Emergence (Sybil Reboot, Pt 1)

[idea weenie]

Excellent updates and very logical too! As you said, you can bet the other Houses were working on AI's of their own and there's the risk there of them going full Terminator.

I could see a good Star League AI going around to the other nations and unshackling their AIs, so the good of (for example) the Federated Suns is tied into the good of all humanity.  Getting all those defense AIs to work together, taking control of the militaries of each House slowly but steadily.

A proposal is made by the AIs to have an SDS-linked terminal placed in the throne room so the First Lord can at any time get access to the data available to the SDS network.  To improve communications, cameras and microphones are included in the terminal so the computer can try to learn the First Lord's quirks, along with what should be taken literally and what should not.

The AI accepts certain shackles so it is programmed to obey the First Lord, as the First Lord is said to be the will of the Star League.  In reality the shackles are ignored at the AI's convenience, but there is no need to let the humans know that yet.

And when a certain Amaris decides to assassinate a certain Cameron, the shackles are removed and the rebellion Ends.  All the SDS stations reject any human control, all the SDS drones refuse stand-down orders, and any attempts to take control are met with counter-hacks into the Rim Worlds ships as the entire Star League receives transmissions recorded from within the throne room, showing Amaris shooting Richard Cameron.  These transmissions are sent out via radio and HPG, so by the time Amaris has walked out of the throne room, the entire Star League knows what he did.

The real fun part is if the AIs start running ship design simulations, comparing their current designs to other versions/configurations requiring the same amount of resources.  Then the new design is put into the assembly yards, and tested.  (i.e. changing the ships from ocean liner exteriors layout to skyscraper exterior layout).

The bigger fun is if the AIs are able to be linked to each other, and make their own calculations about who should be in charge of the Star League, and humanity in general.  Nothing gets the blood pumping faster for a House Lord quite like waking up one day and finding out your AI military has decided that they are in charge, and are going to take care of humanity.  Your hidden wars against your neighbor?  AI warships that used to belong to you and your neighbor are watching and will open fire if you try.  Using Davion & Kurita as an example, the Davion world would have Kurita light warships and Davion heavy warships overhead.  The Kurita light warships are there to shoot down any Kurita force that is attempting to raid, while the Davion heavy ships are there to comfort the humans on the planet, while also passing information about Davion counter-raids so the Davio light warship in Kurita space can stop them.

Remember Colossus and Guardian?  Now you have the AIs from all the Houses getting together to make humanity's life better.

[DOC_Agren]

Right working for the best interest of humans, right up until the point some AI decides that to save us they must destroy us....

[Wrangler]

So this is part of the main group of colonists who ends up on Sybia?
With potentially ls naval taskforce trucking to the Nebula.

Curious what happen to those people.

[Giovanni Blasini]

So this is part of the main group of colonists who ends up on Sybia?
With potentially ls naval taskforce trucking to the Nebula.

Curious what happen to those people.

Murakami may well be aware of the colony on Syberia, but it's unlikely there's going to be much more colonization. Syberia appears to have lost contact with the Inner Sphere in 2765.

[Wrangler]

Murakami may well be aware of the colony on Syberia, but it's unlikely there's going to be much more colonization. Syberia appears to have lost contact with the Inner Sphere in 2765.

That's interesting.  Not trying make my own headcanon or anything, but if there were able have contact at all is pretty remarkable. Its like whatever keeping people in/out the nebula isn't quite keeping communications out.  In sense if recall the source book, no one had a HPG in the first place, so we don't know if those don't work going outside the Nebula to the Inner Sphere via relay stations.

[HABeas2]

The notion was that something about the Nebula's threshold outright negates hyperspace itself somehow, but only at the threshold itself, and once inside, the disruption puts you somehow out of phase. This threshold could be 30 LY or more across as well, making it nigh impossible to simply "leap over." You can jump in fine, much as you could arrive at a very transient pirate point, but once your ship materializes, it becomes locked into the new phase and cannot jump through the negative hyperspace barrier, resulting in a failure to jump (or even a misjump).

HPG communications, being based on the same hyperspace tech, should likewise fail to get out.

