Bay 12 Games Forum

That's not a dumb question, but would people still be interested?

The Ship (Nameless)

Current system (Nameless)

You plot a course for the nearest Star system, and you assemble the top scientists on the ship for discussion on what to do next.

A lot of argument ensues. Some of the scientists want to make for the planet with life, they consider it a great opportunity for study, and a potential location for a colony. Other scientists claim that decision would be foolish, that the priority should be acquiring resources for the purpose of setting up better facilities. You explain to them that you've already tentatively decided on the latter option, and that they should begin making suggestions on how to make such an operation more successful. You also mention that you'd like to begin working on backing up the Databank.

The scientists explain that they would need a similiar memory storage device to back-up the databank, something that would take time and resources to create. They stress just how much information is stored on it, though they mention that if you wanted they could probably back up specific parts of it with much less effort.

Beginning work on mining drones would greatly benefit any mining operation, though with the facilities you have available any drones you created would be very simple, both physically and by programming. They wouldn't be able to react to changing circumstances, and unless you wanted to re-purpose military lasers for some of them then they would be working with rather crude lasers and industrial tools.

It's also mentioned that your robotic workshop factory is programmed quite well, they can accomplish a great variety of tasks, though they specialize at none. It's possible that you could have the scientists work tweak their programming to give them greater skill at more specific tasks, as it is they can do a great variety of things, but only at mediocre effectiveness. One scientist mentions you could also create drones and download the A.I of your factory robots to more autonomous designs. This would allow you to have multi-purpose drones of greater skill, but any A.I they are replaced with in the machining factory would at least initially be deeply inferior.

Further down the line it would be a good idea to create specialised workshops for the creation of more advanced machinery. Anything that you create using your generalised workshop will be servicable, but will never be of the highest quality.


It does not take long for you to arrive at your destination, and you dismiss your science officers for the time being. You have some decisions to make, and you arn't sure exactly where in the system you are heading.

Current Operations:
-Robotic Machine Factory: Offline
-Supercomputer A.I: Running only routine processes.
-On-Board Population: Mostly unoccupied.
-Robotic Probes: Docked and Offline
-Shuttlecraft: Docked and Unoccupied.
-External Solar Panels: Gathering Solar Energy sufficient to sustain current power usage.
-Pantheon Reactor Engine: Currently running at much less than one percent capacity.

Actually, there's one clear example i can think of to illustrate the extent he went to, and to explain how creepy this is.

What if a person went to the lengths to find out and record what kind of pornography you might like?

Quote from: Mlamlah on June 06, 2014, 10:29:11 am

For me, he found pretty much all of my handles (including ones i do not want connected to me IRL) and he found out who i am. Now i havn't talked to either of these people in months, but i got messages on facebook and even a long distance phone call expressing an urgent need to talk. He found my facebook and phone number, and had it in his stalker bullshit character profile, which was how i was contacted and told all of this.

Yeah, so the thing is, most of that isn't really hard. With about 2-3 minutes of googling really basic information provided by your bay12 account, I immediately found accounts for twitter, facebook, and a variety of websites. You provide a lot of information about yourself <cityname> <state/province/territory> <nation>; you frequently reuse your username; you have your personal tagline; your age... And that can all be acquired just from your Bay12 profile. From there, google immediately gives your real name, your twitter (and who you've been talking with on twitter as a result), information about political views, ect ect ect... Real name + location = Facebook info.
Another 2-3 minutes searching a <cityname> phone book, and I, or anyone else, could have called you. From 5 minutes of searching on google.

You tossed all that information out there, and if you don't want it to be found, that's up to you to change. If you truly don't want them to be found, your alternate personas should have different names, possibly different locations, and definitely different taglines. They shouldn't so much as share a substring with your other account personas. You then deny you use those other websites from a different internet person, and give the impression of having no knowledge what they even are. The only alternative is to be like you are now, and be easily located everywhere you go.

As for me, I'm perfectly searchable, I've given out my name, workplace, ect; and my portfolio website will show up pretty well on google. You could even read my resume if you wanted. I'm perfectly fine with people knowing those things. I don't have anything to hide.

Or do I? Hidden away on some unsearchable, unrelated website persona linkable to me by nothing short of the NSA, perhaps?

Na, probably not.

This profile isn't really intended to be secretive at all, to be fair. I actually have different handles for different stuff, but this is my most common one, and the one i'm most okay with connecting to real life me.

There are a few other handles i'm generally a lot more careful with however, for various reasons. The handle he knew me by though, is one i have connected very little information to. Before now, a couple people in that circle even assumed i was a girl. I'm well aware Mlamlah has oodles of information attached to it, i've used it for a long time, and it's a pet name people irl know me by. But he found *all* of my handles. Including an alias i've only used once. It's the pure invasion of privacy that really gets me, particularly from a person who believes so strongly in a person's right to it. It probably hits harder because this comes at the same time as the revelation he's been arrested, and that it sounds like he's struggling with undiagnosed mental illness. The truth is we don't know what he's doing with all this crap. I guess for some of the others he has some legitimate blackmail material in hand.

(I just realized that the ship still doesn't have a name, if we want to vote on that, i'll retcon it into existence.)

The Ship

You have no desire to ever have to experience the Genocide of the Pantheon ever again, and you admit that part of you is thrilled by the idea of exploration into the far reaches of the cosmos. So you give the order for a long jump, a journey of months even with the Pantheon Engine, with the full knowledge that you will never make it home again.

