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[Parisbre56]

@Paris

:\

I outright said that I think a grav shell sized for a gauss cannon would probably be able to take out a BS.  Also, looking at the wiki, G-shells cost 4 tokens for a mag of three, so they're cheaper than what you thought they were.  Interestingly, there's also "hellshot" which is five tokens for a mag of three.  Wonder what that is.

The problem is that for the GC, if you have even one spare magazine, it costs as much as or more than the PSL, but has far fewer shots available.  The PSL gets 7.5 shots to the token, each of which is capable of killing a BS.  The GC gets 0.75 G-shell shots to the token, each of which might be capable of killing a BS.  It's still a better option than anything else that we have, but it's barely cheaper than a PSL, and is quite inferior.


As for why the gauss rifle shouldn't be able to take out a BS with a G-shell: It's a two-token device, and the round can't cost more than one token considering the price for a GC sized G-shell.  That's three tokens, or two if you sell the magazine of normal ammo, and you can take out a BS in one shot.  I doubt there is any chance the coucil would allow that, and even if they did, there's the argument that it's risky if we start using them often, because the UWM would undoubtably copy it.

That would basically nullify heavy armor, and tilt our battles more towards attrition.  The UWM will undoubtably win in attrition, at least for the near future.

I never questioned that. I questioned your claim that a gauss rifle grav-shell is unable to kill a BS. First of all, on the matter of the price:

What's the price of those nuclear gauss cannon rounds, grav-shells and some kind of armor piercing round that could penetrate a battlesuit with a good hit and burn its insides with explosion or incendiary (like modern anti tank rounds)?

The nuclear tipped rounds are standard, so they're the set ammo price in the armory list. Normal shells are half. Grav-shells are twice as much, if not more. Armor piercing would probably be around the same.

Don't know where the wiki got that price from, but this says they're at least more than twice the price of nuclear rounds. Meaning that a magazine of gauss rifle g-shells should cost at least 4 tokens if not more (standard rounds*2 for nuclear*2 for grav + whatever else piecewise wants). Plus, nobody has ever bought one, so we never got a concrete price.

Assuming that piecewise allows someone to buy a g-shell magazine for the minimum of 4 tokens, then we get a total cost of 2+4=6 tokens, which is just one shy of the usual cost of automanipulators which can do the same thing. Add to that the fact that it is a mass produced one use item and not custom made and you can see how it can have about the same price as an automanipulator.

Second, the grav-shell's destructive capabilities:
I can't find the quote right now, but I remember piecewise saying that I should be far away from my target when shooting with gauss cannon grav-shells, because even though they don't have the range of nuclear rounds, they still have quite a wide area of destruction and are quite more destructive in it, pulling things towards them and tearing them apart. Which means they are probably able to take out multiple BSs if they are close together. Which is what you would expect from something costing 2 tokens a round, if not more. So scaling it down to a gauss rifle, they should at least be able to severely damage a BS.

And I can understand such OOC arguments for equipment being created, but right now we're speaking about equipment that already exists. It's like saying we shouldn't use LESHO rifles because the enemy might start using them too. It doesn't matter whether we use them or not, or at least it doesn't matter very much. If piecewise wants to ruin our day, he can always give them to an enemy spec-ops team and ruin our day, because it's equipment that already exists. It may be expensive, but it exists.

[Toaster]

Re turret kit:  Ah.  I don't like artificial limits, but the gun squashing the mount and/or spinning hilariously backwards on discharge is a-okay. 

For the token limit, just trying to get out in front of the munchkins, you know? If you've got a better way, we're certainly open to feedback.

For the Strength req, there's nothing saying that someone couldn't try to mount a bigger gun with questionable results. We're just try to set the limits where the thing can be expected to work normally.

Drop the str ability a point?  Of the things that are both 5 or less str and token cost, that only knocks off the Tesla Arc (which I'm not sure why it requires 5 str in the first place; IIRC it's kinda small.)

Also, is the requirement because of supporting the weapon or because of recoil?  Because if it's the latter, why not allow use of it for single shots?  I'm looking at the fission instigator in particular...

Supporting the actual weight of the weapon. I didn't even put that 5 token limit in the armory writeup I've given PW since "Can use weapons with a Strength requirement of 5 or less." pretty much overrides it anyway.