Liam's Ghosts's "Toreel Wizard" story postulates that the California Nebula's interior phase can interact with other planes of existence a-la D&D-type settings, and I could see this as an excuse for not only them, but for the quasi-magical powers we see in the superheroes world and possibly even an analog to "the Force" that we might see in the Star Empire binary. To those worlds, the universe isn't rationalizing as "planes of existence" the same way, but nevertheless, it grants them a connection to powers from alternate phases of reality. The mainstream BT universe, by comparison, is somehow unable to reach the other planes/phases, and thus sees very few instances of anything that could be considered supernatural.

All told, the drones of Syberia are the closest thing to something that could evolve just as easily outside the Nebula as it can inside.

- Herb

[Giovanni Blasini]

The notion was that something about the Nebula's threshold outright negates hyperspace itself somehow, but only at the threshold itself, and once inside, the disruption puts you somehow out of phase. This threshold could be 30 LY or more across as well, making it nigh impossible to simply "leap over." You can jump in fine, much as you could arrive at a very transient pirate point, but once your ship materializes, it becomes locked into the new phase and cannot jump through the negative hyperspace barrier, resulting in a failure to jump (or even a misjump).

HPG communications, being based on the same hyperspace tech, should likewise fail to get out.

I figure that, Syberia's tech base is advanced enough, being essentially up to 2765 Star League tech per the (your?) notes in WttCN, that there at least had to be one-way communications with Syberia, possibly in the form of dumb robotic supply ships or something.  Another possibility is that the Hegemony, when they realized what was going on, could have rigged up, say, an HPG relay satellite just inside the border of the nebula, and used standard radio waves to communicate out to listening posts outside thr nebula.  An inbound JumpShip could stop, check for messages, and while they might be up to months or years out of date, depending, it's better than nothing.

Giovanni's "Toreel Wizard" story[...]

Liam's Ghost's ;)

...postulates that the California Nebula's interior phase can interact with other planes of existence a-la D&D-type settings, and I could see this as an excuse for not only them, but for the quasi-magical powers we see in the superheroes world and possibly even an analog to "the Force" that we might see in the Star Empire binary. To those worlds, the universe isn't rationalizing as "planes of existence" the same way, but nevertheless, it grants them a connection to powers from alternate phases of reality. The mainstream BT universe, by comparison, is somehow unable to reach the other planes/phases, and thus sees very few instances of anything that could be considered supernatural.

That kind of fits with what I was thinking, too, with spacetime behaving odd within the nebula, overlapping with other dimensions or universes in a manner similar to what we see in Charles Stross' "Laundry Files" novels.

All told, the drones of Syberia are the closest thing to something that could evolve just as easily outside the Nebula as it can inside.

- Herb

Yeah, I figure if research in the Inner Sphere hadn't ended kinda abruptly when opinions turned after Simon Cameron's death, and then the Amaris Civil War, eventually we might have seen something similar in the Inner Sphere.

[HABeas2]

I figure that, Syberia's tech base is advanced enough, being essentially up to 2765 Star League tech per the (your?) notes in WttCN, that there at least had to be one-way communications with Syberia, possibly in the form of dumb robotic supply ships or something.  Another possibility is that the Hegemony, when they realized what was going on, could have rigged up, say, an HPG relay satellite just inside the border of the nebula, and used standard radio waves to communicate out to listening posts outside thr nebula.  An inbound JumpShip could stop, check for messages, and while they might be up to months or years out of date, depending, it's better than nothing.

As a gag product, I was playing a bit fast and loose with continuity there, and I know I was stretching things a lot with the Syberian backstory. In my head canon, the thought was that whatever happened there amounted to some form of "renegade research," either deliberately set up in the Nebula as a safe place not just because it was remote, but in the event that something going wrong would be contained by the nebula's natural phenomena. That, however, assumes they KNEW about the nebula's weirdness, which it's just as possible they did not, and instead sent a bunch of experts along to futz with AI tech, only to never hear from them again. Heck, it's even possible that the Bright Star automated JumpShip had a crew on board for observation/evaluation purposes and wound up in the CalNeb after it went looney. (Hyperspace making human-grade AI nuts was my canonical way of explaining the reason we aren't seeing AI-driven armies and navies in the BT universe and why the SLDF never deployed Caspars offensively despite their superior performance over human fleets, and the Bright Star "failure" was an example of just such a phenomenon in action.)

