselves? How does this translate to the UEF / GTVA situation? Do the Shivans differentiate between different groups of a species, or is it a simple kill / not kill decision applied to a species as a whole?

In the original black and white film of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ the robots basically forced everyone in the galactic community to get along under pain of death, and they made sure civilisations were aware of this before they were technologically capable of leaving their home world. Why do the Shivans (or indeed the Vishnans) not do something similar? Is it a question of free will?

It seems a little unfair on any developing race to be judged without them realising they were even ‘on trial’ so to speak. Not that I’m implying lovecraftian species and intelligences would much care about our notions of morality  :lol:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Asteroth on March 06, 2019, 03:20:33 pm
As far as I'm aware, being a defect hegemon is a little more complex than some thing as simple as "are they fighting" (regardless if it's in self-defense) and more fundamental than something you can stop being when told not to, i.e. as far as the Shivans are concerned telling you to stop being a defect hegemon doesn't actually stop you from being part of the problem, regardless of your actions afterward.

With regards to the questions about the ancients, I would say simply that Shivans are more sensitive to subspace in general, and that they simply didn't even know about the Ancients till they futzed about with it. Which, yeah, definitely means they might miss a "New brahman" being taken out by a defect hegemon.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 07, 2019, 02:01:09 pm
As far as I'm aware, being a defect hegemon is a little more complex than some thing as simple as "are they fighting" (regardless if it's in self-defense) and more fundamental than something you can stop being when told not to, i.e. as far as the Shivans are concerned telling you to stop being a defect hegemon doesn't actually stop you from being part of the problem, regardless of your actions afterward.

Though it might be something  like that - "If you have to be told not to do some thing when it should be obvious its a bad idea then you are beyond help."


With regards to the questions about the ancients, I would say simply that Shivans are more sensitive to subspace in general, and that they simply didn't even know about the Ancients till they futzed about with it. Which, yeah, definitely means they might miss a "New brahman" being taken out by a defect hegemon.

Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 07, 2019, 02:19:54 pm
Quick technical question regarding BP - WiH in particular.

There have been several points where I have noticed severe drops in frame rate - like less than ten frames per second. This appears to be when its gets very busy, when new ships and wings are arriving and when there is lots of flack near the frigates. I'm not sure if it is due to the CUP/GPU/RAM being overtaxed by all the eye candy, or if it is due to assessts being loaded when new ships arrive. I never had this problem with any other FS game/mod, and I don't recall having it in AoA either. I have tried turning off shadows and V-sync which makes a marginal improvement on this. The slowdowns are rare but a little annoying if you are in a dog fight.

I'm writing a review of BP so it would be very useful to know what causes this and potential fixes. If it is a loading assets issue, would a SDD help?

FYI my fairly modest rig has:

AMD A8-6600K 3.9 Ghz CPU
Nvidia GTX 970
8 GB Ram
2TB HD


What specs would someone need to run it at 1080P with everything maxed out inc shadows and V-sync with zero drops below 60 FPS?

Cheers :-)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 07, 2019, 02:38:46 pm
My experience has been that changes to the lighting engine have really hurt performance on mid to lower end systems, especially when lots of stuff is warping in. Otoh BP2 was never well optimized. Really don’t know.

The FSO engine in general performs badly, I would never expect to get 60 FPS with all those features on. Shadows didn’t exist when BP2 was designed.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 07, 2019, 03:01:09 pm
My experience has been that changes to the lighting engine have really hurt performance on mid to lower end systems, especially when lots of stuff is warping in. Otoh BP2 was never well optimized. Really don’t know.

The FSO engine in general performs badly, I would never expect to get 60 FPS with all those features on. Shadows didn’t exist when BP2 was designed.

Figured it might be something like that. I get 60 FPS with all the eye candy at all other times, its just the occasional blip that only happened about three times during the whole campaign, and it only lasts a second, so its not really a problem, (especially for someone who plays a lot of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. MISERY mod - that thing hitches every 30 seconds or so  :lol: )
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Asteroth on March 08, 2019, 10:11:31 am
So there have been many questions about Act 4, but what about Act 5? Does phase 2 of Shambhala work? Does Noemi really "Destroy the GTVA"? It's the act where you play as that vasudan princess right? What exactly is the conflict for her in Act 5?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: hardcorecrush on March 08, 2019, 12:21:43 pm
How many (and which) 2nd and 3rd fleet assets survive act 4? Are they surrendered to the GTVA or do they go into hiding on the edges of Sol?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on March 08, 2019, 01:15:50 pm
Quick technical question regarding BP - WiH in particular.

There have been several points where I have noticed severe drops in frame rate - like less than ten frames per second. This appears to be when its gets very busy, when new ships and wings are arriving and when there is lots of flack near the frigates. I'm not sure if it is due to the CUP/GPU/RAM being overtaxed by all the eye candy, or if it is due to assessts being loaded when new ships arrive. I never had this problem with any other FS game/mod, and I don't recall having it in AoA either. I have tried turning off shadows and V-sync which makes a marginal improvement on this. The slowdowns are rare but a little annoying if you are in a dog fight.

I'm writing a review of BP so it would be very useful to know what causes this and potential fixes. If it is a loading assets issue, would a SDD help?

FYI my fairly modest rig has:

AMD A8-6600K 3.9 Ghz CPU
Nvidia GTX 970
8 GB Ram
2TB HD


What specs would someone need to run it at 1080P with everything maxed out inc shadows and V-sync with zero drops below 60 FPS?

Cheers :-)

I think I had a generally smooth 60 using Icarus as a stress test with a GTX 1060. A 970 is IIRC a little worse in most benchmarks. AMD cards are basically a write-off because AMD writes ****ty OpenGL drivers. Shadows were at setting 1, though, not 2; there's a big drop between the two. This was also on Linux which probably means a performance hit just because nobody cares much about Linux gaming.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 08, 2019, 01:47:50 pm
So there have been many questions about Act 4, but what about Act 5? Does phase 2 of Shambhala work? Does Noemi really "Destroy the GTVA"? It's the act where you play as that vasudan princess right? What exactly is the conflict for her in Act 5?

No, the Vasudan princess is your sidekick in BP3.

Act 5 is about Laporte leading a mutiny and a breakout to Beta Aquilae. While the main thrust of the mutiny fights there, she steals the nodeship and goes to Capella to fulfill Ken's mission and release the Shivans on the GTVA. You can make some major choices about what to do here (including just not doing Act 5 at all), but only one of the outcomes leads to the canon BP3.

How many (and which) 2nd and 3rd fleet assets survive act 4? Are they surrendered to the GTVA or do they go into hiding on the edges of Sol?

There's enough to make for a significant force in Act 5, plus possibly Gef assistance if you handled them well.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 08, 2019, 02:08:51 pm
Act 5 sounds really mean FRED wise. Is there a mission outline for Act 4 and 5 yet, and if yes how long are they?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 08, 2019, 02:20:42 pm
Yeah, it's all been outlined for years. But stuff usually splits/merges and reshuffles during production as we have good ideas and throw out bad ones.

Sunglare went through several drafts before it became a cutscene, for example.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on March 08, 2019, 02:54:58 pm
Does Steele survive Act 5?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 08, 2019, 03:13:25 pm
Probably, yeah.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on March 09, 2019, 11:21:08 am
you cant anneal the steele
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on March 09, 2019, 12:47:31 pm
you cant anneal the steele

get that **** out of here
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: crizza on March 10, 2019, 06:00:28 am
So Steele called in more fleet assets for his endgame, but what did they do?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 10, 2019, 06:34:41 am
What they were told like good subordinates.  ;)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on March 10, 2019, 08:11:00 am
Question, but more of a state of mind than a question, last thing that's been eating away at me about BP for years now. Maybe I can finally lay it all to rest.  :)

Especially in light of the idea of branching endings, and with BP3 taken into account: Is the player encouraged to ally with Ken - like, is it the "good" ending to do so? Is it "justifiable" that I, as a viewer of many cutscenes and gameplay, have significant issues with teaming up with the Shivans? Is it "wrong" that I have doubts about the Vishnans intent?

Are the people who just want to fight to the bitter end rather than give in to these etherreal (cosmic horror if you ask me) typed beings - are they entirely "the bad guys"? Like, is it a "point" of the story to tell me that I should feel bad unless I hang with Shivans/Vishnans/both/whatever?

I feel like in the setting I'd just lash out at anything non-human or Vasudan. Although I guess that might go with my preference for the GTVA in this conflict. But hey.  :)

In other just as vague words: Would I have to be a bad guy if I stuck my heels in and fought for ordinary honest to goodness humans/zods against these manipulative, our-morality-is-so-great-its-incomprehensible-too-transcendent-for-you cosmic forces? Even if it meant our "demise"?

TBH that's what I'd do.  :cool:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on March 10, 2019, 08:20:36 am
Laporte might not.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 10, 2019, 10:21:59 am
The ending that branches to BP3 is more or less telling Ken to **** off. There’s a price to pay, though.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on March 10, 2019, 11:06:58 am
The ending that branches to BP3 is more or less telling Ken to **** off. There’s a price to pay, though.

Ah, interesting! You said earlier that there was a branch that involved not even beginning act 5 - I assumed that was it. You say that the only way to "canonically" progress to BP3 is actually to repudiate Ken? Wow, deeper than I thought, nice! What's the price?

Hope it's not as bad as the cost of a car wash cause man do they shellack you.  :lol:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: praseodym on March 10, 2019, 11:47:45 am
I think, someone dies for that...heroically, of course, for the good.

"Ancient" Greek Tragedy
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on March 10, 2019, 01:52:32 pm
Telling aKEN to **** off, amirite?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 10, 2019, 02:17:47 pm
It either branches to Bosch's plan for an 'arrangement' with the Shivans (as foreshadowed in FS2, this is very bad for the Vsaudans) or to the BP3 path where the Vishnans are gone (unclear whether temporarily or permanently) and the Shivanpocalypse is on.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: crizza on March 10, 2019, 04:17:49 pm
The Shivanapocalypse would be awesome... Having them pour out of Capella, annihillating GTVA blockades etc...

Refering to the vasudan princess: I thought we would play as Nabirasul?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 10, 2019, 04:34:40 pm
Yes.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 10, 2019, 08:01:50 pm
Shivanapocalypse

Any chance for Sol going supernova?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: FrikgFeek on March 10, 2019, 08:25:00 pm
The Sun isn't massive enough for that.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on March 10, 2019, 08:42:03 pm
Neither is Capella, but that didn't stop the Shivans.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: FrikgFeek on March 10, 2019, 09:02:45 pm
Certain supernovae are possible with larger yellow giants of around 10 solar masses(which is what the Capella star is in the FSverse). Even if the Capella star didn't fit the criteria for a supernova it still could've had enough mass to trigger one after runaway fusion has started and caused an iron core collapse.

With the Sun there's just not enough stellar mass to produce such spectacular results.


Though we are talking about the FSverse where physics are ~weird~ so who knows.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on March 10, 2019, 11:38:14 pm
I'm not particularly inclined to cast doubt on the Shivan's ability to throw around retarded amounts of energy, personally.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 10, 2019, 11:57:53 pm
Especially since they received (theoretically) almost God like powers.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 11, 2019, 06:42:14 am
Telling aKEN to **** off, amirite?

I see what you did there  ;7 "It's very hard to kill a *Juggernaut* from the outside..."
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 11, 2019, 06:56:27 am
Hi guys, I need a favour. I'm writing an article about Blue Planet which should go up on Coin-Drop.com later in the week. Can someone send me the sound of the TEI beams as an MP3 file or similar I could embed in the article? If not, a link to a video which shows if off well will also work. Ideally a short video that focuses on this and shows off just how awesome / terrifying the noise those things make truly is?  :)

Those beams have finally knocked off this big gun thingy from SWIV from its perch of pant crapingly awesome sounding beam weapons. https://youtu.be/grRWWGKcV2I?t=679 (Fast forward to 11.19 if the 'start from' part of this link doesn't work - I'm looking at you Wix.)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 11, 2019, 09:11:54 am
You can always extract the sound directly with VPView32.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 11, 2019, 10:29:56 am
You can always extract the sound directly with VPView32.

I thought I might be able to extract them somehow, but I have no idea how. Cheers :-)

I'll give it a try.

PS - do you want to look over the article when I have competed it in draft form before I send it off to the editors at Coin-Drop and make sure I haven't got anything wrong?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on March 11, 2019, 01:26:09 pm
As a random GTVA civilian what're my chances of surviving to the end of BP3?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on March 11, 2019, 01:56:24 pm
How much space travel do you have coming up in the near future?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 11, 2019, 02:14:14 pm
You can always extract the sound directly with VPView32.

I thought I might be able to extract them somehow, but I have no idea how. Cheers :-)

I'll give it a try.

PS - do you want to look over the article when I have competed it in draft form before I send it off to the editors at Coin-Drop and make sure I haven't got anything wrong?


Yup, that worked. I used VPView32 to extract the three sound files (the beam up sound the beam firing sound, and the beam powering down sound. Then I used VLC media player to convert them to MP3 format, then used an on-line tool to combine them into one mp3 file :-)

[attachment eaten by a Shivan]
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Novachen on March 11, 2019, 03:03:35 pm
Yup, that worked. I used VPView32 to extract the three sound files (the beam up sound the beam firing sound, and the beam powering down sound. Then I used VLC media player to convert them to MP3 format, then used an on-line tool to combine them into one mp3 file :-)

That sounds very complicated. I would just use Audacity  :lol:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on March 11, 2019, 04:04:25 pm
How much space travel do you have coming up in the near future?

precisely the average across the GTVA civilian population!
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 11, 2019, 04:09:18 pm
Survival depends on the escorts provided.  If it's alpha one, you're safe. 


 If its sam bei. ............:nervous:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on March 11, 2019, 04:13:44 pm
Survival depends on the escorts provided.  If it's alpha one, you're safe. 


