greenTurtle1134

Ah, the inevitable toll of the public spectacle on any well-run exploratory organization! There is always a dichotomy between being good and looking good.

Is... is he fine? Best wishes to you and your family, four-legged and otherwise.

See, that's the thing. Without reading @Cydonian Monk's previous stories, I have absolutely no idea what is going on. It's a good feeling, too - lets me ride along with the kerbals of Crash 1.0.5 / 1.1.3 as they find out all the hidden history in the universe. But it's really confusing when you reference, by name, out of story, a previous thread. So you mean to say that Ad Lunam... is another history where Gene discovered all the destroyed versions in the past, and got arrested for it? And what exactly is happening now? 1.1.3 is rebuilding itself, using remembered hardware and designs from 1.0.5, remembered because The Boss survived?

It's a place where things outside of human comprehension routinely drop by for tea, if that's what you mean. It's a place where extraordinary things are accepted and live in tandem with Generic Humanity. Sounds pretty good to me.

Like all good stories, this one has gotten mind-blowingly big, so please tell me if I've sorted this out all right. Emiko Station: Extrasolar asteroid captured into Kerbin orbit. Bears a station and refueling stop. Used to be a gravioli focus point, now inactive. Thompberry: Insane scientist that tried to attack KSC with some sort of electromagnetic weapon ("tower of power"). Captured by his own saucers (see immediately below) and sent into space; mind was placed in a neutronium container by the Bop Kraken. Greek-Letter Saucers (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc.): Created by Thompberry; gained sentience after scanning an Ancient Saucer in the ice. Equipped with scanning beam and EMP armament of varying strength; solar powered. At least one was subverted by the Krakens. Stone Arches: Instruments for focusing gravioli energy. Appear as large stone structures. Monoliths: Devices made of neutronium that disrupt the gravioli-concentrating properties of the arches. The Kerbals have begun to understand universe stack theory in conjunction with these. Emiko Kerman: Val's grandmother, rumored to have seen a live Kraken. Namesake of Emiko Station. Transported to Belladonna Cove by an Ancient Saucer. Belladonna Cove: Confluence of various sci-fi and fantasy cultures. The witches know about wormholes and krakens and such. Ancient Saucers: Enigmatic. Buried under crust or ice, can interact with beings both digital and biological. Magic Boulders: Semi-sentient wormhole generation devices. The red one is controlled by the Krakens. Zaltronic: Enigmatic company interested in aerospace. Ties to Angelo. Created the saucers, used to employ Thompberry. Launched a telescope, got it stolen. Destroyed by the Carlenna Kraken using the Red Boulder. Angelo Kerman: Resident @Angel-125 reference and CEO of Wild Blue Industries. This verse's Tony Stark, basically. Sports JetWing, visor, glasses, innovation, and ties to Zaltronics. Once proposed a challenge to visit every celestial body with one ship. Kuzz Kerman: Resident @Kuzzter reference, space pirate. Geschosskopf Kerman: Resident @Geschosskopf reference, Kuzz's first mate. Carlenna Kerman: Formerly associate of Kuzz. Was lost during a NERVA accident and is now controlled by a Kraken in a power struggle with the Lord. Building devices to look for something. Krakens: Ancient civilization of mentally gifted beings. Their empire, at its height, was trans-dimensional but they never got past Sarnus. In their present state, they can take control of a dying being's body, causing changes to eyes. Kraken Lord: Son of the Bop Kraken. Hates the kraken embedded in Carlenna. Bop Kraken: Renegade among his race, used the last of his power to transfer Thompberry's mind. Sanny: The one I can't figure out. Did she actually wander in from the Traveling Circus dimension? Certainly talks about it, boffins and conscripted astronauts.

That's beautiful.

Two and a half weeks later, and someone finally laughs at that.

I invoke Non-Hollywood Mutation! The wolves that don't die of radiation poisoning get stomach cancer. I adopt them, treat them as best I can, and train them into dogs. My wolves. Ten minutes later, my hill.

I forbid wordplay. Boring hill.

...rocks. This Gauss colony...

