Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[GreatWyrmGold]

The dictionary definitions I've seen have "never dying" as part of it. I tend to trust dictionaries more than works of fiction when it comes to providing definitions.

1. Immortality doesn't exist in real life. It can only be found in fiction, and frankly I trust the real thing more than dictionaries.
2. I never said immortality didn't mean not dying, I just said it meant not getting killed. If you get killed by a boulder, a bullet, or a (fan)blade, but you come back, you aren't dead, so how could you have died?

Aren't you arguing a rather subjective point then? I was attempting to anchor it onto something actually debatable.

Then you're moving the goalposts because you're not sure about...um...the rules of soccer? Metaphors are hard at times, especially when they're chosen for you.

At no point did I ever explicitly relate what I said to the subjective concept of what is "cool".

It's implied by joining a debate on the concept of cool. Like I said, you're moving the goalposts...to your home field?

[Empiricist]

The dictionary definitions I've seen have "never dying" as part of it. I tend to trust dictionaries more than works of fiction when it comes to providing definitions.

1. Immortality doesn't exist in real life. It can only be found in fiction, and frankly I trust the real thing more than dictionaries.
2. I never said immortality didn't mean not dying, I just said it meant not getting killed. If you get killed by a boulder, a bullet, or a (fan)blade, but you come back, you aren't dead, so how could you have died?

1. Dictionary definitions would be based upon the fiction that defined that concept.
2. I would call the dead masses of flesh that were his previous incarnations quite dead.

It's implied by joining a debate on the concept of cool. Like I said, you're moving the goalposts...to your home field?

Or more accurately, to an actual field. Because trying to debate on entirely subjective grounds wouldn't be much of a debate.

[Xanmyral]

Below not related to current discussion.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Thanks Caellath.

Main reason why I asked was about the subject prior to the question, about overheating organs in a person in an attempt at stealth.

I'd figure that this 'verse probably mirrors our own to an extent, and that if a weapon is made, counter-measures are devised or attempted. While some of the more complicated ones would no doubt be harder to track, something that manipulates thermodynamics could be seen even with the primitive sensors of today (by comparison (my assumption) to this verse).

If a weapon allows someone to remotely manipulate temp (can it work in reverse?), I'd frankly be surprised if their sensors don't come with thermal by default that would tip people off to abrupt changes (even internal would be noticed by today's standards, no doubt more easily in the time of the game), which would indicate an amp user in the vicinity.

Afraid I'm not sure if this attempt at advice is useful anymore, but I suggest caution against the thought of such a weapon being silent in usage against a military who are aware of them, even if used intelligently and subtly such as internally on an opponent. Hope my two cents are helpful.

[Xantalos]

If the mountain's made out of charcoal I can turn it to diamond...

1. How?
2. Pretty much no matter what your answer, I'm going to be criticizing your comprehension of physics. FYI.

Mass manipulator and microwave amps.
What was that you said about physics?

[kisame12794]

Heat, pressure, carbon, and time. Really all you need to make diamonds. Using amps he can create the pressure and heat, and he could probably have enough of it (heat/pressure) to make it go much faster.

[Sean Mirrsen]

It's not a process that can be infinitely accelerated by pressure and heat (because at some point you're going to find out what powers supergiant stars), and you really need an existing diamond seed if you want to accelerate it meaningfully, and you'll still need several hours for a diamond of any noticeable size, but yeah, in general that's it.

[syvarris]

Spoiler: @Xan(myral) (click to show/hide)

Your reasoning is quite sound, but you're wrong in one place: the only people with manip tech are UWM military.  And the UWM is effective enough that they never fight their own people on a large scale (Or at least, records of such an engagement are as secret as how a manip actually works.)

So they don't have in-built countermeasures to their own stuff in everything.  Even an Avatar's pilot can be taken out with a well-placed ball of warmth.  That's bad for everyone nearby on the planet, but still.

That said, they do have extensive general-purpose bio-sensors in the MK suits, so they know when someone's dead, and why.  They can't detect space magic in particular, but when someone's brain suddenly jumps twenty degrees without any suit punctures or anything, it's pretty easy to guess what did it.

