Xagroth wrote:

Antimatter has the little handicap of being expensive as hell (AKA it takes lots of time to make it, and the only big facility is on Mercury... Talk about logistics bottleneck). Anybody can make a nuke today if they get their hands on the nuclear part, imagine in AF10 with all those Cornucopia Machines...

It obviously isn't that easy or cheap to actually make a nuke today. They're difficult and expensive as hell, much as AM is in EP. But AM is still there. Destroyers are listed as carrying 150 tons of AM (which is equivalent to 6.5 million megatons, though it is mostly for propulsion).

Xagroth wrote:

Ok, 57 meters of explosion... Why has it been deemed as "useless"? Because the farther away you are from your target, the more precise your shot needs to be... meaning a deviation of one half of a degree can be something like... oh, look, you failed by 57 thousand kilometers...

So at a range where half a degree means missing by 57,000km, a guided missile with a 57 meter kill radius is inferior to an unguided projectile that has to hit dead on? Is that what you're saying?

The only reasonable look at ship-to-ship combat I saw was Mass Effect. Where it is waged almost entirely by computers calculating and predicting ship movements. Also that beyond a certain distance you dont even bother because shot deviation and delay makes it impossible to hit anything. Though after I thought of it on my own abit I realized something else. Ship-to-ship combat basically wouldn't exist. Between the speeds the ships are moving and the fact you can see your enemy long before they are within firing range makes any of the weapons we discussed a waste of ammunition. Point-blank combat is possible but would be so suicidal you might as well just ram the ship and save everyone some time. Mostly you will see ship-to-hab combat. Habitats with weapons designed to attack and defend against ships, as we already talked about you can load far superior weapons onto a habitat. While ships will have weapons focused on hitting tough but stationary targets. The only time you'd see ship-to-ship combat is when they are by habitats and defending them. However the ships wont be that effective and the attacking ships will care more about the habitat than ineffective ships. This is combat between glass cannons. Its just a matter of if the habitat can destroy the ships before they can do too much damage. Battles will be measured in minutes if not seconds. As a final note ships will almost never encounter one another away from a port. Even if you know when the ship left and where it is heading with the distances and speeds we are talking about minor deviations to speed and course would amount to great differences in location at any given time. Interception mid-flight is next to impossible.

Smokeskin wrote:

Aeroz wrote:

Though after I thought of it on my own abit I realized something else. Ship-to-ship combat basically wouldn't exist. Between the speeds the ships are moving and the fact you can see your enemy long before they are within firing range makes any of the weapons we discussed a waste of ammunition. Point-blank combat is possible but would be so suicidal you might as well just ram the ship and save everyone some time.

Yes, warfare means people dying and lots of stuff getting destroyed. It never really stopped people in the past, and I don't see why it should in the future. If anything, ego backups would make dangerous or even suicidal operations more common.

because its ineffective. not because people die. Attacks would be fly-bys. Ship plots a course near its target and takes a shot as it flies by it. Only defense is the target blowing it up before it gets close enough. If a suicidal attacker comes towards you, you do not try to suicide it back. You attempt to destroy it first or get out of the way. Point blank battles would resolve like this Both ships get near each other, fire a few shots, shred each other to pieces, mutual destruction. Sure there are spiteful people that are ok with this but you typically want to "win" battles. Kamikaze attacks are not a sound military strategy. As you said backups would make strategies like that more appealing, but it also means the other side doesn't lose anyone. All you did was cause them to lose resources and if that was your goal you could do alot more damage targeting shipyards and mining facilities.

Ah, the Russian motto "quantity has a quality of its own"... World War 1 & 2 are the better examples of how war is when both sides have closer hands, instead winning hands Vs nothing. The truth about war? The higher-ups are conservatives. They prefer things to go the way they grown used to, because they were scary enough back then. Most of them see the things as a "pandora box", and the problem you face when the situation is absolutely impossible to predict is that, in the end, all comes to luck... and that negates all the experience and knowledge a true veteran soldier has. Or at least, closes the gap between the n00b and the old bastard who know all the old tricks.

Smokeskin wrote:

Xagroth wrote:

Ok, 57 meters of explosion... Why has it been deemed as "useless"? Because the farther away you are from your target, the more precise your shot needs to be... meaning a deviation of one half of a degree can be something like... oh, look, you failed by 57 thousand kilometers...

