[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by tsofian

That being said if he is not isolated from the many and varied military networks when the balloon goes up he will potentially have a huge storehouse of knowledge about the war. This, and the data he collected after the war COULD point players who ask the right questions in the direction of Prime Base.

During the time in which Damocles is collecting with significant ability, Prime Base isn't radiating. If Damocles is detecting Prime Base during its active period, then it must possess radio intercept capabilities that would also mean it could spy on Krell and the KFS and others. So it's one or the other - either Damocles has nothing on the Project or it also has info on the other players. It is the same gear, same processes, there is no reason for it to intercept only Morrow transmissions.

Originally Posted by tsofian

He may know that during the war and until his nets went down there were no warheads delivered to where Prime Base is. He will almost certainly have a data base of where every nuclear detonation was during and after the conflict. His on site sensors would be able to detect ground burst nuclear weapons fairly readily. The huge number impacting during large scale strikes might be tough to sort into individual impacts but a stand alone one should be clear as a bell.

I am not disputing Damocles' ability to detect the detonation, just the ability to know that the Project exists and then associate that detonation with the headquarters.

Originally Posted by tsofian

Any SIGINT from the period leading up to the nuclear detonation at Prime might have additional clues.

And there should not be any significant SIGINT from that period. By the time Prime Base starts radiating, Damocles should be operating using only its own on-site antennas and computers, trying to detect low power, LPI radio transmissions from 1500 miles away. Even in the low-noise post-war environment they would probably not be able to detect more than a few sparse transmissions with poor directionality and insufficient data to make any kind of real determination.

Damocles might know that there were a few coded transmissions along a cone that includes a late nuclear detonation, but that doesn't correlate to knowing that Prime Base is there and may not correlate with anything at all - there may have been a variety of radio sources still working that late, including military and intelligence, there may have been a variety of late detonations, and regardless the information is simply going to be too slim to characterize.

Originally Posted by tsofian

Damocles doesn't have all the data, and data only works if you ask the right questions. He won't. It will be up to the Players to do that.

And what would those questions need to look like? Damocles is intelligent, if it has <insert adequate information here>, what questions do the players need to ask to discover that (a) Prime Base is located at site XYZ and that (b) although it was hit by a nuclear detonation there is still something there worth traversing a post-apocalyptic country to investigate?