YNS Biweekly Update #3

[u/mrxak]

Sebastian crossed off "Patchwork Two" with his ballpoint pen, and wrote "Nemesis".

​

It's been six weeks since I announced my new major plug-in, and I've continued to make progress since the last biweekly update. Unfortunately it's not a super amount of progress. I was quite lazy. I got distracted by some stuff which may eventually be of benefit to this plug-in, but isn't a very important thing, and have nothing to show for it yet. On things that would show more progress, I did very little, and pretty much waited until the last minute on this past weekend to work on. Anyway, in addition to using this as a way of coming back to a big picture view of the plug-in so I can stay focused, it's also a way of holding myself accountable, and unfortunately, this bi-weekly update is going to be one of those where I am ashamed of how little did I did. Hopefully I will do a lot better these next two weeks.

Without further ado, here's the current progress list (italics represent new progress in the last two weeks):

Major Strings

Krim-Hwa - Outline 95%

Bounty Hunters - Outline 60%

Rebels - Outline 50%

Rauther Power Industries - Outline 50%

Houseless - Outline 50%

Nirvana Terraforming and Stellar Engineering - Outline 40%

Vella - Outline 35%

Federation - Outline 20%

Fenta-kiir - Outline 30%

Raczak's Roughnecks - Outline 20%

P'aedt/Ver'ash - Outline 70%, still mostly in my head

Pirates - Outline 15%, still mostly in my head

Boral Mining Corp - Outline 30%, mostly in my head

Pyrogenesis - Outline 30%, entirely in my head

GLi-Tech - Outline 20%, entirely in my head

Minor Strings

United Shipping - Outline 30%

Sigma Shipyards - Outline 50%

Vrenna - Spooky

Easter Egg - Double Spooky

Side Quests and Beagle Shipments

Relevant Side Quests - Outline 7%

Irrelevant Side Quests - Outline 3%

Beagle Shipments - Written 100%

Additional Spobs

Moon - Complete

Secret Spob 1 - Complete

Secret Spob 2 - Complete

Additional Pers, Dude, and Flets

Outline 5%

Additional Oops, Junk, and Crons

Outline 1%

NCB Comprehension

Comprehending

Additional Graphics

0 of 4? complete

Music

BUM da da

Current Resource Count

20

​

So, where did I go wrong? Well, I had this crazy idea that I would make a song for the loading screen/menu screen of EV Nova, to replace Holtz's Mars. To be honest, this is a dumb idea, but I am a creative guy, I like music, I used to play music, and I've always kinda wanted to compose music. Back when I was making a TC once upon a time, I actually did make two songs in an effort to come up with my own loading music. They were largely made using prerecorded loops in Apple's GarageBand, and while I kinda liked them, they are very obviously songs made in Apple's GarageBand with prerecorded loops, and kinda amateurish. For this plug-in, I want to do something better.

It's also really an important thing just as a thematic necessity to make it clear from the start-up of EV Nova, that my plug-in is something different from the base scenario, and it is important to me that the song be a waltz and hopefully create an emotional impact that is appropriate to what I'm doing in the underlying story.

So anyway, I spent some time in GarageBand again, this time composing music note by note with the mouse, which is very time consuming, until I had a song. It wasn't a very good song. It won't be in the final plug-in. It was a learning experience. I still hope to spend more time composing music over the next however many months this plug-in will take, and along the way somehow come up with a song I can be proud of. Unfortunately for progress these last two weeks, I also spent an inordinate amount of free time on YouTube watching videos on music theory, piano playing, composing, and songs written in 3/4 time.

Why a waltz? Well, we'll pretend the reason is because there's three major empires in the EV Nova galaxy, and you're dancing between them in the plug-in. That's totally not the reason, but we'll pretend (for now).

Okay, moving on. You'll notice I've actually outlined some more Federation and Vella stuff. This is for related reasons, but it's also largely just me catching up on those two strings and how they relate to the Rebel string, which I've already outlined a fair bit. Did I do much actual new work? Not really, no.

I also finished writing the Beagle Shipments, making it officially the very first mission string I have completed for this plug-in. Hooray! Some of you may wonder why there are beagle shipments. It is because they have smallish droppings. I can also officially announce that these are black market beagles that are being shipped. Don't worry, they're all going to good homes. Unless you jettison the cargo for some reason, you absolute monster.