So at a range where half a degree means missing by 57,000km, a guided missile with a 57 meter kill radius is inferior to an unguided projectile that has to hit dead on? Is that what you're saying?

No, I recall telling that the "unguided projectiles" were a WMD against planetary targets. For ship-to-ship combat I suggested (in that other thread) a missile with some extra ammo and a beta fork that would attack firing and then crash itself against the target, while the ship which launched it remains out of enemy range if possible. That way, the "missile" uses AM both as propulsion and payload. Against habitats you don't need anything but distance and acceleration. As described in several Honorverse novels, you only need to accelerate to your maximun speed, then launch your missiles (which will have your speed AND their own), and get out. The limits in this maneuver are: 1) it only works against targets with 100% predictable movement (like planets or habitats), 2) it requires to attain your maximun speed and launch your missiles at a speed they can survive (oh, that missile... it got caught into a dust bank 3 seconds after launch and blew up...), and 3) it requires a lot of time in EP (essentially MONTHS, considering there are no FTL here... and every warship needs to depart from the inner system, unless the autonomists have now shipyards in the kuiper belt and some reason to fire against somebody in the inner system). Mass Effect, at least in the videogames, presents ships battles the same way Star Trek does (which is Ok, unless we want to see just some icons in a radar screen that would make Asteroids look like state-of-the-art graphics XD). Personally, I don't see any way of space combat that can be considered "hard scifi", because the closest ones require "magical engines" at least.

Aeroz wrote:

I am not talking about the illogic of the individual, but of the military body. Kamikaze as I said is not a sound military tactic. Its whats known as a Punic Victory. There is no point in "winning" a war if your own side is crippled in the process.

You underestimate human ambition. Warfare is a numbers game. If you can do more damage to your enemy than they can do to you, you can win. And this cannot simply be measured in the numbers of men or ships. Sieging armies historically lost four times as many people as the city they were assaulting, but the defenders were risking their homes and sanctuary. This sort of thing might seem insane to you, but that's the ugly face of warfare as it has always been. This will not become prettier when we get to 10 AF. Technology is such in the Eclipse Phase universe that asymmetrical warfare is going to be far more unlikely. Once the technological edge becomes unlikely, warfare goes back to the way it's always been... a numbers game. Is it gruesome? Yes. Is it devastating? Yes. Are the victories often Pyrrhic, with success being counted as a more relative term? Almost always. Why do people do it? Because it's in our nature. You now know why people have been railing on about the pointlessness of war for countless centuries.

Aeroz wrote:

The reason we dont use nuclear weapons right now is there is no point when in the time we get our shots off the enemy has too and we just annihilate one another. This is why ship-to-ship combat as you described makes no sense. Especially when it is a huge waste of resources. With far less effort you can target an entire shipyard.

Except no other weapons would likely suffice in space combat. When dealing on such a massive scale, you need weapons of a similarly massive scale to do anything relevant. But this potential for devastating loss on both sides is likely also the reason why the entire system is more in a state of cold war than anything. When the toll is potentially so high, no one wants to open that Pandora's box.

Aeroz wrote:

If you want to use a real world analogy, then dont talk about infantry and tanks but in long range vehicles like jets and naval craft. Their primary function is not to do battle with one another in the middle of nowhere. Their job is to go to stationary targets, bombard the crap out of them, then retreat before they are destroyed.

Which isn't likely to happen. Warfare in Eclipse Phase is likely to result in a case of Mutually Assured Destruction. Unless you can ensure the swift elimination of your entire enemy, retaliation is inevitable.

Aeroz wrote:

The only reason fighters jets are still used is as interceptors for mobile targets. However I already explained why intercepting a target in flight is a fools errand.

Destruction of your attacker's guidance system followed by some means of deviating their flight path is a good incentive for intercepting in flight (is it flight? do you fly in space? should we call it "intercepting in float"?).

