LostKnightsRPG.org

For discussing the game out of character.

Eventually there should be a "Captain's Log" thread. Not necessary now, but I wanted to mention it while I remembered it.

I approve of having another person with stuff listed in the Guide thread. It really helps to flesh out the characters when you know what part of them is their species/culture and what part is their personality.

Paul: You've been asking for input and guidance, so I'm going to summarize what I've gotten from your comments so far, then offer suggestions based on my perceptions of what you are going for. Take it as far as you like.

Observations: You are a bug person from a collectivist culture with spiritual values related to the oneness of all sapient life. You see your race as living on a "quicker timeframe" than others, and as having perceptions more in line with those associated with bugs. Your culture has rituals that serve as both a binding agent for society, and a method of expressing the hive mentality of the species. Your culture is highly technological, and places a premium on tech development. On a personal level, your character is one of the "important people" of his species, one of the queen's consorts, a general, a great warrior, and a high level cleric in the bug religion (perhaps even a polarizing charismatic figure?)

Suggestions: These will be broken down by category
Culture - Matriarchal at the highest levels, but with room for all bugs to be important in their various castes. Caste based and rigid, with a strong quasi-religious element, similar to Confucianism, that sometimes is purely mystical in its beliefs (the AllHive). Technologically advanced even for the Federation, with tech treated as an integral part of society and religion. I feel like tech should have an almost symbiotic place in your culture; while species like Zach's may use tech and be even better at innovations (not a bug strong suite I would think), your people integrate it seemlessly, using biotech and hard tech to make a vast interconnected society work as a unified whole.

Character - I like the consort angle and the warrior angle. I think the religious angle could best be approached in a manner similar to vulcan priests, keepers of sacred lore and a long tradition as a unifying force among your people. I don't think you should be a priest, but instead should have trained with them, taking a few of their rituals with you. Their lore should be focused around technology, their unique religion, fighting arts, and counseling.

I like seeing you as a hero of your people, an accomplished bug that has risen far and fast through determination and talent. Perhaps even as a polarizing figure, despite or perhaps because of, your adherence to religious principles above and beyond many of the clergy. You are a male who is too high for his station, a former monk pupil that questions the sincerity of the church leaders in carrying out their role, and a leader who questions the traditional castes by both creating efficiency by utilizing your people in novel ways, and by the very fact of your existence and your meteoric rise to power. I see you being removed for the "good" of the civilization and its power brokers, and as a test of your worth. I see this as a theme for all the characters actually.

Traits
Atts/Mega-Atts - everything high, with 2 mega-atts. The specific ones depend on the direction you take things. I feel like you should probably take buggy perception stuff (EM, vibrations, other altered sensory stuff). Dexterity is another strong candidate, but I see you using tech to up your physicals. Wits might be better, as it is where all the quickness stuff is at, and some appropriate mega-int stuff relating to tactics and organization can be reasonably put in wits as well. If you select those, you will double up with Angela; this is not a big deal if you are both okay with it and organize so that you don't take the same stuff. It is two completely different ability sets and there are dozens in each category to choose from. It will be prohibitively expensive to take more before you ever even have to overlap.

Skills - Martial Arts, Firearms, Artillery, Tactics, Meditation, Command, Rapport, Awareness, Engineering, Science, Survival, a smattering of others (some of those are secondary skills from aberrant players guide). Weave/Cunning (see bg's below). I think you should probably take tech skills up to 3. Not high enough to step on Zach or Chris, but enough that you will be able to manipulate and repair your own super-tech, as well as assist others at tech tasks. You should spend xp in game to develop combat specialties in Naginatajutsu (or some sword style, but I see you with a high tech collapsable spear for some reason, one that can double as a gun, transformer style), Golden Gunplay, and some hand to hand.

Backgrounds - I think you should take two things right off: Neofiber and Device (multiple times). Neofiber is like eufiber, but slightly different. It should be the "power armor" you were wanting, a bonded bio-suit with animal level intelligence that responds to your desires and years of training. It probably has religious significance. For devices, you should take a built in commlink, an enhancement to your dex or str, and a minor masterwork weapon that transforms between melee/ranged and is bound to you (like, it only works for your genetic/psychic imprint and it collapses into your suit). Other stuff to consider would be a high level of influence among your people, and some limited backing in your order and the military (your special situation might reduce your pull when you return, but you'd still have it).

