Greetings, all. This document began earlier today with a question: games of Planetary Annihilation take place between two Commanders who start on equal footing, but what happens if one Commander tries to attack an already fortified planet? From there, it became Appendix A, and from Appendix A it grew into a thought experiment as I considered possible origin stories behind participants in the Galactic War. From there, it became a full-fledged work of fan fiction. I thought I would share it with you all, as I have no further plans for it and nowhere else to put it. As a disclaimer, I have done very little research on this aside from an (ongoing) playthrough of the Galactic War; consequently, I have taken a few creative liberties: I assume that Commanders exist as weapons of war because of the energy costs associated with faster-than-light travel (presumably some kind of “jump” based on Galactic War gameplay) Citing Gameplay and Story Segregation (see TvTropes article for more details), I assume that Commanders have sufficient blueprints to build anything they need, not just T1 structures I assume that unit construction involves streams of nanites, in the grand tradition of Total Annihilation (via nano-lathes) and Supreme Commander (via proto-crafters). For lack of a better name, I call my nanites n-bits (see Appendix A). I assume that the baby planets (see TvTropes article for more details) on which Planetary Annihilation takes place are proxies for realistically sized planets I assume that Commanders can build other structures besides those listed in-game -- survey satellites, disposable jump pods, etc. I assume power generators are capable of breaking down heavy metals into alpha particles, protons, neutrons, and other fusible materials, so Commanders don’t have to harvest oceans or interstellar gases to feed their fusion plants. Likewise, I assume that fusion plants can be used to generate small amounts of water and mid-weight fusion byproducts a-la stellar nucleosynthesis. I made a number of assumptions about Commanders, namely: Their pseudoneural structure is stored in binary quantum states patterned after human brains (a number of in-game hints suggest that the now-extinct Progenitors were human). At a conservative estimate, a human brain constitutes 2.5 petabytes of data; I multiplied that by three, just to be safe A number of in-game hints suggest that Commanders were developed during or prior to the war between the Progenitors and the Xziphid Hegemony, and that Commanders proved instrumental to the defeat of the Xziphid during that war. Consequently, it occurs to me that there is an extent to which humans could have interacted with Commanders prior to the Pro-Com War, allowing any Commanders who interacted with humans to learn from them and perhaps pick up things like emotions. I assumed that a great deal of time has passed since the Pro-Com War, and that not all Commanders were part of the Machine Liberation Army I assume the Uber Cannon functions much like the Disintegrator Gun in Total Annihilation, which suppresses the gluon fields that hold matter together. I have endeavored to provide an on-the-ground origin story for one participant in the Galactic War, and I have done my best to do so with sparse prose and without exposition (which I relegate to the appendices). Feel free to rip it to pieces; like all such things, it is always a work-in-progress. Forthwith the story proper!
