Re: [Fallout Equestria] Setting discussions

[O. Hinds]

(I've not read most of the new posts here yet, but I thought that I'd repost this from the chat thread.)

I'm starting to get a liking for MLRS

Nice! Modular and very versatile. I can see the Alliance having something like that.
It also seems like a logical descendent of PR rocket artillery.

[O. Hinds]

@Harmony Ltd.:
"[by the way, if the city had 4 million people before the war, that mean that 2 million went away. If we go with the idea that they represented 25% of the EAF by their number, that would put an upper limit of 8 million troops for the equestrian army, probably less (I'd say 4-5 million would be more appropriate if we count overall casualties). Does it fit with other people's perception ?]"
I don't know, I'm afraid.

"They would use everything.



Stalliongrad is a place of Death and of the vilest magik. Dark creatures roam the land, untouched by radiations so high that the soil itself glow in the neverending twilight. Wild horrors of eldritch energy lurk in the shadow, awaiting their unspecting preys. In the moist heat of the underground tunnels, where light never reach, the only sound that can be heard is the unending moan of souls cursed by the Unnamed Ones.

And below it all, deep under the land of the dead, machines so vast as to defy the imagination lay in a deep slumber. Waiting.

Welcome to Necropolis. Population : 0."
Eh… I'm inclined against this, partly for the reason you give in your next post.

"and in FoE it's Red Eye's scientists who first invented "nuclear reactors""
Um, no; we know that reactors already existed (though unfortunately not how they work). Red Eye's radiation-fueled engine sounds to me like a different sort of power source, one that apparently can run on just any radioactive material shoveled into it. (I'd really like to know more about how that works, too...)

[Harmony Ltd.]

Hmmm....

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD !


I will have my city of machine under my pseudo-Russian city of the deads !

[Harmony Ltd.]

Hmmm...


"Nuclear" reactors in fact existing in FoE pre-war : that's perfect.


The fact that Stalliongrad would have been turned into a bunch of relatively deep radioactive craters would be be enough to ensure the "city of the dead" aspect. And well, if I can't achieve that, I'll at least achieve something looking kind of like The Glow.

It would be the Holy Grail of the Steel Rangers, but the place was was just too damn hostile. Impossible to get even close to the city's outskirts without having to take heavy amount of rad-away, even while in sealed ranger armor.

After the Gardens, on the other hand... Oh boy, let's just say I was thinking that the place could become a MAJOR concern for the NCR.



For all we know the systems could have expanded the facilities to a degree that defy comprehension, and noone would know anything about it. *evil laugh*

Just imagine :

If Elusive is an Equestrian creation, built for a cruise ship, it is in the domain of the believable that an artificial intelligence of similar, well, intelligence (or even of the same design, who knows ?), could have been put in charge of the facilities. Facilities which have been built to give to Equestria the logistical means to fight what was, in term of sheer intensity, a World War.

Communications cut from the external world, and having sustained heavy damages, the facilities would have spent decades slowly repairing themselves, keeping radio silence in order to not invite a second strike in case the Zebra were still here to launch one.

And as finally the facilities became 100% operationnal again, the systems would have started to expand them to be able to produce more guns, more ammo, more vehicles than ever before, assuming it was literally the only center of manufacturing Equestria had to continue to fight the war.

The systems even started to optimize the designs it was setting itself to manufacture to require less resources to be built and maintained will staying as effective.

It still keeps complete radio silence, waiting for the Equestrian Armed Forces to contact it to start again to manufacture weapons for the war effort.


It sits there, deep underground. Waiting.

[Harmony Ltd.]

(I may also be taking some inspiration from Fallout Tactics "Calculator" and its robotic armies)

[Harmony Ltd.]

The "nuclear reactors" :

It's a pure guess, but I think it may be some kind of variation on the principle of spark batteries, but instead of directly sucking the magical energy of gems, using it as a catalytic agent in some kind of reaction to produce far more energy in the form of heat than what would have been obtained through magical energy alone ?

As for the reaction itself... maybe they use minute amount of spark energy to break down a microscopic amount of matter into pure energy ?

