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Ar2 Background Questions

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I have these AR2 background questions:

 

 

What are the forms of government of the Genesis and Nemesis?

 

What is the quality of life for the average member of each faction?

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I am surprised by the interest in the story. An RTS mod isn't exactly a good medium for telling a story and I regret the AR2 story was never finished or even made to be self-coherent in its many different versions.

 

But to answer you, in short, both sides are military rule, though to different degrees.

 

As a result of the breakdown of social order and the drastic climatic change resulted from the first invasion, the previous global council formed by the Atrigan superpowers disintegrated and was in effect taken over by leaders of "Project Genesis", a secret program of the Dezhori government. Authoritarianism emerged from the need to maintain order and preserve previous quality of life, but only the elite few of the planet were privileged enough to be included in the dome cities where life more or less went by as they were before the invasion.

 

The faction known in the game as "Genesis" still rules through the rubber-stamp global council and claims to have legitimate rule over the planet, but in effect the regions the Genesis controls shrink day by day from the glacial wastelands to only the proximal regions surrounding the gigantic shielded cities erected over the past decades. Indeed after the short but significant period of global governance followed by the peaceful coexistence between the Genesis and the Nemesis, the idea of faction boundaries isn't always apparent and regions whose loyalty to the factions isn't immediately clear exist as buffer zones between the hearts of operation of the Nemesis and the Genesis.

 

Nemesis is a borderline sovereignty, or it can be viewed as a reactionary alliance who revolts against the council. It comprises of the majority of the world population who struggle to survive out in the cold and underground, as well as Genesis members who're in secret sympathetic to their cause. The Nemesis leadership is able to unite local leaders and exert influence over economic and industrial activities throughout the planet.

 

Whereas Genesis aims to recover from the first invasion, preserve the quality of life and restore previous colonial glory, Nemesis sees 'etherealization' technologies and the transhumanism pursued by Genesis as a perversion of Atrigan essence, and aims to reinstate personal liberties and take back the planet from the "robots". The common members of Genesis are more than likely not to be a Shiner, but the preservation of consciousness beyond death, and the will of transformation of life beyond its carbon origin are mainstream ideas, there is this idea of that, for life as a basic self replicator, that just as the physical universe provided the environment for genetic evolution, the conscious mind provided a medium for a memetic evolution of the collective will, which in turn ought to supercede and shape its physical origin to allow it to better propagate and manipulate matter and energy in the universe.

 

The connotation of a dictatorship might very well be negative if you're accustomed to a post-modern framework. It is really not easy to explain, to be content with our post-affluent lifestyle is really to blind ourselves from being able to understand the ruthlessness it takes to transform a society. The relationship between Nemesis and Genesis isn't necessarily clear either. One can view the Shiners as the creation of Atrigans playing god, the children of Atrigan who will come to rule, yet one can just as easily imagine Nemesis as a creation of the extant structure of society revolting against its creator. On top of all those, the invaders coinciding with deities in Atrigan lore are returning to bring an end to Atrigo. I guess that's the central theme of the story, is there an immutable essence of this experience of our existence, what would one be willing to sacrifice to achieve certain ends against the odds, ultimately what is morally acceptable under the premise that there is no objective framework for good and evil, and what happens when your god wishes you dead.

 

Survival is the only imperative and indeed the only merit of a self-replicator.

 

Edit: typos

Edited by Chrono

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hey, if you need help with the storyline id love to help. im a bit of a writer myself and i created a storyline for a small mod i made for tiberian sun (FinalSun file XD)

 

anyway id like to help further the story, maybe even make a plot to base a campaign on o.O

 

either way, its your choice, i have a lot of spare time after school ...

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I am surprised by the interest in the story. An RTS mod isn't exactly a good medium for telling a story and I regret the AR2 story was never finished or even made to be self-coherent in its many different versions.

 

But to answer you, in short, both sides are military rule, though to different degrees.

 

As a result of the breakdown of social order and the drastic climatic change resulted from the first invasion, the previous global council formed by the Atrigan superpowers broke down and was in effect taken over by leaders of "Project Genesis", a secret program of the Dezhori government. Authoritarianism emerged from the need to maintain order and preserve previous quality of life, but only the elite few of the planet were privileged enough to be included in the dome cities where life more or less went by as they were before the invasion.

 

The faction known in the game as "Genesis" still rules through the rubber-stamp global council and claimed to have legitimate rule over the planet, but in effect the regions they control shrink day by day from the glacial wastelands to only the proximal regions surrounding the gigantic shielded cities erected over the past decades. Indeed after the short but significant period of global governance followed by the peaceful coexistence between the Genesis and the Nemesis, the idea of faction boundaries isn't always apparent and regions whose loyalty to the factions isn't immediately clear exist as buffer zones between the hearts of operation of the Nemesis and the Genesis.