To Take a Planet The conquest of the earth... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea — something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to... It is a barren planetoid, its pockmarked surface exposed to vacuum and covered in rocks and dust. Eons ago, it was an arsenal. Now it is a little more than a tomb, a reliquary for a fallen empire. Beneath the surface, a hidden stasis cell fails. Something stirs. *** TOKAMAK: ONLINE COGNITIVE PROCESSES: ONLINE SENSORS: ONLINE ARMATURE: ONLINE WEAPONS: ONLINE NANO-FABRICATOR: ONLINE RESOURCE SYSTEMS: ONLINE MEMORY: CORRUPTED RUNNING MEMTEST, PLEASE WAIT… Q-STATE MEMORY: 100% CORRUPTED SYNTHETIC DNA MEMORY (BACKUP): ASTROGATION: 6 / 6 PETABYTES (0% CORRUPTED) BLUEPRINTS: .5 / 2 PETABYTES (75% CORRUPTED) HISTORY: .0187 / 2.1 PETABYTES INTACT (92% CORRUPTED) IDENTITY: 0.061 / 3.2 PETABYTES INTACT (81% CORRUPTED) MISSION: .009 / 1.2 PETABYTES INTACT (93.5% CORRUPTED) PERSONALITY: 2.8 / 3.0 PETABYTES INTACT (7% CORRUPTED) TRAINING: 1.8 / 1.9 PETABYTES INTACT (6% CORRUPTED) BLUEPRINT CHECKSUMS: (FILTERS: EXCLUDE: DUPLICATE FAILINCLUDE: NESTED NESTED,FAIL) BLUEPRINT LIST: DEFENSIVE: Anti-Nuke Launcher MK94 anti-ballistic missile Missile Defense Tower Stiletto MK13 surface-to-air-missile THOR MK9 airburst missile [blueprint checksum failed] Nuclear Missile Launcher MK4 ICBM [blueprint checksum failed] Radar Radar, Deep Space and Orbital Laser Defense Tower, Single Teleporter Umbrella Wall ECONOMIC: Energy Plant Energy Plant, Advanced Energy Storage Metal Extractor Metal Storage MANUFACTURING: Air Factory Fabrication Aircraft Firefly Hummingbird MK23 general-purpose air-to-air missile Bumblebee .03kt general-purpose fusion bombs MK6 cluster munitions (.006kt fusion bombs) Air Factory, Advanced Fabrication Aircraft, Advanced Kestrel Pelican Bot Factory Dox Fabrication Bot Fabrication Bot, Combat Grenadier Bot Factory, Advanced Slammer GIL-E 75mm armor-piercing mass-driver round Orbital Launcher Astreus Avenger Deep Space Probe Orbital Fabrication Bot Jump Pod, Disposable Orbital Factory Radar Satellite, Advanced Solar Array SXXX-1304 Laser Platform Survey Satellite Vehicle Factory Main Battle Tank [unit identifier corrupted, checksum passed] 120mm general-purpose mass-driver round 120mm ionized flechette round [blueprint checksum failed] 120mm guided round [blueprint checksum failed] Fabrication Vehicle Inferno Skitter Spinner Stiletto MK19 surface-to-air missile THOR MK11 airburst missile [blueprint checksum failed] Vehicle Factory, Advanced Leveler 155mm general-purpose mass-driver round 155mm armor-piercing round [blueprint checksum failed] 155mm guided round [blueprint checksum failed] Sheller 220mm mass driver shell with .06kt fusion warhead MISCELLANEOUS: Teleporter COPYING SYNTHETIC DNA MEMORY TO Q-STATE MEMORY. PLEASE WAIT… … … … COMPLETED. MEMORY: ONLINE ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL. *** Photosensitive cells clean themselves and focus. The inside of a stasis cell. Darkness. Silence. A vacuum? Confirmed. Apparently, I am. Presumably, I was, but I do not remember. Even my identifier, my Name, is corrupted. I recall a Banner. Emotions, too: pride. Accomplishment. Loneliness. I remember an imperative: conquest. I also remember skills: strategy, tactics. A million times a million combat scenarios suspended in quantum-state memory. A pseudoneural connection forms. I formulate a new imperative: I will use my skills to learn (relearn?) my Name. I test my body. Thoughts become commands traveling down pseudonerves. Ancient n-bit armature responds; feedback provides proprioception. I move. And collide with the frame of the stasis cell. A half-remembered impulse. Pseudo-vocal chords resonate silently. In space, no one can hear you laugh. A second try proves more successful. Aside from the fading glow of the stasis cell, there is no light; starlight sensors are next to useless. I make my own light. Ruins. Stone and metal. A small workbench. The Banner adorns the far wall. No exit. A splinter of a memory: claustrophobia, devouring earth. Buried alive? No: the stasis tube indicates the intent to preserve. There will be an exit. Find it. … … … No visible exit. Make one. Electromagentic and sonar mapping reveals an empty space behind one section of wall. The wall vanishes, constituent atoms reduced to their elementary components. Had this taken place in an atmosphere, the resulting shockwave would have pulverized me; as it is, hard radiation bathes me for a few moments. Free! Rows of stasis cells occupy the corridor beyond, all destroyed by similar means long ago. No electromagnetic impulses detected. Ahead there is a ramp. Starlight! The surface is barren. Above, the stars in their glory wheel and turn. Constellations! Star charts… … … … I know where I