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Old thread: >>3737332 (Important for planning as many plans were afoot)

Hello, Foreman! You are planning CATS' operations for the month.

Rules: http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.Quest2Rules.html
Datalinks: http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.Quest2Datalinks.html
Timeline: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BlMOSEOxSihj1gdagq7yxCjONaRBgcdlRxnc68uWf0A

You can deploy yourself on TWO actions for a small bonus to all rolls.

Dr Robertson can be deployed on ONE action for a large bonus to R&D rolls or a small bonus to any non-covert rolls

Ryan Andrews can be deployed on ONE action for a large bonus to construction rolls or a small bonus to any non-covert rolls

Moira McSingh can be deployed on ONE action per turn, for a medium bonus to covert rolls or a small bonus to all rolls; She can give basic combat capability to a work crew

Aki Lattinen can be deployed on TWO actions per turn, for a medium bonus to R&D or construction rolls; She will hack into things if bored

As long as you have 10 or more fleet assets, logistics are handled for you automatically.

Drones give a stackable small bonus to non-research rolls; they may be lost in combat.

C0 (Free):

Move the Garibaldi (Mediterranean, Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific)

Buy equipment on the open market:
Power generation 1
Small arms 1
Network equipment 2
Fleet assets 2
Aerospace part 3
Supplies (food, fuel etc) 0.5

C0 (Agent):

Survey a territory for opportunity using an agent
Construct a CellSol pylon (Needs 1 network part)
Undergo combat training (Max 1 per month)

Tail someone
Meet with someone

Buy equipment on the black market:
Small arms 1
Squad weapons and explosives: 2
Stimulants 1

C1:

Reconfigure the Garibaldi (generic, cargo, hospital, strike, orbital)
Tail someone
Survey a territory for opportunity using a team
Hire out a covert operations team for a situational reward
Construct network equipment
Construct power equipment
Procure network equipment and construct a CellSol pylon
Make and sell consumer-grade Nomenklators (Net gain 1BN)

C2:

Do research (1~3)
Construct an aerospace part
Construct a forward logistics hub (small bonus for any action in that territory)
Construct a batch of drones

C3:

Recruit a work team
Schedule a satellite launch, which will happen at the end of NEXT month. Requires 1 (microsat) or 3~5 (bigsat) aerospace parts.
Do research (4~6)
Start DEW research

C4:

Recruit a covert team
Do research (7~9)
Construct a network node (unifies cell and net; costs 1 power, 1 network)

C5:

Rush a satellite launch, which will happen at the end of this month. Microsat only, Requires 1 aerospace part
Construct a hub and a network node at the same time (2 power, 1 network)
Capstone research (10)

What are your orders?

>>3773567

(In order to simplify my life, the Squad Nomenklator bonus has been removed, since it's assumed that your guys have them in their helmest by now, and instead you have been given a unit of Drones, representing the various prototypes that Aki got out there already, since they give the same kind of advantage. Drones can also be sacrificed for a better chance of preserving the lives of your soldiers and, more rarely, your workers).

You have put down earnest money for purchasing the Bagger 1473 bucket-wheel excavator; it will have to be moved this turn, lest the Arctic route for delivering it no longer be available without renting an icebreaker.

Your options on the matter are

# Use the Garibaldi. 1BN to reconfigure her for cargo, 2 work crews to physically do the job. This leaves the Garibaldi in the Atlantic, in cargo configuration, at the end of the month - and takes her up for the month.

# Have Risto Shipping do the job: 2BN cost, 2 work crews manpower.

# Turnkey solution by Thyssen-Krupp. 5BN cost, no manpower.


Back at HQ, you figure that it's time to put Mr. Vajpayee to work compartmentalizing your personnel to prevent or at least mitigate leaks; BOCHICA has calculated that there was 1 chance in 10000 that the Peacekeepers were able to hit your covert units twice in as many months.

You are confident that nobody's hacked you - if nothing else because you control most of the world's security certificates - but you are vulnerable to social engineering, good old sneaker work, and passive monitoring. Vajpayee's search will be broad, but focus primarily on rooting out

# Morale Monitor infiltrators sent to make sure you don't stray from your mandate.

# Bruno Folgore's men; he may be making his own power play.

# Remnant employees who may be giving data out.

# Nationalist holdouts who have an interest in making parts of the Global Community fight each other.

Vajpayee notes that instituting any sort of security measure where there was none before, will impact morale and reduce efficiency at least a little.

# Minimize the impact, we have a good corporate culture here.

# Standard procedures.

# People died, dammit! Find the moles and make an example of them!

Either way, you will have to put some R&D money and heads into defense, be it the cybernetic or meatspace variety.

>Patrick Zevo
>Dr. Susan
>Raman Vajpayee
I want to task Raman to Defence or start intelligence sweeps.

Shouldn't they be up there with Moira, Robertson, and Aki?

Can we also recruit and promote in-house staff members like, how Carla and Hassid became named characters?

>>3773576
Wow, stuff got cheaper.

I don't want to deploy our covert teams till we get our shit in order, so doing odd cargo jobs would be fine and safe.

Would the two crews working on it cost us anything, thus charging a total of 3BN?

>>3773576
Also, AI research is done yes? What can we task it to aside from what it already does automatically?

>>3773576
# Use the Garibaldi. 1BN to reconfigure her for cargo, 2 work crews to physically do the job. This leaves the Garibaldi in the Atlantic, in cargo configuration, at the end of the month - and takes her up for the month.

# Morale Monitor infiltrators sent to make sure you don't stray from your mandate.

# People died, dammit! Find the moles and I will make an example of them!

>>3773582

Yes, deploying a crew always costs 1BN (That's why some covert jobs have been marked at no profit, or even a loss, in the past).

>>3773580

No.

Suzanna Diamond (Name change due to wishes of person referenced in the story) is in Rio, setting up a hospital. If you configure the Garibaldi to operate as a hospital ship, she can be flown there quickly and assist; having a skilled neurosurgeon on staff, particularly one who is also a yoga instructor and can assist with recovery using mindfulness rather than relying exclusively on pharmaceutical, can make the difference between a casualty being crippled for life, or returning to work after a few weeks.

>>3773594

BOCHICA is at its maximum potential, barring a fundamental breakthrough. The system is NOT sentient, but can pass the Turing test in about a third of casual conversations, and almost completely replaces human Nomenklator operators.

That means that if you have 10 fleet assets or more, all logistics is done for you in the background.

In addition, logistics hubs give a SMALL bonus to teams operating in that territory for covert or construction work.

Further, your drones will operate at maximum efficiency, and the only obstacle to building more factories with automated management is getting permission from the local landlord.

Finally, all pylons and network nodes constructed will advance electronic market dominance (this has already happened last month, see graph) since people will gladly outsource their travel and shipping decisions to your system -- if timed correctly within the scope of Carpatescu's current mandate, this may allow you to essentially take over the world's economy.

This month, NCASA engineers are due to complete their anti-asteroid nuclear-tipped Energia rocket as commanded directly by Carpatescu. Afterwards, you will be able to influence their policies. Since McLachlan is currently obeying you out of fear, you will have to use this as much as you can as long as it lasts, or figure out how to keep him under your thumb.

Carla expects that the global disaster preparedness agency UNDRR will be ready to fully function by the end of the year. You have an excellent working relationship, which is going to translate into chances for joint operations.

Carpatescu has expressed some worry about possible issues with the Year 2000 bug on legacy systems, which would naturally fall under your purview. That, and the recent earthquake, are likely to drive the price of emergency supplies up in the following months.

BOCHICA will insulate you from the worst of the speculation, and give you reasonably accurate economic predictions, but it is not a true AI, and has no chance of evolving into one barring a breakthrough.

I forget if we can send a work crew or covert team to recruit or hire a agent. If so I would like to hire a few more people from last thread, or send them message to meet us for job interviews.

Can we get a separate pastebin for all the named major and minor NPC characters so it can we off the map and in text with some descriptions and details of the people we've met, big and small?

Also If I may ask one more thing :)

Can you put a plus + for whenever we complete a project or finish research at the end of a post you make regarding said work or project, when it finishes.

Put a negative -
for if something regresses.

and a neutral equal sign for no progress =

For example Aki suceeds making AI that won't kill us so:
~ AI Research +1
Research complete
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU_qCw_6O5g

Please? Pretty please?

>>3773625

(I can try, yeah. Please note that

Datalinks: http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.Quest2Datalinks.html


is editable, and while I will not add to it, I will ensure that the info in it is correct.


WRT youtube video: I'm also surprised that nobody has complained about me typing "construct additional pylons" about ten times a thread....).

Agents are exceptional individuals; they may or may not pop up depending who surveys a territory when.

Other named characters may help you in a specific area. For example, Dr. Suzanna Diamond unlocked the augmentation tech tree, and is assumed to be working in that sense, but she is a neurosurgeon, and will be mostly busy with that - she does not have Dr. Robertson's capacity to organize a large research team, or Aki Lattinen's raw inspiration. When a named character who is not a roaming agent can be deployed, you will be notified. For example, this month you were considering having Moira confront the Two Witnesses; sending Suzanna along will help in case she needs emergency surgery urgently, but - for example - sending a covert crew would probably not be useful, since the only danger are the Witnesses themselves.

Note that due to the fact that Rebohoth is likely to attack you again, the Foreman's ability to survive hostile actions or a hostile environment is also being tracked. To improve it, consider survival training, or adopt more drastic measures such as a secondary heart.

>>3773628
I don't mind doing it if you don't mind.

I'm planning on going over the entire quest again, so I should be able to get every single name and a bit of their details.

>>3773630

Thank you so much!!!!!

>>3773628
PROTOSS SUCK! ZERG AND TERRAN HYBRIDS RULE!

I was just going to ask about that new stat...

>>3773567
Alright lets get this turn started:


First off lets finish the North american (and america in general) network unification by constructing the network nodes needed in the west coast and in Mexico. This will take 6 Bn and the same in work teams, assuming I'm accounting for our bonus from the UN-agency deal correctly, as well as 2 power and network supplies which we have in stockpile. Assign our Z-drones to this and preferably to the South american region, if we're lucky then Santiago will be interested in our automated workers / fighters and pay to make some for herself.

Then to get the Americas entirely up to the Mandate standard, we will need a pylon on the west coast, one in Mexico and one in the north of the south american continent. The combined cost for will be 3Bn and the same in teams.

The pair of remaining work team should construct additional network equipment for our next wave of node construction while our factories should produce a unit of drones.


This plan doesn't do anything with our covert teams, since some people don't want to deploy them out of fear and to be honest I feel unprepared to make a risk assessment on this so if my plan were selected I'd put it to the voting-body what we do with them.


>>3773576
# Have Risto Shipping do the job: 2BN cost, 2 work crews manpower.

Seeing as we'd want to change the Garibaldi back to it's current config after, there isn't any benefit in not using the Risto shipping option.

# Morale Monitor infiltrators sent to make sure you don't stray from your mandate.

# Standard procedures.

>>3773646
Remember we can only deploy 11 work crews since we need to keep two for the carrier to transport the digger.

Forgot to use the drones actually.

We can remove one work team in Mexico and add the drones, and we can switch from Indonesia to Western USA and remove the security teams, saving 3BN

As for idle covert teams, we can have them recruit or train.

Perhaps we should have Ryan oversee the digger transportation?

Also the Red line through pink means Rebohoth is gonna try to kill us again?

>>3773632
It might take me a few days.

>>3773660
>Remember we can only deploy 11 work crews since we need to keep two for the carrier to transport the digger.
I accounted for that. My plan on uses 11 work crews.

>We can remove one work team in Mexico and add the drones, and we can switch from Indonesia to Western USA and remove the security teams, saving 3BN
I never made mention of Indonesia so I've no idea where you got that from and I also made no mention of security teams so I fail to see where they come in.

>Perhaps we should have Ryan oversee the digger transportation?
You just reminded me that I forgot to assign heroes to the various actions: although it'd honestly just be a case of throwing everyone with a construction or general bonus into heading some team somewhere.

Rolled 88 (1d100)

>>3773660

Since Bruno Folgore's Peacekeepers went after Raveshaw's men as well as your own, it's very likely that Rebohoth will blame you, given that you have been fairly prominent in world affairs lately (and that you make a convenient scapegoat to keep Raveshaw in line, since Rebohoth can't really go after Folgore without angering Carpatescu).

>>3773649

In general, you can only have one agent per job type. This is not a hard limit, however having more will likely lead to them fighting over ideological differences (although you can count on everyone giving their all when there are existential threats, such as Biblical plagues or world wars).

This has not happened between Dr. Robertson and Aki -- Dr. Robertson dislike Aki's lack of method, while Aki has no strong feelings one way or the other -- mostly because they have stayed out of each other's way; Dr. Robertson is not an AI expert himself, although he appreciates having computing power to throw at physics problems, and for some odd reason nobody wanted to let Aki anywhere near your nuclear stockpile.

>>3773439

Supreme Commander Leon Fortunato made an announcement on the internal GC network. recently; he told the story of his death in the earthquake and subsequent resurrection by Nicolae. “My only regret,” he added, “was that there were no witnesses. But I know what I experienced and believe with all my heart that this gift our Supreme Potentate possesses will be used in public in the future. A man bestowed with this power is worthy of a new title. I am suggesting that he hereafter be referred to as His Excellency Nicolae Carpatescu. I have already instituted this policy within the Global Community government and urge all citizens who respect and love our leader to follow suit.

“As you may know, His Excellency would never require or even request such a title. Though reluctantly thrust into leadership, he has expressed a willingness to give his life for his fellow citizens. Though he will never insist upon appropriate deference, I urge it on your part.

“I have not consulted His Excellency on what I am about to tell you, and I only hope he accepts it in the spirit in which I offer it and is not embarrassed. Most of you could not know that he is going through intense personal pain.”

“Our leader and his fiancee, the love of his life, joyfully anticipate the birth of their child within the next several months. But the soon-to-be Mrs. Carpatescu is as yet unaccounted for. She was about to return from the United States of North America after a visit to her family when the earthquake made international travel impossible.

If anyone knows the whereabouts of Miss Harriet Durham, please forward that information to your local Global Community representative as soon as possible.

Thank you.”

Interestingly, Carpatescu hasn't mentioned Harriet in any way shape or form; Fortunato claiming to be on his own here is at least believable.

Mathews is currently in Rome.

Revised a bit.
>>3773567
>>3773646
Recruit Galeazzo Musolesi
He will also be head of security and run "Overwatch" good guys tm.
Recruit someone who can run our PMC/Paramilitaries. You know who I want.
He will run Blackwatch/water" a.k.a. baddies inc.

Buy 10 units of supplies. -5BN

Buy 1 Fleet assets -2BN

Have Moira Meet Klaue with 1 covert team. Do not meet in Africa.

Both Factories make Network parts

I think we should recruit Troy sometime down the line for R&D, he can be made into a R&D leader for our robotics stuff or something to that effect, he definitely has the desire and motivation to produce and create.