 If its sam bei. ............:nervous:

Yeah, what was up with that? Is our expectation of GTVA pilots skewed because Alpha 1 is a badass, or what?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 11, 2019, 04:15:46 pm
Are yall telling me you've never lost an Elysium (a tiny eggshell ship) to a bunch of Nahemas while you were distracted dogfighting Dragons? Plus insane is the most realistic difficulty. Tell me how many escort missions yall got done 100% on the first try on Insane.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on March 11, 2019, 04:17:17 pm
the strike that sam gets hit with is very much a **** This Transport In Particular one

one could even ask if the shivans did want to **** that transport in particular 🤔
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 11, 2019, 04:18:17 pm
They were obviously attracted by the Nagari presence of Hamuel Bei, and by the taint of Vishnans upon him.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 11, 2019, 04:23:46 pm
Shivanapocalypse

Any chance for Sol going supernova?

Can Alpha 1 protect Sol against supernovas?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 11, 2019, 04:27:53 pm
Hamuel Bei


This......made me laugh out loud quite fiercely.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on March 11, 2019, 04:30:31 pm
Are yall telling me you've never lost an Elysium (a tiny eggshell ship) to a bunch of Nahemas while you were distracted dogfighting Dragons? Plus insane is the most realistic difficulty. Tell me how many escort missions yall got done 100% on the first try on Insane.

I was still thinking in terms of Medium, where Dragons are irritating rather than hyper-lethal--generally in FS2 on Med I'd ignore fighters at first (or order wingmates to cover me) and bullrush the bombers before they could drop their payloads. On Insane...yeah no they're definitely in trouble. It does look kind of silly on medium though, watching the fighters get into a furball while those bombs are sloooooooooooooooowly closing on the Elysium.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colt on March 11, 2019, 05:49:58 pm
Are yall telling me you've never lost an Elysium (a tiny eggshell ship) to a bunch of Nahemas while you were distracted dogfighting Dragons? Plus insane is the most realistic difficulty. Tell me how many escort missions yall got done 100% on the first try on Insane.
In my recent playthrough of Freespace Blue I completed Exodus without losing a single ship, even the Nebtuu! (It was on normal though but I feel proud! :lol:)

Reminds me, I gotta upload that part to youtube.

Edit: Apocalypse was a different story for me though. Probably would've been best for Alpha 1 to stay in Capella...
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on March 12, 2019, 12:02:15 pm
Well, technically in reality pilots would interact with each other and act intelligently, they would also be more or less educated on how to shape the battlefield to their advantage as much as possible. So...
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 12, 2019, 12:07:58 pm
Well, technically in reality pilots would interact with each other and act intelligently, they would also be more or less educated on how to shape the battlefield to their advantage as much as possible. So...

I don't see how that'd make a difference.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on March 12, 2019, 12:16:00 pm
I'm kind of venting my frustration at Freespace AI a bit, sorry...

Yet, in this kind of a case a good strategy is to try and pull the dogfight away to a general location between bombers and their target so you can at least shoot down a couple bombs while bouncing around with Dragons. Not that an Elysium wouldn't realistically go down to some random primary fire, I guess.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: FrikgFeek on March 12, 2019, 12:42:56 pm
You know the one time you have to actually "pull the dogfight away" to a different location(The Roman's Blunder) is considered  one of the hardest missions in FS2 on insane. Now imagine that with ****ing Dragons.

Turns out trying to run away while being shot at gets you killed.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 12, 2019, 12:59:52 pm
Will GTVA get some sort of advanced SSM weapon?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on March 12, 2019, 01:01:37 pm
Define "advanced." They already have the TAG-C, Eos, and Supernova.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 12, 2019, 01:09:01 pm
Will GTVA get some sort of advanced SSM weapon?

More than they already have?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 12, 2019, 01:41:37 pm
Yeah I have some sort of cruise missile with meson warhead and shields, plus an jump drive for system-wide range, and I wanted to know whether something like that made it to BP before.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 12, 2019, 01:55:25 pm
That’s a Supernova, yeah.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 12, 2019, 02:39:20 pm
That’s a Supernova, yeah.

Or 'Dawnbringer' ;7
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 12, 2019, 02:40:53 pm
Nah the Eos isn't meson-armed iirc.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: crizza on March 12, 2019, 04:17:00 pm
Wait what? Supernovas are SSMs?! I thought only the Eos could pull that off :D
Out of interest: Is an Eos/Supernova able to be fired from one side of a node to the other, emerging in close proximity of a target or will they just exit the node and run out of fuel?
Or must an SSM-strike always originate from within the same system?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: JoeBalls on March 12, 2019, 04:46:01 pm
It either branches to Bosch's plan for an 'arrangement' with the Shivans (as foreshadowed in FS2, this is very bad for the Vsaudans) or to the BP3 path where the Vishnans are gone (unclear whether temporarily or permanently) and the Shivanpocalypse is on.

So the Vishnans get "unmade" by the Shivans?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 12, 2019, 05:37:57 pm
Hi guys!

I have just finished the first draft of my in-depth review of Blue Planet, which should be going up on Coin-Drop.com next week. I will probably turn it into a five(ish) part article series, since at almost 5200 words long it is a bit hefty for a single article. Before I post it there I have attached the draft here for everyone to look at. Please let me know if I have missed anything or got anything wrong.

If any members of the BP team would like to provide a quote or two to go with it please let em know and I'll happily include them.

Cheers :-)

[attachment eaten by a Shivan]
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 12, 2019, 05:41:40 pm
You can quote me saying (only as the voice actor) "the Orestes is bestes, it has humungous testes".
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 12, 2019, 05:51:22 pm
You might want to note that I was a teenage college student when I wrote a lot of BP, it was really prior to my novel/short story stuff.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on March 12, 2019, 06:01:33 pm
Thanks for the submission Ian!

I no longer enjoy writing my thoughts about written works. I'm going to make an exception here and simply highlight this comment:

"Most video games fail when it comes to character development. "

I beg pardon for this - but this was the tipping point where I really felt like this article was TOO happy about BP and, by extension, came off as disdainful of anything and anyone outside of that fan circle. There are things to like about BP, but it isn't necessarily the favorite of every HLP'er. I guess the article felt... sugary, sickly sweet, to me.

But that is just my one thought.  :) Thanks!
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 12, 2019, 06:12:05 pm
You can quote me saying (only as the voice actor) "the Orestes is bestes, it has humungous testes".

 :lol: I could probably get away with that since they do not censor language on Coin-Drop.com
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 12, 2019, 06:13:22 pm
You might want to note that I was a teenage college student when I wrote a lot of BP, it was really prior to my novel/short story stuff.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll add that in :-)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 12, 2019, 06:46:44 pm
Thanks for the submission Ian!

I no longer enjoy writing my thoughts about written works. I'm going to make an exception here and simply highlight this comment:

"Most video games fail when it comes to character development. "

I beg pardon for this - but this was the tipping point where I really felt like this article was TOO happy about BP and, by extension, came off as disdainful of anything and anyone outside of that fan circle. There are things to like about BP, but it isn't necessarily the favorite of every HLP'er. I guess the article felt... sugary, sickly sweet, to me.

But that is just my one thought.  :) Thanks!

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I respect yours even if I do not agree with it.

I will stand by my claim about character progression in games, since it is something few games attempt to do in the narrative sense (so increasing stats in an RPG doesn't count here). Many iconic characters have remind constant since their inception. Gordon Freeman is still a mute in an orange suit with a crowbar. John 117 is still a faceless guy in a green suit with a gun. Marcus Fenix is still a pissed off dude voiced by a bandanna wearing Bender. Sonic is still a smarmy little git who can run fast but never learnt to swim etc etc.

There are some good examples of course. The player characters in Bioshock and Deus Ex spring to mind, but truly transformational character development is pretty rare in all mediums.

Breaking Bad and GoT nailed it, since many characters undergo quite significant changes, swinging from villain to hero and back again as the series progress. (Walter White and Jamie Lannister for example)

Babylon 5 actually did a good job of this back in the '90s. londo Mollari went from being a somewhat pitiful and almost comic drunkard to becoming a sinister machiavellian warmonger, then saviour of the republic, and finally the tragic emperor of a dying civilisation.

Gradual transormational character development is kinda my thing - one of the reasons I prefer TV over most movies since two hours isn't enough to do it properly, but 50 odd hours is.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 12, 2019, 06:52:11 pm
Thanks for the submission Ian!

I no longer enjoy writing my thoughts about written works. I'm going to make an exception here and simply highlight this comment:

"Most video games fail when it comes to character development. "

I beg pardon for this - but this was the tipping point where I really felt like this article was TOO happy about BP and, by extension, came off as disdainful of anything and anyone outside of that fan circle. There are things to like about BP, but it isn't necessarily the favorite of every HLP'er. I guess the article felt... sugary, sickly sweet, to me.

But that is just my one thought.  :) Thanks!

He's right, though. Like, objectively speaking.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 12, 2019, 07:22:12 pm
Sooooo... attempt No. 3.

Shivanapocalypse

Any chance for Sol going supernova?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 12, 2019, 07:25:26 pm
Probably not in the cards.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: crizza on March 13, 2019, 05:57:50 am
Wait what? Supernovas are SSMs?! I thought only the Eos could pull that off :D
Out of interest: Is an Eos/Supernova able to be fired from one side of a node to the other, emerging in close proximity of a target or will they just exit the node and run out of fuel?
Or must an SSM-strike always originate from within the same system?
Can I get an answer, as in pretty please? :)

Edit: Oh, and did Karen and her Wingmate somehow survived Delenda Est? Like their fighters being disabled and they're PoWs now?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on March 13, 2019, 06:40:08 am
@Iain Baker:
Your article needs a bit of course correction. Firstly, Blue Planet is supposed to be a trilogy, with AoA being the first part, and WiH being the second one, separated into 5 acts each. WiH acts 1 and 2 are definitely complete, with VA and such, while act 3 is without voice acting but other technicals could be changed underway.
Secondly, the videos you're linking to are quite outdated in terms of graphics, as they come without HDR and PBR effects. While I'm not sure if there's a take on Artemis Station with the most modern FSO graphics, I'm pretty confident that there is one on Icarus, but I had no success finding it. Maybe such an article would trigger another playthrough with every setting turned on, on some kind of high difficulty level with some tips in the annotations?
Also, it's Granite Hunter. :P Oh, and Al'Fadil.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 13, 2019, 07:39:46 am
Hi there!

Thank you for the heads up, this is why I put it up here first since I figured I might make a mistake or too :-) I have actually just finished editing it based on some of the earlier feedback, so i will amend it again with your input, thank you.

Re "while act 3 is without voice acting but other technicals could be changed underway." Does this mean act 3 is being worked on again? If so I'll add that act 3 may be improved in future. :-)

Re the videos. I scoured YouTube and these were the best ones I could find. If there are more up-to-date ones showing off the newer eye candy then I would love to use those instead....thinks for a moment...I may have a plan  ;7

Thanks for the proof-reading too BTW :-)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 13, 2019, 07:53:10 am
Hi people, I have a favour to ask, both for the article I'm writing, and to aid me in my capacity as the HLP social media chappie.

Does anyone have a link to the Blue Planet Cut scenes in full 1080P 60FPS (or above) with all the newest candy turned on, such as shadows HDR and PBR effects? If so would you be happy to share them so I can add them to the article and use them for HLP promo purposes? If no such links / footage exists - could someone record said footage, or tell me how I might do it myself?

In particular I am looking for the opening cut scene of WiH 1, the opening cut scene from WiH2 and the end credits cut scene from WiH 1 (From when the Blue Planet War in Heaven title screen appears and the song starts playing - I'm trying to avoid spoilers  :) )

Basically sexier versions of these:

War in Heaven Act 2 Intro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-QwvR77FaQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-QwvR77FaQ)
War in Heaven Act 3 Intro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqHtPh4geHA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqHtPh4geHA)
WiH 1 End Credits:
https://youtu.be/qCsgA6acNJY?t=783 (https://youtu.be/qCsgA6acNJY?t=783)


Many thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out :-)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on March 13, 2019, 08:05:47 am
It's more about the fact that from what I've seen, BP team made some minor changes to AoA and WiH acts 1 and 2 while making/implementing the Director's Cut upgrade, and act 3 was partially rebuilt (modified contents of dreamscape dialogues, optional training sequences added before missions, some mission tweaks ect.), so there is a possibility that Tenebra will get a couple more tweaks when some kind of early version of complete act 4 comes out.
Also, I had to stop reading after a couple pages because RL - so I can't "proof-read" the article right now (and I'm really not qualified to be considered knowledgeable about article writing), so more of my opinions will come some time later.
Besides, don't you think it would be more accessible to people if you ask for such content in some other topic, i.e. some of yours dedicated for social media related matters?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 13, 2019, 10:49:00 am
Hi again all! I have taken the feedback onboard and created a second draft, which fixes a few errors and tones down my gushing a bit ;-) Feel free to take a look.

[attachment eaten by a Shivan]
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Tyriant on March 14, 2019, 09:54:36 pm
By the end of bp3, what are the fates of the various factions (terrans, vasudans, shivans, vishnans)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on March 15, 2019, 02:24:26 pm
Can post the link to this thread on another forum (on there there are a number of fans of BP)?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: thomasj_tx on March 15, 2019, 06:16:33 pm
Let me start off by saying that I know that this is the "wrong" thread for my question and I apologize for that.  However, this one seems to get the most activity, so if my question can't be answered here, please direct me to where I can post it in order to get an answer.

My question....

I have the Blue Planet Complete mod loaded on Knossos 0.13.3.  I have been able to play all of the games, AoA, WiH 1 and WiH 2.  They are GREAT!!!   However, when I try to play FreeSpace Blue, I get the following error:

Unknown radar range: -1!
File: radarsetup.cpp

Line: 487



I am able to load the campaign, go through the first briefing and when I select to start the first Training Mission, I get this error.  I try to click on Debug but nothing happens.

I have also run the "Verify File Integrity" to no avail.

I would greatly appreciate any help I can get.  I look forward to re-playing the original FreeSpace with all of the "Blue" enhancements.