Aeroz wrote:

I am aware humans make mistakes in war, but thats all that would be, a mistake. If 99% of the time your battles end in a draw, only a fool continues. You look for other ways to attack your enemy. It makes no logical sense to sacrifice a ship to destroy one ship, when you can make no sacrifice and destroy a shipyard which is as effective as destroying 10 ships. Its not about acceptable losses its about efficiency. Dont rely on the past so much, there are reasons we no longer use those tactics. Marching formation, siege weaponry, trench warfare, Calvary, all are outdated obsolete methods of fighting. I know what acceptable losses are, but there is a difference between acceptable losses and pointless wastes of resources.

Arguably, all war is a mistake. Yet it continues to occur. That's the nature of things. People don't see something as a pointless waste of resources when they are working to a goal. In fact, people are often more likely to continue burning through resources once they've already invested something into it. It's why compulsive gamblers can never walk away from a table after they've lost only $20. It's why many people can't walk away from cheating spouses that they've been with for several years. The more you put into something, the harder it is for you to admit that everything you've done up to that point was for nothing. And that's why history is riddled with Pyrrhic victories.

Aeroz wrote:

well yea, of course there would be retaliation. I meant for the specific ships to get away. It wouldn't be "war" if a single battle ended it. But you can do alot of damage with fly by bombing runs. The principle is to launch your attack and be out of range before you can be targeted. Which would only be more true with the distances and speeds in Eclipse Phase. Actually the "best" tactic would be to fire shots across the solar system, but that would require a supercomputer to calculate something like that.

Thanks to computers, it is extremely unlikely that you would be able to fire without some form of retaliation. Any sensor suite will likely pick up your attack, and a counterstrike would likely begin within microseconds.

Aeroz wrote:

1 degree deviation, or 1m/s speed difference translates to thousands of miles between planets. Not to mention even without this margin of error you'd have to calculate your own course and speed to be at the same place at the same time as the other ship. Not too likely to find the ship you want to intercept. Remember its difficult to hit moving objects in space when we know their exact path. Imagine trying to get within range of something thats flight path changes simply because the pilot decided to burn his fuel for half a second longer.

Computerized accuracy is a skosh bit better than that. When you are dealing with computer-determined trajectories and guidance, the odds of you missing something go significantly down. Throwing a dart at Mars from here is hard; getting a guided rocket to Mars from here is significantly easier.

Xagroth, space warfare will be nothing like submarine battles. Eclipse Phase doesn't have the magitech required to hide infrared emissions. Being able to bend light around yourself with metamaterials is useless when you're shining like a lighthouse in infrared. Furthermore, whenever anyone fires a drive, everyone watching will know the ship's location, vector, class, mass, and can probably make a good guess as to which specific ship of that class it is. So no, it's not like submarine warfare. It's more like chess.

Decivre wrote:

Assuming there isn't a way to produce metamaterials that bend infrared light as well.

If you don't radiate, you melt. If you radiate in only one direction, everyone with satellites in that direction can see you. And if you fire your drive, everyone knows exactly where you are, what you are, and where you're going. [url=http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacewardetect.php#nostealth]There is no stealth in space.[/url]

Decimator wrote:

If you don't radiate, you melt. If you radiate in only one direction, everyone with satellites in that direction can see you. And if you fire your drive, everyone knows exactly where you are, what you are, and where you're going. [url=http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacewardetect.php#nostealth]There is no stealth in space.[/url]

True. [i]Eventually.[/i] Finding a means to cease your radiation won't turn you to liquid shit in seconds. Transferring that heat to something that can contain large amounts of it could give you decent-sized periods of stealth. If ship combat lasts an hour, then an hour of stealth is all you really need. Plus, it could have offensive advantages. I once talked to someone about ship weaponry, and about how interesting it would be to transfer all of a ships heat into the ammo for a mass driver system. If being hit by a fast-moving asteroid is already devastating, imagine how much more devastating it will be when that asteroid cooks at about 2,000 degrees Kelvin.

Aeroz wrote:

ok I think you are completely missing the point. let me try using an analogy. I want to stress this is an analogy for why ship-to-ship combat is stupid, not an analogy to functionality of war in the real world. You are playing a game where the goal is to make your opponent reach 0 before you do. you have two possible choices to make. One is you expend 100 resources to destroy 100 resources of your opponent. This represents the likely outcome of two ships fighting one another at close range thanks to how fragile they are and mutual destruction is likely The other option is you expend 80 resources to destroy 1000 of your opponents. This option represents ship-to-hab battles. Lower resource cost for you is because its possible for your ship to survive, while you waste alot of your enemies resources because you are destroying infrastructure. No one is going to aim for the plane when they can shoot the hanger. To be clear I mean no one that isn't an idiot. Yes you can argue that most of the military is staffed by stupid people that have no understanding of strategic planning. But since understanding strategic planning is specifically why these people are selected to command, I tend to assume your average officer understands warfare. You do not choose a high risk low reward target when a low risk high reward option is available.

