For Backers Only: Faction #1 Faction Naming Poll

Really?

Total annihilation had underlying themes of the potential implications of transhumanism, fighting for individuality against conformity and the nature of humanity. With its more substantial story, SupCom had rather dark themes of slavery, racism, religious dogmatism, rebellion and the potential for AI's to betray us... not to mention weapons of mass destruction.

Black Sun was not something that pooped out rainbows.

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TA and SupCom were simple. Didn't mean they were brainless.

The TA universe was consistent & relatable; the two sides had clear & plausible motives for war, and nothing really felt out of place. Roman influences on robots, however, seems almost cartoony.

I have to agree I don't really like this direction. I'd even prefer the "Machines" storyline, which (as in TA) didn't try to do anything more complex than set up a reason for war (TA had the added bonus of being incredibly deep & ideological, while still extremely simple).

The problem is, nothing is either right or wrong when it comes to subjective enjoyment of a medium. You can stipulate something is of a low quality and even provide sources that back up your arguments.

But people are always going to disagree, and you can't always dismiss them without calling them inferior in some way (not saying that you do, it's just hard to put someone's subjective argument down). It's why people often agree to disagree on such things.

Instead of claiming that they are right until proven wrong

It's ok Gorbles, you don't have to accept that I'm right. I won't force you. If you want to disregard all of the points that I bring up in my posts to back up my position as well as following a line of logic, that's ok too. If all you want to do is pop into a thread every now and then and remind people of the blindingly obvious fact that I'm self assured and have a holier than thou attitude most of the time, that's your call.

I have never hidden the fact that I'm an arse when it comes to valuing everyone's opinions equally.
But you're a broken record Gorb. You're not telling the people anything they didn't already know.

I personally don't see the exact problem you're trying to outline.

For every option you can invent multiple reasons. I am convinced that the reason for picking this name will be made clearer once the choice is made. However, if lore-guy has to put up a small story for each name, you still have a ton of variables and they don't necessarily all make sense. Nor will they remotely be as meaningful as when a complete choice has been made.

I've picked all my choices with a complete picture in mind, and a complete idea of why this has been done. It doesn't mean others think the same: it's clear most people go for "ohh shiny". I prefer Pax machina, with the leader called Terminus. Why? because i feel that this guy is a patriot. Someone who saw a danger others did not see, and acts. He conquers, but not for the sake of conquering: he does it out of defense. He felt Terminus was appropriate because he's the center of the organization and essentially a "road stone": a point of familiarity, connection, recognition.

Someone else sees it differently, and i think putting in complete stories is just reducing the creativity of the people who vote.

You misunderstand. It's not about the names. It's about the lore behind those names being incongruous. I have no particular gripe with the names themselves beyond them being just another facet of the Planet of Hats trope.

I have a problem with an advanced AI being, whom is the leader of a faction of other Commanders and should be able to explain his reasoning based upon his experiences... waking up with laser-guided amnesia.

I have a problem with said advanced AI being searching his memory banks for a symbol of pride and fear, just so happening to pull the Roman Empire, specifically after the Marian reforms, out of that oh so trope-filled hat.

It's contrived. This is, in my opinion, a decision on the level of the Cybran-o-saurus Rex; the 'cool' name was thought up first and a backstory was built around it. Same deal here, Space Romans are 'cool' so they built a Commander who is basically a Space Roman. How is it that an AI was able to identify with an Terran empire, that at this point must be at least several thousands of years in the past?

Amnesia and 'luck of the draw'.

... ... ...

I'm going to have to reserve judgment on the lore so far.

At the moment, the commander seems fairly human in terms of it's motivation. Or rather, a specific stereotyping of some humans. At least that's my feelings from the lore read so far. To me, that humanity is somehow dissonant with the idea that this is an advanced AI. I expect it to have motivations, desires, and dislikes like a human would, I just don't personally like the idea that those motivations, desires, and dislikes are relatable to from a human standpoint, when the thing possessing them isn't human. Hence why the whole Space Romans thing feels a bit off to me.

I understand why it's written this way. Writing the motivations of a non-human actor is staggeringly difficult, as most writers have had many years experience being a human, and find it difficult to shake off the particular world view that this inherits. There are so many basic assumptions about how we view reality that it is almost impossible to disengage from, as it is the only experience we have. This means that even if a writer can conceive of some truly unique way of thinking about the world, then they will have an immense difficulty in communicating it to their audience in a comprehensible way.

However, i don't necessarily think that the present lore is bad. Merely that it will need some excellent quality writing to make the best of it. For a relevant example, i would like to cite the Robots of Penrose books by Tony Ballantyne. It takes place on a distant world full of ridiculously human robots. They have emotions just as humans do, various political systems, references to historical humans (places like "Turing City") and they even have male and female robots. Yet, there are no humans around, and the robots appear to have no knowledge of humanity. Reading it is downright odd at first. I cannot say why this book series works so well without spoiling it, but I will say that the whole point of the series (so far) is about why the robots appear so human in the conspicuous absence of humanity.

