SMAX Believer scenario: Von Neuman's World

[Darsnan]

Von Neuman's World


BACKDROP: In MY 2433 several factions discovered the wreckage of a Progenitor interstellar spaceship on the farside of Nessus. After much investigation it was determined that the ships star charts were intact, and that the hyperdrive engine could be cloned.
By MY 2452 the first fleet of scoutships had been built and sent out with a mandate to investigate all of the habitable planets catalogued in the ancient Progenitor ships star charts. The results were mixed: some scoutships returned with exciting news of “Eden-class” planets, while other scouts return with tales of planets which had degraded over the eons. Still other scouts failed to return at all.
This is the tale of one scoutship which never returned…..



The UN Scoutship Harmony had been mandated to reconnoiter a small string of planets on the farside of the Milky Way galaxy. While not a difficult task, it was a journey of significant length, with the timeframe involved being approximately 10 years relative to their starting timeframe.
The Harmony wormholed out of hyperdrive at their first location designated by the High Council. The star system had been previously unknown to Man and, so had no name. The Harmony’s sensors began to record the data of the system, taking in the local planets, asteroids, type of star, as well as visuals of the surrounding heavens (this at the insistence of the Morganite attachment to the mission, their reasoning being that people would be more willing to move to an alien planet if the night skies contained more ascetically pleasing views than where they currently lived). A habitable planet was located, the Harmony took up orbit, and probes were sent down to the planet to take samples and data.
After a week the crew of the Harmony had enough information to classify the planet as habitable, and duly logged it as such. The next solar system on their list was called up, the Progenitor-cloned hyperdrive activated, and they worm-holed on to their next destination where the process of cataloguing was repeated, the only difference being that the once habitable world in this solar system had degraded over the eons and was no longer considered suitable for colonization. The Harmony worm-holed again, and again waited a week while the automated instruments collected data on the surrounding environs.
It was during their sixth solar system that one of the technicians who had been assigned to examining the Progenitor star charts realized a mistake had been made in the original decoding of the Progenitor star charts: someone had accidentally moved the decimal point during the coordinate translation, meaning their ship would have ended up in the wrong solar system. The technician made the correction, fed the coordinates of the new solar system into the navigational computer, and went about her business, all without ever telling anyone she had deviated from the original flight course the Harmony had filed back in the Alpha Centauri solar system.
The starship wormholed out into the new solar system just as it had countless times before, and its sensors began taking data of the surrounding environs. A prospective habitable planet was located, and the Harmony began the process of entering into orbit. The ship only had minutes to live….


Sister Mary O’Connor sat at her computer terminal on the starship UNS Harmony, reviewing data from the automated sensors. She astutely ignored the nearby University scientists who were reviewing the data in parallel with her: they had a working relationship with her, but other than that each had their own agendas and tended not to intermingle.
The first sign of concern happened shortly after the Harmony had assumed orbit around the identified habitable planet in the solar system. Mary noticed several of the Peace Keeper Operations crew gathering around one of the maintenance terminals assigned to monitoring the health of the starship, with one supervisor providing direction. Mary heard the words “hull breach”, but in a tone which indicated it was a minor affair, that which had happened before and been remedied easily with a meteor patch. The maintenance supervisor who had been called over delegated the responsibility and went about his business. Several minutes passed before another Operations person called for attention, this time slightly more urgently. Another hull breach, again minor, and in a completely different location. Again the Operations Supervisor delegated the responsibility to another subordinate, however this time the supervisor stayed at the terminal. Mary noted from her station that the super began calling up other subsystems and reviewing their status. Most subsystems, once checked, he closed down again. However there were several screens he kept up, and as time went on the number of screens he kept up grew. More alarming to Mary was the growing look of panic on the subordinate's face.
Mary opened a new screen on her own terminal and started a quick diagnostic on the Harmony. To her horror no fewer than 20 subsystems were now showing faults, and the list was steadily growing even as she watched!
Thinking quickly, Mary was able to project that the ship would become irreversibly damaged within 20 minutes, with catastrophic failure to follow shortly thereafter. She made a quick call to the Believer Faction’s quarters and requiring a quick “prayer service” to occur on the C Deck, which happened to be conveniently located next to the Harmony’s escape pods. As Mary got up from her station she noticed the Uni technicians hurriedly moving towards the exit, followed closely by the Hive Security Officer. So, bad news does travel fast! As Mary moved towards the door she caught the eye of the Maintenance Supervisor, who was still at his post. Before she could give him a warning he turned to her and said as calmly as he could, “You’d better hurry”.