Build a Network node in Western America
2 work crews+drones assisting

Build a Network node in Mexico.
2 work crews with Ryan

Make 2 Network parts
2 work crews

Research Nuclear
4 work crews with Dr. Robertson.

Build Drones
1 work crew

Construct 2 CS pylon and place 1 in Northern part of South America and 1 in Eastern USA

Hot Damn Potatoes This costs 19BN I think?

>>3773675
Does this seem better?
>I never made mention
It was from my previous post that I deleted to remove clutter.

>>3773576
If the squad Nomenklator has been removed, does that mean we gain a hidden passive bonus or is it just switching nomenklators for drones and making nomenklators more of a plot or story item?

Is there a way to reduce complexity in recruiting more people?

>>3773693


Troy Hurtubise was Raptured (or died shortly after the Rapture >>3767101 but his family indicates that he was a devout Christian). However, his latest suit, the Ursus Mark 5, is currently on display in a pawn shop in North Bay, Ontario; you can send someone to retrieve it at negligible cost, or make it into a serious project and send a work team to interview family members, searching for earlier prototypes and schematics, and so on.

The Ursus is not well-suited for combat, being as the user can barely walk in it, but it's pretty damn indestructible.

>>3773703

(I'm switching nomenklators for drones, partly because at this point a lot of people have nomenklators by now. Hence why you start with 1 unit of drones.).

>>3773705

If there is, you have yet to find it.

The issue is that recruiting people that have the right combination of loyalty, competence, and flexibility is difficult...

Note that all recruitment can be done by work and covert teams, or a mixture of the two.

>>3773709
I thought the AI would help in making it easier to recruit.

Maybe make some small concessions like flexibility.

>>3773697
I'll be honest with you, I'm tired as shit so I'm probably just going to trust that you have a plan and that you can make this shit work.

Meanwhile, if you need me, I've got a thing to write and a bed to fall into.

>>3773714
Well we can proceed on things that we agree on and by the time that stuff is done, you would have had some rest and we can work out the rest.

I think its safe to say we all agreed to have the Digger bagger thing get done, and use the Garibaldi to do it.

I'll level with you. I'm a bit tired as well and have a busy day tomorrow. So I'm not %100, and am worried about making narrow-sighted mistakes.

Also, throwing this out there, we really should buy some supplies, and stock up better. I think the prices are going to seesaw back and forth between divine punishments and miracles.

>>3773709
So, when it comes to recruiting free agents or heroes, can we:
1. use a signle work crew or covert team to do it without a named hero NPC leading
or
2. use a named hero NPC to recruit a free agent and/or add a work crew or covert team to assist.

I apologize if this has been addressed before, but I want to be absolutely certain and sure with the answer to all regards and nuances.

>>3773716

Yep! Recruiting is done as part of scouting a territory for opportunities. You can do it yourself, send an agent, send a work team, or send a covert team.

If the Remnant timeline is accurate, it's reasonable to assume that the price of supplies will go up; eventually you may have to start consuming them should the Global Community warehouses run out.

>>3773729
Might as well have two of our Covert teams Survey since they won't be doing much.

Send one Covert team to survey Canada.

Hold one in reserve and let them get some R&R.

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>>3773729
>eventually you may have to start consuming them should the Global Community warehouses run out.

You don't say?

>>3773689
>In general, you can only have one agent per job type. This is not a hard limit, however having more will likely lead to them fighting over ideological differences
This is in regards to hiring Bon Cop, and Bad Cop?

Like We can't hire a "head of CATs Security", then form a PMC that has a "CEO".
As far as I can tell, they would rarely ever interact, due to compartmentalization and separate jobs and deployments they are expected to do.

>>3773576
>use the garbaldi
>Remnant emoyees
> minimize the impact.


So for our turn i think we need to recover our teams. We are low on assets and should work on that. The deadlone give us plenty of tine to recover from this and make the cashless system. As well with the addition organizations we should be able to have more teams without audits.

>3 teams make network node in greenland
>2 factories make network parts place in north south america and east US
>3 teams with ryaman on defense
>3 teams recruit a new work team
>2 teams recruit a new work team

> 2 covert team work.
> 1 covert team eith moira provoke the two whitnesses.
>Ryan work on getting us more factory locations
>Aki do some meditiation and self loving she did a good job on that AI

>>3773771
Oh and us survay two countries.

>>3773773
Lets say greenland and japan. We can recruit more heros as the anons want. Although we already have plenty

>>3773716
How many more heroes do we want?
>>3773697
I dont think understaffing netowkr nodes is a good idea amd we should buy supplies when we have the money or plan to by selling nomenclatures.

What are we getting from klaue? And why do we want so many heros.

We already have 2 R&D more may conflict.
Why nuclear werent we just harping on defense.?

Yeah if it costs 19bn how are we going to have money for turn 3 of this quarter

>>3773865
Nuclear is almost done, and we can put it on the rocket for launch. As for cash, we do more jobs and sell network parts, power, or make nomeklators.

Defense is either 7 research attempts away, or there is something at 5 defense? I don't think we get anything for unfinished for research. So its either as many turns away from something as nuclear for a bonus or its 7 turns away. We finish defense and get the nuke done and we can put it on the rocket, or we can nuke a certain somebody we really don't like and claim that the rocket was a dumb idea or whatever. Might scare the new head of space agency if we nuke someone into submission.

Network nodes are 3 difficulty for the next 3 nodes. plus we put bonuses on them, drones+Ryan puts the mover %66.6 chance of failure.

If you guys really want. We can maybe revise a bit more, and remove two guys from making CS pylons, and put them on network nodes and not buy an extra fleet parts to cut down costs. But one more fleet part will make things cheaper for us, and supplies are likely going to go up VERY soon.

We can swap from nuclear to defense if you guys REALLY want it.

>>3773865
It can work fine if we separate them and assign them specifically different tasks.

Robertson and Aki do different things in different locations. One does nuclear and astrophysics, another does computers and robots. We can put another one Defense and Theology or something.

>>3774063
I gotta go soon.

>>3774063
We get a bonus for each level of research. Its not like 5 or 10 typically do somthing special though but that dosnt mean 5 or 7 isnt valuable. For example we got the mini nuclear generators at 6

We cannot sell network parts or power as of right now. Only nomenclatures.

Yeah id rather not waste a power and network part on a 33% chance of failure.

Also we are not using nukes at all wtf why would be do that. The only reason for this research is for nuclear power. The bomb itself is useless if used on an asteroid it would make things worse not better. We should not put it on any rocket

Sure lets buy a fleet part and i guess more heros we can work with its just nost people dont even use them in turns like your didnt mention aki.

We also need to get put work and covert teams back up. I still suggest this
>>3773771
With adding getting 1 fleet supply to bring it to 10

>>3774157
We'll pick two crew off a project, and add the extra crew to the network nodes.

If you want to change nuclear research to defense that's fine to, but we have been researching a nuclear bomb for like 8 turns spread out, so unless you want to piss that all away we ought to finish it.

Also this renders drones and Ryan redundant and unnecessary for network nodes since they are at %100 success now. So either we do keep em on to wow locals or make the network nodes trimmed with gold or something, or we find something to put them to.

I guess we can give the drones to Moira or Robertson and have Ryan oversee the Bagger transport and carrier reconfiguration just in case.

We can also deploy the covert teams as a pair so it would double normally low success rates. But for only one job.

>>3773567
>>3773697

Recruit Galeazzo Musolesi
Recruit someone who can run our PMC/Paramilitaries and security.

Buy 10 units of supplies. -5BN

Buy 1 Fleet assets -2BN

Have Moira Meet Klaue with 1 covert team.

Both Factories make Network parts

Build a Network node in Western America
3 work crews+drones assisting

Build a Network node in Mexico.
3 work crews with Ryan

Make 1 Network parts
1 work crews

Research Nuclear
4 work crews with Dr. Robertson.

Construct 1 CS pylon and place 1 in Northern part of South America

2 Covert teams on reserve (or can do jobs together).

This costs 19BN

Is this satisfactory to everyone?

>>3774172
We havent been research nuclear bomb weve been reaearching nuclear power. And everyone is concerned abour defense so we can do that turn. Not researching nukes now wont ruin it. We dont randonly loose research

>>3774177
I had ryan look for more factory locations. Which works and will let us expand our industry. And yeah give the drones to our covert teams


We also need to get more teams back and have 9 turns to cover the globe in network we have time

You also diddnt say why you want moira to meet klaue. Are we buying weapons. Why?
>>3774186

I say we

Buy 1 fleet asset

>3 teams make network node in greenland
>2 factories make network parts place in north south america and east US
>3 teams with ryaman on defense
>3 teams recruit a new work team
>2 teams recruit a new work team with us

> 2 covert team work.
> 1 covert team with moira provoke the two witnesses.
>Ryan work on getting us more factory locations
>Aki do some meditiation and self loving she did a good job on that AI

>>3774218

You have directed Dr. Robertson to work out how to build nuclear bombs again; it so happens that, on the way, he's figured out Stirling engines powered by RTGs.

He's overall fairly happy about this particular genie having been put back in the bottle, but he wants to understand WHY.

Right now, you have the capability to build a Uranium Hydride bomb; it will "fizzle" resulting in a detonation equivalent of around 200 tons of TNT, but it will do so reliably. It is, however, very inefficient, since its yield is comparable to a small tactical nuke, but the device itself is very heavy. You could conceivably put one on a tank chassis and use it to end a siege, but that's about it.

>>3774218

Your recent losses have depleted your stock of squad weapons, that may be why.

>>3774177

Correct, overmanning a work project has no hard benefit (it occasionally has soft benefits). Of course, overmanning a covert project has the benefit that if things to south, you have a backup squad.

>>3774157

You are, at least in theory, running a government agency; you cannot enter the free market. The Nomenklators are an exception because of how the situation was handled over the last year or so. You could in theory sell SRTG generators as well, but the public still blames nuclear testing for the Rapture, so you would be met with extreme backlash -- even things like smoke detectors have been redesigned to not use radioactive material.

(Hey QM, did any of the meteorites from the earthquake survive impact?)

#Use the Garibaldi.

#Bruno Folgore's men; he may be making his own power play

#Standard procedures.

---

Reach out to the Camerlengo in Rome, and request a visit to the Vatican. Lets make friend's with the Pope's secretary.

>>3774310

Yes, some did; they technically weren't meteorites; one of the Yellowstone calderas - fortunately, not the large one - went off and ejected rocks suborbitally, some of which hit Chicago.

They're mostly made of basaltic andesites and andesites.

The Remnant are, unsurprisingly, still expecting much larger meteorites to come... and the incident has prompted Carpatescu to give some money to NCASA to build an asteroid-intercept missile.

NCASA's effort has been mocked on Tsion's website as trying to get rid of an eagle with a flyswatter.

The earthquake also shot a fairly large amount of ash in the air. You are in for a cold winter, but there are no predicted long term effects.

One interesting bit of gossip resulting from your tracking of your former employee David Hassid, as picked up by a poorly secured video conference call:

“Carpatescu actually has missiles pointing into outer space, anticipating judgmental meteors.”

Rayford flinched. “He believes the prophecies that God will pour out more judgments?”

“He would never admit that,” David said. “But it sure sounds like he's afraid of it.”

Rayford thanked David and finally told him he needed rest. On his way out, Hassid shared one more bit of news, and it was all Rayford could do to stay off the Internet.

“Carpatescu has been manic the last several days,” David said. “He discovered that Web site where you can tap into a live camera shot of the Wailing Wall. He spent days carrying his laptop everywhere he went, watching and listening to the two preachers at the wall. He's convinced they're speaking directly to him, and of course they are. Oh, he's mad. Twice I heard him scream, 'I want them dead! And soon!'”

“That won't happen before the due time,” Rayford said.

“You don't have to tell me,” David said. “I'm reading Tsion Ben-Judah's messages every chance I get.”

As a note, interfering with Tsion's website is a free action, since it's a regular BBS/imageboard/forum with no particular attempt to secure it.

# Leave it alone; free intel is good.

# Break your promise to Ikko and censor it.

# Do a hard DDOS. This will inflate view count, and force Tsion or Ikko to buy better hosting, which may get them out of hiding enough for an interview.

# Do a soft DDOS, where you have bots read the site often enough to slow it down but not often enough to crash it. This will inflate view count.

# The site itself is not taking ads, but injecting tracking cookies should be fairly trivial. This will give you statistical information about the Remnant and probably cause a flame war when people notice.

# Coordinate with Pontifex Mathews to get a Jesuit-trained Ecumenical Council chaplain on the site, and get into an argument with Tsion. This will cost 1BN but make further cooperation with Mathews easier. Bring the popcorn!

>>3774335
>leave it alone we need the intel
How is our anti metorite prepration? Is the gravity thing all set uo and is the NCASA setting up their own?

#Send in the Jesuits~!

>>3774361

You currently have two high definition, broad angle cameras pointed at the sky, one in Russia, on a satellite, and one in South America, on a mountain observatory.

The good thing is that it's better than nothing and that this lets you cover both hemispheres. The bad thing is that you've only got the two for now.

>>3774365

That will not require any manpower since Mathews will handle it, but it will come at a cost (1BN). A good thing is that the substantial donation to the Ecumenical Council will make working with Mathews easier later on.

Right, right.

I think the cost is worth it.

---

What about the Vatican Observatory in Castle Gandolfo? We could negotiate setting up a camera there...

>>3774394

There are plenty of observatories in the word, of the optical and radio variety, of course -- it's just that these two in particular have been set up specifically to find dinosaur-killers, so they have the best chance of doing so.

(This is a problem IRL, by the way, and why you sometimes see that a near-earth asteroid has been detected a year in advance and sometimes you see something whizzing us by that we've only seen a week ago).

(There was that near miss a few weeks ago, yes?)

Do we have any viable options for upgrading observatories?

>>3774428

Not as such, but you can launch more.

Your engineers have designed a large satellite, derived from Soyuz/Salyut/Shenzhou components, that can hold cameras and other systems in addition to repeater antennas and cache drives.

You currently have one in a Molniya orbit over western Russia.

Further research into satellites will allow making more component types. Right now you can install communications arrays (which do the job they are supposed to do), cameras (configured for high-resolution terrain imaging, or asteroid tracking), and hydrazine tanks, allowing it to change its orbit or perform a (somewhat) controlled crash.

The satellite also holds 20kg of seeds and a reentry pod for them, as a sort of ark of last resort in case of ecocide.

What about our meteorological capacities? What if we want to track the development and movement of storms?

Do we currently possess such assets and if not can we rent access?

>>3774493

BOCHICA can make pretty good prediction for catastrophic weather a week or so out, although it's not optimized for telling the weatherman what to say (the system was designed to aid in disaster preparedness, so all it cares about is "this weather will not kill people or damage infrastructure" versus "this weather will, we must batten the hatches".)

At the very least, you will get a percentage chance of any extreme event being natural or metanatural.

we need to start working on them pew pews.

after we have food reserves.

https://www.americanantigravity.com/troy-hurtubise-on-god-light

>>3774428

To clarify: you upgrade your dinosaur-killer early warning network by launching more camera arrays on your comm satellites.