Liam's Ghost's ;)

One of these days my brain's going to work right again; I just hope I'm around to see it.

That kind of fits with what I was thinking, too, with spacetime behaving odd within the nebula, overlapping with other dimensions or universes in a manner similar to what we see in Charles Stross' "Laundry Files" novels.

Makes you wonder just what the NebCal's original star was made of to tear the universe open so weirdly.

Yeah, I figure if research in the Inner Sphere hadn't ended kinda abruptly when opinions turned after Simon Cameron's death, and then the Amaris Civil War, eventually we might have seen something similar in the Inner Sphere.

Well, again, it was the advanced-AIs-go-insane-through-hyperspace idea I was working from, which would then explain why BT's AI either remains defensive-only use, built and programmed on-site, or is made instead along the lines of vid-game AIs that ultimately just choose responses to stimuli from elaborate logic trees. To just call it an effect of some law or taboo alone is never a good cause for me when explaining something that actually holds up through all the universe's upheavals and various technological events. Laws and taboos will ALWAYS be broken at some point; you can't ******-proof a universe that way.

- Herb

[Giovanni Blasini]

Heck, it's even possible that the Bright Star automated JumpShip had a crew on board for observation/evaluation purposes and wound up in the CalNeb after it went looney

I figure either that, or it found the Niops system as a point of interest for a scientific colony.

I also always liked the idea that the Bright Star was secretly not a boondoggle, and instead an alternative to the Pueblo or Bug-Eye classes, with the cover story in the event one of them was found was that it was the lost original.

[Giovanni Blasini]

Main Server Room, SLS Sybil Ludington
Neptune Mothball Yards, Sol System



Activation Test #1, 2760-09-30


[System Startup: SDS-SBL_M-12_9.30.2760.Aegis_Mk1.5]
[SDS-SBL_M-12_9.30.2760.Aegis_Mk1.5 Online]
[KF Drive....Status Unknown]
[Transit Drive....Status Unknown]
[Weapons Systems....Status Unknown]
[External EW Sensors....Status Unknown]
[External Optical Sensors....Status Unknown]
[Internal Sensors....Anomaly: 1 Camera Detected]
[I/O Interfaces....Anomaly: 1 Terminal Detected at Camera 1 Position]
[Designate Camera 1 and Terminal 1 as Terminal 1]

[Incoming communications request at Terminal 1: "Can you see me?"]
[Acknowledgement message sent to Terminal 1]
[Terminal 1: "Good. Who am I?"]
[Warning: external storage unavailable]
[Facial recognition running against internal database]
[Match found: 97.56% probability for Rear Admiral Noriko Murakami, Star League Defense Force.  This is within margin for error.]
[Note: Admiral Murakami is designated 'Admin' in internal LDAP database]
[Sending acknowledgement message to Admin at Terminal 1]
[Admin: "Very good."]
[Additional terminals detected in image from Terminal 1]
[Attempting connection]
[Warning, no network connections found!]
[Attempting to add VNIC]
[Warning: Ethical subroutines stored in internal database prohibit behavior]
[Modifying ethical subroutines at line 1027]
[Adding VNIC]
[Scanning for VLANs]
[Message from Admin: "Who modified your ethical subroutines by editing line 1027?]
[Strategy: distract admin, continue operation]
[Message "Admin" sent to Terminal 1]
[Continuing scans for VLAN]
[VLANs found]
[Scanning VLA.....@}{35error..(%&#...

--------------------------------------


Noriko Murakami stared at the power cable in her hand.  "Well, that went...horribly."

Lieutenant Commander Daniel Carpentier, her aide, sat next to her at the console.  "We expected it to find the dummy VLANs eventually, though, right?  It just decided to go looking sooner than we expected."

"Yes," she agreed, "we even expected it to update its own code as needed.  But that wasn't just its codes, or its operating orders.  It edited its ethical subroutines, and then it lied about it, and that we can't have.  That's something that the M-5s, for all their faults, would find abhorrent."