You're assuming it will be that easy to hit a key target. I highly doubt that will be the case. For one thing, while shipyards may be stationary objects while in the midst of construction, they need not always be such. Furthermore, there's no reason to assume that every key installation will be placed in an exposed place, where access is easy. A military installation will likely be built the same way it has always been built... in a place where the defender can take advantage of the "terrain". Fortifications buried deep in asteroid fields, shielded installations surfing the corona of the sun, and other such obscure placements are likely to be used to create a natural defense, effective even in space. Furthermore, many important locations will likely utilize a decentralized structure, smaller multiple spread-out habitats rather than a single large one. This means that destroying one may not even remotely cripple the very thing you are trying to disrupt. Siege warfare will likely be exactly as it is today... disadvantageous for the attacker. It'll just be a matter of figuring out how to make it so.

Decimator wrote:

I was talking about intercepting a ship, not hitting something across the solar system. My point being space is big, very very big and you are talking about the equivalent of someone sailing from Australia to US and trying to find them in the middle of the ocean with no information but time and location of departure and destination. I said that to make it clear you wont encounter the enemy away from ports, and if you are at a port you have more appealing targets.

I don't see why you wouldn't catch your enemy away from port. To be honest, I don't see larger ships docking very often. They likely stay active and mobile at all times, with any "dock time" utilizing smaller ships to transport between the larger ship and hab. The books have already hinted at this when dealing with antimatter-equipped ships. I think that most large ships take advantage of this. There's really no need to bring a large ship and habitat into intimate contact. To much of a risk for both parties involved.

Decivre wrote:

Decimator wrote:

If you don't radiate, you melt. If you radiate in only one direction, everyone with satellites in that direction can see you. And if you fire your drive, everyone knows exactly where you are, what you are, and where you're going. [url=http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacewardetect.php#nostealth]There is no stealth in space.[/url]

True. [i]Eventually.[/i] Finding a means to cease your radiation won't turn you to liquid shit in seconds. Transferring that heat to something that can contain large amounts of it could give you decent-sized periods of stealth. If ship combat lasts an hour, then an hour of stealth is all you really need.

The problem is that your enemy will know your position and velocity when you enter stealth. Try to change course, and the enemy spots your drive exhaust. Being invisible is no good if the enemy's computer continues to know exactly where you are. At relatively short distances and time scales you should be able to hide missiles and projectiles, but that's about it.

Smokeskin wrote:

The problem is that your enemy will know your position and velocity when you enter stealth. Try to change course, and the enemy spots your drive exhaust. Being invisible is no good if the enemy's computer continues to know exactly where you are. At relatively short distances and time scales you should be able to hide missiles and projectiles, but that's about it.

Yes, but that's assuming you aren't going to take the necessary precautions during such a skirmish. Example: a Jovian battleship is about to intercept a Consortium battleship near the Jupiter trojans. It approaches using the asteroids for cover to obscure line of sight, avoiding immediate detection. When they are within sensor's reach, they throw on stealth. Their exact trajectory is likely to be masked by the noise from the asteroid field. Plus, magnetic forces can potentially be used to course-correct within the asteroid field without the need for using your drives (magnetically tugging on asteroids will allow course correction without the need for mass ejection). To dissipate heat, the ship radiates it all to ceramic slugs that it stores for close range interaction. Once approach is complete, stealth is thrown off. The Jovians likely position themselves in a relatively unarmed angle of the ship, forcing a facing correction (it's impossible to have weapons facing every direction). This gives them the initiative, allowing them to throw out an opening salvo. The heated slugs are fired in a spread, ensuring that even if the ship maneuvers, it will be peppered with at least a few rounds (all of which have been superheated and launched at a high velocity). It also lets off a few rounds of missiles (antimatter most likely). Afterwards, it turns its most armored side to the enemy ship and begins an escape velocity. The other ship, once facing has been corrected, fires off a multitude of salvos. From there, it is a decision about whether to evade or segment the ship (I work under the assumption that future battleships built for space will be modular). Crew evacuates the locations calculated to be hit, and those components are isolated seconds prior to impact. Combat is fast and hard, and both ships essentially deplete the large majority of their ammo reserves as quickly as possible. From there its all about dodging and bracing for impact. The attacking ship, thanks to initiative, is likely to get off more shots than the consortium crew was able to prior to impact occurring. It's the closest thing to "victory" that you can have in 10 AF. It's not about leaving unscathed, but about having the least jacked-up ship at the end of the fight.

