Kristopher

Re: "Needler" -- sci fi projectile weapon

So does that work as an Adder or Advantage or something you stick in a compound power?

Re: The Singularity?

Careful....I didn't SAY "All smart women are naggy." now. Just pointed out a trait' date=' that one can chain to an intellectual event and evolution.[/quote']

 

With intellect' date=' comes Nagging[/quote']

 

That's a really thin line you're drawing.

Re: "Needler" -- sci fi projectile weapon

"Piercing"?

Re: The Singularity?

You don't want it to smart. With intellect' date=' comes Nagging. Nagging is not a good trait in a Singularity provided Stepford model.[/quote']

 

What gives you the idea that all smart women are naggy?

Re: The Singularity?

Make it IQ 120 and you've got a deal.

The ability to hold a conversation that doesn't make me want to gouge my brain out is a must in anyone I'd be spending that much time with.

Re: Stun Damage and Armor

It does. My major concern with telling them to raise the armor was that it would get to the point where they wouldn't take any body damage unless the roll was near prefect.

 

With no-one in my group ever playing Hero before (well I have but that was 15 years ago) we where going off the examples of Hardpoint, Maelstrom, Taurus and Eagle Eye. The first big fight was indeed an eye opener I will tell you.

 

Thanks

For the typical superheroic setting, you won't see so much BODY damage get through defenses, that's fairly a typical result.

Re: Looking for a technobabble Term

When looking at the ruins of an alien civilization, you'd probably need a massive team, even larger than the teams that work on human archaeological sites.

You need xenoarchaeologists, xenoanthropologists, xenobiologists, xenobotonists, xeno...

Re: The Singularity?

If we're going to go off into an NGD tangent, someone should start a new thread there and post a link to it here, so we can avoid a complete derail.

Re: Martian avalanche caught in the act

Thank you, Nyrath.

Re: A couple of brain cells connected...

One of the species/cultures in my fantasy setting uses rockets to good effect to maintain their independence, maybe even existence, in the face of multiple hostile powers.

Re: Announcing Kazei 5, Second Edition

I've been planning on getting K5 as soon as it comes out, and the preview confirms what I was already thinking.

Re: Announcing Kazei 5, Second Edition

I take it you liked the preview?

Yes.

Re: Announcing Kazei 5, Second Edition

Tell your printers that I don't like to be kept waiting, damnit.

Re: Looking for a technobabble Term

Beaten to my answer.

So another player in the science fiction game wants a "needler" -- a weapon that fires a burst of small shards of crystalized drug or poison. It won't penetrate much, but if it does, it delivers a heavy dose to the target.

How would you build this concept?

Re: The Singularity?

It's a shame that the brain eater got him.

Re: The Singularity?

Ummmmm, not to put too fine a point on it, but in the Terminator movies, the people could not keep up but it was not an option to not buy or use SkyNet. As much as you didn't want them, the blasted terminators would hunt you down and kill you.

In the same way, if we inadvertently start the singularity by creating an intelligent computer ten thousand times smarter than we are, it can do to us pretty much whatever it wants.

I would ask "what does 10000 times smarter actually mean?", and point out that power line running into the facility where the AI is located.

Re: The Singularity?

For me, it comes down to something more simple: technolnogy exists to serve peoople. If people feel they can't keep up, they'll just not buy or use the latest thing.

Re: The Singularity?

So where's all the infinite power come from to fuel all this infinite inertialess forward progression? There seems to me to be far to much "Rub the Genie Lamp" here to give it much credibility.

You mean in terms of electrical power? Well, part of it's increased efficiency, supposedly, along with new sources. Eventually, you get to the "all the power of an entire sun is captured and used" level. Not sure how much stock in I put in Kardeshev's work.

Another aspect of the Singularity is "nanotech". Of course, the nanotech of science fiction is often just another name for magic, as the little buggers seem to run without needing power or generating any waste heat.

Re: The Singularity?

One version I heard had it that the Singularity would occur when AI's acquired the capability to upgrade their own software -- in other words' date=' when they could direct their own evolution at whatever processing speed is available to them. Now, what if some of the AI's in question choose to optimize themselves to evolve even faster...and their 'descendants' continue to do the same? The word 'god-like' comes to mind....[/quote']

 

That's what the power cord is for...

 

"I AM YOUR GOD, PUNY HU" **yank**

Re: The Singularity?

It's the timescale that doesn't make sense to me. Is new stuff just supposed to just magically appear out of thin air then be just as quickly if not more so replaced?

Well, you see, all those really smart computers are going to make all the development faster and faster, including developing faster computers, which will make the development faster, which will make the development faster, which will...

Re: The Singularity?

Well, if you read some of the writing about the singularity, they go even more extreme.

 

You know how it took a few years for us to go from VHS video tapes to DVDs? They say that shortly before the singularity such changes will be happening on a timescale of microseconds, not years.

I would point them instead to the lukewarm uptake of Blu-Ray as a counter-example.

Re: The Singularity?

The problem isn't with the general concept, the problem is that it's supposed to happen all at once, and hasn't happened yet. It's that capital "S", and the true believers, and the fervor.

Re: Lessons from Byzantium

I wouldn't defend that proposition with a twelve-foot gedankenexperimentpol.

I do not, however, think that Ottoman Empire was the spiritual heir of the Roman Empire. Different beasts.

Re: Lessons from Byzantium

From another thread, we're probably looking at sol-type systems almost 20 LY apart on average, and not all of those with fully habitable worlds.