I have to admit, it's a little scary how much thought you've put into all this stuff over the years (while still making it all fit). Makes the things I've been cooking up (unrelated to Star Trek, or I'd probably have posted some of it already) feel like a kid playing around in a sandbox.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
The issue with those Moab suits reminds me strongly of the Y-13 Trauma Harness problem from Fallout New Vegas (seen primarily in the DLCs Dead Money and Old World Blues). The Y-13 Trauma Harness was designed as an adjunct to existing powered-armor designs, so that a soldier incapacitated in battle could be automatically walked back to the nearest FOB for retrieval. Unfortunately, during testing they discovered that should the occupant become deceased, the simple AI in the harness would take over - and begin using its combat programming against all living targets. Including its own side. That's the technology animating the "ghost people" in the villa surrounding the Sierra Madre Casino - trauma harnesses built into hazmat suits that, sadly, could not keep the red fog out. The maintenance people died, and two hundred years later the suits still stalk the villa, attacking anything living. (Except for Knight Christine Royce, if you saved her - special circumstance there.) They're also among the dangers in the Big MT, along with nightstalkers (coyote/rattlesnake mashups), cazadores (giant tarantula hawk wasps), and lobotomites (victims of the Big MT's attempts at brain surgery, implanted with cybernetic controls and programmed to defend the crater at all costs).
Thankfully, the Moab suits only think they are their former occupants, they don't go kill-crazy like a Trauma Harness.
The Karemma seceding from the Dominion was my idea. In TV canon the Karemma are presented as merchants like the Ferengi, but with a key difference: they have a very strong belief in fair play (in "Starship Down", setting a reasonable profit margin based on production costs rather than trying to gouge their customer for every centicredit they can get). Also, the Female Changeling's excuse for not defending Karemma from the Hur'q doesn't even qualify for plausible deniability: personally I suspect she was holding out in hopes of increasing her control over the Karemma vassal state.
Legitimacy has been a running theme in the Masterverse, especially since last year's reboot. I gotta figure the Karemma knew full well who they were getting in bed with when they signed on but figured the price was worth the benefit of having the Jem'Hadar to patrol their space and protect their traders. Which, given the Dominion's authoritarianism (born of the Founders' desperation for control), leads to the conclusion of them now being a race of "smiths but no swordsmen": despite being a major weapons supplier to the Dominion military, they don't have a military of their own beyond law enforcement. And then the Dominion suddenly can't hold up its end effectively anymore, and then they actually refuse to hold up their end, and there are outside witnesses to it that conveniently present the Karemma with another option.
Obviously I combined the two consecutive confrontations with the Female Changeling into one (Eleya being significantly more confrontational by nature than the canonical Federation PC).
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
We should note here that voting rights were a significant issue in the 2412 general election: one of the cited things that Donald Odelaw's Reconciliation coalition ran on was restoring suffrage to groups that had lost it after secession under First Minister Elizabeth Tran and her successors.
Unfortunately, that all got overshadowed by the question of whether the Confederacy should rejoin the Federation, coupled with an outside conspiracy rigging the vote in Rec's favor—using the simple expedient of setting up shell companies to hire lots of people likely to vote Rec. (Turns out that restrictions on who can vote make it easier for the powerful to game the system, who knew? ) This combined with a coup attempt against the staunchly pro-independence state government of Cold Butte touched off a civil war.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Interrupting again because I have to say, I do like the psychological twist you put on these poor APs. Rather than thinking of themselves as superior beings due to superior ability, like Khan Singh and his people, they believe the "naturalborns" are more precious because they're part of a social network that needs them.
I'm not sure the APs should think of themselves as "disposable" like that, but it's nice to see a different yet quite reasonable take on the mental effects of finding out that you're a designer life form.
Yeah, basically it's the "nature versus nurture" argument to an extent. Star Trek's understanding of genetics is pretty stuck in the '60s: we now know that environmental factors, upbringing included, count for a lot in gene expression. The MAOA gene, i.e. the so-called "warrior gene", is a good example: There are plenty of humans who have the variants correlated to higher aggression (the MAOA-L variant she cites is one of the stronger ones) that don't turn into rage-monsters, probably most of them in fact (I don't know the actual numbers).
