After Unicron was defeated for a second time, and then finding out that the geth are constructing a new body for Unicron, has anyone thought about taking the AT&T battlestation out of mothballs? Having a fold-capable weapon capable of destroying a planet should come in handy for fighting an evil god the size of a planet.

For that matter, has whatever technology allows the construction of the AT&T been used again, for the purposes of building artificial planets? If another situation like Krypton develops, and an entire planet needs to be evacuated, why not just evacuate them onto another structure the size of a planet?

>After Unicron was defeated for a second time, and then finding out
>that the geth are constructing a new body for Unicron, has anyone
>thought about taking the AT&T battlestation out of mothballs? Having
>a fold-capable weapon capable of destroying a planet should come in
>handy for fighting an evil god the size of a planet.
>

I may have only seen this in a dream, but I vaguely remember that the AT&T was only fold-capable because it was powered by some notably dangerous reactor system. If that is the case, and not simply my dreaming, then mothballing it would probably include taking down the fold reactors, to keep the risk of Something Very Bad happening.

Even if this isn't the case, the first time Gryphon is aware that Unicron might be coming back is in Holiday in the Sun, which would appear to be concurrent with an unreleased part of Cybertron Reloaded. That doesn't give much time to bring a battle station back to operating status, particularly one the size of a planet.

>
>For that matter, has whatever technology allows the construction of
>the AT&T been used again, for the purposes of building artificial
>planets? If another situation like Krypton develops, and an entire
>planet needs to be evacuated, why not just evacuate them onto another
>structure the size of a planet?
>

It really depends on the time/manpower problem, which I expect Gryphon to hand-wave away - this is space opera, not Hard Science-Fiction. But it took about five years to construct the first one; if there's that much time to spare, it's probably easier to find an actual planet.

Also, that's five years with Largo pushing the project, which probably means that profitability had been thrown out the window, and breaking even followed closely behind it. So, if somebody has several fortunes to throw away, it might happen. But if it's impractical and financially unfeasible, there's probably no reason to do so. Call back once they have reliable planet-construction nanotech, and you might get a different answer.

Peter Eng
--
"What went wrong?"
"I don't know. But instead of a new planet, we've got a planet-sized glob of cherry pie filling."
"Anybody have a solar-system sized graham cracker crust?"

LAST EDITED ON Nov-25-12 AT 06:25 PM (EST)
 
>I may have only seen this in a dream, but I vaguely remember that the
>AT&T was only fold-capable because it was powered by some notably
>dangerous reactor system. If that is the case, and not simply my
>dreaming, then mothballing it would probably include taking down the
>fold reactors, to keep the risk of Something Very Bad happening.

This is so; in fact, all GENOM spacefold technology was incredibly dangerous, because their engineers didn't have access to actual Reflex technology and so ended up sort of brute-forcing the same result. This is why the crash of the Executioner destroyed basically the entire surface of Musashi. (Even GENOM themselves phased out the technology for general use thereafter; by 2300 it was out of service across the fleet, and only reappeared in the AT-series battlestations out of strategic necessity.)

If just one of those fold cores, sufficient to move a quite large but not astronomically-scaled starship, could do that to a Minshara-class planet, imagine what havoc an array of them big enough to shift a small moon would wreak if they got out of hand. That system wasn't just shut down when the WDF captured the AT&T, it was removed entirely and very, very carefully scrapped. This required some pretty significant structural compromises, which is one of the main reasons why I said in my other response below that the station is not what you would call a going concern in the early 2400s.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>After Unicron was defeated for a second time, and then finding out
>that the geth are constructing a new body for Unicron, has anyone
>thought about taking the AT&T battlestation out of mothballs? Having
>a fold-capable weapon capable of destroying a planet should come in
>handy for fighting an evil god the size of a planet.

At this point, to say the AT&T is "in mothballs" is a little like applying the same expression to a mummified pharaoh. I mean, you could technically take all the organs out of the canopic jars and put them back into the body cavity, but you probably still wouldn't get a viable government official out of the deal. :)

Admittedly, it's in better condition than the prototype, which was blown to smithereens in an unpublished-but-alluded-to battle during the early-2390s Corporate Wars that followed the fall of Largo (both Wedge Antilles and Wilhuff Tarkin made their names in that fight, which has been hinted at in Rogue Squadron), but still... by the early 2410s it's not what you would call a Going Concern. Which is not to say that, looking down the barrel of a Unicron attack, the Chief wouldn't quite like to have it back, but it's not really a feasible option. It would probably be quicker and cheaper to build a new one*, which would still take far longer than the time available.

>For that matter, has whatever technology allows the construction of
>the AT&T been used again, for the purposes of building artificial
>planets? If another situation like Krypton develops, and an entire
>planet needs to be evacuated, why not just evacuate them onto another
>structure the size of a planet?

Neither of the GENOM Armored Tyranny stations was actually the size of a planet (the reference to the AT&T in Crossroads being "roughly the size of Terra" is in error on several levels), though either one would still have been handy for the Krypton evacuation (even more so if transporter technology had existed at the time; without transporters on a very large scale, you're still limited by the shuttle bottleneck in that sort of mass evacuation). I would imagine that the series has been scrutinized extensively by space habitat engineers and naval architects in the years since the reorganization of GENOM. There's a limit to how much it can tell them, though, since there was nothing really revolutionary in the ATs' construction. They were just really, really large expressions of fairly-well-understood technologies.