Think of the strength requirement less like an actual limit and more like another way of saying "this tripod and motor assembly has 5 strength", because that's basically what it is. I'd imagine that trying to mount anything too heavy would be the same as having a person trying to lift something too heavy.

As for the instigator. Well, if you need a turret to fire it for you, you're probably using it wrong.

That makes sense for some weapons like the LESHO rifle, which I'm pretty sure is longer than a man is tall.  The Gauss Cannon I know has serious kick, but it's also really heavy.

I suppose one could skip the tripod and just use the remote trigger and camera, but then you really run into "fire it once and the recoil makes it fly backwards hilariously" problem.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Drop the str ability a point?  Of the things that are both 5 or less str and token cost, that only knocks off the Tesla Arc (which I'm not sure why it requires 5 str in the first place; IIRC it's kinda small.)

And Spektr.

Also, the Tesla Arc is more like one of those lightning guns from the Matrix trilogy. It's a bigass battery bank with a bunch of electrodes that make the electricity slightly more likely to strike something ahead of the device than anywhere else. Most of the thing is the battery, a fairly powerful but low-tech battery, which is why it's so cheap and so heavy (think car battery, versus the more advanced and expensive Li-ion cells).

[syvarris]

In the interest of saving space, and making it slightly easier to backtrack in this thread, I'm spoilering stuff.

Spoiler: Responses to Radio (click to show/hide)

Maybe it doesn't 'kill it' in one shot. But does it have to? If a good hit cripples the arms and legs, but leaves the pilot and central cockpit unscathed, that battlesuit is still out of the picture for the most part.

Good point.  I hadn't been considering limb damage, because the vast majority of things take four shots to destroy all four limbs.  Still, a grav shell could conceivably do that, and I honestly have no idea how a limbless battlesuit could pose a threat.  At worst, the pilot could get out and flank with no armor, and a carbine or pistol.

Eh, I dunno. I do kinda make a difference in my head between 'IC resource cost' (important when equipping sods) and 'OOC token cost' (game balance being a major factor). If we make a billion gauss pistols for our sods, one is practically free, bur we'd still need to charge at least a token for one for player characters.

...Uh, I agree?  As I said, it might be moot for this exact reason.  The problem is that we don't know, because there's no system for how much stuff costs in RU.  I'll ask PW how stuff correlates after ARESTEVE is done with me, just to be sure.

Also, if we designed a weapon that's much cheaper in tokens, then it would likely also be cheaper in RU.  So it's not entirely pointless to try.

Even if that were true, we still need something for our sods. Also, I am not so sure if the PSL is the only decent option we have (how many shots does that need to kill one?). I'd investigate, but on mission and stuff.

Ehm, sorry if my wording was ambiguous.  I may have gotten confused about that topic line myself:

Originally, I stated that this is more necessary for sods than for players, because players have SM, but sods don't.   You refuted that by saying players wouldn't be able to kill BSs with amps in the new roll system.  I refuted that by saying it would still be much more effective and easy to kill BSs with amps, rather than con weapons.  And then you refuted that by... using my original point?  I think we looped around.

As to whether or not a PSL is that effective: My post, number seven.  I interpreted that to mean "On a roll of CON:5, if I'm feeling nice."  Even if the first shot fails to outright kill the pilot, a second shot will have much less armor to go through, takes only a fraction of a second to fire, and the pilot would undoubtably be quite stunned by the first shot.  (Also, I found that post by going through the wiki's weapon statistics page, then the "verified" link in the PSL entry.  This is why I made that page.)

On a related note, I was planning on making a two or three round volley modification to all our standard PSLs, since that's basically just programming, and I don't see why anything would ever need to be hit with a ten round volley.

Hmm. Another idea I had was to try and reproduce the brain melt powers of one of the artifacts we have into a short-lived short ranged version that's activated when the shell it sits in breaks (such as on impact on a suit after being fired). Idea would be to fry to pilot's brain while bypassing all the armor. But that depends on if such a thing can be made at all.

...What artifact had that power?  The intelligent power source that killed Grate?  I doubt we could reproduce that in a gauss rifle round, but it's worth a shot.  If we ever figure out how that thing works.

