I understand and sympathize with what you mean. Personally in my games there is an unspoken ban on playing Jovians because it's my belief that a Jovian would be very hard to play and go counter current to a lot of the ideas stated in the book. It's not that I don't like them but they make things very problematic thematically speaking. I think that the Jovians are a bit over the top as written and I'd even go as far as to say a self parody. By using so many Bush era memes the authors have dated themselves. I mean naming a habitat after Pinochet? You might as well make a Hitler Academy of Arts and Architecture. Also I think that their main weakness is that simply morph wise they are outclassed and so far they have no way of catching up. Chances are the universe is going to pass them by while they are huddling trying not to fry from the radiation. Taking religion out of the equation has been an overall mistake I think because it makes the bio-conservative movement lose a lot of it's credibility. Most of the arguments you'll hear in favor of Bio-conservatism will usually have something in there about the soul, and without religion to back it up and without religious belief there to have the need for an afterlife the whole agenda loses a lot of steam and relevance. The supernatural qualities of purity have always had a place conservatism. So, how to fix the Jovians? First give them the equivalent of the technologies available to morphs as something exterior to the body. Intelligence enhancements, cognitive enhancement programs, posthypnotic total recall. Things that will allow the Jovians to have adapted the technology of the transhuman reality to their purposes. You can't expect a scientist with 15 COG to keep up with a Menton Morph with 40 COG. The best way to make the Jovians non-stupid is to literally make them non-stupid. I'd even go as far as to let them have Biological enhancements that can make them the equivalent of a Splicer or Exalt body. Another thing to do is make practically every vehicle and synthmorph they have with Puppet Socks. Who cares if you are not sleeved in a Reaver if you can just lay back, relax and link up with a Reaver and make him move around through electrode inductions and brainscans. The difference becomes academic. The guys goes around in a synth all day but when his shift ends he gets out of his virtual coffin and goes home to his wife and kids with his good old flat body. I would personally play them as Shadowrun riggers when it comes to doing anything outside the habitats. What the Jovians really need is a power base, as written they seem like annoying Lampreys that feed off of the traffic going through their system and that in my mind is a bit of a mistake. It makes them petty and weak. Give them scoop ships and harvesters that skim Jupiter's atmosphere for H3, or satellites with long metallic tendrils that dip in the outer atmosphere and charge up capacitors with Jupiter's crazy static electricity. Give them real power, something to make them relevant. The Jovians are salvageable but they need to be handled very carefully and it is necessary to be extra vigilant not to make them parodies of themselves and instead a true alternative to the transhuman way.

I agree that the Jovians are a bit of a joke, at present, and it cannot be summed up better than this:

Rhyx wrote:

I mean naming a habitat after Pinochet? You might as well make a Hitler Academy of Arts and Architecture.

That sums it up right there. The Jovians aren't being treated seriously, when, in fact, they're a very real aspect of life (and when I say real, I mean there are real life versions of what are likely every aspect of Jovian society living today). My thought on the Jovians is that there's two core societal memes: Bioconservatism and militarism. The former is expressed by their lack of use of advanced technologies, which, for a wide variety of reasons, they refuse to use. Some bioconservatives refuse to use uploading because they fear it won't really be them on the other side (with at least a few examples in the books, and I know a person like this in real life), and others might do it for a multitude of religious reasons, and others still simply because they believe the technology is bad for the world (just look at the hypercorp oligarchs, who have been wrecking lives for power for ages, simply because they just won't die). Bioconservatives aren't necessarily stupid. As has been pointed out, they're mostly survivalists and ultra-religious types, who believe that they're doing what's best for everyone. Meanwhile, Jovian militarism makes them a huge threat. Certainly, they lack bio-enhanced bodies, but I figure most soldiers have genefixes and treatments that make them at least on par with most transhumans. Furthermore, they are all equipped with top-of-the-line armour and weapons, including power armour, that would let them run full-on into a barrage of plasma fire and punch out the Fury holding the cannon. Above all, though, they have tactics. Jovian military aren't mercenaries; they're the last refuge of the duty-bound guard of idealism. Anarchists may have militias, and hypercorps may have whole fleets of mercs, but the Jovians have an army. These are soldiers who, despite not having cortical stacks, will fight bravely and resolutely because they believe in their cause. Despite being at a disadvantage, they have the top training and equipment, and they will fight bitterly to the last. It's hard not to imagine more than a few Direct Action boys having seen Jovians without cortical stacks fighting a desperate battle to the last against overwhelming odds before sacrificing themselves to try and prevent a TITAN artifact from falling into hypercorp hands. Plus, I don't see many of the Jovians as jerks. Sure, they're probably xenophobic, but anyone who's been to old-fashioned Christian communities (which, it's heavily implied, much of the JR is) knows just how friendly they can be. They're just a little misguided. Or perhaps they're right and, when the apocalypse comes, they'll be the only ones left to claim the system. Who knows?

