The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

I actually made this list not to boost my own ego, but to see how well I was doing at demographics. One of which is... current status. So, of my 100 PPC characters (which excludes several of the 'descendant' types who've never actually shown up):

17 are dead.
11 are kids right now, with 3 more not yet born.
5 are retired, and two more are exiled.
5 are resident in HQ without being employed; another 4 are resident elsewhere (because they marry one of the children).
1 is insane.

Which leaves a whopping 52 who are active in the PPC, though that includes my DIA survivors of Crashing Down, for instance. So actually it is an even split - I didn't expect that!

I can also confirm that 58 are female (the rest are male, except for two who are unspecified and one who occasionally changes), 66 are human, but that only 59 speak English as their first language. I also have seven definitively non-straight characters, 38 definitively straight, and 55(!) for whom that information doesn't actually exist.

Stats! So many stats!

hS

I think the last time I listed mine it turned out to be about twenty, but...that was several years ago. I'm not sure I want to know how many I have now (not that they've increased dramatically, but they have increased. I know that for a fact). On the other hand, that's not an actual hundred! Wow.

How many of them are retired or dead compared to the ones who are alive and, well, active either onscreen or offscreen (that is, in recently written missions or just officially active but not being written about right now)? Is it an even split? I'm assuming it isn't, but you never know, and now I'm curious.

~Zing

((I'm at work right now and may not be able to do much more here. Others should feel free to take command.

-Phobos))

... I don't seem to have a statistician agent.

Yet.

Though frankly this sounds right up Agent Sambar's alley.

(I recently made a list of my PPC characters... yeah, turns out I've got a hundred of them, and that's not counting the various PPC-multiverse things like Ispace.)

hS

Well, maybe not only...perhaps I'm an outlier and should not be counted.

(An hour? Heavens. Well, you're awesome for doing this, though you can have an apology if you want one; on the other hand, I've lost time to unexpected plotbunnies from you for years, so this may actually just be making things even.)

~Zing

PS: Although...I think I'd actually originally meant PPC as in the one within HQ. Unfortunately, we're lacking data, but I like the thought that someone in HQ has put together a series of these and is trying to circulate them as something serious...and is taking in anyone who doesn't know how to read graphs or doesn't look at them too closely and isn't thinking critically for whatever reason...

The gravitic wedge is your engine, so I don't think you meant to ask to move it towards you (what with it being... y'know, built into your hull). You want to move to the SE point in your destination area and then raise the wedge again, right?

hS

"Put our wedge back up and begin moving it towards us, we need to get into laser range. Fire another missile. Chief Phobos, you're in charge of positioning it and the live one."

((Put wedge up, move it SE towards the ship, use thrusters to move the ship in the same direction. Launch another Missile, put Chief Phobos in charge of positioning them.))

You grip the arms of your seat as the ship swings round under you. You barely hear the descending whine as the wedge powers down - all your attention is focussed on the tactical board, and the ships and missiles weaving their intricate dance there.

"A hit!" The Chief of Security almost jumps out of his seat. "Direct hit to Target One's laser batteries. They're going to have a hard time patching that back together."

"Let's not get too excited," the XO says at your elbow. "We may have escaped their missiles for now, but the convoy's still on its way - and Target One is headed right for its emergence point."



Or: "Captain! The bad guys are behind us!"

hS

"Do as he says. Also, follow up question: How many Red Shirts can we feasibly eject as Human Shields?"

The bridge looks at him in confusion.

"That was a joke."

And send that one to a location 1 hex SE of the first missile.

i) If the ship has a raised wedge, a coinflip determines whether the attack is stopped by its shielding.

ii) If the attack gets through, a d6 is rolled to determine where it hits. A hit to a fully disabled system counts as a miss.
1 - clean miss.
2 - hits decoys, disabling them. Subsequent rolls of 2 trigger a reroll.
3 - hits weapons. The first hit disables the laser. The third hit disables your missiles.
4 - hits propulsion. The first hit disables the shielding function of your wedge (removing the coinflip). Any subsequent hits roll a d3 to select whether they disable the wedge, the thrusters, or the hyperdrive. (If the hyperdrive is disabled, you won't be able to escape until you repair it.)
5 - disables sensors, leaving you blind.
6 - disables ship power, shutting down all systems, but only if you have already lost two critical systems (missiles, sensors, anything in propulsion). Otherwise, counts as a miss. A second roll of 6 when power is out will destroy the ship.

On any turn, instead of maneuvering, you can repair one disabled system. Missiles only take one turn to repair, though it is possible to repair the damage from a 'second hit' before they're actually disabled.