By the way syv, good job on that list for Hep stuff.

...Thanks, but do you think you could actually make some bold actions in the Heph thread, enacting that stuff?  I can't, because I'm not a general, and Pyro's already threatened me if I do it again.

Spoiler: Responses to Paris (click to show/hide)

I never questioned that. I questioned your claim that a gauss rifle grav-shell is unable to kill a BS. First of all, on the matter of the price:

On the matter of price, you listed the price of a gauss cannon's ammo.  A Gauss cannon is quite a bit more massive than a gauss rifle.  Even so, I accepted your price argument, and said that I doubted a gauss rifle G-shell would cost more than a token.

What's the price of those nuclear gauss cannon rounds, grav-shells and some kind of armor piercing round that could penetrate a battlesuit with a good hit and burn its insides with explosion or incendiary (like modern anti tank rounds)?

The nuclear tipped rounds are standard, so they're the set ammo price in the armory list. Normal shells are half. Grav-shells are twice as much, if not more. Armor piercing would probably be around the same.

Don't know where the wiki got that price from, but this says they're at least more than twice the price of nuclear rounds. Meaning that a magazine of gauss rifle g-shells should cost at least 4 tokens if not more (standard rounds*2 for nuclear*2 for grav + whatever else piecewise wants). Plus, nobody has ever bought one, so we never got a concrete price.

...You, do realize that your post outright said "armor piercing round that could penetrate a battlesuit", right?  If that's true, then we would just use AP over G-shells.

Regardless, I imagine the wiki editor (Aoshi) thought PW meant "Twice as much as normal".  I'll send him a PM asking where he got that information.

Assuming that piecewise allows someone to buy a g-shell magazine for the minimum of 4 tokens, then we get a total cost of 2+4=6 tokens, which is just one shy of the usual cost of automanipulators which can do the same thing. Add to that the fact that it is a mass produced one use item and not custom made and you can see how it can have about the same price as an automanipulator.

...And it's superior to those AMs because it works more than once, at range, uses CON, and is reliable.   Anyways, we don't know that it can kill battlesuits.  It might, but it might not.

Second, the grav-shell's destructive capabilities:
I can't find the quote right now, but I remember piecewise saying that I should be far away from my target when shooting with gauss cannon grav-shells, because even though they don't have the range of nuclear rounds, they still have quite a wide area of destruction and are quite more destructive in it, pulling things towards them and tearing them apart. Which means they are probably able to take out multiple BSs if they are close together. Which is what you would expect from something costing 2 tokens a round, if not more. So scaling it down to a gauss rifle, they should at least be able to severely damage a BS.

Sure.  If they can kill a BS in two shots, then they would be good enough for me.  This is why, before I updated the Heph page and realized that stuff was way more important, my first action aside from visiting ARESTEVE was testing G-shells against BSs.

Currently, this argument is down to "I think it's like this", and won't end until someone asks PW.

And I can understand such OOC arguments for equipment being created, but right now we're speaking about equipment that already exists. It's like saying we shouldn't use LESHO rifles because the enemy might start using them too. It doesn't matter whether we use them or not, or at least it doesn't matter very much. If piecewise wants to ruin our day, he can always give them to an enemy spec-ops team and ruin our day, because it's equipment that already exists. It may be expensive, but it exists.

Yeah, sorry about that.  I was getting into the "arguing to win, not to learn" mode.  I've been trying to stop doing that, but I'm not always successful.

Also, I'm pretty sure G-shells don't exist in the UWM's hands.  After all, it is a specialty round designed by the AM.

[Radio Controlled]

...Uh, I agree?  As I said, it might be moot for this exact reason.  The problem is that we don't know, because there's no system for how much stuff costs in RU.  I'll ask PW how stuff correlates after ARESTEVE is done with me, just to be sure.
Also, if we designed a weapon that's much cheaper in tokens, then it would likely also be cheaper in RU.  So it's not entirely pointless to try.

Yeah, you're right, wasn't trying to disagree. I'm not sure if a straight RU to token conversion equation can be made (due to balancing needs being so vague and situational) but it certainly can't hurt to see what we can get. If we can't however, we'll always have this dissonance between the two, which is kinda annoying at times.