And if this is where the lore in PA is going, then I can see a lot of potential. Why does the commander have an individual personality like us? Why not some sort of hive mind or distributed consciousness? Why does it identify with ancient Rome? Why does it fear the progenitors? Why is it even capable of fear? These are questions that could have interesting and enriching explanations, if a fundamental premise to this work is why do these commanders have any shred of humanity whatsoever?

If this question is brushed under the carpet, then I believe that the lore of PA will be the worse for it. Massive obvious questions are raised, and they need to be addressed, if not necessarily answered. However, if this is a central theme to the history of the PA universe, then it could be interesting. And considering that TA itself had a central theme as "Is a human defined by the hardware that their personality runs on?", I still have high hopes for this being an engaging story.

I get that at least some of the commanders have been built to the pattern of a humanoid.

But:

• At what point was decided that these humanoids had been humans?
• Why did the commander unit have access to the whole Wikipedia with information on earths history, but couldn't remember anything from the time before its deactivation? Not even Wikipedia entries for the last years of the war?
  
• Why would the commander look out for a visual symbol? Visuals are not the primary sense of any robot, either tactile or electronic pattern would have been chosen.
• We are talking about AIs with unlimited connectivity. Why would one unit become a leader? A hivemind is far more likely.
• How did a chemical analysis reveal radioactive isotopes?
• Why would a mechanical unit even THINK about organics like grass or flowers?
• How did the AI end up on a volcanic planet when it was attacked by tentacles?
• Covered under a deep layer of volcanic ash and deactivated for a long time, but there are still burning wreckages all over the pace?

That story has so many plotholes and explains so little about the universe. Pretty much feels like someone had overwritten the whole memory unit of the AI with a documentation about the roman empire on purpose.

But while this story reveals only so little about the universe, it also puts a lot of unnecessary constraints on further stories, like enforcing humans as an essential part of the galaxies history.

The interesting questions are:

• Why are there no dominant organic species left in the galaxy?
• Why are there different models of commanders, not all humanoid, but only one set of blueprints for units across all factions?
• Why is aggressive expansion important for commanders? Do they even have a free will? Or are they just high developed von-Neumann-machines?
  
• Why would commanders aim for the same solar systems when there are so many other? Are they somehow bound to something like the Ley lines for interstellar teleport?
• Why is there only one instance of each commander on the battlefield, but they keep returning from the dead all the time?
• Was there only one or multiple dominant organic species in the galaxy?
• What will happen when one faction controls the galaxy?

Well, it's probable that it comes from the PreVis when 'The Age of Humanity' was mentioned. Humanity being the central driving force in the universe (even if it's over now) is something that most people take as a given.

Humanity by and large, has a massive ego.

Honestly, I'm a little tired of names regarding Roman Empires etc. although at least we haven't gone with United Federation of Earth Defenders Alliance as too many sci-fi games go down the route of - honestly I would prefer something a little more snappy, original, although I'm not amazingly imaginative myself, something like "The Edict" springs to mind

I would just like to point out that "Pax Machina", from my under standing of latin, actually means something more along the lines of "Machine Peace" rather than "Machine of Peace", which would be rendered something like "Pacis Machina".

I would argue that laser-guided amnesia on a robot is just about a million times more probable than on a human, depending on the architecture of his brain.

In general however, i do not believe that this is a "hard" space roman. It's a machine with Google in his head. Google "empire" and the odds are in favor of the Roman empire. besides, we don't know the intactness of his memory in general, and it's possible the only documentation of humanity he has IS the roman empire.

It does raise a ton of questions about what Uber wants, and to be frank, i would prefer if factions 2-4 had a bit more flesh to them before we got to pick.

You're not the first, you're not the last.

Still not a unique and Advanced AI being that has been shaped by its experiences. Now it's "just a machine with google in its head".

... Inspiring.

A testable thought experiment!

Turns out, that if the commander had a copy of google in it's head, it would now be opening up a cinema chain.

Scrolling down until the first political empire is found, the first candidate appears to be the British Empire.

Time to get lathing up that top-hat.

Don't forget the monocle!


Mike

Somehow, I knew that picture would be brought up. Never-the-less, this does not stop my burning, insatiable need to possess such a dapper commander.

Somehow, only slightly more ridiculous than what's on offer so far.

When will the poll end?

I really do need glasses 26th of September

Better not use Imperium (empire) since Games Workshop is like to sue. I wish I was kidding but they file lawsuits for everything. They even once tried to claim they had sole rights to the term "space marine".