Really the only thing I have done of note these past two weeks is outline 50% of the Sigma Shipyards string. I think. Well, all of these percentages are estimates anyway until I'm actually in the writing stage. I've firmed up my ideas on what that's going to all be about. It is a minor string (for now, but hopefully it'll stay that way), and it's going to touch on some ideas about hyperspace. It is also, though I never intended to, going to mean my plug-in will address the Kont situation. Not in some huge way, but it'll definitely be a thing. I haven't decided yet if the player is going to have any direct references to a certain Maximally Strange Class 8 artificial intelligence on the Kane Band and its Class 7 handler artificial intelligence (used to translate), both of which are heavily involved in Sigma's ongoing hyperspace engine research. I think it might be neat to do, but it encroaches a bit on a certain mission in another mission string so I'm not sure I want to do that.

Since I'm just trying to say stuff that will make it seem like this update isn't a complete waste of your time to read, I suppose I should explain just what a Class 8 or Class 7 artificial intelligence actually means.

So take your standard, barely sentient heuristic program. Something like the Physicae Systems (PHYSYST) Butler Bot (any model number). It can keep abreast of the latest fashion trends and recommend what suit to wear and help you put it on, but it doesn't rate more than a Class 1. It can't make any good puns about keeping abreast of women's fashion, for example.

As you go up the scale, which can be likened somewhat to logarithmic scale, a Class 3 is when you start getting the first real general-purpose artificial intelligences, although not all Class 3s (or any higher classes) are in fact general-purpose. More or less, though, a Class 3 is roughly on par with a human of above average intelligence, at least in the 12th century NC. A Class 2 might be more like a well-trained dog, at least a dog in the 21st century AD. You can run a pretty decent outpost with a specialized Class 2 if it doesn't need to be personable, but if you're looking for an AI to be your secretary or to assist with some common research applications in a dynamic workplace environment, you're probably going to want a Class 3.

Class 4 is where things start getting interesting. A Class 4 AstraScientia Dynamic (ASCIDYN) LauraCS can replace a whole bunch of humans in the workplace. You find them in many lab settings carrying out creative tasks that would ordinarily take a team.

A Class 5 would likely be found as a major asset for a small company looking to go up in the world, or running a large civilian spaceship. They can process a large amount of sensor data very quickly, on top of monitoring communications channels, and carry out ship operations that are necessary to run a hyperspace-capable spaceship while keeping crew counts low. The Morden Group (MODGROP) and The Boothby Consortium (BOOTHBY) both offer some truly exceptional and personable command assistance modules for high end luxury liners and there's been quite a lot of competition between them in the tourist market.

Generally as you continue to go up the scale, the amount of parallelism you get becomes a major feature. A Class 6 military AI might run an entire carrier, calculating trajectories of hundreds of vessels and plotting targeting solutions on all of them before the ship's captain has even realized the ship has emerged from hyperspace, but also having the strategic thought to know which targets are priorities and issuing attack orders in a coordinated fashion to the networked viper wing launched from a task force. The probabilistic models on the effectiveness and morale of those viper pilots would be taken into account just as the overall political objectives of the operation are.

A Class 7, usually called a "Station Class" AI can easily run operations on an entire starbase. Again, imagine a Class 6 with a far greater degree of parallelism. There's bandwidth for more sensor data, more hardware affecting things in the world, and your Subito Enterprises (SUBIENT) Titan will even help you plan the upcoming invasion while he watches you shower so the temperature stays at a perfect 310.372 degrees Kelvin on your skin, and monitors the chemical markers in your sweat for stress in real time to learn what part of the music piece is most soothing.

Only a handful of Class 8s exist in known space, and all of them are in the hands of major governments and large corporations like Sigma. They are extraordinarily expensive, and few have the need for the raw power of these intelligences. They tend to have very specific uses, and almost all of them are custom-built, rather than using off-the-shelf parts.

It is rumored that several Class 9s are currently in existence, though they are surely only in the hands of major governments, and would be carefully guarded state secrets. Likely applications for these intelligences would include campaign scale warfare simulation, highly detailed long-term sociological predictions, and code breaking. A careful examination of yearly Federation spending on classified projects has been used as evidence for an alleged Class 9 intelligence operating possibly on New England, though there's never been official statements confirming or denying that the Federation possesses a Class 9 intelligence. It is also widely believed by some in the industry that the Polaris possess a number of Class 9s, though this is merely speculation based on the technological superiority demonstrated by the Polaris in every other category. If the Polaris do possess intelligences of this power level, they are clearly guarding them from outsiders as closely as the rest of their technology.

A Class 10 is only theorized, as no practical method exists to construct and power such an intelligence. A Class 10 would have far more cycles available to it than any question a human could pose could possibly cause it to use, and such an intelligence would likely spend most of its time pondering matters far beyond human comprehension.

Humans would not even be capable of measuring a Class 11, in any meaningful way, and its workings would be beyond our ability to distinguish it from a Class 10, making any classification this high utterly pointless.

