Tech and Transhumanism

Technology Sketches

These are some preliminary ideas for technology. --MJ12 Commando 12:31, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Technical Paths

Technical advancement in Sphere can be roughly divided into several general categories, each with a corresponding level. Higher levels of technical advancement may make viable certain technologies and systems that were impractical for field use at lower levels, or refine early developments.

A nation starts with 0 in all technology fields, which are improved by technology bought via SP or from its origin paths. Each technology + gives two free advancements in any technology field, while each technology malus gives a penalty in a field. Certain nations may gain bonuses to specific technologies from their history paths-in which case the technology advancements may only be applied in a field.

"Paradigm" fields cost five times the normal amount to advance at start. However, if a nation gains a specific bonus to a paradigm field, the cost multiplier is waived.

Evolutionary Advancement

As a nation improves its understanding of a certain field, it can make tweaks to its designs and their usage to improve their effectiveness. This may come in the form of improved effectiveness, reduced size, or decreased cost. Every technology advance adds three Advancement Points (AP) to spend in the category, which can be spent to:

• Increase damage (for weapons) by 10%.
• Improve power (for weaponsy) by +1 (costs twice normal AP)
• Increase range by 10%.
• Increase accuracy for weapons by +1 (costs twice normal AP)
• Increase resistance by 10% (armor/shields).
• Increase component space and hull growth factor by 10% (costs twice normal AP).
• Reduce the size of a component by 5%
• Reduce its PIP and CIP cost by 5% (costs twice normal AP)
• Reduce its Dust cost by 5% (costs triple normal AP)

Any improvement rounds down-sometimes the improvement is more theoretical than actual, as various factors in reality conspire to negate most of the improvement gained from optimization.

However, as advancement in a specific area increases, it becomes harder and harder to improve a component in that area. To improve components in a specific area, it costs (1 + total AP spent in area) points to increase. If a ZOCU power wishes to reduce the size of its megaparticle cannons by 15% (3 advancements), it costs 1 AP for the first level, 2 AP for the second level, and 3 AP for the third level, for a total of 6 AP.

To Do: Simplify the hell out of how evolutionary advancements work.

Revolutionary Advancement

At certain levels, new designs and systems can be practically deployed in useful amounts, instead of being, essentially, limited-production prototypes or insufficiently compact, robust, and reliable for military or possibly even civilian deployment.

Technological Exchange

It is possible but difficult to exchange technological advancements-a majority of the effort spent is in applying knowledge and experimental results into constructing prototypes, retooling industry, and ensuring improvements in

Fields of Advancement

These include some potential/example unlockable systems and short descriptions.

Offensive

Guided Munitions: Advances in this field increase the effectiveness of missiles and artillery.

Micromissiles (requires L1 Guided Munitions): Miniature missile systems, micromissiles are short-ranged, low-power, and fairly stupid but make excellent point defense systems and can easily replace infantry grenade launchers.

Capacitor Warheads (requires L3 Guided Munitions): Advances in capacitor storage and electrically powered drives have made it possible to make a missile which uses a modified electron matrix as a warhead. Such missiles have somewhat reduced hitting power at range, but improved armor penetration capability and damage at short ranges, where the capacitor is still nearly full and converts energy which would be going into propulsion into

Weaponized Lasers: Advances in this field improve laser weapons technology.

Man-Portable Laser Weapons (requires L2 Lasers): Although man-portable laser weapons have been possible for nearly two centuries, lasers capable of competing with other infantry small arms in firepower and reliability are a fairly recent invention. Man-portable laser weapons have comparable (if somewhat inferior) power to ballistic weapons and are far more expensive, but are significantly more accurate, have slightly better effective range, and are somewhat stealthier as a pulse-type laser produces no sound and near-zero visual signature except on the target.

Variable-Rate Pulse Lasers (requires L3 Lasers): VRPLs are highly advanced pulse laser systems which use adaptive lensing to modify both rate of fire and energy per-pulse. VRPLs have superior power and accuracy to standard laser systems but pay for it in increased bulk and shortened range.