root@Making the Jovians non-stupid [hr] The only time I've gotten to play Eclipse Phase was at Gencon where I played the Jovian Spy for several one-shots. He is a fascinating character, and surprisingly effective in almost any situation. One of the parts I liked the best was his lack of a cortical stack, and what that implied about his decision making under duress. I had to be far more careful with him than the rest of the players were with their characters, as my morph and my ego were the same. He also has a heart problem, which I saw as a nod towards the main character in GATTACA (if you haven't seen it, you should fix that), and that gave me the idea of how to make the Jovians non-stupid. Will. Sheer, unquenchable, unyielding will in the face of anything. Ennui will eventually kill the transhumans unless they find ways to keep their empty immortality from forcing them to stare into the bleak meaninglessness of existence, but the Jovians don't have this problem. They are vital, their lives are brief, and they know the lack of their own worth in the face of transhuman superiority. This knowledge doesn't stop them, it in fact drives them to beat ever last ounce of effort out of themselves and everyone around them. They will push themselves and each other to extremes that the transhumans simply cannot muster because nothing matters that much to a transhuman. When a Jovian decides to die for a cause, that dedication is all encompassing. The Jovians are also the only military in Sol system, as has been mentioned, and they build warships that have no possible use. These gargantuan antimatter powered battleships don't have any opposition to take on directly, and so their full power will never be projected. What they do is force every other power group into an asymmetric conflict with the Jovians if they ever decide to pursue conflict. This might seem like a waste of effort and resources, but it isn't. This makes the Jovians the hegemony is Sol system, even though they are technically the weakest of the inner system groups. Hegemony is a strong position to be in, and is incredibly hard to dislodge a group from, particularly if the hegemony's population are forced into the position of needing a fanatical patriotic zeal merely to survive from day to day. The Jovian's aren't stupid. The transhumans merely make the mistake of underestimating them, because they don't understand the horrific motivation instilled by living the zero-sum game of mortality against opponents with no such restrictions. Add to that the bunker mentality that comes with being the only remaining humans, and the political option of projecting planet-cracking force holds no repugnance for the leadership. After all, their enemies aren't human, and applying that perception to another group has been the driving force to push soldiers past the existential crisis that keeps humans from killing since the dawn of time. Pro tip: unless facing a trained soldier, never turn your face away from an aggressor. The psychological barrier to killing evaporates when a face can no longer be seen. Historically, most killing in combat happens once one side has turned their backs during a rout.

I think I might be the only person on these boards who doesn't actually mind if they cast the Jovians in a fairly... maniacal light. The ability to control a population is, if anything stronger in EP. There are plenty of reasons for them to clamp down with police state brutality. There are plenty of reasons to believe that the regimes that exist right now, as we speak, have carried on and set up a presence in space. At the moment the Junta is a mix of the corruption and brutality of Mexico, the harsh military controlled North Korea with a hint of romanticized US divine mandate. And honestly I kind of like it.

I agree with icekatze. The Jovian Republic is not a nice place, to be sure, but they're not cartoonish supervillains; they're like Pilgrims who fled a decadent England, in search of their enlightened, pure (that's a deadly word) society. Certainly, they're oppressive, but everywhere might be called that compared to autonomist societies. They're probably comparable to China, more than anywhere, by my approximation: Harsh, brutal, but not utterly ignorant. They've got censorship and a police state, but they're ultimately not too different from many other modern countries. The Jovian Republic is likely not too disimilar, albeit with likely more religious involvement than in China. With the comparison, of course, comes the point that it's self-supporting, has a lot of clout, and a rather significant "serf" population to match. There's also the sort of insular paranoia the state cultivates with regards to outsiders all being potential threats. That's really the best comparison I can draw to my mental image of the Jovian Republic.

root@Making the Jovians non-stupid [hr] "Your mind is software...Program it." "Your body is a shell...Change it." "Death is a disease...Cure it." Or "Humanity is disappearing...Protect it." "Programs are stealing the future...Fight it." "Death is what makes you human...Embrace it."

