Probe penetrates the atmosphere. 72%
Twilight gave her order, but it wasn’t as though that meant for an instant delivery of all the answer they wanted. They sent off their command, and then began another long period of silence while they all waited to know what would become of the probe.
No one got anything done, not even Spike. To the extent that Spike could get anything done anymore. Twilight knew better than to ask him. Twilight took the time she had to make a brief tour around the Equinox, catching up with what many of her crew had done. Even if she’d given them free reign, she wanted to get an impression of what resources they would have going forward.
She found Node had completely taken over Spike’s workshop. What the dragon had accomplished by ruthless trial and error, assembling from barely-related parts, Node had cleaned up and ordered into something incredible.
The computer fabrication ran quietly, spinning wire-thin circuits around a sphere like a knitter assembling a ball of yarn. Twilight leaned in, looking down at whatever it was creating. Gold and coper and aluminum went in, along with silicon, and only the sphere came out, along with lots and lots of metal scrap and waste acid.
Expensive hobby you have.
Less expensive was the metal skeletons Node had already covered with layers of some kind of dense silicon foam in a pink shade like some ponies under their coats.
Muscles connected one bone to another, muscles of a strange black fiber that another machine quietly spun from silicon, acid, and a carbon brick.
“It’s terrifying, isn’t it?” Spike’s voice asked, coming from one of the nearby speakers. “Node can be insufferable sometimes, but some of what she says is true. Getting her memories back didn’t make her worse at this, it made her much better. If Equestria had one creature like her…”
Twilight raised a wing. She wasn’t sure which of the cameras Spike might be using to watch, but clearly he saw, because he did stop. “Too late for the signalers to save us now, Spike. There might not even be an Equestria anymore. And if there is, it might be here.”
“If there is… we kinda did what we said we would,” Spike said. “In a way. We made first contact, and we might be bringing them back with us. Maybe Node is what saves Equestria.”
“No,” Twilight argued. “Node might help, but it would be us who saved anything. We got here on our own. We survived Proximus B, we survived Cozy Glow. Node barely even answered our questions.”
She stopped, leaning over the table at the strange metal skeleton. “What is this?”
“The Ancients,” Spike answered. “Or what they looked like when they had bodies. The Contingency contains a… simulated world, built for creatures like this. All that’s missing is the fleshy bits, and the brain. You see the first one growing near the wall there.”
“Why?”
There was no longer a way to watch Spike, and see what he might be thinking. She only had his words to go on. “Because Node wants her old body back. She has convinced me that it would be easiest to give me a body to control if I allowed for something less familiar in the short term. Once I had something, I could help build something more familiar. Though building a body like my old one would be… impossible.”
“So you’ll be alive again!” Twilight exclaimed, grinning.
“No,” Spike said flatly. “I would exist within the mainframe. Controlling the body would require proximity. I don’t want to be removed from the Equinox. There’s so much space in here. It isn’t the body I’m used to. But I can do more for everypony with the ship. I can react much faster than you can. I will remain where I am.”
Twilight didn’t argue. She took one last look at the body, with its strangely flat metal skull, and array of sensors and flexible cables. What Canterlot wouldn’t have given for a find like this, before they left.
Sometime the next day—not that long at all, really, Spike put out the all-call that their probe had reported back. “We won’t be getting another transmission,” Spike said. “I think you should meet in the bridge.”
They came—all except Sunset Shimmer, anyway. “I’ll listen from medical if that’s alright. Less walking.”
Twilight watched from the front of the bridge, watching as the probe charted its path straight down into the swirling fog. A distant metallic echo grew by slices, until the vastness of its scope became clear. She leaned down, checking the numbers just to be sure.
“That’s not just bigger than Canterlot Station. That thing is bigger than the moon.”
It stretched down and sideways into the planet’s atmosphere as far as the sensors could penetrate, borne upward by a glow of radiation from below. Active support, lighting the surrounding gas in a brilliant halo that turned the probe’s signal to static the closer it got.
“Not one thing,” Rarity corrected. “Captain, I see two objects. One is tethered to the other, but I believe the composition is distinct. I’m getting a thaumic signature, see here?”
Does Twilight know what it is? Yes.
