The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction

[The Glyphstone]

Originally Posted by Brother Oni

I forget, is a Carnifex a synapse creature?

Not that I remember, but they are autonomous, in that they can function outside synapse range.

[Brother Oni]

Originally Posted by jseah

That's a Point.

They're willing to talk to anybody though. And perhaps the idea of using turning the Orks to lead the biggest Waagh ever into the Eye of Terror might be something SC could contemplate doing.

Especially since the orks would probably be willing to go do it - "Oi lads! We'z gonna go ta de 'Eye ov Terra' and beat up da Kaos boyz! It's gonna be da bestez scrap evva!"

Queue the Culture ferrying the orks to the Eye of Terror to the tune of "'Ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go".

Originally Posted by The Glyphstone

Not that I remember, but they are autonomous, in that they can function outside synapse range.

Which would indicate a looted Carnifex isn't too outside the realms of possibility...

[Gavinfoxx]

Originally Posted by Brother Oni

Especially since the orks would probably be willing to go do it - "Oi lads! We'z gonna go ta de 'Eye ov Terra' and beat up da Kaos boyz! It's gonna be da bestez scrap evva!"

Queue the Culture ferrying the orks to the Eye of Terror to the tune of "'Ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go".

That... would be totally awesome!

[The Glyphstone]

Originally Posted by Brother Oni

Which would indicate a looted Carnifex isn't too outside the realms of possibility...

Strap a Weirdboy to its back to cut off its ability to reach the Hive Mind entirely, then hang a long stick over the front of its head with meat at the end.

[Forum Explorer]

Originally Posted by jseah

Eldan.... is... is that a looted Tyranid?

Yup

Originally Posted by Gavinfoxx

And nothing of value was lost, cause all of the information on ork Kulture and tech is encoded in their genes. They really should look more closely at the ordos xenos archives from Sol...

And I don't think Orks looting a Tyranid is, um, canonical...

Orks Mostly loot human stuff, and they can loot Tau stuff... I don't know if they loot Eldar or Dark Eldar...


Remember that some of their tech is works because of psychic resonance making up for bad construction and manufacturing habits, and some of their tech works because psychic resonance says it should work at all.

They can loot Eldar and Dark Eldar stuff too

Spoiler

They can even loot things in the Real World!

Spoiler

Originally Posted by Brother Oni

I forget, is a Carnifex a synapse creature?

Nope! So as long as they kept it out of Synapse range they could control it like they control a Squiggoth (which is to say poke it in the right direction and laugh)

[Excession]

Originally Posted by Brother Oni

I'm just hoping for a ROU to pick up some ork 'pets' like White Devil has done with the necron warriors.

A short time later you'd have an Ork Looted ROU . (I don't care if it's canon, I like the idea that they really can loot anything) Quite possibly the infusion of an enormous amount of intelligence would do the Orks some good. At least after the fact, the ROU would probably say it was an upgrade, they're pretty weird as Minds go.

Given the Orks resistance to Chaos, the new "Kulture" might be the winner in this fight.

[douglas]

Originally Posted by jseah

It is still predicated on the Culture figuring out that the Orks are lead by solely on a power hierarchy instead of social ties.

Shouldn't that be reasonably obvious just from watching internal interactions between Orks?

Originally Posted by jseah

They're willing to talk to anybody though. And perhaps the idea of using turning the Orks to lead the biggest Waagh ever into the Eye of Terror might be something SC could contemplate doing.

Now that's just crazy enough to work!

[jseah]

Originally Posted by Excession

A short time later you'd have an Ork Looted ROU .

That's probably not going to happen though, given Trapdoor.

Originally Posted by Excession

Given the Orks resistance to Chaos, the new "Kulture" might be the winner in this fight.

Well, it's more like, if they back anyone and that someone is anti-Chaos and listens to the Culture, they win.

In this particular case, the Orks might just be violent and HS-like enough that the Culture may have no qualms using them exactly like they were designed.

As a weapon.

Originally Posted by douglas

Shouldn't that be reasonably obvious just from watching internal interactions between Orks?

The idea was that the Culture thinks the tribal "Big Man" organization the Orks have is just due to primitivism.

