It's not about obligations, its about smart marketing and growing rather than shrinking player enthusiasm and communities. Think of it this way, players' attitudes to fluff can be considered like a ranked list in order... Loves the Fluff Thinks fluff is OK Tolerates the fluff Ignores the fluff Hates the fluff You only ever want to do things that move your customers UP that list you never want to do things that moves customers down it. And its better to keep players comfortable at the same level they are at than risk dropping them down. Personally my take on it when this happens, and it's happened with other similar games, is that the writer's/management's hubris makes them believe everyone is in "Loves the Fluff" when actually a lot of people are bouncing around the middle and play the game for other more reliable reasons. So they double down on something they think everyone loves... and actually it turned out to be an aspect people were merely tolerating or struggling to ignore and rubbing their face into it forces them down to the bottom two groups. This is why the number one rule for fluff writing for games like this should really be "No rubbing players face in it". Because you might think you are rubbing their faces in their favorite flavor of cleavage, but it all too often turns out you were rubbing their faces in the poop they were avoiding or rationalizing.
Problem is that expenses in Defense are a waste in times of peace... but too late to help once the war starts. Thus, it's an investment "just in case". Then again, Spain's expenditure in Defense is under the bare minimum demanded by the NATO, while USA has a constitutional law that forces it to spend 51% of its IBP (or however it's written). Well... Eclipse Phase's shares "memories", and you need post-processing to recover the raw data of the senses. I have included as Spoilers the two relevant implants (that came with the core rulebook), the first comes with all bodies but the "flats" (basic bodies similar to the ones we have nowadays, cost 0, the next ones cost 5-10... out of 1000 creation points), and the second has a cost similar to the JSA box, more or less... Spoiler: Basic Biomods Among other things: Cranial Computer: This computer serves as the hub for the character’s personal area network and is home to their muse. It has all of the functions of a smartphone and PDA, acting as a media player, meshbrowser, alarm clock/calendar, positioning and map system, address book, advanced calculator, file storage system, search engine, social networking client, messaging program, and note pad. It manages the user’s augmented reality input and can run any software the character desires. It also processes XP data, allowing the user to experience other people’s recorded memories, and also allowing the user to share their own XP sensory input with others in real-time. Facial/image recognition and encryption software are included by default. Spoiler: XP implant Mnemonic Augmentation:A character with this augmentation and a cortical stack can access digital recordings of all of the sensory data they have experienced in XP format (and they may share these recordings with others). Mnemonic augmentation differs from the eidetic memory bioware because it allows characters to digitally share all of their sensory data with others. It also allows them to closely examine sensory data they did not initially look at. For example, If the character glanced at a note but did not read it, they can later use image enhancement software to enhance this image and in most cases actually read what the note said. Mnemonic augmentation allows the character to clearly hear all background noises, like a conversation at a nearby table that the character only initially heard a few words of. Using mnemonic augmentation to retrieve a specific piece of information is quite easy, but usually requires between 2 and 20 minutes of concentration. [Low] The bit about the Cube is the same thing as the XP sharing in EP: why send a mess of "wetware" locked data (the sensory feed would be tied to the brain, basically) when you already have a translation to digital going on? You just "duplicate" the data that goes to the cube into another storage system (to not need to extract that data from the cube), and it would be like BEING Candy. Exactly like in the movie I was talking before, incidentally (the illegal part about the XP black market is that those recordings were unfiltered, and akin to drugs. Plus the snuff, that is). Well, that depends a lot on how PanO is organized, something we won't be seeing in enough detail until their RPG splatbook comes out. Right now, the most likely chain of events would be: Candy gets the data (recordings, notes, encounters...) The data is spread all over the most relevant maya-TV channels in PanO. Public opinion gets roused because they are being bombarded all the time with this story. Then they get to experience Candy's "adventure", probably with ads, paying or whatever. It's the story of the month(s). The Government might or might not like this, but can do little unless they control the news corporation, can exert pressure over that, etc... The PanO Hexaedron and the Military are less than thrilled: YJ suffering internal turmoils is a net gain for PanO without doing anything, being forced to act won't really deplete more YJ and will reduce the advantage PanO will get. Public opinion forces (somehow) the government to order the unhappy military to do something to help JSA. Iron wall As I said, PanO's actions are not illogical, nor hard to explain. They set some stuff that will need to go in line with the RPG splatbook, however, because it would be quite... strange, if that "public opinion" was irrelevant in the end. I agree, and their positions