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[Parisbre56]

I was mostly thinking of that scene in Aliens where a large part of the team is injured or unconscious and they are trying to decide if they should nuke the site from orbit.

[Nikitian]

Medals, if needed, would be basically your avarage achievements. Rewarded from number of specific acts, for example saving lifes of allies, recovering artifacts or other valuable information, other acts of bravery... that's actually all that comes in mind right now. But yeah, medals equals achievements.

Ugh, please, no. Very much no. Please, don't ruin the whole medals thing equalling them to achievements.
1.Achievements are very mechanical. Do X N times, do Y in set conditions, etc. Medals are awarded. Sure, there are those things like '10 year service' medals and all, but overall they are not expected to be earned or acquired. One has to do something outstanding to get a medal, as their award is decided on case by case basis. You cannot just 'Okay, I'll need three more controlled overshoots with a field manipulator to earn the "Controlled Hazard" badge'. You do something, and then you may only hope that other people (mainly your direct superiors) decide that it has been a great doing (note the deliberate lack of 'enough'; once again, no set mechanism for acquiring these) and you've proven yourself worthy.
2.As such, medals have a very certain value to them, intrinsic to them by the very design - people do something worthy, and being awarded for that carries on some of that greatness to the award itself. Achievements, however, often have value by sheer virtue of being assigned value socially; if you feel them cool and interesting - sure, but if you don't, they don't have any value beside which you put into them. Think gold coins compared to modern day paper money. Sure, in all actuality, gold has as little immediate practical value as paper, but hey, at least it's shiny and considered valuable because other beautiful shiny things are made of it. (And that's not even taking rarity into consideration.)
3.And finally, I'm afraid that achievements have acquired a certain negative vibe to them, at least for some people; and for others, while cool, they might not be nearly as cool as medals and orders. Just one more reason to avoid connecting the two.

On the overall structure: I'd avoid having a rank of 'squad leader'. It's more of a position on a mission, and mixing up the two can result in confusion, so it's better to avoid it.
Also, I don't quite understand it. Specialist/Subcommander people - are we talking of Simus here (let's take her as a benchmark)? Or Adepts in Piecewise's structure? I'm confused again, I'm afraid.

One thing I would add though, would be the distinction between novices (mosty new recruits and lemmings) and privates/soldiers. Note that soldiers have no real authority over novices, but it could serve as a sort of 'rite of passage', indicating to the person being peomoted to soldier that (s)he is now recognized by his peers as a valuable and competent addition to the team.

Or if someone feels like becoming drillsargeant, that person could design vr courses and tests one must pass in order to achieve the next rank.

Note that this is purely optional, if people prefer everyone below squad leader to be in the same group, that's ok for me as well. Might foster team cohesion more, unsure.

Then it means that Piecewise's scheme was right, after all, with three lower non-commanding ranks. The first two exactly could be 'novice' and 'proven novice' as you want, and the third would be that 'more skilled, not commanding'.


Hmmm. Overall, somewhat amended Piecewise's systems seems the best answer to most of peoples wishes and needs. I'll try and post my take on the system later today.

I was mostly thinking of that scene in Aliens where a large part of the team is injured or unconscious and they are trying to decide if they should nuke the site from orbit.

Oh, that one is easy: one decides for all of them and shoots everyone who doesn't agree with him. And then gets promoted back on Sword. It's called willpower and determination, and is highly valued in leaders and officers.
(I have no idea how the issue was resolved in Aliens, having never seen the movie.)

[Hapah]

Medals, if needed, would be basically your avarage achievements. Rewarded from number of specific acts, for example saving lifes of allies, recovering artifacts or other valuable information, other acts of bravery... that's actually all that comes in mind right now. But yeah, medals equals achievements.