Thank you in advance.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on March 15, 2019, 06:21:49 pm
you can just post it in a new topic on this board and it'll get seen to
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: CT27 on March 16, 2019, 09:30:05 pm
How long after BP2 does BP3 take place?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 17, 2019, 06:27:58 am
Isn't it all dated in the cutscenes and tech room?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 17, 2019, 09:36:59 am
Isn't it all dated in the cutscenes and tech room?

For BP3 as well?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 17, 2019, 10:14:28 am
How long after BP2 does BP3 take place?

Probably 18 weeks, maybe 18 days.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on March 18, 2019, 11:40:50 pm
How long after BP2 does BP3 take place?

Probably 18 weeks, maybe 18 days.

wait, BP1 was 18 years after FS2, the UEF-GTVA war is 18 months long, right? (I might be wrong on that) so 18 weeks for BP3? 

I think I'm sensing a pattern. .   :nervous:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Tyriant on March 20, 2019, 11:19:42 pm
Will the shivanpocalypse in bp3 be countered by a vishnanpocalypse?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rogue Assassin04 on March 21, 2019, 03:32:47 am
Any status on Solaris and 1st Fleet wrt to the War perspective?
Why arent the Fedayeen using the CASSANDRA for the predictions? Why didnt Al Da'wa push CASSANDRA to limits and tell that Calder was about to die?

IIRC, all the time, it was told that the loss of a Solaris class Destroyer would be a major loss for UEF. The destruction of the Toutatis is a blow, why wasn't it tried to stop? Why didn't Laporte advise Calder that Steele was a mind messer?

If Al Da'wa had planned well along with LKFV, like in Tenebra, they could have used the experimental weapons and tech to turn the tide of the war. Why didnt that happen?

How is the sanctuary involved with Shambhala? What happened to the civilians on board the Sanctuary?
Why arent the shivans getting involved and entering the GTVA space?

Does Shambhala use GTVA Tech?

Can i please have answers to these questions?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 21, 2019, 04:13:20 am
Orestes control said "Our weapons pierced the Lucifer's shields..." or words to that effect. Does this mean the Orestes' beam weapons ignored the lucifer's shields in the same way AAA beams ignore a fighter or bombers shields, or was it a case that they battered the Lucifer's shields with sheer firepower until they discharged, as fighter's weapons on other fighters shields?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 21, 2019, 05:07:05 am
Beams pierce shields is an established thing.


Which line was it you recall me saying?


Quote from: tactical dekker
Alpha wing! Hit your burners and intercept enemy bombers at will. Do not engage the SD Hyde. We'll deal with the destroyer ourselves.”

“We've got major damage to systems shipwide! Hull breaches in several sections!”

“Recharging jump engines for subspace entry. Estimate optimal charge in ten minutes time.”

“All personnel, evacuate to escape pods! Abandon ship, I repeat, abandon ship!”

“Orestes control to unknown ships, identify yourselves immediately!”

“Commander Bei? The Temeraire? We lost contact with your ships when you left to apprehend the GTC Duke. What the hell happened out there?”

“Shivan forces ambushed us in Ross 128 after we attempted to follow the Temeraire into the system. We retreated back into Delta Serpentis where we were boxed in by the Lucifer.”

“We're making our stand here, but the planet's gravity well prevents us from escaping very far if we should fail to drive off the Lucifer.”

“Every time we gain the upper hand against the Lucifer, the destroyer jumps out and repairs herself for another attack. We need you to either take out the Lucifer's engines or go for each of the reactors for a killing blow.”

“Success! The Lucifer is going down! I repeat, the Lucifer is going down.”

“Commander Bei, the GTD Orestes and her ships are in your and your allies' debt. Without your timely interference, our survival would have surely been uncertain.”

“Commander, we're not detecting any life signs from your fighter.”

“Oh my God...”

“The Lucifer has escaped! All fighters, return to base immediately. We need to get out of here pronto before the superdestroyer returns!”
 
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 21, 2019, 02:18:00 pm
But I thought the whole deal about beams is that they're particles accelerated to relativistic speeds... something the Lucifer was supposed shielded against (unless that was just Battutas head canon, not BP related).
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on March 21, 2019, 02:21:20 pm
Relativistic plasma in a magnetic bottle. If I had to guess, I'd say there's probably some interaction between shields and the bottle that allows beams to penetrate.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 21, 2019, 02:28:42 pm
Is there any "official" BP explination for shields yet? I have a personal explination for that but it belongs rather into the headcanon thread.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Soulrheever on March 21, 2019, 02:40:17 pm
I'd always operated under the assumption that the Lucifer's shields were blocking some portion of the damage from the high-end beams, but not strong enough to block them entirely. I'd think if they were just passing straight through at full strength that the combined firepower of the Orestes battle group would be able to hull even the infamously durable Lucifer pretty quickly.

I'd also assumed the same was happening when encountering anti cap-ship fire with a fighter: your shields can't repel firepower of that magnitude!
... but then, I'd never really put much thought into how AAA beams just ignore shields entirely, either.  :confused:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on March 21, 2019, 02:46:36 pm
But I thought the whole deal about beams is that they're particles accelerated to relativistic speeds... something the Lucifer was supposed shielded against (unless that was just Battutas head canon, not BP related).
Is there any "official" BP explination for shields yet? I have a personal explination for that but it belongs rather into the headcanon thread.

Shields aren't magic. Every shield system, even the shivan and vishnan ones which operate on deep subspace ****ery, has a defined and finite capacity to disperse and redistribute incoming energy. Beam weapons are, essentially, a way to deliver exajoules of energy on a very small target; this is usually enough to breach a shield system, if only momentarily.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on March 21, 2019, 02:57:27 pm
Any status on Solaris and 1st Fleet wrt to the War perspective?
Why arent the Fedayeen using the CASSANDRA for the predictions? Why didnt Al Da'wa push CASSANDRA to limits and tell that Calder was about to die?

CASSANDRA is not infallible, and not unassailable. It's a Laplacean demon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon), but it is not the only such demon in existence, and is not in possession of complete information.

Quote
IIRC, all the time, it was told that the loss of a Solaris class Destroyer would be a major loss for UEF. The destruction of the Toutatis is a blow, why wasn't it tried to stop? Why didn't Laporte advise Calder that Steele was a mind messer?

Because that loss wasn't guaranteed, because Laporte does not have access to complete information, and ultimately, because Calder is an Admiral and Laporte is not.

Quote
If Al Da'wa had planned well along with LKFV, like in Tenebra, they could have used the experimental weapons and tech to turn the tide of the war. Why didnt that happen?

No single weapon can win a war.

Quote
How is the sanctuary involved with Shambhala? What happened to the civilians on board the Sanctuary?
Why arent the shivans getting involved and entering the GTVA space?

The Sanctuary and her passengers aren't all that involved, beyond adding an impetus to finish that particular project; As it turns out, being in a different universe from the one you were born in isn't all that good for your health.

The Shivans are, over the course of WiH, engaging in a whole lot of manipulation literally behind the scenes. Canonically, when Laporte defies them at Capella, they consider this particular experiment a failure and go back to more straightforward omnicidal tactics again.

Quote
Does Shambhala use GTVA Tech?

Yes.

Quote
Can i please have answers to these questions?

No :P
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: crizza on March 22, 2019, 05:16:10 am
Wait what? Supernovas are SSMs?! I thought only the Eos could pull that off :D
Out of interest: Is an Eos/Supernova able to be fired from one side of a node to the other, emerging in close proximity of a target or will they just exit the node and run out of fuel?
Or must an SSM-strike always originate from within the same system?
Can I get an answer, as in pretty please? :)

Edit: Oh, and did Karen and her Wingmate somehow survived Delenda Est? Like their fighters being disabled and they're PoWs now?
Third try^^
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 22, 2019, 05:18:44 am
Beams pierce shields is an established thing.


Which line was it you recall me saying?


Quote from: tactical dekker
Alpha wing! Hit your burners and intercept enemy bombers at will. Do not engage the SD Hyde. We'll deal with the destroyer ourselves.”

“We've got major damage to systems shipwide! Hull breaches in several sections!”

“Recharging jump engines for subspace entry. Estimate optimal charge in ten minutes time.”

“All personnel, evacuate to escape pods! Abandon ship, I repeat, abandon ship!”

“Orestes control to unknown ships, identify yourselves immediately!”

“Commander Bei? The Temeraire? We lost contact with your ships when you left to apprehend the GTC Duke. What the hell happened out there?”

“Shivan forces ambushed us in Ross 128 after we attempted to follow the Temeraire into the system. We retreated back into Delta Serpentis where we were boxed in by the Lucifer.”

“We're making our stand here, but the planet's gravity well prevents us from escaping very far if we should fail to drive off the Lucifer.”

“Every time we gain the upper hand against the Lucifer, the destroyer jumps out and repairs herself for another attack. We need you to either take out the Lucifer's engines or go for each of the reactors for a killing blow.”

“Success! The Lucifer is going down! I repeat, the Lucifer is going down.”

“Commander Bei, the GTD Orestes and her ships are in your and your allies' debt. Without your timely interference, our survival would have surely been uncertain.”

“Commander, we're not detecting any life signs from your fighter.”

“Oh my God...”

“The Lucifer has escaped! All fighters, return to base immediately. We need to get out of here pronto before the superdestroyer returns!”
 


You were the voice of Orestes' control? Nice :-)

Having since watched the mission again on YouTube I realised that I must have imagined you saying that. Doh! Guess I must have assumed that since you say "....we gain the upper hand against the Lucifer..." that the shields were overcome somehow. *EDIT* Just looked at the NEM.NOW entry for the Lucifer again. It states "Analysts believe the Lucifer recognised that it was outmatched and intentionally shut its sheath shield off in order to pursue a strategy of attritional engagement..."

I guess I assumed having read NEM.NOW previously that the Lucy thought "Oh crap - my shield doesn't work against their beams. Better try a different approach" and assumed that beams pierce shields. But now that I think about it a "Oh crap - my shields wont last long against that sort of firepower. Better try a different approach" would also make sense if the beams just batterd the shield into submission.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 22, 2019, 05:32:40 am
But I thought the whole deal about beams is that they're particles accelerated to relativistic speeds... something the Lucifer was supposed shielded against (unless that was just Battutas head canon, not BP related).
Is there any "official" BP explination for shields yet? I have a personal explination for that but it belongs rather into the headcanon thread.

Shields aren't magic. Every shield system, even the shivan and vishnan ones which operate on deep subspace ****ery, has a defined and finite capacity to disperse and redistribute incoming energy. Beam weapons are, essentially, a way to deliver exajoules of energy on a very small target; this is usually enough to breach a shield system, if only momentarily.


That's my head cannon too. I have never liked the whole 'shields are impenetrable' sci-fi trope which you see in some Hollywood movies. I figured the Lucy's shields were just extremaly powerful due to having multiple reactors powering them, and that Great War era tech simply couldn't output focused energy fast enough to discharge them.

Funny aside. Aaaages ago I played Frontier: Elite 2. By the magic of cheating I had purchased a Panther Clipper - the largest ship you could buy, and loaded it up with over 100 shield generators. I then deliberately pissed off the police at a space port so all their puny ships would come after me. My shields recharged so quickly that they recharged faster than the space copper's weapons could discharge them, so I was essentially invulnerable Mwa-ha-ha!!!
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 22, 2019, 05:34:18 am
PS - I'll leave this link here as well since this appears to be the most active BP thread at the moment.

http://coin-drop.com/freespace-blue-planet-masterclass-video-game-storytelling/ (http://coin-drop.com/freespace-blue-planet-masterclass-video-game-storytelling/)

Hope ya'll like it :-)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on March 22, 2019, 06:34:13 am
Wait what? Supernovas are SSMs?! I thought only the Eos could pull that off :D
Out of interest: Is an Eos/Supernova able to be fired from one side of a node to the other, emerging in close proximity of a target or will they just exit the node and run out of fuel?
Or must an SSM-strike always originate from within the same system?

SSMs, as currently available to the GTVA, are intrasystem weapons only. They do not have node-traversal capability.

Also: The Eos and Supernova are very similar weapon systems; their main difference is in the warhead they carry. The missile bus is mostly the same, and thus turning them into SSMs is not that hard (SSM capability being centered in the launcher rather than the missile itself).
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on March 22, 2019, 06:46:46 am
Edit: Oh, and did Karen and her Wingmate somehow survived Delenda Est? Like their fighters being disabled and they're PoWs now?

No.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on March 22, 2019, 04:46:54 pm
Awwww. I've always wondered why at the end of Delenda Est the Tevs didn't just get Yangtze and her fighter corps to surrender. On the other hand I think it would be reasonable for the losing side to do so; the battle is already ended - why waste more lives?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 22, 2019, 04:51:57 pm
They were still Wargods, they weren't going to surrender.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on March 22, 2019, 06:22:11 pm
But I thought the whole deal about beams is that they're particles accelerated to relativistic speeds... something the Lucifer was supposed shielded against (unless that was just Battutas head canon, not BP related).
Is there any "official" BP explination for shields yet? I have a personal explination for that but it belongs rather into the headcanon thread.

Shields aren't magic. Every shield system, even the shivan and vishnan ones which operate on deep subspace ****ery, has a defined and finite capacity to disperse and redistribute incoming energy. Beam weapons are, essentially, a way to deliver exajoules of energy on a very small target; this is usually enough to breach a shield system, if only momentarily.

what? shields are magic electromagnetic bubbles around ships, beams are electromagic pipes that are used to plumb a stream of very hot plasma into the target. beams pass through shields without interacting, like a wet straw poked through a soap bubble

also if shivan shields work on deep subspace ****ery how on earth did the terran-vasudans use scans of them to develop their own shields within a matter of days? this is the first time ive heard that suggested rather than the parsimonious explanation that they both operate on the same principle
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nissan on March 22, 2019, 06:53:54 pm
also if shivan shields work on deep subspace ****ery how on earth did the terran-vasudans use scans of them to develop their own shields within a matter of days? this is the first time ive heard that suggested rather than the parsimonious explanation that they both operate on the same principle

The Terrans and Vasudans didn't develop their shield systems from scans alone. If memory serves, the debrief for the Shivan cargo depot mission mentions that a separate mission was successfully able to retrieve some shield prototypes, and those are the ones that you escort back to Earth in the next mission.