Mega-Particle Weapons: ZOCU's signature weapons system, Megaparticle Weaponry are devastating energy weapons.
Mass Drivers: Advances in this field improve railguns, from infantry scale to battleship guns. Pulse Weapons: Advances in this field increase the effectiveness of particle beam weapons.

Defensive

Shields: Self explanatory.
Structural: Structural technologies improve the capabilities of armor.
ECM: Electronic Countermeasures are obvious but powerful devices which can ensure that enemy weaponsfire misses altogether.
Stealth: From RAM to cloaking devices, stealth is a measure to how well you can stay invisible.
Sensors: Advanced sensors provide a countermeasure to stealth technologies.

Propulsive

FTL Drives: The better this is, the faster your ships go on a strategic level.
Reaction Drives: From cold gas to VASIMR, reaction drives are the most common type of drive system.
Inertial Drives: Rarer and more expensive than reaction drives, inertial drives are powerful reactionless systems which require Delta Dust to function.

Engineering

Ground Vehicles: From motorcycles to tanks, this covers a whole suite of vehicles.

Landships (require L4 Ground Vehicles): Take a battleship. Install treads. Season with more guns to taste.

Aerospace: Advancements in aerospace technology allow the construction of more advanced fighters, bombers, and gunships.

Superfighters (require L4 Aerospace): Superfighters are inordinately expensive, incredibly powerful fighters which can often defeat entire flights of lesser fighters on their lonesome-which is just as well as they often cost as much as an entire flight of lesser fighters to build and maintain.

Mobile Armor (require L5 Aerospace or L5 Mecha): Scaling up high-impulse low-endurance drives to their natural limit, mobile armors are frigate-sized strike platforms which mount firepower superior to that of many cruisers.

Mecha: Humanoid fighting vehicles, from Gears and Battlemechs to the latest generation Orbital Frames.

Orbital Frames (require L4 Mecha): The Mecha equivalent of Superfighters, OFs have high availability of components and extreme survivability at an exorbitant price point.

Mobile Armor (require L5 Aerospace or L5 Mecha): Scaling up high-impulse low-endurance drives to their limit, mobile armors are frigate-sized strike platforms which mount firepower superior to that of many cruisers.

Medical: Medical technology covers categories from biowarfare defense, medicine, and human enhancement technologies, including supersoldier programs, cyberware, and bioengineering.
Shipbuilding: Shipbuilding technology is a measure of a power's knowledge of how to build effective vessels, from the smallest escort to the largest Titan.

Titans (require L10 Shipbuilding, L2 FTL Drives, L3 Structural, L2 Reaction or L2 Inertial Drives): Vessels that essentially only exist on the drawing board, Titans are the most impressive and most ridiculous mobile vessel ever proposed, with lengths in the kilometers and crew in the tens of thousands. Significant advancement in structural and propulsive technology is required simply to allow these vessels to transit into FTL and use their engines without breaking apart.

Augmentation

Some ideas for augmentation. --MJ12 Commando 16:17, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Faster, Stronger, Better

For every dot of +Transgene a power has a power gets 2 points to put into the following enhancement categories or special effects. Furthermore, by being transgenic at all, a power starts with 1 point to put into any enhancement category. Therefore a power with Transgene 1 has 3 points to spend, a power with Transgene 2 5 points, and so on.

Enhanced Endurance-A common military modification, enhanced endurance isn't sexy or impressive but is instrumental for sustained combat operations. This covers both strategic infantry speed as well as the ability of infantry, civilians, and crew to survive harsh conditions.

Enhanced Strength-Boosted musculature density allows the carrying of heavier loads, which although quaint and outdated in modern times can still be very useful for a soldier on a battlefield. Due to the improved density of muscle mass strength boosts also improve the capacity of the transgenic to sustain damage to some extent.

