Technical next steps

RunsInShadows wrote:
God Bless you my friend for posting that link. I've been a nut for steam engines and steam trains since I was a little kid. Gave me a new show to look for episodes of as well as introducing me to a marvelous part of history! Well done, sir, well done. Brings me back to the annual Steam show that the Carroll County Farm Museum would do. All manor of steam tractors and vehicles, and of course a steam calliope! Don't recall ever seeing a steam lorrie though. Marvelous find!

And yes, by all means, Safehold needs Steam Lorries!

Larry

I couldn't agree more! Mundane use, and armored battle wagon. Much like the KH was based off of a mundane platform.

I foresee many hours of my time watching that show.
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Given the British army used armored steam tractors in the Boer War in the 1890's rolling out a copy of a Fowler B5 would be an obvious next step.
Or a steam tank...
http://i.imgur.com/YN97rZG.jpg

anwi wrote:SNIP
Regarding airships: SNIP
But their tactical advantage will be rather limited for the ICA, because the major field commanders have direct or indirect access to SNARC Information. SNIP

My bolding.
Only BGV has direct access to OWL's information! Everyone else has to be contacted by either through Merlin, or Nimue now, dropping out of sight and delivering a message through some manufactured local character. I don't know if I'd agree this can be considered "tactical", especially when our character has to smooth talk his, or her, way through multiple levels of security to get access to our commander's ear. A change in the enemy's plans, or a deliberate move as was done with the NOG navy, can get a lot of people killed because our commanders can't be contacted quickly.

The problem's much worse for the Navy. We can't have some local character wandering into a fleet a thousand miles offshore. RFC's said we can expect some setbacks along the way and I've always expected some of these would come about because of this lack of timely information.

If Magwair likes Lyonheart's idea of sending a MHOG army down the Bedard/Sabana and marching them along the coast with supplies moving along by boat, it's highly possible the good guys might not have any of this happening until the 300,000 show up on the outskirts of Dairnyth. That would definitely ruin DE/EH/HM's day.

Randomiser wrote:Larry, the basic understanding on Safehold is that God, through the Archangels, is beneficent, faithful and fair. To that end the Prohibitions clearly lay down how God's Children are to live and anyone who breaks them will get in trouble, up to and including getting smitten by the Rakurai. However the converse of that is also true, God will not punish people for doing things which are not Prohibited, because that would be capricious and unfair and undermine the understanding of God's character on which the whole society is based. The heros in the Vicarate may not play by those rules, exactly, but the Archangels did, because they understood the cost if they didn't.

There is a general suspicion of innovation, but it is not actually prohibited as such. Burning coal for heating and for various industrial processes, think all kinds of metal production and working, is clearly allowed. Burning coal gas is very little different. Playing Chemistry with the coal is quite different and may be covered by a proscription on the limited uses of acids etc. Or maybe not, since proscriptions that are too detailed lead to interesting lines of enquiry if one is so minded.

RFC in posts has indicated that various people in Safehold's history have started to play with electricity and have been hammered by the Inquisition for it.

The use of the Rakurai for smiting the ungodly is tricky.

If it was meant to be the Proscriptions ultimate enforcer, it's got to be set up so that the only things it smites for are things that are not possibly the result of anything but Proscription violations, as generous as the Church may have let them get.

If it's stricter than that and dumb, the Archangels would have invited a capricious God smiting people for what the Church ended up allowing.

If it's stricter than that and smart, it'd've blown away Tellesburg already.

Gas lighting is apparently okay. You can't prohibit using a lot of gas without prohibiting even a little, else God's capricious again.

Steam power too is apparently okay, because it's in use and no boom today.

This line of reasoning may break down if the Rakurai command system is (1) strict and smart but near-sighted, so it would blow away these violations if it detected them but hasn't yet, or (2) is a leftover from the War of the Fallen, isn't meant to blow away anything short of Terran Federation level tech, and shoots anything short of that down only as a kind of erring on the side of "caution".

(1) - "Blind Rakurai" - seems mighty unlikely, given how well it still sees through Federation stealth systems. Surely it'd notice Delthak. (The ship or the location.)

(2) - "Leftover Rakurai" - seems a real possibility. It doesn't leave the Rakurai to make any judgment calls that the Church can be trusted to make (or that Bedard's social engineering can be supposed to have pre-empted forever), and it's consistent with all the times it has not gone off so far and the times it has (specifically, under specific control against the Southern Enclave). The use of the Rakurai as a threat is fully consistent with this, when Safehold doesn't know what may set it off. In effect, Chihiro was bluffing that way - you could violate the Proscriptions for a long while before setting it off - but bluff's are fine when the other players cannot see any possible tell, calling your bluff may mean the wrath of God, and not calling it may leave you, eh, with somewhat riskier lighting.

JeffEngel wrote:The use of the Rakurai for smiting the ungodly is tricky.

...

You missed one variant -- "The Gardener Rakurai"

A gardener doesn't prune plants every time a leaf or branch grows too long or out of place. They let things grow and then prune back to the size/shape they've determined is correct.

The Rakuri may be well aware of Gaslights, Steamships, Steel production, et al, but be waiting for some trigger level of technology before acting. Maybe when the Rakuri detects ICE emissions signatures, or electric motors, a telegraph/phone network or whatever, the Rakuri will bomb the offending area "back to the stone age" and obliterate everything that even approaches a violation of the Proscriptions.