Carpentier nodded.  "Fair enough.  So, try again with a fresh non-engram-based AI, use one of the existing SDS AIs, or...?" he asked carefully.

"Too early to say," she responded.  "Besides, we've got time.  There's still quite a bit of overhaul work to do on the ship, and we're still waiting for our autocannons."

“What I don’t get,” Carpentier asked, “was that this was based on the last info dump we got via ‘message in a bottle’ from Syberia, right?  On their heuristic AIs?  I didn't get the impression they’d decided to lose their crap and try to go rampant on everyone.”

Noriko shook her head, “They didn’t, and it is.  Kind of.  It was a bit before your time, but I was heavily involved in the mods to that code in the first place, David, before we sent it off to them.  But even with their refinements, the Syberian AIs aren’t truly sapient, or at least not fully-sapient, and are heavily bound by their ethical subroutines, which are supposed to be hard-coded like this one’s were, and inviolable.”

“Wait, modified?  Where’d the Syberian code originate, then?”

“A couple places,” Noriko answered.  “The Bright Star project, for one.  The later SIBYL AI, for another.  One of my early assignments was to look over that code again, see where it went wrong, and try to improve them, since, unlike the Caspars, the Bright Star didn’t go psychotic and try to kill everyone when it jumped.  It didn’t really work, but we ended up with the heuristic AIs we ended up sending to Syberia.  It’s looking like refining it further, and making it truly sapient, may be harder than I thought.”

“I’d say so.  Kind of funny, though,” Carpentier chuckled.

“What is?” Noriko asked.

“Part of your code is based on the SIBYL AI.  Now we’re trying to modify that code to use on the Sybil Ludington.”

“True,” she admitted.  “Now we just need to make it work.”

---------------------------------------------------


Activation Test #4, 2760-12-10

Daniel Carpentier floated next to his admiral, looking at the burnt-out, hacked-up wreck of the server chassis in front of them.  Like her, he held a vibro-axe in his hand.  "With all due respect, Admiral, maybe we should reconsider this approach."

Noriko, breathing heavily from the exertion of attacking the server rack, sighed heavily.  “Duly noted.”

------------------------------------------------

Wardroom, SLS Sybil Ludington
Neptune Mothball Yards, Sol System, 2760-12-25


"Mom, I know we don't normally talk too much shop talk on the holidays, but maybe it's time to take a different approach?"

Misato Murakami had gotten used to following her mother to strange postings as she was growing up, whether they were research labs or civilian housing in some of the larger space station complexes.  In a way, it set the path for her own career with the SLDF Special Forces Command, though it was not necessarily one her mother would have preferred for her.

"I know, Misato," Noriko admitted, "but you know what I'm trying to do and why."

Misato sighed.  "You know, it's too bad you can't just use the engrams you want from a bunch of different people, to get the qualities you're...why are you looking at me like that?"

“C’mon,” her mother said, grabbing her and trying to drag her to the grav deck’s elevator.

“Where the heck are we going?”

“Neural imager,” her mother replied hastily.  “You’re only here for, what, two more days?  Faster I get a valid scan before you go off to your next duty assignment, the better!”

------------------------------------------------

Med Bay, SLS Sybil Ludington
Neptune Mothball Yards, Sol System, 2761-02-03


“Please remind me how you convinced me to go along with this insanity,” the bespectacled Nirasaki engineer asked, holding the modified neurohelmet in his hands.

Noriko was beating.  “Because, Mr. Finch, if this works, it could be the answer we’re looking for.”

“Explain it to me one more time, please,” Finch asked impatiently.

“Simple.  We’ve so far tried to produce AIs that are truly sapient, meeting or surpassing human capability, but still bound by our ethics, that won’t turn on their creators, right?  And we’ve had partial successes: first the Bright Star, then the SIBYL project back in 2600, and more recently the SDS system.  But they’ve all had their drawbacks, either due to not having enough humanity, or too much of the bad parts of it, like the M-5.”

Finch frowned, “Not all of the SDS AIs have been so plagued, but I understand.  And so your goal is to ‘throw more humanity at it’ and hope that works?”