>>3774361

You've got to do a bit of sat research to design a thruster that is adequate for gravity-tugging. Fortunately such a thing exists -- it's called an ion thruster (available in ex-Soviet Hall effect design, and ex-NASA gridded design); adapting it to your satellite designs, turning them into probes, would only take a small amount of R&D.

The problem is that it doesn't do much for you unless you can see the asteroids coming a long way away, six months or more.

>> The problem is that it doesn't do much for you unless you can see the asteroids coming a long way away, six months or more.

Unfortunately, six months is no good. The asteroids will probably be here by then.

Can BOCHICA calculate the likelihood of an asteroid impact based off currently known Potentially Hazardous Objects (PHO)?

How far are we from the First Trumpet? One month (turn) right?

Rolled 66, 87 = 153 (2d100)

>>3774955

At this time, there are no PHOs that you know of that will pass nearby Earth in the next few years - keyword being "that you know of".

There was a false alarm last month, but it seems to have been the result of a software glitch as the system came online (it picked up four traces at the cardinal points, already inside the atmosphere, very briefly).

>>3775379

According to the timeline, so it would seem. The timeline as you have understood it from Tsion Ben-Judah and Bruce Barnes, and subsequent checks on their website, is at

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BlMOSEOxSihj1gdagq7yxCjONaRBgcdlRxnc68uWf0A

The First Trumpet is Hot Hail...

Target: Destruction of 1/3 of trees and all the grass

What's our plan? We have disaster prep PSAs right? We Should coordinate with Carla on promoting a series of PSAs on fire prevention.

Santiago should also be brought on board about this potential threat,too. Her territory is home to the Amazon rain forest. If her territory has fire planes, she'll want to have them on alert.

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>>3774955

Carpatescu has ordered NCASA to go with the opposite approach: an enormous Energia rocket has been retrofitted with a number of nuclear warheads -- apparently he kept a few -- and erected in Baghdad, ready to take out anything coming too close. Looks like NCASA could only build the one, though.

An intermediate approach would be launching a large satellite body with no repeaters, optionally no camera if you can direct it with other methods, and a large propellant tank so that it may nudge any incoming bolides out of the way; using conventional propellant would mean that this would only work for certain types of objects.

The ion drive / gravity tug approach has the advantage of working with every type of asteroids, including liquid or particulate, but would need an advance interception plan.

>>3775524

You call a staff meeting, which several of your people attend via telepresence - Steele from the Garibaldi, Suzanna Diamond from Rio, Aki from the basement. You introduce it with a well-known video segment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfc_CrwiE4Y

"I have decided to start taking the Remnant Timeline seriously. At the very least, we should treat it as a worst-case-scenario. According to it, if we strip out the nonsense about Satan possessing His Excellency and the like, several disasters of never-before-seen magnitude are poised to strike us."

Rather than the usual Powerpoint chart, you mark them down on an old fashioned whiteboard.

Two months from now, we are due for something best described as Hot Hail. I don't know if this is about a flaming bolide, or a series of fires generating burning ash, or what you have.

Four months from now, we are looking at a large impact, contaminating the sea.

Six months from now, we are looking at a second large impact, this time affecting freshwater sources.

Eight months from now, something would affect sunlight, reducing its output by a third.

Carla interrupts you. "Now, if this were to happen, the consequences would be catastrophic: severe global cooling... it would at the very least be another ice age. In the worst case scenario - Snowball Earth. The resulting ice sheets, increase in albedo, and reduction in the natural greenhouse effect due to dry air and thus sparse cloud cover would create a runaway feedback loop, at the end of which we could expect the Earth's surface to be about as cold as Mars."

You stay silent for a beat. "I'm in charge of disaster preparedness now, Foreman. I'm taking it seriously. Unfortunately my role is more public than yours, which, well, limits my operatioal options somewhat."

You conclude the presentation.

"And of course it gets worse from there. Demonic locusts, sea turning to blood, ecocide, and once we are reduced to an endangered species looking for scrap in the ruins, God himself coming down from heaven and fixing everything - in return for the sacrifice of eighty percent of the survivors in the process."

# A few workers have comments.

# Continue.

>>3775693
> a few workers have comments

>>3775693
# A few workers have comments.

I'm back baby!

# A few workers have comments and our new sec chief will mark down anyone objecting to the accurate description of Zod we did.

>>3775700
>>3775708
>>3775765

A few people point out that this is nonsense; some note that if these are real, we should've started watching the skies five years ago. One pulls out a steno pad with the relevant Datalinks information about near-Earth objects, pointing out that the closest known pass is due in 2004, and even that is going to be halfway to the Moon.

Someone else notes that feeding into the Y2K panic is irresponsible.

A young man stands up and politely points out that if these events have been ordained by God, no amount of disaster preparedness will help.

"As intense and powerful as these judgments are going to be, the real sad part about all of this is that there will still be many of these people who will not turn to God. But at least we can all take with us in the next life that our God did everything He possibly could to try and get these people saved and pulled in.

But just as a certain amount of the angelic race have fallen, rebelled, a certain amount of the human race is also going to do the exact same thing – and because of the free will that He has given to each and everyone of us this is going to be the saddest part of human history after it is all said and done."

Well, you can appreciate the sincerity.

"So what would you propose?"

"Admit that you are a sinner, be willing to turn from sin, and believe on Jesus Christ that you may be spared!"

# If everyone did this, it would throw a wrench in the gear just as much as anything else. You know what? Okay. (This does not end the game but will pause it because it'd take a lot of rewriting on my part)

# If anyone feels that way, you may leave.

# If anyone feels that way, you've still got a job here, but you must swear that you will do your job with professional zeal.

# If anyone will decide whether to do any sparing, it will be us.

# Thanks for your contribution. CATS is an equal opportunity employer, but please avoid preaching in the future

Moira's take on this is "Is that what the two scarecrows have been yelling at the people of Jerusalem for the last two years? I'll tell them where they can stick it!"

Aki seems genuinely worried. "Foreman, you're not going to let rocks fall and everyone die, right?"

Suzanna Diamond, teleconferencing from Rio, feels that the guy was unprofessional, but if divine intervention is a possibility, put it on the board and deal with it like everything else.

One of Dr. Robertson's students, teleconferencing from Sudbury (the doctor is down in the hole) tells the young man that he's happy to show him that at least young earth creationism is impossible with the data we have.

Mr. Vajpayee has said nothing, but is taking notes about the workers' body language, to see who reacted to that impromptu bit of preaching.

>>3774186
>>3774218
>>3773598
>>3773646
>>3773697
>>3774186
>>3774218

(I can't really find many commonalities here... however, polite reminder that if you have recruited Vajpayee, you can't recruit Musolesi until he resurfaces again; you've got to pick Also, I thought that Moira was going to Jerusalem?)

>>3775863
>>3775825
# If anyone feels that way, you've still got a job here, but you must swear that you will do your job with professional zeal.

I'm not down with doing the Jerusalem thing until we got the carrier configured to support her.

>>3773865
>>3774218
QM hinted we could speak to Mr. Klaue about our mole problem or something relating to our PMC ideas?

>>3775954

If you want to find someone who is immoral or amoral and has combat experience, your two current best bets are Klaue and Santiago.

Moira is happy to blow up the Eiffel Tower if it serves a purpose (she's likely happy to blow up the Big Ben regardless of whether it serves a purpose), but tries to limit collateral damage of the flesh and blood variety.

>>3775926

How about we just get Susan the doctor to be nearby? We need to get this done before more shit hits the fan.

>Vajpayee, you can't recruit Musolesi
can't give both and assign them to do different jobs?

I do have one anon supporting my original vote here >>3773714 regarding this one >>3773697.

I prefer doing this one >>3774186
though with us not spending an action recruiting Galeazzo Musolesi, and leave that to some other anon. Maybe Survey or do some training, or meditate with Aki since she will have free actions to.

And shift the drones to helping Dr Robertson. While Ryan does something else.

There is support for building network nodes and I believe another player wanted us to finish building them in the Americans to secure both continents, so there is some common ground there.

>>3773646
This guy here.
>First off lets finish the North american (and america in general) network unification by constructing the network nodes needed in the west coast and in Mexico.

>>3775959
What if she gets hit too with the points fingers and people drop dead from heart attack?

Doing this with Susan and the carrier gives us some hidden bonus and improves our chances of success. Why are we so casually risking Moira? One of our most used NPC heros?

>>3775956
Moira hasn't stuck me as a good fit for running a PMC. She seems more like a wild leader of a squad of soldiers on the battlefield. Which she has performed quite well.

>>3773353
I'm talking about this post here.
>>3773353
I'm not entirely sure what you were responding to since that post had different ideas and talking points. So i assumed it was in regards to the mole problem, or something relating to our PMC ideas.

>>3775964

We spent a bunch of money (which we have) and time (which we don't) getting her ready. It's a good chance to either disrupt prophecy or at least get theology research that we can't get in any other way.

>>3775963

I like the plan at >>3774186 too but at that point let's say we configure the carrier as a hospital ship and do the Moira thing right now instead of sending Moira to talk to Klaue.

We can talk to Klaue ourselves aboard the carrier, he's smart enough to not fuck with a good customer on his own ship and if we get hurt we are aboard a hospital ship with a bunch of navy sailors with sidearms to protect us.


>>3775956

Hey can I offer a suggestion? Make a post telling people when you're around if you can. It will be eaiser for people to play. This is good stuff, it's like the salvation war but without the military porn, but it's hard to follow when it progresses and when it doesn't.

>>3775968

Yeah it's like Dr Robinson and Aki. We need to find a yin to Moiras yang.

>>3775969
We can cancel the klaue trip entirely, and save on the difference.

We generally agreed last thread to use the carrier this month to move the bagger to our mine in Canada to do mining up there and gather more materials. So unless we re-arrange the plans for that......

>We need to find a yin to Moiras yang.
An Englishman and Ex-SAS/SBS regimental commander?

A Loyalist Northern Irishman Commando?

So they can hatefuck each other.

>>3775975

It's the same cost to get it done with the Garibaldi or without, if we reconfigure from cargo, though. I'd rather reconfigure to hospital and do the Moira thng this month before we have to deal with more disasters.

If Risto Shipping knows that we bought a digging machine to take to Canada to what is known to be an iron/cobalt mine who cares?

>>3775975

I'm thinking more ex african or asian warlord. Maybe yakuza guy.

>>3775979
cost 3 for us to do it with the carrier cost 4 to do it with the Gilbros and a possible information leak.

>>3775979
>ex african
See that window there by the corner office? Yeah come over here.

>>3775825
>>3775825

Wait.

We're just going to bluntly announce this intention with known moles in our groups?

Well, OK then.

---
>>Free will

Well OK. Our conscientious objector has the free will to either silently pass judgment on the billions of souls who have lost friends and loved ones from recent events OR he can choose to do his fucking job and try to reduce future heartbreak and misery.

In short: # If anyone feels that way, you may leave.

(And have Mr. Vajpayee keep tabs on his internet use. If this leaks to Tsion, it'll be a PR headache)
---
This is another reason to have an in-house theology expert. If Christians are going to be throwing around prepackaged Free Will arguments, we should have someone equipped to counter argument.

>>3775825
>"Admit that you are a sinner, be willing to turn from sin, and believe on Jesus Christ that you may be spared!"
"Ah yes, let me just go and grovel at the feet of a self-glorifying mass-murdering slaver in the hopes that when he decides to kill off most of humanity, that he will spare me. That way, I can grovel at his feet for the rest of time and try to ignore the fact I did nothing to stop him.

Why should I resist? The almighty has done seemingly little good in the last few years if it is even really is him, lord knows that there are other explanations but that doesn't change the fact that you are spurning the suffering of humans and claiming that because it is god's choice, that it is right, just and holy. You follow the same damnable logic the would see religious inquisitions travel the earth forcing confessions of sin and conversions of heretics.

Do you not see the illogicality of claiming that god did everything he possibly could to save these people? That you are asking for people to abandon the faiths of their ancestors or to abandon any number of other things in their lives all because our supposed creator, a thousand generations removed and distant, demands it of us?

That we must choose destruction or deification defeats the whole purpose of the Christian faith: a man's faith can only be judged in darkness, unknowing of the truth; all that this course can judge is a man's spirit, their willingness to stand for themselves.

I won't fire you nor will I demand you change but I must follow my faith, in humanity and justice, and that requires this be done. It requires that I make every effort to save human life, that I spurn those who seem to kill without issue and that I try to keep my people free.

If you are uncomfortable with what we propose, quite literally fighting back the apocalypse whatever it may be and from whatever it spawn, then I suggest you look into new employment or promise me on your faith and on your soul to never let it get in the way of your work."


God damn I hate this line of logic. How do you know what is god-caused and what is natural? By this man's cursed logic why should we have doctors, medicine or anything else? The survival of the injured and sick, clearly the domain of god and if they die then he did everything he could.

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>>3775524
The Amazon might be a possible target. It would make sense since the Amazon makes up 20% of Earth's flora and oxygen supply. At this point, I'm willing to suspect that all major rainforest might be targeted in the First Trumpet Judgement.

>>3776323
Leta not do an atheist rant. We probably would discriminate more people.

>>3776534
Eh, fair enough. Although I'd point out you can't really have an atheistic rant when a core portion of what you are saying is about the existence of god being confirmed and shit.

It was a beautiful rant nonetheless~!

>>3776534
>>3776540
What if we just point out that he took the most supplies like the beyatch he was?

>>3776323
>I must follow my faith, in humanity and justice, and that requires this be done. It requires that I make every effort to save human life, that I spurn those who seem to kill without issue and that I try to keep my people free.
Ummm, hello? We are literally trying to make a black opts unit that murders people here from a basis of a secret mercenary army.

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>>3776480

Amazon is the obvious choice, but there is a lot of forests and a whole lot more grass. One series, Apocamon even lampshades just how many variations of grass there are in the world.

>>3776323
>>3776534
>>3776540
>>3776715
>>3776716

A small group of workers, maybe a dozen, stand up and move to a corner. You figure that's the Remnant members of your workforce, or at least most of them. You notice that a couple of them rub each other's forehead.

You conclude the presentation on asteroid readiness, tell people you are looking for ideas, and to scatter into groups and brainstorm (those attending by telepresence are doing so using those cute little phone robots, which are carried to the tables as needed). Mr. Vajpayee has already pulled up the personnel file of the self-identified Remnant.

"I'm going to spend a month doing passive monitoring of everyone - look for people with gambling problems, or medical debts that they could not discharge, or discrepancies in their personnel bios. I would like to pretend to keep a close eye on the self-identified Remnant workers. In truth, I will be looking for any Morale Monitor infiltrators."

# Too convoluted, and I need results sooner, by the end of this month.

# Sufficiently convoluted for a spy-vs-spy play, go for it.

>>3773598
>>3773771
>>3774310
>>3773646

You've decided to let your new security chief apply standard procedures for a security sweep, and this is a good place as any to start. You type a few lines of pseudocode into the BOCHICA command prompt, and in return, it spits out a contract that requires those who work with you to bear the full burden of any religious objection to their work, including preemptively finding a replacement for work that they aren't comfortable doing, making use of your automated personnel assignment system to swap shift with other workers, and not doing any of this on the clock. Legally, it's airtight; you will have to see if it they follow it after signing it.