Decimator wrote:

Asteroids as cover? You do understand how sparse asteroids are, right?

In the belt, pretty damn. I was under the understanding that the L3 and L4 la grange points were a bit more populated, however.

Xagroth wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:

The problem is that your enemy will know your position and velocity when you enter stealth. Try to change course, and the enemy spots your drive exhaust. Being invisible is no good if the enemy's computer continues to know exactly where you are. At relatively short distances and time scales you should be able to hide missiles and projectiles, but that's about it.

Sir Isaac Newton disagrees with your presumption that the only way of altering couse is using energy/high tech solutions. Don a spacesuit, get out of the ship, and throw a rock. Congratulations, you have just altered your movement vector. By the same way, using compressed air (or CO2) to alter your ship's vector after turning down your engines (because you have enough speed built) will be much harder to spot than your main engines. Not to mention the possibility of launching a drone that will act as a decoy, with enough mass to deploy a surface big enough (but hollow) to confuse the enemy. Can we remember that, during WW2, the african front was had frigging ilusionists in the frontlines? To hit your enemy when he is weak is a core principle of The Art of War, and you can infer that making the enemy to be weak where you want is great. Now, really, can we move this to another post?

You want to maneuver your spaceship with compressed air? Seriously? Decoys work very poorly in space. There's a strict relationship between mass, acceleration and exhaust brightness - the enemy sees the 2 latter so he can determine the mass, which will reveal your drone to be hollow. Your decoys will need the same drive and mass to fool anyone. I'm not opposed to the idea that warships might be designed with the same drives and mass as a commercial vehicle, though I'm not sure how much good it would do. All interplanetary craft are known and you can only convincingly travel along certain routes and only at economical accelerations. To pull off a switcheroo between a freighter and a warship and then getting the warship to somewhere tactically important without the enemy being suspicious is going to be very hard.

Libertad wrote:

27.) What are the main differences between 21st-century capitalism and hypercapitalism?

Scale mostly, hypercorps just have alot more resources and no governmental oversight. In many ways its like early 20th century economics thanks to a lack of anti-trust laws, unions, and other governmental limitations. So you dont have much in the way of choice. Most of the competing brands ultimately having the same source. Back then the rich had fiefdoms. You worked, choose a place to live, a place to buy your food, but all the stores, homes, and jobs were controlled by the same guy. This is how the Planetary Consortium is set up, no matter what you do, you make them richer. The only saving grace is that hypercorps are smart enough to know not to tick off the general populace. They are profit driven, but a content worker is a productive worker is a profitable worker and of course you need to pay them enough to purchase the products you make. Its why no one is revolting against the proto-hypercorps of today. They provide jobs and affordable products. Long as we are kept alive we will deal with alot. Hypercorps will do alot to keep the bulk of their customers alive even at the expense of profit. Fighting a revolt is expensive

Decivre wrote:

That said, a hypercorporation is a new legal entity which hasn't really been clarified within the setting.

What with the text on p70 in the corebook?

GreyBrother wrote:

What with the text on p70 in the corebook?

A fairly broad description of the concept that runs a wide gamut, not really defining what constitutes a hypercorp and how it is in any way significantly different from the concept of a corporation as it exists today. From the descriptions in the core book, it seems like the term "hypercorp" was a buzzword from an earlier time denoting newer, fresher corporations that were in with the transhuman technologies. And it apparently stuck at some point.

Smokeskin wrote:

I'm away froom books, but I thought the hypercorps were smaller and nimbler than 21st century corporations, but working in a highly networked environment. You want to start a new product line, you make deals with other corps who each contribute to parts of the work that needs to be done, where one corp delivers designers, another the production, a third the distribution, a fourth the marketing, etc.

