National Updates Comment Thread

[Krictic]

What happenned to Ebensburg?

[Bremen]

I wondered how the US was going to convince the Eben to allow their planet to be terraformed. Apparently the answer was "they're not." The future doesn't seem bright for the Eben.

Maybe some day brave Russian soldiers will teach those fascist Americans to respect the rights of primitive natives. I wonder what the Russian name equivalent to "Rambo" is 

What happenned to Ebensburg?

I think Ebensburg is just the nation of the Eben. They're conventional tech.

[alex_brunius]

Something similar is happening here in the case of the aliens in this campaign. You never said that their existence is a classified material and the fact that US is going to establish a colony on their planet (and even modify it's atmosphere) would argue that their existence cannot be a secret. Yet it is treated as a very big one, so big a relatively friendly government (UK) has no idea the new race even exists, much less where.
It is of course a rather minor quibble, and otherwise the campaign is a great read, but I think it's something you could improve on.

Have to agree with this here. UK and US trade shipping being the most widespread especially undermines that they would be able to hide this. An automated mining colony or smaller military bases maybe could be hidden, but when your talking about hundreds of thousands inhabitants in an environment where they can move around freely...

Word would get out within days or weeks and first gossip would spread then other nations would investigate and soon evidence would be presented. It's even plausible a nation opposing of USA would try to capture and sneak out a live inhabitant and present the "ultimate" proof in front of UN back on Earth where they would make their case and plead for the other nations of humanity to save their race which would be a huge scandal.

I wonder what the Russian name equivalent to "Rambo" is 

Pretty sure it's their paratroopers

[Bremen]

As far as keeping it secret, I think it's worth noting that this isn't the US we think of; from the background they've gone through what sounds suspiciously like a right wing fascist revolution. They may well have drastically curtailed freedom of the press and civil liberties, making it at least vaguely possible they could keep word of the aliens from spreading.

Pretty sure it's their paratroopers

I don't know if it's the expressions, the music, or the closeups of young men swaying back and forth, but watching that all I could think of was "I thought Russia made 'homosexual propaganda' illegal."

I mean, really, "A white bouquet of parachutes, a soaring dome of rainbow peace?"

[Sematary]

There is also the fact that depending on Steve's method of communication in this world the people on the planet are very far from space controlled by anyone other than the US, they may not have an opportunity to talk to anyone else.

[Jakalo]

We don't know the nature of this USA colony. It is plausible that it is one way trip (with possible restrictions like families of naval and army members). Trade ships (if commercial traffic is allowed at all) might be  allowed only on orbital bases or other satellites where they would be unable to gauge pre-industrial population properly and wouldn't come into contact with natives only military personnel.
There surely are precedents like this on planets containing alien outposts. And while this planet may seem more suspicious than others there has to be only plausible deniability as there got to be thousands of different rumours and crackpot theories about alien encounters.

[Haji]

As far as keeping it secret, I think it's worth noting that this isn't the US we think of; from the background they've gone through what sounds suspiciously like a right wing fascist revolution. They may well have drastically curtailed freedom of the press and civil liberties, making it at least vaguely possible they could keep word of the aliens from spreading.

I don't mind if that's the case, but that's the thing - the way information is spreading around is never explained. I think Steve is just using whether information can be gathered by nations in game, which is fine when playing, but not so fine when role-playing as Aurora really doesn't handle day to day news traffic well. In addition it seems like Steve isn't using the espionage system in this particular campaign, which basically means any nation has total and uncontested information control of it's activities.
When I think of information flow in a campaign like this, I try to imagine this from perspective of today's internet. For example, technical details may be classified, but we know how many Arleigh Burke class ships US (or it's trade partners) possess, how many missiles the class has and of what kind and so on. We know the geography of each and every nation, and even locations of many secret installations. There is also much unwonted information getting out of nations with known censorship, like China. Overall in a campaign that is being role played, unless massive changes to communications occur, much of general information should be available to any and each nation, unless something is specifically kept secret. But whether or not such changes occurred in this universe, is unknown as it was never discussed. Hence why I believe that Steve could improve his role playing of information flow, even if by just stating "this and that is supposed to be a secret".