# Add a clause indicating that they agree to not sue for defamation should you wish to publicize any disattention of the contract: right now, Remnant have a need to be seen as upstanding citizens, and don't need any bad publicity. This should keep them in line.

# Add a clause indicating that they agree to have their religious preferences recorded in their public personnel file which will be shared with other agencies.

# Add a clause indicating that they agree to enhanced noninvasive medical monitoring, which will of course include EEG and MRI, and may give you a clue.

# Add a clause indicating that they agree to enhanced medical monitoring, which will of course include EEG and MRI, and may give you a clue. Intentionally skip the "noninvasive" part.

(You can add 0 to 3 clauses: the more you add the more people will quit).

Having an all-hands brainstorming meeting turns out to be productive for other reasons; despite recent losses in your security corps, morale is high: CATS is a force for good in the world, and you took steps to prevent similar losses in the future.

# Make it a standard thing.

# Just this once was fine.

>>3776724

True, but your rank-and-file doesn't know that.

>>3776715
Thanks, I should hope so given how many I've written over the years.

>>3776724
The greater good and all that anon. Also I'd point out that thus far our troops have done relatively little distasteful work and thus anything we might be planning isn't actionable as a characterisation yet.

>>3776886
# Sufficiently convoluted for a spy-vs-spy play, go for it.

He's the expert and so long as he is removing some corruption or insurgency from our ranks, he can do almost anything.

# Make it a standard thing.

I don't see a need for any of those clauses given what we know already: the first is attempting to blackmail our workers and is bad for our respectability and group morale; the second is a risk when the gov cracks down on Christians; the last two are just kinda evil.

>>3776886

# Sufficiently convoluted for a spy-vs-spy play, go for it.
Shouldn't we monitor this guy a bit? Like we trust him over our veteran employees and all that, and we will take his word others?

# Add a clause indicating that they agree to not sue for defamation should you wish to publicize any disattention of the contract: right now, Remnant have a need to be seen as upstanding citizens, and don't need any bad publicity. This should keep them in line.

# Add a clause indicating that they agree to enhanced medical monitoring, which will of course include EEG and MRI, and may give you a clue. Intentionally skip the "noninvasive" part.

We can pretend the medical stuff is free healthcare.

Also what would medical monitoring do? I thought brain damage was a sign of a lack of faith?

# Make it a standard thing.

>>3776904
>>3776894

You don't trust Mr. Vajpayee one bit; fortunately, you don't have to. The reason why you were shown three candidates selected from pretty much all over the world is that they are renowned in their respective circles for putting professional ethics above the personal. He was vetted quite thoroughly, and on top of that, his conditions of employment included 24/7 monitoring via a Nomenklator headset (of any variety he prefers, as long as he is using one). BOCHICA is not smart enough to do the monitoring fully by itself, but it is smart enough to know when to alert you should a possible discrepancy arise, so that you can get trusted human eyes on this. The extreme creepiness of this is countered by the fact that Mr. Vajpayee volunteered for the job and was explained this from day zero.

(In crunch terms: your named personnel start off with high loyalty, that's what the prep work of surveying, excluding most candidates, etc. does for you. it's up to you whether they keep it or not. Dr. Robertson will want to do science without interference, Ryan Andrews will want to promote his personal brand, Moira will want to blow stuff up for a cause, Aki will want to tinker, etc.).

>>3776894
>>3776904

Each month, there will be an all-hands meeting. While this seems to go against the compartmentalization policy that you want to institute, it has the advantage of letting you get some ideas from your people, monitor how they interact in a more relaxed setting, and removes suspicion that you are keeping things from them -- for example, the fact that you plan to recruit a black ops squad to replace the security platoon you lost.

>>3776904
>>3776894

You do, in fact, offer healthcare to your workers. Carpatescu has gone with the European model for basic care, although in practice private healthcare is needed to supplement said basics.

EEG and MRI scans would let you know if Remnant are neurologically different from other people (including Christians belonging to denominations that signed up with the Ecumenical Council). Invasive procedures... well, Dr. Suzanna Diamond confirms that you can in fact strengthen or dampen religious feelings by electrostimulation, or by judicious application of entheogens such as lysergic acid.

On that note, a few jurisdictions are beginning to follow New Babylon's lead and decriminalize possession of marijuana, ecstasy, and acid; others have scaled down enforcement. Two notable exceptions to this are subpotentates Dimmsdale, who believes the American public won't stand for that sort of thing, and Yang, who promotes enligthenment through self-mastery rather than dependence on chemicals.

>>3774365
(Confirm spending 1BN to have a Jesuit priest troll Tsion on his own site, and maybe extract some intel, which will be necessarily shared with Mathews?)


(In general what's your plan for this month? I've seen several but I can't see any commonalities or I would have done those yesterday! Sorry if I'm being dumb.)

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>>3776943
(ah found the image I sort of wanted)

Well aside from discarding everything discussed and compromised for a coherent action, we can try to do tiny bits by tiny bits of smaller actions that we can all somewhat agree on.

I say we go with my plan --> >>3773646. It'll get the networks in America up to Mandate standards, secure our control over it's E-conomy and produces enough network equipment for another pair of network nodes the month after.

Although, personally, I plan on launching another anti-meteor detection sat next month since we really need to get on top of detecting all that shit ASAP so we can get the equipment online to prevent any issues: a grav-tractor will take months to work so we need advanced detection yet anything else will need to be researched or is a 1-use system that we'd need to produce. Ignoring the exceptionally basic "ram it with a big bomb" or "use a rocket motor to shove it aside".

>>3776985

Your current options are:

* Detonation. This is the approach that NCASA has been mandated to take by Carpatescu; it's inefficient, but you figure that there were few budget issues here. A large rocket carrying a large nuclear warhead is launched and initiates on impact. The main issue is that you don't know if the nuke will work at all. If it does, one large object will be split into many fragments, mitigating the impact damage and preventing some of the fragments from colliding. Any chemical or radiological damage would, of course, not be mitigated at all. A non-nuclear detonation is possible, and trades reliability for efficiency. No R&D necessary as giving enhanced gimbals to an Energia rocket stack was NCASA's job and they have already done it.

* Mechanical push. A probe docks with the object using retro rockets, anchors to it if it can (or deploys an extensible push plate), and then uses its main propulsion system to shove the object into a safe trajectory. The main advantage of this method is its simplicity and reliability. It requires some advance notice. It will only work with solid asteroids. No R&D necessary as the mechanics of this are well understood.

* Gravity tug. This method is clean, efficient, and elegant, and will work with asteroids that have a powdery or liquid consistency. The main issue is that it would require a lot of advance warning, since turning a hit into a near miss with the tiny gravitational field exercised by a probe requires performing the tug maneuver very far out. The ion engine required for a gravity tug exists and is routinely used for stationkeeping in large satellites, so only a small amount of R&D is necessary.

* Flexible. This advanced probe would be powered by a fission-fragment reaction engine and carry enough video equipment to determine the nature of the object. Done so, it would be instructed to gravity-tug, or push, or back off and then accelerate to impact, depending on the object's shape. This is the best of all worlds, but has a serious problem - fission-fragment reaction engines are theoretical and would have to be developed. Ironically, the current issues with nuclear physics would make a FFRE slightly easier to develop than it would have been otherwise, but it's still the sort of project that would take years. If you manage to collaborate with NCASA, you can maybe do it in months.

If you find an object, the more cameras you can train at it, the easier it is to determine its composition.

>>3776980

(I'm mostly just confused by the plans presented, I usually do start with "things that everyone agrees on", but I can't parse any for this turn. Again, my apologies)

>>3776985
Which I accepted and tried to implement into a post.

Lets try this.

Recruit someone who can run our PMC/Paramilitaries and security.

Buy 10 units of supplies.

Buy 1 Fleet assets

Both Factories make Network parts

Build a Network node in Western America
3 work crews

Build a Network node in Mexico.
3 work crews

Make 1 Network parts
1 work crews

Research Nuclear
4 work crews with Dr. Robertson. + Drones

Construct 1 CS pylon and place 1 in Northern part of South America

This just leaves Aki, Moira, Ryan, with unused actions, and Foreman with 1/2 of his actions used.
Plus 3 covert teams unused.

>>3777037
Okay lets focus on the network nodes, I agree with >>3776985 in where to build them and with how ever many crews.

Two network nodes, 3 crews each, and place them in west America, and Mexico. Lets get this part done since there are two players agreeing to do the same thing here.

>>3777037
I like the latter 3 options. I don't suppose we can pretend that we used a nuke to deflect it but it was actually rockets or something, no?

I think the first to is the easiest to achieve, the main issue is going to be detection.

>> Vajpayee
#Sufficiently Convoluted

Lets see what Vajpayee can do.

# Add a clause indicating that they agree to not sue for defamation should you wish to publicize any disattention of the contract

It seems pretty basic? Like, as long as Remnant members don't try to blow up CATS, I'm willing to let them work for us.


#Make it a standard thing

---

>>Anti Asteroid Plan:

Flexible. I trust we can get NCASA to play nicely, via hook or by crook.

>> Monthly Plan

>>3777044 works.

For actions:

Ryan: Assign him to node construction in Western Aerica.

Aki: Research Augmentation

Moira: See if she has any particular requests. If we're going to send her to the Lion's Jaws soon, its only polite we let her complete any unfinished business first. We can even assign her one of three covert teams.

Foreman: Reach out to the Vatican to a request a visit.

Spend 1 BN to troll Tsion.

QM, would cyberspace count as a territory if we're looking for opportunities to cause mischief?


Have one covert team assigned to scout the region of Ukraine.

Maybe also hire a team to scout Israel and do recon on the Witnesses (isn't Tsion supposed to be in the area as well?)

Doable?

>>3777102
Ryan: Assign him to node construction in Western Aerica.

Why? Its at %100 Success already.

>Aki: Research Augmentation
First we try to do nukes, then there is a push for defense, now start we doing Augmentation? If we never focus on anything, we will never finish anything.

>Moira
Okay.

>troll Tsion.
Sure.

Scouting or surveying costs money, and we spend a huge lump this turn already. We can, but just letting you know we've already blown over half our budget in the first month alone.

I'd rather if we just stacked our 3 teams with Moira this turn to do one big job safely. But I'm fine with letting them rest or whatever.

>>3777102
Also we have an unused action so, either we enjoy the fun downtime scene that qm writes for it or we do something like Meditate with Aki since she will have 1 free turn either way.

>>3777119
>>Ryan:
Idle hands are the devil's plaything, I guess? What would you have Ryan do?

Augmentation:
Ryan is researching Nukes this turn.

Aki's the transhumanist. I thought we were trying to do brain implants with those French prisoners as guinea pigs.

>>Covert Ops:
Fair point. Have security forces on standby for Moira shenanigans then.

>>Foreman
I would have us visit the Vatican. Win favor with Space Pope. Get a start on our upcoming demon problem.

To be fair we can assign our heroes to construction actions since most of them either have a universal minor bonus or a focus bonus on construction. Alternatively we can send them around the world to explore different regions and find opportunities or additional heroes to recruit and shit.

>>3777119
>Why? Its at %100 Success already.
Assigning heroes to actions grants bonuses, even in the case that we're fully manning them. This could be anything from the region's economy picking up far faster than it should (because Ryan was aware it was coming and made good investments with insider knowledge) to an enhancement of their function by Aki or something.

Derp. Robertson is researching nukes, not Ryan.

>>3777044

While your drones aren't particularly capable when it comes to fine manipulation, having them available in Effincold and Sudbury means that any students or researchers who are squeamish about carrying around live nuclear fuel can have a mini tank do it; the practical advantages of this are marginal, but the psychological ones are sufficiently visible
>>3777102

Most of the mischief you can cause is largely internet-based. Since your logistics AI is distributed, ANY installation of pylons and nodes results in greater market dominance; you've already begun to offer its services for free, to the point that the profession of travel agent is beginning to suffer. Should you pass a certain threshold, you will effectively be in control of the economy by the simple fact that anyone using your system to buy, sell, and ship goods will have that much of an advantage over anyone who doesn't. Note that this is what Carpatescu is working on with the MCP system; if you beat him to it at the right moment, well, you two will have to figure out who's actually in charge of the Earth.

Also, you don't have to choose between those plans (it's why I listed them with an asterix and not a pound sign); current options were simply being presented to you.

>>3777044
>>3777057

You don't have much of a public profile, which lets you do things that, for example, Carla cannot do. CATS is to be known for reliably connecting the world: it wouldn't do to leave your own back yard uncultured, so your workers go out and build Network Nodes south and west of your HQ. On the way to Mexico, your work crews spend the night on Zevo Toys property, where they find that the factory is back in limited operation -- having retooled for simple, durable toys for preschoolers, since the oldest kid in the world is roughly 4 -- and Mr. Zevo looks in much better shape. He plans to be available to teach stealth and defensive tactics to your security crews by the closing of the year.

>>3777119

Adding an agent to a fully manned job confers small ancillary benefits. In this case, Ryan would help butter up Dimmsdale a little bit byensuring that the Network Node installation is done by private contractors rather than a government agency. Overmanning a job with extra teams however does nothing.

>>3777102

"Requests? Boss, I want this thing off me. I don't like taking pills every day, I'll do that when I'm seventy, thank you very much, and it messes with my drinking. And, if I turn it on, I'm a lot tougher to knock out in a fair fight, which makes it not a fair fight, so, yeah."

"We can abort, if you like."

"Hell no! I want it off my chest, yes, but after it's done its job. Tell you what - give me two days off, a company card, and I'll be ready to deal with those two scarecrows on the sixteenth. Deal?"


>>3777123

You also have the option to fly to South America for survival training. Learning how to keep calm in emergencies will also help you with that.

>>3777144

(OOC question: Aki is 20 years old, so it's not creepy if you hit on her. Is that where you intended to go, since we did a date scene with Carla? Note that Aki will have a very odd idea of what a date might look like.)

>>3777144

Alternatively, we could have Ryan look at ways to make more money for us with drones, if that's a possibility.

We need money. We'll always need money.

Last session's Nigerian Astronaut nonsense got me considering cyber-crime as a means of raising capital.

We run the world's internet. Lets include the shadowy parts too. Consolidate considerable chunks of the cyber criminal underground and become the online Aventine Collegium.

But that's a venture for another month, when we don't have meteors hanging overhead.

>>3777166
I don't know if you were addressing my post at random or selected the wrong person so I'm gonna wait for confirmation on which before I answer.

>>3777167
Agreed. I mean I can think of a few ways to generate money / reduce costs off the top of my head: getting the UNDRR to pay us money in return for renting access to our logistics bases for storing / distributing relief supplies; joint ownership of satellites by UNDRR and NCASA where they are just filled with cameras that can be pointed up for asteroid detection or down for disaster detection; renting the patent for our RTG's to both groups; selling drones to the UNDRR for disaster relief purposes (e,g saving people from burning buildings where sending more people in is risky, etc); having the NCASA perform directed-energy research.