As for how Terran/Vasudan shields differ from the others... (shrug)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 22, 2019, 07:23:57 pm
MX-50 tech description says that the Terrans experimented with some sort of energy-based shielding system.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 23, 2019, 04:57:35 am
That's true.   :nod:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on March 23, 2019, 11:04:55 am
To be fair freespace 1 generally implied that one or both sides had already been working on shield tech (a cutscene of them pretty much immediately working in some shield lab using hardware that didnt look shivan), which would also explain why they succeeded in adopting it so quickly.  The tech was already most of the way there, they just needed a few final problems to be resolved at which point they could pretty quickly start fielding the things.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 23, 2019, 11:08:48 am
Yup, I agree with you there. I seam to recall something stating somewhere that the Ross 128 insterlation had a primitive and experimental shield precursor - not that it helped them much when Lucy came a'nocking.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 23, 2019, 11:39:30 am
https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/GTM_MX-50#Tech_Room_Data

Quote
Early experiments with energy based defenses like the deflector array at Ross 128 have shown that this weapon is exceedingly weak against anything besides steel based targets.



To be fair freespace 1 generally implied that one or both sides had already been working on shield tech (a cutscene of them pretty much immediately working in some shield lab using hardware that didnt look shivan), which would also explain why they succeeded in adopting it so quickly.  The tech was already most of the way there, they just needed a few final problems to be resolved at which point they could pretty quickly start fielding the things.

The lab cutscene was after the capture of the Shivan shields though.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on March 23, 2019, 12:46:08 pm
Yes, and they were experimenting with what appeared to be principally not-shivan hardware in what appeared to be an established lab despite only just having gotten the shivan shields.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 23, 2019, 03:52:39 pm
The time between capture and cutscene Iis pretty vague.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on March 23, 2019, 04:42:18 pm
All FS1 CBs have dates, so it should be very short.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Tyriant on March 29, 2019, 11:19:14 pm
How do the vishnans and vasudans play into act 5 and bp3?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 30, 2019, 01:54:12 am
You play as a Vasudan in BP3. With the summed psyche dead or incommunicado (it's very weird and strong so hard to know), Bei's link to the Vishnans becomes very important.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Tyriant on April 01, 2019, 05:23:19 pm
So if bei has a link to the vishnans, and laporte has a link to the shivans, does Nabirasul have a link to anyone?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: starlord on April 01, 2019, 05:30:00 pm
Will we encounter in one way or another the great darkness again as in universal truth?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on April 01, 2019, 05:38:49 pm
You’ll desperately try to avoid encountering it, yeah.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: starlord on April 01, 2019, 07:53:39 pm
is there any action the player will/can take to directly stop it/check it? or to gain if anything a greater understanding of it?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on April 01, 2019, 11:36:22 pm
Kindof seems like probably not, if it has been accurately characterized so far (which admittedly it probably hasnt been due to all the speculation) then its basically the epitome of abstraction, understanding and complexity to the point that it would probably be kindof like a goldfish trying to avoid an encounter with the fish net.  Its doing something so far beyond your ken and has such a huge advantage over you that there really isn't all that much reasonable expectation of actually succeeding at avoiding it for all that long, at least in the grand scheme of things.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on April 01, 2019, 11:48:00 pm
Yeah you really don't want to learn more about it.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Bryan See on April 02, 2019, 12:01:28 pm
Me too. I sincerely you guys want us to have a very tiny glimpse of what's ahead.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on April 02, 2019, 12:37:42 pm
Me too. I sincerely you guys want us to have a very tiny glimpse of what's ahead.

Well they could just go ahead and post the design docs. Yet they seem to hope that they'll be able to finish atleast parts of it at some future point
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Burnb on April 06, 2019, 10:37:57 pm
Was reading the fiction text; could you tell us what the terrible thing the jester foresaw was that occurs within 50 years?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on April 06, 2019, 11:43:01 pm
Shivan genocide of the Terran/Vasudan species, iirc.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on May 10, 2019, 04:02:53 am
Not sure if this has been covered before but here goes.

1) How do Shivan's reproduce? Do they breed in the conventional sense, (Insert worrying mental image of Shivan hentai  :shaking: :lol:), parthenogenesis, budding etc?

2) Do they have sexes as we would understand them?

3) How quickly do they grow? Or are they manufactured life forms, as are the Warpers in Subnautica, and start life as a fully formed adult?

4) Do they have a life span?

5)The wiki entries states things such as 'population turnover' and different ship types having divergent populations. Are the ships growing their own crews, similar to how the Rorschach ship/city/thingy grew its own crew of scramblers in Blindsight? 

6) The wiki also states cryptic lines about different macrofauna or morphs in the ships. What are the different morphs like? Are the Shivans we see in the hall fight typical of Shivans, or simply one of the various morphs? Is there even a 'typical' Shivan body plan as we would understand it?

7) How do they create their ships? In one of the 'Morrigan' stories it is stated that 'they coalesce them out of the accretion discs of black holes down a probability gradient' or something similar. Can you explain this a bit please?

8) One last question (promise) you have stated that the Shivans were calculated into existence. Is this similar in principal to a Boltzmann brain?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on May 10, 2019, 08:26:38 pm
I remember hearing something about 'probability manipulation' in the accretion belts of black holes in order to synthesize arbitrary objects.  I think that is the shivans principle means of manufacturing more of themselves and their equipment, and is possibly what the 'calculated into existence' line was referring to.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on May 11, 2019, 03:35:25 am
I remember hearing something about 'probability manipulation' in the accretion belts of black holes in order to synthesize arbitrary objects.  I think that is the shivans principle means of manufacturing more of themselves and their equipment, and is possibly what the 'calculated into existence' line was referring to.

That's what I figured too, but still not sure exactly what that means or how they do it ;-) How do they manipulate probability? Is it something to do with cosmic loaded dice or are they counting celestial cards?  :lol:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: captain austin on May 11, 2019, 08:59:18 am
It either branches to Bosch's plan for an 'arrangement' with the Shivans (as foreshadowed in FS2, this is very bad for the Vsaudans) or to the BP3 path where the Vishnans are gone (unclear whether temporarily or permanently) and the Shivanpocalypse is on.

Without wanting to fully spoil the whole shebang; what's the tonality of the final canonical ending for Act 5? Or if such a thing can't be said to exist, at least the finale that involves playing to the "end" of the missions?

Both the first and second games outros struck a unique balance between a bleak, somber reflection on the catastrophe of the day, tinged with the narrator's misplaced optimism about some aspect of the future ahead. As FS2 dashes the hope of the FS1 Alpha 1, so too does the UEF War/Shivanpocalypse make Petrarch's enthusiasm for the Delta Serpentis Portal look like Hiram Maxim's ardent belief that the machine gun would make future war impossible.

Is BP ultimately striving for a similar tack in its conclusion? Or a bit more finality? If the eagerness on this thread to learn more about the Great Darkness is any indication of how certain characters in-universe will react to its revelation, maybe cognition itself is doomed  :ick: Though I will say, hearing of some nosy GTVI analyst's unexpected departure from this existence, in the same vein as a certain "bad" ending to BP Act 2, would elicit at least one hearty chortle from me (I can only imagine the head exploding, Scanners-style)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on May 12, 2019, 11:36:36 am
As FS2 dashes the hope of the FS1 Alpha 1
Did it, though? Nobody in Sol saw any Shivans during FS2, so "not in my lifetime" still held true as of the end of FS2 (and assuming Alpha 1 was still alive, of course).
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on May 12, 2019, 11:39:00 am
The branch of the ending that leads to BP3 is basically defiance against a seemingly hopeless apocalypse - you refuse Ken’s bargain, but the Vishnans are out of the picture for now and the Shivans are in full omnicide mode.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: AdDur on May 12, 2019, 03:16:59 pm
Isn't any resistance againt Shivans ultimately futile?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on May 12, 2019, 03:40:45 pm
I mean, yeah there isn't any real possibility of that working, at least from the perspective of a ships vs. ships shootout, or really any attempt to flee either.

I think AoA pretty clearly illustrated exactly how well trying to flee with anemoi' in tow would work.  Shivans absolutely everywhere because they are in fact practically innumerable, perhaps you last like 200-300 years hiding in some dense nebula as they wear you down.

e:  The so-called Ken bargain, I.E. assumedly getting into the Shivan's heads and figuring out some aspect of their goals well enough to find a way to co-exist (at least temporarily), is seemingly the only way to keep a universe spanning omnicidal monstrosity at bay.  Playing the super-cooperator is in fact probably the only way to survive for any noticeable length of time.

e2: Perhaps indeed thats what the Shivans are looking for?  Something so cooperative it can work even with the interface the shivans present to the universe.  They certainly seemed to be trying to push the humans and vasudans towards cooperation in freespace 1 at least.  Freespace 2 doesn't really fit that narrative, but that also seems (in the BP lore) to have amounted to the GTVA getting crushed underfoot like some unnoticed insect while the shivans go to deal with some other problem.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on May 12, 2019, 03:56:47 pm
Any conventional resistance to the Shivans seems likely to fail in the long term. But there are a lot of complications to that statement. Three of the first questions one might ask would be: are there unconventional modes of resistance - what did the Vishnans want from us, what role did they expect us to inherit? Are there levels of survival which humanity is prepared to accept in order to endure? And is it necessary to secure indefinite survival to ‘win?’

We all believe it’s possible to live meaningful, full lives despite the inevitability of death. Is the inevitability of destruction by Shivans something we must escape in order for human existence to be meaningful or worth living?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: captain austin on May 12, 2019, 07:45:19 pm
As FS2 dashes the hope of the FS1 Alpha 1
Did it, though? Nobody in Sol saw any Shivans during FS2, so "not in my lifetime" still held true as of the end of FS2 (and assuming Alpha 1 was still alive, of course).

Unless he's Kovacs, of course  :eek2: And some of the conversations early in War In Heaven suggest that sections of the UEF are affected by the pain inflicted on the GTVA during the second incursion, and almost pity them. All I'm saying is the next half-century looked more like a nightmare than the "liberation" that damned Nagari sensitive Alpha 1 promised me!

Speaking of nightmares-what are the rough terms of Ken's arrangement with the Shivans, besides it being very bad for the Vasudans? All of them are eradicated and all the humans get to climb aboard for the glorious minutes that are 1 crew generation in a Sathanas' "nightmare turbine"?  If the NEM.NOW logs are any indication, seems like the Zods get the better end of this stick, in all respects except the perpetuation of some ever-diminishing shard of human influence in Shivan ecosystems. Yet it seems like Bosch and his command crew have undergone a different kind of treatment during their formation into Ken that's a little less annihilative (if only just) as they maintain language, cognition, knowledge of their previous senses of self, etc. So maybe Ken has some other endgame in mind, like having some/all humans join his consciousness, though this seems to veer dubiously close to Great Psyche territory for Shivan "tastes."

Which leads perhaps to a deeper question-is Ken even aware of the "real" terms of the agreement with the Shivans? Or is he being deceived and/or blinded, through hubris or outside influence, to their long-term implications?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on May 13, 2019, 04:47:25 am
This is what I love about both this game and this group - the deep philosophical debates it generates. Very few games or fandoms can do this.

I once tried to deep dive into the inner philosophy of Pong, but I didn't get any deeper than 'Boing boing boing'  :lol: 
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: An4ximandros on May 13, 2019, 03:04:15 pm
I remember something about destructive firewall strategies being mentioned somewhere.

What exactly does that entail? I get the idea of walling off Nagari network areas but is that actually what lead to the problem we face now? (the great darkness?)

Sorry I am not more specific, been a while since I played.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on May 13, 2019, 03:06:44 pm
That was reference to destruction of the node network by warring species trying to secure their borders. It’s a secondary function for the Shivans.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on May 13, 2019, 05:59:04 pm
Here's one for ya.

What would be the big picture consequences if the entire node network was wiped? I mean Everywhere, Universe-wide, Complete and total Elimination of subspace.

The good? The Bad? what happens?



Also, semi-related question: AT what point will the whole "Shivans, Vishnans, Great Darkness," situation start to face some outside context issues from the Universe's/Multiverse's age? I asked about heat death before, but will they all act once a big rip, big crunch, vacuum decay, or some kind of natural-yet-unavoidable subspace cataclysm or total dimensional collapse event becomes a greater threat? Could they try to do something about that? or would it all be pointless anyway? How would they react?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on May 16, 2019, 02:39:07 pm
Why does every thread I post in get abandoned?

So how does the Multiverse work in BP anyway? Do they Age at the same rate? Or independently?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on May 16, 2019, 03:16:09 pm
Why does every thread I post in get abandoned?

So how does the Multiverse work in BP anyway? Do they Age at the same rate? Or independently?

They age differently. The one the 14th went adventuring in was much older and was drawing a state pension ;-)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on May 18, 2019, 10:11:22 pm
So, there's an interesting thing I thought of.

The way for Fedayeen to communicate between each other with Nagari is pretty much by being cable connected to CASSANDRA. Also, there's Noemi's breach of the external (to humanity at least) Nagari network, realised with the use of a special transmitter device obtained through HoL agents and the Idun's Dictionary.
On the other hand, Shivans and Vishnans (and Ken) are known to be able to interact with basically anyone's brains, reading and inducing specific states. They can communicate with humans with nearly no limitations in place, whenever they please.

