OBS Invulnerable?

Randomiser wrote:

XofDallas wrote:To my mind, there has to be some mechanism, probably located in or under the Temple, by which the orbital defense system can be turned off.

Yes, that would be nice. Now, where did they scribble down the password?

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Maybe that's what's in Seijin Khody's messages en Espanol: "Found admin password to Rakurai - 'Er1k_L@ngh0rne_iz_the_M@n' ". Probably not, though.

jms

Well, definitely the WORST possible situation would be if the Rakurai computers has a copy of Langhorne own personality...

On the other hands, after the eight thousand years of nothing more than thinking, he should became a little more reasonable...

Dilandu wrote:
Almost completely impossible. First, there should be a C&C loop to play with. For now, the platforms refused to react at all.

Secondly, the communication attempt from the planet would undoubtely be considered VERY suspicious by the platforms. Let's not forget, that the platforms survived the War against Fallen - when the attempt to take control of them was much more probable.

The Rakurai seem to be Langhorne's Plan-B. They keep humanity 'safe' even if it finds out the truth. Eliminating the threat of the platforms requires you to develop technology that will cause the platforms to fire before you're ready. A nice Catch-22. If that's correct, then it's possible that even if the Inner Circle gets access to the Control Center (that most of us assume is beneath the temple) it may not be usable.

Baseless speculation on some other possibilities:
- Owl figures out how to end-run the C3 safeguards to take control, possibly using information yet to be revealed in the story.

- Owl/Charis is able to manufacture a weapon both stealthy enough to survive and powerful enough to be effective. Their advantage is that they have at least some idea of the system's capabilities when they design their countermeasure.

- My own Bad Idea: If they can't build something ON Safehold, maybe they could build something OFF of it. Nanotech means that a manufacturing capability can be very small. Merlin's nannies are said to be able to essentially rebuild him if necessary'. Build a small factory module and launch it (stealthily) to the asteroid belt. It bootstraps itself into a small shipyard capable of building a weapon that can take out the bombardment system.

- Our Heroes are able to convince the returning Archangels to disable the system.

- RFC comes up with something completely unexpected that makes perfect sense in hindsight.

I know where my money is.

jms

First, I agree that David Weber is likely to surprise us.

Second, I suspect that if Merlin/Nimue logs into the control system (likely under the Temple), the OBS will respond to Merlin/Nimue id as a Federation Navy Officer. Langhorne, acting as Safehold Governor, likely could "lock out" individual Navy Officers but could not "lock out" all Navy Officers. Since he doesn't know Nimue in on planet, he didn't see a need to lock her out.

jmseeley wrote:

Dilandu wrote:
Almost completely impossible. First, there should be a C&C loop to play with. For now, the platforms refused to react at all.

Secondly, the communication attempt from the planet would undoubtely be considered VERY suspicious by the platforms. Let's not forget, that the platforms survived the War against Fallen - when the attempt to take control of them was much more probable.

The Rakurai seem to be Langhorne's Plan-B. They keep humanity 'safe' even if it finds out the truth. Eliminating the threat of the platforms requires you to develop technology that will cause the platforms to fire before you're ready. A nice Catch-22. If that's correct, then it's possible that even if the Inner Circle gets access to the Control Center (that most of us assume is beneath the temple) it may not be usable.

Baseless speculation on some other possibilities:
- Owl figures out how to end-run the C3 safeguards to take control, possibly using information yet to be revealed in the story.

- Owl/Charis is able to manufacture a weapon both stealthy enough to survive and powerful enough to be effective. Their advantage is that they have at least some idea of the system's capabilities when they design their countermeasure.

- My own Bad Idea: If they can't build something ON Safehold, maybe they could build something OFF of it. Nanotech means that a manufacturing capability can be very small. Merlin's nannies are said to be able to essentially rebuild him if necessary'. Build a small factory module and launch it (stealthily) to the asteroid belt. It bootstraps itself into a small shipyard capable of building a weapon that can take out the bombardment system.

- Our Heroes are able to convince the returning Archangels to disable the system.

- RFC comes up with something completely unexpected that makes perfect sense in hindsight.

I know where my money is.

jms

Langhorne, acting as Safehold Governor, likely could "lock out" individual Navy Officers but could not "lock out" all Navy Officers.

Highly unlikely. I doubt that OBS is a standart system for colonization expedition or for warships, that protected it. It must be jury-rigged (or commodore Pei would at least knew about it existence), wery probably from non-specialised components. And it may not be avare about the existence of Federation navy Officers at all; it could be simply programmed to some complex code, possibly with additional gene scan or voice identification (or even brainwaves scan) to activate.

Moreover, i think that - after the commodore Pei actions - the Langhorne's followers would make all possible precautinos to make sure that no one "fallen" naval officer would turn the Rakurai against them.