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Where the other factions are trying to move on from and in many ways forget the Fall, the Jovians embrace the "Never Forget" mentality. Their bioconservatism and old economy are more the products of their goal of avoiding the mistakes that lead to the Fall than being for its own sake.

I guess this is where my support for the idea comes to an end. As illustrated they remind me of the kind of people that just never let go and keep living in the past along the lines of "remember the Alamo." "Keep Hiroshima and Nagasaki from ever happening again" and "never forget 9/11" The kind of people that pick at a scab and then are surprised when it bleeds and never heals. What I would respect even more is not a bunch of Luddites trying to stop time but a people who would take control of the technology that surrounds them and that it is they that would decide what to do with it while respecting their ethos. As stated so far they seem like a bunch of people that are unable to learn and who are caught in the past... What I would rather see is an alternate evolutionary path as opposed to a dead stop. As an evolutionary dead end they stop having meaning like a vestigial tailbone but as an alternative they can be a tempting doorway to a different future.

hi hi While I am a skeptic at heart who believes there is no such thing as a free lunch, if I am to assume the premise of the setting and that one can eventually engineer away the laws of physics as we know them, I don't think there is really any way the Jovians can hope to keep up with transhumanity at all. Transhumanity may just begin ignoring them after a while, leaving them to their reservation and going elsewhere to pursue more interesting ends. In the long run, the only real choice the Jovians have in the face of an exponentially advancing and hostile adversary is to maybe buy enough time to escape and go hide somewhere else. Perhaps they are building a gigantic arc to carry humanity to some distant star (one that hopefully doesn't have a Pandora Gate nearby) like in Alpha Centauri or maybe they'll just build a wandering ship, make a few orbits of the milky way and return to Earth in a few hundred thousand years after transhumanity has moved on. Edit: In an old game I ran a few years before Eclipse Phase was released, I set up the concept that all the major governments were secretly mining seed AI type programs for information. They would set up the AI on a totally isolated processor and it would only be fed simulated data for inputs. Without any way of observing the outside world, the AI was rendered harmless to those observing it. A classic brain-in-a-vat type scenario. It is possible that the Jovians might employ a configuration like this. By keeping the AI effectively trapped in simulspace with no physical means of influencing the outside world, they could present it with whatever problems they want, let the AI solve them, then reset it. (They might be the only ones who could do this without fear that someone inside their organization might betray them and release it)

root wrote:

"Humanity is disappearing...Protect it." "Programs are stealing the future...Fight it." "Death is what makes you human...Embrace it."

This, in my eyes, makes the Jovians the ideal Firewall agents. Sure, they can die for good, but if you are a die-hard believer in the Jovian cause (like the Spy template), you can travel around the solar system without your superiors fearing that you become "impure" and you certainly have no troubles with blowing up a habitat to stop a exsurgent infection. No humans will be harmed...

root wrote:

root@Making the Jovians non-stupid "Humanity is disappearing...Protect it." "Programs are stealing the future...Fight it." "Death is what makes you human...Embrace it."

I'm so using this for Juan. +1 C-Rep.