Ugh, please, no. Very much no. Please, don't ruin the whole medals thing equalling them to achievements.
1.Achievements are very mechanical. Do X N times, do Y in set conditions, etc. Medals are awarded. Sure, there are those things like '10 year service' medals and all, but overall they are not expected to be earned or acquired. One has to do something outstanding to get a medal, as their award is decided on case by case basis. You cannot just 'Okay, I'll need three more controlled overshoots with a field manipulator to earn the "Controlled Hazard" badge'. You do something, and then you may only hope that other people (mainly your direct superiors) decide that it has been a great doing (note the deliberate lack of 'enough'; once again, no set mechanism for acquiring these) and you've proven yourself worthy.
2.As such, medals have a very certain value to them, intrinsic to them by the very design - people do something worthy, and being awarded for that carries on some of that greatness to the award itself. Achievements, however, often have value by sheer virtue of being assigned value socially; if you feel them cool and interesting - sure, but if you don't, they don't have any value beside which you put into them. Think gold coins compared to modern day paper money. Sure, in all actuality, gold has as little immediate practical value as paper, but hey, at least it's shiny and considered valuable because other beautiful shiny things are made of it. (And that's not even taking rarity into consideration.)
3.And finally, I'm afraid that achievements have acquired a certain negative vibe to them, at least for some people; and for others, while cool, they might not be nearly as cool as medals and orders. Just one more reason to avoid connecting the two.

Agree entirely with items 1 and 2. Getting a medal for killing 10 enemies is boring; getting a medal because you dragged 2 wounded squadmates to safety and held off an enemy advance while they were evac'd is awesome.

[kj1225]

Are there rules for teaching other characters skills?

[Parisbre56]

Send an email to both the DOC and AM. Ask them if either of them has a weapon/synthflesh upgrade/whatever that uses EXO and isn't an amp.

You could get a sandbag. The fact that you can use it as a shield and as a way to conceal yourself is very useful. So you could shroud yourself in a sandstorm to conceal your movement and protect yourself from lasers and maybe even some kinetic projectiles, approach your enemy, sandblast them (or hit them with solid projectiles) and then whatever is left you can clean up with a shockwave. Not to mention how much the ability to construct things with it would help. Sandbag is a very useful weapon and opens up a great number of interesting tactics IMO.

You think you could leave the sandbag closed but command the sand to move so that you end up flying? Or do they use some kind of non-magical system of locomotion? That would be fun to test.

Are there rules for teaching other characters skills?

I don't think that's ever been done before, except if you count things like the AM's training. Ask piecewise, but don't expect a good answer. Best you'll probably get is some useful tips and a bonus in very specific circumstances.

@Nikitian: Ah, it's a classic quote. "Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." I searched around in Youtube but nobody seems to have the entire scene up due to copyright. Oh well, it's a fun film, I recommend watching it sometime if you have the time and like action/horror movies.

[yobbo]

Damnit, now both Jacks are on the ship.

I really should create some sort of searchable tag for people updating the wiki, so they can easily find posts or parts of posts where things need to be updated or added.

Something like bold red for subtractions, bold green for additions?
lose 2 shotgun ammo
gain 1 laser rifle and 1 spare battery

I was thinking something more along the lines of {WIKI}, something that could be entered into the search feature of the forum and only bring up the posts that matter.

having tried to use the search function a couple times, i'm not sure it's up to that task.

wiki gnomes are already updating the wiki by reading every post, but sometimes it's ambiguous what should actually be updated (like how many grenades were thrown, how much ammo was used etc). I guess that's a separate issue with a combined solution. I know if i were updating the wiki i wouldn't want to use the forum search at all. A tag would be good to indicate that something should be officially updated, but it might still be ambiguous what to update.

but okay, mainly i just think bolded GM -> accountant commands would be funny.

any of the actual wiki gnomes doing the updating want to comment?


EDIT: ahh just realised you probably meant the usual sort of ctrl-F search.

[Toaster]

Agree entirely with items 1 and 2. Getting a medal for killing 10 enemies is boring; getting a medal because you dragged 2 wounded squadmates to safety and held off an enemy advance while they were evac'd is awesome.

+1 to this.

[piecewise]

Agree entirely with items 1 and 2. Getting a medal for killing 10 enemies is boring; getting a medal because you dragged 2 wounded squadmates to safety and held off an enemy advance while they were evac'd is awesome.

+1 to this.

Medals are easy. I would just open a thread for suggestions, catalog the good ones, give them out when needed. Dunno if they should be entirely ceremonial and mechanically useless (Just like in real life) or if they should offer perks, like xcom medals. Hmhmhm.

As per ranks, I'm good with implementing whatever the majority of people agree on. If you guys can hash out a system you like, I'll use it.







