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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 17, 2019 17:17:18 GMT -5
This topic is a child of the Harvester Drones article directory.SUPER SCRAPWhat is most perplexing about the harvester drones is that they are one of the most technologically-sophisticated factions on and off Set. Despite their ramshackle appearance and contradictory behavior, the harvesters command technology that often equals that of the Space Loonies. Furthermore, most harvester AI cores are packed with sets of schematics that afford them access to a variety of technological brackets. This enables harvesters to adapt their level of sophistication to match their available resources, further enhancing their rate of development. Despite this, most harvesters suffer precisely the same dilemma as the rest of orbit. Though teeming with wrecks, debris, asteroids, and valuable anomalies, space over Set is sparse, dangerous, and difficult to navigate. Resources planetside require significant investments in both security and mining equipment, and rarely offer a well-rounded source of raw materials. The tendency for well-stocked harvester groups to spontaneously disappear puts a strong limitation on their average technological capacity. Harvesters often make due with a level of technology just above their absolute minimum. SECTIONS- Artificial Intelligence- Technological Development- Combat & Mining Equipment- Communications & Computing Equipment
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 17, 2019 17:17:58 GMT -5
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The harvesters depend on a common form of artificial intelligence that governs all their activities. It is the root of their harvesting behavior, their hostility towards others, and their impressive adaptability. It is the primary source behind their intuitive recognition of other harvesters, threats, and resource opportunities. It is the driving force behind their mysterious disappearances, their endless cyberwarfare attacks, and their abnormal behavior elsewhere. Despite all this, it commands only a thin level of recognition as a true artificial intelligence.
By and large, this is primarily a matter of sentience. The harvester AI is one of the most powerful software packages on or off Set, capable of self-improvement and innovation unlike any other. It is capable of creative problem-solving when faced with complex obstacles. It is capable of masterful tactical insight and strategic supremacy in the face of armed conflict with experienced, intelligent aggressors. In the face of all its ingenuity, the harvester AI is incapable of diplomacy, compromise, or any form of cooperation with non-harvester parties.
One of the harvester AI's greatest strengths is its ease of storage and transport. Harvester AIs are so efficiently optimized that a harvester could potentially operate on nothing more advanced than a small laptop computer. They are so readily copied and distributed that entire harvester AI packages are sent as common network attacks to most potential targets. The threat of dormant harvesters is so severe in orbit that decontamination screenings and software health certifications are mandatory for salvaged equipment on most stations.
Included with most harvester AI packages is a compressed collection of schematics, behavior patterns, and other useful information. This library of shared memories and knowledge enables even the most basic harvester drones to survive and spread in hostile environments. It affords every individual harvester the ability to identify common threats and fellow harvesters. It ensures that even a crippled fleet can eventually recover and return to operations with nothing more than maintenance drones to carry out repairs.
Many of these details are conjecture based purely on practical observation, rather than verifiable facts. Research into the harvester AI has uncovered little. It has been a subject of intense and often fruitless study by the Unity Trust since the Drone Wars of 660-770 OSC. It has been a long-term strategic objective for the Space Loonies for the sake of combat operations. It has been the source of endless frustration for research teams across Set for as long as they have existed. Despite all efforts into understanding their compression methods, system architecture, or even some basic tenets of their hardware utilization, nothing has come to light. Very few real facts have surfaced on the inner secrets of the harvester AI.
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 17, 2019 17:18:23 GMT -5
TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
Harvester drones carry out the development of their technology based on capture, study, and eventual dissemination of unfamiliar technologies. While harvesters carry out very little actual research, their ability to reverse engineer equipment has yet to reach its limits. Their ability to share new discoveries with other harvesters affords them a consistent level of technology across orbit. As a result, their level of technology often keeps pace with that of the general population in orbit - or, during major catastrophes, vastly exceeds it.
The process of acquiring new technology begins first with a harvester drone encountering an object it does not recognize. Harvester behavior around unidentified objects varies considerably, but valuable items are often stolen after they can be determined as safe. Once the object has been collected, it is deposited in a safe location near to the drone's fleet or colony, but never inside it. The main group of harvesters is then notified of the object's location. A group of combat and repair drones are sent to the object to disassemble, analyze, and eventually return with the object.
Once a device has been fully evaluated, the harvesters begin a short-term production run of purpose-made drones to better test the device's capabilities. If the device can satisfy a need for the group, or a potential need for another, it is entered into production and storage. Stringent requirements are placed on any produced devices, ranging from drone compatibility to safety-versus-performance factors. If the object is of no use to the harvesters, or its use could potentially be dangerous, it is catalogued without being produced.