However, in Sunglare, both Beis seem to communicate with each other through Nagari, but... how? Since the Vishnans decided they will not speak with them anymore, they logically wouldn't also relay the transmissions between these two, since they broke contact. Beis also do not have the access to the transmitter technology from HoL (that we know of), so what kind of options does it leave for us? Did they get transmitters from a different source, or maybe HoL was already contacting with the UEF before they've gave the design to Laporte? Or perhaps human brains, expecially the ones exposed to Nagari influence, have got a limited capability of communication? There's also the case of Nabirasul, who you can meet in the Dreamscape.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Rhymes on May 19, 2019, 01:26:39 am
Who says the Fedayeen are the only ones with Dreamscape tech?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on May 19, 2019, 01:29:27 am
Who says that the conversation between the Beis was done via Nagari?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on May 19, 2019, 04:54:31 am
Yeah I always assumed it was by encrypted facetime.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on May 19, 2019, 06:13:13 am
Who says that the conversation between the Beis was done via Nagari?
It just occured to me that the older Bei has got his voice distorted in a similar fashion to Ken (also all the people you got to hear in the mission "Ken").
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colt on May 21, 2019, 02:10:15 pm
So this odd, tiny little thought's been unreasonably nagging in the back of my mind for the last couple of days, and so I must ask.

Are BP Vasudans related to the Ancients, and if so how?

(I can't recall if this question was already asked, so apologies in advance if it was.)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: taoofcrime on June 02, 2019, 02:17:07 pm
On my third WiH playthrough, love it to death.

My question is, since in Post Meridian Simms (I think) calls Steele a "gentleman psychopath"...does he wear Joker makeup? Does he live in a society?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on June 02, 2019, 02:32:15 pm
He lives in a machinery.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: manwiththemachinegun on June 02, 2019, 06:32:01 pm
Any conventional resistance to the Shivans seems likely to fail in the long term. But there are a lot of complications to that statement. Three of the first questions one might ask would be: are there unconventional modes of resistance - what did the Vishnans want from us, what role did they expect us to inherit? Are there levels of survival which humanity is prepared to accept in order to endure? And is it necessary to secure indefinite survival to ‘win?’

We all believe it’s possible to live meaningful, full lives despite the inevitability of death. Is the inevitability of destruction by Shivans something we must escape in order for human existence to be meaningful or worth living?

Resistance is never futile. To use the Dark Souls analogy, while entropy or "the end" of existence may not be avoidable, it's no excuse to just keel over and die. Apathy is death, and despair of any hope of any sort of victory over the Shivans is a waste of brain power. One more day is worth it. If the Shivans want to play God with creation, reshape it in their image for some nebulous, otherwordly ends, yes, go down guns blazing with ol' Steele at the helm. Let it end in fire and noise and not submission.

But what if the Shivans are, "right?" about the Great Destroyer? Etc.

Irrelevant. You do not stop fighting one enemy just because another is on the horizon. I've hated that trope in fiction, because it's almost always flawed reasoning on the part of the aggressors.

Life fights. That's its nature, as antithesis to the Shivans long term goals of "stability" at all costs. The Shivans cannot be trusted as a benevolent force when no other faction considers them as such. We only have their inscrutable "word" they're doing this all for the greater good of universal balance.

BP goes to some good places headspace wise, and I'm sure it has many deconstructions ahead. But, "the Shivans are too powerful, they've conquered whole other realities and timelines, it's really pointless in the end." Is not something I'm willing to accept. Humanity Stands.

And I am also reminded of the following quote about the Vietnam war.

‘You know, you never beat us on the battlefield,’ I told my North Vietnamese counterpart during negotiations in Hanoi a week before the fall of Saigon. He pondered that remark a moment and then replied, ‘That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.’

Victory means many things, including living one more day.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on June 02, 2019, 07:50:28 pm
I don't really understand how the sentiments you're expressing conflict with the post you're responding to.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Mito [PL] on June 02, 2019, 08:01:19 pm
My question is, since in Post Meridian Simms (I think) calls Steele a "gentleman psychopath"...does he wear Joker makeup? Does he live in a society?
Nah, but let me quote something you can read in Act 3 of WiH:
Quote from: Falconer
Crazy is another word for 'uncomfortably effective'.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: manwiththemachinegun on June 02, 2019, 08:20:05 pm
I don't really understand how the sentiments you're expressing conflict with the post you're responding to.

Not so much conflict as point out at the end of the day, FS2 is a space sim where you fly around and blow up enemy ships. I'd like Blue Planet to have an eventual conclusion, even if it was a Fredded cutscene or a novel or the like. I would say there is an expectation of some form of catharsis for the player, since BP is essentially positioning itself as the "final" chapter of Freespace, I'd like to see some hope of the Shivan conflict end without obliteration for humanity. But I also think blind submission to Shivan meddling in our material universe to be opposed absolutely.

In short, I believe the GTVA is correct in their assessment, if flawed in their execution. BP lore is also incredibly spread out (good but spread out) and diffuse across a dozen short stories, the campaigns, and hidden dialogue, so apologies if I'm missing key details.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: JoeBalls on July 25, 2019, 03:17:08 pm
To breathe a little life into the forum:

- Does the SSJ Kalki destroy the Vishnan Sacred Keeper? Is this the reason for the Vishnans being "dead" in BP3?
- Were the Comm Nodes used to relay the signal from the ken anima?
- Where does the Santhanas fleet jump? Was the primary reason to supernova Capella to contain the GD?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on July 27, 2019, 03:38:58 am
Hi all!

I have read through Granite Hunter again, and I think I have worked out what most of the cryptic language and code-words refer to. However there are two which I'm stuck on. These being

'The Remillard Receipts.'

and

'SADABA YEAR'

Can anyone shed any light on what these are referring to?

Cheers :-)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on July 28, 2019, 01:11:03 am
Wasn't sadaba year Transcend? (as in the campaign)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on July 28, 2019, 01:27:12 pm
Wasn't sadaba year Transcend? (as in the campaign)

Possibly. I have heard some people suggest it relates to Sync. If memory serves, the sync drive takes the flotilla to somewhere where some Vasudans are openly hostile to you, whereas some are friendly (or at least neutral) to you whilst being hostile to the other Vasudans. IIR it doesn't explain what is happening since being left thinking 'WTF is going on!?' is kinda the point in Sync (and Transcend).

However, since we now know that the multiverse theory is true (within FreeSpace at least), we can perhaps better understand what was happening in Sync. I suspect what the sync drive actually did (unintentionally, at least on the part of the humans*) is take the flotilla to one of these alternate realities. In that reality perhaps the HoL were not defeated militarily, and were continuing their civil war against the GTA / PVN / GTVA etc. That would explain why some Vasudans are hostile to both the Terran flotilla and to the Vasudans who were not hostile to you. These aggressors being the HoL. It has been a long time since I played Sync and I only played it once, so I might be misremembering somewhat. I feel another play-though coming along  ;7

*Of course this does beg the question "Was it actually an accident?" Considering t2's apparent ability and willingness to pull fleets from one 'manifold' to the next during 'unusual' hyperspace jumps, could the events of Sync have been deliberately engineered? Could it have been a 'dry run' to test if they could move ships and their squishy human crews from one manifold to another without damaging said ships and crews, (perhaps both physiologically and mentally)? Could Sync have been t2's 'warm up' for what they would later do with the 14 Battle Group?

Now there is some juicy head canon material   ;)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on July 28, 2019, 03:00:57 pm
I'd be inclined to speculate the Sync manifold branched off a fair bit earlier than you suppose.  The translator software was having a hard time with the Vasudan.  It could do it, but it wasn't totally reliable.  Kindof implies IMO that the branch ocurred a long time before the Great War and had significant impact to the point that the Vasudan language was noticeably different.  Certainly the Vasudan death cult things that formed the HOL would still be around (since afaik thats thousands of years old), so I would suppose that the hostile vasudans are basically in fact HOL as you mentioned.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on July 28, 2019, 05:49:50 pm
I'd be inclined to speculate the Sync manifold branched off a fair bit earlier than you suppose.  The translator software was having a hard time with the Vasudan.  It could do it, but it wasn't totally reliable.  Kindof implies IMO that the branch ocurred a long time before the Great War and had significant impact to the point that the Vasudan language was noticeably different.  Certainly the Vasudan death cult things that formed the HOL would still be around (since afaik thats thousands of years old), so I would suppose that the hostile vasudans are basically in fact HOL as you mentioned.

Oooh, I had forgotten about that. Definitely gonna have to play it again when I get done with replaying Derelict :-)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on August 04, 2019, 06:32:12 am
The BP release thread stated that ..."A story that was named 'the best military science fiction of the year' in 2014."   

Can anyone provide a source for this, a link, info about which publication named it as such etc. so that I may cite it? Is this it? https://www.amazon.com/Military-Adventure-Science-Fiction-Stories-ebook/dp/B00WXL8UJM (https://www.amazon.com/Military-Adventure-Science-Fiction-Stories-ebook/dp/B00WXL8UJM)

(I see Seth Dickinson is listed as one of the contributors)


Am I right in thinking it was named the best military science fiction of the year for sci-fi in general, not just in video games? The reason I am asking is because I'm writing an article for Exclusively Games. The theme of the article is that despite what many members of the non video game playing public and the mainstream media seem to think, the storytelling in some videogames is on par with that of a blockbuster movie, live theatre play or best selling novel. I am including BP as one of the examples. It would help the article's argument greatly if I could actually cite something as evidence  :)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on August 04, 2019, 09:59:19 am
The BP release thread stated that ..."A story that was named 'the best military science fiction of the year' in 2014."   

Can anyone provide a source for this, a link, info about which publication named it as such etc. so that I may cite it? Is this it? https://www.amazon.com/Military-Adventure-Science-Fiction-Stories-ebook/dp/B00WXL8UJM (https://www.amazon.com/Military-Adventure-Science-Fiction-Stories-ebook/dp/B00WXL8UJM)

Yes, that's the collection Morrigan in the Sunglare got featured in (Morrigan in Shadow was featured in the 2015 collection).

Quote
Am I right in thinking it was named the best military science fiction of the year for sci-fi in general, not just in video games? The reason I am asking is because I'm writing an article for Exclusively Games. The theme of the article is that despite what many members of the non video game playing public and the mainstream media seem to think, the storytelling in some videogames is on par with that of a blockbuster movie, live theatre play or best selling novel. I am including BP as one of the examples. It would help the article's argument greatly if I could actually cite something as evidence  :)

In this case, it is the Morrigan stories that got the nod, not BP or War in Heaven as a whole. While Morrigan is obviously an offshoot/remix of War in Heaven, that is all it is. The "The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera" collection is explicitly a short story collection, it should not be considered an authoritative source of what the best MilSF and Space Opera was in the SF space overall in those years (2014 and 2015, respectively).
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Nightmare on August 04, 2019, 11:13:10 am
The "The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera" collection is explicitly a short story collection, it should not be considered an authoritative source of what the best MilSF and Space Opera was in the SF space overall in those years (2014 and 2015, respectively).

Still it's a good title to make some PR with.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on August 04, 2019, 12:19:39 pm
Oh, definitely. And given that it's something that's coming from Baen, it's definitely something to take serious; they do know their milSF over there.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on August 12, 2019, 09:37:28 am
Hi all!

A few questions re Shivan construction methods.

Am I right in thinking they 'coalesce' their ships out of the matter swirling around the accretion discs of black holes?

Can they do likewise from protoplanetary disks and the like?

Can they atomise asteroids etc. and coalesce ships etc. out of this?

How does the coalescing process work? What are its limitations?

Does the process require something to coalesce around to get it started (like how rain requires a dust particle or similar for the water vapour to precipitate out onto?)

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the process does not involve nanites or similar, is this correct?


Does the process require a ship or device to do this, for example some form of resource collector / factory ship to suck up the matter and process it into technology?

Are the shivan organism themselves created by the same process? Do the ships grow their own crew as per Rorschach in blindsight?



My main questions relate to the abilities and limits of this process.

How quickly can they create a new ship via this method?

Does the complexity of the craft affect this i.e. a Dragon vs a Basilisk. Does its size?  Is there a limit to how many new ships they can coalesce at once?

How does this compare to whatever method the Vishnans use to make their ships?


If they are able to generate new ships in near real time, and there is no hard upper limit to the number of ships they can generate at once,  then they could beat almost any opponent by sheer attrition. Is that what the BP team were aiming for with the Shivans, an enemy you can beat tactically but never strategically? This would make for some very interesting 'who would win' thought experiments, such as BP Shivans vs Mass Effect Reapers, BSG Cylons, Shadows / Vorlons / Minbari from B5 etc etc.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on December 20, 2019, 02:17:18 pm
Is there any NEM.NOW info for the Scorpion and Shaitan?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on December 21, 2019, 03:38:47 pm
Does Battuta still like us?

 :nervous:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on December 21, 2019, 04:16:12 pm
Yes sorry I'm just on deadline
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: manwiththemachinegun on January 31, 2020, 01:29:01 am
Hi all!

A few questions re Shivan construction methods.

Am I right in thinking they 'coalesce' their ships out of the matter swirling around the accretion discs of black holes?

Can they do likewise from protoplanetary disks and the like?

Can they atomise asteroids etc. and coalesce ships etc. out of this?

How does the coalescing process work? What are its limitations?

Does the process require something to coalesce around to get it started (like how rain requires a dust particle or similar for the water vapour to precipitate out onto?)

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the process does not involve nanites or similar, is this correct?


Does the process require a ship or device to do this, for example some form of resource collector / factory ship to suck up the matter and process it into technology?

Are the shivan organism themselves created by the same process? Do the ships grow their own crew as per Rorschach in blindsight?



My main questions relate to the abilities and limits of this process.

How quickly can they create a new ship via this method?

Does the complexity of the craft affect this i.e. a Dragon vs a Basilisk. Does its size?  Is there a limit to how many new ships they can coalesce at once?

How does this compare to whatever method the Vishnans use to make their ships?


If they are able to generate new ships in near real time, and there is no hard upper limit to the number of ships they can generate at once,  then they could beat almost any opponent by sheer attrition. Is that what the BP team were aiming for with the Shivans, an enemy you can beat tactically but never strategically? This would make for some very interesting 'who would win' thought experiments, such as BP Shivans vs Mass Effect Reapers, BSG Cylons, Shadows / Vorlons / Minbari from B5 etc etc.