are entrenched. However, it gives some data that is quite interesting to look at. I assume that, being a "chunk" of her Cube's recordings to all intents and purposes, plus a 100% fidelity recording of what she perceived, the only think they can do on post-production is to cut, dampen or heighten "channels", so they might have dampen her fear, silence the inner monologue, and let everything else. Repeat after me: Sepsitor, at low speeds. I agree, and it was quite obvious from the beginning. The problem was how you define "victory": in this case, the JSA's victory conditions were to hold out long enough, and YJ's were to quell the rebellion and lose as little resources as possible. In the end, JSA won and YJ lost political standing, face, and combat troops. And I doubt the Kuge won't keep some copies or even the original of some highly placed YJ officers to get some intel for the future... specially if they send some ninjas here and there. Speaking of which, the ninjas are a great way to keep an eye on YJ... And as any group in power whose motivations are increase in power and money for themselves, the bill will be payed by the japanese citizens, not from the Kuge's accounts. More or less... For what I understood, there are several lobbies that group several corporations. Each lobby is a political party. So the Kuge could have talked with the government... or some corps from another lobby that tried to force the ruling government's hand and make them look bad. Certainly, if O-12 rules that PanO has to pay reparations to YJ because of the Iron Wall's actions in certain places, the ruling PanO government will lose face inside the nation. Internal politics, at the end, in which some politician's agenda involves some loses for the country so they have more chances at winning the next elections... Not needed, I think... they just "retire" the current emperor and seat the next one (who belongs to the other dynasty). All of YJ's emperors since the Cube's invention and the nation becoming a State-Empire are there enjoying an endless "retirement" and acting as counselors (I'd bet), no need to force an accident. But yeah, the ISS needs housecleaning. Welcome to a discussion you haven't bothered to check beforehand. The shocking is not YJ acting with force, or even the end result of JSA becoming independent, that's a bitter pill but not really all that world-ending (with the caveat that if you had enough JSA models for Vanilla but not for JSA, you are quite... encouraged... to buy more models...). The shocking part is how YJ is portrayed as a foolish villain you could see in cartoons for 5 years old children. Each faction has players. Each player is a customer. Unfair treatment of a faction means unfair treatment of a client... and unless that same client will change his money expenditure to another faction of your game, you have lost revenue. Conventional business courses are clear: it is cheaper to keep a customer than it is to get new customers. Get bad publicity as a company who regularly kicks its factions, players start thinking "mine will be next someday", and start dropping. Unless they are so invested somehow that they start buying the "army of the month" in a GW-esque rotation of "pay per win", in which case, good riddance. GW came back from that hole, guess why (hint: money). By pure stadistics, there will be players in all categories always, so "all too often" should be "you are always rubbing poop in the face of some customers when you rub fluff on the face of players".
Very much quoted for truth! And just to put this into a relateable frame, *I* went from somewhere between Loves and Likes the Fluff to bordering on Hating the Fluff. At least based on everything that's been leaked. How do you think The Party forces the nominally-independent Head of the Judiciary to step down? It's already established in fluff that if the Emperor ignores his duties, he *will* be replaced by someone who won't ignore them (N2 book, pg34**). The Emperor is replaced by having him suffer a fatal accident, because an Emperor has never been stripped of his titles. To strip a sitting Emperor of his titles would give lie to the story that the Emperor is not controlled by the party. Also, killing an Emperor that is being problematic means that his Dynasty will be out of power for another 30+ years, which encourages the Dynasties to keep their Emperor on-task. ** I'm going to quote that whole paragraph, it's not that long: Besides, when you can resurrect someone, killing their sleeve basically falls into the same level of crime as misdemeanor assault&battery. Though I'm sure that the Party had to get really creative to get someone dangerous past the Hsien guards.
@Section9 what if they evolve the story to unprecedented uproar within the Judiciary where it is the Agent organization itself that handles a purge of the current Emperor? Who got past the Hsien? Why the Hsien did it themselves! While the current focus on Yu Jing risks having too great mono-faction focus, I think there is sufficient room for having a minor upheaval with minimal effect of rules. Example, if the new emperor (or head of Judiciary if the Emperor dynasties are scrapped entirely) shuts down the Kuang Shi as punishment opting for a more civil approach to dissenters - Kuang Shi could still be kept as having relocated to Black Site handling where the individuals are no longer political prisoners but part of a counter-sepsitorization programme. As a minor note at this point, I'd like to see significantly more glue guns among ISS for "live captures"
@Mahtamori While the effects of the Sepsitor can't be reversed, it'd be interesting if Yu Jing could create Kuang Shi out of Sepsitor victims. It'd be a good example of them making the best of a shitty situation.