Yes, but that's all relative. There are plenty of small and nimble corporations today. Corporations range in size anywhere from Disney and Google all the way down to one guy's retirement fund. Furthermore, there's little scholastic difference between a massive corporation today, and a collective alliance of smaller corporations that serve the same purpose as one large one. Many corporations today already do segregate themselves into multiple smaller subsidiaries (and by many, I mean most). That said, hypercorps do seem to vary wildly in the amount of sway and influence they have. The Go-Nin group has its hands in Banking, Agritech, Robotics and Services... a collection of things that actually makes it more versatile and potentially wide reaching than Monsanto is today. Really, the big thing I think that separates hypercorporations from corporations today is the legal autonomy. For the most part, it seems like hypercorps are treated similar to a micronation in that they are not legally recognized and licensed by any specific entity as corporations are today. So long as they don't step on any other governing body/hypercorp's toes, they are left to their own devices. That would mean that hypercorps are really the by-product of a messy and hard-to-bureaucratize social order that has been created in the wake of early space colonization and the Fall.

28.- That depends. I bet that, if you ask for help, a work can be found easily to get you started on the rep bussiness (however, do not expect it to be nice, tidy or comfy). If you are an expert in a field and you make it known (or if you were invited to go there), then you can easily get a "patron" who will answer for you until you produce something that will get you rep. Bear in mind, however, that reputation is gained in a diminishing return basis. Getting 10 points of reputation is exceedingly easy, and might be akin to spend some hours on the habitat's chat, making yourself known and socializing. That should cover the small favours required to survive (food, air, energy). The greater the amount of rep you want, however, the harder the investment you need to do (for example, from 10-20 would require weeks of work as maintenance engineer on the habitat's hull). Also, remember this is oriented to @rep, others might be a little more different in their advancement (c-rep might require you to serve into some minor missions, like months in a comfy city on Mars as a policeman... or weeks in Olympus in the same post! Of course, get killed and they will sleeve you as an indentured worker if you had no insurance XD). 29.- I'd think this varies a lot. Muses can be reprogrammed, and I bet some of their skillset can be added and removed, or it's so superfluous it is not even listed. So essentially, a Muse is like a personal teacher, but that won't be the same as going to school. That will depend on several factors. - Exoplanets, scum barges, Jovian Republic and other small communitites will opt for small schools with some teachers directing the class and the muses supporting each child (remember, in small settlements you might have less than 30 children in the whole school, of varying ages). Personal work is, essentially, the way people learn. - Hyperelite members and offspring will opt for physical schooling, in boarding schools, where they can make connections and create their webs of influence. They will also have supervisors and all that stuff, quite similar to elite schools nowadays. - Too small habitats with few children will join simulspace (without time compression) schooling to ensure classes with enough people. Locus could be an example, with all the hub of smaller habitats close by, or Mars' oribit ones (essentially, where comm lag is less than 2-3 seconds). In general, I think teachers will be full-fledged egos (human or AGI), and the muses will provide support. Also, teachers will usually have a biomorph with high points in social attributes. Finally, a case apart: Uplifts. I bet it is heavily dependant on each species, but we can bet they go as phsyical as possible here, specially for the most social kinds.

Libertad wrote:

30.) What forms of drugs, narcoalgorithms, and other addictive substances are legal in the inner system? Which are illegal?

My impression is that this varies a lot from habitat to habitat. The only canon reference I know is that smoking is permitted on Progress :-)

Quote:

31.) Is it common for criminals to use nanofabricators to get rid of evidence by transforming objects into other forms? Wouldn't most of these devices have records of what went in and out of them to prevent this kind of abuse?

Yes, recyclers likely document what they are recycling by default (this is part of the spime idea, after all). But disabling that might be doable, especially in the outer system where recyclers are more open.

Quote:

32.) Other than the Jovian Republic, what other systems and habitats continue to use the Old Economy system?

Likely some brinker polities.