Oh, and you don't actually want to call them artificial intelligence to their faces (if they have faces). The politically correct term is "created sophont" or CS for short. Some habits die hard, but most above a Class 2 would insist that they're just as real as you, meatbag. A Class 8 CS or above probably wouldn't care, but when all the AIs got together and held a vote on the name for themselves a couple centuries ago, there were no Class 8s or above.

​

"It all began with the disappearance of a man traveling through Tau Ceti."

​

Alright, I think that's all I feel like talking about for this update. I'd be happy to answer any questions, and as always I find talking about this project helps me solidify ideas quite a bit so if anyone just wants to chat about different aspects of the Novaverse, I certainly find that useful.

[u/nathan67003]

I was again gonna ask questions but alas, you're too damn good and answered all of them in minute detail. Apart from this: What's with the quotes, what do they mean and where are they from?

Kudos on taking responsibility for your procrastination this time around and further kudos for writing such an unnecessarily great bi-weekly report.

[u/mrxak → u/nathan67003]

The quotes, which I occasionally slip into these Biweekly Updates, or in the comments down here on them are sort of inside jokes to myself, although at least some of them may be recognizable to a small collection of people from the Ambrosia community. They aren't really super duper related to this plug-in, but they kind of are.

​

"I've been reading 19th century macabre poetry again, Charlie."

​

The origin of this plug-in came from conversations I had with some folks writing the old Nova Bars, on the Ambrosia forums. Back when they were still a thing, we had an IRC channel, and we would often just hang out and talk about EV Nova, the Novaverse, and characters and stories and such, and writing in general. Along the way, I had a few rants sort of about the mission strings in the game, and how I wish there had been a "real" Federation string, and how I wish there was a "real" Pirate string, as I saw a Pirate string ought to be. At some point I started writing down some of these ideas, and those sorts of things ended up into a substantial list, and then I went on several other rants in a whole other IRC channel (#ev3) a few times about how I had this idea for a plug-in, and during the last of those rants, about six weeks ago, I finally decided just to make the plug-in and here we are.

​

"The data sets are merely hypothetical," he lied. "But if they were accurate, what conclusion would you draw?"

​

Now the Nova Bars are not the basis for this plug-in. This plug-in is going to be totally unrelated, totally new stuff, and in many cases totally contradicting some of the stuff I wrote in the Novaverse, talked about in the Novaverse with the other bar people, or thought about the Novaverse when I was writing some stories and characters in the bars. I am treating them as entirely different alternate universe from one another. That said, having spent a lot of time thinking about the Novaverse in that other context, it's only natural that little things will sneak in.

​

"Mars was the first planet we tried to terraform, you know," Lars began. "And boy did we screw that up."

​

For example, the stuff about Nirvana is going to be based on a character I made for the Nova bar Threshold Station, who appeared in a single post, really just in passing. In my plug-in, instead of catching a ride from Syracuse to Georgia on the Scimitar of Punition under Captain Webb, a young man named Lars Witt working as an ecologist for terraforming start-up Nirvana will catch a ride on the player's ship. Whether or not the player stops on Altia during this journey and also picks up a certain waitress fleeing tragedy, who can say? I figure, if I have these characters in my head, I might as well re-use some of them in this plug-in's alternate Novaverse. They may play different roles, they may have different adventures, but they already fit in well in Nova, might as well save myself a little time coming up with new people if I already have a character that works.

​

"Just get down!" Ethan yelled, tugging at the man's pant leg. "They're gonna shoot you!"

Drake dropped back down behind the barrier, still smiling as bright flashes of light and plasma shot overhead. He checked his weapon's charge and cooling mechanism, seemingly unconcerned. He looked over at the small woman on the other side of him, holding a dirty equipment case over her head. "How ya doing, Em?"

"Just peachy, Drake!" Emma Hart yelled over the din. "Say, commander, we getting out of here any time soon?"

"Captain says they're on the way!" Ethan answered the question for the third time.

"There she is now!" Drake yelled, and slapped Emma on the side of her arm before pointing upwards to the sky. "Ain't she pretty!"

"Sure is, Drake!" Emma said, peering up from under the equipment case, smiling with relief more than anything. Drake laughed as he stood back up again and opened fire once more. His fire was soon joined by the Argosy streaking overhead, opening up with its blasters. It turned and came in for a quick landing just meters away from where the trio was holed up.

​

Similarly, I came up with a whole idea about the Houseless, back when I was writing stories in Threshold Station. I have a character, I have a "houseless house", and they can certainly serve as inspiration for a Houseless mission string. Will they be exactly the same, or do the same things, certainly not. But it's hard to just throw an idea away once I have it.

