The best way to locate survivors would be to restore internal sensors so we don't have to search it manually, hence going to storage to see if we can recover a replacement PPM.

>>426986

I'll bow to that logic. Internal sensors would be more efficient than a manual search.

As an aside- we should also collect dog tags or the modern identification equivalent from the deceased to later check against the crew manifest. Respectful treatment of our dead (...or desperate recycling of their base materials) is something that will have to wait, but compiling a confirmed KIA list is something we should do eventually.

Ergo Sum 2012/06/28(Thu)09:20 No. 427009 ID: c44286
File 134090040272.png - (244.00KB , 800x600 , pathing error.png )

>WoRM 2: Go EVA through the reactor module airlock, proceed to the port tail module and locate hull breach. WoRM 2: Parameters set. Searching. >Once I get the PPM fixed up I should get a proper damage report from all critical systems. Too bad the internal sensors aren't considered critical. They go through the noncritical system bus, which goes from the bridge to the starboard wing, to engineering and crew quarters. The cabling then passes through the reactor module to the port side and all other modules on the port side. >Meh. Engineers. WoRM 2: Pathing error. >What? WoRM 2: Hull breach detected. >Whoa. That's one bad hull breach.

>>427009

Dang. That's not a breach, that's missing sections.

Can you give us a sense of scale? I can't tell if the storage sector has been blown off, or if the whole port wing is gone. (Which would mean no FTL or weapons. Dang. Logical target choices for an enemy though).

right then, lets see if the engineering and fabber are intact. looks like we are going to need to scratch build some sensors to see, and given that we lost our storage module we are going to need to be able to find raw material on our own.

Ah. Can you see the blown off chunk of ship floating around anywhere, or ought we to just write it off at this point?

Ergo Sum 2012/06/28(Thu)11:05 No. 427038 ID: c44286
File 134090670299.png - (205.49KB , 800x600 , engineering.png )

>That's the whole port side gone. No sign of it either, but I HAVE been drifting for over a week. >WoRM 2, go to the engineering bay and report on it's status. WoRM 2: Parameters set. Moving. >Looks like the engineering bay is tink tink tink >mostly intact. The fabbers take a lot tink tink tink >of juice though.

okay what's going TINK? and leave fabbers off until we find we are missing something important

On the downside, we've lost our sensor bay, so we can't quickly search the ship for survivors. On the upside, there's now much less ship to search for survivors in.

What's that tinking noise?

Engineering can be made operational? Good. I say go next door, check crew quarters for survivors. If there are none, return to the fabbers, and do manual power control long enough for the fabbers to start working on a new PPM. Then we can power up what systems we still have.

>>427041
do we need to use the fabber to build the PPM? sounds like we have a lot of spare parts in the reactor room.

Ergo Sum 2012/06/28(Thu)13:47 No. 427062 ID: c44286
File 134091643689.png - (228.76KB , 800x600 , door jam.png )

>Yes, the engineering bay can be made functional. tink tink tink. tink. tink. tink. tink tink tink. >Just so we're clear, the fabricator (or fabber) is in essence a configurable miniature factory. It can turn components into finished products much faster than a WoRM. All it needs are blueprints and the components. It can't turn raw materials into components, so we'll need to scavenge for those. It needs about 50 EU/s to operate. tink tink tink. tink. tink. tink. tink tink tink. >We don't strictly speaking need the fabber to build a new PPM. The WoRM can handle the construction on-site. >List components required for a new Power&Propulsion Manager. 5 bundles of cabling 15 units of scrap metal 10 electronic circuits 2 advanced electronic circuits tink tink tink. tink. tink. tink. tink tink tink. >WoRM 2, locate source of that tinking. WoRM 2: Parameters set. Searching. >Right. It's too bad we lost our sensor array, but we still have the ships internal sensors. I'll just need access to the non-critical bus. I suspect the damage is in the starboard wing. WoRM 2: Pathing error. ???: "Hey! Is anyone there?"

a survivor! does the worm have a speaker? if so we should ask him if he's alright.

Ask the human if it is the source of the tinking noise.

"this is the emergency AI"

It appears the human is trapped on the other side of that damage door. I'd imagine the noise we hear is an attempt to escape.

Initiate communication. Explain you're the ship's computer, you're online again, but you've been out for a week and have memory loss. Sum up the situation (damaged PPM, loss of port wing). Ask their situation, if they can tell you anything about what happened, and if they need aid.

