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[Parisbre56]

((Why not send the ships we already have? With the number of defences we have, they won't make much of a difference. And they had enough space to hold a small planetary invasion, so they should be able to carry some freight, meaning extra defences. And use the final automanipulators to create a carrier and make it ferry smaller ships to them and bring back the resources you need to make more crews and more manipulators. And make it carry some probes on the way there, so that it can leave them along the way to ensure that the trade route between you two stays safe. And maybe hand them a few of our more mundane artifacts to investigate, like the sharkmist, the blacksand, the HEP or the flatground. And a QEC device to ensure we can stay in touch, since I don't know if Steve has one he can hand out or if the UWM can cut them off the QEC-net.

Oh, and here's an idea: what if you used a ship to launch probes through the jump point, without actually having the ships themselves jump? That would solve the problem of the probes needing automanipulators and would give you that early warning system I was talking about, at least for a limited amount of time. Or more, if you can make the probes stop after they go through the other side of the portal.))

[Radio Controlled]

((I'm unconvinced we have the resource potential to build a Hammer of Q'Baja.  Is the technology transferable?  The mines and turrets is more doable, but what about civvie traffic?  I assume they get a lot, unlike Heph.))

((I have asked pw before, and he said that building more Hammer cannons is within our capabilities. Needs some spess magic, sure, but that seems to be the largest cost. And the defense net idea can be adapted to allow civvie traffick by moving it farther back from the point but still letting it orbit the star at the same pace as the jump point. That'll gibe ships a window to identify themselves/be identified.))

[syvarris]

Hephaestus Management stuff:

1.Spess Majick facility's preliminary stuff is done.  Start having a construction crew, and the two free research crews, donate their junk to our cause.  At what point will collection be done?

2.Have all the fleshpts convert to flesh sod production, rather than brains.  Our robosod production is far, far outstripping our flesh sod production.

3.Assign a construction crew to building an extremely precise manufacturing plant, specifically to construct the spears that are needed for the SM facility.

4.Draw up plans for what we need to do for the planetary mass part of SMF construction.  I get that we need to choose a planet, but what are the requirements?  One earth mass?  A hundred?  And what do we need to build?  Enough oversized rockets to alter it's orbit?  Something else entirely insane?


Experiment stuff:

5.What I want in the room: A pair of remotely detonated EMP bombs, strong enough to disable a robobody inside containment, but not one outside.  The container the gun was brought in in.  The robobody the gun is possessing.  Outside the room, I want twenty robosods armed with chemthrowers- ten of them should have goop loaded, the other ten neotherm.  I also want the stuff in the spoiler below nearby, so that if we can test what the gun does to shot things, we have a lot of objects ready.

Spoiler: Supplies for target shooting (click to show/hide)

Armor materials:
   A plate of of steel
   A plate of Battlesuit armor
   A sheet of the material civic defender's longcoats are made of
   Thirty plates of miscellaneous metals that look different enough to justify testing.  Not because I care how they react, but so we can test ammunition capacity/recharge rate without it being obvious.
   A container identical to the container the gun is carried in, except painted bright orange.
Possession testing materials:
   A robobody with all wireless communication equipment removed
   A synthflesh arm
If possible, I'd like these too:
   A corpse of some dog-sized animal
   A live dog-sized animal
   A human arm
   A small plate of Mythril

6.Can I have a research crew help me as assistants?  If so, tell two of them to watch the possession server for any connections from the robobody holding the gun.  It only has the possess-ee software, so it shouldn't be able to do any external harm, but I'd like to watch just in case.  Also, check if it's still transmitting it's visual/auditory feeds and whatnot.

7.Tell a squad of robosods to carefully detain the sod that had been possessing the body.  Tell them that this sod may be subverted, and that they should be very careful.  Tell the possessor sod to follow the other sods.  If possible, assign a researcher to quickly interview that sod, to learn exactly what happened when the gun possessed the body, and if there's any lasting effects on the sod.