As a person, reader and overall EP fan I have an absolute HATRED against the J.J. and their meme (bioconcervatism, neo-ludism, anti-AGI), as a gm and (amateur) writer, I want to make them believable and thus fearsome. first, I differentiate the Junta and the Republic. Republic is the public civil government. the senators, the mayors, elected representatives, and the general public. The Junta is the militaro-industrial cabal that effectively calls the shot in the JR Republic territories and maintain the civil population in a "technological dark age" of sort while I'm sure they have top notch technological warfare tools, but I'll come back to this later in this post The comparison with communist China rings pretty true to me, for the Republic. And the Junta...well, I don't think they're stupid, not by a long shot. I hate their memes and stance, but what would be stupid is to believe that they are just that: stupid. The way I see it, they're like a Christian version of the Taliban, a nationalized al Qaida in their zeal and methods. Technological edge. While they keep the Republic in a comparatively low tech, about 80 to 100 years backwards level, the Junta has state of the art material in domains normally disregarded by Transhumanity. I'm thinking about cybernetic prosthetic, Super Soldier type of program (imagine, a HUMAN able to kick a transhuman freak's ass, what message it would convey!), cloaking and superior exoskeleton technology. I'm not talking about Iron-man like armors meshed to you, but stuff like landmates or, dare I say it, mobile suits, where a HUMAN pilot is sitting inside and piloting it with commands, calling the shots; assisted but in control. something they would likely have mastered (in my own game, and graphic novel, they indeed have) is optical stealth and cloaking technology. Diverse method could be explored or hybrided to reach a stealth to match or even surpass the Ghost morph's. Graphene might be cutting edge in 2010, but 150 years from now, it's likely prehistoric, and could be mass produced support for cloaking and protection. Another could be clouds or oils of microscopic prism coating any surface or surrounding objects, bending the light (think the Mirage Coloids in Gundam Seed Destiny), or maybe even disrupting communication masers and lasers. You vaporize clouds of that in a specific zone, and no laser communication will go through unaltered or diverted. And it's not even nanoscopic Their methods, well it's two folds: inward, they polices the technology available to the public, for several reason: keep an edge over them in case of insurrection, control what is produced, and whom purchases what, but also to keep spies from other groups to learn what level the Junta really has; and mostly keep the fear alive. Fear of the TITANs, of AGIs and fear of Transhumanity. If they offer solutions, even -or especially!- false, to a scared population, they will get support and recognition, and reach a greater level of patriotism. Political and Secret Polices are likely present. Outward, well, I picture them engaging in viral propaganda, sowing social unrest and mistrust, aiding and funding sympathizing groups, habitat and societies (like Beatrix's Redemption, read The Eye #1 for more info about that one), long term infiltration and downright criminal activities like sabotage, assassination, kidnapping, coercion and blackmail on key people in any given faction. An important aspect in Jovian Republic is religion. And mostly a Christian-Jewish mix. Look at the Pan American origins, most countries in this group are made of deep rooted God fearing faith driven people. That alone is most likely driving their bioconservative stance and zeal in opposing H+. Inspiration sources: movies: -Equilibrium for the cleric and velvet gloved oppression -Southland Tales for the population control and generally Big Brotherly society -Appleseed: General Hades' human military coup against the bioroids and willingness to use WMD to do that TV shows: -Babylon 5 season 3 and 4: Morgan Clarke's coup and regime, the almighty Nightwatch group and specist meme -Jericho, season 1 (near the end of it) and 2: post apocalyptic fascist governement, the Allied States of America using the fear of past cataclysm and similarly benevolent to the plebes to control them. anime: *the general Universal Century continuity in the Gundam series. While the spacenoids in general are a good exemple of Transhumanity, and the Principality of Zeon is a poster child for the Ultimates, the Earth Federation screams to me "Jovian Junta!". This is especially true in Gundam Zeta and the ongoing Gundam UC -Gundam Seed (+Destiny): the Atlantic Alliance is a military state with a strong anti-Coordinators (the transhumans in the series). Their people were suffering of the apocalyptic terrorist attack (Operation Break The World), while the government kept on financing top-of-the-line weaponry and the atrocious human experiment to match the Coordinators' superior abilities. Also the Blue Cosmos group gives good idea on how the Junta could act outside their boundaries, and LOGOS is an elite of industrialist and nobles hating the Coordinators that would give good idea to play in the higher spheres of the Junta. -Gundam 00: the Human Reform League for their general agenda (though their experiments with the kids like Soma/Marie and (H)Allelujah, which are quite a lot like the Futura Project). They have a strong and driven military, dispite their believed technological backwater population. It also does a great job at showing that an army, as beligerent as it might be, is also constituted of men and women, not just high tech weapons and strategic vectors. *Viper's Creed ( [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L62iAn4OSR4[/url]: in a post cataclysmic world war mid-22nd century, Fort Daiva City's military plotting, and the downright hatred against all foreigners and foreign companies fueled by the military. The so-called terrorist of Hound are a good view of Jovian youth used as scapegoat by the Junta to justify their means. Also provides hell of great visuals for the Trike Exoskeletons and a plethora of player characters concepts. *Rideback ([url] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Se3VdKd5Xw[/url]): a military junta has taken over most of the world and keeps a tight leach on the population's robotic technology, and opposes terrorists (or presumed terrorists) with deadly force. *Shangri-la ([url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EfQwujUtD0&NR=1[/url]) the army controls the ecological impacts people and companies are allowed to make, and are ruthless in their punishment of even the minor infractions. A group is opposing them, called Metal Age. Why is it relevant inspiration is that the government is evacuating to a new city (like an habitat) with a limited number of places aviable and the social injustice it created.

