Very much so. It's hard to believe that Aleph and all the Powers are covering up that much about the threat level of the Combined Army. It does. But not a lot of wiggle room around the fact that it's an active existential threat to the Human Sphere!
think the biggest factor in the war game material is that subjectively for us players the Combined Army has always been seiging Paradiso and it’s been years since the attack starters *for us*. I can’t find anywhere in the 3rd edition books giving a timeline for when the 1st, 2nd and 3rd offensives started. Digging out the RPG, First Offensive was 60NC, Second Offensive was 64NC, the Tohaa treaty was last year, RPG “today” is 67NC (the Exrah event happened this year), so presumably Third Offensive is 68NC or so. Round up some colonists on Ariadna and ask them what’s going on, I can’t help imagining that you’re going to get something that sounds like an American being asked about the Iraq or Afghanistan situation (now or during the height of the conflict, depending on your cynicism levels).
The UR "minds" are in a gestalt that is the Evolved Intelligence. That way, if/when the EI trascends (part A of its "prime directive") it will take the UR with her (part B of its "prime Directive"). It has not been stated if such merge was intended by the Ur or the EI decided it was the best option and proceeded to assimilate Borg-Style without caring about their wishes. Covering it to the public, not hard to believe, since there are so much distractions. Covering from "themselves" (AKA being oblivious to the true extent of the CA menace) is, quite frankly, impossible to believe. See my later expansion on this. Continuing with my answer to Section9: There is a civilization doing all what they want to convince the humans the CA is serious business, and their civilization is losing against it (Tohaa) The humans know, I assume, the numbers the CA is throwing at them through the Acheron's wormhole (50% attrition rate just travelling there... then we talk about exiting the wormhole). If this doesn't point to really hard interest... Sepsitor & Shasvastii. That is called a frigging frakking Shite, or FFS... not only in-universe, but out as well: If you don't carry a cube, but are backed up (a la Al'Djabel) you risk a Shasvastii single infiltration can corrupt hundreds or thousands of human minds. If you are a rich guy paranoid about being sepsitorized, and use hard backups... you are at the mecy of the technicians, so a simple infiltration/sepsitorization of a techie can infect you. Going around without cube... nobody will want that. The real question is why aren't there more robots on the field!
Yes and No. CA attacked Paradiso before the "first contact" with the Tohaa. And if I get it right from Third Offensive the Shasvastii stated that there would be no possibility to convince humanity peacefully to cooperate, what is atm doupted by the Ei, but they have no proof. There is not "that" one reason, what I like very much across the fluff of Infinity.
Thank you for finding this. I knew it was out there, but I didn't care enough to try and find it myself lol! The EOD guys had memorial services for their robots that got blown up in Iraq. I saw one of them cry once. Humans are weird.
Combined vs. Human Sphere really does have a lot of the Imperium vs. Tau issues. And a lot of them used to be explained by the old 2nd edition statement that before the Tohaa set off the Ur probe, humanity was just on the “Future Research Subjects” list. Honestly, playing up the fact that the El has to deal with keeping all of its “research assistant” races under control while recruiting additional “test subject” races is probably really important. How many Exrah Concordat style incidents have there been? That second is really quite entertaining when cross referenced with the description for the Morats have a Diplomacy Corps. “We read through the treaty, and it says we need to have diplomats. This satisfies the legal and technical requirements for diplomacy.”
Wouldn't surprise me at all, since the Robot took the bomb for them. Same reason we decorate and have memorial services for 'puppies' (Military Working Dogs, who very much do not like strange people approaching their human, even if we are wearing the same uniform). And yes, humans are very weird.
Dogs readily form "packs" though. That's just a pack of two. Dog and Bigger Dog. Shedding tears for a EOD bot, though. Yeah, that's some fucked-up-human transference bullshit.
I shed a tear for my Nokia phone when it's battery finally gave up after 7 years. People are so desperate for social connections we will eventually get attached to anything that has had an impact on our lives.
Forgive my poor lore understanding, but arent there jumpgates in paradiso that are hard to replace, one to CA and one formerly to the tohaa? Surely, if those gates who require massive investment exist, the tohaa would have to have had contact with humans around the same time CA attacked? An attack takes more time then just meeting, after all..
If I'm correct, the installations are only for stabilisation the wormhole and for safety. And atm we don't know exactly what will happen to the Daedalus jump point. The Ship Ariadna had no installation on the other side when it jumped to Dawn.
Correct, the jumpgates stabilise a wormhole but it's still possible to travel through one without a gate. It's just more difficult and dangerous. I don't believe that the CA wormhole has a jumpgate (the Acheron blockade would have destroyed it) which is one of the reasons it bottlenecks what can come through it.
The new book’s campaign should be completely self-contained. It may resemble the one from the 2nd edition book, but you won’t need to have a copy of that book to play.
Yeah, as anyone who has had to battle the answer-bots of customer service can attest (me, for example... frigging Vodafone...) or the old people who suddenly need to learn how to use the ATM because the banks want to reduce their personnel... Even so, the timeline states several years have passed since that first contact with the CA and then the Tohaa. The Shasvastii are in "psycho enemy mode" against humanity because of the destruction of one of their nurseries (thought to be a CA intelligence nexus by the humans), so the "humanity will never cooperate" is a biased opinion, a fact known by the EI as well. The problem is, simply, Aleph and the EI exists. The EI has enough capabilities and experience to be three steps ahead of Aleph, and runs a much tighter ship with a lot more authority, while Aleph is literally terrified of the Sepsitor technology. This means Aleph *can* reasonably "boost" the importance of her conclussions and actions against the CA by merging several directives together, kinda like ordering an Asimovian robot to protect its own existence (merging laws #3 and #2), or to protect a child in the long term (merging #1 and #2, with a subtle reinforcement of #3 since the long term demands of the robot to remain operational). In this case, Aleph needs to unify humanity's efforts, show them a much more dire photo of what they think they know (assuming the CA has not shown all of their cards), etc... That means reacting in a rational way (OSS, vs the Greeks created specifically to NOT be 100% rational, and thus not predictable by the enemy EI), which leaves little options to how Aleph behaves and tries to direct humanity to ensure Humanity's survival both as a species, culture and power. I already said it before, unless something serendipitious happens, the question is not about IF the CA conquers humanity, but WHEN, and iunder WHAT conditions, meaning most of this conflict can be interpreted as Aleph "talking" to the EI into respecting humanity and its independence, even if they are incorporated to the CA.