8.Does this containment room have adjacent containment rooms, that can be opened into the room we have the gun in without compromising containment?  If so, I'd like to have the twenty guard sods in those rooms.  If at any time the gun tries anything hostile/dangerous, like destroying one of the bombs, firing at the walls, or trying to hack our systems, activate a bomb and tell the sods to breach the room and disable the gun.  Unless there is some reason to think that there is a real and not entirely insignificant danger to me (not necessarily the research people), tell the sods to only use the goop.  And tell them to goop any sod that's shot by the gun.

9.Finally, say this to the gun in containment: "Hello, I apologize for the long delay in setting this up, but my superiors are very cautious.  Now, friend, do you have a name?"

[Sean Mirrsen]

Dear Sean,

We have reviewed your rental idea.

Our response is as follows:

Nah.

Love,
The Council.

XXXOOXX

((Alright then, are any suggestions forthcoming? A modular suit will not work with a full-buy system, the initial buy-in price is too high and the combined cost of additional modules outweighs any usefulness the system may have compared to regular gear. If the Council has no alternative solutions or suggestions for improving the rental or license ideas, I'm shelving the MACS project. Again. And for the same reason as last time. ಠ_ಠ

Also, Syv. We need to expand. The construction teams are available and all we need is to have some resources freed up to get going.))

[Toaster]

Also, Heph people:  I'm getting ahead of myself here, but do you have any wishlists from what we can get out of Q'Baja?  I know you want more CONSTRUCTION and SCIENCE teams, but anything else in particular?

[Radio Controlled]

Germ cells for spess magic, maybe a freighter ship or two? And their delicious data of course.))

[Sean Mirrsen]

((Some people will want test subjects for pill machine experimentation, and similar things. We'd also appreciate any interesting information on nearby UWM worlds, or deep space facilities/installations that they might know about. Any anomalies as well.

Specialized resources, if they can produce them, would also help. Advanced alloys and composites, myomers and synthflesh, whatever it is that they used to provide for the UWM.))

[syvarris]

((@Sean  Okay.  I agree, we must expand.  I'm already doing a lot towards that- not long ago, I started the general production capacity that's disabling our sods for twenty days.  If there's anything else you think we really need to do, you can use the construction crew that's free, or the constructor ships.  I'm not gonna add even more stuff to mine, because my post is already morbidly oversized.

And no, I'm not removing the relatively pointless experimentation stuff.  That gun is a problem, and it needs to be resolved.

@Toaster

I have no particular requests aside from crew.  We particularly want construction crew, FYI.  I'd suggest you not mention test subjects- if it's that important, we do have fleshpits.))

[Toaster]

Here's a spot I wish I had Thrak, so he could tactfully ask for the germ cells.

[Parisbre56]

((Some people will want test subjects for pill machine experimentation, and similar things. We'd also appreciate any interesting information on nearby UWM worlds, or deep space facilities/installations that they might know about. Any anomalies as well.

Specialized resources, if they can produce them, would also help. Advanced alloys and composites, myomers and synthflesh, whatever it is that they used to provide for the UWM.))

You could ask Steve for information on what is nearby.
And you can make the MACS a tiered communal system like I proposed if you want (and if people would use something like that). Or just focus on a similar but simpler system. Or start working on something else entirely.

And the planet produces synthflesh according to the briefing and things used with synthflesh (like Miyamoto's avatar's spinal controls). Also other useful things. Although it would probably be faster if those were assembled there if possible instead of sent to Hephaestus. It would certainly help with their concerns with their defensive capabilities. Maybe we could even give them information on how to create any missing facilities required for the production of Avatars. Would be fun to hear Steve say "Oh, and Q'Baja just sent fifty avatars to a nearby UWM world and they smashed things up." Or alternatively "There is a rampaging Avatar of war loose on Q'Baja. Wait, correction. There was a rampaging Avatar of war loose on Q'Baja. Another Avatar tried to stop the berserk one, the berserk Avatar had kinetic amps, one thing led to another and long story short, now there are two rampaging Avatars of war loose on Q'Baja."

Here's a spot I wish I had Thrak, so he could tactfully ask for the germ cells.

You can more vaguely ask for "simple biological samples" so the request will be less absurd. Biological samples could be anything. Blood, marrow, etc.

[piecewise]

We can begin it now. I'm not sure if there are crews available, but they would speed it up.

there are currently 3 crews available. I'd like to start the project using 1 of them. Could you give me the date it's done?