I get the sense from BP at least the Shivans operate on a very different time scale to other races. They probably could, and I'm sure many curious fleets were quickly eradicated almost as a matter of reflex, but in general they don't seem to plan beyond a very narrow set of parameters. There's a massive intelligence behind it, but you get the sense most Shivan fleets aren't really even "awake". They're too busy running their protocols, and for the most part have long since swept aside any resistance to their plans.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Damage on March 03, 2020, 03:54:28 pm
Would Command authorize an expedition into N362 to attempt to access the Knossos there?  Or would they prefer to wait until the situation in Sol has stabilized?

Given the fleet assets being moved into Sol, which are probably leaving other portions of the Alliance systems less well-defended, it seems like a bad idea that might draw unwanted attention combined with seriously bad timing.

Would GTI launch that expedition anyway?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 03, 2020, 04:01:12 pm
Would Command authorize an expedition into N362 to attempt to access the Knossos there?  Or would they prefer to wait until the situation in Sol has stabilized?

Given the fleet assets being moved into Sol, which are probably leaving other portions of the Alliance systems less well-defended, it seems like a bad idea that might draw unwanted attention combined with seriously bad timing.

Would GTI launch that expedition anyway?

Well the GTI appear to excel at bad ideas, so, yeah, probably  :lol:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 03, 2020, 04:39:30 pm
Would Command authorize an expedition into N362 to attempt to access the Knossos there?  Or would they prefer to wait until the situation in Sol has stabilized?

This is actually part of the plot for BP3!
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: rubixcube on March 08, 2020, 04:52:34 am
What exactly is the main motivation behind Shivan omnicide this time round? Is it due to the Sol-GTVA war? Or because they're worried Ubuntu (+ the Vasudan's guiding philosophy) will bring forth manifold necrosis/Great Darkness?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on March 08, 2020, 06:38:05 am
What exactly is the main motivation behind Shivan omnicide this time round? Is it due to the Sol-GTVA war? Or because they're worried Ubuntu (+ the Vasudan's guiding philosophy) will bring forth manifold necrosis/Great Darkness?

Seconded. I would add to that, "If GD/Manifold Necrosis is what the Shivans are concerned about why don't they just exterminate all non-Shivan life and sterilize every planet with life on it or potential to produce life at some later point.

No life, no possibility of life creating a GD. The Shivans do not appear to have any use for non-shivan life, nor do they need planets, and they appear to have no moral problems about wholesale xenocide. Therefore Game Theory would suggest 'kill everything whilst you still can' so why don't they? Is it because they are unable to (in which case why) or is it because they do not want to? (Also why)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: The E on March 08, 2020, 07:38:06 am
I would strongly suggest replaying Universal Truth 2.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: spart_n on March 08, 2020, 10:12:44 am
Shivans can't go universal genocide because of the Vishnans and some 'council', I thought? Like, that's what's stopping them and from what it looks like, the Vishnans can easily give Shivans a run for their money. Same with life perseverance, that's Vishnans wanting to do that because living is sometimes cool and getting rid of people ain't that swell.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Kiloku on March 12, 2020, 09:23:21 pm
Shivans can't go universal genocide because of the Vishnans and some 'council' [...]

Follow-up question: What is the "council"? Who's in it? What do they do?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 12, 2020, 10:27:38 pm
What exactly is the main motivation behind Shivan omnicide this time round? Is it due to the Sol-GTVA war? Or because they're worried Ubuntu (+ the Vasudan's guiding philosophy) will bring forth manifold necrosis/Great Darkness?

They oppose. They destroy. In destroying the create the possibility of newness, and prevent the total hegemony of any one thing or meta-thing. This is not their purpose: they have no purpose. But it is their effect.

When Bei sees the Shivans saying "they are like us, they destroy" it's not just a moral judgment upon humanity or the Vasudans. It's an inability to even recognize the values the Vishnans assert. The Shivans don't say "they're bad at creation" or "their old wounds open all too easily" because those aren't really relevant factors to the anima. What's important is that they destroy. That's the only real thing.

But when you look at it that way, you can almost see it as a sign of approval. The anima evaluating humanity as consonant with its way, not the Vishnan way.

The Shivans are anathema to the Great Darkness and resist its creation/spread at the most basic level. But they can only make large-scale plans or schemes against the Great Darkness if an anima can hold on long enough without being torn apart by the very nature of what it is. To the extent that Shivan omnicide has a 'motive' under this anima, it is simply to do what the Shivans do even better, more completely, more thoroughly, without restriction.

Shivans can't go universal genocide because of the Vishnans and some 'council', I thought? Like, that's what's stopping them and from what it looks like, the Vishnans can easily give Shivans a run for their money. Same with life perseverance, that's Vishnans wanting to do that because living is sometimes cool and getting rid of people ain't that swell.

The council is the terminal protocol is the dying design of the Brahmans: a set of strictures which the Shivans and Vishnans obey in service of the ultimate goal, a return to the greatness of the Brahmans and an end to the Great Darkness as a threat. But every aspect of that last sentence is subject to the constant assault and corrosion of Shivan metacognition. Any aspect is open to challenge.

The Vishnans do have one great advantage over the Shivans—they are in a higher, more removed position, outside and above of events. This is also, of course, their great disadvantage.

The Shivans are omnicidal, but they are not preemptively omnicidal. They do not attack or deplete the resources which give rise to life. A universe swarming with Shivans is not a universe of reduced diversity, exhausted subspace networks, or dead worlds. It is a universe full of fascinating and infinitely varied tombs: each species risen into the void left by the last, each extinguished by the Shivans.

Seconded. I would add to that, "If GD/Manifold Necrosis is what the Shivans are concerned about why don't they just exterminate all non-Shivan life and sterilize every planet with life on it or potential to produce life at some later point.

How would this goal arise among the Shivans? Who would pursue it and see it through? How would this goal endure in an environment so terribly corrosive to any stable behavior or purpose? What if it is regularly attempted by the Shivans, all over the universe, and the life we see is simply what slips through the cracks? Everything that lives is that which has failed to die. In an infinite cosmos, anything less than a 100% extermination rate still produces an infinite number of civilizations to rise and challenge the Shivans. Each one will ask itself: "Why are we here, when so many others were destroyed? What gave us this chance?" And the answer is: the very same chaos and blind arbitrary violence that will one day wipe them out.

Of course, the Vishnans inject their preferences and manipulations into the process. But they too are subject to the corrosion of the anti-being.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 12, 2020, 10:29:55 pm
There is of course a very simple motive which falls out of all this: the Shivans want to kill the Vishnans. They cannot want anything else.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on March 12, 2020, 11:13:08 pm
How do the Shivans (and Vishnans) react/feel about node denial? Like does mass node mason-bombing or subspace combat make them mad or cross some sort of trigger threshold?


Would the Shivans react or care about a large scale non-sapient threat?  Like Grey Goo or some other thing?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: starlord on March 13, 2020, 12:00:40 am
So, does this suggest that the shivans abducted Bosch to kill the vishnans by acting through the Terrans/Vasudans somehow?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 13, 2020, 04:53:00 am

Would the Shivans react or care about a large scale non-sapient threat?  Like Grey Goo or some other thing?

I like this question 👍
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 13, 2020, 10:19:53 am
That would definitely qualify as a defect-strategy hegemon, yeah.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Damage on March 13, 2020, 12:16:50 pm
what's the canon ending for "Her Finest Hour?"  Which ships in the Carthage battlegroup escape and which are goners?

I would assume that capturing the Carthage is a much more desirable goal than outright destroying it, if only for the intel value;

But I can also see the Fedayeen (and Laporte in particular) opting for the more practical option
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 13, 2020, 12:23:22 pm
It's whatever you did.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: rubixcube on March 14, 2020, 01:14:41 am
The Shivans are anathema to the Great Darkness and resist its creation/spread at the most basic level. But they can only make large-scale plans or schemes against the Great Darkness if an anima can hold on long enough without being torn apart by the very nature of what it is.

Ohhhh, this is why they want humanity; I think I get it.

what's the canon ending for "Her Finest Hour?"  Which ships in the Carthage battlegroup escape and which are goners?

This choice wont significantly affect the progression of the plot.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: redsniper on March 16, 2020, 02:45:15 am
I just read this whole thread yesterday and it's extremely good ****.

Are the Shivans even conscious?

If the Vishnans exist outside of any universe, and presumably outside any spacetime, how can it be that """""time""""" is running out to fix the terminal protocol, find successors to the Brahmans, preserve diversity of intelligent life, etc.?

Would a finished BP mod contain a visual depiction of the Great Attractor? Of the "extremely destructive fauna" inside a Sathanas?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: rubixcube on March 16, 2020, 05:33:26 pm
Are the Shivans even conscious?

From what I understand, no, the Shivans are not conscious (with the possible exception of Animas)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: manwiththemachinegun on March 18, 2020, 06:10:29 pm
Would Command authorize an expedition into N362 to attempt to access the Knossos there?  Or would they prefer to wait until the situation in Sol has stabilized?

This is actually part of the plot for BP3!

You tease you.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: manwiththemachinegun on March 26, 2020, 03:32:31 pm
What was Steele's service in the GTVA like during the Second Shivan Incursion? Were there any operations or events that helped shape his strategies or person?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on March 26, 2020, 03:34:32 pm
Maybe he was the pilot in Vassago's Dirge  :o :o :o :o :o
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: manwiththemachinegun on March 26, 2020, 06:47:13 pm
AGAIN with the teasing. :D
I know that the stories were developed separately but I love the little nods here and there to Vassago and Derelict.
And looking at it objectively, the fighter screens near fire support ships, the beam sniping, the use of unorthodox strategies like direct boarding and sabotage of an enemy base... Those do kind of fit with the more tactical combat approach the GTVA has in BP.
And yes, I know Axem did a lot of cross over work. But still...
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: SaltyWaffles on May 30, 2020, 07:14:10 pm
The Shivans are, over the course of WiH, engaging in a whole lot of manipulation literally behind the scenes. Canonically, when Laporte defies them at Capella, they consider this particular experiment a failure and go back to more straightforward omnicidal tactics again.
I know this was a while ago, but I'm very confused by this. Firstly, when the heck did Laporte defy the Shivans at Capella? She only talked to Ken, and she doesn't so much defy him as doubt her own sanity--and only briefly (hell, in real time, only seconds had passed)--before accepting Ken's mission and the reasons behind it. And Ken would be able to tell the Shivans that she ultimately did accept the mission.

Also, another question: why can't the Shivans fight the Great Darkness directly? Given their nature, they seem most suited for the task, and their infinite reserves/production capability, surely that would be a better approach than an imperfect containment-esque strategy.

And another: don't the Vishnans know what Shambhala is? Since they have direct access to the minds of the Council of Elders, who ARE in the know about it (even if only some of them know, Vishnans have access to them all), surely they know? I'm kind of confused as to why they seem so ambivalent about it, given that the Elders (who largely follow Vishnan ideals, or along those lines) seem confident about it as a way to win a war without destruction/killing, and it's so close to completion that apparently the UEF only needs to hold off the Tevs for a matter of days? Since they've already shown a penchant for direct intervention if they feel it's worth it, why would they not, say, do what they could to buy the Elders the time they need? It wouldn't even have to be direct, overt action like sending a battlegroup--just use their Nagari capability to influence/sabotage/direct the right people; after all, they only need to buy a matter of days.

Lastly: back before the Tevs captured Neptune, why was the UEF so unwilling to commit enough force to stop them? They had to have known how bad it would be to let the GTVA get a logistical foothold in the Sol system, and that the cost of stopping that would be far, far less than the cost of fighting the Tevs that had a solid beachhead into the system (and thus had the ability to expand that beachhead). By that point, they had to know the Tev's capabilities/tactics/doctrine fairly well from the Beis, and they certainly had more than enough ships to crush such an attempt without leaving critical assets/places undefended.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: DefCynodont119 on May 30, 2020, 08:06:56 pm
The Shivans are, over the course of WiH, engaging in a whole lot of manipulation literally behind the scenes. Canonically, when Laporte defies them at Capella, they consider this particular experiment a failure and go back to more straightforward omnicidal tactics again.
I know this was a while ago, but I'm very confused by this. Firstly, when the heck did Laporte defy the Shivans at Capella? She only talked to Ken, and she doesn't so much defy him as doubt her own sanity--and only briefly (hell, in real time, only seconds had passed)--before accepting Ken's mission and the reasons behind it. And Ken would be able to tell the Shivans that she ultimately did accept the mission.

It's referring to something that happens in an unfinished future act. There should be a short story about it somewhere in this thread.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: manwiththemachinegun on August 02, 2020, 02:00:23 pm
In terms of strategic analysis, is there AI in the setting? Freespace never mentions the topic due to its WWII fighter roots, but is there a compelling reason why drone technology and logistical planning isn't used more often?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on August 05, 2020, 09:39:16 am
The Shivans are, over the course of WiH, engaging in a whole lot of manipulation literally behind the scenes. Canonically, when Laporte defies them at Capella, they consider this particular experiment a failure and go back to more straightforward omnicidal tactics again.
I know this was a while ago, but I'm very confused by this. Firstly, when the heck did Laporte defy the Shivans at Capella? She only talked to Ken, and she doesn't so much defy him as doubt her own sanity--and only briefly (hell, in real time, only seconds had passed)--before accepting Ken's mission and the reasons behind it. And Ken would be able to tell the Shivans that she ultimately did accept the mission.

It's referring to something that happens in an unfinished future act. There should be a short story about it somewhere in this thread.




This :-) http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/dickinson_12_15/  (Text)
 
https://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/6/7/b/67b3ca4a705dea70/clarkesworld_12_15_dickinson.mp3?c_id=10484264&cs_id=10484264&expiration=1596647617&hwt=fe3593217982eead12988650bc3f525a  (Audio)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: captain austin on August 05, 2020, 01:07:32 pm
In terms of strategic analysis, is there AI in the setting? Freespace never mentions the topic due to its WWII fighter roots, but is there a compelling reason why drone technology and logistical planning isn't used more often?