Plus we could look into having the UNDRR form another private military company that they are most certainly not related to or just have them feed into ours, that way we can reasonably sustain a larger one without anyone questioning why we need such a security force (since now there are more customers and thus more troops needed).

>>3777044

You order a bulk purchase of MREs, water filters, and diesel, confident that BOCHICA will automatically have it delivered where it's likely to be needed.

After you do, you take a bit of time to follow how the purchases were made; to your complete lack of surprise, the International Community Co-Op follows suit in purchasing supplies, driving the price up a little. Its delays in purchases and the fact that it occasionally does a better job than you at getting a good deal, but loses out on average, tells you that Ikko is not using any purchasing algorithms; Mr. Vajpayee confirms that she probably has a room full of people with phones or, more realistically, each of them is in their own room and they coordinate via IRC.

>>3777191

(Sorry, mispaste; your post isn't related)

>>3777167

During the all-hands meeting, Carla has pointed out that, in a worst case scenario, you won't need money; the whole electronic cash thing will be moot if things really go south. At that point, having food and production capabilities would become more important.

That said, yes; it would be easy for you to infiltrate the black market, although should you move too fast it would simply revert to pre-internet methods.

>>3777204

To be explicit, I'm talking recruiting black hat hackers and the other shadowy sort to engage in activities that could hinder Carpatescu's cashless system or other factions (Rehoboth for example) if necessary. Maybe I'm overestimating the prevalence of internet use in the late 90s, but I think enough of the big fish are using it for business, yes?

Or have someone invent ransomware and have them shut down Global Community or Remnant computers, or using social engineering to compromise rival departments security or payroll.

I'm OK with letting the Internet remain uncensored, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have the option to fight dirty in the emerging Information Age.

Black market is a bonus, too, sure.

>>3777230

The big fish -- banks and the like -- are starting to, yes. Carpatescu has begun to push for a cashless system, and banking websites and phone apps are a stepping stone towards it.

You are of course in an unique position to take advantage of it, but there's a drawback: part of why adoption has been fast, is that hackers are generally no more a threat than bank robbers are. Any TRULY large heist would slow down adoption.

Now, something like a protection racket on the other hand... why bust hackers when you can make them pay a tithe?

(At this point it's safe to mix 90s tropes and mid-2000s tropes, since you've sped up development significantly).

>>3777163
>Ryan butters up Dimmsdale
Okay.

>>3777166
What? No! I mean, I wasn't thinking that going forward. I'd rather her think of us as sempai who notices her sometimes.

>>3777167
>>3777191
We can make money without tarnishing our image or reputation. We don't need to do illegal activities online. We can do legal ones that were set up by us.

>>3777230
Hmm.... Interesting and I'm dow nwith using black hats to slow down the opposition, but I'm not so big on stuff like ransomware. Had that myself. Sucked but they never got a penny from me.

>>3777242
Offer more security and software subscriptions.

Keep most Banking and financial transactions safe.

I recall times like these had lots of lame ass subscription crap like Norton AV

>>3777242
Ah, now THAT's a really brilliant idea.

Anyways, I won't distract us from current concerns further. It is merely something I feel deserves exploration in the near future when we have the time and funds.

>>3777261
We should lay some groundwork in between posts.

Having an idea float around without refining it into anything usable for the quest is about as useful as pointing out that someone is being beaten to death and someone should maybe do something or possibly call 911.

>>3777271

(I try to add them to the options roster, but I am sure I miss more than a few. If I do, PLEASE call me on it)

>>3777259

Right now, more people are using BOCHICA than the MCP. A couple months ago, you decided to make it a free service, in order to increase its adoption rate. Once it's the default, introducing premium services is likely to work pretty well...

(Not like Microsoft, Google, Apple et al. didn't do that IRL after all)

>>3777259

For the shady stuff we would subcontract black hats to do the work for us. They wouldn't be officially affiliated with CATS but rather folks like Rose or other agents who can either be trusted or that we have leverage to keep them from blabbing.

As for a protection racket, would that be offering CATS services as a contractual IS firm? Like hire ourselves out to the big banks and corporations?

Might be a useful way to get into Dimsdale's good graces.

>>3777308
Mmmmm.... Freemium to Premium. It works.

Off Point Quandry: Is Clippy still a thing in this universe?

>>3777308
I'm meaning more in the sense as we try to refine the ideas into a presentable or realistic option and ask YOU the qm if it can be implemented. But if you can think up a good idea or what to do it then that's even better.

>>3777320
Hmmm, any way we can integrate and expand our system a bit more? Extra Servers, backups and storing the main AI in a bunker....

>>3777320

Yes, Clippy is a thing. The internet loves to hate it. You've been approached by Joe and Jay Bonzi to use their "buddy" graphics as a way to use BOCHICA that doesn't require typing into a DOS prompt, and as far as you remember, they ended up doing it anyway when you made the API available to the public.

>>3777336

Thanks to your earlier decisions, your logistics AI is fully distributed: it's running on every piece of hardware you have, including idle CPU time on the satellites in orbit. That is arguably more secure than any bunker. You have a big server farm in your HQ and forward bases, of course, but you strictly speaking don't need them anymore.

>>3777336

Definitely backup BOCHICA. As we get bigger, I can only imagine that Carpatescu will make an attempt to silence us.

Maybe we could attempt to split the AI into dedicated roles. The main AI can focus on securing economic control, while subsections can assist in R&D, coordinating disaster defense, or DDoSing Tsion. That would probably require more servers, which in turn requires more cash and people to run.

There's also Y2K. While obviously not a threat, it was a big fear at the time. Maybe there's a business opportunity...

>>3777362

There is! You expect that in the last three months of 1999, businesses that aren't Y2K-ready will panic and be wanting to spend a lot of money on trained network specialists to bring them up to speed. This will be a unique opportunity to use work crews to make money directly.

(I was going to start making that available next month, good catch! IRL I spent midnight of 1999 in some insurance company's office making sure that everything worked. Impromptu Red Alert/Starcraft LAN party with friends and we got paid for it, effectively, not a lot but half a million Italian lire is a lot of money when you are a teenager).

>>3777320
>As for a protection racket, would that be offering CATS services as a contractual IS firm? Like hire ourselves out to the big banks and corporations?
To be fair, we could also offer a specialised "secure message" service where it's beamed entirely through satellites between point A and B in order to prevent anyone intercepting it by controlling or monitoring network traffic on the ground.

It wouldn't do that much against cyber-observation but whenever your message might route through a remote part of the network that a hacker could literally walk onto, plug into and manipulate, it would be securer.

That or we could offer "priority messaging", in a similar manner to how we grant the Police / disaster relief services priority during disasters or major events. It'd basically just be making two separate buffers for data and having the network focus on one over the other. It might not be popular but it could be profitable.

>>3777375
>This will be a unique opportunity to use work crews to make money directly.
Presumably you mean at a greater rate than the currently possible 1:1 of making Nomenklators?

>half a million Italian lire is a lot of money when you are a teenager
I'd imagine given you'd probably spend it on alcohol more than anything.

OK. We can hire out some work teams to make sure they're safe from the Big Bad Y2K.

The Melissa Worm was around this time too, yes? That's an opportunity too. The ILOVEYOU worm was 2000.

If there are major viruses and worms showing up, we can attempt to rectify the damages, patch known vulnerabilities, etc.

Forgive me, but are there any particular rules for setting up private companies again? Could we have Ryan set up a 'shell corporation to do IT work or the like?

>>3777391
I can imagine secure message services would be a huge hit with the Remnant and Nationalist crowd, although they wouldn't trust a service affiliated with the GC.

>>3777394

It's definitely a conversation to have with Ryan Andrews. He's guarantee to skim a bit off the top, but he's been remarkably reliable in that sense. He wants your job once CATS is inevitably privatized in a few years, and you know it.... but that means he'll play ball.

Interestingly Andrews thinks that the whole "end of the world" thing is nonsense, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

>>3777361
So we accidentally made Skynet without realizing it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaMjFTbaFRg

>>3777375
>Impromptu Red Alert/Starcraft LAN party
I'm so jelly

>>3777458
>So we accidentally made Skynet without realizing it?
I mean, I've been saying we should create a virus to steal computation power from computers to throw at the AI calculations to make the system smarter (and the process of it becoming human level) for a little while now.

>>3777459

What has happened is that people are freely downloading something like Seti@Home, so that they can use it to get discounts on train and airplane tickets and shipping. In a sense, it's the most insidious sort of virus.

>>3777465
Yeah but it's not like we're actively spreading it to every computer in the world without a choice or running the computers so close to the red line that they almost melt.

>>3777459
>"By the time Skynet became self-aware it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms; everywhere. It was software; in cyberspace. There was no system core; it could not be shutdown. The attack began at 6:18 PM, just as he said it would. Judgment Day, the day the human race was almost destroyed by the weapons they'd built to protect themselves. I should have realized it was never our destiny to stop Judgment Day, it was merely to survive it, together. The Terminator knew; he tried to tell us, but I didn't want to hear it. Maybe the future has been written. I don't know; all I know is what the Terminator taught me; never stop fighting. And I never will. The battle has just begun..."

>The attack began at 6:18 PM, just as he said it would. Judgment Day...
>it was never our destiny to stop Judgment Day
Dear God! UNPLUG THE DAM THING!

If we survive the Apocalypse he can have it.

If we offered Dimsdale a better deal on patching the infrastructure for North America's larger corporations, that would probably open up opportunities to 'convert' the Subpotentate.

---
On an unrelated, I had more thoughts about Theology for future events. We could consider acquiring a Jesuit. Given their role in education and the Sciences, we could land a researcher who could alternate between scientific research and combating supernatural threats. Plus, as Catholics, there is likely no love loss between them and Tsion's people.

>>3777529

Happily, you've already spent some resources towards that end, which should streamline the process considerably.

>>3777473

(That is one of the possible endgames, yes.)

>>3777529
>Jesuit
No.

>>3777542
>(That is one of the possible endgames, yes.)
Best end game. Lets just make Cyber-Aki take on god for us.

Also listening to Snowcrash and imagining a hacker in this world ending up involved in some similar shit is fun.

Librarian-Vi is best virtual intellect. It's like BOCHICA but more adorably english.

QM, what happened to the Free Masons? Have they folded into Enigma Babylon too?

>>3777037
Lets go with Flexible if we can get NCASA to help us on this, mainly they provide most of the funding and some staff to help. They can get most of the credit 60/40.

>>3777542
Okay so far we have....

Done research with Robertson using drones
Built network nodes in W.USA & Mexico

Bought supplies

Can we add Ryan to the W.USA job to butter up the subponete?

Also we didn't buy any fleet assets no? Or would we have to buy 2 in order to get that >>3773608
>all logistics is done for you in the background
bonus.

So this leaves 1 work team and 3 covert teams left plus everyone but Robertson and maybe Ryan with a bunch of actions.

>>3777702

Assign Ryan to West Coast to curry favor with Dimsdale. If possible, see about patching infrastructure against known viruses and worms at a discount costs.

Preferably focus on Big Business.

1 Work Team does Y2K prevention

How about we have one covert team recruit black hat hackers. Ukraine would be a good place. China and Israel as well.

Did we get a list of opportunities for this month?

>>3777647

Secular organizations like the Freemasons and Oddfellows are doing well; notably there has been a resurgence of E Clampus Vitus in California and Nevada.

However, they're social clubs, not secret societies.

>>3777738
>>3777702

Ryan Andrews goes with the American West Coast team; while he has little to do on the techncal side of things since your pylons and network nodes are by now well-tested tech. he manages to ensure that the various subcontracting jobs are auctioned off in a way that is almost fair and, most importantly, appears to be completely fair. Despite the encroaching centralization mandated by Carpatescu, Dimmsdale wants to be seen as friendly to small businesses; Andrews is savvy enough to accomodate him. Your AI tells you that Andrews, personally, broke even and didn't make a profit; you figure that he was mostly trying to burnish his personal brand, with some success since a number of tabloids refer to him as "the man behind the man behind the Internet".

>>3777702

You did buy one fleet asset. You'd need one more, unless you keep the Garibaldi in a configuration that has at least some cargo space.

>>3777608
>>3777623

You're almost sure that Aki doesn't have the organizational capabilities to do that; to be the queen, she'd need a kingmaker. An opportunity may present itself when Carpatescu's cashless economy system comes to fruition, if you manage to put BOCHICA in charge of the economy not too early and not too late.

>>3777468

True.

>>3777529

That's more or less the unspoken deal you have with Andrews, basically.

>>3777702
>>3777738

You have four teams left, which would let you recruit an additional covert team, if you so choose (Recruitment can be done by any mixture of teams).

>>3777830
If Aki is to be the YAAASSSSS queen, she'd need a dragon.

FTFY.

>>3777830
You did buy one fleet asset. You'd need one more, unless you keep the Garibaldi in a configuration that has at least some cargo space.
Goddamit.

>>3777934

Buying fleet assets is a free action, if you have the cash. Feel free to edit.

>>3777936
B-b-but what about o-our b-bb-budget?

TOO BAD! BUY THAT EXTRA FLEET ASSET, BUY THE SHIT OUTTA IT!

>>3777936
Yeah, sure put the last 4 teams on recruiting a covert team. May as well leave no chance of more spies and undesirables getting thorough.

I think another anon wanted to do recruitment too.

Since Aki is not doing anything with both of her turns, can we put her with the interview or recruiting team?

Perhaps send Moira to survey Ireland or the United British States for opportunity?

Aki has some hacker connections. She knows Rose. Have her and two covert teams recruit.

Put the other two on standby in case new developments crop up during the month.

If Aki didn't meditate last month, have her do so this one.

We could have Moira do recon in Israel, since she's going against the Witnesses, although she also wanted two days off to get prepped.

Maybe have a covert team do recon in Israel, make preparations for Moira's visit. Since Tsion's allegedly in the area, we can spy on him as well. Maybe get some recon on the First Trumpet or the 144,000.

>>3777963

Sending Aki to survey an area is perfectly doable; the only difference story wise is that she'll do so from your basement, and use remote systems (She's technically under house arrest, but she doesn't really want to go outside much if at all, if she's sufficiently stimulated otherwise. She -knows- she's under house arrest, so she's at least humoring you about it. She did go to England one time, under Carla's direct supervision). Depending who you send (named character including yourself, work team, covert team) different things and people will show up for different territories.

>>3777963

>>3777978

Moira doing survey in Israel is compatible with her facing the Two Witnesses; she's a former terrorist, so she'd at the very least scope out an escape route for herself just in case.

>>3777980
Sure.

Anything to stack the odds in our favor and ensure our Mad Bomber Gal survives.

---

I can imagine Aki's idea of remote scouting involves drones in wigs, yes?

>>3777988

The only time you asked her to survey a territory, she ventured under the daystar (with Carla holding her hand) and met with Terry Pratchett shortly before he died, during the nationalist attacks.

