Just gotta say, I like this quest enough (and find it interesting enough) that it's the first one I participated in with more than a post or two on the sidelines.

I like the notion of this super-secret AI helping Congress and the Prez run things.

Anonymous 2011/04/17(Sun)03:10 No. 35404 ID: f01ac4
File 130303503555.png - (287.36KB , 1000x634 , NorthernCaliforniaAndregularCalifornia.png )

>>345203
Thank ya, good sir!

Its kinda of weird. I started doing this as a sort of generic sci-fi, Alpha Centari romp, but via the actions of the people, its become something more more interesting and, in my eyes, meaningful.

I'd also like to give some more background on F.R.E.E. (a name I detest, but I couldn't make a good backronym with L.I.B.E.R.T.Y.), but it hasn't really worked itself into the story, yet. Luckily, this gives me more time to flesh out F.R.E.E's origin.

Anyway, just for the fuck of it, here's the location of Northern California (Green) and regular California (Blue)

Also, if anyone is curious

TheOlderOne 2011/04/17(Sun)05:23 No. 35410 ID: 7c1667
File 130304302788.jpg - (77.72KB , 1024x768 , ElectorialOrel.jpg )

Fuck. Not only was I anon at the time, but I also didn't finish whatever the hell it was I was talking about.

Regardless, I want to share an idea with you all that I've been saving for later down the road. I was just going to spring it on you, but I don't think anything of this nature has happened before in any Quest.

I'm talking about having one of the player's become The President! Not for the next four turns, since its only 2019, but still.

Here's an example of what I'm considering. Tell me what you think!

-----

2020 Presidential Election Guidelines!

Rules: People must have a name that they'll use... forever. Unless they're voted out.

It's also probably a good idea to have a picture of some kind and some background history to represent the president you want to play. This isn't a requirement, but it would be nice.

To simplify things, there's no primaries or political parties, allowing as many people whom may be interested to run for the position. If you wish, you can either choose someone who is running to be your vice president or I can NPC the VPrez. Of course, they can deny if they feel that you can't win or that they could win.

In the event of just one president running, he wins by default and I NPC the Vice Prez. If he selects a VP and that person accepts and there's no one else running for president, they both win by default.

If no one runs, I'll NPC a president, who may or may not be a complete dick-hole.

Of course, if there's more than one person wanting to be president, that's when things get interesting. More on that later.

Each person must state their platform. While Leviathan is of a particular interest to everyone, there's also a number of other things that you will need to have an opinion on. After all, you don't want to look a one-note president, do you?

After all the platform's are stated, its straight to election time!

The United States is split into three meta-electorates.

North (Off-White)
South (Red)
West (Blue)

Each region gets one electoral vote. This vote is determined by popular votes by non-presidential candidates (the other folks), who get to vote for each region. They can vote in any matter (be it one for each, one for all of them, two in one and one in another, etc).

Then, the popular vote is tallied. Who ever wins two or more meta-electorates colleges, wins. In the strange event of a three way tie, I have someone IRL pick a number between one and three and whatever they choose determines the president. Just like the 2000 election!

"So, I'm a president. Now what?"

You get the following ~Magical Powers~!

Veto!: If Congress is trying to pass something you don't agree with, tell them no with Veto(tm)! Vetoing a bill means it goes back down to Congress. If they want to pass this bill, they have to 2/3rds of the vote (the number of states-people voting * 0.66666, result is rounded up, if need be). Just to keep the game play interesting, the bill in question can be voted upon until two turns after the bills been veto.

Send in the National Guard!: Hoooly shit! After all these years, the Chicago Cubs have won a World Series! But.. what's this? The celebration is getting ooout of controoool. Send in the National Guard to keep them in line.

War Powers!: Without the authorization of Congress, the president can sent troops aboard to fight in a country for the next turn (so long as by the end of that next turn, they're home/back to a legal US base). Of course, if Congress feels like it, they recognize this act of war and extend this police action for however long the feel like.

Affluence!: Sometimes, someone needs to go out to the public and tell them what's what. Sometimes its the nation, sometimes its some NPC I'm running. Depending on the tone and nature of your words, you could inspire and saw whomever in your direction! Or.. just be a damn goof.

The State of the Union!: Every four turns (at the start of the new year), you get to lay down a plan for Congress and, by proxy, the American public. It also works a little like Affluence, too.

A Harem of Interns!: Each one chubbier and more tempting then the last...

"So, I'm the Vice President. Now what?"

You get the following, less impressive ~Magical Powers!~

T-t-t-t-tie Breaker!: You get to to break any ties the Congress has.