Twilight followed her gesture to that part of the display. “That’s a city shield. Unless I’m wrong… Spike, do we have a match on… Canterlot Station?”
There was a brief pause, and the screen focused on the smaller object. It was only a radio outline, and compared to the incredible radiation that blasted out of the lower object, this one was a corpse.
“No match,” Spike said. “On the object as a whole. This section however…” a faint outline appeared around the tip of the object, maybe a tenth of its total area. “Could be a match. The thaumic signature is two orders of magnitude greater than the old Harmony reactor.”
“Well duh,” Rainbow muttered. “How the buck do they keep it fueled? While in-flight?”
Sunset’s voice came over the radio a moment later. “I don’t know. It doesn’t look like what the crystal empire wanted to build. Guess they found another way here.”
It’s a pony shield spell, Twilight thought. We have a pony ship.
“One more thing,” Spike said. “The probe sent encrypted ident-pings as we approached. We have a response here—just from the smaller object. We have… ship status report. Hold on, I’m reconstructing it. Bleed from that fusion torch is making this harder than you can imagine.”
“I can imagine,” Node said. “Would you like my help?”
Spike didn’t answer for a few more moments. “There!”
GENERAL DISTRESS OF HMS CELESTIAL ENDURANCE! HOSTILE VESSEL, WE ARE THE LAST SURVIVORS OF OUR PLANET. OUR VESSEL CANNOT ENDURE THE CONDITIONS OF THIS PLANET. IF WE ARE NOT RELEASED, WE WILL BE DESTROYED.
A heavy silence settled over the room. “Ain’t what I wanted to hear,” Applejack whispered. “Mah whole family—”
“Might be on it,” Pinkie said helpfully. “Don’t be sad yet. We don’t know.”
“We need an approach vector,” Spike said flatly. Like he’d just switched off whatever let him speak with pony emotion. “This data suggests a few options. But if we’re going to try any of them, we need to fortify the Equinox. I wasn’t designed to survive a hurricane.”
1. Permanently sacrifice Applejack’s personal project to reinforce the Equinox.
2. Remove everyone from personal projects for a little while (each character receives only a d4 to make progress, instead of a d8. If a character does not reach 100% upon arrival, that project will not be usable)
3. Don’t take anyone off their projects, Twilight and Sunset will just shield the Equinox when the time comes (if they are alive)
(Certainty 205 required)
This is a real tricky decision. Sacrificing AJ's project will mean the ship isn't as strong as it could be when they arrive.
Having everyone chip in may mean there is still a chance the hull won't be reinforced, and we have a much lower chance of having weapons or Rarity's defence project.
And having to rely on magic seems risky since we don't even know if Sunset will survive the trip.
Make AJ work on structure and sacrifice her project. In this instance we can really weigh the probability to reinforce the guy feeling that’s better.
Having them all split time give Node, Rainbow, and Bloom/Sunset a respectable 75% chance of success, but Rarity has only a 25% chance to finish. AJ is a coin flip in that scenario, 50%.
Giving up AJs coin flip and accepting losing it ups Node, Rainbow, and AB/SS’ chances up to 88% and Rarity’s up to a whopping 63% chance.
Giving up AJs project for that much of an increase in the others is worth it. Without we are more than likely losing Rarity’s and AJ’s projects and Rarity’s project seems particularly useful for coming conflict, even though not applicable to the constant stress the coming problem will put the ship under.
I might be misunderstanding how the dice roll for progress works, but it kind of looks to me like sacrificing AJ's project is much, much better than the other options.
Even without getting into specific numbers, it looks like choosing option b gives relatively poor odds of completing five projects, option a gives good odds of completing four (with Applejack's removed), and option c gives good odds of five, but probably prevents Twilight and Sunset from doing anything else with magic, and relies pretty much entirely on Sunset successfully surviving deceleration.
Kind of feels like if you still have to make a roll just to get Applejack's project on that option, that you could well end up not completing that project even after cutting the odds of completing any others just to keep the chance at it.
Assuming the progress is [Dice Roll] X 10 (and that is just an assumption), we have the current progress and odds of completion of:
Node: Current 80%. Completion on 2 or more; d4 = 75%; d8 = 87.5%.
Rarity: 60%. Completion on 4 or more; d4 = 25%; d8 = 62.5%.