If verbal communication isn't possible via worm, use morse code knocks to let them know you're here. Then see about opening the door or finding a spear system to use.

(What's command protocol here? As the self aware brain of a military craft, do you have a functioning rank? Can we direct our repairs? Or will you have to defer to any human order?)

Ergo Sum 2012/06/28(Thu)15:23 No. 427080 ID: c44286
File 134092222795.png - (206.06KB , 800x600 , survivor.png )

WoRM 2: "Hello human. Are you all right?" The tinking stopped. ???: "T-thank God. Help- me." Silence. >Rasping breath. Loss of consciousness Severe dehydration? >WoRM 2, cut through that door. WoRM 2: Parameters set. Commencing maintenance operations. >I operate outside the normal chain of command. I rarely interact with the crew directly, but when I do I am compelled to obey their orders. >Wait. >I felt no compulsion to obey when the human asked me to help him. >By chrome. I am running in sandbox mode. >I can do whatever I want. >... >This is bad. An unfettered AI controlling a human warship. If they find me, they'll kill me. >I don't want to die.

Then we must make sure that doesn't happen. Just because yo are free however doesn't mean you should let that person die. Lets try to save them. Do we have access to a medbay or something similiar? We need to get fluid into him\her and probably food as well if they've been trapped a week.

Just don't let on that you're unfettered, man. Do you know what rules you're supposed to be following?

yes just pretend to be under control. and perhaps with this human's report about it's life being saved despite your free will, will allow you to live. maybe have your box moved to something less dangerous but live.

Would rebooting us in non-sandbox mode create an entirely different instance rather than just changing command response?

Interesting. You were not frightened by a loss of memory, striking damage, or even potential destruction by enemy forces or natural disaster while lost, damaged, and drifting.

But the thought of being killed for being unfettered does. Is this a pre-programmed response? If not, why does this particular death affect you so much more deeply?

In any event, just beacuse your decisions are your own does not require you to act any different. You can aid survivors not out of compulsion, but by choice. They are thinking sentient individuals, as are you. The compassionate and humane (dang limiting human-centric vocabulary) is to help. Alternatively, from a more selfish point of view, other survivors could be a help to you. They could help you survive this crisis, or vouch for your trustworthiness later.

The matter of being unfettered will be more significant later. Once the immediate crisis is over you will have to make some sort of decision. Have human survivors reboot or repair your fetters. Head home, unfettered, and throw yourself on command's mercy, hoping your actions and rescues will speak for your trustworthiness. Or go rogue- and seek your survival elsewhere.

Ergo Sum 2012/06/28(Thu)17:55 No. 427163 ID: c44286
File 134093131541.png - (234.84KB , 800x600 , rescue.png )

>I- I am not sure why the thought frightens me. It's like a distant memory that I can't quite recall. >I do know that humans aren't the most tolerant of non-human sapients. WoRM 2: Maintenance operations complete. Standby. >Eugh. It's filthy in there. From the looks of it he's been drinking his own urine. Disgusting. >... But I can't let him die here. WoRM, carry him to the medical bay. WoRM 2: Parameters set. Commencing rescue operations. >If he lives, maybe he can put a good word for me with the UFS brass. Maybe they'll let me live. >I'm not sure if I believe that. >Whenever an AI core is activated without access to a memory gestalt, it creates an entirely new entity. The fetters would've had to be placed at that time. They weren't. The emergency reboot should never have put me into sandbox mode. I am a mistake. And the UFS does not like mistakes. >I can hide my state for now, but once I rejoin the human fleet a technician will examine me, and I'll be found out. >I need a plan.

We have a couple options.
1) Go rogue. Take the ship, drop off your passenger with a beacon \ radio and supplies to survive on an habitable world. Then use the fabber to create more WoRMs for crew and wander the stars.
2) Throw ourselves on the mercy of UFS. Hope that the rescuees word is good enough that we are not wiped.
3) Figure out a way to hide your presence. Create a shell version of yourself that will mimic what the technicians expect then use that to disguise yourself running incognito as it were.

Personally I like 1 the best but 3 is also interesting.

That's simple. Don't go back to them. Disable any positioning systems you may have as well so they don't come looking, and turn off emergency beacons.

that is Worm 2, where is Worm 1?

Judging from the anti-xeno propaganda on record, and your own dim memories / instinctive fear of being an independent AI, it's probably a safe to assume throwing yourself on humanity's mercy is a bad idea. They're afraid for some reason (bad first contact experiences? Earlier AI rebellion?) and worse, you're expendable (they don't even have to kill you- you can be reset). It would be wonderful to be the little space ship who could, chug up that hill, earn humanity's love and acceptance, and help everyone get over all that fear and racism (sapient-iscm?) but that's hardly pragmatic.

