The Great ST Debate

[Tom]

That's not a flaw. Just like how in real life some people have access to higher education and some do not, unfairness is reality.

Perhaps, but that's still no excuse to give players on one side of the fence invincibility while others are left to die. You want bigger guns, more people more tech in general? Fine. But one has to draw the line when they see others being given immortality.

I've met a few people in Alcor's cryogenics program--basically, when they die, they'll be vitrified until technology has risen to a point at which their ailments may be cured. Because they'd be getting "an extra life" would you say that's "overpowered?"

I'll confidently say that it's impossible at this point in time. Cryogenics are highly experimental. I counter by saying prove to me that this ST technology can practically work. We can't compare real life to a fictional space future. I really can't answer your question, unless you want me to get religious (and I"m sure NOBODY wants that).

Every aspect of a player's RP experience could be subject to "behind-the-scenes abuse" by GMs. If you can trust a GM with the plot, which will determine the chances of your character dying in the first place, you chould certainly be able to trust him with ST rolls. If don't feel like you could trust GMs to be fair, then you've got problems which are not caused by ST tech.

I trust GMs with their plots, but I see ST technology as a backbreaker OOC.

ST technology gives GMs the equivalent of total, unchallengable control over what happens. GM NPCs/PCs can remain alive indefinately. Let's say a player group goes off to assasinate Emperor Uesu. SOMEHOW, the players use their amazing ingenuity to get him into a precarious situation. They pull the trigger and kill him. The GM, obviously not liking this situation, has Uesu's ST backup revived.

That's an extreme case, of course, but can be applied to any other situation where something "unexpected" happens to a GM's person they planned to be key.

I'd rather not have the assumption that every person has ST backups by default. It makes things much more difficult.

Yes there are. We run into these ST-related social issues all the time day in the RP! Look at the Sakura plot right now, for instance, or the Kai assassination, or any number of events that have happened so far that dealt with the dead returning.

I'm talking more wide-scale than individual traumas. If people knew about the possibility of an immortality potion, I'd expect riots in the streets and I'd also expect severe ethical questions to be presented on TV debates across the universe. Not to mention the religious implications (for those that have a religion.) And I mean longstanding stuff. Not stuff that happens for a couple weeks/months and then gets brushed under the rug.

You're saying we should be suffering OOCly at the loss of characters instead of having a more fun, carefree RP experience. Fear can be a nice element of RP, but how exactly would you improve gameplay by forcing the good of others creations (to able to be RPed) to be lost forever?

Forgive me, but a carefree RP experience in a war-filled universe? That's a blatant contradiction. I'm not saying we should have this horrible dystopian universe where war kills every man, woman and child on Yamatai, but I want there to be a consequence for getting yourself killed in the line of duty!

I'm 100% certain that anybody who came from the outside to join the Star Army universe knew that there'd be a chance their characters would die in a conflict. The assumption that their creations would be "lost forever" is given the second they make a character.

Here's a way that gameplay would improve, and I can't possibly see anything against this:

As things stand right now, ranks progress by whim or by whatever mission you sign up for. The promotion structure is rather automatic.

If we force players to be aware of death, then that breaks the RP dynamic. Characters can raise up the ranks slower by playing it safe. Those who are gutsy, take chances and save the day (although they're in far greater risk for death) will recieve faster promotion, just like in real life.

I'm quoting something you wrote for Rufus:

Rufus checked his watch; only seven minutes remainedsince he'd made the announcement. He headed over towards the pot-side passageway, and stood outside the laundry room near the front of the ship, waiting for the crew to assemble. He'd already decided that those who didn't show up were going to be the ones that were going to have the most dangerous (but least important) assignments in the mission to come.

This is an example of what happens with ST tech. Dangerous missions become the least important? There's your depreciation of the value of life.

Edit: Kotori and Harlequin bring up good points.

 

[Rine]

In all honesty, I don't like ST from a purely rp standpoint. It's like back in the old chatrooms of ayenee, where you would go through a major combat scene, finally kill your opponent, and he simply pops over to another room like nothing happened. It makes killing your opponent a much less worthy goal, and in all honesty, would probably lead to the less than polite ones of the galaxy preferring to torture people than kill them.

Besides, whats to keep someone with an ST backup from putting the backup into a body while they're still alive? I could have three characters!

 

[Fred]

There always could be the possibility, like I said earlier, of only having the Soul Transfer device used to 'transfer' a person's psyche instead of recording a copy. You could still save someone's life using it, but there would defenitely be more care in the way people would act.

