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You know that last bit of my post? That whole, "differing expectations" bit?

Cross that out.

This is exactly what I wanted it to be.

I imagine the game running in a similar sort of way to Battletech, but on a grander scale and with more of a Powell and Pressburger-y aesthetic. It's also got a bit of FTL's crew shuffling mechanics, as well as the upgrades, points cost, and cornucopia of upgrades and bonuses for even the most teeny-tiny robot and its most junior commander taken wholesale from every mad roguelike I've ever played. Rolls are made using D20s, and there's plenty of them; I intend it to be like a kind of insane mashup of Battletech, Path Of Exile, FTL, Warhammer 40000, and Risk. Even if the last one is mostly because it'll go on forever. =]

The Thompson Drive is essentially a primitive fusion reactor, the initial incarnation of which was hammered together out of Weird Science, a lot of oddly-shaped metal, and the contents of Dr. Archibald Thompson (4th Viscount Kincaid)'s garden shed. The plans were recovered and refined by the British War Office in 1917 at the behest of Lady Thompson, who wanted it to be a memorial to her husband. It was supposed to end war, you see, in much the same way that dynamite was.

The fact of it is, occupational health and safety was about as much a concern for WWI-era military institutions as whether or not the spider taking up residence in the corner of one's bedroom answers to the name of Mildred. The British Army in particular was notorious for this, treating the common soldier (the extremely common soldier) as what amounted to a not terribly bright attack dog with a penchant for hard booze and women of easy virtue. Thus, in order to squeeze as much power out of a mech's Thompson Drive as possible, nimby-pimby things like radiation shielding and guard rails are left entirely by the wayside in favour of more armour, more guns, and more ammunition. However, individual crews spend a lot of time in their mechs, and tend to cobble together their own versions so that the "stock model", as it were, is rendered safer and more user-friendly. The uncharitable might compare the modifications' collective utility to putting a leash made of used dental floss around the neck of a maternally outraged grizzly bear, but it's better than nothing. Probably.

Essentially, every faction has access to everything from 1-inch naval guns to War of the Worlds style heat beams, but not every faction has access to heat beams that actually, y'know, work. At least not all the time. Building a mech is about tradeoffs. If you want heroic and gallant officers who do their duty with the courage and honour of a particularly fervent Ultramarine Chapter Master, you have to forgo the laser zap bolts. Conversely, your superheavy stompmonster might have all the bells and whistles you can cram into it, as well as a few more you nailed to the outside, but it would end up being led by some unspeakably inoffensive stuffed-shirt with delusions of adequacy. Or it could have both of those positive attributes, but run the risk of turning into an Extremely Not Cheap crater every time the chief engineer so much as looks at it funny. It's really up to what the individual player wants to do.

See, to my mind, you can get roleplaying by proxy out of a crunch-heavy game just by giving the player options out the wazoo. Two players from the same faction might build completely separate armies - one might theme their force around a grizzled, wily old mech captain hurling his ancient war machines into one last battle with every trick in the book at his disposal, and the other might prefer a small cadre of highly experimental mechs forced to enter battle as a last resort and captained by people whose field experience chiefly involves hiding under something heavy-looking and waiting for the horrid bangy noises to stop. A third might do something totally different. It's really up to the players! At least, that's how I envision it being.

As far as weapons go, they're a mix of actual artillery, converted naval weapons, big rockets, scaled-up infantry equipment, experimental weapons that would otherwise be impractical, and a boatload of Weird Sci-Fi Weapons with a coat of WW1 paint slapped over them (which is presumably either khaki, mud brown, or very, very red). For example, Thompson Drives don't lend themselves at all well to miniaturization, so they're no good for aircraft, but the biggest mechs can also function as aircraft carriers that fuel battery-powered biplanes and monoplanes with the energy output of the Drive. Those planes might only have an air-time of 15 minutes, but that's more than enough time to act as bombers, spotters, and interference runners in the field. All the dashing fighter aces? They're mech captains now, or working for them as grunts piloting Lillehammer-style bomb-armed helicopters.