Out of that particular caper you got Sir Pterry's sword, quite possibly the least magical sword ever made. It is, however, fairly sharp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rOE0hvEy00 You'd have to see what she does now that she has drones.

File: Hand of god.png (291 KB, 500x373)

291 KB PNG

I'd bet a bag of nicks that if it kills enough demons, it'll be sharp enough to cut causality itself. ;P

Rolled 42 (1d100)

>>3777044
>>3777102


Buying out additional space on barges and cargo contracts with regional charter airlines is a matter of running a shell script; it's expensive, but otherwise there is literally zero overhead.

Dr. Robertson expresses his skepticism (he spells it scepticism, since he's an older Canadian) about the "launch a nuke at any incoming space objects".

Coincidentally, least year's summer blockbusters Armageddon and Deep Impact are re-issued for theaters at reduced prices; you reckon it's a decision of Fortunato's propaganda arm. They flop, although you're heartened to see video remixes soon becoming available on the net in glorious 240p.

Dr. Robertson does his due diligence, however, and runs a few simulations. "Given the nature of the device installed on the Energia rocket, I don't think that it would achieve initiation. However, it should be possible to pack sufficient uranium hydride around the primary warhead to let us obtain the same effect as the "fizzle" we got last winter.

You have sufficient control over NCASA to demand that it be done, although it would cost you a significant portion of your nuclear fuel (0.5).

# Do it. If a nuclear asteroid-buster we must have, it may as well actually work.

# Waste of precious resources.

"Assuming that the device is used at all, which I of course hope it wouldn't be, I am confident that the data we collect would answer the ultimate question within this program - can we"


The simulations, and a few bits of live testing, have also shown how best to make Stirling RTGs safe to operate in close proximity to living beings.

Dr. Robertson asks you if you know what graphene is.

"Graphite was always an excellent neutron moderator material. With the changes that have occured - at this time, I am suspecting an alteration of the force ratio between strong and weak nuclear interaction, which fortunately has left most macroscopic effects intact, as well as the proton-proton fusion cycle that powers the sun - its two-dimensional allotrope, graphene, if used in staggered layers, becomes excellent at bouncing back stray neutrons, slightly increasing RTG efficiency and greatly augmenting safety. The simple expedient of stuffing broken graphene sheets in an isolating pouch is almost as effective, and, since we are literally sitting on top of a coal mine, infinitely cheaper."

The bottom line is that the stuff -- extremely refined charcoal, more or less -- can be used as nuclear shielding and, should the new nuclear paradigm hold, prove better than lead at its job.

"I'm close to something interesting here, Foreman. If it was possible to develop an active version of this neutron mirror, we could use it to once more give ourselves the ability to initiate large scale nuclear reactions. The closest work that has ever been done on the topic is, of course, the inertial confinement fusion experiments done at Fermilab -- although, as you know, they've missed the mark by well over two thirds."

After sending a quick e-mail to Pontifex Peter Mathews about Tsion's website, you tell him of your intention to endow Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio (his former diocesan seat) with a token of your respect for the Jesuit tradition of scholarly debate, so that they may establish a Chair of Internet Theology. You hope that this opens up avenues of collaboration later on,

# especially since you went to Rome in person.

# should everything go well.

The (dubious) honor falls on Father Franz Schorpe, who you are surprised to learn is not a Jesuit but a Marianist, having switched orders after having spent years in a Bolivian Marianist mission. The man is old, in his seventies, but you're surprised to learn that he is an avid gamer, at least as much as his antiquated 486 laptop will allow. "Oh, the new stuff is too fast and too realistic looking for me. Besides, I got used to this keyboard and the, thing here, I think it's called a nipple mouse. Say, did you know that Civilization II has multiplayer?"

The man takes his job seriously; he sets up a lesson plan (he intends to hit the ground running with the 1999-2000 academic year), reads Pastor Barnes' notes in less than a week, and signs up on Tsion's website using his real name and full address. On day three, some nut of a Remnant dry drunk goes to it expecting to give a load of fire and brimstone to the old man, only to find that the professor lives on campus and neither the campus cops nor security are keen on having crazy people with a car trunk full of sulfurous rocks and Chick tracts around.

A few of the posters on Tsion's website are, well, a bit intense; a couple start stalking Schorpe on the topics where he posts, claiming that the Titanic's Captain Edward Smith was a "Jesuit temporal coadjutor" and that the "accidental sinking" was arranged by having Smith's "Jesuit master", Father Francis Browne, board the Titanic and order Smith to run his ship at full speed through an ice field, ignoring any ice warnings, with the purpose of hitting an iceberg severely enough to cause the ship to founder and the three businessmen to drown. In other words, the Titanic was built and then sunk, and her crew and passengers sacrificed, to eliminate these three men. As evidence, the conspiracy theorists say that after the sinking, all opposition to the Federal Reserve disappeared. It was set up in December 1913, and eight months later the Jesuits had sufficient funding to launch a European war.

To your mild annoyance, this allows Tsion to play the voice of reason; to your mild elation, Tsion's apology includes a written promise to not ban "the distinguished scholar from a wayward Christian tradition", even as the two argue whose tradition is wayward.

You don't really have a horse in this race; what interests you is intel, and intel you collect, finding out that Tsion does plan to move back to Israel, but only as part of his intention to debate Carpatescu on stage -- to which His Excellency agreed.

"A new book by 80-year-old futurist James Lovelock, author of the Gaia hypothesis, argues "Our supremacy as the prime understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to end. The understanders of the future will not be humans but what I choose to call 'cyborgs' that will have designed and built themselves."

Lovelock describes cyborgs as the self-sufficient, self-aware descendants of today's robots and artificial intelligence systems. He calls the looming era of their dominance the Novacene -- literally, the "new new" age...

Unlike technoskeptics, including University of Louisville computer scientist Roman Yampolskiy, Lovelock thinks it unlikely that our machines will turn against us, Terminator-style. And unlike utopians like futurist Ray Kurzweil, he doesn't envision humans and machines merging blissfully into a union that some call the singularity. Rather, Lovelock views the rise of technology through an evolutionary lens, in keeping with his decades of research and thinking about ecological and biological systems. He also brings the unique perspective of a scientist who just marked his 100th birthday, with a deep awareness of changing scientific fashions and with nothing left to prove. It's an outlook that pushes him to conclusions at once optimistic and deeply disturbing.

Once established, the cyborgs will remain dominant on our planet. "The Novacene," Lovelock says, "will probably be the final era of life on Earth..." Lovelock believes that advances like BOCHICA mean we don't have to look to the distant future to see how the story will unfold. "The crucial step that started the Novacene was, I think, the need to use computers to design and make themselves," he writes. "It now seems probable that a new form of intelligent life will emerge from an artificially intelligent precursor made by one of us, perhaps from something like BOCHICA."

Once we get used to being treated like houseplants, the early days of the Novacene might not be so bad. For one thing, Lovelock says, cyborgs and humans will have a shared interest in protecting Earth from disasters, because neither we nor they could tolerate operating outside of Earth's magnetosphere. For instance, if humans fail to find ways to mitigate the effects of global warming, then the cyborgs will need to do it. "They will, of course, bring something new to the party, probably in the field of geoengineering -- large-scale projects to protect or modify the environment. Such projects will be well within the capacity of electronic life," Lovelock writes.

As the Novacene progresses, the cyborgs might decide to remake Earth's ecosystem. With no need for oxygen or water, they might create a new world that is better for them but lethal for us... Given their complete dominion over Earth, the cyborgs would become our planet's final inhabitants."

- Book review, GC Weekly, editor Verna Zee, filling in for William Cameron.

>>3778036
>You have sufficient control over NCASA to demand that it be done, although it would cost you a significant portion of your nuclear fuel (0.5).
Hold off on it till we finish our nuke research.

# especially since you went to Rome in person.
I really want to hang out with Aki for some fun, bonding and shenanigans. Maybe next time.

>>3778143

You have two actions. Both of you can do meditation training with Dr. Suzanna Diamond, which still leaves her free to go to Israel and be on standby for Moira's caper since all that is happening at the end of the month.

>>3778145
So we aren't recruiting the founder of blackwater?

>>3778036

#Postpone. Graphene looks promising.

>>3778046

#Went to Rome in person

Ahhhhh. Straight to the Alberto Rivera bunk.

>>3778093
I for one welcome our cybernetic overlord.

>>3778187

Darkwater Worldwide was founded in 1997, roughly fourteen months after the disappearances. Its main training facility is in North Carolina, and they currently do contract work for Dimmsdale, Gustav, and Carpatescu directly. As a cabinet level Global Community officer, you are certainly welcome to talk to them about hiring them, although technically, they are your competitors, at least as far as security services go!

If you are just touching base, it'll take a day or two, so it won't cost an action.

Dark Water? We looking for a PMC head?

Vajpayee is former Indian police force, yes? Does he know any Gurkhas? From the accounts I've read, they're quite badass and they have those nice Kukri knives.

>Darkwater
What?

What about Executive outcomes?
When Mandela came to power, he force so many army and special forces of SADF to disband they formed a PMC army from the veterans.

>>3778830
Gurkhas are overrated like US marines.

Most of it is propaganda and marketing a brand.

>>3778024

Finding a demon may be hard or easy. The closest thing you have on hand to a purely supernatural creature, if there be such a thing, are the "two witnesses".

Moira's trip to Israel so far has been fun for her; the country is overall quite secular, with the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews having largely taken the time to make whatever real estate deals they needed to make in order to semi-retreat to gated communities. The two witnesses cursed the land with drought a few months ago, but the territory is rich, so they have been importing fresh water by the tankerful while large solar powered desalination plants are brought into operation.

>>3778830
>>3778843

(I just took the Blackwater Wikipedia page and renamed it Darkwater because Payday 2. Gimme a break here :) )

>>3778830
>>3778843

Mr. Vajpayee has not had the pleasure to work with Gurkhas directly, although he tells you that the Singapore municipal government still hires retired Gurkhas for their police force, and he knows a couple personally. They are not supernatural warriors, but they are excellent soldiers, primarily because of their adaptability and independence from modern supply chains. "If you need someone to survive for a month behind enemy lines with no support whatsoever and report what they see, there's none better." While your exceptional SIGINT capabilities almost make traditional scouts obsolete, they don't quite get there yet.

>>3778843

XE was dissolved on Dec 31, 1998 on Rebohoth's orders. This has largely backfired, if his intention was to clamp down on mercenaries not under his control, simply because the result was various chunks of the personnel and gear involved going their separate ways as smaller PMCs that are slightly harder to suppress and much harder to keep an eye on.

Rebohoth is finding it difficult to exercise any sort of soft power in the modern sense, so he's essentially reverted to feudal methods of maintaining control.

>>3778856

Desalination plants, eh? Neat. We should make a note of those for the Third Trumpet.

---


>>Darkwater

Learned something new. Neat.

>>XE
Might be an opportunity there.

I don't suppose there is an 'Outer Heaven' or 'Zanzibar Land' expy floating about. :P

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>Darkwater because Payday 2
Cannot find the reference, closest I found was "Shadow Raid"?

>>3778856
Aren't there like 4 different regiments of gurkas? There's British, Indian, Singaporean, and Nepal?

We could theoretically scout all 4 different ones.

>Moira's trip to Israel
Well did she find anything interesting? Like black market contacts at least?

>>3778878
What about the CEO bossman?

>>3778890

Better yet, what are the 144,000 up to in Israel? I can't imagine the Orthodox Jewish population would be thrilled with the increase in 'Jews for Jesus'. The Palestinians and Armenian Christians are also likely not fans either.

>>3778889

As Carpatescu centralizes the actual workings of the global government, the subpotentates have been cracking down on that sort of thing, so as to not lose what power they still have; ironically, your best bet to find something like that is in Santiago's territory.

>>3778890
Derp, Murkywater in Payday 2, not Darkwater. My bad.

>>3778890
>>3778908

So far she's found a few good places to drink at, a nice scuba diving outfit that caters to people with colostomy bags (she also learned that she doesn't have to worry about that since the heart implant's battery plug is made of titanium and gold for biocompatibility, so it won't rust), and has made a report about internal tensions -- Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews have largely retreated into gated communities, and helped those of their number who can't afford that afford it anyway through a system of solidarity loans. The 144000 followers of Tsion in Israel - who haven't quite reached that number yet, maybe fifty thousand - have been renting out stadiums and convention centers for revival events, and have been making some converts and creating some headaches for law enforcement. A few have recently gotten arrested for invading a bar and starting to lecture people about the evils of alcohol. In general, most of Israeli society sees them as people who got overly Americanized, more than as a religious group.

Most Palestinian Christians have joined the Ecumenical Council, largely because being subsumed with a larger organization was the best way to not be harassed, or at least being harassed less.

>>3778908
We can probably find that out without risking Moira's exposure. Seriously shes a wanted terrorist, and non-kosher.

>>3778927
Okay here's an idea, we stall the rise in Tsion's followers for as long as possible buying us more time.

Also, is his website only in english? I assume Tsion can speak both hebrew and english, but the Orthodox might be seeing the 144000 as westernized because they are mainly doing things in english?

>>3778927

That's a good idea.

According to prophecy the 144,000 must belong to one of the Twelve tribes (excluding Dan for... reasons) as well as be virgins.


>>3778927
What about the Palestinian Muslims? What happened to them? Considering the Seven Year peace accord, I'm willing to bet they got screwed over. If there IS a new Temple, that must mean the Dome of the Rock, the very site where their prophet ascended into Heaven, has been either demolished or renovated.

>>3778938

>>3778954

The Dome of the Rock is going to be dismantled, moved to Baghdad or New Babylon, and reassembled as soon as it becomes feasible to do so -- it's a serious undertaking, and there are a lot of negotiation that are having to happen on every little detail; this will allow a new Temple to be built on the site, for which a crowdfunding campaign (one of the first of its kind) is already in progress.

Historically, nobody has any ideas where ten of the twelve tribes even are, if they still exist at all; the ultimate arbiter of who qualifies, other than they are all male virgins, seems to be Tsion. This is possibly the first time in recent history, and certainly the first time in Internet history, that being a male virgin is seen as something that can be bragged about.

By the people involved, anyway. Pretty much the rest of the Internet is making fun of them. The way it seems to work is that a random white or semitic young man with no game will have a prophetic dream, post it on Tsion's discussion board, and receive the appropriate flair (or more commonly not) based on admin decision.

Remnant members understand how important it is that the Internet keep running as it is; those on your payroll are mostly happy to continue working for you. Thanks to your committment to not discriminate, they gladly confirm to you that the "seal of God" is in fact visible on others' forehead, but not their own, and takes the shape of a vaguely cross shaped smudge like that drawn by Catholics on Ash Wednesday. They are, however, unwilling to identify members of the Christian Remnant who haven't chosen to identify themselves.

You do confirm that this odd selective optical effect does not transfer over to cameras, or recordings; much like Carpatescu's hypnosis, it requires live presence to manifest.

>>3778979

I wonder if the seal emits a energy signature that can be picked up? If we can detect God's fingerprints, that would benefit our efforts greatly.

