September>December 2024: Nuclear winter has struck, leaving room for the N5

If it would be this way, then they are triple-traitors! Ehey!
If they would do it this way, then I hope, they would betray EI as well for combo.

Yes. Absolutely usual CA elements. I thought that it is a Bit. She has same peaces. (where is she now, I wonder...)

 

You know fictional universes still follow internal logic, right? That's why there is no magic or cavemen

Everything you just wrote is exactly handwaving, basically "a wizard did it"

 

Again, could be some tech requiring very little to no maintenance, super intuitive to use. That's it.

You are also playing Infinity so you are also fine with fictional universes in which the rule of cool is enough to make a technology work. Please, explain to me how Mnemonica (which is the equivalent of an instantaneous wireless transfer of petabytes of data) respects the laws of physics? What about impersonation? How about rifle-sized weapons shooting balls of plasma hundreds of meters away? Monofilament weapons? How about Nanocreen? Should I continue?

@Benkei you're a bit late to the party, I already answered all of that. Read the rest of the thread.

 

I still think you guys are talking past each other a bit so I'm gonna take another swing at this.

Different people have their Suspension of Disbelief broken by different things. One my uncles who was special forces absolutely could not stand watching most spy flicks, because his Suspension was broken anytime anyone got into hand-to-hand combat. Some people can't stand it when a story set in space has sound, or things like the falling Ice in GI Joe, or claims about us only using 10% of our brain, etc.

The biggest key, however, to keeping Suspension running in the mind of most of your audience is to be internally consistent. You can have Magic and wonky physics as long as you keep the rules you set. If Magic is only usable through chanting and runes, don't have a fight scene where suddenly mages are throwing spells around with just hand gestures. If you have a Monofilament weapon or Lightsaber that cuts through anything, don't have it suddenly bounce off of the hero. If you have warp drives that make travel fast, but not instantaneous, don't show characters going to several planets back-to-back like it's all happening in the same day.

You can bend and break the laws of physics as long as you introduce and maintain a new logic system. You can even break that system as long as you effectively implement a new one that is consistent with the evidence from the old one. But if you do it too much or too often, or without adequate explanation, that's when the majority of people have their Suspension break.

JSA having Alien Tech isn't on its own enough to break Suspension, but it is a major change from the established logic system, and that will require a good explanation to avoid a break. Maybe not for you personally; again, everyone has different tolerances, but for the majority of people.

Most people are in the "wait and see" category, waiting to see what CB posits as the explanation. But "they can do what they want because it's a fictional setting" is not an adequate explanation for most people to maintain their Suspension.

 

As far as I remember, by fluff the Boyg does feature a little reverse-engineered VoodooTech in its control systems alongside stolen Yu Jing construction techniques, but that and Hector's gun are indeed the only Human-manufactured alien technology seen in the setting- and both are limited-production prototypes (and of arguable effectiveness in the case of the Boyg).

 

But that's beyond the point. The point is - monofilament weapons have been part of Infinity tech level since N1, and were - since N1 - available to certain units in Human Sphere. Few of them, true, but they were there.
This implies that Human Sphere has been able to manufacture and service monoblades, and do it at a certain scale. The tech train was there - and likely is still there. They were developed, they are understud, thay can be sustained by Human Sphere armies.

Mnemonica, Plasma weapons (with the exception of a couple experimental ones, issued to certain chracters - personally I recall only Hector, but obviously I don't know all the Human Sphere profiles by heart - something we already talked about in this topic) and Nanoscreen are, as of the end of N4 all technologies used by the aliens.
So it is they who have the know-how and logistics train to manufacture and sustain them.
I don't see the logical problem with that - but please do point it out to me.

Impersonation - it was shown (N1/N2 rulebook artwork) as including an elemnt of holographic projection. Then, there's the quantronic aspect of it (used by Killer Hackers in the Cybermask program) that seemingly supersedes user's IFF so enemy systems idenitfy the user as a friendly.
Again, Impersonation has been a thing since N1, and used only by the Hassassin Fidays back then (as far as Human Sphere tech goes). So once more, it was around for quite a while, meaning the konw-how, tech train, training, the works, have been available.


Mnemonica, BTW: almost all Infinity-era computing is based on quantronics, quantum computers. Now, I admit, I have really hard time wrapping my head around quantum physics, and I'm by no means expert on the subject. There are such things as quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation (actually achieved in a laboratory back in 1997), however.

 

Boyg also have some illegal cube modifications to make user feel armor better.
I like this unit. May be it is not top tier... But looks good. And it have a good story.

 

Humans already do have nanotechnology. Nanopulsars is one such. But also in medikits. It's not a huge stretch that humans have taken up a few levels in 5 years.

 

Well, if you really want to die on that hill...