...I mean, use it as a mean to ressucitate rather than ressurect.

 

[Tom]

I like that idea. Near death or short-term death (10-15 minutes) can be reversed by this brilliant medical discovery. After the "deadline," the psyche has deteriorated too much to be restored.

I think using it for Resutation rather than ressurection is cool.

 

[Nyton]

This whole thing reminds me of the discussion in The Sixth Day regarding cloning. Hey, one thing I've been wondering, this ST tech copies the person's ... whatever and transfers it to a new body. Does that mean the person who dies has all their memories up till the point they died or up till their last backup copy? Wouldn't that mean they have a 'memory gap' due to not having the actions leading to their death lost since you can't memory record during action? Also I fail to understand the whole concept of the soul in this. Does the soul 'abandon ship' and jump into the backup body along with the memory that's downloaded into it? What if the wrong memory backup is loaded into the wrong body? Would you have a man with the mind of a woman? This really just feels like another version of cloning, kind of like in Phantasy Star 2 where if your char died you'd just clone them right back up without any exp loss. Remember this is a game before the days of online gaming. ;p But the thing about cloning that always bugged me is that if I died and a clone of me was made that clone, even if it had my memories up until my death, is still not ME. There is a me still lying out there dead and the clone me could very well walk up and see the dead me. Now that's just freakin' creepy.

Because of this viewpoint, even with ST tech in this game I still feel 'fear' at the possibility of my character dying. It was on my char's second mission where a crew member died and was irretrievable due to the main computer losing the ST backups from memory. The danger of losing your character is still there to me. Now in game I can see people taking the whole concept and not thinking much since they grew up knowing about it, but you could still have people with the outlook I stated above. Just because you get copied onto another brain it doesn't mean that its YOU anymore, just another kind of you.

I'm tired. >_>

 

[Rob]

There is a me still lying out there dead and the clone me could very well walk up and see the dead me. Now that's just freakin' creepy.

Yes... kinda... but you gotta remember that those are your feeling OOCly. I mean, you may feel the same IC, but it's different - you die, and the clone is you. You don't think of it as a clone, it just is YOU. Gotta remember that the SAoY has had this tech for a while, and people would be pretty used to being cloned when they die because of it.

...

ALSO, if the star army can produce sentient AI systems that can understand people's feelings, how can they not store a person's mind? hell, half the systems used by the SA are bio-computers ANYWAY, so you can't talk about analog/digital problems in that sense.

 

[Wes]

Does that mean the person who dies has all their memories up till the point they died or up till their last backup copy? Wouldn't that mean they have a 'memory gap' due to not having the actions leading to their death lost since you can't memory record during action?

Memories only go up until the point at which the backup was made.

Does the soul 'abandon ship' and jump into the backup body along with the memory that's downloaded into it?

"Soul" is just an expression of a person's conciousness and memories. There is no "spirit."

What if the wrong memory backup is loaded into the wrong body? Would you have a man with the mind of a woman?

Yes. It's happened before. Wazu was ST-backuped into a neko body at one point.

 

[Jadg Wolf]

Before, I was going to say that you can't just take a technology out of Star Army for OOC reasons, as you suggested. Saying that "there's a part of life that can't be saved on disk" when it has already happened would be foolish. But, considering that the fleets were reduced for no real IC reason (that I could tell, you could make one up, probably, but the OOC factor was the big issue), something along those lines could be done for this too.

I agree with Tom and Harlequin and the others. I've already said I never really liked the ST tech but I got used to it. Still, this is supposed to be a military RP. I didn't say anything before, because there wasn't a whole lot of combat (or at least not a lot of PC deaths). Having a safety net trivializes combat. If there's an IC way to get rid of it, and have seperate social and combat plots, I think everyone could be happy. Why be in a combat plot if you're scared for your character's life?

 

[Karma Mechanic]

IC - the ST system scares the bloody hell out of me(makes me want to avoid death), Tasuku dies, and is replaced by some cheap copy, whos memories are from two weeks ago. a lot can happen in two weeks, two days, or even hours, that can change your life. Not to mention before I died I would know it wouldn't really be me coming back; And the copy of me would feel a little less than real. This perhaps is also the reason Tasuku hasn't and is wary of "upgrading" from a Geshrin to a new Yamataian body yet.

OOC - I really don't have a problem with it, I think I would aviod dying with or without it; its built into your genetics to avoid dying anyway.

 

[Kim]

From what I can remember, it was made illegal for anyone to have more than 1 copy of their information backed up. And we were told that unless we ICly stated that we backed up the ST data, it wasn't there.