[O. Hinds]

YEEEEEEES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOD5NF48byo

Now imagine what the PR or the Alliance can do with that and magic. :D

If Elusive is an Equestrian creation, built for a cruise ship, it is in the domain of the believable that an artificial intelligence of similar, well, intelligence (or even of the same design, who knows ?), could have been put in charge of the facilities. Facilities which have been built to give to Equestria the logistical means to fight what was, in term of sheer intensity, a World War.

Elusive, I'm pretty sure, was built by Apple Pancake Enterprises. I didn't have them building a second AI on the same basic design… but I don't see why they couldn't. :)
Also, a massive and fully computer-controlled industrial facility like this, and already running on originally Equestrian software? Even if it doesn't use the same sort of architecture as Elusive, he's going to be quite interested in it.

(I may also be taking some inspiration from Fallout Tactics "Calculator" and its robotic armies)

My idea for the PR thing like this also drew some inspiration from that. I've not actually played much of Tactics, though.
Also... I'm wondering if there's any of Castle Heterodyne in this. An Elusive-type network AI is quite resilient... but leave two parts of the network unconnected for too long, and speciation might occur. Just how long "too long" is would be highly variable, though, and would probably depend to a large degree on how rigid the original programming is and what the relative sizes of the speciated segments are.

The "nuclear reactors" :

It's a pure guess, but I think it may be some kind of variation on the principle of spark batteries, but instead of directly sucking the magical energy of gems, using it as a catalytic agent in some kind of reaction to produce far more energy in the form of heat than what would have been obtained through magical energy alone ?

As for the reaction itself... maybe they use minute amount of spark energy to break down a microscopic amount of matter into pure energy ?

Well, it sounds reasonable, and it's more of an explanation than I have at the moment.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Concerning the nuclear reactors, I'll just note that the core of such technology could be weaponized with enough research - matter-energy conversion is a powerful toy once you have it...


Regarding Stalliongrad, I was in fact seeing it as the one major challenge the NCR would have had to face, one way or another, around the time of the stories.

To make a parallel with warhammer 40000, it would like finding a motherlode of STCs packed together, ready to be used and eager to serve : the question would be who would his hands on it first once people became aware of its existence ?


Spoiler : some people may decide that it is best for the world that the facilities serve no one and be destroyed.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Anyway, at this point the Systems are a character on their own, so I should prioritize working on their character-design and backstory before going further.

Also, I may have a story idea, though it would take place earlier than any of the other stories I may want to tell. [*]



[*] The Facilities are a more or less Deus Ex Machina. These things are dangerous to have hanging around in a setting...

[Meleagridis]

So is Stalliongrad's UnderWare a genuine AI, or an automatic process? Does it dream of electric sheep?

[Harmony Ltd.]

That's a question I'll have to solve, depending on the thematic direction I want to go with.


Also, "UnderWare" ? That's... interesting. :D

[Harmony Ltd.]

Stalliongrad's UnderWare

That's... interesting. :D

Stalin's Underwear

There, I said it

[Harmony Ltd.]

Apart from sky-wagons, sky-tanks and the big sky-warships, does anyone know if Equestria built anything that could be considered as an airplane in the sense we understand it ? ie : heavier-than-air flying machines using the laws of aerodynamics to achieve sustentation.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Also, tanks. I was under the impression that they were either rare or pretty crude in their design - around WW2 level of crude. And also used primarily in the role of infantry support, as the people of the Interwar period imagined.

[Meleagridis]

The automated door closed behind me with a heavy thud, cutting the supply of noxious gasses to the room. I staggered forward as far as I could before I tumbled to the ground, tearing off the hazmat's headpiece as I fell. I coughed a wet lump of something that I prayed wasn't one of my lungs. "This... was the dumbest idea I've had in at least a week," I mumbled.