The President is dead. Congratulations, Mr. President!: Whenever a president dies (perhaps shot via an NPC assassination, because they stated that they don't want to do it anymore, or haven't done their duties in 3 days), you get to be the President!

Put on this Wig. No one will know the difference!: If the President hasn't passed a series of bills within six hours (or if they're going somewhere IRL and explicitly stated so), you get the power to pass or veto bills!

Guard This Ashtray!: With. Your. Fucking. Life.

>>345204
North California is best California.
Also, without the ability to steal water from Northern California, people in Southern California would have to give up all their pools and pretty lawns and shit. The place would turn right back into a desert.

>>345210
Oh god. Please do this. PLEASE.

>>345210
Yes, YES.

Do it. Especially once we get more participants, this'll be awesome.
And insane.

>>345217
>>345238
Okay. Will do! It'll be four turns from now, so there's that.

I'm also already thinking about how I should deal with the budget a little more effectively. I don't want to use exact numbers (I suck at math), but I want to have a sense that the bills are actually doing something to this goddamn debt.

Suggestions appreciated.

Also, should each turn be a chapter or should each year be a chapter?

OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU. This is an awesome quest.

Also, I'm definitely running for prez.

Also also, we should try to keep this civil, guys. Let's refrain from ad hominem attacks, yeah? If you want to criticize another candidate's platform, try to attack the core of their arguments, rather than something less relevant. We're all intelligent. We can manage that, yes?

>>345242
I'd say each chapter should be 4 turns, ie one year. About the budget, general percentages might work, I suppose. I'd help, but I'm now knowledgeable enough about the US, its system for the budget and all to do much good, I think.


Now, what could our next action be? We got fixing the debt and budget on the way, as well as getting other nations to work with us regarding Leviathan. Both combined might strengthen the US' diplomatic clout a little, keeping it just long enough from falling out of its superpower status that it might recover.
TAO will ensure good, safe and relatively cheap power for the nation, lessening reliance on oil, coal, gas and the like considerably. With a little luck we might even be able to make every car an electric one.
UPASOW will certainly strengthen the economy long-term, if not short term. It'll probably reduce repeat crimes aand all, which will lessen the strain on the system.

So, what next? I still think the bureaucracy needs to be taken care of, but there's also other issues we might want to look at. Example, public transport: Is there anything large-scale of the sort in the US? Mass transit, public transport, massively important if we want to reduce environmental damage and impact of the US on the world. It's not just the car exhausts, but making the entire car that's so damn damaging. It might, however, damage the car industry. But, German Cars Are Better. In my opinion at least. (The Japanese make good ones, too).
And I wanted to go somewhere with this, but after looking at some Wiki articles and getting sidetracked, I forgot. Damnit.

And the justice system. Oh my god. Millions to be paid by single persons in damage? Insane.
Millions to be paid by companies in damage? Peanuts. The justice system needs something of an overhaul as well, potentially with the entirety of the law. Some ancient ones we can get rid of (No parking elephants on main streets in Florida), other ones we can streamline. Being influenced by the European system, I'd propose we try to get rid of precedents being used so damn much, because a single wrong decision may fuck up the entire process in the future.

Any other current problems you can think of that need fixing?

This probably looks a lot shorter in this tiny box than it will in the normal text field. Damnit, I want a bigger text box. 1920*1080 makes this box tiiiiiiny

>>345294

(The naming system your guys started seems to be good, heh.)

Anyway, I agree that the budget can be represented with percentages. Probably divided into something like Military/National Defence, Medicare/Health, Social Security, Debt repaying costs, income sent to the treasury, etc while ignoring the smaller parts. Maybe give us a chart every 4 turns which shows the percentages we are spending on what and how big our debt is(percentage wise) compared to our yearly income(which would be what we spend).
Not too sure about it though.

I wanted to propose this before, as well, but forgot to pay for my internet, hehe.
I think we should just ditch the Common Law system(the one with precedents) and go over to the Civil Law system(Continental Law). This would, of course, need a lot of the legal system to be rewritten, but it would also make legal education simpler and representation cheaper. It would also help dictate a more orderly social environment, where the importance of judges increases and the importance of juries decreases.
Since the system already exists it would still be easier to implement than correcting the Common Law system.

>>345297
This is a good post and you should feel good.
Feel free to propose the Civil Law and removal of Common Law as bill once we can.

(Naming note, did not notice somebody had already taken Senator M. Going with T, heh.)