This question has gnawed at me forever. But where the core canon lacks any satisfying resolution, the BP lore seems to go a long way toward solving it. The answer, I think (though lots of this is interpolating/BSing from extremely limited data), is BP’s dual emphasis on computing and the “constant arms race” of ECM/ECCM.

Today, many people regard the “optimal” space combat strategy as unleashing swarms of drone fighters or, better yet, AI guided missiles, precluding the need for manned starfighters at all. But in a universe where all sides have their own shiny Laplace daemon, and are obsessed with the statistical computation of optimal strategies, maybe our collective ability to preclude that optimum is so great that we all need to settle on something less: i.e., human pilots flying cool ships around.

We can start to see why from the way BP portrays capital ships (especially the most authoritative source of all: the BP card game :P). FS1 and 2 state that warship crews are both relatively expansive and expensive (the GTD Orion tech room compares the cost of the ship to paying the crew for 3 years; that crew cost is an order of magnitude more than modern aircraft carriers). Though some of that increase is due to the sheer scale of the ships, and broader changes in the general labor market (inflation is a *****), BP implicates that big parts of the crew expenses go to programmers, hackers, and other technical specialists. Think Kyle Netreba before he made it big in the admiralty. Their job is to jam enemy comms/sensors/weapons, and to cause whatever electromagnetic havoc they can while undoing whatever the enemy is doing to you. BP would have us believe that in the background of any shoot-em-up space battle is an extremely contested EM spectrum. Capital ships from cruiser-size on up train directional sensors and counter-sensors and counter-counter-sensors on each other in the same way they blast away with weapons. That is presumably why in FS1, capital ship missile weapons are relatively limited and appear mostly as direct line of sight (more ballistic gun than anything). That is also why the ships lack significant numbers of kinetic point-defense systems in that era. The GTA and PVN in FS1 are highly confident that, provided it loiters long enough, any fully autonomous weapons system (drone, missile, sentry gun, etc.) can be blinded, nullified, subverted, or electronically defeated.

So what we need is a way to minimize the amount of time ordinance spends homing onto a target—in other words, the period of vulnerability where it can be defeated. Enter the strike craft. If capital ships cannot deliver missiles from range, have small, nimble, and numerous platforms try to do it up close. We know from the base games that fighters have some onboard AIs (see the GTS Hygeia tech room; also, the fact that something fixes your subsystems slowly over time). Each fighter is a man-machine team. The benefits of the machine are so obvious that we must wonder why combatants keep the man at all.

But here BP’s lore comes to the rescue again. You cannot have a fully autonomous fighter, which in practice is just a particularly long-loitering missile (one that is very dangerous if subverted thanks to the other ordnance it is hauling). As an aside, today we tend to think “jamming” fully-autonomous systems is nonsense, but in FS they seem to have figured out how to do this quite early (think about all the sentry guns you hack). Even without that magic tech, the tactical flexibility you lose from relying on an AI severed entirely from the battlenet (to say nothing of its expense) has tradeoffs of its own (see the terrible performance of the GTDr Amazon, when it was apparently a real spaceframe in FS1). It is more efficient just to stick a pilot in. Other forms of drone fighters are also out. You cannot control drone fighters from the local capital ships, as those are by and large extremely jammed in any combat setting. Last, you cannot control drones over-the-horizon with subspace communications, which for the most part are not steady/powerful enough to direct munitions reliably (as they apparently struggle to project video into your comms system beyond grainy two-tone images).

The way to recover tactical flexibility given highly degraded comms, and increase strikecraft reliability and survivability given the ease of subverting autonomous systems, is to dumb-down the most important subroutines (flight control, weapons release, etc.) by putting a human in the driver’s seat. Meanwhile, the AI busies itself with wholly-internal tasks (repairing subsystems) or maybe stochastically varying your ordnances’ targeting matrices to let it cut through the evolving jamming situation and reach a target. And the man and machine keep each other in check. Just as cockpits can (well, according to the Morrigan stories anyway) autonomously polarize to blot out very bright objects (say a dazzling laser trying to blind a pilot), so too could having a human onboard help keep the AI from going on the fritz or being subverted, as there is someone to press the proverbial reset button. The AI and the human make up for each other’s weaknesses, and complement the strengths (massive capability!) and weakness (big slow target!) of the capital ships.

With this framework from BP, we can (maybe? IDK I'm just some guy) dispatch with a lot of open-ended, in-universe strategic questions:

•   Why did the UEF also forego drones and develop flak guns? From their shared GTA heritage, the Tevs and the UEF reach many similar conclusions after the First Incursion. Engaging in a cyber arms race with the comparably-equipped Vasudans or human rebels is one thing, but after encountering the utterly-superior Shivans it is clear there is no out-computing them (chiefly as they don't compute in the sense we do). So the importance of a man-in-the-loop grows even stronger, spelling the end of drone fighters. And you need more conventional kinetic point defense if your fancy electronic tricks are less likely to work.

•   Why is the UEF suddenly using missiles, which we would expect to be everyone’s weapon of choice as early as the Terran-Vasudan War? First, there is the obvious “brown v. blue water” doctrinal differences discussed in the tech room. The UEF can heft missiles as they are always close to supply sources, while the GTVA must look to energy weapons due to its expeditionary nature. But there is more to it than that. The UEF moves toward the expected optimum—missile-heavy loadouts—because of the massive computing advantage that assets like CASSANDRA or the processors underpinning Ubuntu market simulations offer their fleet against would-be Terran opponents in Sol. Of course, the Gefs can do ECM to some degree, but the UEF Fleet can expect to always have the computational upper hand, and thus feel comfortable reintroducing missiles. And if the Shivans return with even superior computers, there are plenty of mass drivers and strikecraft to fight the delaying action they plan for.

•   What about the GTVA? Don’t they have drones/SSMs now? Shouldn’t those not work? As mentioned, after the Great War, the GTVA reached some analogous conclusions to the UEF: kinetic point defense is needed, and drone fighters are evolutionary dead ends (you’d prefer missiles, which are cheaper, if you could get them). Boxed in with the Vasudans and wracked by internal revolt, they cannot share the UEF’s confidence in computational superiority over any local foes: i.e., they cannot safely fall back on missiles. So the primary weapon shifts to beams. During the Second Incursion, when it is revealed that beams can be jammed or disrupted, the Alliance responds with jury-rigged AWACS ships and TAG (perhaps based on research into Shivan exofauna to develop a sensor that can adhere to a hostile hull and survive long enough to serve its purpose). Then during TEI after Capella, we see tactical adjustments to minimize the danger of jamming by operating capital ships more like strike craft via the shock jump. Get in, fire first and quickly before you get jammed, and end the fight there. Like UEF missiles, their two big new weapons (SSM missiles and, in future BP, drone bombers) are not ideas straight off the drawing board, but rather old concepts made new through technological breakthroughs allowing the GTVA to shift closer to the optimal strategy. For the SSM missiles, the breakthrough is a leg up over the UEF regarding subspace comms, perhaps gleaned from the Knossos or Sathanas system that opened the Capella black hole. For the GTB Gorgon operating its drone bombers, the key to commanding the drones must be combining the relative mobility of a strike craft (compared to a capital ship) with some radical increase in processing power. Considering the class’s rarity, its emphasis on survivability, the Gorgon’s “full AWACS capacity,” and the boarding seen in the deuterocanonical Vassago’s Dirge, maybe BACKBREAKER is a CASSANDRA-analog, and each Gorgon mounts a dead Shivan to pull this off?

•   Why are AWACs/ISR/etc platforms ubiquitous in 2020, totally absent in FS1, and only reappear as extremely weak in FS2? Because according to BP, every fighter and capital ship in this universe takes on some aspect of network warfare as we understand it today. The dedicated AWACS platforms first appearing in FS2 are rush jobs to get particularly new/unoptimized/bulky capabilities into the field faster than it would take to overhaul existing warships with these capabilities. That is why many of the FS2 AWACS capabilities are integrated into line capital ships by the time of BP (see the long-range jamming used in The Things that Bind Us) and yet the AWACS are still around, demonstrating even newer technologies developed in response to the current war. On the UEF side, this understanding also lines up nicely with the Oculus tech room description, which says it was jury-rigged to meet unforeseen combat exigencies. AWACS are stopgap vessels used to get cutting-edge technologies into the field quickly and cheaply, without needing to take a destroyer into drydock to mount the latest and greatest tech.
 
•   Why are engagement ranges close enough to use guns? Because jamming of long-range sensors is so extreme that you need to close the gap to have any realistic chance of keeping a weapon on target without it being jammed, as having a human in the loop is so critical.

•   Why do fighters have to run ahead and scan things? Like the above, and capital ships are too systematically jammed to do it.

•   Why does it take longer to lock a Cyclops than a Harpoon? Having more space, crew, and processing power, the capital ship will always have the computational upper hand over the onboard AI of a fighter, and gain a corresponding electromagnetic edge. Overcoming that relative disadvantage is hard work!

•   Why are sentry guns such a bad idea? Because they are like a drone fighter or a missile: just a machine without people keeping it in check. It can thus apparently be hacked, which we see happen all the time in game, in one of the ultimate demonstrations that even autonomous AIs with little external direction are still liable to interference or subversion. Instead, sentry guns get used only when there is little risk of enemy capital ship presence, and thus minimal risk of encountering the heaviest forms of jamming: i.e., at supply depots (where most raids are by fighters), in-atmosphere (Eyes in the Storm), and to cover retreats (where they are just a distraction).

•   Why does it look the same (and very grainy) when you are talking to your wingman right next to you, or command on the other side of a node? Due to the extreme tactical jamming, EMCON could dictate that practically all military comms be conducted using subspace radio, no matter the realspace distance, to avoid disruption in the more classic EM spectrum.

TLDR: in this universe, it seems sometimes the smartest tactic is the one that looks suboptimal on the surface. The Shivans fall into this trope—the comparative lack of drones and AI missiles is another, distinct example.

Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Iain Baker on August 05, 2020, 01:31:48 pm
Well reasoned, well thought out and well explained  :) :yes:
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Renegade Paladin on August 05, 2020, 09:09:34 pm
The UEF's tech is a consequence of the environment in Sol. Their military planning was based around the assumption that expeditions through the node network are generally a thing of the past; the UEF Navy is essentially designed for peacekeeping ops in Sol and the (assumed low probability) event of a shivan incursion through the node network. Its ships and their armaments are essentially "coastal" (as opposed to the GTVA's "blue water" approach); it is assumed that they're always able to retreat to a safe position for repair and rearm, which is why their weapons are heavily projectile-based and more maintenance-intensive than their GTVA equivalents.
This being the case, why is it always the GTVA ships that jump out and deny you the kill when they hit critical, and UEF ships almost never do and when they do are super bad at it (see jumping into the sun), if doing that was their design intention? 
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: QuakeIV on August 05, 2020, 10:56:34 pm
My general understanding had been that GTVA ships have much better jump drive tech in general, and usually the UEF ships tend to die before they are ready to leave (or they try to leave early with horrible consequences) whereas the GTVA stuff is much more likely to be ready when it is needed.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: manwiththemachinegun on August 06, 2020, 12:35:03 am
A very good read. I never worry too much about line of sight engagements in fighter games though. Something something Minosfsky particles. ;)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: captain austin on August 06, 2020, 11:24:10 am
Minosfsky particles

Huh, today I learned. Thanks for that!

If we're still doing questions...in Her Finest Hour, when you're mopping up the last of the Carthage Air Wing, one of the GTVA squadrons is called "Neptune Provisional." Though they were probably just a cobbled-together composite wing of Tev pilots in for R&R/maintenance/reassignment at Neptune HQ, the reference was just vague enough that I always wondered if they were something else: local UEF collaborators being trained to fly the Kulas for the GTVA.

Are there any significant UEF ships, squadrons or assets (not just individuals like Elder Henrikkson) that defected during the war to the GTVA, like a 14th Battlegroup in reverse? Does that situation change after Steele capitulates Earth, or does the whole UEF fleet immediately go to space-Scapa Flow to await decommissioning/Laporte's mutiny? Is that mutiny met with hostility from some elements of the UEF fleet that would rather cooperate? I guess in general, will a theme of Acts 4/5 or BP3 be division within the former UEF about how to handle their defeat?

I always though that if an Elder in the center of the council was willing to defect, there must be some Jovians or Martians ready to call it quits and abandon Ubuntu, or cast their lot with the GTVA much sooner than the rest of the fleet.
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Damage on August 06, 2020, 01:38:20 pm
Off-hand I don't remember ever seeing a reference to any UEF defectors to the GTVA before Tenebra.

From a story perspective, LaPorte might not be in a position to know about them during her early role in the campaign, unless they were high-profile, in which case we might have at least a passing mention.  As a comparative example, McCarthy was a widely known traitor to the the GTVA, presumably because he was bringing technology to the Vasudans during an ongoing war.

Our hypothetical defectors wouldn't need anything more than information to take to the GTVA, and if such a defection was successful, the UEF would have every reason to keep that quiet from both the public and the military lower ranks.  Having said all that, I find it hard to believe there haven't been at least a few defectors, probably motivated as you suggest.

Wondering if there have been UEF defectors to the GTVA invites further questions regarding Ubuntu party's active and passive "social programming" (for lack of a better phrase)
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: SaltyWaffles on September 22, 2020, 01:34:25 pm
In terms of strategic analysis, is there AI in the setting? Freespace never mentions the topic due to its WWII fighter roots, but is there a compelling reason why drone technology and logistical planning isn't used more often?

This question has gnawed at me forever. But where the core canon lacks any satisfying resolution, the BP lore seems to go a long way toward solving it. The answer, I think (though lots of this is interpolating/BSing from extremely limited data), is BP’s dual emphasis on computing and the “constant arms race” of ECM/ECCM.

Today, many people regard the “optimal” space combat strategy as unleashing swarms of drone fighters or, better yet, AI guided missiles, precluding the need for manned starfighters at all. But in a universe where all sides have their own shiny Laplace daemon, and are obsessed with the statistical computation of optimal strategies, maybe our collective ability to preclude that optimum is so great that we all need to settle on something less: i.e., human pilots flying cool ships around.