Enhanced Agility-Where endurance covers long-term movement speed, enhanced agility covers sprint speed. Although the image of the superhumanly agile transgene special forces ninja is common in media throughout the human sphere, this is generally secondary in combat-designed transhumans to enhanced endurance, perception, and reaction times.

Enhanced Reactions-Another common military modification, boosted reactions increases the ability of a transgene to react to rapidly changing events without being overwhelmed by data. As it is useful for a wide degree of applications, it is common in the vast majority of transgenic templates, regardless if the improvements made are mental or physical in nature.

Enhanced Perception-Modified senses are another common enhancement with military application. Better senses increase the ability of infantry as well as vehicle drivers to acquire targets. At high levels entirely new senses might be added instead of sharpening extant senses.

Enhanced Intellect-No matter the means by which the mind is enhanced, the result is improved research and development, more effective schooling, and an economy that runs slightly more smoothly. Cognitive boosting technology may take the form of boosts to overall brain function and thought speed or the slightly safer but more limited method of inducing omnisavant capability in subjects.

Enhanced Socialization-Although the human mind is not perfectly understood, it's still understood what makes people convincing and what makes them not. Modifications to instincts, body language, and the ability to keep a poker face can improve the negotiation ability of a transgenic, whether it's negotiating treaties or trying to get into the pants of that attractive twentysomething across the room.

Ubiquity-Each point in ubiquity doubles the percentage of the population which has augmentation, from a base of 25%. Therefore a nation with Ubiquity 1 has 50% distribution of transgenic enhancement and a nation with Ubiquity 2 has 100%.

Special Effects

Certain modifications have effects not easily represented by simply boosting a rough category. These are those enhancements.

Caste System (5 pts)-your population has almost speciated-your people have developed into highly differentiated lines, to the point where they may not even be able to breed together. The most obvious example of such a system is Haraway, but there are others. A nation with this effect gains as many separate castes as they want, up to a limit of their total +Transgene score, which can have the remainder of their points distributed any way they wish.

Enhanced Appearance (1-3 pts)-Looking good is one of the most common fields of human enhancement and virtually all modern transgenic templates (the exception proving the rule being Homo Sapiens Adharae) possess some degree of appearance enhancement. This may tie in with trade and mass media rules if and when I get those working. At 1 point everyone looks significantly better than baseline average, while at 2 points everyone could go on and professionally model in their spare time. At 3 points... you're probably a horrible fanservice power.

Clean (1 pt)-your population is extremely resistant to radiological, biological, and chemical weaponry in general. The improved resistance to toxin and disease is fairly common across the Sphere.

Trauma Management (2 pts)-the transgenic is extremely resistant to trauma, via methods such as dermal armoring, redundant blood vessels, or multiple redundant organs. Transgenes with this gain a significant toughness bonus.

Upgrade Friendly (2 pts)-the transgenic is designed with the ability to accept further modification easily and without issue. This modification reduces the cost of producing supersoldiers from the population's stock by a significant amount.

[Hostile Environment] Adapted (4 pts)-the transgenic is specifically adapted to a hostile (or at least unusual) environment in which it thrives extremely well. Buying this is the same as having taken Radical Morphological Change. Examples include space, deserts, arctic environments, volcanic worlds, oceans...

Radical Morphological Change

Certain subspecies of the human race have been created by engineering, adapted to extraordinarily hostile environments. Augments with radical morphological change are assumed to be fully adapted to the environment in question (from primordial Earth to icy hells to zero-G living) and overall more robust against environmental conditions. Functionally having a Radical Morphological Change gives the transgenics in question a relevant Hostile Environment adaptation.

Jumping the Gun

As the Brazilian debacle showed, human enhancement technology is not without its pitfalls. Certain templates are flawed, owing to trying to make them do too much at too low of a cost, or with insufficient understanding.

Certain transgene templates may have flaws due, like the Brazilian enhancement retroviruses and the result of mental disorders. However, those looking to get supermen on the cheap must beware-purposely sacrificing performance and stability for improved capability has rapidly diminishing returns. A transgene template may take any number of flaws-but gains less and less points from each subsequent one.