The escape pod containing the Believer Faction jettisoned from the Harmony and began its descent to the planet below. Mary manipulated the pod’s controls to give her and her command detachment a better view of their starship: as the escape pod slewed around in response to Mary’s commands it gave them a good profile of the ship, and what they saw amazed them: it was as if the ship were slowly dissolving right before their eyes! Huge chunks of the front section were already missing, and the holes there were growing by the minute, while aft the damage wasn’t as bad but was steadily getting worse. “Did we hit an antimatter field?” she heard someone ask from behind her. “Couldn’t be” someone else replied, “else we’d see explosions from the matter – antimatter collisions”.
“Nannites!” someone else said, almost accusingly, and Mary knew they were right! She’d heard of several Factions back in the Alpha Centauri system who had been experimenting with nannites which could perform menial tasks on the molecular level. What she was seeing here before her went far beyond that however, and it made her shudder. This was science completely unfettered, left to run amok!
What really made her soul grow cold was the thought of what they might find on the world below, a world which they would shortly come to call” Von Neuman’s World”.

Directions

1) In your alpha centauri/Scenarios subdirectory create a folder called "VNW", and download and unzip the attached files into it.
2) Start up SMAX, then select "Scenario", "Play Scenario", and then go to the subdirectory "VNW" and choose the scenario “VNW”. The game will automatically load up with the Believers.

Enjoy!

D

[Darsnan]

Von Neuman Probes

A von Neumann probe is a self-replicating spacecraft designed to investigate its target system and transmit information about it back to its system of origin.[5] The concept is named after Hungarian-born mathematician and physicist John von Neumann, who rigorously studied the concept of self-replicating machines that he called "Universal Assemblers" and which are often referred to as "von Neumann machines". While von Neumann never applied his work to the idea of spacecraft, theoreticians since then have done so.
If a self-replicating probe finds evidence of primitive life (or a primitive, low level culture) it might be programmed to lie dormant, silently observe, attempt to make contact (this variant is known as a Bracewell probe), or even interfere with or guide the evolution of life in some way.

Replicating "seeder" ships

Yet another variant on the idea of the self-replicating starship is that of the "seeder" ship. Such starships might store the genetic patterns of lifeforms from their home world, perhaps even of the race which created it. Upon finding a habitable exoplanet, or even one that might be terraformed, it would try to replicate such lifeforms - either from stored embryos (see: embryo space colonization) or from stored information using molecular nanotechnology to "build" zygotes with varying genetic information from local raw materials. Such ships might be terraforming vessels, preparing colony worlds for later colonization by other vessels, or - should they be programmed to recreate, raise, and educate individuals of the species that created it - self-replicating colonizers themselves.

Datalinks


The Sentinels

The Sentinels were a starfaring race who roamed the galaxy after the fall of the Progenitor Empire. No Sentinel cities or habitats have ever been found, nor have any abandoned starships or their wreckage ever been encountered, either. Several theories exist as to why this is, the most prominent being that the Sentinels are using Von Neumann type probes in the form of nannites to terraform planets for future colonization, and that the actual Sentinel race has not kept pace with the galaxy-wide spread of their self-replicating nannite terraformers. Another theory holds that the Sentinels were overwhelmed and destroyed by the same nannites they had used to terraform their worlds. This theory states that the Sentinel cities had grown to the state where they had produced a large enough ecological imbalance on their terraformed worlds that the dormant nannites had awakened to “rectify” the ecological imbalances, and in the process had devoured and consumed all of the Sentinels and their works. This would then explain why the nannites encountered today tend to attack larger cities where the ecological imbalances are the greatest....