Manips are still the best stealth weapons we have.  I mean, they're completely undetectable until the person is dead.  Can't really beat that.

[Parisbre56]

Actually, there are defensive automanipulator-based shields, but those are very rarely used. So for example a heat-shield automanipulator could defend you from lasers and also defend you from Microwave Manipulators.

[syvarris]

Yeah, I didn't deny there being countermeasures.  I just said that they're not used.  After all, the 'heat shield' is a automanip which constantly sets your temperature to a particular number.  And they're really expensive, and can get quite large if you're shielding big things.  Not to mention that they have a very exact area that they modify.

And that's only the countermeasure for temperature.  I really don't know how you'd safely prevent someone from using a vector manip to mash your brain- constantly using a vector automanip to set your brain's velocity to zero... seems like a really bad idea.  It might work for something like an avatar pilot, where there's no real movement, but how would you use it in a battlesuit, let alone an MK?

[Parisbre56]

After all, the 'heat shield' is a automanip which constantly sets your temperature to a particular number. Not to mention that they have a very exact area that they modify.

And that's only the countermeasure for temperature.  I really don't know how you'd safely prevent someone from using a vector manip to mash your brain- constantly using a vector automanip to set your brain's velocity to zero... seems like a really bad idea.  It might work for something like an avatar pilot, where there's no real movement, but how would you use it in a battlesuit, let alone an MK?

They don't set something to a specific variable. They simply prevent extreme/dangerous modification as much as they can. So if their sensors sense something trying to heat the area you occupy in a dangerous way, they activate the automanipulator to negate that change.
Of course, there's the question of how they sense the modification... Probably using some sort of space-magic-sensing like the trick Amp Specialists use to see with their amps but in manipulator form. Or maybe the change is gradual enough that normal sensors have enough time to sense it and trigger a counter-response from the automanipulator.

Manipulators can't be operated continuously, not for very long. Even doing so with amps is very strenuous for the one that does it. Same with automanipulators.

Plus, I think not allowing your body's temperature to change would have some very bad implications. Most chemical reactions that happen in the body give off or absorb heat, so stopping all temperature changes in your body would probably screw its chemistry in some way.

Remember, it's not that automanipulators can't be programmed with variable outputs and inputs. See the kinetic amps. They accept variable input and give off variable output. We just don't have access to those kinds of variable automanipulators. And if we try to modify a manipulator/automanipulator/amp, it will most likely self-destruct unless you make a very good roll (or not even then depending on what piecewise wants).

EDIT: Hmmm... What if piecewise has some hidden counter in his notes and every time someone uses an amp or manipulator he increments that counter and then throws something at us when that counter reaches a certain number? Or maybe a future succeed-or-TPK/succeed-or-you-loose-the-game mission becomes much more difficult every time that number gets incremented. Kinda like Zentol in Perplexicon.

[Xanmyral]

A military that doesn't make sure they can defend against their own weapons is a military that will soon cease to exist when, not if, their enemies get their weapons. That's my opinion on the situation.

[kisame12794]

But the UWM is the largest military force we know of. If anybody gets their tech and uses it against them, they either throw more troops at it, or bombard from orbit. When you have trillions of soldiers, you aren't going to lose just because some people got their hands on a manipulator or amp.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Plus they have the annoying tendency to lifelock their weapons.

With that in mind, I suggest that our boarding teams be careful with who they shoot once they get to the ship bridges.

[Xanmyral]

Why aren't they bombing you then, nor sending in more troops? Because they lack the resources currently and don't wish to blow up their own resources? I can hardly consider that a unique situation.

Lots of parallels could be drawn to Xcom here, old or new although the lifelock is particularly of the new one, it seems.

[darkpaladin109]

Why aren't they bombing you then, nor sending in more troops? Because they lack the resources currently and don't wish to blow up their own resources? I can hardly consider that a unique situation.

Lots of parallels could be drawn to Xcom here, old or new although the lifelock is particularly of the new one, it seems.

They're not bombing us because that would mean the game would effectivelly be over.
Sometimes fun/!!FUN!! must precede logic, you know.
EDIT: That's my thoughs on it, at least.