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Kroothawk wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:I'm sure the majority of their fanbase would also appreciate a male sculpt.
There's no way I'm alone in this.

You are alone at wanting a male sculpt with a mini skirt

Pft. At least I'm not swearing my allegiance to denominators!
But really. I just want an armored, angry male sniper firing a rifle. Is that so bad?

Oh well. Dasyu+those arms could work.

Kroothawk wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:I'm sure the majority of their fanbase would also appreciate a male sculpt.
There's no way I'm alone in this.

You are alone at wanting a male sculpt with a mini skirt

That reminds me the new legend of zelda is out.

Personally I love that Sniper model, will have to take it's place alongside my Haqq Islam Lasiq sniper and Nomad Reverend Morias as a sexy Infinity sniper

I think it is quite a difficult line that CB tread in terms of appealing to the standard 'future tech' testosterone fuelled sausage-fest, while at the same time that slightly kitsch, off-centre anime sensibility. I think for the most part they tread that line quite well, although some models go too far for some people (the Daktari for instance, although I reluctantly bought it to paint for someone and ended up actually quite enjoying painting it )

That Daktari though fits the flavor of the Nomads rather well. They're rebellious deviants with a love of manipulating genes and dying skin/hair/etc just for fun. Nomads' version of "sexy" is sluttiness and sexual deviance through dog-people.

Aleph is all about uniformity, structure, and srsbiz order. A happy-clumsy schoolgirl with a purse is not a convincing "doctor". Aleph's version of "sexy" is an unsettling and 'perfect' prudishness. Their males and females are 'perfect' because they can buy or craft or grow these things.

Compare their characters: Aleph's moviestar glamor model Achilles and Nomads' goofy monkey de Castro.

Absolutionis wrote:I also find it a strange relief that the Mk2 and the Mk3 Proxies are the only female models in the entire line that don't have heels. Even the Assassins have heels.

You're actually wrong - on both counts. The Mk2 and 3's do have thick heels - take another look! But at the same time, you clearly need to spend more time looking at the Yu Jing range (which, as it happens, is one of the few ranges where a fair portion of the female characters lack irregularly ample bosoms). A few examples:

http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/2011/miniatures/oniwaban-shinobu-kitsune/

http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/2011/miniatures/celestial-guard-2/

http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/2011/miniatures/kempeitai-2/

http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/2011/miniatures/aragoto-senkenbutai/

http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/2011/miniatures/ninjas-3/

Oh wow. I'm actually pleased. I've usually avoided the Yu Jing line just out of preference (not a fan of ninjas). I didn't even know that one of the Aragoto Senkenbutai was female at all; it's even hard to tell from those images. IMHO, that's the way a miniatures line should be.

Thanks for the correction.

Absolutionis wrote:That Daktari though fits the flavor of the Nomads rather well. They're rebellious deviants with a love of manipulating genes and dying skin/hair/etc just for fun. Nomads' version of "sexy" is sluttiness and sexual deviance through dog-people.

I thought that was more Bakunin than the Nomads at large.

Aleph is all about uniformity, structure, and srsbiz order. A happy-clumsy schoolgirl with a purse is not a convincing "doctor". Aleph's version of "sexy" is an unsettling and 'perfect' prudishness. Their males and females are 'perfect' because they can buy or craft or grow these things.

Not just that, they're the "pinnacle of humanity"...even though they're not entirely human.

Compare their characters: Aleph's moviestar glamor model Achilles and Nomads' goofy monkey de Castro.

Again, I think that's more of a Bakunin thing. While de Castro can go for multiple Nomad factions, I've personally envisaged characters from Corregidor to be more like Senor Massacre, and Tunguska's to be a bit of a Jin-Roh/Akira feel for them.

Kanluwen wrote:

Kroothawk wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:I'm sure the majority of their fanbase would also appreciate a male sculpt.
There's no way I'm alone in this.

You are alone at wanting a male sculpt with a mini skirt

Pft. At least I'm not swearing my allegiance to denominators!
But really. I just want an armored, angry male sniper firing a rifle. Is that so bad?
.

Sometimes a train going through a tunnel is just a train going through a tunnel.

And sometimes it isn't.

What precisely are you trying to say, Alpharius?