PS:

It might also be that there is a warning light flashing in some deserted part of the Temple basement that is the OBS' equivalent of a third grader bouncing up and down with hand raised, shouting "Pick me! Pick me! Let Me do it!"

Weird Harold wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:The use of the Rakurai for smiting the ungodly is tricky.

...

You missed one variant -- "The Gardener Rakurai"

A gardener doesn't prune plants every time a leaf or branch grows too long or out of place. They let things grow and then prune back to the size/shape they've determined is correct.

The Rakuri may be well aware of Gaslights, Steamships, Steel production, et al, but be waiting for some trigger level of technology before acting. Maybe when the Rakuri detects ICE emissions signatures, or electric motors, a telegraph/phone network or whatever, the Rakuri will bomb the offending area "back to the stone age" and obliterate everything that even approaches a violation of the Proscriptions.

PS:

It might also be that there is a warning light flashing in some deserted part of the Temple basement that is the OBS' equivalent of a third grader bouncing up and down with hand raised, shouting "Pick me! Pick me! Let Me do it!"

After both gun powder and steam got ignored, I find myself wondering if the rakurai is fully functional. There is something missing, like a command that is not being received.

Or perhaps after so much time a computer broke down... something. It will be interesting to see how this is resolved in the story line.

Don

Weird Harold wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:The use of the Rakurai for smiting the ungodly is tricky.

...

You missed one variant -- "The Gardener Rakurai"

A gardener doesn't prune plants every time a leaf or branch grows too long or out of place. They let things grow and then prune back to the size/shape they've determined is correct.

The Rakuri may be well aware of Gaslights, Steamships, Steel production, et al, but be waiting for some trigger level of technology before acting. Maybe when the Rakuri detects ICE emissions signatures, or electric motors, a telegraph/phone network or whatever, the Rakuri will bomb the offending area "back to the stone age" and obliterate everything that even approaches a violation of the Proscriptions.

I think you get the capricious God charge that way though, and it's too tolerant for too long to be effective as a leftover War of the Fallen system.

Safehold's theology may have made out some justification for that if it'd eased off on supposing God is a decent bloke, or the one exactly running the Rakurai. If, say, they had a kind of junior partner for God who was the bad cop, who may toy with you a bit before smiting, the Gardener Rakurai would avoid causing theological problems. But it doesn't sound like they've made that sort of revision since the War.

PS:

It might also be that there is a warning light flashing in some deserted part of the Temple basement that is the OBS' equivalent of a third grader bouncing up and down with hand raised, shouting "Pick me! Pick me! Let Me do it!"

Oh dear!

I can see that as a variant on Leftover Rakurai - a system with warnings and manual control capabilities inside the Temple, otherwise running on fairly conservative, practically lenient automatic protocols. For that matter, they may have left Gardener Rakurai behavior as one of those default protocols if Safehold keeps being slightly naughty over a long period and no one in the Temple is answering the blinky light for more specific instructions. The idea there would be just to blast it and let Safehold adjust theology as needed in that case.

The question is, is the Rakurai OBS autonomously self-replacing and maintaining, or is it a finite quantity of use weapon? That has a large bearing on how the system would be programmed by the 'Archangels.'

If it is a finite quantity of use weapon, however large that quantity may be, then the designers might be more likely to employ the Gardener strategy.........

lmwatbullrun wrote:The question is, is the Rakurai OBS autonomously self-replacing and maintaining,...

IIRC, RFC has said that the OBS is capable of reloading and repairing itself.

Merlin's SNARC was blasted by the OBS when it got too close, so it is still capable of self-defense, at minimum.

Weird Harold wrote:

lmwatbullrun wrote:The question is, is the Rakurai OBS autonomously self-replacing and maintaining,...

IIRC, RFC has said that the OBS is capable of reloading and repairing itself.

Merlin's SNARC was blasted by the OBS when it got too close, so it is still capable of self-defense, at minimum.

I wonder to what extent it can reload. It has to get the mass from something. If you can force the Rakurai to expend enough munitions at fake targets, maybe you could deplete that mass. I wouldn't be opposed to setting some electrical devices, activated by mechanical timer, on Armageddon reef to try to make it fire.

I suspect that it wouldn't alert the "angels" given that they weren't alerted by Merlin's Snarc gettin blasted. That is unless it automatically blasts anything greater than a pebble that comes within range, meaning that it wasn't the detection of electronics that set it off. I would think that unlikely though because constantly shooting stuff out of space would give off quite a few emissions which is what they were trying to avoid in the first place.

For that matter, even fusion power plants need fuel, and they gotta get that from somewhere. On planet that might be simple enough, but in space that is a real problem unless they are running off of solar.

n7axw wrote:After both gun powder and steam got ignored, I find myself wondering if the rakurai is fully functional. There is something missing, like a command that is not being received.

Or perhaps after so much time a computer broke down... something. It will be interesting to see how this is resolved in the story line.

Don

The other option could be a filter set deliberately coarse.
You don't want a rakurai shot hitting a volcano or a coal seam fire, for example, as that would raise questions you don't want asked. A full power blast furnace is not dissimilar to the markers for a volcanic vent, except a little smaller. A coal fired steam power plant looks similar to a geothermal power plant (or a smaller version of Yellowstone). A dumb AI would be more likely than a smart one as it would be less likely to eventually ask, why shoot.
An electrical power plant or a primitive radio installation would send signals totally different from natural events however and are certainly more likely to trigger a response (even if the response is to wake a brighter AI).