Moe Lane's Blog, page 32

Megacorps and Terrorist Groups (Unfiltered)

Finally finished this up. You can read the whole collated thing on Patreon.

Megacorps and Terrorist Groups

Megacorporations all know that working with terrorist organizations is contraindicated. The Great Powers and the colony worlds both make that abundantly clear. So ignorance, at least, is not an excuse.

Bureau désavoué: the Bureau is the great bane of isolated research facilities and remote locations. It is also the terrorist organization whose crimes megacorps are least likely to document, if they have any say in the matter (which is one reason why the terrorist group rarely lets them have one). When the Bureau désavoué hits a site, most people assume that there was a reason. More than a few mutter that they should have done it a month earlier.Galactic Pioneer Scouts: There’s money in piracy, although the Scouts say that there’s money in prize courts. Whatever the term, somebody is trading finished goods to the Scouts in exchange for captured cargo and ships. For that matter, somebody is trading finished goods to the corsairs and renegados that the Scouts prey on. It would be extra-foolish for a megacorp to sell to both.League of the Viridian Triangle: League strikes are notoriously uneven. The groups’ habit of stopping small problems by smashing them with sledgehammers means that a smart megacorp can cast itself as the undeserving victim of an attack. Even smarter megacorps know that the League is happy to be told gossip about a rival company’s particularly unsavory activities. Just as long as it’s true gossip, though. Luckily, it doesn’t take much to convince the League to break out the cleansing flame.Order of Truth: sensible megacorps spend a lot of time looking for Order spies and saboteurs. The Order routinely uses megacorp resources to carry out its activities, with no inherent concern for the long-term survival of the groups they infiltrate and suborn. If destroying an innocent company is the price to pay for what the Order of Truth defines as ‘the greater good,’ their operatives will make the company pay that price. They won’t stick around to suffer the consequences, either. Because that wouldn’t be for the greater good.Xenolife Shield Interstellar: it is very simple to hire XSI for a monster-killing job. All you have to do is accurately state your problem, list the known complications, define your solution, pay the bill, and never show even the slightest hint of a desire to study or commercially exploit the monsters in question. Those last two clauses are the ones that cause the most megacorp friction with XSI. The group is not in the monster-understanding business. It is in the monster-killing business, and it goes into every corporate gig with a plan in place for if/when the megacorp tries to alter the deal, mid-job.Patreon!

So, Google Search really is [bleep]ing useless, then.

The search: “moe lane” “federal march” (here’s the link, by the way).

Google:

Bing:

And Google does in fact index my site.

It just sucks at it.

‘Godzilla-1.0 Godzilla Suite II.’

I might have been watching scenes from the movie tonight.

Godzilla-1.0 Godzilla Suite II

#commissionearned

The GOOD BOY trailer.

I wonder if GOOD BOY might be too intense. Our culture gets a little funny in the head when you mess with our pets. I mean, things can get seriously out of hand.

Critical Drinker reviews War of the Worlds.

He almost lost it, halfway through. Or possibly it was deliberate? I mean, other than that the stonefacing was impressive.

The new The Bold Marauder is up!

Better late than never, hey? The con did some serious monkeywrenching to my schedule, sorry. Worth it, but I need to plan ahead better next time.

Patreon!

The MORGAN BAROD OUaC Kindle sale is over!

So I guess you’ll just have to buy MORGAN BAROD at full price now. A total of six more copies sold would be awesome, actually. It’s arguably on the threshold of above-average sales for independently published novels.

#commissionearned

Megacorporations in the Tomb Worlds (Unfiltered)

I gotta get back into the swing of the thing.

…

Megacorporations in the Tomb Worlds

The Amalgamation had a sophisticated view of commerce and trade, which was broadly congruent with human speculation of what a post-scarcity economy would look like. Earth is still at least two conceptual leaps away from true understanding of how their economic system operated, but it is definitely clear that its citizenry still bought and sold things, and that they had organizations that aided in that. In other words, the Amalgamation had something like corporations, and their societal infrastructure took that into account.

This has allowed human megacorps to find ways to integrate (or insinuate) themselves in what fragments of the Amalgamation’s infrastructure network remain. It’s never perfect, but as long as corporate outposts stay within whatever rules are still being enforced, they can operate freely. This can be helpful on the more developed worlds. It can also be dangerous, since some rules are only discovered after they’ve been broken. The Amalgamation itself was a highly enlightened system, but whatever ravaged it very much did so with malice aforethought.

Corporate enclaves on the Tomb Worlds are well-designed and properly staffed for brutally pragmatic reasons. Using shoddy materials guarantees that the facility will fail. Allocating inadequate resources guarantees that the facility will fail. Providing insufficient physical, mental, and social support to staffers guarantees that the facility will fail. Failed facilities are useless, and must invariably be fully replaced. Human resources in particular are difficult and time-consuming to replenish, as it takes at least a quarter-century of development for people to come to their full earning potential. Providing staff with adequate motivation, equipment, and defenses is thus far cheaper in the long term.

A corporate facility on the Tomb Worlds is thus either one of two things. The vast majority are filled with motivated employees with genuine loyalty to their employers, not least because their employers show loyalty right back. They will be armed appropriately for the environment, particularly on Tomb Worlds with aggressive biospheres. They will also be extremely vigilant of their own mental and physical health, proactively dealing with small dangers before they become big ones. Finally, they will be welcoming to friendly strangers.

Facilities lacking in one of these categories are suspicious. Facilities lacking in two are actively dangerous. Any facility with three or more is probably a trap.

Patreon!

‘Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now).’

Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now), C+C Music Factory

#commissionearned

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is… finally coming out?

They’re claiming October 21st. I am skeptical, since I pre-ordered Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 pre-Covid. I also can see the subtle signs of Development Hell in the trailer, too.

I’m still gonna play it. I mean, again, I preordered the dang thing.