Really. I just want a decent looking ALEPH sniper, preferably male. The one(soon to be two) snipers are both female and both really doing nothing to do with sniping. More striking poses.

Absolutionis wrote:Oh wow. I'm actually pleased. I've usually avoided the Yu Jing line just out of preference (not a fan of ninjas). I didn't even know that one of the Aragoto Senkenbutai was female at all; it's even hard to tell from those images. IMHO, that's the way a miniatures line should be.

Thanks for the correction.

Heh, no worries - I thought exactly the same as you, until I looked at the Yu Jing models. It was actually that which tipped me over the edge into Infinity (until then I'd been too put off by the, er, ever-so-slightly creepy female figures dotting the other armies. Particularly the uniformly awful female Ariadnans). And yes, I wasn't sure whether the second Aragoto was a woman until I got the models myself (it's the one on the right, as you probably guessed) - they're just really nicely done, for the most part. Though, admittedly, their combi-rifle equipped Keisotsu and all of their HI (and their lone MI) do go in for the heeled-up power armour look, with the exception of Ko Dali, who sadly makes up for it in every other way (skin tight armour? Check. Impractically well-endowed? Check. Ugly model? Check). But when it comes to the rest of their LI and skirmishers, practical designs all the way. And, well, I'm able to forgive the heels when the figure is encased in armour, on top of which a huge trenchcoat, and cutting a mean pose.

BlueDagger wrote:For those that aren't awe of the fluff behind these...

In Infinity a device called a "cube" has been invented that once implanted into the brain it records all memories and the essenence of what makes tha person who they are. When the person dies they await a new body to be made for them and during that time they can download into an MK Proxy to have the experiance of being in a conflict.

Now imagine yourself in a fake body without any real fear of being "killed", you would basically be the equivalent of a person playing a first person shooter.
.

That's unfortunately very unaccurate. Reread your Rulebook and Human Sphere book, because it seems you didn't properly grasp the background.

While many people has access to a cube (in PanOceania is a right given to any citizen and in YuJIng is a right allowed to first class citizens) very few people has the right to come back to life in a new body, as it's a very expensive process which only the most wealthy persons can afford to. The most usual destination for the most part of the extracted cubes is to end up stored in a cube bank, where from time to time the family can pay a visit and awake the stored personality of the deceased. However In PanOceania, the concensus between Aleph and Church and in YuJing, the consensus between the State and Aleph allow the most useful and relevant persons to be granted the resurrection, people like brilliant scientists, politicians and sport/spectacle superstars. Also there's a lottery which allows fortunate enough common people to be granted the process after their death. There are other ways to be granted the live after death, as it's been said as long as you have money and the right contacts you can pay for it. Therefore a lightning visit to the dark suburbs of Praxis laboratories in the Nomad spaceship of Bakunin is a fast way to get you a prosthetic body for more less pennies than usual as long as you're willing to face the risks involving the visit and the no guarantee of your new body. Or relevant practicants of the Aristeia can get the sponsor of companies to pay for the multiple times they are going to need the services of the resurrection process.

Still those fortunate enough to be choosen by Aleph are granted the Post Humanity. Here lies the difference with a normal resurrection process. The post human is allowed to its data to be stored in Aleph, therefore inow they 're bonded to Aleph. Now it's data lives in the net and can travel through the whole Maya net at light speed, being able to discharge its personality in any prothestic body in nanoseconds. So if the body is destroyed it can return to the safe place of the net. It's usual for many Post Humans to become Aleph agents as now they 're part of Aleph.

Bluetablepainting Shawn is having some public skype interviews with CB staff.



He asks people to suggest REAL INTERESTING QUESTIONS on the comments on Youtube.

Janzerker wrote:

BlueDagger wrote:For those that aren't awe of the fluff behind these...

In Infinity a device called a "cube" has been invented that once implanted into the brain it records all memories and the essenence of what makes tha person who they are. When the person dies they await a new body to be made for them and during that time they can download into an MK Proxy to have the experiance of being in a conflict.

Now imagine yourself in a fake body without any real fear of being "killed", you would basically be the equivalent of a person playing a first person shooter.
.

That's unfortunately very unaccurate. Reread your Rulebook and Human Sphere book, because it seems you didn't properly grasp the background.