If i were in place of Langhorne, i would lock the OBS system on my personality scan - to make sure that NOBODY exept me or at least my copy would be able to play with system. Hm... if i were in place of Langhorne would i build this system after all?...

Dilandu wrote:If i were in place of Langhorne, i would lock the OBS system on my personality scan - to make sure that NOBODY exept me or at least my copy would be able to play with system. Hm... if i were in place of Langhorne would i build this system after all?...

I'm pretty sure that the OBS/Temple Command Center will recognize Nimue as the Senior Surviving Federation Officer once either version (Nimue or Merlin) reaches a secure communications console under the Temple.

Military AIs would not accept a total lockout without a designated chain of command -- down to the lowest recruit if the Sole Survivor.

Weird Harold wrote:
I'm pretty sure that the OBS/Temple Command Center will recognize Nimue as the Senior Surviving Federation Officer once either version (Nimue or Merlin) reaches a secure communications console under the Temple.

Military AIs would not accept a total lockout without a designated chain of command -- down to the lowest recruit if the Sole Survivor.

Why would the OBS have a standard TFN AI running it? Langhonre built it after reaching Safehold; it makes sense that he would put a customize AI in control (assuming there actually is an AI controlling it, which as far as I know is just speculation). I see no reason why Langhorne - or whoever controlled the OBS after the War Against the Fallen - couldn't have implemented whatever security precautions he or they felt necessary. And if that is the case, it's likely going to deny access to anyone not on the side of the "Archangels" as of the end of the WAtF, so Nimue Alban would have no access.

Here's an appropriate 'low tech' way to get the parasites out there...if you really insist

Anyone ever messed with model rocketry? You can get some very impressive ISP's out of the engines, especially with some of the multi-stage designs. And they used to have one that allowed you to launch an egg and recover it intact (ideally- all we ever recovered was 'egg-au-blut')..

Given that the 'art' of rocketry has been recovered, use a black powder rocket launched from Merlin's skimmer in low orbit. The spark required is extremely small- a 6 volt battery, or even a piezo electric lighter igniter will do the trick- to fire the engine(s).

Set it up so that the engines are of the 'stage' variety- ones that have no delay between burnout and recovery chage- in series to build up the velocity needed to (VERY )slowly get out there- keep in mind, if we are discussing the L-4 or L-5 points, they are a significant distance out there ( could someone who has the knowledge,skill with math,and the inclination figure the distance in Safehold terms,please? I do believe that it would be somewhere around an A.U. or so) with the final engine of the type that deploys the parachute. In this case, it fragments a container of parasites that would eventually intersect the libration point that the ORBS calls home. They could then do their mass multiplication trick, and when they reach a critical amount, trigger the 'brain' that rode the capsule out there with 'em to give them their instructions to go about trashing the 'sats systems.

This method would have the primary benefit of being so low tech that the ORBS platform would probably not be watching for a purely chemical flare,and give the nanites time to maybe even multiply en route.They could then ( in terms of solar velocities ) drift gently all over the blasted thing and then go active all at once, creating one heck of a problem for the onboard systems to deal with.

I do feel, however, that such an approach would be academic; for some odd reason, I think that the codes to activate or null the bloody thing are in Father Paityr's paperweight- which is currently (according to textev) in Nimue's cave.

But that's not to say that there aren't other 'keys' out there...

And,as has been already stated,our Wonderful Wizard of Odds likes to surprise

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InvisibleBison wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
I'm pretty sure that the OBS/Temple Command Center will recognize Nimue as the Senior Surviving Federation Officer once either version (Nimue or Merlin) reaches a secure communications console under the Temple.

Military AIs would not accept a total lockout without a designated chain of command -- down to the lowest recruit if the Sole Survivor.

Why would the OBS have a standard TFN AI running it? Langhonre built it after reaching Safehold; it makes sense that he would put a customize AI in control (assuming there actually is an AI controlling it, which as far as I know is just speculation). I see no reason why Langhorne - or whoever controlled the OBS after the War Against the Fallen - couldn't have implemented whatever security precautions he or they felt necessary. And if that is the case, it's likely going to deny access to anyone not on the side of the "Archangels" as of the end of the WAtF, so Nimue Alban would have no access.

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I think everyone is over estimating the skill level of the remaining Angels/Command Crew. Like today most people can use a computer but very few can write a program for one. Window 8.1 and Office has had man centuries of development and they still have major errors in them that have to be fixed with updates. Want to try and write either one of them from scratch. We use them daily but very few of use can read any part of their code.

With the NUKE attack the pool of very highly educated people/Programmers was severely depleted. I expect a lot of programing was built around canned menu driven software not wrote from scratch. Even building an AI was probably made from a menu driven template. OWL did the equivalent of somewhere around a man-century in virtual R&D before he built Nimue.

I think the OBS and other system used what was on the canned programs that were already available because programmers of Doctor Proctor level where very few and far between.