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This, in my eyes, makes the Jovians the ideal Firewall agents.

Works for as long as they don't have to farcast anywhere. I think that's the worst part of being a Jovian, you're basically either in deep freeze for the trip or you're staying at home. I mean as far As I understand it farcasting is basically making a copy of your consciousness like an alpha or beta fork and putting it in a body elsewhere and how exactly is that different from a cortical stack? How are you supposed to do that and maintain "Jovian Purity" and still be able to travel.

well, I have a Jovian Junta NPC called Winston "Death's Rook" Slane. He's just become a Proxy for Firewall, and assembled a cell of borderline sentinels that no-one wanted to be proxy for. a Triad killer, carrying nanoswarms sleeved with Delta forks of his own Ego on his body in the form or tatoos. a mercenary woman using a Sylph with pheromones to lure her preys and poison them an Async boy with ties to the Ultimates, brother to an islamist kamikaze. a Lost Gen girl with pyrokinesis found on Luna and a devastated but terribly efficient markman who lost his arm and his daughter in the destruction of an Exsurgent infected habitat. to Slane, the team is just a mean to an end: destroying the TITANs, and he named his cell just that, as a reminder to himself that they're as bad as the aberrations and will eventually need to be put down

I don't see why the Jovians have to be evil. I tend to compare them to Southern Americans (with a touch a Latino in there for that spice of life). They are very set in their ways, they have the drive to protect themselves and what is left of "humanity", and they won't compromise for anyone. I find all the factions in EP are like this. They could all be seen as good or evil and they all make great Firewall agents based on their strengths and their desire to protect transhumanity. Makes me think that each faction in EP should have their own version of the EP slogan (I would say Root's Jovian slogan bests describes the Jovain Republic). I will start a thread for any others.

Indeed, I don't see them as being evil at all. They're a group of refugees who just escaped as their planet was literally set ablaze. Now they've decided they're going to learn their lessons, and not do that sort of stupid stuff again. They aren't against nanotechnology. They're against the use of improperly tested technologies. The rest of the solar system figures that losing a habitat of 2,000 people once a month isn't too bad. The Jovians don't agree - every life is valuable. So I'm sorry Mr. Argonaut, you may not build an unshielded Mr. Fusion in your kitchen. You're going to kill someone, and that's against the law. Are their laws draconian? Absolutely - by EP standards. They don't permit suicide, genocide, the use of WMDs, self-brain-mutilation, weird alien-ear-sex or any of the other freakish things that go on in the world. However, they probably have a progressive tax rate, a strong welfare system, free public education, cheap public transit, special care for those with disabilities and a strong environmental program. Their legal and judicial systems are inherited from the US - which trace their lineage back to the ancient English system - you know, which rights to representation, a right to confront your accuser, juries and so on. Not like what the Consortium has set up, with AIs gathering all evidence itself and dispensing penalties after a remote, black-box judgment. Are they fascist? Again, yes - if you understand what 'fascist' means: a radical - by virtue of creating entirely new political systems, EVERYONE in EP is radical and authoritarian - they do believe in an extremely strong central authority, not unlike the Consortium nationalist - We've seen this political ideology. - Okay well, clearly we're talking just about the government here, not the entire culture. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist - Note, this is not the same as corporations as we see them currently - that would be the Consortium. Coproratism is the view that "a community as a body based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles among individuals". i.e., they believe that the Republic is itself an entity which must be protected, and that each person must do his role within that organization. Bob and Joe don't compete, unless in doing so it helps the entire Republic. Given how strong the central government is, this seems reasonable. The Junta is basically saying "we are all the humans left. We will work to support each other, because we are now one family." It's a requirement of strong support from everyone for the success of the nation itself. ... perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy (Definitions dissected from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism ) Yet despite all this, I wouldn't say the Republic is bad. Honestly, I'd say the Republic is THE most level-headed group portrayed so far. I mean, think about it. Imagine your house just burnt to the ground and your family scatters. You've got: Argonauts - "maybe if we understood fire better, we could create a more useful flame!" Anarchists - "sure my house just burnt down, but it's still fine if I play with fire, as long as I don't burn down my neighbor's house too." Consortium - "how can we market this house-destroying power?" Ultimates - "I am the flame!" Jovians - "You guys stop being idiots and help me build a new house!"