While many people has access to a cube (in PanOceania is a right given to any citizen and in YuJIng is a right allowed to first class citizens) very few people has the right to come back to life in a new body, as it's a very expensive process which only the most wealthy persons can afford to. The most usual destination for the most part of the extracted cubes is to end up stored in a cube bank, where from time to time the family can pay a visit and awake the stored personality of the deceased. However In PanOceania, the concensus between Aleph and Church and in YuJing, the consensus between the State and Aleph allow the most useful and relevant persons to be granted the resurrection, people like brilliant scientists, politicians and sport/spectacle superstars. Also there's a lottery which allows fortunate enough common people to be granted the process after their death. There are other ways to be granted the live after death, as it's been said as long as you have money and the right contacts you can pay for it. Therefore a lightning visit to the dark suburbs of Praxis laboratories in the Nomad spaceship of Bakunin is a fast way to get you a prosthetic body for more less pennies than usual as long as you're willing to face the risks involving the visit and the no guarantee of your new body. Or relevant practicants of the Aristeia can get the sponsor of companies to pay for the multiple times they are going to need the services of the resurrection process.

Still those fortunate enough to be choosen by Aleph are granted the Post Humanity. Here lies the difference with a normal resurrection process. The post human is allowed to its data to be stored in Aleph, therefore inow they 're bonded to Aleph. Now it's data lives in the net and can travel through the whole Maya net at light speed, being able to discharge its personality in any prothestic body in nanoseconds. So if the body is destroyed it can return to the safe place of the net. It's usual for many Post Humans to become Aleph agents as now they 're part of Aleph.

hm looks like I need to sit down and read my book in more depth and quit skimming lol.

To be honest, I've seen this "idea" enacted a few times for different sci fi settings, it's used in EVE where the Capsuleers come back in cloned bodies, and it was also the main theme in the new BattleStar Galactica where the Cilons get rebooted after death.

I wish CB had taken it one step further though, and straight up found the fluff to show that the "thing" coming back is actually you and not just a copy of what you were. In all the settings where this alternative to "immortality" is expounded, they all fail to realise that death is still death for the original version, and in fact it's only the copies that really get to enjoy the benefits of this digital rebirth.

Both the resurrection via cloning and memory storage in cells/cubes, and the personality download into the post human/post physical Aleph seem to be inspired in Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga. In this setting, resurrection has nothing traumatic about it: Even if the process might raise some philosophical questions, these are never explored. Characters just go along and live their (endless) lives, the only question being when to call it quits.

Fun enough, most of the inspiration for the Ariadna faction seems to come from Hamilton's works as well.

Edit: missing a whole paragraph!

Alpharius wrote:Not sure if this has been posted yet, but just in case, here it is:

http://wargamingtrader.com/infinity/intro1

Interesting stuff in there, to 'help out' 40K players looking at Infinity.

Having finally dug out my password again...

Part two is up at http://wargamingtrader.com/infinity/intro2 and covers game mechanics, with a lot more comparisons to 40k than the first article. Part 1 has also been updated with all the faction YouTube videos from Corvus Belli.

Agent_Tremolo - hardly, Hamilton came very late to the idea of backups & downloadable personalities in SF. Apart from anything else, the original Ghost in the Shell comics are 13 years older and Infinity itself isn't much younger than the Commonwealth Saga.

Yeah, Hamilton's SF in general is very derivative. I have to admit I've not read the latest stuff, having been utterly disappointed with the bad science and worse storytelling of the Night's Dawn trilogy.

Wow.. those are some of the best sci-fi books I have ever read, and I found them to be irresistible page turners!

Each to their own I guess

Well I shan't derail the thread here too much, but -- Night's Dawn problems:

Basic O-level physics fail in Book 1 (can't remember quite what, but it was along the lines of "no, no, our nanotech can't deal with this particular problem, because the problem is on the molecular scale"!)

Whole premise based on very shaky, dated science (Tipler's Omega point stuff -- not as interesting as, say, the Boltzman brain stuff that Stephen Baxter uses in some of his SF).

Usual Hamilton sexism -- females are basically either lovely and virginal and princess like, or ultimate badasses, or both, but either way they totally fall for the hero...