As far as the ST technology taking away fear of death:

When I had Chiharu make the comment IC to Iseki (when they were captives of Elysia) about "Don't worry too much about them being gone, they'll be able to bring them back, and you'll see them again when we get out of here!" The response was dryly, "That's a lie, you know that once the ship is destroyed, we cannot be bought back." (something like that was said.)

Ships made out of something indestructable have been destroyed before and none of the data retrieved, nor any of the crew revived.

The way I look at the whole matter is, how would you feel to know that there is a big chunk of your memory missing and you died? Or the guilt that your character might feel if they were the only ones from that battle that were able to be brought back? There is a lot of emotional baggage that would come with the revival of a character. Would your character feel so guilty that they would become horribly depressed and WANT to die and stay dead?

There are many possiblities still available to make the ST technology not a perfect process without removing it. I like the idea of giving the players the choice to make it something good- to create a more interesting story by playing up the aftermath of a battle, knowing that you should be dead.

((I know this is a little disjointed, it's been a loong day. ))

 

[Tom]

You get the same emotional baggage WITHOUT the use of ST.

It's called survivor's guilt.

 

[Kim]

Yes, I know this (it also applies to people who have been affected by armed robberies) - but it would be worse with the instance of ST because you wou;d've already died and are not back.

 

[DocTomoe]

well, i've got two cents to drop into this again...

My character just stared death in the face thanks to a mistake made by a powered armor pilot, and I realised in my gut "Oh damn... I forgot to have him make an ST copy." at that moment I realised that the character that I enjoyed was about to maybe die because of some one's pilot error.

I think... the ST is a good way to keep people from becomnig bitter over something like another person's innocent mistake that rips their character from them.

 

[Turboneko]

well, i've got two cents to drop into this again...

My character just stared death in the face thanks to a mistake made by a powered armor pilot, and I realized in my gut "Oh damn... I forgot to have him make an ST copy." at that moment I realized that the character that I enjoyed was about to maybe die because of some one's pilot error.

I think... the ST is a good way to keep people from becomnig bitter over something like another person's innocent mistake that rips their character from them.

To be frankly mean, welcome to life. You're in the army now.

 

[Fred]

My character just stared death in the face thanks to a mistake made by a powered armor pilot, and I realized in my gut "Oh damn... I forgot to have him make an ST copy." at that moment I realized that the character that I enjoyed was about to maybe die because of some one's pilot error.

But... but... the bombs were going to go off anyways! ~_~

<- pilot using a scallar cannon to try disabling a kamikaze neko trio carrying explosives-laced vests. Scallar cannons and explosives do NOT mix.

 

[DocTomoe]

To be frankly mean, welcome to life. You're in the army now.

Yea, when you're in the army, you're meant to be serving with individuals who know what their weapons cause explosive devices to do.

 

[Turboneko]

Yea, when you're in the army, you're meant to be serving with individuals who know what their weapons cause explosive devices to do.

But accidents still happen.

 

[Kimura]

Not to mention it was not immediately evident that they were explosive.

I think the problem people are seeing, though, is not with the idea of an entire ship being destroyed, and potentially some people surviving due to SS pods instead of escape pods; it's that some particularly unlucky characters might end up in their own version of Groundhog Day. They run out, kill a bunch of things, die, wake up the next morning, run out, kill a bunch of things...etc... Or, they go about their daily business, then suddenly BAM! Sniped. An week later, they are going about their daily business again then BAM! Sniped again. Hitmen are starting to be paid salaries instead of commission. Ordinary people with high incomes are buying monthly, weekly or even daily ST backups. The only trouble is that they can't learn anything new unless they get their 'save point' after...and they will always wonder how many times they've been killed, every time they wake up...

Sure, it's a safety net that maybe shouldn't be there, but it is - just like unemployment insurance, only more epic. If the GM wants to kill off someone with a ST backup, they only need to additionally hire some very skilled goons to get rid of it. Heck, someone could make a group of NPC mercenaries which specializes in ST invasion and destruction.

 

[Tom]

Heck, someone could make a group of NPC mercenaries which specializes in ST invasion and destruction.

ST Tech is a bit too highly protected that there'd be mercenary groups who are specialized in its destruction. Only military and high government have access, so your mercenary group would have to spend years and years getting moles into the army/government (which would be ridiculously difficutlt and costly). Only radicals would do something like that.

 

[Fred]

*Looks around the Sakura seeing a tentacle legged neko along with a group of iffy black-garbed nekos*

I say we have radicals.