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

2) Technology is being released faster than it's being tested. That's what caused the Fall.

What? No. What caused the Fall was lack of resources for all but the supremely rich, jingoism, and a bunch of powerhungry maniacs with more military aspirations than brains. They created antagonistic AGIs without morals. The only reason mankind was saved was the AGIs that were created by the predecessors to Firewall. Humanity just remains unaware of that (leaving the attitude towards AGIs understandable but misguided).

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

4) The Jovians are playing a short game. Their reproduction rate, at best, is probably 500% in twenty years. Anyone willing to fork can meet 500% in about 8 hours. The Jovians know that they are outpaced in population, technology and industry. If they don't fix things in the next decade or so, they're going to go extinct (and with them, humanity).

I think the Jovians are still leading the population race. Yes, you could fork and fill a bunch of morphs pretty fast. No, that's not normal except for a rare few places. Titan, despite a well developed resleeving system, is overloaded: Unless you have the cash to shell out, you will have to wait years for a new morph. The inner system came up with the Lost to fix the dwindling population growth (and boy did that ever backfire). Even places with a whole bunch of refugee infolifes have taken to putting them in cheap, mass-produced synths, if they get a body at all. And, of course, a baby might take a long time to mature, but it only takes 9 months to produce. Growing a biomorph takes 18-24 months. The Jovians have a lot of things going for them: Numbers, fanaticism, universal military training and weapons, and a willingness to live in poverty (in comparison with the rest of the solar system). They have plenty of heart, even if they're a bit too willing to point their guns at the rest of humanity(trans- or not). As a culture, they should be able to keep expanding for the foreseeable future, even if they can't match the anarchists in technology or the corps in industry.

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As a culture, they should be able to keep expanding for the foreseeable future, even if they can't match the anarchists in technology or the corps in industry.

Expanding to where, they can't even exploit their own resources on Europa, they have to pimp it out to the Transhumans they hate so much to get anything out of it! That's not a model of self sufficiency to me. It was their first test of if they could stand on their own without the help of the Transhumans and they failed that! I mean come on, It's water! The only real chance that the Jovians as written have is to pack up their stuff go through a gate to an earthlike world and leave a "do not follow" sign behind them.

I don't think Titan is feeling any significant strains except the demand, and that will inevitably fall with time, barring, well, a Fall. They're in no particular danger at the moment. As for the Jovians, there's no reason they have to kowtow to anyone. They've got a significant military presence, and displacing them will hurt a lot, no matter what, barring some superb advance in military technologies (like forcefields or some such). Furthermore, there's really no reason to displace them. It'd cost everyone out there far more to take them out than it would to just deal with their nonsense for the moment. Transhumanity is a transitional species, ultimately, and whatever comes out the other side will have no need to squabble with something as trivial as the Jovians. They're not going to die out unless they reeeeally piss off the wrong people. Transhumanity has the Pandora Gates, don't forget; the playground is not limited to the solar system anymore (and it'll grow even larger if Factor FTL drives are made available).

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

Transhumanity is a transitional species, ultimately, and whatever comes out the other side will have no need to squabble with something as trivial as the Jovians.

Of course, to use a somewhat a tongue in cheek metaphor, the Jovians might be the bacteria that makes the yoghurt. This transitional species might be harvested as seen in the past, while the basic humans that are its ancestors ignored.