The point of that weird little story is that thanks to the Thompson Drive, however tangentially, a lot of the mad ideas of early 20th century science-fiction writers sort of work. The home front looks Edwardian, but the streets are lit with electric lights, the trains are all electrified, and in many ways it has the infrastructure of a modern nation (without the internet, obviously). We've even been to the Moon - though it was the British Empire that did it first, and not without blowing up a few dozen would-be astronauts. Grand zeppelins cruise the sky-lines of the world, calling at "air-ports" to recharge their batteries and let the great and the good take in the air of foreign climes. The Russian Revolution still happened... ish. The world is changing and the world is weird.

There isn't an iconic weapon yet, but in my head I have some quietly excited gentleman scientist showing the PM his plans for a new bunker-busting supergun that fires a burst of energy analogous to that of a solar flare. The squat, dumpy, orange-glowing thing is hooked up to a Thompson Drive, hums ominously, and after a few seconds of charging incinerates a stand of small oak trees roughly half a mile away. Thus, the Sun Cannon begins to be equipped to British mechs, and launches searing stellar plasma at the rampaging Boche. One imagines there's a picture of such a thing happening in the rulebook somewhere. =]

I hope this was of some use to you. If nothing else, it certainly was to me. =]

How many units would be in a medium-sized game? I assumed it was 3-5 on each side, but I just realized you may have had battles with closer a few dozen mechs in mind, given the existence of formations.

...but I want it so bad. I have a handful of questions to sate my acquired need to know more.

First, how do you envision the completed game running? I'm talking how rolls work, the granularity of key statistics (" Does the average line mech have 7 crew points or seventy?"), crunch levels, things like that. I presume that this will be one of those games with a massive rulebook for every last detail.

What is the nature and extent of the weird future technologies? Does every faction get laser weapons and shields? What powers the Thompson Drive? Has the home front seen any benefits yet?

Relatedly, what are the weapons like? Are they mech-sized versions of infantry guns? Massive artillery pieces? Are there any setting-unique weapons that set your world apart from any other mech-based combat games?

As for feedback, what I see I find really interesting, but it's a bit early to draw conclusions now. What I would want from this game probably differs a bit from what you want from it.

I can't help myself, but... D'aaaawww...

That was so sweet and adorable! Didn't expect that ending either.

Still, congrats to the soon-to-be Mr. And Mrs. Backslash... Wait, does he even have a last name? Well congratulations anyway!

My mum put together a collection of my short stories and got it published and it's actually for sale in my university bookshop aaaaaaaah

Is buk!

Y is buk??

Hau is buk???

Picture already covers who, what, when, and where, so I guess that's me out of questions.

hS would add some kind of celebration or commiseration, but has no idea y is buk, so cannot.

Is

Is book

Is my book

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Since the plan is to have a lot of different weapons, armour varieties, mods, and mechs - for each faction - I'm putting it off a bit to focus on my studies.

*immediately begins assembling an army of adorable lego robots*

...wait, there's no mechanical rules yet? Scaaaaaape!

I've had an idea in my head for a tabletop game for a while now, but it's only now that I've finally hashed out the thing into a single document. Fair warning: it's a bare bones, pre-pre-alpha experience, but I wanted to share it with you anyway. Feel free to leave as much feedback as you like! I'd really welcome it.

===

In an alternate 1930s, the world is still at war, but the blasted hellscapes of the 1910s are left behind. Battles now are fought between great machines, wielding strange and powerful weapons and moving faster than galloping horses. The battlefield is their kingdom now, and these titans do not suffer an enemy's presence. This is a world of weird energies, of arcane machinery... and of iron men.

This is the world of the Trenchbreakers.

I'm not posting code for day 23, as part a was a rather simple modification of code from an earlier day, and part b boiled down to staring at the input until figured out what it was meant to do, then writing a short program to do it much faster.

Day 24 ended up being a rather unenlightening brute-force. The first implementation I made (yesterday) either had a bug or horrible memory inefficiencies, which is why it happened now.