So I played off an alternate story treatment Worffan101 wrote for Star Trek Into Darkness, which involved the notion that somebody had to have made Khan Singh and taught him that he was a superior being. But Khan was the visible symbol and so the popular history focused on him instead of the jerks who made him as a weapon against their enemies, or whatever their reasoning was.
Julian Bashir should provide the perfect counter-example, but to its shame DS9 chickened out of actually challenging the idea and so we're left with a Federation that, 300 years on from a war that only took place on one planet of at least 150, still treats augs the way Fox News treats the bogeyman du jour. #totallynottryingtostartapoliticalargument
(I should also note that the Siegfrieds aren't augments on the same scale as Khan or even Julian Bashir: because they're supposed to be able to blend in with natural-born Starfleet personnel, their physical abilities are designed to put them at the high end of baseline but still within the normal range of a naturally conceived human.)
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
I appreciate the way you guys are dealing with PTSD. It is a severe issue, and one with which humans have been dealing since forever, (mostly by ignoring it and hoping it would go away.)
I have never been in combat, but I believe we have an obligation to those whom we asked to risk everything that extends beyond a medal and a discharge. We literally owe them their life back. How much is that worth in dollars or euros?
Sweeping the problem under the rug again isn't the right answer. The thing is, that's been our way of dealing with it for so long that most people don't know what PTSD is, and how pervasive it is.
I appreciate the way you guys are dealing with PTSD. It is a severe issue, and one with which humans have been dealing since forever, (mostly by ignoring it and hoping it would go away.)
I have never been in combat, but I believe we have an obligation to those whom we asked to risk everything that extends beyond a medal and a discharge. We literally owe them their life back. How much is that worth in dollars or euros?
Sweeping the problem under the rug again isn't the right answer. The thing is, that's been our way of dealing with it for so long that most people don't know what PTSD is, and how pervasive it is.
So thanks for putting a spotlight on the problem.
Yeah, that's always been something I try to keep in mind when I write military science fiction: the effects that war has on the soldiers. We glamorize war because when it's on a screen or in a book, it's exciting, but the fact is, the soldiers maybe enjoy the camaraderie but the actual fighting is not any fun, or at least it's not supposed to be.
As I developed Eleya, and then redeveloped her for the Masterverse, her personality took on shades of an Iraq/Afghanistan vet who's been back for tour after tour for years on end: that embitterment at years and years of a pointless, endless war because the majority of the people at home, including most of the politicians who ultimately give the orders, don't fully comprehend the conditions on the ground (reading recommendation: Chasing Ghosts by Paul Rieckhoff (Lieutenant, US Army National Guard, ret.)). Both my own continuity and the Masterverse stretched the game's chronology out across several years and split them across multiple protagonists because there's a frankly implausible amount of events for one person to experience, but it's still a lot of heavy stuff for even dozens of characters to go through.
(For myself, my family's been in the US Navy for four generations on my father's side, and my mom and maternal grandfather both served, as well. I wanted to enlist, too, but I was turned down because I'm on the autism spectrum.)
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Just to make this clear, "commodore" in this context is not a traditional rank. The rank was officially replaced with rear admiral (lower half) in the US Navy after TOS, and TNG followed suit. However, the TITLE of commodore is still in use in situations where you have a billet that ought to be filled by a rear admiral but either one isn't available or the best officer for the job hasn't hit flag rank yet.
In this particular case, Eleya could field-promote McKnight, except for the little problem that she's only a one-star and isn't allowed to promote ANYONE to her own rank. So she gave McKnight her old commodore's pin (stand-in for the command flag to which a USN commodore is entitled).
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Comments
I have to admit, it's a little scary how much thought you've put into all this stuff over the years (while still making it all fit). Makes the things I've been cooking up (unrelated to Star Trek, or I'd probably have posted some of it already) feel like a kid playing around in a sandbox.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Thankfully, the Moab suits only think they are their former occupants, they don't go kill-crazy like a Trauma Harness.