[vyeh]

For some reason, I don't see anything in the active unit window or the stack window:



I also had the same problem in "UNWanted."

I did not have this problem for "Into the Hornet's Nest," "The Guardian of the Planet," "Eye of the Beholder," and "Pick yer Poison!"

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by vyeh
For some reason, I don't see anything in the active unit window or the stack window:

If this only happens on the first turn, then its because of the way I set the scenario up. Essentially theres a known bug whereby sometimes units don't show on the first turn. The reason the other scenarios worked is because I had progressed the MY to a later turn (probably to accomodate inclusion of the Progs).
If this issue is happening on more than just the first turn let me know and I'll look into it.


D

[vyeh]

That solved it.

This is probably another known bug: If you follow your instructions to play a scenario and within the game, you load the scenario file, then you are put in a situation with the scenario editor activated (but the omniscient view off) and you don't pick up your alphax.txt changes or the drabsmac terrain. If you save the game and use the save, this problem doesn't arise.

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by vyeh
If you save the game and use the save, this problem doesn't arise.

Are you saying the save game then utilizes the changes made in the alphax, script, helpx, etc.? I'm not sure this would work if I did it and posted the game save, as not everyone has set up their SMACX subdirectory system the same way I do.

Oh, and I'm not using Drabsmac - I'm using wgabrie's enhanced terrain graphics . FYI in case you want to check it out.


D

[vyeh]

I'm saying that the problem doesn't arise for me if I save the scenario and then reload the save. I think my save "fixes" the location of the subdirectory, even if the save is in the "save" folder and not in the "scenario" folder.

The only reason I loaded the scenario was that I wanted to check your previous answer by hitting "turn complete" and then I wanted to start the scenario while I was in the application. There is a "load game" command in the Game menu, but no "load scenario" command.

I don't know exactly what the save file picks up and what it doesn't. Given the size, I don't see how it could pick up script, helpx.

What I did is not something that would ordinarily occur. I only pointed it out as I thought it interesting that the "load game" command accepts .sc files and that the file did not pick up the modified files in its subdirectory even though I had originally started a scenario in that subdirectory, but picked up (at least the terraforming section) from my alphax.txt file.

I don't see any reason for you to change your procedure.

[Darsnan]

OK, Gotcha.

[Hercules]

This is the forum I started on and I will be trying Darsnan's scenario's sometime soon.













But significant post:


9999

[Flubber]

Well--

I just played this one (I am very slowly making my way thorugh Darsnan's scenarios)-- I like Darsnan's scenarios and this one had a LOT of familiar elements and units. I thought the AI did ok and that the uplifts to forests and tech changes when other terraforming became available worked well.

If the AI could learn to do proper probe defense it would have been far harder but is seems even designing them somne cheap probeships cannot make them as good as a determined human at the probe game

I also wanted to comment on a unit- it was a Darsnan special-- a predesigned <12>r-?-6 interceptor that the AI built lots. This unit singlehandedly gutted the usefulness of choppers against bases. Since the ? shield seemed to initiate psi or in this case "nannite" combat, my higher reactors and weapons were meaningless. But worse (or better depending on what you want), against an air attack this unit used its WEAPON as its starting value before modifiers. So it was my attack value of ONE against a defense value of 12 !! It slowed me up and I had to kill the AI the slower way, with artillery and ground troops. Thankfully that unit lost half its health to an artillery barrage and it was just "normal"si type combat against ground attacks so once i figured that out it was all good

But the AI built a lot of them and after I figured it out, it was funny to have to expend my reactor 4 choppers sometimes as self destructing suicide bombers or to have to wait until I had otherwise cleared a base of interceptors before using them. That unit alone turned chopers into a somewhat marginal unit.

So good unit darsnan!! -- I like any unit that changes the dynamic a bit