OOC Freespacer OOC Discussion

You're welcome, Jess. Glad to see you back! ^_^ :mrgreen:

Welcome back, SL!

whoa whoa whoa. i missed all this stuff?

SL, what's the "prince of privateers" topic all about? ._. (oh, and it's awesome)

Prelude: viewtopic.php?f=40&t=763

Basically it's a sort of "breaking in" run for the Wired Rovers.

Hey there, I'm in the mist of creating a Freespacer and I though I would just pose a few nosey questions...

For one, are Freespacer characters really that rare, or is the compiled list on the wiki totally out of date?

For seconds, would making a type three automaker be too cliche? Or are they supposed to have a high level of engineers, as their sterotype would suggest? >_>

(I also appologise if this wasn't supposed to go here, but I thought this thread could do with the traffic. ;D)

AFAIK they are MORE rare than what the list would suggest

Don't worry about the statistics and the stereotypes and just make the type of character you like the most. SARP needs more freespacers!

Please check Freespacer pages to ensure pics are all still working. All pics that weren't in a namespace were deleted.

Freespacer Players:

In the case that you are not involved in a plot, please contact me on IRC, YIM or PM in the foreseeable future. Plans being worked on may allow me to involve you in an upcoming plot event.

I'm still hanging around and available for helping people out with their 'spacer characters if they feel the need, since I think I'm now more or less the unofficial Freespacer GM until Jessica (hopefully) comes back.

Hey, Freespacers! Even though it looks like we've been dealt a real blow, I hope we can all do our best to keep this wonderful, interesting, and well fleshed out species from fading into stardust.

How do people feel about discussing possible elements of 'spacer culture and reactions to the slaughter? Or maybe a name they refer to the event by?

Hello, AC!

I think once SL left, the attention to the Day of the Crushed Network (an idea for the event name...good, bad?) has been steadily winding down...mostly because of the Summer Slump, but also because everyone has been focusing on their own plot participation. The Freespacers haven't had any posts from the race at large since the UOC split, I think.

It does seem like there should be a record of the event. It'll just take a little research.

Without any active GM, no one has the authority to make posts from "the race at large", though. Or am I wrong?

I mean things like "politics" both external and internal, moving ships around... in short, acting as the faction head.
I haven't heard from Jessica in a long while and couldn't contact her no matter what. Personally, I think Freespacers, their culture being that, shouldn't have a "faction head" or at least no single faction head. (no, I'm not saying this because I dislike Jessica, quite the opposite: I liked her and her work a great deal. But since Freespacers are, IC, the only non-hierarchical player race, I think they should be like this OOC too, as an experiment if nothing else.)

They're anarchists who value independent initiative (while at the same time managing to maintain themselves as a very close-knit, communist, deeply altruistic nomad state) and they have immense variability among their ranks, so, if Jessica doesn't intend on returning, I'd rather have the whole corpus of active Freespacer players vote on major issues or act on their own on minor issues (like how I'm playing S.I. Invalid in the HMS Fearless plot.)

This is, obviously, assuming that all Freespacer players are reasonable players who have read all the Freespacer fluff on the wiki and know what they're doing. That seems to be the case.

While I agree that a non-hierarchical, democratic way of directing the Freespacers would be best, I do think we shouldn't shy away from hoping to have a GM. At the very least, it would let us have some official representation in case a GM says "the Freespacers all do X" and the Freespacer forum comes to a democratic disagreement with that statement.

For the time being, though, I guess we should just push along and do our best! I was considering putting a post in the Genocide thread on early attempts to create Type One 'spacers again. Though, is there an official timeline? I don't have a good idea of how long it has been since Halna, which is kind of important to figuring out how long the 'spacers may have been trying this.

Handwave it, keep it within reason (like, 1-4 months), or just don't get too specific.

And I agree that having someone who other GM can refer too is important. I would have already proposed myself, if i had the time to.
It pains me to see the Spacers in this state, but unfortunately, i don't have the free time to play a GM full time.