Legitimacy has been a running theme in the Masterverse, especially since last year's reboot. I gotta figure the Karemma knew full well who they were getting in bed with when they signed on but figured the price was worth the benefit of having the Jem'Hadar to patrol their space and protect their traders. Which, given the Dominion's authoritarianism (born of the Founders' desperation for control), leads to the conclusion of them now being a race of "smiths but no swordsmen": despite being a major weapons supplier to the Dominion military, they don't have a military of their own beyond law enforcement. And then the Dominion suddenly can't hold up its end effectively anymore, and then they actually refuse to hold up their end, and there are outside witnesses to it that conveniently present the Karemma with another option.
Obviously I combined the two consecutive confrontations with the Female Changeling into one (Eleya being significantly more confrontational by nature than the canonical Federation PC).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Unfortunately, that all got overshadowed by the question of whether the Confederacy should rejoin the Federation, coupled with an outside conspiracy rigging the vote in Rec's favor—using the simple expedient of setting up shell companies to hire lots of people likely to vote Rec. (Turns out that restrictions on who can vote make it easier for the powerful to game the system, who knew?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I'm not sure the APs should think of themselves as "disposable" like that, but it's nice to see a different yet quite reasonable take on the mental effects of finding out that you're a designer life form.
Pigs are an even crazier example: a domesticated hog that goes feral will grow tusks and thicker, more bristly fur within weeks.
So I played off an alternate story treatment Worffan101 wrote for Star Trek Into Darkness, which involved the notion that somebody had to have made Khan Singh and taught him that he was a superior being. But Khan was the visible symbol and so the popular history focused on him instead of the jerks who made him as a weapon against their enemies, or whatever their reasoning was.
Julian Bashir should provide the perfect counter-example, but to its shame DS9 chickened out of actually challenging the idea and so we're left with a Federation that, 300 years on from a war that only took place on one planet of at least 150, still treats augs the way Fox News treats the bogeyman du jour. #totallynottryingtostartapoliticalargument
(I should also note that the Siegfrieds aren't augments on the same scale as Khan or even Julian Bashir: because they're supposed to be able to blend in with natural-born Starfleet personnel, their physical abilities are designed to put them at the high end of baseline but still within the normal range of a naturally conceived human.)
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I have never been in combat, but I believe we have an obligation to those whom we asked to risk everything that extends beyond a medal and a discharge. We literally owe them their life back. How much is that worth in dollars or euros?
Sweeping the problem under the rug again isn't the right answer. The thing is, that's been our way of dealing with it for so long that most people don't know what PTSD is, and how pervasive it is.
So thanks for putting a spotlight on the problem.
Yeah, that's always been something I try to keep in mind when I write military science fiction: the effects that war has on the soldiers. We glamorize war because when it's on a screen or in a book, it's exciting, but the fact is, the soldiers maybe enjoy the camaraderie but the actual fighting is not any fun, or at least it's not supposed to be.
As I developed Eleya, and then redeveloped her for the Masterverse, her personality took on shades of an Iraq/Afghanistan vet who's been back for tour after tour for years on end: that embitterment at years and years of a pointless, endless war because the majority of the people at home, including most of the politicians who ultimately give the orders, don't fully comprehend the conditions on the ground (reading recommendation: Chasing Ghosts by Paul Rieckhoff (Lieutenant, US Army National Guard, ret.)). Both my own continuity and the Masterverse stretched the game's chronology out across several years and split them across multiple protagonists because there's a frankly implausible amount of events for one person to experience, but it's still a lot of heavy stuff for even dozens of characters to go through.
(For myself, my family's been in the US Navy for four generations on my father's side, and my mom and maternal grandfather both served, as well. I wanted to enlist, too, but I was turned down because I'm on the autism spectrum.)
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
In this particular case, Eleya could field-promote McKnight, except for the little problem that she's only a one-star and isn't allowed to promote ANYONE to her own rank. So she gave McKnight her old commodore's pin (stand-in for the command flag to which a USN commodore is entitled).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/