On a related note, I was planning on making a two or three round volley modification to all our standard PSLs, since that's basically just programming, and I don't see why anything would ever need to be hit with a ten round volley.

Sounds like a useful mod. I think the rationale behind the ten volley was 'there ain't no kill like overkill' (which I suspect was coined by an entrepreneurial ammunition manufacturer somewhere).

I think we looped around.

Groundhog Day on Forums sounds like an interesting pitch for a game. Maybe a suggestion game where the community has to try and find their way to the end of a story via trial and error.

...What artifact had that power?  The intelligent power source that killed Grate?  I doubt we could reproduce that in a gauss rifle round, but it's worth a shot.  If we ever figure out how that thing works.

There was one from gratesplosion that gave people violent headaches when they got near. I think there was also one from the anomaly mission that made people nauseous as they got near, but I might be imagining that.

...Thanks, but do you think you could actually make some bold actions in the Heph thread, enacting that stuff?  I can't, because I'm not a general, and Pyro's already threatened me if I do it again.

Normally I'd jump on that, but since I'm still on mission, and I already bothered pw with some stuff lately... Hmm. How about you post it with the clause of asking Simus first or something, and if pyro doesn't respond by tomorrow I'll do it myself. Deal?

[syvarris]

Groundhog Day on Forums sounds like an interesting pitch for a game. Maybe a suggestion game where the community has to try and find their way to the end of a story via trial and error.

I had a similar idea a little while ago, when I saw Edge of Tomorrow (and read the book it was based on...), where the players would control a single character in an impossible situation, but when they respawned could immediately skip to any point in a path of actions.  I decided it wouldn't be interesting, because they'd most likely just try and brute force everything possible before backtracking too far, and it would be a massive headache for the GM to keep track of.

Normally I'd jump on that, but since I'm still on mission, and I already bothered pw with some stuff lately... Hmm. How about you post it with the clause of asking Simus first or something, and if pyro doesn't respond by tomorrow I'll do it myself. Deal?

ehhh... No, because that's how I used to get around the "can't build something without permission from a superior" rule.  If I do it when Pyro doesn't respond, Pyro says I'm breaking the rule, but if I wait until Pyro okays it, Pyro might as well post it himself.  Beyond that, I already have ten sub actions, although technically nine of them are me providing the information for Pyro's turn.  That's more than my self-imposed, and overly high limit of nine.

[Radio Controlled]

ehhh... No, because that's how I used to get around the "can't build something without permission from a superior" rule.  If I do it when Pyro doesn't respond, Pyro says I'm breaking the rule, but if I wait until Pyro okays it, Pyro might as well post it himself.  Beyond that, I already have ten sub actions, although technically nine of them are me providing the information for Pyro's turn.  That's more than my self-imposed, and overly high limit of nine.

Well, I understand your predicament. But you also see why I don't wanna overload pw with my stuff, right? After all, I promised him I would try not to abuse my position too much. Hmm. Another way to do this if you just add all the things to be built/researched your next turn, with Miya's explicit permission to do so (that's why that clause was added after all, to have a backup if pyro's absent). If anyone gives you any shit about it IC or OOC, you can then deflect the blame to me.

[Radio Controlled]

1.There are a few things, but the ones that are most relevant are a particular pair of weapons. The first is a gun that fires mindfuck. Thats what it does. It fires mindfuck. And it doesn't require a manip or anything.  The second, and perhaps more pertinent is more of a system then a weapon. It's essentially a short range teleportation system with some drawbacks. ARESTEVE has it designed to teleport grenades, but warns you that it requires a very specific kind of user, one with skill in conventional weapons and a high degree of intelligence due to some manual distance adjustments that have to be made.

Wow. Oh wow. That's two of my projects (weaponizing mindfuck, and the teleporter gun) taken care of right there. Didn't see that coming. Might be able to expand on it, but even then, proof of concept get!

This opens some intersting new horizons.

Also, pw, kudos on the armor write up. Didn't expect you to go into detail like that, but it's a nice bonus.