We have Covert OPs deployed with Moira, right? How about after we finish her business with the Two Witnesses, we 'borrow' one of the 144,000... for SCIENCE.

>>3778954
We could probably delay it by fluffing up the numbers. Have our bot create a bunch of fake accounts and make deam posts generated off of previous dream posts. If there are 50k of them thats a lot of material. Once he reaches his 144000 half of which are bots he will stpp recruiting

>>3778929

Moira is officially dead; being deployed to Ireland, England and Scotland has a chance of her being recognized, but in the Holy Land she's just another European tourist -- albeit one that stands out a bit, because of the hair.

She generally wears a shayla when in Africa or the Middle East, both to not be immediately obvious, and to protect herself from sunburn.

>>3778938

They are, in fact, mostly doing things in English. Tsion is a native Hebrew speaker, can read ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and speaks English with a marked accent although his grammar is impeccable. After discussing with Father Schorpe, he has been learning German.

>>3778143
>>3778224

You figure that NCASA are on their own for this; Carpatescu gave exact specifications, and it's better to not cause a flip-out. Besides, it would raise questions as why you had the uranium hydride available in the first place.

Dr. Robertson calculates that should the plutonium warheads not initiate, the conventional explosive that makes up their implosive charges and the sheer mass of the Energia rocket may be enough to fracture a rocky asteroid, mitigating the impact.

>>3778143

Your trip to Rome is uncomplicated; the Eternal City is thriving, and some of the earliest-born children are old enough to be taken outside to play. You witness something unthinkable before the Event; when a mother is crossing a street with a pram, cars and mopeds actually stop to let her use the zebra crossing unimpeded, rather than give her just enough space as they would anyone else.

Pontifex Mathews has undertaken a campaign of restoring and promoting the Catholic Church's artistic and cultural legacy, including throwing the papal estates open, save for Castelgandolfo which he has turned into his private palace. He's redecorated it with a Renaissance theme, with opulence in food and drink to match.

Other than endowing a chair at Xavier University, you

# keep things light and let the man show you around, something which he clearly takes great pleasure and pride in.

# discuss the end-times timeline.

# get to the meat of the matter and request access to the archives.

>>3779001

You currently don't, but you certainly can; you have 1 work crew and 3 covert crews free. Carrying out a traditional abduction would be somewhat difficult; given the general low social skills of the people who qualify for the role, you may be able to carry out a soft abduction, disguising it as a preaching opportunity.

Moira is, as it stands, ready to go, but you can still abort and use her time for something else.

>>3779012

That's an interesting project, and fits into the "soft DDOS" plan as in >>3774335

Your AI can't write posts that pass for human outside of a very limited scope (booking trains or flights, or arranging shipping), but encouraging people to shitpost isn't exactly difficult even if you aren't paying for it.

# keep things light and let the man show you around, something which he clearly takes great pleasure and pride in.

AKA Case the joint. When all else fails, it helps to know where the valuable stuff is kept.

Since the Pope wants to promote art and culture, we can even offer our services in IT, sharing the splendor of the Holy City.

And hey if there happens to be anything in the archives worth preserving....

>>3779016
# keep things light and let the man show you around, something which he clearly takes great pleasure and pride in.
Let him take his time so long as its not too much time.

>fracture a rocky asteroid
What about a impact sensitive explosive that triggers a shaped charge HEAT? What about a rocket that embeds powdered aluminum Thermite and the ignites and super heats the asteroid to explode?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xQeF_EM7WU

>>3779037
>>3779034

Buttering up people like Zakharov or Mathews is a significant part of the job: there are other people who would do a better job (if nothing else because neither of them find your body type particularly attractive!), but it's a matter of status - sending a subordinate to confer with them would be taken the wrong way.

As you admire Renaissance and Baroque paintings and sculptures, some with clearly passionate art students busy in restoration work right there and then - Mathews feels that in a way this is performance art itself, a study in how the work of the great masters remains alive today by the students' efforts - you learn that the Pontifex intends to rescind the Catholic obligation of celibacy for priests (he even references that while the pedophile priest problem has "solved itself quite drastically", which sounds very callous, he wants to take this opportunity to prevent it from ever resurfacing), that he is very interested in scanning the ancient codices to be preserved digitally so that the oldest and more fragile may be put in argon-filled vaults where they will be safe from the wear and tear and oxidation of being in active use, and that he respectfully declines any help in doing so, at least for now. "Putting things on the Internet isn't difficult, conceptually -- even fools such as William Cameron can manage. I'm worried about the physical aspect; even the most dedicated restoration worker may cause a disaster. For that reason, I would prefer to not hand the liability to an external agency."

You point out that robots are a thing; he's clearly thinking of factory arms, and seems genuinely horrified at the prospect. However, he's amenable to watching videos of precision robots used in electronics manufacturing, surgery, and biology labs; you give him a few, and he's genuinely surprised at how much the state of the art has advanced. "Of course I am amenable to change my mind, Foreman; dogma has its place, but conservatorship isn't it."

You go home with eyes full of classical beauty, a belly full of gelato, cannoli and excellent wine, and bland promises of further cooperation -- at the very least, you figure that if you play to Mathews' relatively benign epicureanism, you'll get somewhere.

Two interesting things did happen: Mathews claims that he took the papal name Peter II specifically to disrupt the so-called prophecy of Saint Malachy (which is generally recognized as a forgery), since it came out of order, and he's been subtly poking you about your personal loyalty to Carpatescu. Does he have his own power play to make?

>>3779037

That sort of thing would only help for a relatively small rock; ablation, explosive or otherwise, is a good way to redirect an asteroid mechanically, though. One plan even involves painting one side of the asteroid white and one black, and changing its rotation so that photon pressure from the Sun would change its trajectory.

>>3779077
>>3779117
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/

We should provoke Matthews into acting in a sense of urgency.
We start scanning books to a digital volume for protection and preservation A modern library of Alexandria.
We put information up that this is only till the last books are coped and then sealed in a vault which then the methods for doing so will be retired due to cost or something, so any books that do not make the deadline will not be able to be saved. Also allow people to personally add or contribute books or rare covers and editions of books.

We use advanced robotic hands in sterilized rooms to scan books, put a high def camera to show it off with some fancy directing and classical music playing in the background, make it look like a advertisement almost.

Would it be possible to devise drones that a 70 year old theologian could operate? For the purpose of restoring delicate codices.

>>3779176

That could work.

Maybe get Ryan involved to add that razzle-dazzle.

Maybe other Ecumenical Council leaders (Greek Orthodox, Coptics, Moslems, etc.) will want to get in on the action too.

And if we charge for the service...

>>3779133
>>3779183

That's certainly a thing to look into.

>>3779176

Probably, but Italy is full of archeology grad students who would probably do a better job.

>>3779198

True. For the best, probably.

UNESCO works for us, right? Maybe they have some talent we could borrow (AKA Poach). Give them a chance to curry favor after their Earthquake faux pas.

>>3779236

No, they don't. You have managed to get Carpatescu to press upon Mr. McLachlan of the Global Community Aronautics and Space Administration that he is to follow your lead, and you have a former underling, Carla, chairing the Global Community Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR; global agencies may use Global Community or United Nation at their preference, especially in cases like UNICEF when the "brand" is already well known). UNESCO is, if anything, already cooperating closely with Mathews.

>>3779183

Ryan Andrews would definitely help in selling this sort of service to churches and also museums and libraries, yes.

Hmmmm.... Would coordinating with UNESCO be an option if we let them join in on the book preservation program? We provide the technology and they provide the talent.

We let UNESCO have the prestige and regain face with Carpatescu. Meanwhile, we do our own shenanigans behind the scenes.

>>3779264
Did we do the bagger move, and the recruitment yet?

Rolled 64 (1d100)

>>3779521

The current plan is (more or less) as in >>3777044 which does not include moving the Bagger 1475. However, you have bought it; you will have to move it.

You have 1 work team and 3 covert teams free (My understanding is that one of them will follow Moira). so you can recruit.

>>3779539
I thought we were going to use all the left over teams to recruit a covert team.

I wasn't planing on deploying Moira at all this turn.

Although I did leave some actions out so other anons can fill them in to get something they wanted. Which I assume is going to be sending the teams to support Moira to test the heart thing?

>>3779553

That's my understanding. This leaves 2 covert teams and 1 work team available in case they want to recruit.

>>3779521
>bagger

shit we have to do it this turn or we can't carry it across the artic for like another six months.

>>3779561
2 covert teams work and the 1 work team should make nomenclatures and sell em

>>3779564

You have a few options in that sense:

* Coordinating the move with the remaining work team, and hoping that things go well. 1 work team, 2BN cost, medium chance of failure.

* Using the Garibaldi and getting the crew to help. 1 work team, 1BN cost, the Garibaldi will have to be reconfigured, small chance of failure.

* Removing the protection detail from Robertson for a month so that they can assist with the construction work Canada-side. 1 work team, 2BN cost, small chance of failure.

* Having Thyssen-Krupp do the whole job for you. 4BN cost, no manpower.

* Having Thyssen-Krupp do the disassembly and shipping, while your team does the reassembly. 3BN cost, 1 work team, small chance of failure.

Since you only have taken one action this month, you can go yourself and help.

>>3779691
Using garbaldi and the 1 work team i thought is what we agreed too

>>3779715
it was and it needs 2 work teams, which I already set aside.

>>3779561
Why are they going with Moira? Shes not buggering anyone till afterwards to test the witnesses.

Ah idc I'm going back to sleep.

I'd also like the foreman to recruit a CEO for us to run a PMC, hopefully this will make recruiting decent soldiers easier.

>>3779691
Wait, so reconfigurating the carrier and having two work crews help with the transport wasn't enough?

>>3779848

It is! I'm going by >>3777044 which doesn't seem to have that in there though. If it does, I can't see it (I count 12 work crews busy, and 1 in reserve, as you correctly state).

I must admit that I am now thoroughly confused. Is it OK if I just count the votes for who's doing what this turn, end the turn, and set up something that's a bit less confusing from here on out?

>>3779855
Works for me.

>>3779855
Ah darn I see, the make network part was suppose to have been canceled but seems I forgot to remove that bit? I must have gotten it mixed up at some point thinking it was a free action of sorts.

We had two network parts, and have the factory making two more so at the end of all this it should leave us with 1 Network pt.

>>3779855
Well Foreman still has an action that I would like to use.

C0 (Agent):
Construct a CellSol pylon (Needs 1 network part)

C1:
Procure network equipment and construct a CellSol pylon

I must have thought building a CS pylon was a free action and got these two mixed up when I was tired.

>>3779878

No problem.

>>3779863

You good with this? I'll do the writeup either tonight or tomorrow morning when I wake up. (I did want to zoom in on Moira and the witnesses thing, but let's wait until more people are around, since it's quite a fair amount of plot relevant.)

>>3779882
Wanted to do the witness thing next month with extra hands and a hospital ship.

Just gonna say, if she dies a permanent death, I'm going to be very upset.

I'm down with it. Other anon has the logistic thing down.

>>3779890
Ditto.

I want to maximize our chances of saving her from the jaws of death.

At the very least maybe mingle with the locals, do some reconnaissance on the area, be on standby.

Is Israel its own sovereign territory or is it Carpatescu's domain?

Rolled 32 (1d100)

>>3779900

Israel is technically the only country that is outside of the Global Community (Switzerland was the last to join), but there is a formal peace treaty. This is interesting in that since one thing that was never included in said treaty is extradition, there's quite a few wanted people cooling their heels in Israel, where the local law enforcement hasn't particularly cared to look for them if they make no visible trouble.

(Yeah, I know this makes no damn sense).

>>3779890
>>3779900

Moira doesn't seem to mind having a bit more time to case the place out; the two witnesses have largely been left alone -- out of self-preservation -- and given their own section of the Wailing Wall to shout at passersby from.

Moira, herself no novice when it comes to incendiaries, said she could smell their smoky burlap robes. Their dark, bony bare feet and knuckled hands made them appear thousands of years old. They had long, coarse beards, dark, piercing eyes, and long, wild hair. Eli and Moishe they called each other. Someone from a local TV station did a good job of setting up a permanent webcam; the video identifies the one on the left as Eli, and subtitles carried his message in English. Interestingly, anyone with a passing knowledge of the Bible, including Moira (who grew up Catholic) could understand what they are saying regardless of language, but this effect does not carry over to recordings or the webcam's audio. They do not carry the peculiar monotone that Carpatescu does, but rather sound stentorean, like Tsion did. Eli was saying,

“Beware, men of Jerusalem! You have now been without the waters of heaven since the signing of the evil pact. Continue to blaspheme the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior, and you will continue to see your land parched and your throats dry. To reject Jesus as Messiah is to spit in the face of almighty God. He will not be mocked.

“Woe unto him who sits on the throne of this earth. Should he dare stand in the way of God's sealed and anointed witnesses, twelve thousand from each of the twelve tribes making a pilgrimage here for the purpose of preparation, he shall surely suffer for it.”

Here Moishe took over. “Yea, any attempt to impede the moving of God among the sealed will cause your plants to wither and die, rain to remain in the clouds, and your water—all of it—to turn to blood! The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely, as I have thought, so it shall come to pass, and as I have purposed, so it shall stand!'”

Moira has been told to not engage, so she doesn't; instead, she watches. A young woman bring the two witnesses some flatbread and a glass of desalinated water. They contemptuously ignore her.

Apparently those who attacked the two witnesses were burned from flames that they manifested, and those who argued against them got fatal heart attacks until warning signs were erected and a Merkava "tankbulance" stationed nearby.


(OK, so we're clear, what do you do with the Bagger ? )

Transport the Bagger via Garibaldi. 1 work team, 2BN

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OK I wanted to do it now because we have to deal with asteroid crap next month BUT

if Moira does the witnesses thing next month I want all the bases covered.

Carrier at the ready in hospital mode. Neurologist available on site. Airplane or helicopter ready for a getaway. Security squad making sure nobody interferes.

Drones. Let's see them give a heart attack to one of these. https://youtu.be/Z3_eEO0Cvwg

Lets see if they can get into an insult fight with an irish woman.

If the anti heart attack thing works properly Moira is going to come back the next day with the APC with the big gun and blow them to pieces. Or if the Israelis have a problem with that use a TAC-50 rifle. Reach out and touch someone. Shoot flames and by the time they covered the distance she will be long gone. (Is she any good at sharpshooting? If not have someone help hr aim and then she can pull the trigger)

If they survive this they will have to use all their bullshit god powers to do it and we will be recording and adapting.

>>3779921

second, this way we have the ship available next month.

>>3779924

We might actually have a bit of a buffer before the asteroid, however. I stumbled across this verse while rewatching Apocamon.

"After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree. 2 Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: 3 “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”

It suggests that Tsion has to round up his 144,000 Jewish virgins before Zod can start the Trumpet judgments off.

Rolled 3 (1d100)

>>3779927

Since you've done due diligence with interviewing Tsion and Barnes, spent a bit of time and money tracking Tsion's website, and engaged the services of an external theologian, I'd like to point out that:

1) It is NOT metagaming to use other Premillennial Dispensationalist sources to make sense of the timeline, in fact, I encourage it.