Secondly, we have a rather large backlog of artifacts. To what extent are we allowed to use science crews on them? Should we do preliminary research ourselves, and then let them reverse-engineer it? Because doing it all manually will take very long (especially seeing how our two most active members both don't seem to like doing that). Do you make a difference between mission artifacts and Nyartifacts in terms of whether we can use a sciene crew on it?

Wait for it...I can't give you missions until there are things to fuck up and there's been nothing to fuck up yet besides the fleshhorror.

And if we thought of a mission ourselves, could that count?


It's good to know what still needs to be done for the facility, thanks for checking that. So, what planet shall we sacrifice to the spess magic god? I'd think one of the (sub)jovian ones perhaps?

Missed me I think.

Eh...three weeks from nows

You can use science teams on mission stuff, not nyars stuff.

And sure, do my work for me!

Charles stands in position, motionless, his emoticon display inactive. He stares back, blankly, ensuring that the lens of the cameras built into his head remain locked in pseudo-eyecontact with the prisoner. Patiently, he waits, he waits until the curses, the spitting and gestures cease, or at least, until sufficient time has passed to indicate that the subject has some kind of strange supernatural ability to continuously offend people indefinitely without getting a sore throat or running out of ways to word their insults. It is only then that he speaks, attempting to calm them down as if they were just an unstable patient.

Alternatively, if they are being too uncooperative, he just tries to speech roll the bastard into submission using whatever psychotic thoughts involving bolded text, sheep, Xan and/or dice that happen to pop into his mind at the time.

You counter his display of verbal and gestural violence with one of your own, matching and exceeding his actions in volume, speed and spittle. He quiets down if only out of sheer amazement and awe at your display.

Hephaestus Management stuff:

1.Spess Majick facility's preliminary stuff is done.  Start having a construction crew, and the two free research crews, donate their junk to our cause.  At what point will collection be done?

2.Have all the fleshpts convert to flesh sod production, rather than brains.  Our robosod production is far, far outstripping our flesh sod production.

3.Assign a construction crew to building an extremely precise manufacturing plant, specifically to construct the spears that are needed for the SM facility.

4.Draw up plans for what we need to do for the planetary mass part of SMF construction.  I get that we need to choose a planet, but what are the requirements?  One earth mass?  A hundred?  And what do we need to build?  Enough oversized rockets to alter it's orbit?  Something else entirely insane?


Experiment stuff:

5.What I want in the room: A pair of remotely detonated EMP bombs, strong enough to disable a robobody inside containment, but not one outside.  The container the gun was brought in in.  The robobody the gun is possessing.  Outside the room, I want twenty robosods armed with chemthrowers- ten of them should have goop loaded, the other ten neotherm.  I also want the stuff in the spoiler below nearby, so that if we can test what the gun does to shot things, we have a lot of objects ready.

Spoiler: Supplies for target shooting (click to show/hide)

Armor materials:
   A plate of of steel
   A plate of Battlesuit armor
   A sheet of the material civic defender's longcoats are made of
   Thirty plates of miscellaneous metals that look different enough to justify testing.  Not because I care how they react, but so we can test ammunition capacity/recharge rate without it being obvious.
   A container identical to the container the gun is carried in, except painted bright orange.
Possession testing materials:
   A robobody with all wireless communication equipment removed
   A synthflesh arm
If possible, I'd like these too:
   A corpse of some dog-sized animal
   A live dog-sized animal
   A human arm
   A small plate of Mythril

6.Can I have a research crew help me as assistants?  If so, tell two of them to watch the possession server for any connections from the robobody holding the gun.  It only has the possess-ee software, so it shouldn't be able to do any external harm, but I'd like to watch just in case.  Also, check if it's still transmitting it's visual/auditory feeds and whatnot.

7.Tell a squad of robosods to carefully detain the sod that had been possessing the body.  Tell them that this sod may be subverted, and that they should be very careful.  Tell the possessor sod to follow the other sods.  If possible, assign a researcher to quickly interview that sod, to learn exactly what happened when the gun possessed the body, and if there's any lasting effects on the sod.