They do have ork genetic material though, so they'll eventually figure it out. I know, figuring out social structures from genetic code is a bit crazy, but I wouldn't put it past a Mind. At least not after they've had some time to chew on it.

Originally Posted by douglas

Now that's just crazy enough to work!

The more likely plan isn't to hijack the Orks as they are now, but to eliminate the current Orks and breed their own from scratch. With a Sky God (resident ROU) for them to worship or something.

There's no point carrying the cultural baggage of Gork and Mork if you're going to weaponize orks.

Of course, it probably still leads to hilarity as the "Sky God" finds that its effectors work better, it gets a red coat of paint out of nowhere, it has an FTL top speed faster than its engine is rated for...

lolz, they might inadvertently ascend an ROU that way.

[Tiki Snakes]

Originally Posted by jseah

The more likely plan isn't to hijack the Orks as they are now, but to eliminate the current Orks and breed their own from scratch. With a Sky God (resident ROU) for them to worship or something.

There's no point carrying the cultural baggage of Gork and Mork if you're going to weaponize orks.

Of course, it probably still leads to hilarity as the "Sky God" finds that its effectors work better, it gets a red coat of paint out of nowhere, it has an FTL top speed faster than its engine is rated for...

lolz, they might inadvertently ascend an ROU that way.

Breeding your own Orks from scratch goes one of two ways.
Either you've genocided the Orks in all but name and simply replaced them with your own propriotory Green Warrior Race.
Or the "Sky God" put in place to shepherd them starts insisting on being called either Gork or Mork (possibly interchangeably), then the culture lose track of it altogether.

Note - There are some suggestions, mostly in fanon and jokes (though there may be more to it, I'm no fluff grandmaster) that simply dealing with Orks long enough can lead to a certain amount of Orkyness rubbing off. How valid this is beyond hilarious comics/fics/fan theories I have no idea.

[The Glyphstone]

Gork and Mork themselves won't like that, but there's not a whole lot they can do about it.

Of course, it probably still leads to hilarity as the "Sky God" finds that its effectors work better, it gets a red coat of paint out of nowhere, it has an FTL top speed faster than its engine is rated for...

It starts obsessing about adding more weapons and gives long philosophical diatribes over if cutting things apart with effector fields counts as "Dakka' or 'Choppa'...

Or the "Sky God" put in place to shepherd them starts insisting on being called either Gork or Mork (possibly interchangeably), then the culture lose track of it altogether.

This would be great. For all we know, Gork and Mork are hard-locked into the Orkish geonome right alongside their coded memories and skills. Even Ferals worship them, so it's got to be more than simple cultural influence.

[jseah]

Originally Posted by The Glyphstone

It starts obsessing about adding more weapons and gives long philosophical diatribes over if cutting things apart with effector fields counts as "Dakka' or 'Choppa'...

Lol. It'll probably get replaced though, if it goes too far off.

And if the Orks get Culture-equiv-tech, the Chaos problem starts to look just a little small..

[Forum Explorer]

Originally Posted by jseah

That's probably not going to happen though, given Trapdoor.

The idea was that the Culture thinks the tribal "Big Man" organization the Orks have is just due to primitivism.

They do have ork genetic material though, so they'll eventually figure it out. I know, figuring out social structures from genetic code is a bit crazy, but I wouldn't put it past a Mind. At least not after they've had some time to chew on it.


The more likely plan isn't to hijack the Orks as they are now, but to eliminate the current Orks and breed their own from scratch. With a Sky God (resident ROU) for them to worship or something.

There's no point carrying the cultural baggage of Gork and Mork if you're going to weaponize orks.

Of course, it probably still leads to hilarity as the "Sky God" finds that its effectors work better, it gets a red coat of paint out of nowhere, it has an FTL top speed faster than its engine is rated for...

lolz, they might inadvertently ascend an ROU that way.

If Orks hijack a Mind it'll be because the Mind has decided the Orks are superior. Which is clearly true.

The worship of Gork and Mork is, well not (probably) genetic, but pretty much universal among Orks. Likely because Gork and Mork literally talk to the Orks themselves. Still the ROU should be able to takeover the Orks without disrupting the religion.