Applejack: 70%. Completion on 3 or more; d4 = 50%; d8 = Abandoned.
Rainbow: 80%. Completion on 2 or more; d4 = 75%; d8 = 87.5%.
Applebloom/Sunset: 80%. Completion on 2 or more; d4 = 75%; d8 = 87.5%.
Eyeballing those odds, I'd bet on losing on average one other project that would otherwise have been completed, for a 50% shot at keeping Applejack's. Not worth it, by the odds.
Well it's a good thing we didn't try and go in blind huh? The logical choice here is AJ fixes the ship. Probably a net loss but far safer than the other options. While I do firmly believe Twilight alone could shield the ship if push came to shove, there's no reason to take the risk.
I say remove everyone.
Reinforce the ship. Losing the repairs project is rough, but I don't think everyone's projects will get done anyway.
If AJ abandons repairs at 70%, the stuff she's already repaired isn't going to unrepair itself. I'm not willing to chance the entire crew's safety on one roll for Sunset's survival and another to see if Twi actuality casts the spell correctly and doesn't 1) have Hunger problems, 2) knock herself out again, or 3) get outmatched by the strength of whatever's attacking that other ship.
Sorry, AJ. The numbers suggest that using her project seems like the best option... assuming it's a strict d8*10%. Though if that's the case, we got phenomenal rolls last time.
Still, the purely magical approach is definitely out. We don't even know if Sunset's going to live through the trip there. And this is all of equinity we're talking about. We can't screw this one up.
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I think the "attacking" the message referred to was the probe being seen as a hostile attack, cause they did mention it'd have to crash into whatever it found.
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I, myself, don't exactly understand the system but I feel like you'd be correct, yeah. Sadly most are voting to have everyone chip in a little. That's not great
Why isn't there an option for having the crew completely drop their pet projects and work 100% on what's needed, without specifically dumping AJ"s project?
I think I'll go with option 1. Everyone else gets a better roll, and I'm certain she'd drop everything anyway if there's a chance that she has family on that ship
Urgh...this isn't easy.
I picked 2. If we hadn't had the high rolls we got initially, then I'd have said 1. That's suuuuper not a guarantee that everyone will complete their projects, but it's better than fully abandoning the hull project.
Hmm I'm divided, but the chance of hostilities make this complicated. If the roll is simply x10 probably not finishing repairs is not that much of a problem as long as the ship doesn't rip itself apart, even though it's Spike's body we're talking about.
If they're something like x15 or x20 it's the other way around and rolling D4s becomes quite acceptable. Honestly we're lacking information here, even if it looks quite clear is x10.
On the chapter itself, were the precursors human or just humanoid? And why would it be possible to build a body like his previous one?
Interesting.
Sweet.
Dang, well good thing we went to with the 'announce our presence' approach, otherwise they probably wouldn't be being sent this alert.
1 seems like the best bet, repairing the Equinox versus reinforcing the Equinox feels like six of one, half a dozen of the other anyway.
Magic as a last resort. Sunset may not survive.
How long have they been stuck there?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Applejacks personal project fixing the engine?
I'm gonna go with option 2 here. We can't rely on magic to shield us, since there is still a chance Sunset could kick the bucket, and I really don't want to scrap any of the projects, especially AJ's. At least we can still make progress with the projects instead of none at all.
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As far as I can see, it was only ever listed as ‘repairs’. So you are giving up a chance at repairs to get a 100% chance at... repairs...
It’s not super clear, but I still think giving up hers to increase the chances of success in 5 other projects is worth it. Math wills it!
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I'm not so sure. A sturdy hall doesn't sound so great if you got a debunked engine and are flying the equivalent of a great big metal space brick in a planets gravity well.
I'm going for the all or something choice.
They're going to need those engines and I don't think they want to rely on Sunsets magic for something like this.
It's amazing how close 1 and 2 are.
I'll chip in here that saving an Equestrian ship also likely means access to Equestrian repair capacity previously unavailable. There may be engineers and certainly parts, possibly even technology the Equinox lacked on it's departure. This could give AJ repair options previously unavailable.
Nodes artificial body project might also save ponies onboard that are otherwise beyond help. Better to get as many projects done in time, even guaranteed that one cannot.