Well, IIRC Avatars of War are synthflesh monstrosities that are designed to be hulking engines of destruction, and the synthflesh gives them a heck of lat more power to weight than normal muscle and tissue. Xan, could probably match this and try to wrestle Miya, but if he screws it up he'll run hard into the square cube law
He's kinda got shit stats, though, at least for that kind of thing.
Both true. Maybe if he gets even larger...?
square cube law
Unless that, yeah. :<
Though he has been shown to be able to adjust his density and such, hasn't he? If he can replicate cameyes, the odds that he'll be able to do a passable imitation of something tougher than a lot of metals seems pretty good.
If I manage to survive, I'd love to spar with Xan in a robot body. Or maybe in a body that Xan provides, if that proves to be fun enough.
I still don't believe any of you at all that this will end well.
Though of course it'd be awesome if it did.
Speaking of sparring and robo-bodies, can one control a synthflesh or robot body remotely?
Could be handy for sparring without dying. Then again, there's always the VR... but where's the fun in that?!
I looked into this ages ago. It's possible, but there's a handful of side effects. Lemme see if I can find them.
*snrk* "delay teammates death" no entries found.
((This is really making me wish I had time to test and use this system. Maybe I still do, but I suspect Nyars is getting antsy and it'd probably take at least 3-4 iterations to figure it out.))
Oh god don't hit me Nyars, this will only take a second:
1. Examine possible problems with a system that transmitted all input to a remote body rather than the one my brain is in, effectively allowing me to "switch" bodies even though my brain is elsewhere.
2. Examine cost of such a system, both the parts that go in my "real" body and the parts that go in the replacements.
2a. Presumably the drone half of said parts would look like a braincase that's holding a wireless transceiver instead of a brain, and the main one a series of gates over the normal information ports on the braincase that can switch between sending information to the body as normal and sending it wirelessly to a different target elsewhere.
2b. Look into encryption or similar if there's danger of background noise or similar making me trip balls or spaz out with this setup.
3. Ask Doctor if he'd give me a few free robot bodies for this project. If not, ask how much each one would cost.
You hide in the VR and try to ignore the sound of metallic tapping as Nyars stalks the halls, rhythmically rapping his bat against the floor and walls. You pretty sure you can hear him singing something.
1.Possible problems include but are not limited to: Signal lag resulting in reaction lag that potentially results in failure and or death of remote body or teammates. Signal interruption that results in the same. Signal feedback resulting in death. Power surge resulting in death. Life support failure resulting in life failure. Body dysmorphia. Psyche fragmentation. Bi-location disorder. Coma. Brain chemistry imbalances resulting from transmission artifacts. The list goes on.
2. Depends on the system. A radio based system will be fairly cheap and just require an array in both the real body and the puppet. But it will be much more prone to interference and signal dropping. After all, the signal from one body to the other might not be overly large, but it will be very particular. Small errors may result in unwanted effects. A controlled quantum entanglement decay relay would be better, but it would also be extremely expensive and rather large.
3. Robot bodies are free to brains that need them. Otherwise they cost tokens. Not sure price. Ask Armory master. Also, duck.
"Boy, thats an odd mess-"
And then there's a few hectic seconds of Nyars pinning you, accessing the panel on your back and then shutting you down. Oh no.
Most of those are probably a lot less severe when you're a few meters away from the action, but who knows with wireless soultech.
How exactly do you expect Hasala and Lerman to watch out for the police while inside the building and fighting cultists? The only way to keep an eye out for the police is to be in the diner or out on the sidewalk, since we didn't bring any cameras. So it's basically exactly "no, bad dog, you get the newspaper". It's even worse for Hasala; you're basically denying any chance he has left of fulfilling Miyamoto's orders. At least Lerman is still gonna get mostly what he came on the mission for. Depending on how the encounter with the police goes, Hasala might not even get a chance to test the goop thrower.