Well, I already mentioned it before, but... The truly terrifying part about the Sepsitor is not that it "turns your priorities into adoring the EI", that can be done with regular brainwashing and conditioning. The terrifying part is that the Sepsitor does it in an instant, on the battlefield, and it achieves that by -somehow- turning the Cube from "write only" into "read/write". So, undoing Sepsitor's effects could be theoretically possible, but very likely unpractical, and "kuangshification" of sepsitorized victims could be a solution. The other, of course, being the "overwriting" of the body's mind with a "safe" casualty you have waiting for a Lhost. Sure, it might mean to suffer some gender bendering... at least until you die again and the Lhost arrives finally XD
That's certainly the most likely option, though you'd have to work really hard to corrupt a Hsien enough to betray the person they have sworn to follow. Stun pistols, too. "Don't taze me, bro!"
Not really, you just move their loyalty from the person to the institution. Or have them go full praetorian guard.
Yeah, I'd say it's actually more likely to be a Hsien, or IS-sent Ninja. They're not morally bankrupt (well, I guess they are now!) and they'd be interested in maintaining a stable leadership considering that that is their entire raison d'etre; their purpose is to maintain stability and law, an Emperor not doing so is promoting disorder. Hence, in-house cleaning.
Alternatively the Emperor may be clearing house and the Hsiens visiting some low ranks, depends on the situation and eventual events. The fluff says one agent was arrested out of 65 investigated cases so ISS does not sweep everything under the rug, they may excuse many things given the situation, but not everything.
hahaha, authoritarian regimes are aimed to revolt? no surprise? More likely revolts are encouraged in any regime by those who want to get personal gain and get rich but the government gets in their way. They trend to cause crisis or exploit them parising "great words" to cause social movements (almost always supported by outsider interested parties). And that's exactly the case in JSA. In this fictional galaxy, Yujing was providing to all it's citizens as equals. Then the kuge began terrorism to claim for yujing cruelties (mainly nobles lost their privileges and some cultural cannibalization), so Yujing punished japanese for hiding this terrorists (the second class treatment, no cube, surveillance, limited access to heavy weapons... such a great policy made by YJ), then the terrorism continues... and after some years the uprising comes with the aid of foreign nations supporting terrorists. Japaneses after the uprising have gotten a political regression and a voracious industrialization, probably based on work exploitation, to pay for the Japanese debts. Such an improvement! Such freedom! Also the praised bushido code makes as good brainwashing as kuangshification... a lot of good words and morals, but forget all of them, the priority is to serve your medieval lord, the hand who provides. This is what I was talking about. After this uprising fiasco and the "stupid" ISS intervention... it's time for the emperor to step down (Either by its own or by "accident". It's choice) The ovbious course of action during this revolt should have been cutting down the head of the snake. All the kuges and Japanese emperor relatives (preferable after a public trial). Then forcing the rest of the nobility to fall in line or follow their leaders (it's what bushido demands... a lot of sepukku) The main problem was the fact that ISS and Yanjing were incompetent on their jobs probably beacuse the betrayal of ninjas. A pretty great Idea, to give such important role to a treacherous party (this was well known before the uprising based on JSA avaliabilities). So again, more Yujing incompetence.
I think we can assume that, while some were captured and tried, the really culprit ones escaped beforehand... After all, it's like the Kempeitai and surviving JSA officers: if you are loyal to YJ and not JSA, why are you still alive, if the Kempeitai are killing any YJ loyalist?
"Because shooting first and asking questions later plays directly into the Insurgent's playbook, which was written by Mao Tse Tung (essentially, the founder of Yu Jing)." Oh, so because Mao was Chinese, Yu Jing's leadership must understand how insurgency works and how to counter them? Sorry, that doesn't even follow in real life. Though Yu Jing high command will probably have a shake up after the JSA debacle. "Your argument won't work, because, fundamentally, as a PanO fan, @Death will be happiest with the morally bankrupt portrayal of Yu Jing." Hmm, I don't see Yu Jing as morally bankrupt. Machiavellian sure but not without morals. This is a faction that forces prisoners into battle with a bomb in them. They are never going to be saints. I guess its just hard for me to understand the view that Pano is pure evil and Yu Jing the honorable underdog. That does the opposite, making Pano a cartoon villain and Yu Jing a cartoon hero.
And? It doesn't follow that Yu Jing follows his lessons. People make mistakes even if they should know better. @Mc-Clane I agree. The Kuge are the real cause of the JSA split and are not good guys. That also means Yu Jing aren't being portrayed as cartoon villains. The JSA split is more complicated then what you'd see in a childrens cartoon.
Yeah, China has also just out right killed plenty of civilians as well. And theres a big difference between crushing resistance within China and crushing a rebellion that stretches across planets while theres an alien invasion that has everyones concern. Also, theres a big difference between repressing minorities that have long been within china and the Japanese people who have a strong national sense in the infinity fluff.