Day 25 ended up being pretty much writing out the definition of a Turing Machine and filling in the blanks per the input.

And so the challenge came to a close for me.

Was fun.

- Tomash

—doctorlit, probably not being as random as he thinks

Very cramped. Hard to laze around in the holidays. And to make things worse(better), I had to return to universoty to do my works. Hopefully my siblings be more industrous, since the house is easily cluttered.

I think it's currently the 25th for just about everyone in the PPC, so it seems like a good enough time to post this thread.

I've had a pretty good holiday so far. It's been spent at my aunt and uncle's in Poland along with one set of grandparents, and it's been nice seeing them again and eating a whole bunch of food (there's a traditional 12-course Christmas Eve dinner, which my aunt and grandma made, which was good).

Gift-wise, among other things, I got a copy of Oathbringer (the third Stormlight Archives book), which I will end up binge-reading at some point this week. I've also been given a copy of TIS-100, which is apparently "programmer crack". And my brother got me a book, but I won't know what it is until I get back to the States from this research position in about three weeks.

So, how have all y'all's holidays been?

- Tomash

Iximaz wants a real life DMS flash patch!

I found this on Etsy and while stuffing stockings today, Mom showed it to me.

See it for yourself! I couldn't find a better patch if I tried.

Initially I was going to protest that the intent was for Backslash to worry that Whitney was going to say no, but having given it some thought I now realize that I really did mess up there. The correct wording should be either "How could I not say yes?" or "How could I say no?" The goof has now been rectified with the former phrasing. ^^;

No prompt. No character. Nothing like the rest. Not even in focus. But here you go:



Merry Christmas.

hS

Ok, first off, you really improved a lot since the first entry. The shading is done nicely, not overdone, and in the right places. The legs are drawn nicely and well proportioned, I particularly like the shading since it captures the light source quite well. i also really like the shading for the face, it gives the face a nice contour.

Now, improvements, I'm going to nitpick here since this is probably the last time I'm critiquing your art unless you decide to make more art threads in the future. First, the clothes. You did add folds, which are nice, but now the folds themselves are the problem. Your folds don't really fold, they are just lines. You didn't make what I call fold bumps on the outline of the clothes. While you could get away with that usually, it's still a good idea to draw some, usually where the cloth is being compressed. Also, keep in mind folds appear both when the cloth is being compressed and stretched, and careful not to overdo the folds.
Next, the hands. These are pretty well structured compared to your previous sketches, a bit of an issue with the left hand is that the fingers seem a little too short.
The hair is a bit iffy here, I can see strands, which is nice, but there is too much crisscrossing. It lacks flow. Yes, hair is not always perfectly parallel, but this seems like you tried too hard to make each strand go in a unique direction. This is actually the opposite problem to the folds; for the folds, there wasn't enough detail, for the hair, you placed too much.

Overall, the sketch itself is pretty well structured, and well drawn. However, it could benefit from improving the fine details, but be careful not to overdo the details. A good mantra to follow is "art is suggestion, not replication". All you need to do is suggest the details are there by placing a couple of details, enough for the viewer to notice, but not too much as to clutter up the sketch.

P.S. You seemed to have switched the left and right feet.(^ _ ^)

Though, there's an extra word at a key moment:

"How could I not say no?"

Agents Whitney and Backslash have a little Heart-To-Heart in the Headquarters' Courtyard.

Merry (early) Christmas, everyone!

V'z abg ragveryl pbaivaprq Rkl vf vagb tveyf, npghnyyl. Abg gung gung obguref Nerngun... fur'f zber guna unys qbvat vg sbe sha, naljnl.

I'm actually planning a full revision of Gravity's Embrace for NaNoEdMo in March. It's the first NaNo that's felt like it could be edited into shape (rather than rewritten entirely, as my forst one was). Once I've got that done... well, it /is/ a spectacularly entertaining setting, and partly created by PPCers to boot. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to take another romp through it.

Not a sequel, though. Exy and Areatha's story is the end of the setting as we know it, I feel.

hS