And yes, that does mean the first one was officially designated "Armored Tyranny" and the second "Armored Tyranny and Terror". The whispered joke around MILARM Command was that if Largo commissioned a third one, it would be even larger and they'd have to come up with another T word to add - maybe Armored Total Tyranny and Terror, or, since Admiral Thrawn was reputed to be fond of wine, perhaps Armored Tyranny, Terror, and Terroir. ("Death Star" was a Salusian Intelligence Service codename which was technically only applied to the prototype, not the larger one that the WDF captured in the Second Battle of Zeta Cygni.)

--G.
* after Babylon 4 disappeared, the Babylon Foundation did consider this, but decided it would, er, Send the Wrong Message
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Nov-25-12 AT 06:26 PM (EST)
 
For no apparent reason, I'm picturing the following scene:

Unicron has returned, and the Chief, after consulting with Cybertron High Command, authorizes CODE M, use of the ultimate weapon.

A crack team of commandos infiltrates Unicron's new form, and makes their way to his spark housing.

There, they hook up a smallish box, and set a timer, rushing out with unseemly haste. The timer runs out, but rather than an explosion, a data connection is made, and Unicron hears a single phrase, one that chills him to the core of his being:

"I'll have you know, I'm feeling very depressed..."

:)

>Neither of the GENOM Armored Tyranny stations was actually the size of
>a planet (the reference to the AT&T in Crossroads being
>"roughly the size of Terra" is in error on several levels)
Well, it probably has about the same usable surface area as Terra.

>* after Babylon 4 disappeared, the Babylon Foundation did
>consider this, but decided it would, er, Send the Wrong
>Message
This reminds me of the Peace Moon from Darths and Droids.

Why take the whole station? Just chop the superlaser out and glue a huge cluster of reactors and an engine to one end, then use a fleet of ships to drag it into and out of metaspace.

LAST EDITED ON Dec-03-12 AT 04:54 AM (EST)
 
There's a technical term for something like that.

two, actually: "terror weapon" and, perhaps more importantly, "sitting duck".

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

>There's a technical term for something like that.
>
>two, actually: "terror weapon" and, perhaps more importantly,
>"sitting duck".

Also 'Darksaber'.

*shudder*

In a slight defense of that idea (ludicrous as it was) the Hutt used the cheapest labor possible to build it. It was guaranteed to be a disaster in the making, even without commando squads doing their level best to sabotage it.

>There's a technical term for something like that.
>
>two, actually: "terror weapon" and, perhaps more importantly,
>"sitting duck".
>
>--
>Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
>Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
>"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

Thus the excuse for a frantic scene with lots of starfighters defending the thing from Decepticons while it charges up.

>>There's a technical term for something like that.
>>
>>two, actually: "terror weapon" and, perhaps more importantly,
>>"sitting duck".
>
>Thus the excuse for a frantic scene with lots of starfighters
>defending the thing from Decepticons while it charges up.

That kind of mission is about the least amount of fun a person can have playing a starfighter sim. I'm skeptical that it'd work any better in prose.

--G.
escort the hospital ships again?!
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I'm not sure I agree with you there. Far be it from someone who once wrote a fic about the Hogwarts organ being charmed to play only Ramones songs to tell you about writing, but that kind of mission - the increasing desperation and sense of sacrifice as your forces are slowly whittled down, the mounting tension, the growing fear that you won't quite make it - does make for a compelling action scene. They're not fun to control, yes, but they're incredibly powerful when told from the point of view of the pilots caught up in this mess.

Of course, feel free to completely ignore all that; I've also written fanfic for a folk song, so it's entirely possible I'm talking right out of my arse here.

---
"Yeah, I'm definitely going to hell/But I'll have all the best stories to tell" -- Frank Turner, The Ballad of Me and My Friends

>
>Of course, feel free to completely ignore all that; I've also written
>fanfic for a folk song, so it's entirely possible I'm talking
>right out of my arse here.
>

It's also possible that, like food, writing is a personal thing, and that what you enjoy isn't what somebody else is going to enjoy.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>It's also possible that, like food, writing is a personal thing, and
>that what you enjoy isn't what somebody else is going to enjoy.

Yeah, that's more or less what I was going for there, really, or rather the converse of it: "Some people might well enjoy reading a sequence like that, but fuck me, I'd rather have another abdominal MRI than write it." :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Of course, feel free to completely ignore all that; I've also written
>fanfic for a folk song, so it's entirely possible I'm talking
>right out of my arse here.

In fairness, London Bridge Is Falling Down would make an epic 1970s-style disaster movie. Particularly if it was a period piece set in the days of the old London Bridge, the one that had a whole street on it with houses and shops and everything.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

And one of the houses on the Bridge would house a man trying to teach a street urchin how to act like a proper lady. I assume that there would be musical numbers as well -- I think that sounds loverly.

Btw Traitor, that wasn't a criticism on the Ramones thing -- I thought it was funny to try and imagine the organ stops necessary for "I Wanna Be Sedated".

>And one of the houses on the Bridge would house a man trying to teach
>a street urchin how to act like a proper lady. I assume that there
>would be musical numbers as well -- I think that sounds loverly.

A musical Irwin Allen-style disaster movie? I'm not sure the world is ready for that.

--G.
the rain in Spain oh never mind this run for your lives!
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.