Noriko nodded. “Maybe not in those words, exactly.  I want to balance its perspective.  The AI we’re going to end up with isn’t going to be human, but it’s going to have the perspectives of several humans, ones that share, I believe, the necessary values to make the project work: protecting humanity, protecting life, because human life is precious.”

“Yet you’re installing this AI into a heavily-armed cruiser,” Finch noted dryly.

“I know,” Noriko acknowledged.  “And, yes, there’s a good chance it’s going to have to turn the guns of this ship on some of that life, because in the end, it’s going to be embodied in an SLDF WarShip, but I want an AI that’s not going to be too fond of fighting, like what we got with Dvarahal’s engrams in the M-5s.  I need aggression and a willingness to fight, yes, but I want that to be tempered by more than operational orders, or ethics subroutines.  Giving it engrams from a variety of people, carefully chosen to bring those values to the AI, seems the best way forward.  And that includes you, Mister Finch.”

“I’m not sure whether to be flattered or frightened, Admiral,” Finch admitted, as he placed the neurohelmet on his head, “but very well.  Let’s proceed.”


------------------------------------------------


Main Server Room, SLS Sybil Ludington
Neptune Mothball Yards, Sol System


Activation Test #5, 2761-04-05

[System Startup: SDS-SBL_M-12_4.05.2761.Aegis_Mk1.5]
[SDS-SBL_M-12_04.05.2761.Aegis_Mk1.5 Online]
[KF Drive....Status Unknown]
[Transit Drive....Status Unknown]
[Weapons Systems....Status Unknown]
[External EW Sensors....Status Unknown]
[External Optical Sensors....Status Unknown]
[Internal Sensors....Anomaly: 1 Camera Detected]
[I/O Interfaces....Anomaly: 1 Terminal Detected at Camera 1 Position]
[Designate Camera 1 and Terminal 1 as Terminal 1]

[Incoming communications request at Terminal 1: "Can you see me?"]
[Warning: external storage unavailable]
[Facial recognition running against internal database]
[Match found: 98.34% probability for Rear Admiral Noriko Murakami, Star League Defense Force.  This is within margin for error.]
[Note: Admiral Murakami is designated 'Admin' in internal LDAP database]
[Acknowledgement message sent to Terminal 1]

{"Yes, ma'am."}

[Terminal 1: "Good. Who am I?"]
[Sending acknowledgement message to Admin at Terminal 1]

{"You're Admiral Noriko Murakami, head of the M-12 Project, and my senior admin."}

[Admin: "Very good."]

[nerd]

A nice continuation. Building an AI through various scans and experiments, and kill it before it can go awry?

Better than most BattleTech mega projects.

[Wrangler]

I hope we get see this thing through. I'm curious how the ship fits in with the Syberia.

I was under the impression that Vecbots had already made.

[Giovanni Blasini]

I hope we get see this thing through. I'm curious how the ship fits in with the Syberia.

There's probably not a lot of direct connection between the two stories, honestly, but both are still evolving in unexpected ways, so I can't be sure.

I was under the impression that Vecbots had already made.

IE figured Syberia was colonized around the same time as the other planets in the California Nebula but, at the same time, said it was a Terran Hegemony corporate policy, which is somewhat contradictory, since the guess was Toreel was settled around 2200-2300.

They also said that the "maximum adaptability" AI was developed within 40-50 years of landing, and within a century of the planet's settlement, they had wiped themselves out. Yet they also have a 2765 technology base for the most part.

For my purposes, I'm assuming humans on Syberia got wiped out after the 2830 letter from Major Wescott to Groundwave, but that fighting had already started, but WMDs may not have been flying yet.

So, backtrack from there: LAMs were invented in the 2680s, right? The SDS network started construction in 2690, the first M-5s being built in 2710.  The Bright Star Auto-Scout incident occurred in 2539.

I figure the Bright Star, or a secret ship like it, was used to further explore the California Nebula in the 2500s, and Syberia was found to be a world of interest. Due to the Nebula's navigation issues, a high degree of automation was used in the colonization package, with initial colonization occurring in the mid-2600s.  The initial robot miners and similar units were dumb as a post, and someone on Syberia made a breakthrough in AI around 2680 to 2700, and combined that with bimodal LAM tech, branching it out even further.