Hey, question about the Heim Drive: I remember hearing somewhere that as objects begin to accelerate to relativistic speeds, they begin to take on greater and greater inertia, and that something travelling at c carries inertia equivalent to the entire universe.

If that's true, and if the Heim Drive is actually capable of transporting things faster than the speed of light, then can't we launch a feather travelling at .9999c at the meteor? Theoretically, that should be enough to completely vaporize it into itty bitty little parts.

Also, since we can go faster than the speed of light, we can probably travel backwards in time, because breaking that law of the universe invites an entire clusterfuck in the nature of reality.

Can we get some clear, technical specs on the Heim Drive, please?

>>345331
Not sure about 'inertia equivalent to the entire universe', but the object's mass approaches infinity using conventional acceleration.
The Heim drive may somehow circumvent the energy requirements, but yeah, it'd be really useful to get actual specs for it.

TheOlderOne 2011/04/20(Wed)07:18 No. 35538 ID: ba5e43
File 130330912793.png - (24.58KB , 600x463 , graph.png )

Here is a potential mock-up for the US Budget at the start of 2019. It's partially based in this link I already shared: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html but I expanded upon the numbers a little. I didn't do any research into 'budget trends'. You'd also note I didn't include the amount of income coming into the United States. That'll probably be represented by a second graph I'm making later.

The Heim Drive is, infact, capable of traveling at the speed of light (and beyond) as stated earlier in the quest:

"
>How does the drive function? Is it a jump-style drive? Does it shift matter into another dimension? Does it apply some sort of acceleration to its load?

<Analyzing question. Inferring...> The engine, known by the scientific community as the Heim drive, applies Buckhard Heim's unified field theory to space-travel.

In layman's term, an object is thrust forward by an intense magnetic field. If this magnetic field is large enough, theoretically it could allow the same object to slip into a different dimension where its speed would be faster than that of light.

Because of the potential risk involved to our own planets' electro-magnetic field, researchers have only tested the theoretical engine at 75% the speed of light, though it is accepted throughout the community that it could, at the very least, travel at the speed of light. "

As for technical specs... That is a little difficult, considering I am by no means a scientist (my lack of math skills, periodic dyslexia and general stupidity in the field would drive the folks at NASA wild). BUUUUUUT....

The original engine ran of Plutonium. To propel an object with a mass of one metric ton (including the boosters it would take to launch it into space), it needs three metric tons of Plutonium to force it to eventually travel at .99999c.

Of course, the NEW Heim Engine will now probably run off of Thorium, so the amount of fuel required to move it forward will probably be reduced. By what? I dunno. Not a scientist and horrible at math.

Even with all this stuff, the engine does circumvent a lot of energy requirements and Einstein's pesky theory of relativity. I hate to do this, but.. *handwaves*.

I hope that does answer a lot of your questions though and in turn doesn't alienate any of you fine senators away from this Quest.

As for me, I'm going to do one more update and probably leave it alone for the next day or two.

> 3 metric tons of Pu-235
HOLY FUCKING SHIT. 2.561×10^17 J to accelerate 1 ton to .75c. To put that is perspective, that's like concentrating the entire energy generated by initiating the Tsar Bomba into one object, or the energy output of a small 1st-world country for half a year, or strapping just under 9000 Saturn-5 first stages to the object.
That's still about 1/180th the relativistic KE of a 1 ton at 0.75c (4.6×10^19 J) i.e. the energy needed to accelerate an object to that speed conventionally, so a decent saving in fuel, and two middle fingers and several pelvic thrusts to the law of conservation of energy.

If we use 1/150 is a ballpark for estimating fuel needed to accelerate to non-relativistic speeds, then we could use the Heim drive to save on fuel needed got get stuff to Leviathan and to equalise velocity with it.

TheOlderOne 2011/04/23(Sat)07:50 No. 35639 ID: 3761f0
File 130357020297.jpg - (336.24KB , 900x1200 , 1303122015667.jpg )

It's been updated after a long delay!

I'll be around for a few days as well, but I'm off to WV on Wednesday to visit muh dad and be a general dweeb in coal country.

Also: A picture. Have it.

>>345439
Never look up the story surrounding this comic, or it will be ruined for you forever.

>>345471

I disagree wholeheartedly.

