I believe you go the roles in that analogy entirely reversed. Or did you intend that?
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Considering that the Amarr Navy was the only Empire group to mount their own specific incursion into Anoikis to collect their plunder from the Sleeper Enclaves, the Drifters could have made a two-reasoned headshot and attack, in part to send a message to us in the Cluster & in part to take revenge, in a way.
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The Federation, the State, and the Republic all had access to the primitive Sleeper implants that were used to create infantry clones. Those infantry clones all showed patent madness, and as a result all of the empires - save the Amarr - committed a purge against those clones. Even still, Jamyl announced her own purge later on when the âsafeâ implants were rolled out. Albeit, her purge was specific to unloyal Templars, but nevertheless.
So, why not attack the others as well?
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Well, if you were casting Goons as the Drifters, then you needed to indicate that BoB âsuddenly stopped firingâ only after Goons stopped. You didnât. More importantly, it didnât really matter which direction the roles were paired in. Both sides understood one anotherâs motives and goals, and both sides knew what the otherâs command and control structure looked like, and what kind of logistical capabilities and needs their enemy had.
You know none of that.
And, not for nothing, butâŚ
This is an incredibly wrong statement. Tell me, where is the entire Imperial Navy currently mobilized to? The Republic Fleet?
You build your war machine, and then you only field so much of it as you ever need toward a specific purpose. The rest, you keep in reserve. You husband your strength, so that if your initial estimate is wrong, you can then escalate with what is hoped to be excessive force. And if itâs not wrong, you can still simultaneously respond to additional developments and new threats. Not âan explicit purposeâ unless âliterally anything that might happen that we donât see coming from literally anywhereâ counts as an explicit purpose.
Because they werenât the ones who actually attacked the Sleepers? Sure, they may have bought stolen property, but the Empireâs the ones who busted in and killed people to get it, in effect.
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Since as I said, only the Amarr launched a full-scale incursion into Anoikis - the rest certainly picked here and there, but the Navy sent entire fleets into unknown space for a very organized and broad-scale fashion. For whatever reason, they were far more eager to take advantage of new discoveries to be found.
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Well, Empress Jamyl was pretty blatant with her reasons. She wanted to end war by having a distinct advantage over other sovereigns, winning that war with endless waves of an immutable threat; immortal infantry. If the other factions had not discovered the technology, she very well may have done just that. So, in a sense, I suppose we should be thankful that they did. Which unfortunately puts us in our current position in which we pay the price for the Empireâs sins. Does not really matter though, if not Drifters, then Sansha, or some other enemy of the greater majority of mankind.
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⌠would be doing what, exactly? Itâs not like any of those others have stopped existing. Theyâre still out there, doing exactly what theyâd be doing âif not Driftersâ⌠you out there shooting them âfor scienceâ?
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Things are getting pretty heated here. I would advice some calm before things escalate.
We know Drifters can communicate with us, they just choose not to for some reason. The Hilen Tukoss messages shows that at least two different entities tried to communicate with us, one likely to be Hilen Tukoss, the other the Drifters:
The return of Hilen Tukoss: first entity messages
The return of Hilen Tukoss: second entity messages
So we know they can communicate, brokenly, but they can. We at least did what they tasked us to do, give the Jovian bodyparts.
On the stance Why act when the Navies & Concord donât act? I like to refer to you to the Sansha Invasion, where initially, Concord forbid us to engage the Sansha fleets that were raiding planets for people to add to their biomass & the Navies didnât do anything either.
Only later, Concord changed directions & cooperated, along with the Navies. By then many worlds were already raided for Sansha biomass.
For people warning not to be aggressive towards them, the lancer & Drifter Patrols that fly around are generally left alone, their Wormhole structures as well. The story is different in wormhole space & the Drifters being all aggressive there should be a natural thing.
And do note, attempts at peaceful ways of communicating should proceed, simply because any possible success can alter things greatly.
But to call capsuleers murderous when they group up to attack Drifter fleet formations is a tad much, especially as the last time they did it, it ended in the Drifters attacking Amarr space.
So attacking these new fleets before they become a threat is to me a legitimate approach.
The attack on the Drifter fleet in Caldari space I fully support, because they loomed en masse over an important gate in the Jita - Amarr trade routes, causing panic among the traders.