[Sean Mirrsen]

The mindfuck gun is great in that it's both manipulatorless, and scalable. So for instance you could have a short-range, wide-angle version for clearing rooms and crowd control, a medium-range, wide-angle version for base defense (it doesn't work on robots, so drone units in the field wouldn't be affected), and a very long-range, tight-beam version for anti-ship and ship-to-planet warfare, since it can't be stopped by physical barriers of any sort, and scrambling the thoughts of all crew aboard a given ship or inside a given military installation may be very detrimental to its combat effectiveness.

[NAV]

OMG we need to play russian roulette with the mindfuck gun.

[Toaster]

Give Lars the grenadeaporter!  Ignore his zero int- it's just a measure of his inflexible thinking and totally wouldn't apply!

Soldiers can repair it by pressing anything with carbon into it.

Aren't most of our soldiers made of carbon?

[piecewise]

Give Lars the grenadeaporter!  Ignore his zero int- it's just a measure of his inflexible thinking and totally wouldn't apply!

Soldiers can repair it by pressing anything with carbon into it.

Aren't most of our soldiers made of carbon?

So are most of our enemies.

ARESTEVE is working on getting robots made of the stuff so they can be powered by corpses, but it's still in development.

[Xantalos]

Hmm. If I were released from stasis on Hephaestus and allowed to study the sharkmist I could probably make some significant upgrades to my capabilities.

[syvarris]

Yeah, there's a lot of awesome stuff in the last Heph turn.  I feel like a kid who had candy waved in front of him, then told that I couldn't have any until I've done my chores and waited awhile.

I want to make stuff with the almost frictionless material.  Efficient exoskeletons!  Efficient planes!  Efficient gun barrels!  Efficient Skates!  Efficient cup holders!  Efficient floors!  Efficient keyboards!  Efficient tables!

[Parisbre56]

Flint is going to be very happy that his efforts in the anomalous planetoid weren't a total failure.
And the mindfuck gun does sound interesting, since it was one of the first things he asked the AM about. That is, assuming it doesn't make people to kill themselves.

Hey, Steve said that weird analyser blob I got from the AP was a very advanced organic computer. Use that to make us miniature Steves for our suits. No, I have no idea how that would work. Or for a more serious suggestion, see if it contains any interesting data. Maybe it holds the answer to life, the universe and everything, having sat on the AP pondering the question for millions of years (even though my research shows that those things were created the moment the AP exited the jump-point (or at least in very similar circumstances)).

Assuming that piecewise allows someone to buy a g-shell magazine for the minimum of 4 tokens, then we get a total cost of 2+4=6 tokens, which is just one shy of the usual cost of automanipulators which can do the same thing. Add to that the fact that it is a mass produced one use item and not custom made and you can see how it can have about the same price as an automanipulator.

...And it's superior to those AMs because it works more than once, at range, uses CON, and is reliable.   Anyways, we don't know that it can kill battlesuits.  It might, but it might not.

I meant AMs that can perform similar damage, not the exact same effect. So you could, for example, get an automanipulator that creates a cone of heat strong enough to fry the pilot or a cone of EMP strong enough to fry the BS. Sure, it won't have the same range or the same price, but it'll be easier to aim (although I think piecewise doesn't take aim bonuses into consideration anymore, at least not very much) and if you mass produce it it'll be cheaper, probably good for ambushes for spec-ops units or as mines.

Anyway, I'm just saying this for the sake of discussion, don't know if they'll be a good enough weapon.

This is why, before I updated the Heph page and realized that stuff was way more important, my first action aside from visiting ARESTEVE was testing G-shells against BSs.

Currently, this argument is down to "I think it's like this", and won't end until someone asks PW.

I could ask piecewise in the TINKER thread, since he sometimes answers small questions there.

Also, I'm pretty sure G-shells don't exist in the UWM's hands.  After all, it is a specialty round designed by the AM.

They are? I always thought they were new and experimental military tech, like the shield automanipulators. I didn't remember it being said that the AM developed them. And every time I saw that on the wiki I assumed someone had misunderstood something but I didn't want to search the entire thread for a quote proving or disproving that.

Sometimes I feel like going around the wiki and filling it with ^{[citation needed]}.

Oh, and there's (at least) two things I didn't write in the artefact list from the AP. That pink plant-like thing Thearpox got and that EM-seeking worm corpse Unholy got.

Sometime I'll read through the entire subforum again and finish that artefact page in the wiki. Hopefully.