Unrelated, Does anyone know a good way to go about proving Trig Identities? Something like:
(sec-tan)²+1
_____________ = 2 tan.
csc (sec-tan)

I understand all the concepts behind it but I have yet to find a good solid methodical way of solving it that doesn't involve just making shitty guesses and playing around with things till something works. And while we're at it:

Tan(X)=2sin(X)

This produces, through normal means, two answers. One of them is superfluous, the other works. However, there's a third one that doesn't show up anywhere along the way, one you just kind of have to infer by looking at the problem. And I am baffled about how to get there through normal methods.


I'm bad at math.

[Hapah]

Agree entirely with items 1 and 2. Getting a medal for killing 10 enemies is boring; getting a medal because you dragged 2 wounded squadmates to safety and held off an enemy advance while they were evac'd is awesome.

+1 to this.

Medals are easy. I would just open a thread for suggestions, catalog the good ones, give them out when needed. Dunno if they should be entirely ceremonial and mechanically useless (Just like in real life) or if they should offer perks, like xcom medals. Hmhmhm.

What if you make medals pay out an extra token or two in the mission they are awarded; and use that as the system for determining if someone deserves more than base mission pay? Relatively easy to handle and might make your life a bit easier to boot.

[swordsmith04]

I was thinking something more along the lines of {WIKI}, something that could be entered into the search feature of the forum and only bring up the posts that matter.

having tried to use the search function a couple times, i'm not sure it's up to that task.

wiki gnomes are already updating the wiki by reading every post, but sometimes it's ambiguous what should actually be updated (like how many grenades were thrown, how much ammo was used etc). I guess that's a separate issue with a combined solution. I know if i were updating the wiki i wouldn't want to use the forum search at all. A tag would be good to indicate that something should be officially updated, but it might still be ambiguous what to update.

but okay, mainly i just think bolded GM -> accountant commands would be funny.

any of the actual wiki gnomes doing the updating want to comment?


EDIT: ahh just realised you probably meant the usual sort of ctrl-F search.

As one of said wiki gnomes, I don't think a [WIKI] tag or anything is necessary, though it would certainly help; especially if it had hovertext, in the case of used ammo + grenades, like you said. I really hate having to add "Partially used" or "Fired X number of times" notes to the wiki; exact figures are just so much better.

Agree entirely with items 1 and 2. Getting a medal for killing 10 enemies is boring; getting a medal because you dragged 2 wounded squadmates to safety and held off an enemy advance while they were evac'd is awesome.

+1 to this.

Medals are easy. I would just open a thread for suggestions, catalog the good ones, give them out when needed. Dunno if they should be entirely ceremonial and mechanically useless (Just like in real life) or if they should offer perks, like xcom medals. Hmhmhm.

What if you make medals pay out an extra token or two in the mission they are awarded; and use that as the system for determining if someone deserves more than base mission pay? Relatively easy to handle and might make your life a bit easier to boot.

That would either make non-base mission pay rarer or make medals too ubiquitous, I think. Maybe a combination of the two?

I like the attribute/circumstantial bonus medal reward system. We should definitively have at least some ceremonial medals, though.

[Beirus]

Ceremonial medal for when folks end up in a robody? You know, so they don't feel so bad about never having children in the future.

[sambojin]

It's not entirely out of the question with gene splicing, cloning, synth-flesh, the wonders of DNA  and still being a human brain-in-a-bucket. Male brain DNA, female brain DNA, gene splice them together after reticulating splines and a random d6 roll. Voila! A little human thingy (maybe). It might not even need the male/female consideration. Although, there may be errors associated with all this.

Computer love.......

[Gentlefish]

HA

I'm sure Cecil's babies would be genetic beauties. With six arms and organic chestplates.

[kisame12794]

There are procedures for stuffing your brain back into a meat shell, it's just entirely impractical and expensive, because the price scales with your stats, and honestly, you're probably gonna lose it again. Now, I can see getting it to join Joker team, just not for the usual missions we encounter.

[sambojin]

I was thinking more of Jim-bot's love story. His girl won't know what hit her. Then he can drag her back to the Doktors cave......

Actually, it'll probably be the other way around. The doktor can probably hit pretty hard when he wants to.