Thank you kindly for the feedback

As I have told others: Since I am too preoccupied with other things on FL currently I don’t and didn’t plan for FTI to try and establish itself again.

But I will try to respond to any inquiries, RP or whatever people wish to involve FTI with whenever possible so don’t hesitate to check out the faction pages and do with it whatever you think fits!

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Neat concept, wrong setting. There is no single hint that there are advanced androids that look like human or can act like humans. All we have is the star wars'ish protocol droids. Perhaps you should've stick to those

(08-29-2024, 10:40 PM)Groshyr Wrote: Neat concept, wrong setting. There is no single hint that there are advanced androids that look like human or can act like humans. All we have is the star wars'ish protocol droids. Perhaps you should've stick to those

It's been 30+ years since vanilla, and said droids are likely heavily used in industrial applications, such as on bases.

Even if this was the case, there is no indication that such technology couldn't have been made between now and then.

Furthermore, lore adherance to such a rigid level should not be expected, nor crammed down the throats of others.

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(08-29-2024, 11:05 PM)Nodoka Hanamura Wrote: Furthermore, lore adherance to such a rigid level should not be expected, nor crammed down the throats of others.

Freelancer's world is built on the foundation of no high-end automation or man-made artificial intelligence. The entirety of Sirius' heavy industry, and really the economy at large, is done manually by actual people. The vast majority of domestic conflict and corporate/unlawful plot threads are based on their exploitation of human labourers.

Rigid lore adherence being "crammed down the throats of others" would be getting anal about Plasmaball team names, not pointing out one of the core tenets of the setting we're playing in.

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(08-29-2024, 11:32 PM)TheSauron Wrote:

(08-29-2024, 11:05 PM)Nodoka Hanamura Wrote: Furthermore, lore adherance to such a rigid level should not be expected, nor crammed down the throats of others.

Freelancer's world is built on the foundation of no high-end automation or man-made artificial intelligence. The entirety of Sirius' heavy industry, and really the economy at large, is done manually by actual people. The vast majority of domestic conflict and corporate/unlawful plot threads are based on their exploitation of human labourers.

Rigid lore adherence being "crammed down the throats of others" would be getting anal about Plasmaball team names, not pointing out one of the core tenets of the setting we're playing in.

Quote:Black Market Augments cover a range of cybernetic products, from replacement limbs to brain altering implants. A thriving underground industry exists on Honshu, thanks to the accessibility of local Optronics and Robotics, and an abundance of jaded Scientists who have rejected the traditional keiretsu career path. These devices are largely based on stolen Kishiro IP, and are frequently modified to conceal weapons or otherwise facilitate criminal activities. Kusari’s Black Market Augments are sold to the highest bidder, with clients including pirates, terrorists and revolutionaries.

I think if we're at the point that we can have relatively easy access to cybernetic body part replacement, then having a completely cybernetic body isn't that much of a reach. It would certainly be very cutting edge technology in Disco's universe, but it wouldn't be entirely impossible. We also have canonical AI being used in industrial settings.

Quote:GMS employees are very hostile to the use of advanced Robotics in mining operations if they use artifical intelligence. The miners rightly fear that the thinking machines will replace them. Toulon Mining Facility in the Provence system, however, is a fairly dangerous place to work due to all the criminal activity in the system, so the miners don't seem to mind so much if they can send the Robots out to do the mining, or can sit at a console safely on the station and direct the Robots out in the mining fields.

Quote:The Luxury Liner was initially designed for Orbital Spa and Cruise by the renowned ship architect, Peter Englund, a designer employed by White Spa Lines, a subsidiary arm of Orbital Spa and Cruise itself. Orbital Spa and Cruise ordered several of the vessels, the most notable of which are the tourist liners Hawaii and Shetland, although there are known to be several others. With all the latest in holographic entertainment and artificial persons, as well as utilizing the latest in VI technology, the liners are the pinnacle of luxurious ship design and architecture, allowing OSC VIPs and dignitaries to travel in style.

Now to be fair that first one about GMS hating AI is from an old Solar Engineering rumor, so I'm unsure if it's still canon or not, but we have all the things that would be needed to have a fully synthetic humanoid that looks like an actual person, it would just be extremely expensive and unlikely to be useful in most of the situations that we see the robots that we interact with on a regular basis. There isn't much need for a human-looking robot out in deep space when ease of maintenance is what you're most concerned about, or in a setting where they need to be more robust that a human would be.

EDIT: I forgot that weapons platforms are also canonically housing an AI that runs the platform, so Freelancer has always had man-made AIs.

