Tactics: Let's conquer an alien planet.

Ok tigers, let the driving wheel alone. You are both making polls about long term stuff, that was mostly debated and decided long ago. And read the topic, yes all 250 pages; tons of stuff you are trying to ask and push has been debated before.

Expedition to L-IV has been agreed ages ago. Our plan for NotMoon is cautions non invasive study while our industrial potential grows; with a yet undecided "feel secure enough" point.

You are asking fine detail questions about meeting supposed M3 delegation. We don't know if their offer is genuine, maybe they are just trying to get us to talk since M3 on its own doesn't have resources to do the meeting. Are they talking for a coalition of powers? Would be nice to talk that out with them first. What if other powers try to prevent their expedition, or "just" put us on adversary list because of cooperating with one particular block of nations?

Only thing that should be discussed right now is our data of L system and our communication policy for next couple of in game days. Do we talk, or wait, if we talk to whom we talk, what do we say...

That is a summary of what's going on, NOT a summary of what the current plan is.

L-III-XVII is not particularly large, as moons go, and, hypoithetically, would have to engage in a pure (and full-efficiency!) matter-antimatter reaction in order to mass-scatter L-II.

We may be able to get forces on the surface of LII without Lamprey knowledge by leveraging our biotechnology to create large objects.

The organism begins as a spore, using PNA, so it doesn't mutate and matches LII life more closely. When the spore lands in seawater, it begins to grow into a small mobile organism that looks identical to some small aquatic LII creature. When the organism is fully grown, it seeks out a hydrothermal vent and buries itself in the sediment. Once there, it begins to grow similarly to a fungus, spreading tendrils out among the vents and through the sediment. The fungus continues to grow, and eventually creates a "womb" that produces nanobots in the controlled environment they require. The nanobots then proceed to construct a refining unit, tiny chemical power plant, and collector and assembly robots using resources delivered by the fungus.

Yes, in my experience GFs rarely consider aggressive explorations of their honeypots- you know what? Never mind.

I'm interested in seeing it. The best I can think of right now is a momentum exchange tether. If we cut it up I think we have enough cable to make about six of optimum size given the strengths of carbon nanotubes, though we might want to adjust that to account for g-loads if we want to be able to take biologicals for a ride. Either way, it's enough to start building a very cheap and efficient, if slow, transit system.

Agreed, it's pretty much a Kevlar balloon with an aluminum radiator on the outside, chain more as desired. If it's attached to the exchange tether it'll even have artificial gravity. We can already make simple and easy solar cells.

I'm dead set against giving them any look at our biologics until we know more about what has spooked them about theirs and Foamy makes up his mind about the PNA.

Diplobot is a decent first step, and we can rapidly improve on the by holding a crowd-sourced contest to design and vote on a better ambassador. Meanwhile personal interaction in both open communications with the general population and whatever "game" we end up putting together will do vastly more than any international diplomacy.

Seriously, if aliens showed up on Earth and made a facebook account, how many friend requests do you think they'd get in the first hour? Think they'd have to spend much time waiting around "looking for group?" There's already evidence that the upcoming human generation cares a lot less about nationality due to this sort of early experience and there's serious consideration being given to the idea of formal "digital nationhood," nations that have actual citizens and are in every capacity nations, but don't have a geographical territory.

Awesome. Some forms of art as part of play wouldn't be a bad idea either. Showing that we're abstract thinkers with an appreciation of absurdity will humanize lampreyize our public perception.

We could build our own bubbles, shaped like balloon animals, or just plain do it bigger. The pVN is capable of churning out 210,000,000 kilos of 10nm aluminum coated mylar a day, that's enough to make an inflated sphere with a radius of about 40,000km, just for the hell of it. Earth has a radius of about 6,400km just for reference.

"What the hell is in that thing!?!"

"We don't want to talk about it."

"Why is it broadcasting what look's like ultra-high encrypted communications on all frequencies?"

"We don't want to talk about it."

"Why does the surface seem to be changing colors and running Conway's "game of life?"

"We don't want to talk about it."

"Why are you building more?"

"We don't want to talk about it."


If we really want decoys we can do a hell of a lot better than FB for a lot cheaper. We could basically flood the system with too many potentially vital targets for them to ever destroy in a first strike.

What in the name of all that is holy and unholy is that image supposed to be?
Also I thought i had thrown in my votes but didnt see it on Hobb's list.. one sec while i re-vote...
okay..
Yes to RandomJ's honeypot.
Yes to modifying a Lander to be easily detonated and able to meet with Lampreys.
Yes to 1a using the already agreed upon plan to spam the galaxy with humanity.
Yes to 2a with 2c as a backup using RandomJ's Exploding Lander.

