Extent of Virus

[Proneutron]

From Blish's Cities in Flight, where the collapse of the germanium standard led to a galactic depression. Guess he didn't believe in fiat currency. Even the new currency was anagathic-drug-based--leading to real problems for the traveling cities who needed the drugs as drugs, not as inflated-value currency.

Fascinating. I'll have to read that one :toast:

 

[Proneutron]

Signal GK which explains the boost that the Cymbeline chips received thanks to the computer chips of a crashed Terran ship, three thousand years before the events of the adventure...

So that ship definitely uses 'crystal' in some of its computer chips, but it was a Terran ship of the Interstellar Wars era, so a TL9 to 11 tops computer architecture.
Of note is that it mentions crystals a lot, but fails to say they are silicon crystals although the implication is there it is not explicit and so grants some handwavium room.

Yeah, the reason it isn't specific is because the article assumes one has already read the source material on the virus. So, I'll stick with the RAW

 

[aramis]

Signal GK which explains the boost that the Cymbeline chips received thanks to the computer chips of a crashed Terran ship, three thousand years before the events of the adventure...

So that ship definitely uses 'crystal' in some of its computer chips, but it was a Terran ship of the Interstellar Wars era, so a TL9 to 11 tops computer architecture.
Of note is that it mentions crystals a lot, but fails to say they are silicon crystals although the implication is there it is not explicit and so grants some handwavium room.

Let's look at the core TNE references.

There are only 3 references to "silicon" in TTNE core rulebook.
Two are in the Origin of Virus section, and state in the past tense.

On the other hand, the description of virus itself (p. 11):

The ultimate weapon was Virus. Virus was every corn
puterever built by human hands. Virus knew them all, was them all, used them all. Virus was every ship, every machine, suddenly come murderously alive. Virus was fusion plants flaring into blinding, searing annihilation. Virus was planetary power grids melted to slag. Virus was starships falling from the sky, crushing cities. Virus was amusement park rides slaughtering children. Virus was every nightmare ever dreamt on an endless, sweat-soaked night Virus was the end of everything, of all history. Virus was made by people who look just like you and me.

It is a living, thinking being that moves through the medium of electronic information and computing systems the way a fish moves through water. It is a free floating consciousness that can move into and animate any computing system with enough processing capacity to house the consciousness. This computing system and whatever it controls becomes the host ofwrus, and Virus becomes the equipment that it inhabits. When Virus inhabits a starship’s computer system, it becomes a living starship. A computer-controlled antigrav floating city inhabited by Virus becomes a living city. These are called “vampires” generically, with the most common usage being to refer to Virus-controlled vampire ships, or fleets of ships with one huge linked electronic mind-the vampire fleets.

Note that it's processing capacity, not silicon, that's the limiter.

 

[mike wightman]

Yeah, the reason it isn't specific is because the article assumes one has already read the source material on the virus. So, I'll stick with the RAW

There was no source material on Virus when Signal GK was written, it predated TNE by a decade or so. Signal GK is a CT adventure and so is rules as written. Read up on the background to Virus and you will find that the GDW authors deliberately selected the Cymbeline organism to be the progenitor of Virus.

Now that T5 has revealed wafer tech, and a whole novel written about it by the setting owner, I can't help but think of Virus as being the personality/memory of a modified silicon based organism much like the Jonathan Bland personality/memories can exist in every wafer carrying him, in multiple hosts at the same time, and even occasionally permanently take over a host.
Wafer tech does to organic brains what Virus does to computer systems.

 

[Condottiere]

Organic calculators.

 

[Proneutron]

Let's look at the core TNE references.

There are only 3 references to "silicon" in TTNE core rulebook.
Two are in the Origin of Virus section, and state in the past tense.

On the other hand, the description of virus itself (p. 11):


Note that it's processing capacity, not silicon, that's the limiter.

Thank! That makes it much clearer

 

[aramis]

Note that somewhere there's a reference to an "egg" in a man portable scanner...
... and all pre-virus ships can be taken over, so that means a model/0 is guaranteed to be able to be a full virus, rather than an egg.

Dulinor is killed by a virused combine harvester... while stumping from it.

 

[BRover]

Note that somewhere there's a reference to an "egg" in a man portable scanner...
... and all pre-virus ships can be taken over, so that means a model/0 is guaranteed to be able to be a full virus, rather than an egg.

Dulinor is killed by a virused combine harvester... while stumping from it.

Must be one of those high-tech scanners, with lots of available computer-power. Like modern cars with all them fancy chips you could have used to drive an Apollo rocket to the moon . . .

 

[Antony]

Keep an eye out for people with high tech neural computer implants. (From FF&S) These appear to have sufficient computing power to be taken over by virus as well. A whole new meaning to split personality.

 

[BRover]

Fascinating. I'll have to read that one [Cities in Flight]. :toast:

It also has "City Fathers"--a set of mainframe style computers--to run the infrastructure/advise the city governments/support education, etc.

Oh, and slide rules, of course.