Pondering...

As with everyperson on this board, I have made some plugs (most of which were failures). I have an idea which I think would make an interesting plug (slightly derived from an idea I was working on with Jorinn (a.k.a. Celtic Starbase) God knows how many years ago :

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Confed/Rebel war rages on blahblahblah

MegaCorporations (Atinoda, Astex) are gettting out of hand. Artemis group ( Remember the Lucas "T.A.G., You're it !" mission set ?) hiring mercenaries to destroy dangerously powerful ship and weapon prototypes as well as keeping the pirates in check

Major Surprise, Aliens are back ! (it's a cliche at this stage) But they are a mere shadow of the ships of terror that were encountered in the Great War
But...
In the middle of the Great war the Confeds sent out a huge group of the best scientists,pilots and engineers to create a heavily defended research base around the back of Alien territory, to study their weapons etc.. They were last seen heading out towards the Serpens Nebula and were presumed dead...
They are not...

They have made some major advances in research (They have no war to worry about), making all existing Confederate technology obselete. (let us call them "Plop's" for the purpose of this conversation
The Plop's push the remaining, recovering aliens into Confederate territory where they are slaughtered but with loss of life on both sides.

Then they hit... They captured New Britain and took the Confederation by surprise.
Feeling pity for the rebels they join them and the Confederation is slowly in the process of being beaten.The Confederation is joined (reluctantly) by part of the Artemis group, keen to keep a galactic harmony.
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What do you think ?

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Wham!Man - The original and still the best
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"The past is history, the futures a mystery. Today is a gift, that's

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Originally posted by Wham!Man:
What do you think ?

The "Confederation scientists beat the aliens and join the Rebels" thing has been done before (although not very well), but you could probably come up with a good plugin from this.

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://members.aol.com/darthur1/talon-ev/")Talon Plugin for the original Escape Velocity(/url)

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Originally posted by David Arthur:
**The "Confederation scientists beat the aliens and join the Rebels" thing has been done before (although not very well), but you could probably come up with a good plugin from this.
**

The idea is fine, but I have a problem with the underlying?sp? assumption about human psychology and motivation. I always assumed the EV universe was much larger than what was visible, and simply hadn't been explored.

If these Confed scientists and their offspring have been isolated from the rest of the human universe for a while, it makes sense that they have no problem in attacking Confed ships. Why attack, though? There's a whole universe to settle. Humans are like water and take the path of least resistance. I'd think it'd take more energy and resources to conquor inhabited space vs settling virgin planets.

Of course, if there were political, religious, or cultural reasons for attacking settled human space, then I'd buy it. Here's a potential subplot that might explain at least some motivations:

The original Confed research group had the additional mandate that they were to remain isolated in the fears that the aliens would totally overrun human space. Humanity must survive. They've been monitoring events in the rest of human spac, particularly the civil war. A renouned writer in the--what's you call them? the Plop? Anyway, a renouned essayest among the Plop writes a piece experssing his belief that the current war raging in the rest of human space is a threat to humanity as a whole. Not that the war will eradicate the species--there are too many settled planets for that. Instead, he feels that continued warfare will stop humans from moving from planet to planet. This self imposed isolation of planetary populations and planetary groups (Rebellion vs Confed planets) would eventually lead to divergent evolution and could make the species splinter into visibly different, hostile groups. This would take hundreds and thousands of years to happen, but the original mandate of the group was to safeguard "humanity", so it was their duty to bring order to all of human settled space.

At the time of the writing, the neutral systems between the Rebellion and Confed systems acted as genetic gobetweens. If the neutral systems began to disappear through alliance or conquest, the writer fears the results.

A decade after writing his famous essay, the neutral systems do being to be absorbed by the dominant powers. The writer's essay, already well accepted, begins to become official policy. The political and military arm of the Plop first drive the reminants of the alien forces into human space in the hopes it will unite the warring human factions. When that didn't work, they chose to intervene diretly in a war of conquest.

What they didn't realize was just how powerful their technology had become. They succeeded in uniting the warring human groups, but they have, ironicly created another set of two isolated groups of humans in which genetic drift had already begun.

While watching events in the rest of human settled space, they did not think about their own isolation and the impact it was having of their genetic makeup. After several decades there are indicators that the Plop, as a population, have begun to diverge from the rest of the human populations.

Within the Plot are factions that do not think divergence is bad, and promote settlement of virgin planets by small populations of Plot so accelerate local divergence.

So, what you'd end up with is an uneasy alliance between the Confed, Rebellion, and Artemis group against the Plop. The Plop are themselves dealing with internal divisions bewteen Purist and Divergent groups. The Purist/Divergent conflict could lead to civil war eventually, but not for at least 200 years.

Of course, the Plop could just be led by a powerhungry leader.... 🙂

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"Christ, what if the terrorists' base of operations turns out to be Detroit? Would we declare war on the state of Michigan? I suppose we'd have to." -U.S. Sen. John McCain, misquoted in (url="http://"http://www.theonion.com")"The Onion"(/url)

(This message has been edited by seant (edited 10-21-2001).)

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Originally posted by Wham!Man:
**< snip>
**

The plot sounds to me a lot like that of the battletech universe. A splinter group of humans leaves for uncharted space thought never to be heard from again while really their just advancing technologically. Meanwhile, back at home, wars ravage and technology goes no where. Eventually the splinter group comes and immediately attacks the home group. Those who were formerly at war with each other must suddenly unite to destroy a new and more powerful common enemy.

just sounds a little familiar only with aliens this time. 😉

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(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/thorprime")NovaBurst Home(/url)

(This message has been edited by ThorPrime (edited 10-21-2001).)

Some people are a little confused...
""The "Confederation scientists beat the aliens and join the Rebels" thing has been done before ""

It's acttualy more like :
HUMAN Splinter group (this was in the middle of the Great War) disappear. Human Splinter Group attack the Confederation for never looking, never caring. They believe themselves to be the dominant race culturally and techcnology and decide to "ethnically cleanse" (so to speak) the deceitful and Corrupt "Confederation". They take pity on the Rebels who they believe to be on the right track (ethically) and decide they need a helpful hand. The Artimos Group (hope thats the right name) are keen to keep Galactic Harmony...but to what end ??

Anyone think of a decent name for the "Plops" ?
Besides :
United Earth
Federation of something or other
Conderate,Confederation etc...
Union of something or other.

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Wham!Man - The original and still the best
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"The past is history, the futures a mystery. Today is a gift, that's