Now that’d be a purpose I could get behind. I mean, it’s the logical next step. Baseliners don’t even get us to break a sweat, other capsuleers are at best a fifty-fifty proposition to take on and all the other “threats” in New Eden prove easily dealt with, with the most barebones of preparation.
Now a Deity. That’d be a fight worth taking. I almost wish I could believe the universe worked that way, just so I could have that to look forwards to.
To put this statement into context, here’s the kb for the Vigilant Tyrannos. It’s gotten a little … busy, lately?
The Navka Overminds, too. (Though I’m sure there’s some overlap.)
Arrendis and I are both on there somewhere, me in a couple places.
And how many of those have been killed by capsuleers? How many would be on your killboard if they registered? Compared to taking on a competent and resourceful capsuleer, those are child’s play.
Sure. … But the “enemy” here isn’t a single ship, or even a single faction. It’s a place, or phenomenon: the Abyss.
Ask Arrendis if she thinks diving it is child’s play. She’s been doing pretty well; only the one loss so far I think, despite how deep she dives. But I also know how she summarizes the losses we’re seeing:
“They underestimated the Abyss.”
Now replace the enemies in the Abyss with an equal number of capsuleers. I bet you that’d be a vastly more… eheh, “interesting” combat scenario, for the seconds it’d take before being violently returned to a clone bay. So compared to capsuleers? Yeah, child’s play.
Like it or not, one to one, experienced capsuleers are the apex predators among all the beings we know of in New Eden at the moment. And we can’t even bring our heftiest toys to Abyssal Space at the moment. So… yeah, still looking for that enemy that could possibly be a better fight than that.
I don’t hope you’ll get your wish, Miz. And actually, based on your warnings against provoking the Drifters, I’m not sure you really do, either.
Actually, though, I think the likeliest ones to humble us, if that time comes, will probably be those closest to us. That won’t be a real fight in the way you’re thinking, either, though.
Apex predators have a way of thinking their strength makes them safe. But the natural enemy of strength is cunning.
Why not? A fight worth having isn’t synonymous with threat to my people.
Meh, if CONCORD wants to flip the switch, it’ll be when it’s pretty damn confirmed that there’s nothing more dangerous than us out there anyway.
Strength is far from the defining characteristic of Apex Predators. Some are exactly that, cunning and dangerous. Some are brutish and strong. Some are simply due to their forming of societies and groups. Doesn’t really change that right now, that means us.
I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll never find something else that fits that bill, unless we create it ourselves.
Aria, what does “
” mean, do you know ?
According to Ms. Priano, it’s “YOUR GOD IS *EAD,” the asterisk being a letter we’re unclear on but doesn’t seem to be just “D” or anything. Which is weird.
If it’s saying the obvious thing, maybe someone beat us to deiciding Mr. Nauplius’s god.
(Which might explain why his magic hasn’t been working all that well?)
If I recall correctly, some of our personnel were digging around in the neocom and found CONCORD’s standardized Triglavian fontset. There were a few disparities from what ARC’d constructed over the project, but then we’d also found symbols we weren’t able to parse that weren’t part of the pointer sets.
So, I’ll nudge some of the staff and see what they can turn up.
Edit; amendment! ‘your god is Dead.’ Capitalization matters. Just, uh, ignore the above.
Take it seriously, build for where you’re going, and it’s child’s play. Don’t, and you might as well be running high-pay missions against the Angels in a pod.
The real problem with being an Apex Predator is you’re dependent on the whole food chain beneath you. Disturb that, and you die off. Eliminate the miners, and our combat vessels stop getting built.
What is the context of this blasphemous message? Who wrote it and where?
I was at the cafe on the station at Bahromab and there was someone in one of those Triglavian suits there as well, and someone was talking to me and when I looked back, the person in the Trigsuit had disappeared and that message was on the table. Pretty weird, eh?
“Suppressors”
Well, they’re not stations, exactly. Or they don’t seem to be. They’re not crewed … I don’t think. They’re pretty mindless, really, and their effects are straightforward. They’re big, though. I mean, not station-big, but big enough that a close orbit centering on the usual point just below the singularity will have you bumping into the lower bit if you’re not careful. (I guess having a harnessed singularity as a power source throws off your center of mass or something?)
Basically, a “Whatever-range Deviant Automata Suppressor” is just an autonomous area-suppression system, like a point defense system on a citadel, only it just hits drones and missiles. I’m confused about why the Triglavians configured them the way they did: they don’t hit Sleeper drones (blasted Lucid Escorts!), but do hit frigate-or-smaller rogue drones whether they’re allied to the Collective or not. They even exterminate Vila Swarmers, which are not only allied to but apparently launched by and dependent on Triglavian ships.