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I suppose I should know better by now than to not expect someone coming in with semantics as their argument.

Yes, Freelancer does technically have man-made artificial intelligence in the form of simplistic automatons, but it hardly ever takes the form of anything more than a moderately long list of if-else statements. All a weapons platform needs is to check whether something flashes a valid IFF for the given area, and blast everything that does not. It is obviously artificial intelligence by definition, but it's not the kind of general artificial intelligence that would be required for the androids being sold by FTI.

As for the mining drone and the liner, these are both Discovery additions that slipped through our notoriously poor QA when they were first introduced, one of them also being from Gallia of all places. I'm more inclined to lean towards the multitude of vanilla mining operations portraying the use of manual labour (Bautzen, LD-14 and Tsushima, for example) than new additions which were likely not even proofread.

Ultimately, if Sirian robots were as capable as the ones listed here, we would not have transport crews, EVA mining or manned turrets. There is a wealth of text out there explicitly describing Sirius as being incredibly backwards in regards to automation, and even just the concept of autonomous mining drones makes the entire house of cards fall apart. I don't think one or two throwaway Disco infocards trump the foundation of the setting itself.

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Robots are a very common thing in Freelancer, up to the point where there are fully automated science outposts. Van Pelt was "all alone" on Benford, and Research Station Baxter was described as fully automated. Augmentation of the human body to cyborg level have also been a thing since vanilla. Freelancer never focused on that aspect, but it has always been part of the game, whether people like it or not. Discovery certainly put a lot of emphasis on that aspect with the integration of Auxo as part of the canon lore. FTI Androids are really not a novelty to the setting, just one group that puts them under a spotlight.

Player roleplay certainly has been making robots, cyborgs and androids, even AI-controlled non-gammu ships a thing for decades. Suffice to say, FTI fits perfectly into Discovery, nor would it be far-fetched for vanilla if vanilla cared to elaborate more on robotics specifically. Given the ginormous scope of Sci-Fi tropes vanilla covered and the huge scope of things vanilla didn't manage to cover in detail - little reminder that vanilla was very sparse with details on non-sentient life forms on sirian planets, to the point where things like Holstein Sea Serpents, Squeloms, Curacao's oceans not being allowing Earth-origin sea life to adapt, Gaian wildlife like the Blue Ground Sloth and White Saber Tiger, Honshu's almost extinct fish population and Junyo's mass produce clam farms stand out. Similarly do things like robots in cutscenes, on docking rings and mentions in the campaign.


Long story short: FTI fits realistically, considering androids are already a thing iRL, even though not the typical Detroit Become Human android in your common household. That's really a no-brainer, and I'm glad this aspect is explored again after the rapture of Sirius Robotics.

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I agree with @TheSauron in that the fundamentals of the setting explicitly depict many aspects of the setting as being technologically backwards. This is easily visible through things you might gloss over such as the vintage radio style communications everyone seems to use in space, rife with glorious static and other forms of white noise.

I feel like people tend to forget freelancer was distinctly not a cyberpunk setting, and was in line with retro futurism instead. But per usual, you have people throwing around semantics as a qualifier for correctness and insisting that whenever the setting feels restrictive that said elements of the setting be ignored. And that's just silly but also, and more importantly, has nothing to do with feedback for this faction.

The way I see it is that it's fine if this faction wants to try and be the first mover and innovator in the field of robotics, it would just feel more organic and in line with the lore if that was done by acknowledging the fact that this specific technology did not previously exist in the setting. It would also be prudent to thoroughly explain how the company pulled off the technological leap that it did.

Edit: If executed correctly, this faction can both acknowledge the current level of technology within the sector while seamlessly integrating itself with no drastic changes to its current format and creative intent.

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(08-30-2024, 09:24 AM)Reeves Wrote: It would also be prudent to thoroughly explain how the company pulled off the technological leap that it did.

How should this ideally be done? I think it's a little silly to expect FTI's players to have to pore through hundreds of pages of present-day robotics, AI, and advanced prosthetics research and experimentation in order to provide a scientific explanation of how their androids work. And I certainly don't want to see them yoink stuff from the Cyberpunk setting but changing just enough of the wording to slip past the "no imports" rule.

While their present infopage certainly needs some proofreading and could probably do with a bit more expansion, it's certainly more than good enough in my book for a small RP-focused side project. If their faction was planning on going official at some point, I might be singing a different tune, but then again I'm no longer among those who vote on such so it doesn't really matter anyway.


Anyway, for my own feedback:
What little I have seen from FTI so far has been a pleasure to read, and I'd quite like to see yet more.

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