8.Does this containment room have adjacent containment rooms, that can be opened into the room we have the gun in without compromising containment?  If so, I'd like to have the twenty guard sods in those rooms.  If at any time the gun tries anything hostile/dangerous, like destroying one of the bombs, firing at the walls, or trying to hack our systems, activate a bomb and tell the sods to breach the room and disable the gun.  Unless there is some reason to think that there is a real and not entirely insignificant danger to me (not necessarily the research people), tell the sods to only use the goop.  And tell them to goop any sod that's shot by the gun.

9.Finally, say this to the gun in containment: "Hello, I apologize for the long delay in setting this up, but my superiors are very cautious.  Now, friend, do you have a name?"

1. Depends on how aggressive you want to be. And if jazz is involved.

2.Resetting back to normal flesh.

3. Beginning construction of spears. This is going to take a while, but they should be done by the time they're needed.

4. More mass the better, but earth sized or so should work. We're going to need to get an automanip in here, stick it on a specially made ship, fly it up into orbit and start converting that planetary mass into a contained quasi-singularity mass. Thats gonna form our containment field, among other things.

5. Okie dokie

6. You can just use normal men as your assistance. They keep an eye on everything electronic near the cell.

7.Considering the sod that controlled the body is a brain in a jar, we're pretty safe unless you think he might crawl away on his brain stem. He's unconscious right now, anyways.

8. No, that room is completely isolated, connecting to nothing. It's not even connected to the main hall right now.

9. The body turns and looks around until it finds an obvious camera, but it doesn't reply. It just sort of stares for a long moment, as though considering something.

[Empiricist]

Charles pauses, long enough for it to register as a distinct length of time and to collect his own thoughts, but not long enough for the prisoner to recover enough to continue ranting. Speaking in a suddenly calm monotone, he states "Now listen to me, and listen very carefully - You are not in any position to be making threats. You are not in any position to curse and spit and rudely gesture. I have been sent here specifically to talk to you, to come to some kind of understanding, or perhaps, compromise. Would you rather that I leave? Would you rather that the only rampart between you and an agonizing, decade-long march to execution be removed? That's if you're fortunate. Any less so, and something far worse than a bullet will find its way into your skull."
Another short pause, this time punctuated with an artificial sigh. Charles' tone slowly begins to shift to that of slight sympathy laced with exasperation. "Surely, surely you must have something to live for. Surely there must be a reason why you didn't just bash in your frontal lobe. Surely there must be something keeping you going. What is it? What do you want? What do you live for?

Thoughts of vengeance. Thoughts of freedom. Thoughts of murder. They wouldn't have sustained a man this long. So tell me, what is it that keeps you going? Surely we could make a compromise. Surely we could find a reason to convince my superiors not to feed you to the spawn of a nightmarish aberration."
Charles lapses into silence again, awaiting a reply.
((I only just noticed that my last action for Charles prior to becoming inactive for a while was missed.))

Charles researches the following:

• What do most UWM soldiers do after their term of duty?
• Have there been any cases where specialist units have defected due to appeals towards their sociopathic nature?
• What were the causes of the government rebellions?
• How quickly does the UWM deal with rebellions?

((Is it possible to develop Stockholm Syndrome toward a specific location rather than towards specific people? Specifically, Xan's digestive tract. Because I'm thinking of whether to try inducing it in Leo, or whether to just have a Xanling assimilate him.))

[Xantalos]

((You could get him to develop Stockholm Syndrome toward a certain person, then I could take their appearance and make them do things.))

[Radio Controlled]

((Sean, in an effort to help you a bit (and prove this shit is actually discussed in the council, we don't just dismiss things offhandedly) I have parsed a few comments from them, as well ass added some comments of my own here and there (note that it's edited in some places, so that's why some of it may seem worded strangely). Hope it helps:

((Alright then, are any suggestions forthcoming? A modular suit will not work with a full-buy system, the initial buy-in price is too high and the combined cost of additional modules outweighs any usefulness the system may have compared to regular gear. If the Council has no alternative solutions or suggestions for improving the rental or license ideas, I'm shelving the MACS project. Again. And for the same reason as last time. ಠ_ಠ

I would suggest him to make his base suit be actually worth something, aka making a exoskeleton the base unit.