With the inability to reason with them on short term (no communications), our only other option was to force them away in an aggressive push before they would become a possible threat.
A fleet of 51 battleships close to our economic heart does not say We come in peace Drop a fleet of 51 battleships anywhere in high security space & people will get nervous, irrelevant of how peaceful you act.
However, we do have to see what is different as well. Unlike the previous Drifter fleets, these new damaged Drifter fleets are not outright aggressive.
Now that we have established that, actions can be taken to alter the approach. We now know they give up fighting largely after suffering heavy losses, a behaviour not shown before either.
If the Drifters didnât want us to attack their fleets on sight, they had years to re-open communicatuion lines. Now we can only work based on what we have observed of them in the past.
Do note that carrying corpses falls under âprovoking the Driftersâ so for people who donât like provoking the Drifters: Do not hold funerals in space, else that sad moment is about to get a whole lot sadder.
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Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity! And the Drifters are pretty stupid!
I think the complete extermination of the Drifters has been long overdue, if for anything, so we can move on to study more interesting science than those corpse thieves!
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Its seems youâve misunderstood what Iâve been trying to say, to my recollection I have not once criticized your efforts for being insufficient, but of being the wrong kind, and that you often completely ignore to mention you have tried any communications at all when you make reports such as these, instead of opting to just say how many Drifter ships youâve eradicated this time.
It might be your standard procedure to attempt communications, but as outsiders not privy to your standard operating procedures, we do not know this. So, would it be impossible to include in your reports a single line âwe tried to hail the Drifter ships but attempts were met with no responseâ? It might at the very least lessen the amount of people bringing it up every time.
As for wrong kind of efforts, I simply mean the other standard operating procedure which seems to be âWell, theyâre not responding to our hails, so shoot em up.â
I think youâre asking the wrong thing here, Iâm sure most people here agree that they are a hazard, there are just varying levels of disagreement over how much of a hazard, to whom, and how to actually deal with them.
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So ⌠Ms. Teinyhr, a couple things.
ARCâs always been about finding a solution to this stuff. Itâs not dedicated to any particular solution. Blowing up Drifters has never been its actual aim; that would be SERAPH, which Arrendis has sometimes flown with. Iâm wondering whether sheâs actually trying to persuade someone other than Ms. Priano.
There was a Drifter fleet in Rens, and, I guess it was attacking ships carrying capsuleer biomass. Once destroyed, it was replaced with a slightly weaker one, and it wasnât clear whether they were meant to be reinforcements or what. Either way, theyâd still have been deadly to passersby carrying the wrong kind of cargo.
You and I might not differ so much about this: I want to see the threat-- the slow-burn crisis of a mysterious, deadly force of apparent Ancients wandering about New Eden with unclear goals and total comms silence-- end. Iâm not picky about how, though actually Iâd rather it didnât involve destroying what we donât understand.
I want to learn. I want to know. These desires arenât inconsistent with working with ARC. Quite the opposite: I think ARC shares them.
I once tried bailing out of my ship during a Hive run and requesting docking access at a Hive to see whether the Drifters wanted a new translator. (I figured my backup clone could activate and keep serving in my place. It probably wouldnât have mattered to the Drifters whether CONCORD considered me legally dead.) I kept at it for a little while. No response, though, not even something showing up to kill me and harvest my biomass.
Itâs ARC that I was flying alongside at that time. They allowed the experiment, didnât interfere, welcomed me back after.
The Drifters are a puzzle. Theyâre a puzzle that seems to object to attempts to figure it out, at least by methods other than persistent efforts to communicate (which the puzzle just ignores). ARC is the sort of organization to want to figure it out by all reasonable means; and, for a lot of the possible realities that could be behind this situation, thatâs exactly the correct and necessary approach. If the Drifters are moving against us in ways we canât see or identify, we need to understand before we run out of time.
Maybe your approach is the correct one, though. Maybe the Drifters wouldnât take me in, even as a prisoner, because Iâve killed too many of them. Maybe they suspected a trap. Maybe weâll need someone like you to finish the puzzle-- someone the Drifters will regard as a neutral, even a potentially friendly, person.
But there are lots of maybes here, and lots of speculation, and not enough data. It makes sense to pursue all possible angles ⌠even if itâs impossible for a single person, or a single group.
