SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread IV

[Kartr_Kana]

You do realize that insane people with very large guns are not looked upon favorably. In fact they're usually eliminated by snipers as soon as there's a clear shot with no chance of collateral damage or lost hostages. You are the metaphorical crazy with the big gun right now and you have no hostages (allies who could be drawn into a war on your side.). I wouldn't be so happy about being crazy if I were you. Shep is arguably psychotic but he has the common sense to try and put on a facade of sanity so people don't kill him as quickly as possible.

[Chaotic Neutral]

My nation frowns on lying.

[Kartr_Kana]

Does it frown on discretion?

And how do you keep your people from lying?

[Chaotic Neutral]

Yes, discretion too.

Insults and anger.

[Kartr_Kana]

You keep your people from lying by insulting them and making them angry? How does that even make sense in whatever vacation spot your brain has taken off to?

Also since I doubt you know what discretion means:

dis-cre-tion; noun 2. the quality of being discreet, esp. with reference to one's own actions or speech; prudence or decorum: Throwing all discretion to the winds, he blurted out the truth.

Also, "Better to remain silent and to be thought a fool than open your mouth and prove it.". I may have paraphrased that a little but it conveys the intent of Abraham Lincoln's sage advice. Advice that you should have heeded.

[PeZook]

Huh...so, Centralite intelligence people go banging WHORES WHORES WHORES while on a job?

Somebody's head is going to roll. I'm guessing literally

[Shroom Man 777]

The WHORES WHORES WHORES accosted them. They were under cover as foreigners (Shepistanis perhaps). Not banging the WHORES WHORES WHORES would've made them suspicious and might have been detrimental to their cover!

[PeZook]

The WHORES WHORES WHORES accosted them. They were under cover as foreigners (Shepistanis perhaps). Not banging the WHORES WHORES WHORES would've made them suspicious and might have been detrimental to their cover!

No doubt that's what they will write on their report

[Shroom Man 777]

I'm sorry Langley, but I really wanted to do this. Just tell me if you want me to change the little girl into some other country's representative. I could make it an albino from Shinra.

[Master_Baerne]

Shroom, first a Space Ant cameo and then the inevitable WHORES WHORES WHORES? You're on a roll today.

Franco-Formic is a very catchy term too. French Ants!

From now on, Franco-Formic culture will be making appearances more frequently - ANTZ screenshots are too funny not to use!

[Shroom Man 777]

Happy birthday Tanasinn!

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

My nation frowns on lying.

That's ridiculous. The notion of secrecy is in-built into the notion of a state. As they say, "Open yes, but not gaping!" With secrecy, there comes lying. It is a given!

[Shroom Man 777]

We should play a game of spin the bottle or truth or dare with the MEH. We won't even need to get it drunk!

[Master_Baerne]

Hey, Force Lord - not to pester your shipyard surveyors, specifically since they're so swamped this second, but when are the frigvettes being delivered?

[Force Lord]

Hey, Force Lord - not to pester your shipyard surveyors, specifically since they're so swamped this second, but when are the frigvettes being delivered?

Optimistically, about a week.

EDIT: Of course, more distant customers have to wait longer.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

I'm sorry Langley, but I really wanted to do this. Just tell me if you want me to change the little girl into some other country's representative. I could make it an albino from Shinra.

Nah, it's perfectly fine, mang. It was excellent reading.

The doctor from Manhattan!

[Akhlut]

Quite frankly, you're going about everything in the wrong way. I don't think you should quit, and it's impossible to retcon things at this point, I think you should be able to salvage this if you put a bit more thought into how a government would operate, and not, seemingly, just type out whatever you have on your mind and then post without a bit of editing and questioning if you're doing things in a plausible manner. For instance, would a nation really be that upfront about experimentation on prisoner psykers?

That was my plan all along. I wanted my nation to be insane.

Then you shouldn't be surprised or dismayed at the results. I expect your nation to be short on friends in this game as a logical consequence of your actions.

[Force Lord]

This may have been asked before, but just asking, can a ESPer use more than one ability, for example, being a telepath and a telekenetic at the same time, or he or she is stuck with one skill only?