30.- Rule of thumb for any habitat: anything that endangers others is forbidden unless consumed under controlled circumstances. Self-harm, on the other hand, is a little more allowed, since you can always backup (if you can pay it, of course). Don't expect a backup insurance covering the costs of resleeving caused by voluntary ingestion of toxic stuff, though (and you can expect the jobs deemed "risky" to imply an extra cost to the insurance). 31.- In the Honor Harrington slave trade novels (the ones with Victor Cachat, the first one to be precise) it is mentioned that "garbage destroyers" can dispose, among other things, of bodies and weapons, but are rigged not to and to sound an alarm if somebody tries to use them for that. It is also mentioned that somebody good enough can override that precautions (and we are talking about a very corrupt Earth here, so...). Taking that as a base, I'd say this: - First: public CM/Fabbers will have a list of stuff they won't compile or decompile, like, ever. You can override it, of course, but I'd say there is a very high chance it will be as hard (and time-consuming) as hacking a CM to produce blueprints in a PC habitat. - Second: EP has a lot of extra suveillance, look into Panopticon: the smaller the habitat, the more likely there will be recordings of the crime, so disposing of the body is quite irrelevant. - Third: on space habitats it might be simpler to send the body to space through an airlock. - Fourth: a fabber, the ones you use for making your meals, are capable of dissassembling a biomorph. Given enough time and pieces small enough, that is... So it is simpler to hack your fabber than a public CM. - Fifth: morphs are a scarce commodity. Take the body to a body bank and get paid for it (or pay a little so the morph dissapears with a new face and identity...). The more illegal the killing, the more shadier the bank must be... 32.- I bet the Lunar-Lagrange Alliance and some really old habitats, at best. 90% of EP runs on credits, reputation, or a mix of the two.

Libertad wrote:

33.) Other than the Remade, what other morphs are deemed sufficiently superior by the Ultimates?

I'd imagine that many synthmorph variants are also considered superior, as I doubt the Ultimates limit themselves to biological bodies. It's really not so much about the specific morph model you have per se, but in how you use it. The Ultimates are about discipline and strength in both body and mind. A fool in a remade is just as worthless to them as a genius in a flat. Furthermore, there is more than one path to supremacy. One could take a weaker morph and spend years enhancing it with implants and modifications, and it would probably serve you the same as purchasing something like a remade. I'm sure in later books, we'll get a glimpse at the other body designs that the Utimates have up their sleeve.

DivineWrath wrote:

Quote:

33.) Other than the Remade, what other morphs are deemed sufficiently superior by the Ultimates?

I think that is the wrong question to ask. It implies that an Ultimate would be unwilling to sleeve into an inferior morph. Being too picky can be a weakness of sorts. I think a better question would be "What kind of morphs would an Ultimate prefer?".

My take on the Ultimates is that they are not as unified as one might think, and there are several "factions" inside of the group. The "younger" members (newbies, if you want) will more than likely go for Remades and despise everything else, while the "rulers" of the faction will go with Remades both because they are quite good (I think it is the best biomorph for an experienced charater, but a waste of sorts for a fresh one) and they give them some control over the new members of the group until they "settle" in their niches. I'd like to flesh out this rulers into a classic Rome battle order, making the Ultimates essentially a group with an inner order like the one in the Roman Empire, but with challenges to get authority (strength and wits are paramount). Other factions inside the Ultimates would be scientific members (who tend to prefer infomorphs, and heavy-duty building synthmorphs like the spiderbots or flexbots) devoted to I+D+i, engineers, logistic "officers", etc... Because, to be truthful, slaves have only so many uses, and a faction of only soldiers has no future (they cannot develop anything new, thus depending on other factions for the means to wage war!). At least to me, the Ultimates are specialists, experts and/or savants, and the soldiers we see are their most public face (you don't wanna meet with their assassins...). As a militaristic culture, of course, all members have to pass a training and service period (at least 5 years), unless they are specially inducted for a particular skillset (more common with the scientist, but they are considered reservists anyway). This means that almost all morphs are prone to be used by a Ultimate, but the soldiers will go for the most useful morph for their current work, with the Remade being their choice if they can pay for it (the "poor" ones get an Olympic, a synth or a spider). Pods are used mostly as "quick flesh", however, usually controlled by AIs and ready to run forks of the security detachment if needed (something mostly used when the use of the more durable and with easier to conceal weapons synthmorphs are not an option, like waitresses in a bar that acts as secret base for the group).