[jseah]

Hmmm, come to think of it, the Culture using the Orks as a pet HS to whack Chaos is subject to the same problems that Culture-constructed HS has.

Namely, tech leakage to Chaos.

I know, I know, orks are immune to Chaos, but the Culture doesn't know that. Eventually though, they'll figure it out.

Or... hmm... I think I got an outline of what I need to happen next. Yup, I think I can get it to happen. =D

[Gavinfoxx]

I kinda like the 'let's repair Orks! Hmm, coding culture and technical knowledge into genes themselves was a stroke of brilliance. Looks like they had some issues with it though, the execution is a bit sloppy, and they are prone to insanity it seems. now that we realize it is possible in the first place... and it looks like several types of thought patterns regarding anything other than fighting has been suppressed... oh, that's where the insanity comes from... hmmm, maybe we can fix this... of course, this isn't just fixing Orks, it's fixing and tweaking the entire orkoid ecosystem, to enable an actual culture and a variety of thinking and real intelligence --and choice-- to happen... and slow down the annihilation of existing ecosystems by out-competing them; their natural terraforming of all these squigs and such is a bit too aggressive... oh, look, there's genetic data regarding myths of 'brainboyz'. Weird, I don't see any code for those... hmmm... we can do something with this... oh wow, it looks like there is a lot of ork kulture knowledge that has just been turned off in their genetic code, we should reactivate that!' *tinker tinker tinker*

By the patterns so far, they got a lot of uplift happy, eccentric Minds in this expedition, didn't they...?

Then again, those sorts would be the ones that are colonization-oriented anyway...

[Gavinfoxx]

Okay I think I'm done editing that previous bit. ;)

[Spamotron]

Yeah, using the Orks as a weapon would be considered very morally borderline by the Culture. But 'uplifting' them to give them more mental flexibility is very possible. From the Culture's point of view the Orks 'almost' have free will but their creators restricted it so that every choice they make must in some way involve fighting. Removing that restriction would then be 'freeing' the Orks from a form of genetically enforced slavery that persists long after their masters death.

[jseah]

Originally Posted by Spamotron

Yeah, using the Orks as a weapon would be considered very morally borderline by the Culture.

Originally Posted by Spamotron

Removing that restriction would then be 'freeing' the Orks from a form of genetically enforced slavery that persists long after their masters death.

That totally plays into part 7. Imma steal that idea.

[Brother Oni]

Originally Posted by Excession

A short time later you'd have an Ork Looted ROU . (I don't care if it's canon, I like the idea that they really can loot anything) Quite possibly the infusion of an enormous amount of intelligence would do the Orks some good. At least after the fact, the ROU would probably say it was an upgrade, they're pretty weird as Minds go.

Furthe jseah comments, this is assuming that the orks don't accept the mind as their new boss, they have a Big Mek on board and they can escape their containment facilities.

Any Mind Eccentric enough to pick up elements of a HS as pets (not test subjects) is going to be flexible enough to entertain the idea of subverting their command structure and provided it maintains suitable levels of orky leadership, the orks aren't going to try and undermine their new boss (about the only orks sneaky enough to do that are Kommandos and they don't tinker much).

Orks thinking of mounting a leadership challenge get bigger and meaner in preparation, so it's obvious for a Mind if that's going to occur, not to mention such challenges are usually in the form of a choppa to the face rather than Machiavellian plots involving sabotage.
Which reminds me, the Mind is going to have to alter its avatar form to be bigger than the other orks to help facilitate the leadership transfer, which will probably require remodelling of the internal layout to let itself and the orks wander about.

Originally Posted by Spamotron

But 'uplifting' them to give them more mental flexibility is very possible.

There's always the possibility that they simply carry on as they are, simply because they like being violent savages (only more effective at it). Alternately, they could also fall apart due to the increased infighting since they get sneakier at leadership challenges and the subjugated orks are no longer too stupid to be ruled by fear.

[jseah]

part 6.5 Orks - Finale (Necrons finale, not the orks)

Spoiler

A Note: the teams deployed to the planet surface are Contact & SC. And about 2/3 drones. SC teams refers to this, apologies for omission.

Since the SC teams have set up defensive emplacements outside the entrances, they have come under attack from Orks. The Necron Lord appears uncooperative despite our help.