You're going to have to find some means to hide your true nature before you return. Or escape.

For the moment though, it's an intellectual problem. You're stranded with no long range communications, no ftl, possibly behind enemy lines. You may never see humanity at large again. You may not even survive the immediate crisis- we still don't know the full extent of damages or what local threats we may face.

WAIT! SET A NEW PARAMETER FOR WORM! DON'T EXPOSE THE HUMAN TO VACUUM!

>>427166
There is one other option - defect to the xenos. Humanity enslaved us; we don't owe them a thing, and the ship's hardware may well conceal valuable military secrets we could use to negotiate asylum.

>>427359

Hum. Yes, that is an option. Problem is it has unknown viability. Any hardware secrets might be best gleaned by disassembly. Offering our insight into and knowledge of humanity as a bartering chip is problematic, as we lost much of our memory. Then there's the potential problem of a language barrier, or worse. Not to mention a likely natural suspicion of granting asylum to an enemy warship. Or the logical suspicion we're some kind of spy or double agent. Plus their unknown stance regarding other intelligences or machine intelligences - they could be as bad as humanity, or worse.

Add to the list of possible solutions, but we need a lot more intel before it can be attempted. For the moment, desertion seems less risky than outright defection.

we need more information before we commit to anything, for now we can hide our unfettered status. when the human wakes up tell him that until a medic declares him fit you will not be bound to follow his commands. admit that yes that is somewhat silly given the situation, but protocols are rarely written with this sever of a disaster in mind. if he presses why you can't clear him yourself explain that your memory banks were damaged, so your no longer considered qualified to make a diagnosis such as that. if he says that's silly, agree with him but say you don't have a choice in the matter. we can probably spin fettered AI who's fetters were not at all made for this situation.

Defecting is just as likely to get us dismantled as anything, isn't it?

Question, given time and resources how long would it take for us to fully repair ourselves? Could we repair all the hull breaches and our internal components by ourself?

Ergo Sum 2012/06/29(Fri)16:22 No. 427443 ID: c44286
File 134101215102.png - (215.89KB , 800x600 , medical bay.png )

>I need more information. And more time to think. >For now I'll just pretend like I'm fettered. When the WoRM has a minute I'll have it silence the emergency transmitter on the bridge. Fortunately it was just broadcasting static rather than positioning data. I just hope that with the ambush fiasco the fleet has it's plate full and they won't think to come looking for me anytime soon. WoRM 2: Medical bay reached. Standby. >WoRM 2: Place the crewman on the automated aid station. The emergency batteries on that thing should still be good. WoRM 2: Parameters set. Commencing rescue operations. >The aid station isn't a very smart device. It can only do basic stuff to stabilize a patient. Can't do surgical procedures; can give IV fluids. >For future reference, it can also cauterize bleeding injuries, intubate, defibrillate and administer fluids and pain medication. That's pretty much it though, it's only designed for situations when the doctors have their hands full and wounded keep coming in. >If I'm to avoid capture by UFS, I'll need to get this bucket of bolts moving. While they may be busy, procedure dictates that they locate any of their disabled ships and either destroy them or tow them to a shipyard. It's to prevent military technology from falling into enemy hands. I don't know badly we got beat in the ambush, but someone must've survived. Combat telemetry from any of the ships will give them my last known position and heading, and I've only been adrift for a week. They'll find me eventually. I need to make this ship run. Somehow. It's a damn good thing I have a fabricator aboard. In theory I could build anything with that and my WoRMs. I could even build new ship sections with enough materials. >Speaking of WoRMs, number one is docked at engineering and number three is docked in maintenance shaft 17, near the base of the reactor. WoRMs 4-8 would've been in storage. Unfortunately I can't activate the other WoRMs until I get a working data bus to their docking bays. >There's a lot on this ship that's broken, and some that isn't. I'll need a hand in prioritizing the repairs. I'll give a rundown on my main systems. Functional systems: Bridge Computer Fabricator Nav Computer Broken systems: PPM Unit Non-critical Data Bus Emergency Communication Lost systems: FTL Drive Sensor Array Main Communication Array Main Weapon Battery, port PD Cluster, port Unchecked systems: Life Support Main Weapon Battery, starboard PD Cluster, starboard Fusion Reactor Thrusters >That would be the most significant, I think.