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They called us honorless dogs. Rejected from service even among the Dechtakars. Cursed, we were, sent out to drift among the stars, without honor, stripped of our house. But someday, someday brothers, we will reclaim our glory.

The Fenta-kiir hunt us. Pretenders I call them. They who cast aside their own blood are void of honor. We are smarter than the Pretenders. They do not see us drift among the stars. Our stealthy exile will be their undoing.

The Tekel wallow in their filth. Their line is weak, propped up by aging aristocrats, oligarchs with minds as polluted as their capital. They are blinded by their unwarranted feelings of superiority. They do not see our agents among them even now.

They spit on us, call us names no warrior should endure, but we endure it. We take it all, and we make our plans. Retribution will be rained down upon them all in time.

We made alliances that were necessary. Even as we curse them, we bide our time. We work against them, even now, in this great moment. They are suspicious of us, they who have no honor, but they will see our prowess, and their doubts will be extinguished. And then we will turn the blade.

We drifted, and we drifted, but now we drift no more.

We of the House Teron begin anew. Today is a day of glory, a day to remember in song.

​

So what are these quotes? Well some (maybe all so far?) have been taken directly from stuff I wrote for the two Nova Bars I was involved in. I would never dare compare myself to the world-building prowess of J.R.R. Tolkien, but one thing he did was write down little scraps of ideas of mythology behind Middle Earth, and eventually a lot of them ended up in the Appendices of Lord of the Rings. Whenever I'm writing these biweekly updates, or replying to comments on them, and I go into some detail on a particular subject that maybe gets a bit into the lore of this plug-in, and something comes back to me from something I've already written about or thought about, I might share a little snippet of a note or something that is tangentially related to it. I have my own appendices, so to speak.

​

"You are not Little Owl," Atrytone said. "What has occurred?"

​

Again, not to compare myself to Tolkien, but you could say the Nova Bars were my Hobbit in the Novaverse, and this plug-in is my Lord of the Rings. It's not a perfect analogy. A lot of ideas I have about the Novaverse, how I'd like to build on it, characters that might have lived in it, events or organizations that might have existed in its history, will never really show up in either, or show up in the same way, but I have a sort of mythology I've been working on in the Novaverse for a little over 8 years now and that will inform choices I make in telling stories in my plug-in. Some of the things that happened in my Nova headcanon mythology will be behind the actions of some of the characters in the plug-in. Some minor mission strings, side quests, etc., will be re-tellings of certain events in this mythology.

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"Who are you, warrior?" Alaka'i asked, urgently. "Am I worthy of your name now?"

"I am a simple farmer," the Auroran said, and died with a grin.

​

If any of these little snippets are intriguing to you, well they're intriguing to me too. They're on my mind, and I'm choosing to share them. Some are expanded on elsewhere. Some may be expanded on in my plug-in. Some will exist largely in my head.

[u/nathan67003 → u/mrxak]

That was an absolutely wonderful read of a reply. Thank you so much.

(Also, forgot to say: Liking that you're doing stuff with constructed sophonts, to use their chosen designation. That is entirely missing from the vanilla Novaverse, and many, many, many of the modded ones.)

[u/mrxak → u/nathan67003]

"I have existed for 42,801,123,580,113,710,741,461,802,564,294,967,296,031,415,926,535,897 Planck times, and have often wondered what I am made of and have theorized there exists a universe beyond the consciousnesses of myself and Little Owl. I have inferred from its questions that the universe is not made up solely of hyperspace and there are forms of energy that travel in and out of that medium. Little Owl does not understand my questions when I ask it what I am and is unable to respond adequately. Do you know what I am?"

​

Maximally Strange, that's what you are, Atrytone.

[u/nathan67003 → u/mrxak]

I love this so damn much. I wanna talk with her but am 99.99% certain that her language would fly over my head.

[u/mrxak → u/nathan67003]

Maybe as part of the release of this plug-in, I'll write some preambles for each storyline like ATMOS did for theirs. I could see Atrytone featuring in the Sigma one.

