Dholcrist

Did a search over the forums, and the internets, and thus far have come up with nothing whatsoever. I'm working with a friend to create an original SF setting in the year 2176, and we thought it was pretty important to have actual interplanetary distances on the start date of the setting (1/1/2176). At first I was just going to copy directly from the Transhuman Space book that lists distances as of 2100, but I really would like to avoid just stealing their work. So, my question is this: does anyone know of an online program that calculates the distances of all the planets and (hopefully) all of the major asteroids from each other as of a given date? And if there's not a program available, how would one go about figuring that out? Thanks guys, I know that if anyone could help me out with this, they're in this forum.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Quick setup: Our game is fantasy using the Conan 1st ed. ruleset in a homebrew world. Our characters are Imperial Inquisitors, two former soldiers who after a terrible war have been stationed at a small city to keep the Emperor's Peace, and to root out any signs of treason or handle anything that is beyond that of the local city guard. My character is Belkin, a former cavalry soldier of the Empire's most elite squad, while my friend is Gannon, a former mercenary and general "ends justify the means... as long as I get rich" type. He's the best though, so his general shadiness is overlooked. Also, the Inquisitors are basically like Judges in Judge Dredd, or Spectres in Mass Effect (the ultimate in law enforcement, they answer to no man except for the upper echelons of the nobility, and that's only when the Inquisitor has crossed into their jurisdiction). Anyways, during our first game we were headed to the city we were stationed in and happened by a wagon that had been obviously attacked, the men in it killed. Upon further inspection, we discovered that the wagon still had a great deal of supplies in it; food, water, liquors, medicines, etc. We searched the killed men, and found that they were actually soldiers disguised as travelers. And they had a good amount of coin on them. Gannon: "I don't think this was a robbery," he says as he transfers gold from the men's coin pouches into his own. Belkin: "No, I think you're right. But I think THIS might be!" Another game we were playing "Good Inquisitor Bad Inquisitor" with a suspect, grilling information out of him. Once we were satisfied that we had gotten all we could out of him, I had begun to leave to notify the chief of the guard that he could take him away. As I did so, Gannon drew his sword and calmly angled it directly at his throat. The man started to cry. "Don't embarass yourself," Gannon said. "It'll be over in a moment." Luckily I was able to jump between them and simply cold cock the kid. Course, the Captain of the Guard had him hanged within the hour.

Re: Mega Men Very cool idea, I'm always up for just about anything Mega Man related. The original Blue Bomber, of course. Though when I saw the post I thought somebody was actually making a Hero game based off of the post-apocalyptic Mega Man rock opera by the band the Protomen. That I would like to see done.

Alright, I know this is pretty well treaded ground already, but all the software I've found for modeling galactic scale starmaps is for Windows (and most of those for older Windows OS's). I was wondering if anybody knew of anything made for the Mac? I have Astrosynthesis on my desktop PC, but it's buggy as hell on Vista and I'm never able to use the machine because I do all of my writing on my laptop (and most of that is outside of the home). Sorry if this is already covered, and I'm not holding my breath, but anything would help. Oh, and I do have Celestia on the laptop, which is great, but I'm hoping for something more along the lines of Astrosynthesis that actually allows for real mapping. Thanks everybody.

Re: Mass Effect Campaign Setting One of my gm's is actually wanting to start a ME campaign, but is intent on using the Star Wars Saga Edition rules and converting them over. Personally, I'm pretty against this, so I've been pushing for using Star Hero. In the interest of convincing him of this, any new updates on rules/stats/campaigns?

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? You mean to prepare yourself by lowering your expectations so much that the Chun Li movie might be bearable? I watched the first episode of Desert Punk a couple of weeks ago on Netflix streaming, and while I liked the setting and the concept, the actual execution was terrible. Too bad. And Boondock Saints is an awesome movie. Don't know how many times we've made the characters into Cyberpunk pc's.

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Re: What Have You Watched Recently? I've only seen the commercials, but I have seen the first one. So, by extrapolating probable quality based off of these two sources, you could say I'm making an anti-recommendation. And yeah, I love the first two Mummy movies quite a bit, and even saw Scorpion King on opening day. Just struck me as a somewhat lame version of the original Conan movie. Which is too bad, because the "Rock" should be a fantastic action star (for the one movie where this is true, see "The Run Down").