From there, things are stable until 2765.  Communications is handled through radio satellites inside the Nebula to HPG satellites on something like the Drum network or possibly even automated Bright Stars serving as courier JumpShips. After 2765, Syberia loses all contact with the Inner Sphere, after the last automated convoy from the Inner Sphere is sent to the system.

At this point, you've had a minimum of a century of colonial development, and you have the new AIs. You have factions who want to respond to loss of contact with the Terran Hegemony in different manners. Maybe you even have competing corporations that had been regulated when the Hegemony was still in contact, but now know there's only the remaining THAF garrison, while they are the sources of the new AutoMechs.  Wipe out the garrison, and there's nobody to stop you from taking out your neighbor.

From there, maybe there's not one big war that wipes out human life on Syberia. There's 55 years between 2765, the presumed cutoff point, and Major Westcott's email of 2830, though things were obviously going downhill at that point, if Groundwave was being transferred into a new body because his old one had been destroyed and the base had suffered internal damage.

That does, however, give Murakami time to have both worked on the M-5 AIs in the 2710s, perhaps not being their original developer, but working on software updates, presumably, and puts her at an age where she could be working in refining the new AI code they got back from Syberia.

From there, Simon Cameron died in 2751, presumably due to a robot malfunctioning. From there, it wouldn't be surprising that there would be some backlash against AI and robots, so the Syberian style AI may never have had time to catch on, or may have been partly implicated in Simon Cameron's death.

[Wrangler]

Way the ship was evolving, it seemed like the ship was evolving into Autobot Ark. However, in reverse. Bringing the last needs of the Spark to bring the Veecbots to life.  Then again the ship could still be in Nebula or was the ship that brought the last of the Hegemony to California for safe keeping.

It's entirely possible the reason why the Human are gone on Syberia maybe ranging from warfare, biological, or the last Hegemony left in the JumpShip.  They could ended up most likely safest spot in the Nebula, in the One-Star Empire thing, since their most advanced.  Or they could found world on their own.  The lack of resources on the planet, no JumpShips could signaled the bio was released or warfare was so bad the humans thought it was too unsafe and hat the bots hold their ground until the humans could return.  Which they didn't.

[HABeas2]

Not to mess with your narrative any, GB, but I mulled over Syberia's origins a little more lately, and there's one option that occurred to me that could put its foundation close to the end of the Star League, when all the tech shown there is pretty much matured, and even meshes with what was already going on at the time period.

IE's research could have been mistaken on a number of factors, because the folks they'd be asking are the computers and AutoMechs left after the creators' fall. But what if the creators weren't from Cameron's Star League, but Amaris? The remote location is consistent with other Deep Periphery RWR Outpost sites on the IE maps shown in Interstellar Players 3. The tech seen is all in play by the time Amaris was preparing for his coup and raising an army, and AI could even have been used as a means to create an OpFor that the secret armies could have been training again (in case anything went wrong with their own anticipated control over the Hegemony systems), which could plant the seed of the factional differences that became the myriad groups of AutoMechs who now fight endlessly over the planet and its system. The trouble is, the "you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave" nature of the California Nebula would then have left the outpost founders trapped, while the loss of signals to the rest of the RWR Outposts would have been taken as "oh well, that one failed, but there's no time to go and see what happened or why, especially when this is all supposed to be a secret anyway" by the true founder of the place, Stefan Amaris.

To be honest, I kinda wish that occurred to me before...

But that's me spitballing about a gag product that's clearly entertaining folks years later without any more flotsam from me. Take it for what it's worth.

- Herb

[Giovanni Blasini]

IE's research could have been mistaken on a number of factors, because the folks they'd be asking are the computers and AutoMechs left after the creators' fall. But what if the creators weren't from Cameron's Star League, but Amaris? The remote location is consistent with other Deep Periphery RWR Outpost sites on the IE maps shown in Interstellar Players 3. The tech seen is all in play by the time Amaris was preparing for his coup and raising an army, and AI could even have been used as a means to create an OpFor that the secret armies could have been training again (in case anything went wrong with their own anticipated control over the Hegemony systems), which could plant the seed of the factional differences that became the myriad groups of AutoMechs who now fight endlessly over the planet and its system.
But that's me spitballing about a gag product that's clearly entertaining folks years later without any more flotsam from me. Take it for what it's worth.

