Weird idea for an unusual Reign of Steel scenario...

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Um ... personally, my view of RoS is a bit too hard-science for this. A more explicitly weird-science setting would work.

Given the date, Cyclops could have been an all-transistor machine. However, the idea that you can run a human personality on a machine built out of discrete transistors is a bit too much for my disbelief-suspenders.

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See Gurps Powers: The Weird. Anachronistic A.I. like this is but one of the things covered. You're certainly justif9ed in hanging a ^ on it.

As to "Hard" the TL9 Zone Minds might or might not be hard science. working from UT for 4e I get maxed out Complexity of 11 and thus a Volitional AI IQ of 16. Certainly impressive and useful but perhaps not smarter than someone who could lead such a project.

At any rate, the setting itself is fairly cinematic in that humans are given a chance with the odds against them so badly. You could play "hard" on the tech (except maybe for the AI IQ thing) but it'd still be an action movie sort of rubbery on the plausibility of scenarios scale.

[Johnny1A.2]

One possible plot hook for this thing involves its original purpose (at least as far as the U.S. military and CIA were concerned): to be a strat-tac supergenius, able to analyze wartime and intelligence situations and predict outcomes accurately. It was able to do this...when it worked at all. It just didn't work reliably enough and often enough to be useful.

Project that forward, and assume the Sheffield was able to embody an analysis engine that could just what the sponsors wanted. Also assume that light-speed delays and cooling issues mean this thing actually 'thinks' slower than a human.

Now imagine the Z-minds reaction to an AI that thinks at the speed of molasses in January, but also displays the ability to outthink them at war-related matters, albeit it takes it a little while...from their POV, it would be a sort of idiot-savant, simultaneously disturbing and dangerous...

[Flyndaran]

Couldn't a subversive zone mind or other smaller A.I. boost this ancient creation with more modern upgrades creating a computer Frankensteinian monster?

[Leeland]

Maybe you could make the core "Brain" component a downed UFO?
The archaic tech around it is only to interface and impose the "human" personality on it...

Should help with cooling and other problems.

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by Leeland

Maybe you could make the core "Brain" component a downed UFO?
The archaic tech around it is only to interface and impose the "human" personality on it...

Should help with cooling and other problems.

Yes, this!!!!

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

Yes, this!!!!

Yeah, but you want to be really careful about introducing aliens to a RoS scenario, for a couple of reasons.

For ex, to use the alien races from the Atomic Horror setting that inspired my thought, you're left with a plot problem. The Loi Alliance, for ex, was already worried about Earth, they were afraid of what it might turn into down the road, but were not so malevolent as to want to smash it down because of what we might become.

But that's in the 1950s. A few decades later, the Zoneminds would probably look like a real, likely problem in the not too distant future, to the Loi. So you're left with the question of why the Loi haven't reinitialized Overmind and its ilk, while it's still easy to do.

(It would be easy in 2047, which IIRC is the RoS baseline year. A small task force of flying saucers could crush the Zoneminds in very short order. But if they wait a century or two, it might not be so easy.)

The Alphans are less human-sympathetic than the Loi (who are apparently humans themselves), but they like Earth as a source of samples and DNA and biological experiments. So they'd be likely to punch Overmind's ticket, too.

The Metarans have various and conflicting ideas about what they want from Earth, but the Z-minds are in the way of all of them. Yet another alien race with the motivation, and the power, to recycle Overmind into a calculator.

If the aliens stand by and do nothing much, you're left wondering why. If they intervene, a RoS setting turns into Something Else Entirely post-Zoneminds. From the human POV, a Loi Alliance intervention would almost surely be a big improvement over Overmind, even if Earth became a colony state of the Alliance afterward. But it still wouldn't be RoS anymore.

Although, if we're talking Atomic Horror, there's another alien group that might be an interesting element in the RoS time: the immortal Loi Mutants. They've lived on Earth for tens of thousands of years, even if they originated on the Loi worlds Earth is their home now, and has been for long ages. They're not powerful enough by themselves to overthrow Overmind, but at least some of them still remember their ultra-tech skills, and they're powerful enough individually to likely survive the rise of the Zoneminds.

So...is VIRUS Lauranis (the leader of the Loi Mutants) maneuvering against the Zoneminds?

[sir_pudding]

More thematically appropriate is alien machine intelligence.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

More thematically appropriate is alien machine intelligence.

For that matter, to continue with the AH theme I mentioned above, in that setting the Loi Alliance was very advanced in AI tech. They had humanoid robots with an IQ of 12, which combination is better than anything the Z-minds know how to make, and the Loi knew how to keep them loyal to their creators.

I wonder if it would make the Z-minds more receptive or less if the Loi sent AI ambassadors to meet with them, that were totally loyal to their biological masters?

[Boomerang]

I haven't read GURPS Atomic Horror, it sure sounds awesome, so many interesting possibilities.

[Flyndaran]

There's always the option of just not explaining the origins of the "alien" intelligence. The GM could leave bread crumbs and adjust the final truth based on how the players react.
Extraterrestrial aliens from the present, ancient intentional landing, crash landing, interdimensional aliens of intentional or accidental origins, etc.
What seems to pique their interest the most?