...who is, like, a starship captain and rebel and genius and expert combatant and irresistible to women... Mary Sue, much? The author really needs to get out more!

Three thick books, of which at least the first 400 pages of each are basically filler, to tell a story that finishes with a (SPOILER of an already CRAP BOOK) literal deus ex machina? The whole universe is at peril, but it's OK, 'cos as long as we ask God, he'll just sort it all out? I felt like all the time I'd spent being bored during the 3 books was even more wasted at the final revelation. :(


If you want really good posthuman / uploaded as software fiction, then check out Alastair Reynolds, or Dan Simmons's _Ilium_, or Greg Egan's _Permutation City_.

Yeah, but if you want to read really bad books, just head over to the Black Library.....ohh.

Delephont wrote:Yeah, but if you want to read really bad books, just head over to the Black Library.....ohh.

Aw, c'mon- Abnett's stuff is alright, ADB's stuff is readable, and there's a lot of decent, unapologetic pulp in there too.

Back on the infinity tip, I rather like the murkiness about whether a reloaded copy (for a Cube or other non-implanted forms of backup) is really the original person or not.

Also interesting is that one's backup is still accessible even if it's not incarnated into a new body. People go visit their dead relatives, and the dead seem to be able to control their investments from beyond the grave. Eventually (after 115 years on average the fluff says) many can buy a body. But even that figure, and the whole discussion of backups, is supposedly taken from a source of questionable accuracy. [The Infinity fluff mostly takes the part of excerpts from newscasts or academic reports etc.- so there's a bias in much of the "factual" info. In fact, some of it has obvious spin or falsification in it, which is really cool IMO.]. The incarnation-market is actually getting more clogged-up according to the fluff in the book, so perhaps it's just not possible for any but the privileged or lucky to get reincarnated.

Interesting, either way. I love how Infinity allows it's core narrative to be given by sources that may be unreliable. It really adds to the cloak-and-dagger feel and the multitudinous possibilities of the background. And given that abilities in the game are actually in a pretty narrow band and troop-type variance is really tightly controlled, very diverse fluff helps balance out the feel of an otherwise very tightly-scripted experience.

Delephont wrote:
I wish CB had taken it one step further though, and straight up found the fluff to show that the "thing" coming back is actually you and not just a copy of what you were. In all the settings where this alternative to "immortality" is expounded, they all fail to realise that death is still death for the original version, and in fact it's only the copies that really get to enjoy the benefits of this digital rebirth.

This gets into a bunch of wacky philosophical digressions, and there's some science fiction authors who've handled it better than I can (Recommend Charles Stross, Ken Mcleod, and others) but:

A lot of this comes down to how you define 'alive.' Is someone who flatlined and was brought back a different person as they were 'dead' for a while? What about amnesia that wipes someone's last few months? If we suppose the technology of near-flawless 'uploading' of someone's mind, the tech has a lot of really interesting ramifications.

From the POV of the uploaded, there's a continuity. They sat down in a chair, had the process, woke up in whatever body or virtual environment they were copied to. There may have been a 'time skip' but those happen to normal live people (get drunk, injured and put in a coma, sleep etc.)

Of course, if a person has the ability to copy themselves, run multiple copies, and do things with them, there's all sorts of rights issues our current system can't handle. Saying "Thou Shalt Not" is probably going to fail: people love the idea of immortality (even if it involved being copied into a cloned young body) and a related idea (If you can run someone in a virtual space, run them at faster than realtime so they can innovate and think up clever ideas faster).

Have I died every time I've gone to sleep? I lost consciousness for hours... My mind was doing things I was not aware of... Am I the same person that went to sleep?

Balance wrote:

Delephont wrote:
I wish CB had taken it one step further though, and straight up found the fluff to show that the "thing" coming back is actually you and not just a copy of what you were. In all the settings where this alternative to "immortality" is expounded, they all fail to realise that death is still death for the original version, and in fact it's only the copies that really get to enjoy the benefits of this digital rebirth.