Extrasolar Angel wrote:

Of course, to use a somewhat a tongue in cheek metaphor, the Jovians might be the bacteria that makes the yoghurt. This transitional species might be harvested as seen in the past, while the basic humans that are its ancestors ignored.

The TITANs didn't seem to discriminate, to my knowledge. More to the point, there's no answer as to what they might be harvested by, or what they might turn into. This becomes especially noticeable when discussions of the ETI start occurring.

root wrote:

Transhumanity has no survival pressure, whereas the Jovians are constantly at threat. The Jovians will make weaponry and take over any locations they feel the need for, and they will get away with it because it's easier to let them do it than kill them. The rest of the system will never move to exterminate all of the Jovians because I promise that any group with the origins that the Jovians have will possess several copies of TITANs on cold storage as a mutually assured destruction deterrent.

I agree with you for the most part, but this goes back to what I said before: The Jovians will expand as long as they have no competition. Once it becomes more trouble to cohabitate with them than it is to wipe them out, there is no doubt who will be the victor. As for the threat of TITANs, I believe they might use that as a threat, but I doubt they actually have that capability. If they did, their own citizens might turn against them, and the rest of transhumanity would most definitely move to wipe them out. This isn't saying "We will defend ourselves with nuclear weapons", this is "We have back-ups of the guys who flew into the WTC!" on a far larger scale.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

That's what exacerbated the Fall, but it's not what caused it. The Exsurgent Virus is what caused it. Without that, there's no telling how events might have unfolded. Probably not well, but likely better than they did.

You're right. The creation of the military AGIs were only what enabled the Fall, even though they lied to and exploited humanity even before they were infected. The Exsurgent Virus was what caused it. The Exsurgent Virus was a trap placed there by the ETI, which had nothing to do with mankind as such. I still maintain that the Fall had little (outright) to do with technology outpacing humanity - because the progenitors of Firewall had AGI that largely avoided the Virus, and managed to save humanity in the following war. The Fall did have a lot to do with how humanity chose to use their technology.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

The Jovians don't agree - every life is valuable.

Mostly in that "life is sacred, so if you want an abortion we're going to KILL you!" kinda way.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

Yet despite all this, I wouldn't say the Republic is bad. Honestly, I'd say the Republic is THE most level-headed group portrayed so far. I mean, think about it. Imagine your house just burnt to the ground and your family scatters.

Yes. Except your house burnt down because your mom and dad were fighting, and both decided housing criminally insane pyromaniacs would give them the edge (and your smart brother saved the day, because he was secretly having some firemen over - it might have been a fetish thing). So: Argonauts - "Maybe if we understood fire better, we could form a better fire department!" Anarchists - "Sure my house just burnt down, but fire probably has many useful purposes. Let me play with it and see if I can find some." Consortium - "How can we market this house-destroying power? Oh, let's sell fire extinguishers too." Ultimates - "I am the flame!" (Yeah, this one was pretty spot on.) Jovians - "You guys are idiots! There will be no pyromaniacs, no fire department, and no fire. Guns for everyone!" The technology (like fire, which provides me with delicious barbeque in summer and a warm house in winter) was fine. The first AGI were the only reason mankind still exists. The TITANs were AGI made without regard for human life (how could that backfire?) and infected by an alien virus. The Jovians have an awesome military, but their technology wouldn't be enough to resist a return of the TITANs, much less actual ETI lifeforms. So if your house burns, get out and call the fire department. Assuming you haven't shut it down for fear that the firemen were secretly pyromaniacs.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

The point was, you CAN outpace the Jovians. All it takes is everyone forking once and the rest of space doubles its population.

Of course you can outpace the Jovians, but there remains a huge social taboo against it, as well as laws in most places. It doesn't mean they can't, but unless facing extinction, I can't see why they would change their opinion that dramatically. Much like incest, most people just don't consider it okay. Your Smith example is valid (and witty). Of course, John would either be brought back as an infolife and then have to buy a new morph of his own (in case of basic insurance) or have a pre-purchased morph available (in case of more expensive insurance) or go for a rental. Had John been a Titanian, he would of course have gotten a morph for free, but he would probably have had to wait for a few years. Of course, had it been Jimmy Smith the special force operative, any of the factions would resleeve him (as per Jovian Spy in the sample characters).