Okay, I'll just do my best to write something out that isn't too detailed on the time side of things. If we ever figure out dates and stuff, it shouldn't be too far off of reasonable...

I was wondering, given the cooperative nature of the Freespacers, do you think a thread for discussing expansions to the wiki would be good? We could have a list of ideas that'd been put forward to be fleshed out and talked over. It'd also give people who were interested in writing a good idea of what parts of the wiki would be helpful to be added to over others ('Spacer cooking should probably be put on the backburner until we've written up what happened at Halna). Do you think something like that would be a good idea?

I don't have time for a full reply here on everything you two have covered so far, but I was wondering if either of you have noticed whether the Freespacers are still able to procreate at all (make little Type Ones) given their highly radioactive nature. Could lack of natural procreative ability be the reason why the wiki say Type Ones are extinct?

It states they're (nearly) extinct for three reasons:

* High natural rate of sterility.
* High natural rate of miscarriage/abortion, among those able to reproduce.
* Type Ones not being able to have as extensive mental cyberware, so it's undesirable to produce them.

Likely, a concerted effort to breed Freespacers could do something, but because of their strange rate of aging, odd biochemistry, and other things, the race would probably have to reinvent obstetric technology to have any chance of it being a functional alternative to genebanks. Even then, it seems like the Type Ones would have a somehow stunted ability to interface with the digital network and Polysentience.

Well, I guess it depends.

Just NOW MUCH has the freespacer's reproductive capacity (cloning vats for biological freespacers, factories for automata freespacers) been damaged by the Yamatai attack?

I'd say that if it's above 50% of what it once was, they might well try and replenish their numbers through their usual means.
If below 50%, however, they'd probably try and increase their numbers by any means possible.

Is there a GM who could give us some numbers on the number of surviving motherships and their locations? I know it was written that most are heading for the uncharted, northeastern side of the map, but there are also some taking refuge in Nepleslian territory, right?

There has never been a list of how many motherships existed, and I think that there have never been details. I might be wrong, though.

Pre-genocide, the Freespacer population was of 400,000 biological and 1,800,000 automata/SI. Total 2,200,000.

The Yamatai attack has been massive, but not methodical, and most of the Freespacer population resides in starships, especially motherships, which range from "difficult" to "impossible" to track thanks to their low technology, the vastness of space, and the skill in electronic warfare which is one of the Freespacer's strong points, so I think that we're talking of losses of about one third.

That would leave the post-genocide Freespacers with a population of (rounded) 1,500,000, of which 300,000 biological and 1,200,000 automata/SI.

Let's suppose that 10% of the population lived on planets (and is now, mostly, dead). That would leave us with a 90% (now almost 100%) of the population living in space.

Now, I'm going to throw around some numbers. Each fleet is based around a mothership and has a number of support vessels. Let's say that a fleet holds 10,000 'spacers, about 80% on the mothership and 20% on support craft.

That would leave us with about 150 motherships left.
As for their location, I'd guess that they're scattered around. maybe one-fourth in "old Nep" space and another fourth in the area of space the Nep are currently colonizing. The rest scattered around in unknown space and putting as much distance between them and Yamatai borders as possible. Possibly gathering around Null and Void and Journey's End.
Did the Beanfield at Journey's End get bombed? I can't remember. They sure lost the Lighthouse, Halna and Freehold Factory.


Also, about the recollection post: I'd rather make a thread about rebuilding efforts. Creating new ships, integrating them with Nepleslian technology, increasing their numbers (I imagine that, given the destruction of Freehold Factory, the number of biological Freespacers would increase a bit faster than the number of automata, also in an effort to make the numbers more evenly spread).

There has been enough stuff on the Genocide, and I expect Freespacers to look forward rather than backwards now, since their survival and the survival of the ideals of the Free State are on the line.