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

This may have been asked before, but just asking, can a ESPer use more than one ability, for example, being a telepath and a telekenetic at the same time, or he or she is stuck with one skill only?

High-end ESPers are capable of using multiple abilities at once. Lower-end ESPers are the ones who tend to have only one specialty while neglecting other areas (favoring telekinesis over telepathy, for instance), but they can certainly learn how to use other abilities. At least that's how I understand things, at any rate.

[Steve]

The more powerful an Esper, the more diverse their potential skills and abilities. Low level Espers tend to have only telepathy and limited precog, with some potential for TK and physical enhancement. The higher you go, the more likely you get metacognitives, electrokinetics, pyrokinetics, and direct-perceptives on top of those other skills.

[Kartr_Kana]

Last night in chat there was talk about fighters, bombers and gunships. Some surprise was shown by certain parties when I said I had a fighter that was 2/$1 so I was going to lay out the way I understand/see fighters, bombers and gunships working. This way if I had it all figured wrong someone can tell me.

10-7/$1 really cheap drone fighters designed to swarm the enemy.
6-5/$1 first of the manned fighters, similar to the Japanese Zero they're light weight flimsy etc.
4-3/$1 continuing the WW2 fighters analogy these are the Spitfires, Mustangs, ME-109s, FW-190s etc. For bombers these would be the Stuka's, IL-2s and the American carrier bombers.
2-1/$1 this is where you start getting into a bit of a grey zone where they could be fighters, bombers or gunships. Fighters are like the P-47, the Typhoon, TA-152s, Me-110, and the Mosquito. Bombers are like Ju-88's, B-25s, A-26s etc. Gunships would be more like the B-17, B-24 and Lancaster bombers.

1/>$1 there are no more fighter craft in this range just progressively bigger gunships.

So that's how my understanding of strike craft works. If I'm horribly off base I trust someone will tell me and if there's anything anyone wants to add to my analysis please feel free. Oh and you can blame the use of WW2 fighters/bombers on a) their plentiful and I'm familiar with them and b) Steve for making so many WW2 references in his TGG stories.

[Master_Baerne]

If I had any major carrier forces, I think they'd get along very well with yours. We seem to be using the same system, roughly.

[Agent Sorchus]

I had figured that the 10-$ things were going to be maned and by the time you reach 2-$ you have fit then B-17 multi maned things. I was wrong about some other things last night though so what ever.

[Darkevilme]

It seems there's a lot of flexibility here.

Chamarrans use 12 per $1 unmanned drones for cheap and cheerful swarming tactics and 1 per $1 gunships with crews in the 3-5 range for specialist purposes.

[Simon_Jester]

Remember, in this day and age a drone doesn't have to be shitty (Siege has sixty-point AI warships that are, in some obscure and silly sense, "drones," but are quite capable of swatting any manned fighter or gunship in the game). Conversely, a manned fighter doesn't have to be all that amazing (think TIE fighters, as portrayed in the EU where they get shot down in droves going up against the shielded X-wings).

In principle, automation offers improved tactical performance over a human pilot, and reduced mass penalty for life support, but at the cost of reduced strategic judgement... unless you use a fully sentient AI pilot, in which case that goes out the window.

Some nations use cheap fighters that are drones, but there's no obvious reason not to use manned fighters of equal equipment quality and have human pilots flying 10/$ fighters. Or, in the case of the Pfhor, 20/$ fighters. The only argument against doing so is that you may risk tangling against enemy fighters and suffering unfavorable pilot casualty ratios. Which is an occupational hazard for any kind of warship in this game: if your 100-point ship has twice as many crewmen as mine, your casualty ratios are unfavorable. Such is life.

Conversely, there's no reason why expensive fighters can't be drones too- we're quite capable of designing AIs or expert systems that can match or exceed the performance of a human pilot.

At some point, the sheer firepower of the craft means either multi-manned crews or one pilot with a LOT of computer support, be that internal cybernetics or external automation. That can occur at the gunship level, but it doesn't have to.

Honestly, I think there's no reason to try to standardize on this issue; different nations have radically different flavor when it comes to the quality and quantity of their small craft, and whether it's feasible for them to put AI in said small craft or not.