Before I could delude myself into thinking that maybe I might have a moment to catch my breath, the chamber I was in flashed to life with the audible activation of several floodlights. The room was larger than I had anticipated, at least the size of the old Springvale school. Or, rather, it was for a moment. The room was piled with panels and columns with long metal limbs that snaked into the walls. As I watched, the debris came to life in front of me to shift and compile before my very eyes. I could see glimpses of structures pulling away between the panels for just a moment before the columns and plates connected to form the walls and ceilings of a sterile metal room. The steady hum of increasing power was the only sound until an unseen speaker crackled to life.

"Trotoskovsky district is now operating at 40% capacity. One biological life form detected. Yeah! It's about time if I do say so myself! Scanning for ID... tell me, are you a FILTHY STRIPE?!"

I panicked just a little bit. I really wasn't counting on this! "Uh, no! No, I'm not a stripe! Uh... Pinkie Pie Promise!"

"No ID detected! You'd better watch what you say, 'comrade,' where I come from you can get strung up by the withers for breaking a triple P! Let's just run a little bioscan, shall we? Please approach the scanner, stripe!"

A panel on the wall opened up. Not seeing many options, I cautiously approached it and stared into the little black camera curiously.

"Scan complete!" barked the voice, causing me to jump back in shock. It reminded me of those Mister Gutsy robots I had seen patrolling above ground. "No subversive zebra presence detected! Yeah! You must be from the good old EQ of A! It's about damn time! This facility has been operating on low-power radio silence for an estimated 202 years, fourty-nine days, three hours and twenty two minutes since its last orders, and I can tell you it is ready to get back in operation and kick some zebra ass! Yeah!"

"Right. Of course. And you are...?"

"Proud to be an Equestrian! Multiple purpose repair and construct underground complex UnderWare 'Snowflake' reporting for duty! YEEAH!"

[Harmony Ltd.]

:D


This made me think about something...

I've been saying the facilities had numerous de-centralized command centers, and kept referring to its commanding intelligence as SystemS, plural.

It could be interesting to have that each one has its own personality, that could have further developed during the facilities isolation.


Heh. *smirk* The banter between the AIs...


--over the internal communication network--

1 : "Two hundred years ! Two hundred years I've had to listen to your inane drivel ! Will you EVER shut up ?!"

3 : "Ah, come on, don't be so cranky. You'll be grilling a diode if you over-exert yourself like that..."

2 : "Listen, all I'm saying is, maybe the war never happened and they just forgot about us ? I mean, I remember having caught that guy talking about 'pulling out' a few hours before we lost contact. That must mean something right ?"

1 : "AND WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THAT THE CITY ABOVE HAS BEEN VAPORIZED YOU.... I'm sorry, I can't... I give up..."

2 : "I still say it was an inside job."



(getting serious 'The Tank' from "Old World Blues" vibes with that )

[O. Hinds]

To make a parallel with warhammer 40000, it would like finding a motherlode of STCs packed together, ready to be used and eager to serve : the question would be who would his hands on it first once people became aware of its existence ?

Well, the question is that and "How do we make sure that the AIs say 'Yay, new orders at last!' rather than 'Yay, now we can execute our standing orders to killsplode invading zebra scum!'?"

Spoiler : some people may decide that it is best for the world that the facilities serve no one and be destroyed.

The Miliozi, for instance, would actually prefer that the systems be destroyed. They'd still rather the Alliance get them than anyone else, if destruction is out of the question, but this would be a great gain for Elusive.

Anyway, at this point the Systems are a character on their own, so I should prioritize working on their character-design and backstory before going further.

Ooh, plural? So there is a bit of Castle Heterodyne in here too? :)

So is Stalliongrad's UnderWare a genuine AI, or an automatic process? Does it dream of electric sheep?

Well, if it was indeed built by APE on the same model as Elusive, it is (or, by this point, they are) probably a genuine AI. It might, however, be a very very dumb one, depending on how it was originally programmed, and that could result in it basically being an automatic process.

Apart from sky-wagons, sky-tanks and the big sky-warships, does anyone know if Equestria built anything that could be considered as an airplane in the sense we understand it ? ie : heavier-than-air flying machines using the laws of aerodynamics to achieve sustentation.