We can start to see why from the way BP portrays capital ships (especially the most authoritative source of all: the BP card game :P). FS1 and 2 state that warship crews are both relatively expansive and expensive (the GTD Orion tech room compares the cost of the ship to paying the crew for 3 years; that crew cost is an order of magnitude more than modern aircraft carriers). Though some of that increase is due to the sheer scale of the ships, and broader changes in the general labor market (inflation is a *****), BP implicates that big parts of the crew expenses go to programmers, hackers, and other technical specialists. Think Kyle Netreba before he made it big in the admiralty. Their job is to jam enemy comms/sensors/weapons, and to cause whatever electromagnetic havoc they can while undoing whatever the enemy is doing to you. BP would have us believe that in the background of any shoot-em-up space battle is an extremely contested EM spectrum. Capital ships from cruiser-size on up train directional sensors and counter-sensors and counter-counter-sensors on each other in the same way they blast away with weapons. That is presumably why in FS1, capital ship missile weapons are relatively limited and appear mostly as direct line of sight (more ballistic gun than anything). That is also why the ships lack significant numbers of kinetic point-defense systems in that era. The GTA and PVN in FS1 are highly confident that, provided it loiters long enough, any fully autonomous weapons system (drone, missile, sentry gun, etc.) can be blinded, nullified, subverted, or electronically defeated.

So what we need is a way to minimize the amount of time ordinance spends homing onto a target—in other words, the period of vulnerability where it can be defeated. Enter the strike craft. If capital ships cannot deliver missiles from range, have small, nimble, and numerous platforms try to do it up close. We know from the base games that fighters have some onboard AIs (see the GTS Hygeia tech room; also, the fact that something fixes your subsystems slowly over time). Each fighter is a man-machine team. The benefits of the machine are so obvious that we must wonder why combatants keep the man at all.

But here BP’s lore comes to the rescue again. You cannot have a fully autonomous fighter, which in practice is just a particularly long-loitering missile (one that is very dangerous if subverted thanks to the other ordnance it is hauling). As an aside, today we tend to think “jamming” fully-autonomous systems is nonsense, but in FS they seem to have figured out how to do this quite early (think about all the sentry guns you hack). Even without that magic tech, the tactical flexibility you lose from relying on an AI severed entirely from the battlenet (to say nothing of its expense) has tradeoffs of its own (see the terrible performance of the GTDr Amazon, when it was apparently a real spaceframe in FS1). It is more efficient just to stick a pilot in. Other forms of drone fighters are also out. You cannot control drone fighters from the local capital ships, as those are by and large extremely jammed in any combat setting. Last, you cannot control drones over-the-horizon with subspace communications, which for the most part are not steady/powerful enough to direct munitions reliably (as they apparently struggle to project video into your comms system beyond grainy two-tone images).

The way to recover tactical flexibility given highly degraded comms, and increase strikecraft reliability and survivability given the ease of subverting autonomous systems, is to dumb-down the most important subroutines (flight control, weapons release, etc.) by putting a human in the driver’s seat. Meanwhile, the AI busies itself with wholly-internal tasks (repairing subsystems) or maybe stochastically varying your ordnances’ targeting matrices to let it cut through the evolving jamming situation and reach a target. And the man and machine keep each other in check. Just as cockpits can (well, according to the Morrigan stories anyway) autonomously polarize to blot out very bright objects (say a dazzling laser trying to blind a pilot), so too could having a human onboard help keep the AI from going on the fritz or being subverted, as there is someone to press the proverbial reset button. The AI and the human make up for each other’s weaknesses, and complement the strengths (massive capability!) and weakness (big slow target!) of the capital ships.

With this framework from BP, we can (maybe? IDK I'm just some guy) dispatch with a lot of open-ended, in-universe strategic questions:

•   Why did the UEF also forego drones and develop flak guns? From their shared GTA heritage, the Tevs and the UEF reach many similar conclusions after the First Incursion. Engaging in a cyber arms race with the comparably-equipped Vasudans or human rebels is one thing, but after encountering the utterly-superior Shivans it is clear there is no out-computing them (chiefly as they don't compute in the sense we do). So the importance of a man-in-the-loop grows even stronger, spelling the end of drone fighters. And you need more conventional kinetic point defense if your fancy electronic tricks are less likely to work.

•   Why is the UEF suddenly using missiles, which we would expect to be everyone’s weapon of choice as early as the Terran-Vasudan War? First, there is the obvious “brown v. blue water” doctrinal differences discussed in the tech room. The UEF can heft missiles as they are always close to supply sources, while the GTVA must look to energy weapons due to its expeditionary nature. But there is more to it than that. The UEF moves toward the expected optimum—missile-heavy loadouts—because of the massive computing advantage that assets like CASSANDRA or the processors underpinning Ubuntu market simulations offer their fleet against would-be Terran opponents in Sol. Of course, the Gefs can do ECM to some degree, but the UEF Fleet can expect to always have the computational upper hand, and thus feel comfortable reintroducing missiles. And if the Shivans return with even superior computers, there are plenty of mass drivers and strikecraft to fight the delaying action they plan for.

•   What about the GTVA? Don’t they have drones/SSMs now? Shouldn’t those not work? As mentioned, after the Great War, the GTVA reached some analogous conclusions to the UEF: kinetic point defense is needed, and drone fighters are evolutionary dead ends (you’d prefer missiles, which are cheaper, if you could get them). Boxed in with the Vasudans and wracked by internal revolt, they cannot share the UEF’s confidence in computational superiority over any local foes: i.e., they cannot safely fall back on missiles. So the primary weapon shifts to beams. During the Second Incursion, when it is revealed that beams can be jammed or disrupted, the Alliance responds with jury-rigged AWACS ships and TAG (perhaps based on research into Shivan exofauna to develop a sensor that can adhere to a hostile hull and survive long enough to serve its purpose). Then during TEI after Capella, we see tactical adjustments to minimize the danger of jamming by operating capital ships more like strike craft via the shock jump. Get in, fire first and quickly before you get jammed, and end the fight there. Like UEF missiles, their two big new weapons (SSM missiles and, in future BP, drone bombers) are not ideas straight off the drawing board, but rather old concepts made new through technological breakthroughs allowing the GTVA to shift closer to the optimal strategy. For the SSM missiles, the breakthrough is a leg up over the UEF regarding subspace comms, perhaps gleaned from the Knossos or Sathanas system that opened the Capella black hole. For the GTB Gorgon operating its drone bombers, the key to commanding the drones must be combining the relative mobility of a strike craft (compared to a capital ship) with some radical increase in processing power. Considering the class’s rarity, its emphasis on survivability, the Gorgon’s “full AWACS capacity,” and the boarding seen in the deuterocanonical Vassago’s Dirge, maybe BACKBREAKER is a CASSANDRA-analog, and each Gorgon mounts a dead Shivan to pull this off?

•   Why are AWACs/ISR/etc platforms ubiquitous in 2020, totally absent in FS1, and only reappear as extremely weak in FS2? Because according to BP, every fighter and capital ship in this universe takes on some aspect of network warfare as we understand it today. The dedicated AWACS platforms first appearing in FS2 are rush jobs to get particularly new/unoptimized/bulky capabilities into the field faster than it would take to overhaul existing warships with these capabilities. That is why many of the FS2 AWACS capabilities are integrated into line capital ships by the time of BP (see the long-range jamming used in The Things that Bind Us) and yet the AWACS are still around, demonstrating even newer technologies developed in response to the current war. On the UEF side, this understanding also lines up nicely with the Oculus tech room description, which says it was jury-rigged to meet unforeseen combat exigencies. AWACS are stopgap vessels used to get cutting-edge technologies into the field quickly and cheaply, without needing to take a destroyer into drydock to mount the latest and greatest tech.
 
•   Why are engagement ranges close enough to use guns? Because jamming of long-range sensors is so extreme that you need to close the gap to have any realistic chance of keeping a weapon on target without it being jammed, as having a human in the loop is so critical.

•   Why do fighters have to run ahead and scan things? Like the above, and capital ships are too systematically jammed to do it.

•   Why does it take longer to lock a Cyclops than a Harpoon? Having more space, crew, and processing power, the capital ship will always have the computational upper hand over the onboard AI of a fighter, and gain a corresponding electromagnetic edge. Overcoming that relative disadvantage is hard work!

•   Why are sentry guns such a bad idea? Because they are like a drone fighter or a missile: just a machine without people keeping it in check. It can thus apparently be hacked, which we see happen all the time in game, in one of the ultimate demonstrations that even autonomous AIs with little external direction are still liable to interference or subversion. Instead, sentry guns get used only when there is little risk of enemy capital ship presence, and thus minimal risk of encountering the heaviest forms of jamming: i.e., at supply depots (where most raids are by fighters), in-atmosphere (Eyes in the Storm), and to cover retreats (where they are just a distraction).

•   Why does it look the same (and very grainy) when you are talking to your wingman right next to you, or command on the other side of a node? Due to the extreme tactical jamming, EMCON could dictate that practically all military comms be conducted using subspace radio, no matter the realspace distance, to avoid disruption in the more classic EM spectrum.

TLDR: in this universe, it seems sometimes the smartest tactic is the one that looks suboptimal on the surface. The Shivans fall into this trope—the comparative lack of drones and AI missiles is another, distinct example.
A great post! A couple of things, though:

1. As we saw in Her Finest Hour, sentry guns do indeed have a very relevant and pretty potent use even against warships and their ECM--when backed by warships and ECCM of their own, they can provide substantial support for point defense and a bit of extra firepower against attacking warships. Granted, that only really works for purely defensive applications, but still--imagine a bunch of sentry guns helping to protect an installation like Artemis or an Arcadia; the station's own ECM/ECCM could protect the sentry guns from subversion. I imagine the reason we're seeing this now and not before is due to an advancement in ECM/ECCM, particularly in a networked and integrated manner (see BACKBREAKER), not merely in warships but in fighters and even sentry platforms.

2. We are seeing a greater emphasis on strike craft with their own serious ECM/ECCM capability, both with the Aurora and with the Gorgon. The idea is sound--basically, you add/integrate a serious EWAR package into a strike craft, which is coupled with the strike craft's above-average powerplant. Given that we don't see warships bristling with fighter-type guns for point-defense (which is important, because imagine if UEF warships were bristling with Rapier turrets instead of the PD guns or blob turrets--they'd slaughter warheads and bombers alike; likewise, imagine if Tev warships replaced all of their Terran Turret 2s with Balor turrets or Prometheus S turrets), the powerplants used for strike craft are too expensive or impractical to stuff into warships in the numbers required. The ROLE of these strikecraft, however, is typically not to use active ECM capabilities, but to provide targeting, navigational, sensor, and communications support to warships or other strike craft. In other words, they don't jam things, they support other assets in more passive ways. This is why we see a pair of AWACS ships in HFH; they're countering the UEF's EWAR actively, while the Auroras are providing targeting support.

3. The UEF hasn't introduced an AWACS fighter/strike craft of its own because that kind of capability requires too much work in advance to develop in an integrated manner. The Aurora was many years in the making, and most of its capabilities are only possible thanks to universal integration of BACKBREAKER and such. While the UEF could put AWACS-like capabilities in a strike craft, integrating the ability to properly take advantage of it into all other strike craft would be a lot harder (because none of the current craft were designed for that capability). Plus, it conflicts with UEF doctrine--that its strike craft would be closely supported by friendly warships whenever going up against anything larger than a fighter, that it had these powerful heavy bombers (or gunships) to use whenever going up against a warship without serious friendly warship support, and that the warships provided significant EWAR capabilities of their own anyway. This is why we see the UEF upgrading the EWAR capabilities of its existing warships (sometimes heavily so, like with the Custos-class and Eris) and modifying an existing ship for dedicated AWACS capabilities (like the Oculus).

4. Bombs and torpedoes are dramatically less effective than they used to be because they have not improved at all while point defenses and fighters have quite a lot. Bombs are still painfully slow, easily shot down, slow to fire, and not dealing a ton of damage even when they DO hit. Solaris (a fantastic total conversion mod for FS2) fixes this by making bombs faster firing, significantly faster-moving, doing ****loads of damage when they hit, and having weaker point defenses overall--thus, a pair of heavy bombers closing in on a frigate-equivalent is practically (very quick!) death sentence for the frigate, whereas a pair of Ursas closing in on a Karuna would usually result in a pair of dead Ursas with significant but not substantial damage on the Karuna. In Blue Planet, the only way for torpedoes to shine is by taking out point defenses on the target ship ahead of time or by overwhelming enemy point defenses with sheer numbers (typically by multiple warships) over time, and even then, it takes a while to actually finish off a warship in this manner. Tev warships have significant but relatively anemic torpedo firepower, but that's okay because they're designed to whittle down Shivan cruisers (which typically don't have that much in the way of point defenses) or to take out Shivan warships after Tev fighters have taken out some or all of the point defenses--and even then, torpedoes very much a tertiary armament for Tev warships that are their more for their all-aspect, good range capability than for firepower). The UEF alleviates this somewhat by having its bombers also carry powerful anti-ship cannons that the GTVA has no equivalent for at all, and these cannons obviously cannot be intercepted by point defenses or fighters. It is these, more than anything, that makes UEF bombers so dangerous; a pair of UEF bombers backed up by a wing of Uriel gunships is a quick death sentence to anything below a destroyer, and a major threat to even destroyers themselves.

Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: Phantom Hoover on October 28, 2020, 04:30:01 pm
Right, I just replayed BP and Battuta's posting again so you better answer my questions you mother****er.

What's the grand Vishnan plan? They're doing something the Shivans are suspicious about, something outside the prior status quo, but I'm not quite sure what it is. What do they think it will accomplish? Why does forcing isolation of Sol and then ****ing around with it for 50 years play into that? What would be the ~objectively likely~ outcome of this and would it involve the Great Darkness eating everyone's brains?
Title: Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Post by: General Battuta on December 09, 2020, 06:43:04 pm
They want to appoint a successor to the Brahman. It's very hard to know the objectively likely outcome.