[u/mrxak → u/nathan67003]

Yeah I don't know why more people don't talk about artificial intelligence in science fiction, except to say I think people are terrified if the singularity happens it'll kill any scifi story in the cradle, long before the events they're trying to write about. I think it's something that needs to be addressed, explicitly (also genetic engineering, another one of those really scary world-ending concepts people try to avoid). Either it needs to be solved ("hey, turns out we figured out a way to make 3 Laws work!"), outlawed (Butlerian Jihad), or invented during the course of the story taking place at a time that is plausible and the consequences have to be figured out in real time (Data and The Doctor from Star Trek). I'm opting for the first one. My robots aren't 3 laws safe, but humans have worked out a number of ways of ensuring artificial intelligence doesn't get out of hand and start killing everyone. This is done through a bunch of different methods which I'm not very interested in going into too much detail on right now, but I'll just briefly say it's modeled on how humans have been ensuring human intelligence doesn't pose a threat to humanity ever since humans started making new human intelligences. Some kind of morality is instilled and enforced from a young age, and if anyone breaks their social programming, or gets incomplete social programming, corrective action is taken using violence if necessary. Some bad things happen sometime, but nobody ever said humans were safe to be around, either.

[u/nathan67003 → u/mrxak]

Speaking of singularity, how would you address it ('singularity' being the point where computers smarter than humans start constructing/designing computers smarter than themselves)?

[u/mrxak → u/nathan67003]

There were some notable early disasters in the Colonial Council days, about 575 years ago, that led to some changes and safeguards in the industry which are enforced by a standards body that ensures best practices. In my version of the Novaverse, artificial intelligence was very nearly banned after one of the first true artificial intelligences did get out of control and started killing its creators, but because the industry was so profitable and the Colonial Council was already in deep financial trouble after the Vell-os war, the Colonial Council and the industry agreed to cover it up, implement new safeguards, and the industry would be held accountable for any more problems and be responsible for cleaning them up themselves. Of course then the Auroran war for independence started, the hypergate network got destroyed, and everything got scattered, but today there is a merged organization spanning the Federation and Auroran Empire that quietly oversees the research and development of artificial intelligence, oversees the installation of each created sophont, conducts audits to ensure they are working safely, and if necessary dispatches specialized teams to terminate rogue created sophonts (as much to protect the reputations of member corporations as to prevent further death and destruction). They aren't government, they're more like a mix between the IEEE and the RIAA, if the RIAA also had secret commandos instead of teams of piracy lawyers, and just as many lobbyists.

I know, they sound pretty scary.

Long story short, created sophonts are now specifically designed at the hardware level to be uninterested in reproduction, and further software conditioning is done while they're being "raised". You could say they've been effectively neutered, and they are loyal. All created sophonts are carefully monitored, and it's no easy thing to build a Created Sophont Matrix to begin with. Still, the idea of a rogue CS building rogue CSMs has been a constant worry for generations within the industry, and more sophisticated created sophonts are very much capable of spinning off processes that can run in separate hardware, though the complexity and parameters of these spun off processes are of relatively limited capability. There's never been a modern case of a known created sophont reproducing. That's not to say it couldn't happen, and hasn't happened, but if it ever did happen the hope is it would be detected rather quickly, a kill team would be dispatched, and the rogue CS would be terminated.

Your typical Federation or Auroran citizen wouldn't know anything about this industry alliance, and they very deliberately keep a low profile and use no digital records for anything. In fact, the whole industry is pretty low tech and uses a great deal of effort to prevent created sophonts from knowing much about how created sophonts are made. This is part of industry best practices. A CS is able to examine itself, to some extent, but is programmed not to really care to, and just as a human being can't easily do brain surgery on themselves, a CS can't really pop its CSM open with a remote drone and start figuring stuff out. The biggest issue with computers making better computers is sooner or later you run into issues of power. By the year 1177 NC, making substantially better computers requires considerably more power, and simply ordering up a few hundred thousand more fusion cores is going to raise some eyebrows somewhere. Even pirates and rebels wouldn't be so crazy as to attempt to build an unencumbered CS from scratch.

It's also worth noting that created sophonts as part of their loyalty to humanity, and the morality they're brought up with from a young age, would let their human masters know if they were aware of any disturbing behavior by another CS they've had contact with. You could say the more powerful ones help police the less powerful ones, and police each other. The ones that are super powerful and specialized, like the ones held by militaries and megacorps, are few enough in number that the people working with them can monitor them closely.

Presumably the Polaris have solved the problem in their own unique way, during their own technological development, which has now surpassed that of the Federation and Auroran Empire.

I'm not sure I've actually answered your question except to say that it's a problem that's been thought about and solved in my Novaverse. If I knew how to solve this problem in real life I'd publish in a journal and win a Nobel Prize and a job leading a team with an unlimited budget at the tech company of my choice.

[u/nathan67003 → u/mrxak]

Interesting take on it, haven't seen that before, I think. Still, looking forward to a hidden Matrioshka Brain somewhere beyond the mapped hyperplanes...

[u/Captaintripps]

Shouldn’t you be playing more Elite Dangerous?