Alright, so let me try to summarize this mess for my own sake... V1S1 - Cycle 1.1.3's space program reaches low orbit, discovers previous Cycles with the help of Thomlock Kerman, who falls from solar orbit. V1S2 - Cycle 1.1.3 finds Kelgee and other relics from previous Cycles in low Kerbin orbit, begins exploring them. V1S3 - They experiment with space telescopes and shuttles, resulting in GrandMa and the Aluminum series. V1S4 - Memory of Tomorrow, an interplanetary exploration vessel based around an all-purpose shuttlepod called the Sulfur/Sulphur/Sulpher, is constructed using radiothermal generators from various Cycle relics. V1V5 - The crew of Tomorrow travels to Mun, where they meet the Crazy Space Pirate with the bananas, and he steals their ship. V1S6 - Leveling up new recruits, missions to Mun to plant time capsules, and various references to pop culture (Mario's Another Castle, Paradox's Stellaris). A replacement Jool ship is built, called the Jumble of Parts. Kerbin 1.1.3 is destroyed ...am I right so far? It gets very crazy, very fast, what with communists and man-eating bugs...

Eve-Online physics, basically. Space has drag and wings matter in vacuum, etc etc etc... What is this "perseus" you talk about?

Great. Maybe make those run out as well, just far slower and with a nonrenewable resource? Maybe make the resource be the expensive part, so you can pay less but risk a sudden blink! out in the dark. Also, why does the light look so rugged? Thought it was a planet for a sec. Finally: Something to make it a bit less scary but much cooler. Engine Lighting. Will provide a bit of brightness, and be very cool to see your ship as a bit of light in the dark...

Like I said before, one thing you should do is completely change the role of doing science - by having a bunch of detailed reports for small biomes. So instead of the get-there-get-points attitude of Stock and most science mods, you need to carefully explore every corner of the bodies and the text is interesting, but once you do that you have more science than you will need.

Gaseous moon? I like the idea of planets being visible but moons not. The SOIs must be really big, though, so that there's a chance of finding them. Things like the navball and map might help you realize when you've been captured by one. I assume you found out how to hide them in Kopernicus? I really should play this at some point. I wonder how scary the dark can really be...

Yep, it was great. The UBM dislikes the acronym.

Options? The best option is probably a conversation along these lines:

I'd agree that the Company deserves to die for their crimes, but Camwise would be careful not to fall to their level. The slaughtering of innocents in zero-gee for ulterior motives is best left to the Board.

Then... put a router within reach of a big gaming desktop?

FINALLY someone with the exact same existential qualms about the transporter that I have! If it disassembles you and places you together again in another place, did you really move or were you killed and replaced with an exact copy that took over your life? When you step in a transporter, do you appear at the other end or does your consciousness just end and die the moment you are dematerialized? Everyone else can see the same person, but are we all just procuring a perfect doppelganger while killing the original? Can a consciousness be taken out and reinserted once the same atomic pattern has been assembled? Atoms are cycled through our bodies all the time, so it must not be the particular atoms that carry consciousness, but completely different ones? And then there's the issue of duplication. If your mind is scanned and a copy made, which does the chain of consciousness "jump" to? I suspect the one that was scanned first, as that one will have more memories - I read on Wikipedia that there was an argument that a mind cannot be exactly duplicated, as the neurons will change as the mind is scanned. But then transportation is just equivalent to duplicating a mind then killing the original! Can the consciousness, the informational pattern / potential soul that carries your personality, realize that this body is earmarked for vaporization and jump to an identical one? Or a near identical one? If you allow both copies to live a while then dematerialize one, then can it take over the other body? Probably not, but there must be a brief delay between transportation and dematerialization. What if you are trapped in a body that everyone else assumes can be safely destroyed? You beg everyone not to kill you, but they will just think that the real thing is somewhere else and this is just a question/answer program babbling to them? But are people any more than question/answer programs? Consciousness is just a linked list of question/answer programs, so does it actually mean anything? Is everyone else just an empty shell that can't be self-aware of conscious at all? What could it mean... At least I'm in good company regarding this.

The classic phrase is "For fun and profit"; the absence of the first part is likely symbolic of Camwise's attitude, or the Board's, or the author's or all of them. Just saying. (also) The crashing scene was really well written! It was a real contrast between this nice montage of the ship being constructed from SSTO launches and then suddenly, in a couple of lines, it goes back to heart-stopping action. And that little bit in the middle - when Camwise is arguing with himself over whether he is ready to die or not - that's really brilliant. I wonder what the Board does about the failure. Probably going to just go, "Well, our ship is finished, get lost."

Correct, at least until you get NERVAs or install Cryogenic Engines. The user below me is not described by the second line of this post.

...has the density of petroleum. This rocket ship...

So now it's Gregmore v.s. Gregmore? Also: What kind of weapons does Kerbfleet have? When they say "going in," does that just mean ram the enemy ship, or...?

Hmm, Ship of Theseus. If the entire fleet, including ships, flags, and crew has been reconstructed and replaced to be exactly the same as it was before, is it the same fleet? Hmm. Hmm! HMM!