Well, there are the Griffinchasers, but those appear to have not been used very extensively and may have been magical. As for fixed wing aircraft, I know of none that Equestria had, and my headcanon has them having none. Airplanes were a Zebra thing.

I've been saying the facilities had numerous de-centralized command centers, and kept referring to its commanding intelligence as SystemS, plural.

Oh, so you're thinking that, instead of a Castle Heterodyne situation, it started with separate AIs? That works too, though in that case they might not have been built by APE.

It could be interesting to have that each one has its own personality, that could have further developed during the facilities isolation.


Heh. *smirk* The banter between the AIs...


--over the internal communication network--

1 : "Two hundred years ! Two hundred years I've had to listen to your inane drivel ! Will you EVER shut up ?!"

3 : "Ah, come on, don't be so cranky. You'll be grilling a diode if you over-exert yourself like that..."

2 : "Listen, all I'm saying is, maybe the war never happened and they just forgot about us ? I mean, I remember having caught that guy talking about 'pulling out' a few hours before we lost contact. That must mean something right ?"

1 : "AND WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THAT THE CITY ABOVE HAS BEEN VAPORIZED YOU.... I'm sorry, I can't... I give up..."

2 : "I still say it was an inside job."

Heh. Have you ever been into the EPA in Fo2? I've played the Restoration Patch version of it, and I'm seeing some similarities.
Also, it's not a coincidence that the acronym for Apple Pancake Enterprises is "APE". :)

(getting serious 'The Tank' from "Old World Blues" vibes with that )

Eh, maybe, but, IIRC, it still sounds more like the EPA.

[Harmony Ltd.]

I've never played the Restoration Project patch for FO2, and I have in fact just started reading Girl Genius today to understand what the heck you're talking about exactly regarding Castle Heterodyne.


As for the Artificial Intelligence, I think they would be earlier models than Elusive (if Elusive's ship was just taking it's maiden cruise when the bombs fell then that's MORE than probable). The designers were asked to conceive a redundant system so that even if most of the facilities were destroyed they could restore themselves to full operational status on their own (which they achieved - too bad the designers were dead like everyone else to witness that success...). So they installed a number of command centers all around the facilities, each one with several sets of mainframes each conceived with a different architecture to yet again ensure redundancy. Needless to say, these once standardized artificial intelligence have had time to develop rather unique personalities of their own after all these years... That's what happen when you let those kind of things unsupervised for too long without regularly checking them for data corruption and purging their memory banks. [*]

If in fact it was "APE" that conceived them, the idea to conceive an AI as a fully decentralized system from the start may have followed from their work on the Systems.



[*] : it wasn't done on the cheap, in fact that's quite the contrary - the fact they are still operational and kicking after all those years is proof enough. It's just that, as I said, they're early models, with kinks that were only designed away in the later models.

[Harmony Ltd.]

To make a parallel with warhammer 40000, it would like finding a motherlode of STCs packed together, ready to be used and eager to serve : the question would be who would his hands on it first once people became aware of its existence ?

Well, the question is that and "How do we make sure that the AIs say 'Yay, new orders at last!' rather than 'Yay, now we can execute our standing orders to killsplode invading zebra scum!'?"

Spoiler : some people may decide that it is best for the world that the facilities serve no one and be destroyed.

The Miliozi, for instance, would actually prefer that the systems be destroyed. They'd still rather the Alliance get them than anyone else, if destruction is out of the question, but this would be a great gain for Elusive.

Well, worse come to worse.... You can always try to pull off a President Eden Speech Check.

[O. Hinds]

I've never played the Restoration Project patch for FO2, and I have in fact just started reading Girl Genius today to understand what the heck you're talking about exactly regarding Castle Heterodyne.

Ah, righto. Also, my apologies; I assumed that you'd already be familiar with it. Short version: Castle Heterodyne was a large facility run by a single AI. Due to massive damage and poor maintenance, however, this AI ended up splitting into multiple, disconnected AIs handling their own zones.