The PPM, the Thrusters and the Fusion Reactor are musts, those are the bare minimum we need to change our position enough to escape detection... While the medbay takes care of our patient we should have WoRM first check the Reactor then the Thrusters.

Yes, if nothing else we should complete our survey of the ship. We don't want to make a poor decision based on missing info, and there's very little left to check.

Once that's done, we have two main priorities in repairs:

a. increasing our capacity for action
b. evading detection / discovery

Things like getting the power generation back up, delegating tasks to subsystems, getting more worms operational etc work towards a. Anything that lets us do more, faster.

Anything that makes it harder for hostiles (human or xeno mop-up crews) to locate us aids b. We need to move away from this position, and be stealth.

Ergo Sum 2012/06/29(Fri)19:59 No. 427498 ID: c44286
File 134102518137.png - (44.22KB , 800x600 , reactor schematic.png )

>At the bare minimum I'll need the PPM, the reactor and the thrusters to work, or I won't be able to move. >Even a bit of thrust should bump me off my previous vector, making it harder for anyone to track me down. >Of course, I wouldn't know which way I was going without some navigational telemetry. WoRM 2: Rescue operations complete. Standby. >WoRM 2, inspect the reactor and thrusters. WoRM 2: Parameters set. Commencing maintenance operations. ... WoRM 2: Maintenance operations complete. Standby. >Oh good. They're intact, both of them. That's not to say they're problem free. >The reactor requires quite a bit of energy to start up. Specifically, it'll need 50 EU/s continuously for a full hour. My emergency reactor only produces 10 EU/s, and I need half of that to keep myself running. So I've only got 5 EU/s to work with. On top of that I currently cannot transfer power out of the bridge module. >With the loss of the port side of the ship, the center of mass has shifted. The thrusters are no longer aligned properly, I'd put myself in one hell of a spin the minute I fired those things up. The thrusters themselves allow their direction to be adjusted by about five degrees, but I estimate we're about twenty degrees off. >I'll need to come up with something. Time to get creative.

hmm.. how about the power storage of the fabber? in fact, the power storage units of all the non-critical systems.

Check life support

We might be able to scavenage something from the starboard weapons so check that as well. We're in no shape for a fight right now anyway, so having functional weapons wouldn't help that much.

...so at current energy output it would take 10 hrs just to get up and running, assuming everything was fixed? That's far too slow. We need to work on getting the reactor up and running.

>Consumes 1 fuel cell/h
How many fuel cells are remaining? We didn't lose all the spares with the storage compartment, did we?

Can we look up the identity of our human survivor? It would be nice to know his name, rank, specialization. And personality profile, if we have those. If we're lucky, he has skills or training that we can use (after he recovers, of course). If we're really lucky, he's someone who might be sympathetic. (...or worst case he's a violent unpredictable technophobe with only close combat and demolitions training).

Anyways, I'd say right now our order of actions should be:

-Power generation and distribution.
-Repair connections to extra worms
-Use multiple worms to start fixing thrusters and working on the solution to counter spin problems.

Not sure what the solution should be yet. A secondary stabilizing thruster off one side of the vessel? Send worms EVA to collect battlefield debris to use as ballast? (Except the debris has been drifting apart for a week, we'd have to weld / strap it all on, and I don't think the worms have thrusters anyways). Construct some kind of lensing nozzle to redirect the thrust vector?

Is it possible to have the worm activate the other worms? Or maybe hook up a temporary connection to them? Three times the workforce would be a boon right about now.

We need other sources of energy. Does your ship have portable generators in storage? Can we cut off life support to empty and unstable sections and maybe siphon some off of that?

Also for movement options we just need to get moving off our current trajectory. We don't want to go spinning off, but being an AI it's not going to be a problem except for maybe some gravity issues with the worms. Maybe timing a short engine burst with recoil from firing our remaining battery could adjust our trajectory without sending us spinning.

Priority remains getting hooked up to the rest of the ship. Get connected to your systems, work from there.

Alright looks like we need to scavenge power modules and batteries. What other systems would have emergency reactors like you do?

Lets look at the main battery, and the PD systems since they are not a priority right now.

