Results 151 to 180 of 1488
-
2016-11-20, 05:05 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
On the contrary, it's the kind of setting almost perfect for exploration, an RPG based on this kind of world could be carried almost entirely by exploration. Exploration is going to be the big industry at Uli-Oa for as long as there's still PTU's to be harvested.
After all, everyone knows Uli-Oa is incredibly valuable, but no one knows exactly how valuable, and there's a hint of potential scientific knowledge to be gained here too, so before anything can be broken apart and salvaged at the cost of potential science value, it HAS to be explored, catalogued and quantified, and that means there's money in doing it. LOTS of money, since we're talking about one of the toughest substances to manufacture in the world and therefore one of the rarest and most valuable, over and above the value of artifacts and scientific knowledge that can be gained. All of that has value, and that value will bring the speculators, scavengers, legitimate businessmen, pirates, and scholars by the shuttleful.
With a lot of money to be had in both exploration and exploitation, the espy city and probably many other nearby makeshift structures and service centers are going to be swamped with speculators, scavengers and explorers, and no few pirates, for generations. As a scifi-Wild West setting, it doesn't get much better and the plotlines almost write themselves -- you can pick a character based on any of dozens of professions from the mercenary that protects a given race's salvage interest to the scholar seeking the knowledge of the Ancient Oafans to the bedraggled law enforcement officer trying to make everyone play nice (I actually favor the last one, with the entire Rogue's Gallery literally descending on this place, RPing as a wing marshal trying desperately to maintain some semblance of order would make for a rich plot with many different directions to go)
Anyway I've rambled enough. TL:DR, the potential for an RPG setting is pretty rich, either for a tabletop RPG or for a video game.Last edited by Imgran; 2016-11-20 at 05:21 PM.
-
2016-11-21, 02:55 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
I think you're missing the point. Petey is going to use relativistic impactors to blast Uli-Oa into gravel. Anyone who happens to be on it will be obliterated at the time. That's why they've moved the Esspee city of it, and it's why they're unlikely to have it as part of the RPG.
-
2016-11-21, 03:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
-
2016-11-21, 06:58 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2012
- Location
- Montreal
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
I think i missed or forgot a bit of conversation.
What information did Murtaugh learn? What did she actually pay for it? Why cant she use it?
-
2016-11-21, 07:13 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender
-
2016-11-21, 07:54 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2009
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
We need teraport cages that fit into themselves, so they can teraport anywhere & then, teraport anything.
-
2016-11-21, 08:58 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2009
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
They learned how the World Forge worked, but don't have the resources to use that info. http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-11-06 But maybe someone else does.
Member of the Giants in the Playground Forum Chapter for the Movement to Reunite Gondwana!
-
2016-11-21, 08:59 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2016
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
I think he did the only morally acceptable thing by killing everyone.
-
2016-11-21, 05:48 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
-
2016-11-27, 03:55 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
OK, I'm a little puzzled now. I can understand why they had to rip the cabins out of Cindercone since the entire interior is now a teraport cage, but why did they also have to remove Cindy herself? Surely the ship still needs some sort of AI to run it? Or is the problem that Cindercone has passed back to Oafan ownership, while Cindy belongs to the Toughs?
-
2016-11-27, 07:57 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2013
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
My Homebrew A Return to Exile, a homebrew campaign setting.
Under Construction: Skills revamp for the Campaign Setting. I need to make a new index thread.
-
2016-11-27, 10:07 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Chinook was controlling Cindercone's twin directly, the same as with the long gun corvettes. Apparently ships like that didn't normally have crews or AIs. The ships sold to UNS INT-AF-INT via Petey didn't seem to have AIs, either. Apparently Broken Wind originally did, though, but Broken Wind's boats don't. I guess ships like Broken Wind had AIs that controlled other ships and boats.
Enesby's argument about replacing the "integrated A.I. matrix" in Broken Wind didn't apply to Cindercone, apparently because it didn't already have one. Presumably the Toughs just pulled the AI computer core from Bristlecone and installed it in Cindercone.
BTW, I'm wondering how many people have been missing the fact that, despite Ennesby saying that Broken Wind was "ready to fly without a major refit," nearly everything we've seen in any interior shot of any of the ships (or boats) wasn't part of the original ships. Talk about major refits! (The huge hole inside Cindercone would be about the only exception.) The Oafa were just huge bags of hydrogen. Floors would just be in their way. A room that would be good for a human would be much too small for them. The decks, walls, etc., that we see would have been added for the sake of the new occupants. That's yet one more reason why it was stupid of the Toughs to use the ships rather than selling them for scrap and buying something that met their needs much better or at least using the money from the ships they did sell. Perhaps Iafa forced them to keep Broken Wind as part of the deal, but why would that have applied to Cindercone?Last edited by eschmenk; 2016-11-27 at 10:42 AM.
-
2016-11-27, 11:40 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2005
- Location
- Eberron
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
I suspect a bit part of the reason they kept the oafan ships rather than selling for mad stacks of cash would be time and availability.
Petey 1.0 was a fluke, a properly powerful military ship isn't something you can just throw a bunch of money at and drive away from a shipyard with. It'll take time for all the orders that were there before yours to finish, it'll take time to reconfigure between jobs, it'll take time to build the thing. Then add in on top of that not necessarily having access to all the shiniest hardware options because governments don't really like nongovernments having all the fun toys. Which admittedly is the sort of problem you can theoretically throw money at to fix, but still.
Plus, you know. Long Gun. And Kaff's long-established liking of extravagant ships.