[SteelChicken]

You are taking it all way too seriously.

[Haji]

Yes and no. On the one hand I enjoy the campaign anyway. On the other hand I think it may be even better. Consider this to be my way of showing affection.

[Sematary]

Today's internet does not work on such a massive interstellar scale. Steve is generally not a fan of ansible tech which means FTL communication only works with jump engines or jump gates. That is all controlled by governments. Its completely plausible.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

The alien race is on a planet that has only been surveyed by the US and the UK is the only other power that knows the system even exists. There is a small US colony visited by the US Navy and a very occasional civilian ship. Considering the only way for the colonists to talk to the rest of the universe is via the jump gate network plus the importance of the information, I don't think controlling the information flow would be very difficult. That is assuming most of the colony is even aware of the existence of the aliens. A planet is a pretty big place. Besides, the Manhattan project stayed pretty secret and that was on the same heavily populated planet as many other nations, not twenty billion miles away with only a single communication link.

(and yes you may be taking it too seriously - I don't think keeping the Eben secret is the most implausible part of the AAR)

[alex_brunius]

The alien race is on a planet that has only been surveyed by the US and the UK is the only other power that knows the system even exists. There is a small US colony visited by the US Navy and a very occasional civilian ship. Considering the only way for the colonists to talk to the rest of the universe is via the jump gate network plus the importance of the information, I don't think controlling the information flow would be very difficult. That is assuming most of the colony is even aware of the existence of the aliens. A planet is a pretty big place. Besides, the Manhattan project stayed pretty secret and that was on the same heavily populated planet as many other nations, not twenty billion miles away with only a single communication link.

(and yes you may be taking it too seriously - I don't think keeping the Eben secret is the most implausible part of the AAR)

I think it depends greatly on your view of what actually happens below the game simulation scale.

If we for example assume the world is alive and buzzling with personal/corporate shuttles, yachts, small trade ships, small explorer & leisure ships that have similar range and speeds of bigger civilian ships it becomes a different matter entirely...

The implications is that any knowledge within the jumpgate network and not under strictly enforced military blockade is spread at minimum with the speed of the civilian shipping. Because thousands of civilian smallships, especially near the less policed and regulated fringes can land at a whim more or less where, how and when they want.

These would also be the preferred method of choice for espionage and eavesdropping on transmissions since as long as you don't have active emissions and behave within the expected realm of what civilians would do you won't be suspicious.


I don't think these assumptions are totally off. Translate the Aurora travel-times to current Earth and consider how many private jets, helicopters, yachts and smaller tradeships below the cargo liner scales that traffic our oceans and skies.

I know it's a big matter of personal taste, but when I RP Aurora I always assume everything within the jumpgate network is public knowledge of all races and factions that can communicate and trade with eachother.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

even if you assume  that to be true, it only works inside the jumpgate network.  anyplace that requires a jumpship to get to has its access and communication completely controlled by the state.

[Bremen]

Well, regardless, I think it's fair for Steve to handle it how he wants.

At worst I figure the higher ups in the civilian trade lines are firmly under the US government's thumb and they know they'll be arrested if they spill word about how their trade ships can see evidence of non-human civilization on a US colony.

[Nathan_]

I wondered how the US was going to convince the Eben to allow their planet to be terraformed. Apparently the answer was "they're not." The future doesn't seem bright for the Eben.

Maybe some day brave Russian soldiers will teach those fascist Americans to respect the rights of primitive natives. I wonder what the Russian name equivalent to "Rambo" is 

I think Ebensburg is just the nation of the Eben. They're conventional tech.

"why are you doing this?"
"Because we want to fully exploit your world."