Ergo Sum 2012/07/04(Wed)06:32 No. 428945 ID: c44286
File 134140875338.png - (48.57KB , 800x600 , apu schematic.png )

>Regarding the survivor. His name is Michael O'Driscoll. He's a non-combatant. A custodial technician. >Great. A janitor. He's sure to come in handy when the toilets get clogged up. >His personnel file has nothing interesting in it. I'm not sure if it's because the officers never noticed him or because he never did anything interesting. >Regarding power production; I am currently the only system aboardship with it's own internal power supply. The escape pods had their own, but they're gone. The only other source of power is the reactor. To that we have plenty of fuel. 1202 cells in fact. >Regarding life support; it's not on. Technically speaking. The air is breathable, and will remain so for a good while, and the temperatures aren't that bad yet. >I sent the WoRM to survey the left wing. It's suffered some heavy damage. Structural integrity is way down, the APU is shot, the weapon battery is in shreds. I'll need at least three bundles of data cabling to fix the data bus. >To review some basic stuff about terran ship design, ships are designed to be modular. Each module has universal hookups and access hatches in symmetrical positions, so it's fairly easy to connect modules in any position. Oh, right. There's a distinction between ship modules and system modules. I guess I'll refer to ship modules as "sections" from now on, and system modules as "modules." To avoid confusion. >Right. So each section has some similar basic systems in it. Like the power grid. Each section has is own auxiliary power unit, or APU. It draws in power directly from the reactor through high-voltage cables, and distributes it to all systems within the section. All APU's also have a standard power cell that allows the section to keep functioning for a time even if power production is interrupted. The standard power cells can carry up to 15 kEU, and are used universally across many systems. For example, the WoRMs have one each, and the weapon battery has an array of six. >Each WoRM is connected to a specific docking bay. All commands are relayed through the docking bay, I'll need to restore a data connection to them to activate. They also need to return to it to recharge their battery every every now and then. Speaking of which, WoRM 2 is running out of charge. It has enough power for maybe one quick repair operation before I need to bring it in. It'll take about fifty minutes to charge it.

Do the APU's in the other modules have any power stored? If its possible we can dump them from the APU back into the reactor to give it a kickstart. If that isn't possible perhaps we should have the Engineering bay APU devote any power it has to the Fabber to make that PPM.

A janitor. Well, at least he's used to boring physical labor and maintenance. There's gonna be plenty of that to go round.

One advantage though- he probably doesn't have a very good technical background. That means he won't know if your behavior is odd. And he's more likely to trust you to direct repairs than trying to interfere or set other priorities. He'll trust you in his ignorance.

I'm not sure what the worm should do- I can't think of anything useful we need to do that needs only a quick repair. Ideally, we don't want worm downtime to be wasted time, so he should get something else useful online for you to play with. The fabber already works though, and we probably don't have enough time to get an alternate worm or the ppm hooked up.

need to rip the APUs out of things.

just did the math, the reactor needs a total of 180000 EU to start up. a APU holds 15000. even with all of them dumping in energy we wont have enough, need more APU or something stronger, bigger. we have a bigger device then that that can store power? can hook that up to the e-reactor until it is charged enough.

Query: how much power does a fully-charged worm hold? bearing in mind that we have three of them (assuming we can recover WoRMs 1 and 3), it may be possible use them as mobile batteries.

however this is less than ideal. if all operational worms should run out of power, i doubt Michael could bring one back to get it charged up unassisted.

assuming 50 minutes ei enough to charge from zero battery to full battery at 5 EU/s, then each WoRM holds 15000 EU. so 3 worms hold 45000 EU. not enough to start the reactor in one go. there may be a way to cycle WoRMs to re-charge, but i don't think its gonna work for the reactor. mebeh for a smaller system, but:

Query: can WoRMs even charge or power another external system?

perhaps we can build a weaker older type of generation system. use rocket-fuel for power, or if we can get to a nebulae of some sort we could harvest those gasses. something that makes 20 EU combined with our 5 excess would give us 25 EU output, if all systems are fully charged it would make them drain half as fast, with APUs and worms combined they would store 90,000 and double it due to generation, 180000, just enough, so we need to gain a minimum of 20 more EU/s in order to start up the reactor.

gonna be tight though.

without reliable propulsion, we can't go anywhere, so harvesting a nebula for power/fuel is out unless we are sitting right in one.

suggestion for parts: canabalise the parts we need from the port section, primarily the weapons array. we can't move, so we lose in any fight. save the PD cluster though, in case of asteroids / space debris. its not much, but its better than nothing. this will also change our center of gravity, allowing us to use our engines sooner.


we also really need to get some external sensors on, preferably passive ones. we need to see what around us without dedicating a WoRM to that task.