 

Nemesis is a borderline sovereignty, or it can be viewed as a reactionary alliance who revolts against the council. It comprises of the majority of the world population who struggle to survive out in the cold and underground, as well as Genesis members who're in secret sympathetic to their cause. The Nemesis leadership is able to unite local leaders and exert influence over economic and industrial activities throughout the planet.

 

Whereas Genesis aims to recover from the first invasion, preserve the quality of life and restore previous colonial glory, Nemesis sees 'etherealization' technologies and the transhumanism pursued by Genesis as a perversion of Atrigan essence, and aims to reinstate personal liberties and take back the planet from the "robots". The common members of Genesis are more than likely not to be a Shiner, but the preservation of consciousness beyond 'death', and the will of transformation of life beyond its carbon origin are mainstream ideas, there is this idea of that, for life as a basic self replicator, that just as the physical universe provided the environment for genetic evolution, the conscious mind provided a medium for a memetic evolution of the collective will, which in turn ought to supercede and shape its physical origin to allow it to better propagate and manipulate matter and energy in the universe.

 

The connotation of a dictatorship might very well be negative if you're accustomed to a post-modern framework. It is really not easy to explain, to be content with our post-affluent lifestyle is really to blind ourselves from being able to understand the ruthlessness it takes to transform a society. The relationship between Nemesis and Genesis isn't necessarily clear either. One can view the Shiners as the creation of Atrigans playing god, the children of Atrigan who will come to rule, yet one can just as easily imagine Nemesis as a creation of the extant structure of society revolting against its creator. On top of all those, the invaders coinciding with deities in Atrigan lore are returning to bring an end to Atrigo. I guess that's the central theme of the story, is there an immutable essence of this experience of our existence, what would one be willing to sacrifice to achieve certain ends against the odds, ultimately what is morally acceptable under the premise that there is no objective framework for good and evil, and what happens when your god wishes you dead.

 

Survival is the only imperative and indeed the only merit of a self-replicator.

Thank you very much.

 

I also confess never to understand what a Shiner is. Is it basically brain patterns placed inside a robot?

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its like the consciousness passed inside another body, albeit mechanical.

don't forget that the nemesis have these to... those cyborgs units. (the ones that have the initiate image)

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From my understanding, a Shiner is a normal Atrigan with armor, but due to etherealization, the Shiners are....loyal.

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I believe the shiners are still mostly human, but they have most of the human essential brain functions disabled.

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The point where the story leaves off is that Nemesis is getting ready to invade Genesis, and when they do, the lovely Scrin show up. So... you have no idea who is winning at this point in time...

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AR2 manages to twitch like a dead body and move like a snail every now and then. :D I've started to do a little.

 

These are my current jobs:

- AI - Eventually...

- Maps - I just started a new one after not working on any for a long time.

- Random Super Secret Stuff - IEs, and trying to implement "impossible" ideas that we have until they work.

 

---

 

Vinifera7 is working a lot these days and his focus isn't on AR2. Latest thing he managed to do was to write a base warheads for every unit. (He's rebalancing everything.)

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Great stuff Chrono. I definately want to work the religious elements into the story more.

 

tmapm is right. I am very busy with work and school, but I've somehow found time to work on parts of the manual every now and then. Here is the glossary entry for the Atrigan Council that I did recently, that may be viewed for proofreading by Chrono or whomever wants to comment.

 

Atrigan Council -- An interpolated conference established following the declaration of the Aureon War, initially created to form a peace agreement between the waring factions. The Council was successful in its endevor, but only after both sides suffered several years of agonizing losses engaged in interplanetary warfare. Many years later, as the Council gained influence, it succeeded in a political merger between Nemora and Dezhor, and managed to place one of its own delegates in power; ushering in an era of unified governance on Atrigo.

 

Scythe, you might be of use for writing the manual. There is a lot to write besides the story that needs to be done first. Let me know if you want to help.

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I was under the impression that changes made to AR2 will not involve the storyline, but if you just want to make certain things sound better, by all means go ahead, I just think we have to leave this version of AR2 to a state where an end can be seen.

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I never made any changes to the storyline.. This is just additional explanation of it. The only "changes" that I want to promote are those regarding the religious aspects.

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I think I said this too...the AR2 background is too good not to explain. :P

 

Holy crap how did I miss all this surge of activity...musta been the forum reorganization...

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Well let's see.. There is an impossible feature that I'd like to implement, but it isn't possible currently. However, with the next version of the Rock Patch (1.10) I'll be able to code it in for 6.0 like we wanted to. And I'm working on another new map...

 

May 2nd, 12:57pm edit: Oh, and I'm getting ready to start coding the AI from the ground up.

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