The first additional point costs 2 points of flaws, and each subsequent additional point increases this cost by one-so a template with two additional points must have 5 points of flaws, while a template with 3 must have 9.

Example Flaws

Mental disorders (2, or 6 pts)-At the 2 point level a small percentage of your population manifests severe mental disorders or a significant percentage of the population suffer from (relatively) minor mental problems such as sociopathy, a phobia of an uncommon situation, high-functioning autism, and the like. At the 6 point level a significant percentage of your population suffers from problems such as antisocial personality disorder, psychosis, bipolar syndrome, severe depression, and the like, or *all* the population suffers from (relatively) minor mental problems.

Highly obvious (1 pt)-Transgenes with this modification are extremely easy to spot, whether it's because they have fur or because they're built with kevlar for skin and armored glass spheres for eyes.

Reduced capability (1+ pts)-some transgenic templates have greatly reduced capability compared to the human norm in a physical or mental category. Examples of such are genejacks, which have atrophied intellectual skills as they are unnecessary for blue-collar labor. Such damage may turn up by accident, but the immoral or unscrupulous may purposely induce it (violating many, many medical and human rights laws in the process) for their own purposes. A transgene with this flaw has a score of -1 in at least one enhancement category. No matter how many times this is taken, capability cannot be reduced beyond -1 in any category. Reduced ubiquity reduces your transgene population to a small minority, 10% or less of the population.

High Maintenance (2 pts)-Transgenes with this modification are extremely expensive to keep in circulation. Oftentimes this is a side effect of implementing accelerated healing and biological immortality, as the transgenics in question find themselves cancer-prone and unstable, as well as a potential consequence of boosting strength and agility. This reduces the per-capita wealth your population produces by a undecided but significant amount due to the increase in medical bills and need for constant medical care.

Infertile (1 pt)-The transgenics in question have very low natural population growth for whatever reason-perhaps most fetuses miscarry or everyone is a woman or the template is extremely complex and implements a significant amount of drytech that must be assembled in utero, increasing the cost of increasing population as children are comparatively rarer.

Quirky Miniboss Squads

Cost-effective augmentation of ability is fairly limited in what it can wreak, but there are extremely expensive and extremely powerful improvements that can be done to the human condition, via cutting-edge gene therapies, heavy cybernetic replacement, and other types of craziness. Supersoldiers are immensely powerful engineered weapons of war, with similarly high price points.

Supersoldiers are not born-they are made. Even powers without transgenic populations can build supersoldiers, if they find it necessary. However, their high cost makes it hard to procure them in all but the most limited amounts. Supersoldiers generally cost either RP (bioengineering) or CIP (cybernetics) to produce, and are produced in small batches.

Example Transgenic Setup

Sphere 1.0 Adharan Template
Transgene 7, Radical Morphological Change (15 + 2 pts)
Enhancements: Endurance 5 Strength 1 Agility 1 Reactions 2 Perception 1 Intellect 2 Socialization -1 Ubiquity 2
Special Effects: Desert Adapted, Trauma Management, Clean (3 pts)
Flaws: Ubiquitious Mental Disorder (Minor Phobia of isolation), Reduced Capacity (Socialization), Highly Obvious, Infertile (5 flaw pts, +2 enhancement pts)

Sphere 2.0 Adharan
Transgene 7, Radical Morphological Change (15 + 1 pts)
Enhancements: Endurance 2 Strength 2 Agility 1 Reactions 2 Perception 1 Intellect 1 Socialization 0 Ubiquity 2
Special Effects: Hostile Environment Adapted (horrible primordial earth conditions), Trauma Management, Clean, Upgrade Friendly (5 pts)
Flaws: Infertile (highly complex), Highly Obvious (Plastic skin!) (2 flaw pts, +1 enhancement pt)

Minkowskan homo caelum
Transgene 1, Radical Morphological Change (3 pts)
Enhancements: Ubiquity 2
Special Effects: Hostile Environment Adapted (space), Clean
Flaws: -