ARCâs dedicated to its work, and its course, but if you wanted a little cooperation, like, maybe getting escort into a Drifter Hive so you can slip in without running afoul of Drifter patrols, even if you donât mean to hurt anything ⌠maybe it would be possible for you and ARC to talk about how to make it happen?
You donât have to agree with ARCâs methods, or take part in them, to maybe be a partner of sorts.
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This is pretty much the gist of what Iâve been trying to say, maybe Iâve not conveyed it properly, that the the Drifters are an enigma and to outright just be hostile to them when there is so much we donât know, is foolish, in my perspective.
ALL opinions on them are just that, opinions, educated guesses and theories. When people present their theory that they are an eminent threat to humanity, I try to challenge that idea with my own, basing on what I think is evidence, just like the others, like for example that the damage dealt by the Drifters pales in comparison to the damage dealt to them, or just the general daily scale of destruction between baseliner factions and capsuleers alone.
As Nomistrav up there brought up the Drifter autopsy, not a whole lot of it is concrete evidence, just supposition. Drifter bodies seem like infomorph bodies, just taken to the extreme and with anomalous and even startling properties. So, for example, when people claim that they are specifically made not to communicate, lacking vocal cords, that might be true in part, but as raised as a point by others, when I communicate while Iâm in my pod, I do not actually talk or use my vocal cords either, and, not knowing much about their culture, if they even have one, or their society which might be entirely based on infomorphism, they might have opted to not have vocal cords because they do not need them, communicating entirely by thought.
As for my general outlook on the Drifters, Iâd have hoped Iâve made my position clear, but perhaps not. Ms. Ruil up there does provide some surprising insight, though, in my opinon; ânever attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidityâ or in this case, not stupidity but perhaps indifference or ignorance. That is, I donât feel Drifters do what they do out of malice or hatred to us, but for reasons we would do well to find out.
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Sure. ⌠that doesnât mean we can just let them do what they want, though.
I donât think your critique is so much unfounded as incomplete, Ms. Teinyhr-- you could be disastrously wrong. So could we. Standing up and standing down both have risks.
Can we maybe see how we can help each other out? ARCâs been doing this for quite a while, and has gathered a good bit of data. I donât know if thereâs anything there that might help you that isnât already public, but, I donât know that theyâd object to sharing.
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But we donât even know what they want, that is the whole point. Well, okay we donât know what they want besides just about anything to do with the Jove, their technology and biomass, and specifically infomorph biomass as they have not taken to raiding baseliners, to my knowledge.
Sure, why not, but Iâm not a scientist by trade, and Iâd rather not start entering their hives, having avoided it so far, because for all intents and purposes they do seem to consider it a hostile action.
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Iâve been thinking maybe clone flesh is particularly suitable for re-patterning the way they need it. The way itâs grown ⌠our bodies were never little, you know? Never babies. Theyâre basically huge masses of biomass springing full-grown from the clone bay, and that biomass was only told what it was going to be pretty recently.
Maybe itâs good at learning new tunes.
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As far as I know, Aliâs suspended operations already, and did so well before this. So no, Aria, Iâm not trying to convince the rabid warmonger whoâs not shooting them to stop shooting them.
And no, really, Aria, the one organized group thatâs currently actively hunting them down and killing them, when presented with an opportunity to study them without being attacked, deciding âwell, ok, we looked at them for half an hour and they didnât send us hugs, start shooting againâ, no, that really doesnât convey âblowing up Drifters has never been our aimâ.
If anything, it conveys âsearching for a âsolutionâ has always been a thinly-veiled excuse to go blow up Driftersâ.
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Arrendis, we live in a cluster that has worlds, and those worlds have to be guarded by ships with guns. Whoâs gonna do it? You? You, Mizhara?
ARC have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the Drifters and you curse the ARC. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know; that ARCâs Drifter Massacre, while tragic, probably saved lives.
And ARCâs existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You donât want the truth because deep down in places you donât talk about at parties, you want them guarding those worlds. You need them guarding those worlds.
Their crews use words like honor, code, loyalty. They use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain ARCâs motivations to a woman who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that they provide, and then questions the manner in which they provide it.
I would rather you just said âthank youâ and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you arm up a ship and stand a post. Either way, I donât give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
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The people who already are. ARCâs claim is that theyâre scientists, not guardians. And stop quoting holos to try to score points, you twit.
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Make me.
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Now thereâs an interesting phrase.
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