So you can take a hit, even a damaging one, and recover from it. With a bit of luck, you can take several.

As per usual, the same rules apply to the enemy.

(Also, when your wedge is up, there's no downside to launching a missile. It would have exactly the same potential targets as your ride-along Macross buddy, so letting you cover twice the potential targets.)

hS

That in addition to firing off a second missile similarly to the previous one, we should lower our field. Keeping the field close to us should restrict the enemy's ability to launch missiles against us.

Do I have any objections?

I think the fact that you (Scapegrace) do tend to apologise quickly speaks well for you. It says that you're not really doing it out of deliberate maliciousness so much as... well, poor control, as Nesh says.

I also think I can agree that it's become a lot less common over the past year or two. The difference in what you did in the two examples I linked to is fairly striking. It does look as though you're trying pretty hard.

Onwards and upwards?

hS

The Security Chief is a large, bearded man in a red uniform. He stands at his own tactical display near the rear of the bridge.

"If we can get around behind the upper enemy ship, we can avoid being flanked. I suggest that we alter course, by turning and accelerating, to take a position in the middle of the upper limit of our range ((2 hexes North of where our arrow stops))."

"I further suggest taking the fight to the closer foe, who will likely try to get behind us. I propose moving our missile to the point of their range closest to us ((their extreme West))."

He stops to study the readout again. "And as much as I hate to say this, I believe dropping the wedge is our best course of action. They'll have to find us before they can hit us."


(( 1. Fire no weapons
1b. Move our missile to the point 3E and 1 NE of the end of our plotted vector
2. Change our vector to move to a point 2N of our plotted vector
3. Lower the wedge
4. Pray))

-Phobos

I feel that you are doing your best, and I think you've improved your control significantly in the time I've known you. As far as I know, that's even without much of an IRL support system, so I find it pretty admirable. Don't stop. {= )

~Neshomeh

My thought on malicious intent is that it is done specifically to hurt someone or a group of someones. My intent was to keep a group of someones from being hurt.

"Captain on the bridge!"

You walk over to your chair and settle in, leaning forwards to scrutinise the tactical plot. Your XO is at your elbow, waiting for your orders.

"Launch one missile," you say, "but keep it in close. I want us to close with the upper enemy... let's see if we can take them out before their friends get here."

"Aye aye, skipper." You watch the plot change as Helm makes the changes, then draw in a sharp breath as the enemy moves to counter.

"They're heading right past us," the Tactical Officer reports. "We've got enough fuel in the missile to hit any one of their possible locations, but there's no indication of where they'll go. And, captain," the TO swallows, "we're going to be sailing directly into their own missile envelope. If they guess where we're going to jump..."



The new plot. Your single deployed missile has 8 units of accel left, meaning it can reach anywhere 8 hexes from the tip of its arrow - but of course, you don't know where the enemy is going.

4 turns until the convoy arrives; I'll place a marker on the board for next turn.

hS

From my perspective, a whole bunch of people were about to be slapped with a potentially months-long ban for just being in the chat at that time, regardless of what they said or what they were thinking. At that point, I did (and still do) think what I had done was incredibly stupid, so even if I didn't particularly want to be banned, I was willing to put up with it, but I thought just smacking down everyone wasn't particularly just, and so I thought that rather than just sit around and talk about it and ending up being shouted down, I was going to do something to rectify it. Like I said, stupid. You want to call it malicious? ... Honestly, I don't really care. Call it what you want, I've said my piece.

Also with the missles: I'm aiming to keep it within close proximity to our main ship, if only to build up a good, healthy Macross Missile Massacre.

I'm not sure what you're saying for the missile - are you firing it at the top ship, or what?

(Oh, I should've mentioned: missiles start on your ship. That means their vector starts off identical to yours, so any acceleration has to take that into account.)

hS

I'd say the ship should begin make it's way towards the the upper ship, and fire a missile off but have it hold it's immediate attack.

It looks from my reading of the chat logs like your position was that the screenshot should definitely be posted (with personal information removed) after you contacted July, regardless of what she said in that contact. Would you say that is a fair summary?

Also, can you clarify what you meant in this exchange:

Ekyl-Yesterday at 3:21 PM
And I don't want discussions of community standards and how to fix the problems we're having to turn into drumming people up to go after someone.
Aegis-Yesterday at 3:21 PM
In this case, though, the changes proposed in community standards pretty much state that we need to go after someone, so separating the two issues here is nuanced. (Emphasis mine.)

hS

PS: Also, a quick bit of trivia, since it came up in the logs: in most jurisdictions, people are not required to self-incriminate when charged with a criminal offence. :)