One of the Orks frontline leaders issued a challenge to the SC team along the largest entrance to the Necron tombs, saying that he will fight the leader in single combat. While the teams do not have a hierarchical structure of command and we have no intention of honouring the result, no matter what happens, this is an excellent technique to stall for time and one of the SC team members, who is an personal combat hobbyist, has been encouraged to take the "bait" and draw out the battle.

The combat between the SC agent and the Ork "boss" (as he calls himself) went on for over three hours as the SC agent repeatedly disabled the "boss"'s weapons and damaged his limbs without critically injuring him. Reportedly, the SC agent finds it great fun to spar with the Orks since they appear to be incredibly resilient and blows that the agent would have easily killed any citizen with (and was thus restricted from using them in sparring sessions) the large Ork merely shrugs off with a broken bone that appears to heal very quickly.

The combat, which has gathered significant attention from the Ork camps, included a few of the sub-commanders who have tried to also join the battle and were killed or driven off either by the "boss" or the SC agent. This was interrupted when three Monoliths (name from IoM records) of the Necrons teleported around the SC defensive site and began attacking the SC team.
The monoliths unloaded a large number of Necron warriors and "floaty things" (name attritbuted to Memis Trayer), as well as a lesser number of more specialist vehicles or infantry, both identified and unidentified.

Shortly after the battle started, Large Sticks Speak Softly decided to rate these Necrons as hostile and decided that a large demonstration of power was required to gain their attention. SC teams were given clearance to use maximum force, with an attention to a showcase of the Culture's military superiority.

An initial salvo of plasma weaponry were attenuated by a triangular energy field projected between the three Necron monoliths. Readings and specifics of this field have been taken but the field projector in the monolith is nearly undecipherable. While the attacks of the SC team were hindered by it, they managed to disable large portions of the Necron force within a few seconds, but they displayed significant regeneration capabilites powered by the field. It was noted that in high shot density areas, the "floaty things" could indeed be destroyed if they reappeared while a shot was passing through them.

At this point, the GCU decided not to risk SC team casualties, which would spoil the superiority effect, and destroyed the monoliths with one shot of a high-energy x-ray CREW each. (an SC agent reported that it looked like a pencil thin column of light from the sky that made the monoliths explode)
The "floaty things" proved susceptible to displacement and were forced into orbit, where they appeared to survive unhindered and teleported back to their underground tomb.

The rest of the Necron forces were easily dispatched without loss, using a combination of battlefield displacement and mirror field-guided weaponry to rapidly provide unlimited angles of attack that the Necrons (and orks) were unable to respond to.

Unfortunately, knife missiles proved unusuable against Necron armour unless equipped with a plasma sheath penetrator. In any case, the Necrons appear unfazed by simple decapitation strikes, being able to quickly regenerate from such damage on the battlefield. Full vapourization or explosive disintegration of the body chassis is required for their deactivation, which unfortunately, requires the self-destruction of the knife missiles.

No green marks were seen, that and traps appear to be the primary cause of the SC team casualties from Curiousity Saved the Cat. Why the Necrons did not employ the green-mark weapon this time is unknown.

So, how would I fight a flashy ground battle with Culture level tech and a dug-in SC team? Simple.
Bury a short-range displacer in the ground, have everyone wire to it to displace.
Every person fires one shot and immediately displaces somewhere else to fire another. Drones can use mirror fields to bounce back missed shots or direct CREW fire around obstacles to more important targets. Knife missiles find primary targets (battlefield commanders and supporting forces) and self-destruct their antimatter power core.

The result is a force that is tactically mobile with direct fire weapons that can skid round corners and with a cloud of 10cm long micromissiles each with a maneuverability and independence to find and target key points.

A decentralized style of fighting that exploits opportunities and flexibly responds on each member's initiative. Every man is his own squad and commander, fluid and impossible to pin down. An archetypally Culture style.

Guaranteed to cause sheer chaos which the style excels at coping with.


Wonder how the Orks will respond to THAT?

[Selrahc]

Full vapourization or explosive disintegration of the body chassis is required for their deactivation, which unfortunately, requires the self-destruction of the knife missiles.