They do NOT hit the drone units you’d think the Triglavians would most want to see gone: Abyssal Overminds and “grip” battlecruisers. Really the damage they’d do to such heavily-protected targets might be kind of minor anyway-- plink, plink, plink-- but it might be nice to have just that little bit of extra help. No such luck.
I do kind of wonder what it is about rogue drone design or the design of the suppressors that keeps drones from steering clear of them. You’d think they’d be marked by the drones as “do-not-go-here-you-will-die” zones, but they just wander right on in.
I was thinking that it seemed strange to need a singularity power source for the kind of effects the “suppressor” pylons create, but, actually, I think it must mostly be for long-term operation and defense. The suppressors, and their tracking-enhancement cousins, are really, really sturdy-- probably more trouble than they’re worth to destroy in almost all situations.
Oh-- divers? Take large swarms of “Lance” -type drones seriously. I keep wanting to just bait them onto short-range suppressors and watch them go up like a pretty fireworks display (which they do), but unless you thin their numbers they’ll apply a kind of alarming amount of firepower to your defenses in the meantime. Had an incident last night where I heard the shield alarm and thought I’d forgotten to activate the booster. Then I thought I’d forgotten to activate my hardeners. By the time I confirmed both were already on I’d shot through the rest of my shields and into armor. Got the Assault DCU on before they could do worse, but it might have been bad if I hadn’t been running a HAC.
Your incompetence is astounding
That occurred to me as well. As we know, WH space is some 1000+ LY from us, in the same galaxy, just outside of the well explored and gated region of it we call New Eden. Why the Abyssal Space must be any different? I bet it’s not even that far away. The ancestors of the Triglavians had to get there somehow, so it’s not a million LY, more like in hundreds to first thousands LY range. And Trace Cosmos looks like a good place where it might be.
Are you sure that those were the proper rogue drones and not of the “Navka Overminds” as classified by CONCORD - those cooperating with the Triglavians?
In any case, I’ve read whatever publically available info CONCORD managed to extract from the wreckage of the Deviant Automata Suppressors so far, and it is:
So some group relatively independent in their decision-making, the Svarog clade, doesn’t think that using (or cooperating with) Rogue Drones is a good idea, and sets up these pylons to support that “sever-dissent” with action. And they attack all drones below certain size in the area, but assaulting the Overminds, whether because of power limits on the pylons, or because the Overminds are considered sentient allies by the rest of the Collective, was restricted.
That was my flow of thought, at least.
Oh … yes, I’d seen and then forgotten that. Silly of me. Thank you, ma’am.
Something else I noticed: the structures, or at least some of them (I’ll need to take more close looks) do appear to have docking bays-- force-screened openings in the sides of their bases. Whether they’re for drones or for Triglavian vessels (or both) isn’t clear. It also doesn’t do a whole lot to clarify whether the structures are inhabited, aside from hinting that they might be.
Another thing, and, maybe not too much should be read into this: I’ve never seen an Overmind or Grip appear with Triglavian vessels. They appear alone or with drone escort. Has anyone seen an exception?
(Then again I don’t think I’ve ever seen Lucid Deepwatchers appear with Drifters, either, and the Sleeper drones in the Abyss certainly seem to be working with the Drifters, so … I’m not even sure what that implies, but there’s some symmetry to it.)
“CRUNCH!”
If my imploding hull didn’t actually make a sound like that it probably should have.
I probably should have waited for a better result from the boosters; the Blue Pill was taking away a lot of what the Crash was giving, but a Raging Dark run had gone so smoothly (and without much to show for it) it was annoying.
It was my first dive into the Chaotic Dark.
First impressions of the Chaotic Dark: “frantic.” Loads of targets, lots of hazards, not enough time to do any of it. Still no Triglavian colonies or bases that I could see, but actually I spent the whole time fighting the Drifters.
… and winning, sort of. Another couple of minutes and I’d have finished clearing the field and been home, but, no: there I was cozied up to the origin conduit, ready to jump the instant the last blasted Lucid Escort fell. Not fast enough.
It wasn’t really painful. It was too fast for that. It just … my ship just kind of stopped being a ship, and I guess became a drifting pile of scrap. My pod too, a second later. Camera drones gave me a nice view of the tissue damage my body took (WHY do they do that?! Why waste fluid router bandwidth on such a thing during clone activation? Is it really worth it just to make the experience a little more traumatic or something??) while my clone was activating. I guess the pod breach must have sheered off a lot of my skin. Considering the forces that tore my ship and pod apart I was a little surprised I didn’t get wadded into a little, er, meatierite, or something. But I guess the Abyssal gravitational forces don’t act so predictably.
I wonder if Lancers still harvest capsuleer bodies that get lost in the Abyss.
Anyway, it’ll probably be a little while before I try such a thing again. If there’s something really different about the deepest depths (why was CONCORD so worried?), I wasn’t able to observe it under the circumstances.
Could be worse. Aura could still laugh at you when you die too.
She did that?