Secondly, as mentioned before, ask him to do a general interest check, maybe as well as one for the various modules he's been cooking up.

This ties into several things. Making the base suit (something pw himself advised!) a useful something on its own means making the whole thing more efficient (as evidenced by the battlesuit and Mk.III, it's cheaper to add things as a whole package than to add them piecemeal later on). You said before you wanted synthpeople and 'sufficiently strong' people to be able to wear it, but honestly: how many of the latter exist? And how many of the former, having acquired a piece of powerful late-game equipment (and sometimes earning tokens more rapidly due to greater capability), would realistically have need of this system? This is why the council requested the interest check (though perhaps the way it's being done now is a bit too... broad).

It doesn't even have to be this flexable.  He could sell them by simply saying that you can get only the options you need.. the jet boots for 7, for instance, rather than forcing someone to buy an entire mk III.  Sure, you may 'waste' a few tokens if you then buy the rest of the Mk III's functionality, but then you get part of it now instead of going naked for a few more missions.

There's lots he could do with modularity, but none of it requires returning things for full price.  Sell the parts people care about for less, and don't care that someone with a full suit would have 'wasted' a few tokens.  The player didn't have to go naked, and that should be worth a few tokens for some people.

The more I think about it the more I like this line of reasoning.

Thing to take away from this: don't be afraid to be flexible with the idea. There may be other ways to go about this, so don't let yourself get stuck thinking that if it doesn't work the way you originally wanted it to, that it's a lost cause.

Oh, and a personal request, try to use (gm) validated info when arguing prices and such, makes discussions better and more objective.

[Sean Mirrsen]

((Anything hardly ever gets discussed enough to be GM-validated, so if I only used that for estimates I'd never have anything to go on.

I can't help but be stuck with the idea - that's how I see it working best in my mind.

For instance, I feel it needs to start as a Mk2-replacement. Primarily because the Mk2 is the basis of everything else - a Mk3 is functionally a Mk2 with powered exoskeleton and rockets, and the pilot of an exosuit or a Battlesuit is going to wear a Mk2 in control seat. This naturally follows into the other benefits - the low initial buy-in cost for everyone, and synthflesh people specifically don't end up carrying a useless and costly exoskeleton around. A Mk3 replacement is fine, but I see no fundamental obstacles to stripping out the exoskeleton and getting a cheaper base suit out of it. People still use Mk2's, right?

Worst case scenario, having both a 5-token Mk2-alike "plugsuit", and a more expensive power-assisted variant for whoever needs the integrated exoskeleton should still be a viable option. With the ability upgrade the former to the latter, permanently and for the full price of whatever exoskeleton option is purchased. The idea is that you'd be able to get the benefits of, say, flight early on, without spending the extra tokens for an exoskeleton that's not going to be terribly useful when flying.

I agree though, that the tokens may be becoming a little less short in supply than they were before, so maybe I'm overly pessimistic about the possible success of a full-buy modular suit. But even with the exoskeleton integrated, a full-buy Mk3-equivalent is going to be expensive as all get out. I can only speculate on the price, but I think my logic is sound:

Taking the existing Armory prices for similar equipment, an "Exoskeleton" is 9 token. A suit with a medical suite, life support, cooling, and an integrated exoskeleton should cost at least a little more, so at least 10 token. The rocket pack of a Mk3 is an entirely different beast from the separately sold "Jump Rocket Pack" in the Armory, but for comparison purposes we'll assume that it costs the same - so, 7 token. Final cost then is, optimistically, 17 token for a 13-token Mk3's equivalent. An inferior equivalent, because no EMM and less agility.

I just don't see the extra expense being worth it. Mission-adaptability is inherently a weak feature for this game. Modularity isn't about upgrades, it's about changing the role - but people normally get good at one thing and stay with that one thing while they play, upgrading to better gear when they can. Just having less performance already seems a fitting compensation for the nominal versatility, adding extra cost on top of that seems just overkill.

I guess we could just as well have a suit series instead, or in addition to this. Atmospheric/underwater mobility, rocket/space flight, heavy laser, melee, ranged, support. Would be cheaper with no modules and conform to standard gear. Could call it the "specialized equipment combat suit" series or something...))