>>345474
minus sucks
it's like calvin and hobbes with none of the ambiguity, charm, or wit
and also calvin is a sociopath

TheOlderOne AKA Mr. Piglet 2011/04/24(Sun)07:45 No. 35681 ID: 0a4b65
File 130365630667.jpg - (48.79KB , 247x222 , 1303570669033.jpg )

It is with heavy heart that I regret to inform you fine folks that I can no longer run A Portrait of the Human Race. There is a myriad of reasons that I've chose to simply close this down instead of continue onward, but the primary ones are this:

I lack the technical and mathematical knowledge to effectively run this quest. This much is obvious to anyone who's read this. Because of this, I've invested a considerable amount of trying to establish a level of realism that is not only I find agreeable, but the audience does as well. Sometimes it worked perfectly while in other instances, it was an astounding failure. Some of the time with little consideration with statements that I made earlier.

I never had a concrete plan. Well, I did. Way back when the objective was to escape the Earth and live elsewhere in the galaxy. (In fact, the idea was going to be that the prologue was going to simply be a series of questions and the real quest would have begun on another planet) I became so attached to this plan, whoever, that when you fine folks suggested blowing Leviathan up, I was stunned and left holding my hat. I never really recovered from that and never established any alternate plan.

You highly intellectual people need someone else more capable running this quest without the hang ups that I have. That's why as of 10:30 AM EST this Easter Day, I resign my post as the runner of the quest. If someone would like to take up the mantle of running this quest or to restart this quest in a different capacity, by all means. I release all ideas and concepts into the public domain so long as its used solely on tgchan.org.

If no one accepts the position by Friday, I will report both of these threads and properly dispose of them in Graveyard.

As for me, I'd like to try a new quest later, though this will be after some significant planning to ensure that only the simplest of arithmetic will be used and all choices will be planned accordingly.

I thank all of you for your time and words of encouragement.

>>345474

I disagree with you. It has a lot more meaning as a kid and their crazy, defiant idea in the face of impending doom than it does as a ridiculous superbeing that probably will literally bat the meteor away. The first is a great comic. The second is a waste of data.

>>345481
Mhm, unfortunate.

While I would like to try my hand at a quest, I'm not sure that my grasp of the English language (being a non-native speaker and all) is sufficient to make it enough fun for everyone to keep posting.

If you have anything about this quest written down in text documents, I would like for you to send it to my e-mail. Perhaps I'll take up the hat and continue, or restart it. I've a few ideas I could try.


Also, T.O.O., I'm sorry.
I was the guy who originally proposed blowing Leviathan up and came with the whole calculation about how many Joule the projectile would have at 75% c.

Dang, that's a shame. I can't politik for shit, so my taking over would only result in "Draw up Detailed Technical Plans for Capture/Deflection of a EO-Intersecting Minor Planet Quest", which has a... decidedly limited appeal outside those who design ED nozzles for fun.

>>345512
>"Draw up Detailed Technical Plans for Capture/Deflection of a EO-Intersecting Minor Planet Quest"
Fund it. That sounds awesome.

>>345481
Aw, bummer, man! I really like your writing style!

How about this? If the readership is agreeable, how about we just word-of-god it and you just write in a bunch of human incompetence/corruption. Get a really evil bastard to sabotage everything beyond our control. That'll force us to play the quest you meant us to play. I'm alright with this, because I want to have you running things.

Basically, just take over, destroy Earth in a cutscene, and start us off either en-route to or at some other planet. Think that'd be agreeable to you?

Bugger.

While I personally lack the scientific know-how to have helped much in the "coming up with ways to blow up giant space rock", I like to think that I knew enough about sociopolitical, economic and military matters to contribute in the more down to earth aspects of this quest.

Also, I liked helping run a country so I am greatly saddened by the fall of this quest.

Good job on it though. For as long as it lasted, it was great fun.

I've emailed Senator W. about the potential of having him run the quest, with some information I was keeping mentally about what was going to transpire during the project. If (s)he choices, they will run quest in my wake and I'll run something different.

Hokay.
I got the email, and am currently debating with myself about running this. I'd like to.
I am, however, not sure whether to continue TheOlderOne's, or restart the entire thing. I'd alos like to note this would be my first quest. on this site. Ha. Always a first time and all. Worst that can happen is that I fail.
Anyways! I'd like for the people who're interested in this to voice their thoughts about continuing, or restarting. In the latter case, you'd get to choose the nation again, with a thing or two in the world potentially changed.

>>345594
While I like the current setting and how things have been going so far, I think that if you wish to take over this quest/concept, you should do it from scratch.

This would allow you to follow a similar path, but would remove any constrictions that would prevent your first quest from going like you want it to. Nothing would, of course, stop you from using this quest as a reference point on how things are likely to go.

>>345595
Hear hear! As this fine gentleman says.

Very well, then. I shall try and make a new thread once I got a thing or two sorted out.