JSA finding some alien tech and using it is magic that breaks thermodynamics but Mnemonica wirelessly transferring petabytes of data instantaneously is very plausible quantum physics, sure, sure...

 

But you didn't, all you keep repeating boils down to "it's magic". In fact, Errhile keeps pumping amazingly well argumented and reasoned posts and your only counter is "lol, but it's made up"

 

I might regret jumping into this discussion, but I feel it's worth pointing out that the Japanese corporations were by and large Yu-Jings premier R&D/testing facilitie, with what came out of those facilities making their way to others to manufacturer the results. Yes they lost research, facilities, and personnel during the Uprising but not the point they're at an Ariadnan technical level. So it's conceivable that those industries would be sufficiently rebuilt in the intervening years to start retro-engineering alien tech to have sufficient enough understanding to produce a small amount of tech for elite units.

 

Read again, slowly. And stop being so obviously of bad faith. That's not what I said and you missed the point.

 

It would also be worth noting that the setting already depends on two different types of unobtanium (teseum and nessium) to function at all…

 

The Bøyg uses a combo of VoodooTech and illegal Cube modifications to achieve the stellar mobility. The failure is not having the same level of miniaturization that yujingyu armies have.

 

Shhhhhhh, stop making sense like this...

 

So, few notes on the lore and the real world:

Humanity has successfully reverse engineered alien tech before. This is how we got plasma. In fact the EI is very paranoid about loosing tech to its enemies, to the point it personally downgrades its own forces. This is also the reason the previous Exrah got obliterated - they sold weaponry to the humans.

There are, however, serious precedents, when it comes to tech, being used without any serious understanding from the operators. The digesters have been known to share information on a... well they know what kind of basis, but centuries after encountering them and basing their major drive as a civilization on them, the Tohaa still have zero idea how many aspects of the digesters work. The RPG supplements, precious source of niche lore, also inform us about several pieces of military technology, that the CA soldiers employ without knowing the basic facts behind their method of operation. Apparently, in the Infinity universe, for a sufficiently advanced Intelligence (a digester, the EI etc) it is possible to produce sufficiently idiot-friendly technology. Occasionally. Heck there are the so called veve pods, which manufacture a stable influx of the objects they are capable of producing seemingly out of nowhere. Does this run afoul of basic Physics axioms? Probably. However...

Quantum Mechanics (and QFT too) in the Human Sphere works nothing like in the real world. No-go theorems are all dead and buried. The lore reason for that is the existence of exotic materials such as Teseum and some others, which have entirely different shape and structure of their orbitals, fractal. Now, this is pure magic. Orbital shapes can be derived from the wave function (and thus - from spherical harmonics), which are as far from fractals, as one can even imagine. But okay, I'm not the Sorel sisters, I'm not studying the rings of Saturn and I'll leave my beloved spherical harmonics to weep in the corner, next to my moderator sniper. Both are equally relevant to Infinity.

TLDR: None of what you know about quantum mechanics applies in the setting of Infinity and this can have all kinds of weird implications about what is physically possible,

 

If the her regular mini looks good like this artwork I would be not amused if can not use her in Aleph anymore

Jotum still has DEP ...

Maybe CA/Shas has strict outfit regulations or its just the leading fashion there.

I missed that in the fluff of the Boyg. But to achiev what? Dodge +3? He is not even 6-2 and loaded with skills like the silverprimestar. And what kind of voodotech YJ was using for Bixie (Dodge+6)?

 

Also really disappointing rules for the premise- I don't think I've seen wider PanO (as in, not the MO purists) as hyped for anything for a good while, but the unit was ultimately a bit boring and weak.

The big thing about sci-fi is to make it internally consistent. If you're breaking a big Physical Law, break it in the same way every time or make a big deal out of someone breaking it a different way and most people won't mind. Except specialists in their field of expertise, but pretty much everyone's basically a wizard in one or two fields these days.

Well, N5 is coming. It surely isn't much of an ask to have a sniper profile back if JSA are getting a whole unit restored. And it's probably more likely to happen than Gutier learning and implementing your baffling ball witchcraft.

 

So far, Infinity is decently internally consistent, when it comes to physics, at least from my point of view. My only complain is that the Human Sphere does not have antigravity, yet stuff constantly flies and launches without obliterating anything underneath it.

As for the moderator sniper, he still exists, but with BS10, he is completely irrelevant. Much like my "baffling ball witchcraft", although the pneumarch and his ball give me hopes that optimal energy configurations on a sphere still have some significance.

 

The Mother-Forge of a Sophotect is another example.

About plasma weapon used by human troops, I'm sure the Lynx with plasma carbine is hidden somewhere in this thread, mumbling "Am I a joke to you?"

Lorewise, Nomads Black Labs are very well suited for alien equipement retro engineering, and they can work for anybody willing to pay for it.