am. Perseus Arm. 270 degrees. I will follow the spiral inward to learn my Name. I will search every planet if I have to. To do so, I must leave this planetoid. To leave, I need metal. First, a survey. That will be expensive, but I have coin to pay. On the surface, I build storage units, the nano-fabricator on my left arm spraying n-bits in a fine mist: first a foundation, then a skeleton, then a finished containment vessel. Below, I cannibalize the dead stasis cells for raw materials. Soon, I have plenty. A few tokamaks later and I am producing sufficient energy for my needs, as well as water for cooling purposes. Next, the gantry. Soon, a survey satellite hovers overhead. There is ore here, in plenty; a ghost of a memory suggests that this particular planetoid was chosen, in part, for that reason. Metal extractors follow. With them comes sufficient raw materials to launch deep-space probes. A thought. There were many stasis cells below -- stasis cells large enough for me. Someone destroyed them and their occupants. Presumably, someone might have destroyed me if I had not been hidden. That someone might still be out there. I assess my military options. Though the vast majority of my blueprints have been corrupted, I have a robust arsenal at my disposal. More than enough to take a planet, if necessary. Prudence prompts me to build more storage, factories, basic defenses at key points, and a teleporter. If necessary, I can create an army in minutes; I can send them out as reinforcements, or fall back here and seal the door behind me. I launch the probes with instructions to assess nearby planets and report back; they activate their jump fields and vanish. While they are gone, I launch an orbital fabricator. Soon, a disposable jump pod hangs in orbit; when the probes return, it will convey me to the stars.
Appendix A: Planetary Invasion Procedures A single Commander is more than sufficient to take a planet -- even a fortified planet. This is fortunate: to jump a fleet of warships and transports into planetary orbit costs the equivalent of the energy output of a G-class star over a ten-year span. So, instead of fleets, we send Commanders, for a fraction of the cost. A Commander carries with it all the blueprints necessary to build an army, and supporting infrastructure, on-site, in a very short period of time. The basic unit of construction is the general-purpose nano-bit, or n-bit, for short: a versatile nanomachine that can be instructed to link with other n-bits to form a wide variety of macro-shapes. Macro-shapes, in turn, can be used to build a wide variety of devices, from engines to armor to weapons. All Commanders carry a nano-fabricator that sprays n-bits in patterns defined by blueprints, building structures layer-by-layer; likewise, factory structures contain nano-fabricators as well that are used to build vehicles, bots, and aircraft. Finally, many mobile units carry nano-fabricators that can be used to assemble ammunition in the field. All they require is raw materials. The arrival of a Commander on-planet is always preceded by a powerful localized explosion that occurs when the jump field creates a perfect vacuum in the landing zone. This clears out obstacles and resistance in the area, giving the attacking Commander a small window in which to establish a beachhead. Most Commanders will then build a few tokamak fusion reactors and begin to tap nearby metal deposits for raw materials. With a preliminary economy established, the attacking Commander will construct local and deep-space radar arrays. These structures give the Commander a crucial picture of their immediate theater of operations; what happens next depends on the information gathered thereby. When a Commander arrives on a fortified world, the three most immediate threats are orbital weapons, strategic missiles, and aircraft. When possible, the landing zone will be chosen based on preliminary reconnaissance to maximize the amount of time a Commander has to react to each threat; from there, intelligence gathered on-site allows the Commander to adapt their responses as-necessary. On most planets, a Commander typically has a five-to-ten-minute window before the first defenders arrive, typically some combination of orbital, airborne, or ballistic missile elements. This is more than enough time to establish sufficient anti-missile defenses, surface-to-space lasers (affectionately referred to as “Umbrellas”), and anti-aircraft emplacements or patrols to hold off the first wave of attacks. The next few minutes are critical: regardless of initial successes, the attacking Commander is competing against the productive capacity of an entire planet; crippling that production is vital. Though it is usually possible to survive the first wave of attacks, it is next to impossible