Powers - Not many. Buggy stuff for racial things, mostly body mods (and for your wings, I would go with a pair of retractable wings that allow for gliding but not flight, at least not without integrated tech assistance). A few psychic or dynamic knacks, as they relate to building unity between thinking beings, or your specific training (these should be specific to the character, not its species). Maybe the option to buy a few more psychic knacks as you unlock more of your potential.

Aberrations - bug stuff (most of it won't even get you points, but a few are inconveniences), altered senses, maybe short.

Okay, I've noticed this before, but I haven't had long texts on here and thus haven't cared. I can't scroll though my text and make changes on this site. When I get to any text that requires scrolling, I get sent back to the top of the message. This makes editing a pain. Can this be fixed?

not sure what causes that. Steven question.

In other news, it appears that people's background stuff is slowly flowing in. When did people want to start?

I'm going to need a better description of the problem. That said, if a fix would require me to dive into the code supporting the boards, it probably isn't going to happen. I'll just upgrade the whole board system before I bother making any major edits, at this point.

When are we doing city building for the ship? Is there a picture of the ship somewhere so we can all get a rough idea of what it maybe looks like? When are we starting? Why haven't people posted their back stories? Can someone besides the same three people make a relevant post on here that is more than just numbers, or game mechanics?

I will this weekend. I don't have a computer so I have to write it up on my iPad which is a pain.

Good questions all. We are probably not going to do city building for the ship *before* game starts, since part of the plot is how unexpected the ship is when you finally board. We may do it after game starts, and for in game reasons that will make sense later.

We will be starting fairly soon, I'm waiting on a few more people to be ready in order to start, which may happen as soon as next week.

MAKE IT DO!!

YiPIIEEEE!!

Hey Gideon.

I'm putting together a work up of the treaty between the Matriarch and the Federation. I wanted some input from the Federation's point of view. It was a treaty between two cultures after all, so it seems only right to have at least two perspectives.

I mainly want to know what the Federation would seek from a treaty with such an off putting race.

Other people can feel free to share input of course. The more ideas the merrier.

Liquidprism wrote:Hey Gideon.

I'm putting together a work up of the treaty between the Matriarch and the Federation. I wanted some input from the Federation's point of view. It was a treaty between two cultures after all, so it seems only right to have at least two perspectives.

I mainly want to know what the Federation would seek from a treaty with such an off putting race.

Other people can feel free to share input of course. The more ideas the merrier.

Not to quote too strongly from the wrong type of source, but the federation would want to add your uniqueness and diversity to their own collective.

Some believe that "The Commander" from the days of Federal Ascendancy and the Second Zorian War and "The Immortal Emperor" from nowadays (and several generations of presidency) are the same person. If so, his reluctance to engage in genocide and his aversion of that practice at all costs would have become a fundamental ethic of the federation, and one which spared your race.

The federation would arrive at a peaceful integration of your society into their own at *almost* all costs. Your race would have had chances and chances at the negotiating table.

We did mention, if you recall, that your races adherence to promises and laws is suspicious in that it's pretty much the only way that your race could be integrated, perhaps not all of your race has such a trait, like the Schism, and that the ones that could adapt to such a rigorous life are the ones that survived joining the federation.

Did we want to look into building the ship soon?

As revealed in the Episode 1: Pilot thread, the museum and tourism replica of the Endeavor is a bit over 20 km long.

"Wow! That number seems...how big is that?"

Well User, I'm glad you asked. The Endeavor is really really big. It is actually about the same size as a Star Destroyer and a Super Star Destroyer end to end. It is almost as long as three Babylon 5's end to end. It is almost as long as the Independence Day city destroyers are wide. It is slightly shorter than a Farscape Peacekeeper Command Carrier. It is slightly more than twice as long as the Lexx. It is as long as seven Borg Assimilation Cubes end to end, with maybe a little room to spare.

"Why doesn't the Endeavor have more craft in it? You said it only carries a few vessels, three wings of fighters, like three or four Rangers, and some other crap we don't really care about. What gives? And why so few marines? What gives?"

Stop repeating yourself, it's annoying. Ahem. Well, the answer is really quite simple. In the SASForge universe, not unlike our own, the effectiveness of a carrier is really in how many missions it can support, and the effectiveness of those missions is partly due to the kind of ordnance the vehicles it supports can deploy, and how well those vehicles are supported. In other words, the Endeavor is an effective carrier and battleship because it can support very long range missions, for a very very long time, without a resupply. Part of the challenge the designers faced in arming the Endeavor was finding a balance between effective weapons against unknown enemies, and sustainability. In reality, the Rangers are the main strength of the Endeavor. Each of them is capable of deploying antimatter warhead torpedoes, and features primary beams. They are intended as the vanguard for the Endeavor in any large engagement, as they are warp capable and can sustain themselves for quite a long time.