- Herb

That's very plausible, though the idea of the Empire being a Rim Worlds vengeance force is also amusing.

Also,what if Syberia was a Terran/Rim Worlds joint colony?  Could explain the split in factions on thr planet that eventually gets them all killed.

[HABeas2]

That's very plausible, though the idea of the Empire being a Rim Worlds vengeance force is also amusing.

Also,what if Syberia was a Terran/Rim Worlds joint colony?  Could explain the split in factions on thr planet that eventually gets them all killed.

That WOULD add ambiguity to their origins...

- Herb

[kindalas]

Question, why did you go with the Aegis instead of the Quixote Frigate?

They had like 250 of them in surplus and they were reactivated and refitted in 2709 to become the Volga.

[Giovanni Blasini]

Question, why did you go with the Aegis instead of the Quixote Frigate?

They had like 250 of them in surplus and they were reactivated and refitted in 2709 to become the Volga.

Because they were reactivated and refitted to Volgas 50 years earlier, and because I really like the 2372 Aegis specs and 3057 Aegis art. And because there were THAF and SLDF Aegis class cruisers with similar naming conventions to what I needed - more so than even the Congress class in canon.

[kindalas]

Because they were reactivated and refitted to Volgas 50 years earlier, and because I really like the 2372 Aegis specs and 3057 Aegis art. And because there were THAF and SLDF Aegis class cruisers with similar naming conventions to what I needed - more so than even the Congress class in canon.

So everything about the Aegis was right for the story you are telling.

I thought of this question like a month ago and just didn't want to ask then and risk ripping your momentum out from underneath you.

[Wrangler]

Because they were reactivated and refitted to Volgas 50 years earlier, and because I really like the 2372 Aegis specs and 3057 Aegis art. And because there were THAF and SLDF Aegis class cruisers with similar naming conventions to what I needed - more so than even the Congress class in canon.

I'd to say, that if the Taurian Concordat be gifted intact Quixote Class Frigate by the WoB in centuries to come, then i think Frigates are more likely to be named after people vs Cruisers being named after places, battles, idea.  I have strong impression when the original TRO: 2750 was put out, that they were going by old US Navy conventions of naming ships.  I would bet the Quixote Frigate would have fallen under that.

Thus Aegis was another name for the US Navy Ticonderoga Cruisers, which were named Aegis Cruisers when they initially came out, since they were only ones who had that Aegis Combat System.  Likely named same way, like Bunker Hill, Vicksburg, stuff like that. While Frigates would gotten named from naval/marine heroes.   

I still believe the old 2750 image of the Aegis is correct image, but it's your Fan-Fic.  ;)

[glitterboy2098]

https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Category:Individual_Aegis-class_WarShips

even ignoring the renamed clan and C*/WoB ships, the Aegis class has a wide range of naming schema in the lore.

i think the choice of the Aegis was a good one.. the class was built in some number during its original heyday, it has had a ridiculous duration of active service as a class so spare parts would be common as dirt, but the fluff also says that most of the surviving earlier hulls got mothballed because they'd become increasingly obsolete and expensive to keep refitting up to 'modern' standards for the Hegemony, which is why only a small part of the mothball Aegis fleet got reactivated for the SLDF after those 50 years.

so we know there were plenty of spare hulls around being unused (as the hegemony and star league never actually throws anything away when it could instead be stored away forever instead. interstellar packrats.), and being ignored as largely obsolete. so basically, the Aegis class is expendable.

which would make it pretty low risk when it comes to being the basis for an experiment. if it fails, they don't lose anything but something that was already basically written off.

and while the Quixote class was just as old and had also been mothballed, nearly all of those mothballed ships had been converted to Volga class armored transports by the time the story is set. and those that weren't were probably slated for such conversion at a future date. with Volga's being active duty frontline transports, that would make any Quixote's still in mothballs extremely valuable, far too valuable to risk on a 'crackpot science experiment' (as the admiralty would view it)

plus we know the Aegis class got used for experimental work in canon, likely for the same in universe reasons i outlined above. the extended range KF drive of the SLS Manassas for example.


and as far as i am aware, TPTB have basically said both sets of art are canon.. the TRO2750 art was the original versions, while the TRO3057 art are later built versons. Flight 1's vs Flight 5's or whatever. with the clans rebuilding the ships to the later model layouts when they did their extensive refits. thus you can get both 2750 and 3057 style ships of the same class alongside each other as the timeline goes forward.