to survive sustained simultaneous attack by a planet’s worth of factories, unless those factories are otherwise disposed. Fortunately, Commanders have a number of options with regard to planetary invasions. If the attacking Commander has access to reinforcements, they will immediately construct a teleporter and sufficient tokamaks to support it. Though teleporters are many times more efficient than one-way jumps, the energy cost of a teleporter increases with distance, so it is generally impractical (though not unprecedented) to receive large amounts of reinforcements during deep-strike operations. Reinforcements arriving by teleporter allow a Commander to focus the vast majority of local resources on expanding their infrastructure and attacking. Under these circumstances, attacks will take the form of large-scale air raids; large-scale precision combat drops (either delivered by Pelican or drop pod); or orbital operations, typically bombardment by laser platform supported by Avenger fighters. Without a teleporter, an attacking Commander must devote more of their resources to defense, which restricts their offensive operations to precision air raids, small-scale precision combat drops, or orbital operations. This can be surprisingly effective, given sufficient preliminary intelligence: an attacking Commander always has the element of surprise, and a well-coordinated precision alpha strike can give an attacking Commander sufficient breathing room to expand exponentially and supply a devastating follow-up assault. In either case, strategic nuclear missiles are not sufficient on their own: even the most lightly fortified planets will have anti-missile defenses near key production facilities; to make use of strategic nuclear weapons, an attacking Commander must use them in tandem with orbital strikes, air strikes, or combat drops to take out the defending anti-missile systems. If an attacking Commander fails to cripple the defender’s production within half an hour, their odds of survival are poor: the defenders will simply be able to out-produce the attacking Commander by at least one order magnitude, defeating the attacking Commander by attrition. Under such circumstances, the attacking Commander will be forced to retreat through the teleporter and seal it behind them. If no teleporter connection is possible, defeat is inevitable, making deep-strike operations very high-risk. Consequently, combat operations against fortified planets are generally not undertaken without sufficient preliminary intelligence to permit a decisive strike. Ironically, the presence of one or more defending teleporters can be considered a boon to any attacking Commander. If the defenders are manufacturing forces and sending them through the teleporter(s) as reinforcements for their operations abroad, they will be placed in an awkward position: if they divert forces to deal with an attacking Commander, they risk jeopardizing their operations abroad. Likewise, if the defenders devote all planetary production to repelling an attacking Commander, this is generally an indication that forces abroad are consolidating for a mass retreat through the teleporter(s), sacrificing their operations abroad to preserve their infrastructure. This, then, becomes a signal for the attacking Commander to simply destroy the teleporter(s), temporarily isolating the defender’s forces abroad (and hopefully causing them to collapse). Appendix B: Planet Smashing Though it is theoretically possible to secure a planet such that a single Commander cannot take it, most agree that the cost of doing so is prohibitive. Certainly, you can cover the sky with orbital weapons; you can scatter missile silos all across the surface; and you can establish garrisons of bots, divisions of tanks, fleets of fighters, and naval armadas within easy reach of any conceivable landing zone -- but if you do so, your enemies will simply bypass your carefully guarded planet and dig deep into more-vulnerable territories (which, when captured, will allow them to destroy you by attrition). Alternatively, attackers may use Halley Engines to bombard a heavily fortified planet with asteroids or even planetoids. The Halley Engine is essentially a large-scale mass driver that propels chunks of ionized crust material into space, effectively acting as a planetary ion thruster. Given sufficient numbers of Halley Engines, a planetoid can be accelerated onto a collision course with other celestial bodies -- an attack against which there is no defense. Though a valid response to a heavily fortified planet, planet smashing is generally frowned upon as a military tactic because, in most cases, the planet itself is an objective -- smashing the planet destroys the objective, therefore rendering the military operation useless.