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

Anywhere else and you can do it between say... 1 hour (fork an existing personality into an infomorph) and 1 year (the above, plus bother to build a morph), and the result is even better than what the jovians have, thanks to benefits from implanted skills, 'instantaneous' experience, and superior morphs.

There's a huge social taboo against forking like that. Yes, I know it's possible, but it's also possible for Jovians to resleeve (see the Jovian Spy sample character). Neither happens often, but if you're willing to completely set aside one faction's morals, why not do it all around?

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then has five alpha forks of himself sleeved as a squad in synthmorphs

Just like synthmorphs alpha forking in extensive way isn't seen as acceptable. I guess just like we don't use atomic devices for mining, although the potential is there. Plus you wouldn't want to have standarized soldiers-they can copy the same behaviour/traits that could make them vulnerable. If you use such measures-the opponent won't stay static-perhaps the Jovians will engineer a virus attacking only a person with a certain DNA code or a virus infesting only certain cyberbrain patterns-since they would target alpha forks they could get away with it in war.

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(which, coincidentally, would allow soldiers to rapidly accumulate combat experience and become veterans far sooner than the Jovians).

Besides the danger of standarizing soldiers, Rambo syndrome says hallo. You now have an army of psychopatic soldiers with trauma experience-this actually was brought up in discussions before. Of course in EP their abilities are amplified. Furthermore I suppose Planetary Consortium might not like the idea of having a large, super soldier army, that might have ideas on its own as to the way things are run in Sol System-I would have them rely on more specialised hight tech and merc forces in addition to more crowd control and internal security detachments.

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They need not fear death, because they will all likely be re-merged into themselves again.

Death in itself is still traumatic, it's not the end in EP, but it's no picnic either. Do that numerous times to soldiers and you get very psychotic super soldiers in the end. Is that really the best course of action ? Remember that backups from dead or dying persons experience numerous complications, and having been restored from death results in high stress value, and you also need to take integration and alienation tests. Restoring a soldier from death and giving him a new body to fight doesn't happen in a second nor by a click of the button.

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The PC can recycle or repair the bodies of their troops to make new ones. They don't even have to be that great; they can win via attrition.

Growing new morphs or creating synths still takes time. Synths could probably be made faster, but there is also the question of resources-they do cost after all. Plus you would have to deliver them to combat, and here Jovians have a powerfull space navy that can interdict any troop assaults.

To counter merging soldiers, I see the Jovians relying on UAVs and jumped into drones. Basically this is like sleeving into a synth, except the mind is always in the original Splice or Flat a few kilometres away and you gain similar experience (plus no need to retrieve stacks from a battlefield). Jovians would accept this because there is less risk to the soldier but you don't have to resleeve. That being said the best soldiers are the ones that have the most to lose (like a wolverine backed into a corner). This is why Jovian soldiers will always be more ferocious then their transhuman counterparts (thus their enemies will always have to out man and out gun them in every fight). Mortality has a funny way of making people not want to die if they can handle it. The best minds of Jovian society will have cortical stacks, and the infomorphs created from these stacks will always be turned into XPs to train future generations. This isn't the immortality that the rest of transhumanity takes for granted but it does allow vital knowledge to be passed on to future generations.

root@Making the Jovians non-stupid [hr] As TBRMInsanity says, transhumans are quitters. Jovian soldiers fight to the bone because they don't have the option of rebooting from a save point. They will do everything they can to use force multipiers and ways to leverage a network enhanced mind, and this includes the fact that they do not consider forks to be human. They don't need to jam drones (but they will) when they can send in drones with full alphas inside who don't consider themselves to be human, and are thus fully expendable in their own minds. The Jovians will always play for higher stakes, because they have no other choice. If Gorgon Security invades a Jovian mining facility, expect the janitor to rise to the challenge and become a hero using nothing but chlorine, bleach, and a cheap pocket knife. If the PC points a gun at something the Jovians own, expect them to point a battleship back. If someone points a battleship at something the Jovians own, expect them to find a way to blacken the sun in retaliation. The Jovians always win because they are willing to die a final death, and the transhumans aren't. Since the Jovians are always willing to risk more, they will always be the ones choosing which game is being played, and the ability to choose the game gives them an insurmountable advantage against transhumans.