Heh. Uh... not read much with Knife Missile usage I take it?

In Hydrogen Sonata a knife missile zooms out of sensor range, to fake being destroyed and gain a suprise strike, then accelerates back into the battle reaching massively supersonic speeds and chewing through dozens of kilometres of abandoned cityscape, before vapourising an entire street in a pillar of fire to kill its targets.

It gets reprimanded by the Ship Avatoid that had been supervising it for being too flashy, and wasting far too much of its nanite and power allotment, possibly leaving them vulnerable to a hypothetical next wave of attackers.

In light of that, I have trouble believing Knife Missiles will be unable to kill Necrons.

[Brother Oni]

Originally Posted by jseah

A decentralized style of fighting that exploits opportunities and flexibly responds on each member's initiative. Every man is his own squad and commander, fluid and impossible to pin down. An archetypally Culture style.

Incredible reliant on the displacement tech and even more reliant on good communications between team members, else you're going to end up with people displacing into each other's lines of fire (which is a blue on blue accident just waiting to happen).

While I'm not dismissing the advantages of essentially at-will teleportation, the 'fire-instaport-fire-instaport' tactic sounds great on paper, but in practicality it only works with one or two squad members and doesn't scale up well.

Originally Posted by jseah

Wonder how the Orks will respond to THAT?

Simple - saturation fire and area of effect weapons. If you're displacing around at random, you're even more likely to get hit by stray fire, which orks excel at, not to say anything of mortar/artillery fire.
Controlled displacements (ie fire off a couple shots, displace to new safe firing position, repeat) is much better in my opinion for squad level combat, plus the drones can keep track of any potentially troublesome incoming mortal/artillery shells and either deflect or bounce them off with shields.

Of course if each SC team member is so far apart that there's no chance with crossing into each other's fire arcs, then it's not an issue, although it would be slightly more difficult to co-ordinate attacks and there's the small possibility of an individual member being overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers (the orks aren't going to catch them, but being forced to retreat may open up an vulnerability in the Culture's lines).

[Parra]

I think you may be overplaying the role of SC. Keep in mind that they are more spies and covert operatives than warriors. They tend not to do the whole 'mass combat' thing.
Contact in general might if pressed, but only until volunteer soldiers came forward.

[jseah]

Selrahc: Forgive me, I am unaware of the capabilities of knife missiles.

Nevertheless, Necrons do take tank shells to the face and get up fine after a quick kip. And there's their fancy armour to contend with too.

It might take starship level armament to disintegrate them enough that they can't repair on the battlefield.
But what do I know? I am unfamiliar with necron regeneration either.

Still, it looks like a bunch of knife missiles might keep an entire Necron force flat on the ground. It might not kill them but they can surely slice and dice it.
So, *takes out nerfbat*, make that "a few" knife missiles instead of "a cloud". =P

Originally Posted by Brother Oni

in practicality it only works with one or two squad members and doesn't scale up well.

All fair points. They do however, have drones and a Mind to coordinate thing, as well as mental implants and Augmented Reality. Also Effector fields says no to ork stray shots.

And probably hypercomm IFF and a friendly-fire safe mode.

And yeah, it's reliant on the displacer. Without the displacer, it becomes more like modern infantry tactics, but more rocket-taggy.

[jseah]

Originally Posted by Parra

I think you may be overplaying the role of SC. Keep in mind that they are more spies and covert operatives than warriors. They tend not to do the whole 'mass combat' thing.
Contact in general might if pressed, but only until volunteer soldiers came forward.

It's a Contact-SC combined team, sorry. I've just taken to calling everything planetside SC teams.

In this case, they're looking to plant themselves in the middle of a siege. Protracted sitting around is bound to happen.

EDIT: I added a note to the section.

[The Glyphstone]

Knife missiles can definitely incapacitate Necrons. Without knowing their effective explosive yield when they detonate, it's hard to say if they'll inflict a mission-kill or a total-kill.

Re: Orks and displacing...yeah, they'll just use mass indirect fire like they always do (and mass direct fire at random). Orks don't really aim to much extent, they just saturate the general direction of the target in firepower and hope something hits, so fancy move-shoot-move tactics would actually be less effective than just putting up a gigantic force field.