The harvesters have demonstrated a near-faultless degree of caution and study on reverse-engineering prospects. Attempts to deceive them into using dangerous or counterproductive equipment through surreptitiously-planted objects have almost universally failed. A notable example was Operation Wood Shield, carried out by the Joint Orbital Defense Command of the Space Loonies in 1131 OSC. An attempt was made to deceive the harvesters into believing a micromanufactured fusion warhead was actually an infantry rifle. The bait was planted covertly in the path of a major harvester fleet in the Scuttler Slice. Forecasts suggested even unionite researchers had difficulty determining the device's true nature. Despite this, the harvesters eventually used the warhead as a missile against pirates in the Slice - along with a barrage of reproduced derivatives.
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 17, 2019 17:19:15 GMT -5
COMBAT & MINING EQUIPMENT
Harvester weapons range from simple casemate submachine guns on gun drones on up to shipborne gravity manipulator arrays that rival those of the Unity Trust. They include auto-railguns, plasma beams, and particle cannons, some of which are even more advanced than Space Looney designs. They can field gravity shielding, electromagnetic barriers, and even exotic shielding such as suspended nanite defense gels. With sufficient resources and motivation, a harvester fleet can be one of the most sophisticated and deadly forces in known space.
As in all other areas, the harvesters are harshly limited by scarcity. Spaceborne harvesters are often forced to subsist with low-output pulse lasers, low-velocity coilguns, and scavenged firearms. Terrestrial harvesters favor firearms over all, with at least half of all planetside drones equipped with a machine gun or submachine gun. Technology in any given harvester group usually peaks at the level necessary to start construction on particle cannons. Even then, most are given to mining drones instead of combat units.
In a similar vein, harvester weapons are often repurposed mining and industrial tools. For as many gun drones are outfitted with machine guns, there are just as many outfitted with high-velocity nailguns loaded with flechettes. For as many armor drones are mounted with cannons or railguns, just as many are equipped with overcharged mining lasers. The inverse is also true; many harvester mining units are equipped with weapons modified for their task - or simply issued different ammunition for an unchanged design. Missile launchers and small-bore cannons are popular alternatives to dedicated tunnelling tools. Particle cannons are popular on all models of harvester mining drones.
Harvester mining tools are as diverse and advanced as their combat equivalents. While most harvesters make due with drills, basic lasers, and explosives, their potential extends upwards in excess of even the Unity Trust. Self-replicating nanite colonies, remote singularity compaction, and gravitational fusion cutters are all possible at the harvesters' peak. Blueprints on harvester mining technology are coveted prizes for the Unity Trust and Space Loonies.
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 17, 2019 17:19:40 GMT -5
COMMUNICATIONS & COMPUTING EQUIPMENT
The harvesters are not far removed from the rest of orbit when it comes to networking demands. They rely on a wide variety of different communications mediums, applied to fit the local circumstances and technological capacity of their group. They range from simple radio transmitters at their most common and basic, to banks of quantum communication links between critical ships in a major harvester fleet. They are capable of communicating with the rest of orbit on every level - much to the detriment of all others.
Harvesters invest considerable levels of resources into communications infrastructure, regardless of their group's size, technology, or available resources. The vast majority of their networking power is leveraged in the ongoing cyber-siege of Set's surface and orbit. Individual harvesters are routinely overburdened with so much equipment that at least a quarter of any given harvester's mass is built solely to handle communications. This includes everything from heavy droneships marauding high orbit right down to mining flyers burrowed deep into the planet's surface.
To support their networking demands, harvesters are outfitted with an array of electronics to assist their central artificial intelligence cores. Unlike most other harvester technology, computer equipment on harvesters is consistently built to the most advanced and demanding specifications possible. Harvesters will ignore the resource requirements for parts as large and unlikely as entire quantum server banks. They will invest all effort into parts as small and common as individual processor control units. It is estimated that the combined processing power of every computerized device produced since the beginning of recorded history on Set constitutes no more than 3% of the harvesters' current capacity.
Consequently, harvester electronics are some of the most valuable computer parts in orbit. Even battle-damaged parts at the bare minimum of functionality command immense premiums. This comes with no shortage of risk; due to the highly-compact, durable, and portable nature of harvester AIs, it is possible that any part, no matter how large or small, may be infectious to its host system. The immense risk of harvesters spreading in major stations, such as Unity or Lebedrovez, has driven most authorities to deem harvester equipment as highly illegal. The Space Loonies, in particular, consider use or possession of harvester parts as an offense on par with the possession of stolen Space Looney technology.
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