To your surprise, as your crew begins to make preparations you receive word that two other ships will also be journeying deep into the direction you have chosen. It's still deeply unlikely you will ever receive word from either of them, but perhaps your distant descendants will one day encounter eachother.



Six months later, you give the order to cut the engines. It is surprisingly difficult to turn them off after so long at full power, and it's another full week before the engine fully powers down. During that time you take the measure of your surroundings, and find three different systems relatively closeby. Conveniently you have three probes, and you send them out to give you more information on these systems.


The closest is a red dwarf system filled with dozens of small rocky worlds with thin atmosphere. There are a variety of valuable minerals and useful metals scattered arround the system, making it ideal for a mining colony.

The second is the familiar glow of a yellow star, with only four worlds circling. The outermost is a gas giant, but to your deep surprise the planet second from the star has all the signs of flourishing plantlife.

The farthest of these close systems is a binary star system, two white dwarfs circling eachother, with a number of gas giants in turn circling those stars. There is also a great asteroid belt in the system.

Humans had just began to explore and settle the reaches of space. They terraformed planets, assembled fleets, built great hulking cities in deep space and yet they remained as they always had. Governments rose and fell on the homeworld and colonies elsewhere, human factions went to war against eachother, and even against the races of other galactic civilisations which had found purchase in the stars. Humans developed a reputation as very fickle creatures, and it was not entirely undeserved. As the march of time moved inexorably forward, humanity lost track of itself. Not every human colony even remembered the existence of the homeworld, so far from it in time and space their people had travelled, some of these societies effectively disappeared from history.

One day though, ships began to appear in human space, ships that neither the human civilisations or their neighbors knew anything about. These ships came to be called the Pantheon. They hung dead, drifting in space, and of course human scientists soon became curious enough that they decided to crack one open and enter it. The attempt to breach the hull of one of these ships caused it to flare to life and quickly destroy the scientific vessels come to study it. From there it destroyed the entire human population of a nearby planet with an armament far superior to anything  any human had ever seen before. It took the united forces of nearly all human governments to assemble a fleet up to the task of eliminating this threat.
The ship was neutralized, and immediately cannibalized for it's technology, though most of what was found there has remained a secret from you. Almost immediatly after the human victory however, every Pantheon ship humans had under surveillance activated, and continued where the first had left off. The crippled human fleets had no chance to defeat this foe, the only option was running.
Thankfully the secrets of Pantheon technology gave humanity a hope of accomplishing this. The ship that had been taken apart ran on a Reactor that human scientists didn't even understand, for it seemed to run on a power source that humans could neither detect or measure, but they could duplicate the Pantheon Reactor on a smaller scale all the same.

You are the head of a private corporation that helped to fund the war effort and the research of Pantheon technology. With the backing of grossly wealthy investors you commissioned a small fleet of ships powered in part by these reactors, and you've taken one of these ships for yourself, with it you intend to escape death by the Pantheon. With you come one hundred and eleven of the greatest minds in your system. The ship will be lightly armed, but with a variety of facilities that could greatly benefit the creation of a colony elsewhere including a Robotic machining workshop, a supercomputer AI intelligence, a self contained ecosystem capable of sustaining the ship's population for a century provided it doesn't grow, a deployable atmospheric dome complete with an apartment complex, and a databank full of more information than the entire crew could read in their whole life.
Soon one of the Pantheon ships will be arriving at the planet you call home, there is little doubt that it will make short work of the planetary defences, and then will bomb the populace into oblivion. You must make a choice, the Pantheon Reactor Engine that is the primary feature of your ship is powerful, but also poorly tested. Normally navigation is a simple matter of mathematics, but here it is guesswork, and so you cannot arrive at a location you specifically designate.

-If you go only a relatively short distance, perhaps just outside of the boundaries of previous human colonization you will be able to aim for an ideal location. You will know the area, and whatever neighbors you possess. Perhaps best of all, it is likely that fleeing humans would pass through your new territory frequently, giving you the opportunity to increase your strength. On the other hand, the Pantheon will still be nearby, and if they find you it could spell your doom.

-You could go a reasonably lengthy distance, to space that you've heard of but that few humans have been to before, close to alien civilisations you are familiar with, and still allowing for contact with human settlers, but far enough away from the Pantheon ships that you're not likely to see them unless you draw their attention somehow. Unfortunatly you may not initially find a suitable location for a settlement, but it's possible you could ask local alien civilisations for assistance.

-You could go into the far reaches of deep space, into territories no human being has ever explored before. You never know what you might find, but it would be next to impossible for the Pantheon to find you. Truth be told, you probably wouldn't have an easy time determining where you are either. You're unlikely to find human settlers, but any alien civilisations you encounter are unlikely to have heard of you, so you would be starting with a clean state, rather than a reputation for petty warfare and fickleness.

So where will you go to escape this menace?
 

Huh, yeah. That's pretty messed up, but that's conspiracy theorists for you.

There *was* some stuff that we was more open about working on that seemed totally legit as far as that sort of thing goes, and some of us were kind of helping him research. Like, i personally thought he was just kind of quirky, so it's kind of shitty to also realize i was probably helping enable a really big problem he had. I mean, i havn't talked to him in like... six months, so i don't know if maybe he just got way worse in that time, but still. He clearly has some big issues, and on one hand i'm freaked out because of this huge breach of privacy, but on the other i might have helped make it worse to begin with.