2) All the PMD's have different interpretations -- in-universe, even Tsion and Barnes and another guy who you haven't met yet disagree on the details. So, don't expect to get it quite right.

Of course, here's the reason why the Remnant are sure that they will win: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOHnNawUwNc

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Did Tsion or Barnes remember to factor in the number of Filipinos in the bible, though?

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(I'm pretty sure I am ignoring someone's input, for which I apologize, but this turn was confusing for me. I will try to do better next time!)

>>3779921
>>3779539

Converting the Garibaldi for transport means, effectively, disembarking all the extra equipment, or at least packing it up and securing it so that it doesn't take up space. You're having to do this with a skeleton crew, which worries captain A.K. Steele to no end -- he recommends that the work crew fly back home and wait at harbor, so that he doesn't have any landlubbers to babysit during the trip.

Fortunately, crossing the Atlantic east to west in August is not particularly dificult; the Arctic segment of the trip happens at the end of the brief summer, and significantly taxes the Garibaldi's gas turbines, forcing a refueling stop in Iceland and Newfoundland.

* The Garibaldi is in the Atlantic
* She is now in cargo configuration
* Your nuclear fuel excavation rate is now 0.5 per month
* In case of resource shortages, you can switch the Bagger to extract metals or coal

Your security forces this month are split; one group ends up in Israel, where they familiarize themselves with what their status as GC-authorized armed personnel lets them do; to their disappointment, using IFVs or armed aircraft is right out. Fortunately, this does not extend to drones: the Israelis are, as far as they know, the only ones who use recon drones in an extended capacity. Thanks to your investments in AI and network technology, your stuff is now a couple years ahead of theirs -- in a hypothetical engagement, one of your drones will on average take out 2.718 of theirs before being incapacitated. The other two groups are scooped up by UNDRR to finish the Three Gorges Dam job in China, at the standard rate.

You discreetly put the word out that you're looking for people who were dishonorably discharged from militaries, or expelled from law enforcement agencies, or are former mercenaries, for a "second chance at life" program.

Aki starts looking into what other augmentations are feasible to implement, but most of her ideas are vetoed by Dr. Suzanna Diamond, on grounds of they are physically dangerous, mentally dangerous, would require replacing someone's right brain with a BOCHICA instance, or all of the above.

Despite this, the two seem to get along well; Aki seems to need a maternal figure, and Dr. Diamond isn't bad at playing "team mom".

The neurologist reports to you that Aki is clearly some sort of autistic savant -- nothing new there -- and occasionally shows signs of NPD. Meditation is helping her manage her bipolar disorder. Suzanna feels that prescribing medication to Aki would rob her of the sincere happiness she experiences when tackling an engineering problem, and the world of a great talent, but gives you a prescription for what to give her in case she has a freakout.


>>3779937

I.... don't think so? https://www.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_biblical_theories_of_the_origins_of_the_Filipinos

>>3779927

Intercepted from Tsion's instant messaging conversation with "Buck", who you know to be Ikko's husband.


“I need to go back to Israel,”

“Hm?”.

“I need to go back to my homeland.”

“We're homeless,we can barely drive to the next block."
"We don't know we'll survive tomorrow."
"You are a hunted criminal in Israel."
"You think they'll forget about you, now that they have earthquake relief to do?”

“On the contrary. But I have to assume the
bulk of the 144,000 witnesses, of whom I am
one, must come from Israel. Not all of them will.
Many will come from tribes all over the globe.
But the greatest source of Jews is Israel.
These will be zealous as Paul but new to the faith
and untrained. I feel a call to meet them and
greet them and teach them. They must be
mobilized and sent out. They are already empowered.”

“Let's assume I get you to Israel. How do I keep you alive?”

“What, you think you kept me alive on our flight across the Sinai?”

“I helped.”

“You helped? You amuse me, Buck. In many ways, yes,
I owe you my life. But you were as much in the way as
I was. That was God's work, and we both know it.”

“Fair enough. Still, taking you back to
where you are a fugitive seems lunacy.”

“Send word ahead that I was killed in the
earthquake, then I can go in disguise under
one of those phony names you come up with.”

“Not without plastic surgery you won't.
You're a recognizable guy, even in Israel where
everybody your age looks like you.”

You assume that the two met to talk in person after this particular bit of casual racism. Tsion occasionally uses a webcam, and his address after this conversation doesn't look like it's prerecorded -- he reads some posts on air -- and he clearly didn't get plastic surgery... unless these people finally got a clue and the video upload was intended to misdirect in that sense.

Tsion is hoping to have a public gathering Teddy Kollek Stadium, with 25000 converts. He has invited Moishe, Eli, and -oddly- Carpatescu to join him there, onstensibly to resolve differences. After Orthodox pressure, the government allowed it.

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Rolled 51, 46 = 97 (2d100)

>>3779955

Carpatescu has, of course, not committed either way. By taking apart the bits of Bible that they emit, Moira reckons that the two witnesses on the other hand are happy to go; the Israeli authorities are loathe to intervene directly against the two, being as it would open an enormous can of worms.

You figure that your "special" security team should be well separated from the rest of your forces, and only receive backup in an emergency.

The NCASA observatory in South America, and your off-brand version of the Hubble over Russia, begin scanning the skies; your satellite first has to calibrate its own optics on known objects, such as the Moon and 3753 Cruithne
and other Aten-group asteroids.

Reconstruction in New Babylon proceeds apace; Nicolae has unveiled the revised shape of the Burj Carpathia, to be lighted every night in remembrance of "our brothers and sisters taken by a capricious nature, yet to be tamed", and decided that the Dome of the Rock would be rebuilt between Baghdad and New Babylon. More money and manpower flow into the city to intersperse the administrative buildings with collection of themed arcologies, each barely shorter than the Burj Carpathia and considerably wider, intended to showcase the best that the world has to offer.

>>3779967

Your eyes in the sky have little to report; space telescope calibration is successful, but they can't find any near-Earth objects that could be a threat any time soon.

Santiago reminds you that for her own reasons, she'd prefer to not have cameras over her territory; the Atacama telescope will have to do the job when it comes to early warning. The NCASA staff operating it is uninspired, but reasonably competent (and using your software, which probably helps).

Thanks to Ryan Andrews' and your own ministrations, Dimmsdale is now amenable to building an automated factory management system; Ryan pointed out that one of the only successful uses of the Synco system in 1973 was to disrupt a truckers' strike by algorithmically managing the few scabs so that they could keep Chile's industrial economy operating at some fraction of capacity rather than grinding to a halt.

"Well, well! I suppose that less time spent over minutiae means more time playing golf. By thunder, you've talked me into it!"

Should you manage to build an automated factory system in the US and in either India or China, given how much consumers are starting to trust the network for things like booking their travel, or even shopping, and manufacturers for shipping and routine purchasing, you would be able to subtly control a sufficient portion of the world's economy to bring it to a halt on your word.

You run the number, and BOCHICA confirms that you are a little ahead of halfway towards that goal; you have two automatic systems in place out of four, people's trust in the internet is high and its reach is global and increasing, and Carpatescu's sysadmins are tailoring the MCP to work with the financial sector, while you have chosen to focus on the goods economy -- ultimately, when the chips are down having things you can use to eat or build is better than having the paperwork for same. Ikko, the third player in this little game, remains of course a wild card.

Of course, should you wish to yoink the world's economy from under Carpatescu's nose, you would have only one shot to do it, and you'd have to ensure that you survive retaliation. Since he is doing quite a bit of gladhanding with financial lever-pullers and the like to prepare them for the transition to a cashless economy, the optimal time to do it in would be when he is ready to make his big announcement.

(You've passed 50%; the electronic market dominance tracker has been updated).

In a sad echo of the century that is coming to a close, Africa remains underdeveloped; you will have to make peace with Rebohoth, oust him, or simply ensure that your work teams are well protected as they complete Carpatescu's mandate. At this point, Rebohoth has some interest in making you look incompetent, especially after your display at the summit.

Mr. Vajpayee warns you that he's also likely to send someone after you -- his rhetoric is similar to that which he was using when he sent an assassin to South America.

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Hello, Foreman! You are planning CATS' operations for the month.

Rules: http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.Quest2Rules.html
Datalinks: http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.Quest2Datalinks.html
Timeline: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BlMOSEOxSihj1gdagq7yxCjONaRBgcdlRxnc68uWf0A

You can deploy yourself on TWO actions for a small bonus to all rolls.
Dr Robertson can be deployed on ONE action for a large bonus to R&D rolls or a small bonus to any non-covert rolls
Ryan Andrews can be deployed on ONE action for a large bonus to construction rolls or a small bonus to any non-covert rolls
Moira McSingh can be deployed on ONE action per turn, for a medium bonus to covert rolls or a small bonus to all rolls; She can give basic combat capability to a work crew
Aki Lattinen can be deployed on TWO actions per turn, for a medium bonus to R&D or construction rolls; She will hack into things if bored

Logistics are handled for you automatically.

Drones give a stackable small bonus to non-research rolls; they may be lost in combat.

C0 (Free):

Move the Garibaldi (Mediterranean, Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific)

Buy equipment on the open market:
Power generation 1
Small arms 1
Network equipment 2
Fleet assets 2
Aerospace part 3
Supplies (food, fuel etc) 0.5

C0 (Agent):

Survey a territory for opportunity using an agent
Construct a CellSol pylon (Needs 1 network part)
Undergo combat training (Max 1 per month)

Tail someone
Meet with someone

Buy equipment on the black market:
Small arms 1
Squad weapons and explosives: 2
Stimulants 1

C1:

Reconfigure the Garibaldi (generic, cargo, hospital, strike, orbital)
Tail someone
Survey a territory for opportunity using a team
Hire out a covert operations team for a situational reward
Construct network equipment
Construct power equipment
Procure network equipment and construct a CellSol pylon
Make and sell consumer-grade Nomenklators (Net gain 1BN)

C2:

Do research (1~3)
Construct an aerospace part
Construct a forward logistics hub (small bonus for any action in that territory)
Construct a batch of drones

C3:
Construct a network node (unifies cell and net; costs 1 power, 1 network)
Recruit a work team
Schedule a satellite launch, which will happen at the end of NEXT month. Requires 1 (microsat) or 3~5 (bigsat) aerospace parts.
Do research (4~6)
Start DEW research

C4:

Construct a factory
Recruit a covert team OR recruit the black ops team (Needs you on the job)
Do research (7~9)

C5:

Rush a satellite launch, which will happen at the end of this month. Microsat only, Requires 1 aerospace part
Construct a hub and a network node at the same time (2 power, 1 network)
Capstone research (10)

What are your orders?

We didn't use our action to recruit a proper pmc consultant. What did we even use our other turn for?

>>3780003

(oh fml. i knew i forgot something. Okay, you do a write-in for that one please because I really have no idea where you have been wanting to go with it)

>>3779976
The man I think is wrong with mistakes?

There is suppose to be a network node on the west coast of USA, but it seems like a CS pylon was put on the east coast.

Mexico lost all numbers relating to its placement of the node or moved to the other side next to the Caribbean?

Does factories produce 2 network parts instead of one each?

And how did we gain any power? Not that I'm complaining at the free shit. I probably should shut up about that...

>>3780005
>>3780005
Yeah I supported another guy going to talk to Matthews to get access to the archives.

Recruit a guy who can set up and run a PMC like a former head of Blackwater or Executive Outcomes. Actually lets go find a South African guy to do this. We are going to need Rebohotha gone and getting very eager and grateful SA ex-army mercs would be mutual interest, and likely come with a ton of experience.

Recruit the the former head of EX I suppose.

>>3780006
Map*

>>3780006
Do you need a better write in for this?

So we didnt do the whitnesses? Wtf we have been delaying thsi for two truns now.

>>3779976

>3 work teams recruit a new work team
>4 work teams make a factory in america
>3 work teams make a network node in west America
>3 work teams work on sattalite (from what i understand this help with meteors)

>1 covert team and moira fuck with the whitnesses

>2 cover teams work

>2 factories make netowkr parts. One goes in mexico and one goes in china/japan.

Anything peeps.would like to change? Im focusing on getting us a factory in america and japan 15 work teams and 5 covert teams over time.

Shouldn't there be a second Pylon in western Russia? Or am I remembering wrong? We aborted the node then came back and decided to go big and build both a network node and a pylon right?

>>3779976
Okay lets get our previous shit done.
Configure the Garibaldi to Hospital ship, and move it to the Mediterranean or Indian Ocean.

Send Dr. Diamond and Moira with 3 Covert security teams as support.

Make sure they have easy and safe ways to extract her along with special fire extinguishers, and shock pads. Bring or make an extra hearts+biomech hearts too just in case.

Factory 1 Makes more network parts.
Factory 2 Makes Aerospace parts.

Build a factory in America, ideally the Midwest area, so as to MAKE more jobs rather than take them away (truck drivers will deliver stuff to us and subcontractors or something, etc.)
4 work crews with Foreman in charge. + Drones.

Recruit a Black opts team with the Foreman.
3 work crews and 1 Security team.

Schedule a satellite launch, which will happen at the end of NEXT month. Requires 1 (microsat) or 3~5 (bigsat) aerospace parts.
3 work crews with Ryan build a spy satellite over Africa.

Build Network node in Greenland
3 work teams with Dr. Robertson (I dunno why I'm sending him but I would expect it would be entertaining to see or at least provide a small bonus.)

Tell Aki to play with lasers wearing safety googles, or exercise.

>>3780019
You dont think three teams is overkill for this?

>>3780017
Its okay to be whitne.

I don't want to send our teams out on risky stuff with a mole in our staff.

>>3780021
Ah shoot, I was suppose to pull one team off from the job with Moira and put it on recruitment.

>Send Dr. Diamond and Moira with 2 Covert security teams as support.
Here's the correction.

My real main issue with this is we would be down to 5 bn after this. Leaving us with. I cahs next turn

>>3780026
Well we are suppose to be making money with the Y2K thing so either that option is coming soon, or its done in the background for us.

Next round I'm thinking of just making just enough cash to break even, and make Pylons and a factory in Japan if possible.

I'm fairly certain we can spend BN in the same month we make it.

>>3780017
>work teams make a network node in west America
I think we already have one there
>>3780019
Supporting this

>build a spy satellite over Africa.
Are we building a big sat and will it only have cameras pointed to the ground or also up?

>>3780031
I figure if we build a big one, we can have it point cameras both ways.

That's why I had another factory make more aerospace parts, for 5 instead of 3. Not sure if that's who it works.... Would be nice if it only needed 3 parts to do everything we wanted.

>>3780031
We dont look at the map

>>3780030
Ehh fine ill support
>>3780019

>>3779955

(Wait... he's trying to pretend he is dead to sneak into Israel.... and then invites Carpatescu to debate him.

What?)

>>3780019

Support with one proposed alterations

>>Ryan

Have Ryan look into starting a book preservation business; It'll help us get capital and get us further along in getting into the archives.

>>3780112
Sure.

I just shoved Ryan there for any bonuses it might give.