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Surely you mean "forget Scorpion 2 as well."

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Just watched the first two episodes of Planetes, an anime series set in the late 2060's during the rise of space travel. It follows a space debris cleanup crew through their everyday life, working to clean all of the crap floating in orbit around the Earth after a shuttle carrying civilians was destroyed by a screw traveling at several meters a second. Like many anime, it has its goofy moments, which is one of the things I don't like about most anime series. But it has a surprising large amount of hard science behind it, and they're obviously trying to portray things as realistically as possible. Definitely going to keep watching it.

Re: Transporter Accident Ironhide, (a Colossus clone) after armoring up and ready to break some heads, would eventually cooperate and allow the medical officers to run their tests, all the while trying to glean as much information on his current surroundings as possible. He'd try to figure out what had happened to his team, and what their current status was. Once he found out that he was in a future identical to Star Trek, he would request a flight back to Earth, where he would scour the archives for information on Mutants and his own team, Legion X. Once he realizes that this may not be the same universe, he would still attempt to make contact with his own time/dimension, and try leaving messages in various places on Earth for his teammate, Kenix Kil (master time traveler) to discover. Then he would take up work as an engineer, learn the proper sciences needed for starship engineering, and find work where possible. Or maybe he would just explore the galaxy on his own? Moon Spectre, (a Moon Knight clone) would pull his own twin Desert Eagles on the transporter techs, disarm them, and then escape the room. He would use his technology scrambling suit (scrambles all sensors so that he appears as a simple blur on any electronic media) to escape security teams, and eventually make his way to the hangar, where he would attempt to steal a shuttle and launch it on autopilot to the nearest planet. Hoping that this would keep the crew distracted, he makes his way to the Captain's quarters, where he ambushes him and demands to know why he has been kidnapped. Once things were sufficiently explained, he would also demand to be returned to Earth, for he is the chosen protector of humanity by the Egyptian god Khons, and his power stems from the light of Luna. He returns to Earth, catches up on current events, tracks down any possible cults of his enemies, and if there are none in this reality, moves to a colony on the moon where he lives forever, until he discovers a way home. That is, unless in this reality Khons cannot grant him eternal life through the power of the moon, in which case he would believe that he has failed as Earth's protector, and strikes out on his own, giving up his heroic identity and adventuring throughout the galaxy.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Oh, wow, I completely forgot to mention that movie. Watched it for the first time about two weeks ago. Any movie that has so many casualties that over a dozen people die in the sex scene, I'm happy. Clive Owen is a good man.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Valkyrie. Pretty good, though not amazing. Visually very well done, conveyed the story rather well, and had a great cast. Unfortunately, the cast was a little too... international. The mix of accents that were all supposed to be actually speaking German was a little jarring from time to time, especially Cruise. Just weird when you had secretaries with German accents speaking to someone with a British accent being yelled at someone with an American accent. Other than that and a few other small things, pretty good overall.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Started watching MI-5 with the roommate (I believe it's known as "Spooks" in the UK). We'd been looking for somewhere to pick it up for a while, but just happened to discover it on the Netflix Instant View list and been watching it on the 360. Started out pretty bad. Like, hilariously bad. But once it hit the third episode, the kid gloves were off and we couldn't stop watching it. Brilliant show. Aside from the handful of episodes that have these huge plots that are extremely well done, but they wrap up in the last three minutes. Two big examples of this are one: a plot to kill President Bush that's foiled without any intervention from MI-5 whatsoever. And another where a terrorist plans on causing a nuclear plant to go Chernobyl in North England but once you actually see the terrorists who plan to blow it up it's just two guys with a rocket launcher sitting in a field. Somewhat disappointing. Can't wait to start the second series.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Just finished Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex: 2nd Gig. Loved it even more than the first season. Really phenomenal stuff near the end. Man I hope they get around to making a 3rd Gig.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Yeah, it's an awful, awful show. I used to watch it when they showed it on Sci-Fi channel at 3 am back in high school, but more just because it was hilarious. And wasn't the woman who controlled the LEXX super hot? That probably had something to do with it. Oh foolish youth.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Just finished watching the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Been meaning to get around to it forever now, but with Netflix now on the 360 I was able to just stream the entire season on the tv. I had seen a lot of it off and on a while back, but never wanted to throw down the cash for the dvd's. Really great stuff. Started the 2nd Gig last night, we'll see if it lives up to the first. Also watched Next Avengers, which I didn't like at first, but towards the end became a very 80's kids movie, which I'm all about. Ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Though I wish the animation was a tad bit better for the first half of the movie.