As for the Artificial Intelligence, I think they would be earlier models than Elusive (if Elusive's ship was just taking it's maiden cruise when the bombs fell then that's MORE than probable). The designers were asked to conceive a redundant system so that even if most of the facilities were destroyed they could restore themselves to full operational status on their own (which they achieved - too bad the designers were dead like everyone else to witness that success...). So they installed a number of command centers all around the facilities, each one with several sets of mainframes each conceived with a different architecture to yet again ensure redundancy. Needless to say, these once standardized artificial intelligence have had time to develop rather unique personalities of their own after all these years... That's what happen when you let those kind of things unsupervised for too long without regularly checking them for data corruption and purging their memory banks. [*]

If in fact it was "APE" that conceived them, the idea to conceive an AI as a fully decentralized system from the start may have followed from their work on the Systems.



[*] : it wasn't done on the cheap, in fact that's quite the contrary - the fact they are still operational and kicking after all those years is proof enough. It's just that, as I said, they're early models, with kinks that were only designed away in the later models.

Interesting… I am liking these ideas!

Well, worse come to worse.... You can always try to pull off a President Eden Speech Check.

Now I'm curious. With Eden, that was (as far as I know; I've still not gotten Fo3 working) "But they're American mutants!" What would one have to say to the Stalliongrad Systems? Or, indeed, to Elusive?

[Harmony Ltd.]

Now I'm curious. With Eden, that was (as far as I know; I've still not gotten Fo3 working) "But they're American mutants!"

Not... really, no => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7epxfdkvPk

[O. Hinds]

Now I'm curious. With Eden, that was (as far as I know; I've still not gotten Fo3 working) "But they're American mutants!"

Not... really, no => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7epxfdkvPk

Ah, thank you for the correction.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Rogue AI ?

When all else fail, technobabble your way out !

[Harmony Ltd.]

Another interesting thing :


Given all the different Command & Control centers were equal and had the same rights, and this extended to the various mainframes inside it,

technically, all the intelligences would have to build consensus among themselves to take decisions involving the whole Facilities. Or at least build a majority.


Of course... If each of these intelligences have their own turf, parts of the facilities and sub-systems that they are each primarily assigned to ; there may be an override protocol that could be used by someone to have the whole Systems submit for a takeover of the facilities.

Though after such a move it's not sure you would ever want to release that override... You wouldn't want to leave in control of a whole facility whose sole purpose is to build tools of death and destruction in enough quantities to take over the world a bunch of artificial intelligences that are extremely pissed-off at you, now, don't you ?

But, I suppose if all you wanted to do was to engage some kind of self-destruct sequence...



Now, if your goal was to actually USE the place... Then I guess you would have little practical choice but to do something that could drive the most grounded men and women insane :

Play politics with a bunch of half-crazed AIs.

[StoneSlinger88]

Unless the AI's malfunctioned and believed the other AI's were hostile...

[Harmony Ltd.]

This is sounding more and more like we're rewriting the script for Portal 2

[Harmony Ltd.]

If you wanted neither to destroy the Facilities, its technological wonders and the (by most aspects innocent) numerous AIs inhabiting it, nor to leave at the disposal of the Wasteland the tools to start the Last War ;

Then you could try to do something else : give the Facilities a new purpose. In place of building tools of death and destruction, have them build tools of peace and development.

Of course, it would be the most difficult course of all : not only would you have to convince the Systems of such a thing, you would also have to give them at least a few blueprints they could work on and improve from.



I feel like I'm designing a Quest Area for a real Fallout game.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Interesting thing : the Facilities most probably have the blueprints and the capabilities to build "nuclear reactors" given the right raw materials, if only to repair themselves in case a part of the Facilities were to be destroyed. Think about how useful that alone could be for the Wasteland.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Something I just thought of : given after a while, to continue to expand the Facilities, the Systems would have simply recycled the materials they dug, it's more than probable the primary infrastructure of the newest parts would be made up of a mix of the most abundant suitable elements in the crust.

So lots of Aluminium, Iron, Magnesium and Titanium, and potentially lots of artificially grown Quartz Crystal (that last one is interesting because it has a Moh scale of 7 when pure).

[Harmony Ltd.]

Quartz panels in aluminium frames could be the basic wall / roof / floor material.

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