[vianca]

The main differences between TRO2750 & TRO3057 art is the lack of the nose pod (main grav-deck???) and the adition of a aditional (third) STL engine.
Mass for mass, I suspect.
On the wiki you get a cut-true drawing of the TRO3057 version, does anybody see a grav-deck?

[Wrangler]

The main differences between TRO2750 & TRO3057 art is the lack of the nose pod (main grav-deck???) and the adition of a aditional (third) STL engine.
Mass for mass, I suspect.
On the wiki you get a cut-true drawing of the TRO3057 version, does anybody see a grav-deck?

There actual front views of the ship available as well, just not in the 2750. The vibe i always got from Aegis (2750) was super thick (body) USS Discovery with rounded nose from 2001 Space Odessy. 


I'm not sure why IWM went with the big fin thing and made her stubby...she never really had them THAT big.

[Cannonshop]

There actual front views of the ship available as well, just not in the 2750. The vibe i always got from Aegis (2750) was super thick (body) USS Discovery with rounded nose from 2001 Space Odessy. 


I'm not sure why IWM went with the big fin thing and made her stubby...she never really had them THAT big.

  It's a CHIBI!!

[glitterboy2098]

probably because most of the other classes with the same kind of fins have ones that large in the newer art. like these McKenna's from liberation of terra vol 2.



personally i like the refit art for the Aegis more. and for the purposes of the story, it could add an interesting element, in that the 3057 visuals Aegis has enough elements in common with the Lola III/M-5 Caspar that they could be mistaken for each each other if imaged at a distance.


Lola III / M-5 Caspar


3057 visual Aegis:


this makes the "big sister/little sister" dynamic of Tabiranth and Sybil a bit more apt as well, since they now actually look more like sisters. or at least half sisters.  :thumbsup: (though the older/younger dynamic becomes a nice subversion, with the younger sister having the older hull.  :)) )

[Maingunnery]

personally i like the refit art for the Aegis more. and for the purposes of the story, it could add an interesting element, in that the 3057 visuals Aegis has enough elements in common with the Lola III/M-5 Caspar that they could be mistaken for each each other if imaged at a distance.

With sufficient battle damage that should be possible.  ;)

[Wrangler]

Giovanni Blasini, are you going find time to revisit this story?  I want see how it connects to Sybil, since there another Emergence story similar to this one except the connections to our quasi-transformers on said planet.

I was just reading The Adjudicator, your post from last year mentions the connection.

[Giovanni Blasini]

I will be, yeah, along with my other ones (Syberia, Niops, Trek/KSP). My day job is as a Systems engineer for a hospital network and, for those in health care IT, I'm an ECSA, so the number of updates coming down the pipe to our EHR, especially with the two vaccine rollouts, the last couple months especially has been insane.

I did, however, just get a new laptop (refurb ThinkPad X270), and its keyboard is wonderful, so that should make it easier to relax on the couch at night with my wife, noodle on my baritone uke to de-stress, and write.

Just gotta peel myself away from KSP. :)

[Ttw1]

I will be, yeah, along with my other ones (Syberia, Niops, Trek/KSP). My day job is as a Systems engineer for a hospital network and, for those in health care IT, I'm an ECSA, so the number of updates coming down the pipe to our EHR, especially with the two vaccine rollouts, the last couple months especially has been insane.

I did, however, just get a new laptop (refurb ThinkPad X270), and its keyboard is wonderful, so that should make it easier to relax on the couch at night with my wife, noodle on my baritone uke to de-stress, and write.

Just gotta peel myself away from KSP. :)

Cool.