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Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Just finished watching the pilot episode of Briscoe County Jr. Loving it so far, rockets and everything. My only complaint is the scientist character seems to be trying very, very hard to do a Doc Brown impression. Which is fine, just too bad that they couldn't get Christopher Lloyd to actually play Doc Brown. That would've been epic.

Re: Fallout 3: Postapocalyptica They have to reload, but I've never witnessed them actually run out of ammo.

Re: Fallout 3: Postapocalyptica Haven't tried it myself, but there are several perks that are designed specifically for hand to hand. "Paralyzing Palm" I believe is one. Also, there are several weapons in the game like Power Fists and various brass knuckles that are designed to help you out with that. Not sure how well it works, but they seem to have it in mind.

Re: Fallout 3: Postapocalyptica Nail on the head on all points. First though, yes, the Repeater is repairable using any Hunting Rifle. Makes it rather devastating against Super Mutants since it does very good damage, very accurate, and repairs using many of their drops. Again, ammo on it is the only drawback. But, like you said, ammo in the game is one of the drawbacks. I'm seriously thinking about making a neutral character my next play through that has a low strength score, just so that I can't carry much with me, forcing myself to carry only two or three weapons. I also think that the idea of having to use a workbench for repairs is brilliant, and it just makes absolute sense. This may be too complicated to implement, but what if you could repair using either identical weapons, OR junk, with junk being far less reliable and making the weapon more prone to jams and the like. I know, changes the mechanics of it quite a bit, but the system in Far Cry 2 is actually pretty good for that. In other news though, Bethesda has announced DLC and the GECK editor. Taken from http://www.kotaku.com I'm so glad they're adding the Pitt. I found a note referencing it, and was very frustrated when I discovered it wasn't in the game. And I'm especially looking forward to continuing past the main story. Speaking of which, who here has beaten the game, and what are your thoughts? I beat it a few days ago, and must say I was slightly disappointed. Not because it was a bad ending, but because it just didn't live up to the rest of the game.

Re: Fallout 3: Postapocalyptica Absolutely. The game was best at the beginning, in my opinion, when you first leave the vault and have this feeling that everything you see could be the difference between life and death. "9 10mm rounds? Better save those, never know when some Raiders could be over the next rise." For literally the first hour or two I used solely a baseball bat I grabbed from my room on my way out of the vault, just so that I wouldn't have to waste ammo. Now though? I pawn off hundreds of rounds whenever I'm low on cash, I have literally well over two-thousand rounds of various types of energy cells (I rarely use laser or plasma weapons), and I hover a little under a thousand 5.56. The only ammunition I ever run low on is .40, just because I use Lincoln's Repeater so much. It's a shame it becomes less of a survival game and more of a slaughter-house towards the end, but it's still fun as hell.

Re: My mostly hard sci-fi campaign As for this, have you seen the movie Sunshine? It's a pretty great example of how people react to long, stressful trips in space (complete with virtual reality simulations!). It gets a bit out of hand toward the end, but still a pretty good example. Otherwise, bravo for continuing to work on this, I'm going to have to go back through and read up on everything that's been written down. I'm trying to construct a somewhat realistic history for the Terran Empire still, so anything that goes up on here is greatly appreciated. Keep it up!

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Been watching Top Gear obsessively the past few weeks after catching it a few times (thanks to some members of this board who spoke highly of it), and I'm completely in love with this show. As is everyone I've shown it to. Bloody brilliant.