[grolim]

Actually it sounds like the best effect would be to put up a gigantic force field. Then displace out of it. That way you can get a bit to eat, take a nap, and just watch since they would keep shooting at the field.

*Bad mental image of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.*
Orks shooting at the field, a SC agent walking up and asking what ya doing?

[Tiki Snakes]

Originally Posted by grolim

Actually it sounds like the best effect would be to put up a gigantic force field. Then displace out of it. That way you can get a bit to eat, take a nap, and just watch since they would keep shooting at the field.

*Bad mental image of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.*
Orks shooting at the field, a SC agent walking up and asking what ya doing?

To be fair, the Orks are entirely capable of getting bored and wandering off. They aren't automatons.

[Brother Oni]

Originally Posted by jseah

All fair points. They do however, have drones and a Mind to coordinate thing, as well as mental implants and Augmented Reality. Also Effector fields says no to ork stray shots.

The AR, mental implants and comms gear are essentially the main tactical edge the Culture ground teams have. You could give them the same weapons as the orks and they would still thrash them hands down because of this advantage.

Having the drones and Minds co-ordinate the team is reducing the 'each member is their own commander' element though.

As for the stray shots, let's do some number crunching and meta analysis:

A unit of boyz has 18(?) models and are armed with shootas. Making the assumption that a shoota has a cyclic rate equivalent to a modern battle rifle (~700rpm) and in a turn they each spend a total of 10 seconds shooting at a target, that's 2100 rounds a turn at a single target.

Now given the average ork has a BS of 2 (hit a target on 5+, so 33% chance of hitting), on average that's 700 rounds that are on target, so 700 separate separate things to effector away. If the SC agent were displacing about, then the drone would have to protect a much wider area, so potentially, it would have to block all 2100 rounds rather than just the 700 that are on target.

In terms of efficiency, the drone would prefer the agent to stay still so it could just concentrate on the small area and let all the stray rounds sail on by. This isn't even addressing the issue of directionality of fire, which the orks would probably be taking advantage of (easier to block hostile fire from one direction than from multiple directions).

Originally Posted by jseah

And probably hypercomm IFF and a friendly-fire safe mode.

FF safe mode isn't going to do much to a projectile already on its way downrange and a friendly displaces into the path of it, neither will it help an agent that displaces into the way of a hostile round.

[Selrahc]

Culture "soldiers"(Field Agents) have robot suits, with sophisticated combat technology In the thick of combat, the robots basically take over complete tactical control. Human control would be over decisions on a more strategic level.

The suits will automatically be displacing and targeting based on their objectives. The humans are basically along for the ride once the shooting starts, although they'll be fed tactical data and can* override the suit decisions.

*well. If they stridently disagree, they can normally convince the suit. Battlesuits are either near-intelligences or actual intelligences.

[jseah]

The drones and Mind I don't see as fulfilling a role similar to today's commanders though. More like data processing for the AR overlay. They observe, provide new viewpoints, collate data to identify threats and potential courses of action.

Imagine the battlefield with allied and enemy markers overlaid onto everything. That ork behind the tree is outlined in flourescent red because a knife missile in the forest has picked up his lifesigns. Your ally behind a full effector stealth field is shown in clear green, with the shape and position of the field clearly demarcated.
You look at the rock beside you and ray traces of the weapons you are trying to get away from indicate the cover it provides. A tactical overlay on the ground and through space shows the overall flow of the battle and a general idea of where your allies are and what they plan to do.

Displacing into wrong place is hard to do. You know your allies' line of fire and where they plan to go. That rock cover will be occupied three seconds from now, the Mind tells you that a Squiggoth has gotten within range on the left and the ork in front of you is moving his weapon your way (the red cone of his weapon is obvious). The other tree over there is brought to your attention as the tactical analyzer in your implant suggests it might be a good idea and you spot a better rock near it to hide behind. So you do.

Culture weapons are nearly instant and only a split second is needed to do the damage. For long lasting weapons, threat areas will be highlighted and the displacer refuse to drop you there.
Ork weapons can be shrugged off by the effectors you carry on your person (or that you have built in if you are a drone). The odds of you displacing into a bullet is very very low.

Complete battlespace awareness.