Conway's Game of Life, looks like.

my station thing should read "obsolete power source and obsolete computer system" so much for proofreading

So foamy, long story short, does the trojan look more like a complicated thing that really (if unsuccessfully) tries to live up to the task of running on a wide array of platforms (including unknown ones)?

And does it bear typical signs of being developed by several people (team/s) ?

You probably mean this:
Tether propulsion

What makes you think they won't see an elaborate trap in that space-station?

Minor clarification:
I don't want to send a 100% biological emissary , but rather a cybernetic shell that gives us the closest approximation to human looks with the least amount of fleshy bits.

Anyway , I don't think it'll be that bad.
We already know they aren't afraid of the unknown , so that's something we don't have to worry about.
There'll certainly be some sort of shock reaction among a number of Lamprey's , but they'll quickly get over it.
Also , showing our 'true' face has a very symbolic meaning , given how much the Lampreys value face-to-face.
Diplobot on the other hand - innocous as it might be - is just a remote terminal with zero symbolic value.

"Do you mind giving us some privacy? We aren't constantly looking at your naughty bits either."

Are those things really worrying you? Why?

False dilemma:
If I can't run away I'd rather take my chances and do a forward retreat , trying to find out as much about the alien menace as possible.
Also , keeping with your metaphor , that Bolo already slept through several metric tons of TNT blowing right next to it.

Does it matter?
They can hardly argue with the wisdom of sending in the bots first.
Opportunities to keep them away from things 'Lampreykind was not meant to know' without them suspecting something might be very limited , though.

Perhaps it's time we set up some sort of "Let's conquer an alien planet"-Strategy thread , although I'm unsure whether that would be of any use.

I'm certain that falls under the bio-tech shenanigans not allowed by GM decree.
Same reason we can't have anorganic nano , at least not the way it's commonly understood.

So, what are we waiting for, in terms of the next story post?


And two, anybody remember the name of the first tactics thread? I feel like rereading it.

Mostly for foamy to finish Dragon Age II
Nah , just joking

We're mostly discussing how to reply to the messages we've been getting recently , especially M3's proposal.
Also what to tell the Lampreys about NotMoon and stuff , how to get the them trust us and so on.

WHAT? THERE WAS ANOTHER TACTICS THREAD?!
Does anyone know any details?

THIS is the first tactics thread.

No, not actually. This is the first one by me. The first tactics thread was by Fuzzy Modem, if I recall correctly, and can be found here:

http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=132574

He posted a couple of other ones later:

http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=145259
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=147946

It's only shenanigans if it wouldn't actually work.

We can build organisms from scratch and simulate them effectively.

Jellyfish lifecylce
Some organisms here on earth have similarly strange lifecycles.

Proteins
Cells are quite capable of making molecular machines.

Our nanotech works in a controlled environment. The organism gathers the heavy metals and energy required.

Does that fix your shenanigans alarm?

Well , I'm not the GM , you'll have to ask foamy whether he'll allow that or not.

Foamy hasn't been banning things via fiat.

What's the point of introducing a few extra monsters into the ecosystem?

If we want to simulate a sucessful hack, I suggest a single computer of a "Laser Management Cluster" as the infected system. Each member unit of the cluster would maintain aiming, focusing, and power output data redundantly. Message processing would be divided among cluster elements, allowing us to feed selected messages to the simulation. It would be interesting to know where the malware would attempt to direct the laser for communications, or if they then try to burn something with it.

Keep in mind that their primitive computers likely have limited or no facilities for virtualization or emulation. In the very worst case, we can use an Audacity lab or AVN to spin up a custom computer-on-a-chip that will let us execute the thing on hardware with complete external control.

You might as well, there's nothing else to do. Maybe you can catch its attention long enough to keep it from driving over you.

At the level we are talking about, all they can do is send random bit patterns and hope that something 'sticks' in our systems. It is trivial to stop this by NEVER writing more than X bytes to an X byte buffer. The checks that enforce this are rather expensive in primitive computers like the Lampreys have unless they have hardware-based assistance.

Assuming a buffer is not boundry-enforced, after sucessfully crashing out the end of the buffer the extra data needs to be executed. Most of the time crashing out of a buffer has very little room for commands, so the attacker needs to load more code by addressing memory. This is operating system and architecture dependant.

Crashing a buffer on Windows willl not work the same as crashing a buffer on OS X even though they are both x64 processors. Additionally, x86-compatible processors have several different operating modes which will change how the processor reacts to the instruction "jump to memory address 0x425D". Most PowerPC chips have a selectable endian mode, which changes how a given set of bytes will be interpreted into an address, opcode, or data. CISC type chips have variable instruction lengths while RISC chips have more instructions but they are all the same number of bytes, and there are plenty of other types.