Also, they DID sell a bunch of oafan hulls, that was literally (part of) the reason they went to Earth.Man this thing was full of outdated stuff.
Swoop Falcon
I make(made?) avatars! Last updated 12-23-2008. Requests not unwelcome. Last request 01-12-2010.
Avatar by me.
-
2016-11-27, 12:26 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Yes, so? They have plenty of money this time.
Why not buy a used ship from a mercenary company? If you pay several times what it's worth, you should get one quickly. Since they took Oafan ships instead, they didn't get their ships quickly because they were forced to build usable interiors for the ships before they could use them. The ships were made for Oafa, not people who are heavier than air, as I just said. They never got around to adding weapons suitable for fighting the enemies the Toughs were likely to face.
Um, the ships that the Toughs took didn't have any Long Guns. (Neosyncronicity was taken by Enesby separate from the Toughs and wasn't replaced.) Also, how does Kaff's "long-established liking of extravagant ships" lead to him being satisfied with such inferior ships that don't meet the Toughs' needs? Heck, it turns out that one was merely a teraport cage and they didn't even know it could do that much!
I think that was the Oafa, not the Toughs, selling to the UNS in that case. The Toughs were merely facilitators.
I already mentioned that the Toughs sold hulls to UNS Int-Af-Int via Petey, though, so I obviously knew that they sold some hulls. Repeating myself for about the hundredth time: The question is why didn't they buy something that met their needs better than what they have with all the cash that they got?Last edited by eschmenk; 2016-11-27 at 01:16 PM.
-
2016-11-27, 01:10 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2005
- Location
- Eberron
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Even without the teraport cage, Cindercone was still a freighter large enough to transport things like battleplates or space stations. The ability to haul freight is never a bad thing.
As for meeting needs, the ship you have is never the ship you want. Also I'm not entirely sure what needs aren't being met, the ability to repel boarders? That's more on the crew than anything, and also their decision to lock the AI out of being able to gravy the insides.
And even if they did have better ships, the laws of dramatics would just refactor their threats to still be just as threatening. Bigger numbers can't save you from plot.Man this thing was full of outdated stuff.
Swoop Falcon
I make(made?) avatars! Last updated 12-23-2008. Requests not unwelcome. Last request 01-12-2010.
Avatar by me.
-
2016-11-28, 08:45 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2013
- Location
- Bristol, UK
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
-
2016-11-28, 09:07 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2012
- Location
- Montreal
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Someone can tell me again why they cant simply restore a backup?
They HAVE to have backups. You can backup people now!
-
2016-11-28, 09:17 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2007
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
They keep the back-ups of their brains distributed in the person itself, schlock-wise. Total body annihilation also takes back-ups. No reason given that I can recall as to why not keep a secondary back-up somewhere else (although I'd be quite worried about both identity theft and Theseus' Ship paradox).
GWInterested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
Deep in the corners of your mind
Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
-
2016-11-28, 04:02 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
I imagine there would be significant bandwidth issues in transmitting all that data to a remote location, and given the likelihood of total body annihilation is not that high, it's presumably a risk they consider worth it--just like you or I have a significantly higher risk of death every time we get behind the wheel of a car (as compared to sitting at home), but we do it anyway because the benefits are worth the additional risk.
-
2016-11-28, 10:09 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2012
- Location
- Montreal
- Gender
-
2016-11-28, 10:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2015
-
2016-11-28, 10:45 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2005
- Location
- Eberron
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Man this thing was full of outdated stuff.
Swoop Falcon
I make(made?) avatars! Last updated 12-23-2008. Requests not unwelcome. Last request 01-12-2010.
Avatar by me.
-
2016-11-28, 11:53 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2006
- Location
- Maryland
- Gender
-
2016-11-29, 02:56 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2009
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Member of the Giants in the Playground Forum Chapter for the Movement to Reunite Gondwana!
-
2016-11-29, 03:21 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
OK, current strip: unless I'm misremembering, the Wing Marshal has never met Chinook before. So, the can full of sky is now famous enough that everyone knows the AI who runs it. This is the main thing that annoys me about current plotlines in the strip--people know things that there is no reason they should know, and no explanation is ever given!
It's not even that it's required the Wing Marshal knows who Chinook is--he could have said "Who are you?" and Chinook's response would have made just as much sense.
-
2016-11-29, 03:37 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2006
- Location
- Watching the world go by
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Never having met her is not the same as never having heard of her. She was, after all, interacting with the espees before his betrayal.
-
2016-11-29, 07:30 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender
-
2016-11-29, 08:20 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2009
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Oh, she most certainly did.
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-05-28Member of the Giants in the Playground Forum Chapter for the Movement to Reunite Gondwana!
-
2016-11-29, 08:33 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
That wouldn't have been a problem if the nannies abandoned Kaff soon enough. He had to carry the missile a long way from where it was stored to where he set it off, so they would have started at a safe distance. They probably would have needed to have a way to transfer their data before the Broken Wind was submerged in the water, though, or they might have risked being washed out of the ship.
There was even one strip where Kaff ordered Bunny to remain in a safe location because he was expecting to need her after the battle was over. That was before we learned of his plans, but perhaps he had already come up with them by then. That could mean that Kaff went out of the way to back himself up quickly before he revealed his plan to anyone. I don't know how he would have done it, but HT could retroactively reveal a way to do it if he wants to bring Kaff back. In any case, I think of Kaff as probably just being temporarily gone.
-
2016-11-29, 12:35 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2012
- Location
- Montreal
- Gender