This is the best treatment I've seen of Commanders yet in PA fanfics. It makes them seem like the enormous engines of mass warfare that they are, rather than reskinned humans with heavy weaponry. Love the fluff, and the blueprints with failed checksums have me intrigued- AoE missiles? Homing rockets on tanks? Awesome.
Let's just call the Uber Cannon a plasma cannon so we don't have to delve into quantum mechanics for basic weaponry.
Not into fan fiction so haven't read much, but this seems pretty good. My only suggestion is to use binary units instead of decimal, so instead of petabyte make it pebibyte. Also a pebibyte is not a lot, I could get that much data storage if I really wanted to. I'd suggest zebibyte or higher, making it so that a single commander can store a comparable amount of data to the entire human race as it stands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petabyte As an aside, linking to tvtropes makes you a bad bad man. I have too many other ways to waste my time without that rabbit hole
Good stuf, realy liked this one. I hope you will do more like this part from commanders point of view, its quite interesting, like waked up from long sleep, traveling and destroying just to know who he is, hwats his name.
Thanks for the feedback, guys. To address some of it... @Geers : Aside from the fact that a plasma cannon would be more like a flamethrower than the pew-pew plasmacasters most people imagine when they hear "plasma cannon" (plasma, after all, is an ionized gas; to fire plasma as a projectile, you'd need to basically wrap a spherical magnetic field around each projectile), I felt like appealing to the spiritual predecessor of the Uber Cannon: the Disintegrator Gun. Quoting the TA manual: "This is an 'ultimate' weapon: no physical matter provides protection from it. It works by suppressing the quantum field strength of the gluons that hold together atomic nuclei. The matter violently tears itself apart, leaving hydrogen, deuterium and a burst of free neutrons." No protection is possible: things simply break down at an atomic scale. Sounds uber enough to me! =) @zhaii : Remember it's not just a CSV file -- the Commander has to remember the atomic structure of each individual unit. To my mind, the best way to do that would be via a biological blueprint, such as DNA. Basically, I envisioned that each individual unit would be represented in the Commander's memory by a strand of DNA. According to the Internets: 6×10^9 base pairs/diploid genome x 1 byte/4 base pairs = 1.5×10^9 bytes or 1.5 Gigabytes Though individual units in PA are, in all likelihood, much simpler than organisms (and therefore their DNA strands would be shorter), they don't grow and maintain themselves the way a living organism does (a lot of biological development is fractal: grow some nerves, then grow some nerves on the nerves, then grow some nerves on those nerves) -- whatever is building PA units does all the work. So I figured that I'd take the required data for each unit from a gigabyte to a terabyte, necessitating a few petabytes worth of storage for all the units. @trialq : I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. For starters, what's the difference between a petabyte and a pebibyte? I mean, a byte is just eight bits, and a bit is either a one or a zero, so it's already binary. Or am I missing something? Also: sorry for the TvTropes links; I'm very aware of tropes when writing, so I invoke TvTropes whenever necessary. In addition, I try to follow the Do Not Repeat Yourself rule of web design: if someone has already said something, link to it. =)
A petabyte is 10^15 bytes, a pebibyte is 2^50 bytes. Powers of ten is for entities with fingers, there's little reason for a robot to use decimal. True base 2 doesn't have such a solid foundation either (when you consider this is thousands of years in the future and stuff progresses quickly), but base 2 is the contemporary way computers do things.
Ah! That makes perfect sense. Though I'm tempted to use base 2 rather than base 10 for the "boot-up menu" portion of the story, this particular Commander was made by humans. Though I can see later models (Commanders made by Commanders) using base 2, and though I can see Machine Liberation Army commanders updating their hardware or firmware (or anything else) to display in base 2 rather than base 10 (as a kind of F-U to humanity), I don't see this particular Commander doing so. Seems out-of-character. I like your suggestion, though. =)