And all this assumes that an attacker knows what they are attacking down to the bits and physical wires.

It is impossible that the Lampreys do not know this if they have ever in history had more than one kind of CPU.

Assuming the attack gets to loading more data, now what? How does the program go about accessing the hard drive to store data permanently? It's different on IDE vs. MFM vs. SCSI and BIOS vs. OpenFirmware vs. EFI vs. ROM based systems. Network access depends on the tranceiver chip and how it is attached: ISA, PCI, PCI-Express, Nubus, USB, PCMCIA, MicroChannel. And those lists are limited to widely distributed mass-market general purpose computers.

Assume the network tranciever is successfully used: what to send and where to send it? The program needs to discover each and every layer of the network stack from bottom to top in order to communicate.


If they genuinely expected the attack to work, they are morons of the highest order OR the attacker expected a specific kind of computer would recieve the information. Lamprey Illuminati who discovered an ancient artifact and have been preparing for contact for generations?

It is possible of course that some fringe looney group has seen too much Lamprey Independance Day.


Still, I like the honeypot for seeing what they will do about it. Perhaps it is lampchanners who will try to draw an obscene gesture on one of the larger asteroids.

Not monsters, a foothold at the bottom of the ocean.

Actually, I intended to use it in construction of a Fusion Candle system (I can't find the post where foamy confirms the possibility of fusion candles)

At worst they will send in their least important politicians and diplomats there.

Anything with fleshy bits will make them think that we have legitimate reasons to seize their biosphere.

For which we REALLY have no uses beyond scientific investigation of most interesting samples.

Our true face is a spaceship *flat giggle*

We are effectively a machine civilization with a meat larva stage in development cycle.

I think asking them about whether the bubbles are a custom/art form and whether they mind us building ones of our own is more interesting.

I want them to provide a reason why we should not construct bubbles. If they won't, we'll start launching bubbles like we're the cult of Yog Sothoth.

Because I can totally envision Dr Hax's colleagues doing something Haxesque to the NotMoon, and I am not convinced it will be as kind as we are.

Well, those were its own TNT methinks.

And forward retreat does not necessarily mean things that could be considered offensive.

Point.

Hm.

Maybe...

I guess you mean 'by desirability' i.e. how useful it would be?
Actually , he has :
True carbon nanotubes are impossible for us , despite being feasable for all we know.

EDIT:

He has , it's in the summary.
Although I have no idea what that's supposed to be.
Can't google it either , because there's some damn company called "Fusion Candle" polluting the search index >_>

That does not follow , because it's not our biosphere.
Besides , we can build our own habitats , which much simpler than colonizing L-II , you said so yourself.
Just tell the Lampreys as well.

Well , I guess we could make human colonies down there , since our awesome bio-tech should allow us to keep humans safe from alien biohazards.

That's right , so why not tell them?

They're watching our glorious machines reproduce.
Doesn't that at least make you want to charge them by the hour?

Pretty unlikely that it would react to that , it didn't react to decades of Lamprey radio signals either.
Their hacking attempts would be no different to NotMoon than the noise they are making on their home planet.

I don't get what you mean , unless you were not referring to NotMoon but to us.

Basically, the "low-key" variant I aim for uses the CCT-backboned "tube" to harvest fusible material from the atmosphere of the gas giant.

It's an orbital station that extends a trunk into the atmosphere with a harvester unit on the "atmospheric" end of the trunk (the entire trunk+harvester assembly being suspended via our two CCT ribbons, of which we have enough AFAIK), which siphons the cool shit out of the atmosphere and sends it into station to feed into the reactor.

Power generated via such elephantine fusion reactor is then beamed to wherever we feel like.

EDIT : candle talk found.

link1 link 2

[spoiler]
The "high-key" variant of the candle can theoretically allow you to turn the giant into a UBERHUGE SPACESHIP but I am fairly confident foamy won't let us
[/spoiler]

Yeah, they are known for believing people a lot.

Organics = like biospheres.

Machines = like ores and hydrogen. Simple reasoning average Lamprey will all too gladly follow.

lol

I mean the actual, you know, archeological expedition when they will have opportunity to physically poke stuff...

I am referring to us, yes.

So far, there was a fairly reckless launch (that could have been interpreted as "holy fuck batman kill it with fire" by some other hypothetical aliens) and an attempt at hax0ring which is a fairly aggressive (if pathetic and uncharacteristically senseless) act.

Also, if the Contemplator really believes that all that time we were listening and comprehending, her address was also fairly risky and had a not-so-tiny likelihood of provoking the aliens (which, according to her belief, are listening)

WHO'S GOT DELTA-V NOW BITCHEEESSSS

[spoiler]Yes I'm aware that's not how delta v works but I thought it the appropriate thing to say [/spoiler]