How dark is the future of the Morrow Project

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by stormlion1

Actually I kind of figured that after plans were set in motion he would send changes along after the fact. The Council of Tomorrow might have made approvals of several things that would have worked, but Morrow after the fact modified them. As far as anyone was concerned everything is as it should have been.

That implies that (a) Morrow was in operational control and that (b) the Council had no other contact with the rest of the Project. Those don't seem like reasonable assumptions to me. Any of thousands of people should have seen immediate problems and worked to correct them, presumably reporting up their change of command.

Regardless, this Morrowluminati idea is a quite different interpretation than anything I ever saw implied in the game.

Originally Posted by stormlion1

The question would be why. I think that rebuilding after a nuclear war would have just recreated the old United States, an angry one. By forcing the issue and waking the teams later he had a blank check to create a new nation. The entire US is either small ministates or wilderness. A true blank slate with Morrow Teams doing the rebuilding with a large leg up in comparison to other survivors.

Why would it recreate the old US? Most of the people who were devoted to that specific form of government and who had the passion and skill to execute it would have been the exact people targeted in the war! I always saw the purpose of the Project as being saving the people, and allowing them to decide the course of their governance on their own - perhaps uniting into a new United States, perhaps become a patchwork of independent nations. I don't recall anywhere the Teams are instructed to give specific guidance on this to the people they are helping.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Why would it recreate the old US? Most of the people who were devoted to that specific form of government and who had the passion and skill to execute it would have been the exact people targeted in the war! I always saw the purpose of the Project as being saving the people, and allowing them to decide the course of their governance on their own - perhaps uniting into a new United States, perhaps become a patchwork of independent nations. I don't recall anywhere the Teams are instructed to give specific guidance on this to the people they are helping.

That is a 3rd edition versus 4th edition schism...

3rd was about saving civilization and 4th implies strong if not outright saying the Project is there to preserve and rebuild the United States of America.

So when championing one or the other it helps with everyones understanding if you let people know which edition you are concerned about.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

That is a 3rd edition versus 4th edition schism...

3rd was about saving civilization and 4th implies strong if not outright saying the Project is there to preserve and rebuild the United States of America.

So when championing one or the other it helps with everyones understanding if you let people know which edition you are concerned about.

Gotcha. Don't have 4th edition yet, have not yet been overwhelmed with reasons to purchase it, either.

From a practical standpoint, rebuilding the USA as it currently exists would be a monumentally complex task. Even just a few years post-apocalypse, that type of government might be very problematic and not even desired by the population.

[stormlion1]

That's the issue. A few years afterwords no one will want a US or they will want a US that will exact revenge for them. By waiting the old US of A becomes a Golden Age in peoples memorys and something to rebuild towards. The main issue is that after Prime was destroyed the Regional Bases didn't wake up either or were destroyed. And if they did wake up, they didn't have the ability to wake anyone else up. A massive oversight.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by stormlion1

That's the issue. A few years afterwords no one will want a US or they will want a US that will exact revenge for them. By waiting the old US of A becomes a Golden Age in peoples memorys and something to rebuild towards.

Will it? Consistently? Or will it become "The Cursed Old Ways that Nearly Destroyed Us ALL!!!!"? Under the circumstances, ignorance or hatred of the past seems more likely than reverence.

Originally Posted by stormlion1

The main issue is that after Prime was destroyed the Regional Bases didn't wake up either or were destroyed. And if they did wake up, they didn't have the ability to wake anyone else up. A massive oversight.

So massive that it is either stunning incompetence or massive conspiracy. Neither one really fits with 3rd edition (can't speak to 4th), but I prefer a different answer: the designers of the game didn't think this through very well. Everyone makes mistakes, and it seems reasonable for these to be game design mistakes (to be fixed!!) rather than intentional flaws in the Project.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

So massive that it is either stunning incompetence or massive conspiracy. Neither one really fits with 3rd edition (can't speak to 4th), but I prefer a different answer: the designers of the game didn't think this through very well. Everyone makes mistakes, and it seems reasonable for these to be game design mistakes (to be fixed!!) rather than intentional flaws in the Project.

Actually, it fits very well with the background material of PF 08 Prime Base. The only exception is that there is a mistake in the programming code for the wake up delay.

Someone put a decimal in the wrong place, or did not carry a zero..... I forgive them, they were dying.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Actually, it fits very well with the background material of PF 08 Prime Base. The only exception is that there is a mistake in the programming code for the wake up delay.

Someone put a decimal in the wrong place, or did not carry a zero..... I forgive them, they were dying.

I forgive that guy, but I don't forgive his superiors. Why wasn't such a program already written? Why didn't the regional commands or other backups have some kind of timer or other way of awakening?

Realistically, every single manned Morrow facility (including team boltholes) should have had a timer that woke the team (or at least the CO) after a certain time. And every command superior to that one should have the ability to reset that timer remotely. Set the initial timer for 5 years, and every year that you don't want them awake, send the reset signal. When you are ready, send the wake-up, but if the ability to transmit is lost then the Project still activates a few years later.

No decent engineer or manager would fail to allow for the possibility that Prime Base would be taken out prior to launching the Teams. Stray nuke, Morrow civil-war, hostile takeover, whatever - there is a possibility that this single transmitter at this single location will not work. And it has to work. There should be automated systems working in parallel with manned systems, with the latter ensuring the correct functioning of the former and the former acting as a back up to failures of the more-frail latter.