The point of that wall of text is that Endeavor supports a modest complement of vessels well and for several consecutive years of use. Much of the volume of Endeavor is taken up by a large habitat module and enormous series of cargo holds, as well as a first of it's size power plant. The contents of the cargo holds could be thought of as the true power of Endeavor, as they contain sufficient consumable and spare parts to keep Endeavor combat ready for potentially decades. There are enough spare parts in there to build up to 5 more Rangers from the ground up. Endeavor is designed in such a way to help guide the commanding officers to make decisions that are sustainable. A battle that can be won by 8 Rangers but not 3 Rangers AND Endeavor is a strange battle indeed, but a battle that costs 3 Rangers leaves 5 more in parts in the hold.

Parts wear out over time, and parts in combat wear out in very little time. Part of the reason so many spare parts are aboard are that worn out parts are expected to be retooled, given the capabilities of fabricators aboard.

Finally, it is expected that Endeavor is never given a resupply. Those in charge of the big picture were made aware that Endeavor was in reality unlikely to find anything at all. Therefore special attention was given to making sure that the crew of the Endeavor might survive for a very long time in the depths of darkness, as a humanitarian gesture towards them as much as anything.

"How big was the Endeavor?

The original Endeavor was actually about two thirds the size of the museum and tourism replica. The tragedy that struck the original vessel hit it before it was even loaded with cargo or vessels, demonstrating the apparent foresight of the consortium that built the replica.

"Why build a replica?"

The turmoil that surrounded the construction of the Endeavor was enormous. Everybody wanted a piece of it. The Galactic Federation gave it a certain budget, which was then submitted to contract bidding. Quality vs Cost was discussed at length. The budget was also quite large, so literally millions of corporations squabbled and peddled political favors and hedged around to try to get a piece of the action. The advertising potential was huge. The Endeavor had become, nearly overnight, a symbol of unity and galactic federal prosperity. Entire political campaigns were based on the importance of the Endeavor and everyone's support of it. A company that makes space toilets that could claim "As seen on the Endeavor" would skyrocket in sales, while other companies' profits would vanish.

A group of several very wealthy but not politically powerful corporations, and several private individuals worth quadrillions, were outbid on fundamental and massive parts of the ship early on by more politically connected but not necessarily better corporations. These gathered together and realized that, while they had lost out on the opportunity of a lifetime, there was still a chance to make money. By designing a Museum and Tourism Replica Endeavor Vessel as a charitable contribution to the effort, and funding it with their own money, they were able to avoid the political shenanigans surrounding the proper Endeavor, still tag their products with "As seen on the Endeavor*" (*=museum and tourism replica) and deduct the expenses involved in the construction from their taxes.

In some ways, this independence from governmental bidding structures resulted in a better ship. In other ways, this independence from military construction standards and testing resulted in a dangerous ship. Corporate group-think affected many aspects of the vessel, and final construction costs were funded by private individuals purchasing plots of land in the habitat module, or private residences aboard, to go on the ultimate vacation. The cream of the crop were uninterested, but those whose fortunes would soon vanish because they were outbid on the Endeavor had a chance to get away from a universe that was ultimately unfair.

The terrorists that bombed the Endeavor just before it was to be hitched up to the Superwarp stage are suspected to have been hired by one or more of the companies involved in the replica. Regardless, their attack was successful, the endeavor was shattered by 100 tons of antimatter, a stupendous explosive far in excess of what was necessary to destroy it. And the Galactic Federation nearly went up with it. With so many political campaigns leveraged against the eventual launch of the Endeavor, news of it's destruction would end those careers as well, and enough of them were critical enough to the cohesion of the Federation that their exodus would cause a critical mass of instability. The Federation that failed to launch the Endeavor mission would itself fail.

Overnight it became more important to launch the Endeavor mission than for it to succeed. The tourism replica was loaded with it's cargo, hitched the superwarp stage, and fired off on its course. An elegant bait and switch was pulled, in which it was stated that a decoy had been destroyed, and the actual Endeavor was launching on schedule, which had been advanced. All delays were circumvented, as with the reveal of the replica vessel, it was potentially a target for the same terrorists that struck at the original Endeavor.

"Weird."

Yup.