You could ask Steve or the driver to keep watch for you and make sure not to break radio contact with them. Which is admittedly unlikely going inside that void sheath, but still. You could potentially also take turns or just have one member volunteer for the lookout part, provided the same. Actually handling it will
probably take more than one person manning the machine gun, but that'll probably take more than two or a better-equipped two anyway. If you felt particularly ballsy you could even try something more elaborate, like having the APC scoot away and pulling something with ambushing, blocking off, or hiding from the cops. Not that I'd recommend it, but there are more ways to deal with incoming police action than sitting in the car waiting for them to arrive.
Plus, it's a potentially fluid situation. If we get a bunch of injured people who can't do anything
but sit in the APC gently caressing the machine gun, you might be off the hook (
assuming you trust them, of course). If they don't seem to be coming after all, or they show up and we manage to convince them they don't want none of this heat, you're probably off the hook. If they show up and we wipe them out, you're at least temporarily off the hook. If they show up, set up a laughable perimeter, and then shout at us that we should give ourselves up while settling down for some coffee and doughnuts, you're probably off the hook.
Everyone else, remember the plan. Go in, ask whoever appears to be in charge about their higher power or something. Whatever gets them talking or shooting. Try not to deliberately intimidate or bother the diners; they'll probably go quieter if they think you've got no beef with them in particular and just happen to be making a mess of their dining plans. On the other hand, there's a non-zero chance the diners are cultists or affected somehow, so don't let your guard down completely.
Important sections highlighted. Hasala did not deliberately intimidate anyone, although he did walk up with a jury-rigged flamethrower. I'd think that would probably be less intimidating than the spacesuits- any large gang might have jury-rigged flamethrowers, but spaceshits are pretty obviously weird.
Further, you never told him that he should stay back because he was scarier. From his perspective, he was told to go in. Blindly following orders isn't a trait of a leader, but it is a good trait of a soldier. Punishing people for not second-guessing your orders seems... just as insane as Lerman flashbanging civvies.
Also, Lerman's flashbang was obviously intended to help the diners, even if it was a schizophrenic form of 'help'. Taddock starting to beat people up wasn't helpful in any way, and directly contradicted your orders. Yes, he did it after damage was done, but I don't see how a flashbang would have sparked that behavior; He probably would have done it in any case, so he should get the same punishment.
Faith's going by what she saw and what happened, not what was intended. I believe it was Konrad beating the civilians, not Taddok, but whichever it was had a pretty terrible action- block the door looking menacing? How the hell is that going to aid in getting people
out of the diner? But Faith didn't see that; she saw Hasala and Lerman ruin everything, and then Konrad go Typical ARM with a nightstick. Especially given that the point of the "punishment" was "we now need people to deal with this, so since you produced it that should probably be you," it makes a lot of sense to hold Hasala and Lerman accountable, but not Konrad.
As for specifics, I really doubt a strange outfit is going to panic people more than an obviously armed person just standing there whistling. If it's a common gang implement, the locals are apparently not accustomed to it being a good sign.
It's true that I didn't tell him to stay back because he was scarier, and that in fact I told him the opposite. However, he didn't do exactly what I said- he walked up and just stood there disconcertingly. Him or especially everyone actually entering the building with their various accoutrements might have been more or less scary; if it was more, obviously I wouldn't be blaming anyone for what they were packing. As it stands, he looked a
lot like a crazy armed person threatening or planning some kind of malice.
I flashbanged everyone due to shitty intelligence and willpower rolls. Now I get to sit in the truck.
Well, you don't have to. You just have to make sure we don't get blindsided by the police or else a tall synthwoman might be rather cross with you.
"Well, you don't have to stay behind. Just, if you don't, and police show up, this very dangerous person might be rather cross with you."
So, you won't do anything if people disobey orders and nothing goes wrong, but if people obey orders and mess things up, they're punished. Really, 'orders' are kinda just 'suggestions'; just do whatever you think is least likely to mess stuff up.
Their orders aren't "stay here, but you know, orders are just suggestions for not pissing me off." Their orders are "deal with the police that are probably on their way because of the stuff you did." If they can do that some way other than the obvious, problem solved.