This gets into a bunch of wacky philosophical digressions, and there's some science fiction authors who've handled it better than I can (Recommend Charles Stross, Ken Mcleod, and others) but:

A lot of this comes down to how you define 'alive.' Is someone who flatlined and was brought back a different person as they were 'dead' for a while? What about amnesia that wipes someone's last few months? If we suppose the technology of near-flawless 'uploading' of someone's mind, the tech has a lot of really interesting ramifications.

From the POV of the uploaded, there's a continuity. They sat down in a chair, had the process, woke up in whatever body or virtual environment they were copied to. There may have been a 'time skip' but those happen to normal live people (get drunk, injured and put in a coma, sleep etc.)

Of course, if a person has the ability to copy themselves, run multiple copies, and do things with them, there's all sorts of rights issues our current system can't handle. Saying "Thou Shalt Not" is probably going to fail: people love the idea of immortality (even if it involved being copied into a cloned young body) and a related idea (If you can run someone in a virtual space, run them at faster than realtime so they can innovate and think up clever ideas faster).

Have I died every time I've gone to sleep? I lost consciousness for hours... My mind was doing things I was not aware of... Am I the same person that went to sleep?

It's a shame there's not a "Buy you a beer" smilie, I'd use it right now, I bet you're an interesting person to sit down and chew the fat with

I like you're take on the idea, and while it doesn't answer an impossible question, it does give the concept some foundation in our current "reality".....I applaud you sir!

Thanks! I'm usually a bit more grounded, but I have been reading a lot of stuff that ties into this of later.

It's a weird topic, and I'm willing to bet that if it goes from theoretical to a real issue governments will probably have a lot of trouble with it.

If you're interested in the whole concept, I recommend Charles Stross' Accelerando as a neat introduction. it's a book of linked short stories that basically go from sometime Real Soon Now to a ways down the road.

(There's a follow-up titled 'Glasshouse' that is good, but is a bit rougher read as there's a lot going on, and some of it not-very-nice.)

Richard Morgan tackles the concept in some depth in the Altered Carbon--Broken Angels--Woken Furies trilogy.

Balance wrote:
Ken Mcleod

Do you mean Ken Macleod of Fall Revolution notorioty? Because that is EXACTLY how I picture the world of Infinity pre-space immigration. And it's a great series.

Extinction Angel wrote:

Balance wrote:
Ken Mcleod

Do you mean Ken Macleod of Fall Revolution notorioty? Because that is EXACTLY how I picture the world of Infinity pre-space immigration. And it's a great series.

Yes, spelling it wrong because I was too lazy to look it up. Amusingly, I just finished the 4th book in that series at lunch today. I don't agree with much of his politics, but I respect that he seems to challenge and consider his viewpoint throughout the books.

You should look at Neal Asher's "Polity" series of books too - it is how I see a lot of the Infinity game world too...

I'd say that none of this author has been published in Spain with the exception of classics like ray Bradbury or Orson Scott Card :(

My favourite take on the "is it still you" issue comes from the concept that the "you" is not the physical body, it's a pattern that moves through space and time, that at least starts out as an emergent property of one's physical body and its activities. Consciousness is interrupted at least once a day by sleep, and occasionally by other means. Even the physical form alters considerably -- it is constantly being worn out and renewed, so that the "you" of birth shares only a small number of cells with the "you" of old age.

The paradox of the Ship of Theseus is relevant here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

One of my favourite emergent concepts is "what if there were two yous?" -- mentioned in that Wiki article, with Hobbes's concept that the discarded portions of the 1st ship could be used to make another, causing confusion as to which is the "true" ship. There have been some great stories based on that concept, from Andre Norton's classic SF novel "Android at Arms", to the Justin Bialy stories in Autoduel Quarterly (you guys will remember the great wargame Car Wars, no doubt -- clones are a reality in that, and one of the Bialy stories makes use of the "what if" of having 2 clones active simultaneously), to that Farscape sequence, to the amazing Calvino novella "The Cloven Viscount" in which both halves of a man bisected by a cannoball are repaired...

Anyway -- if you treat consciousness as an interruptible, renewable pattern, then it's possible for it to be revived at a later date after one version was destroyed, just like you'd go back to a backup of a corrupted document. If it's not a pattern, what is it? Intuition demands some kind of connection to the physical body, but your body isn't you -- it's a load of processed food, arranged into patterns by your parents' DNA, from which "you" arise and emerge.