Bucky

Re: Kill-Master General

Re: Does Hero System "break" at higher levels, and if so, at what level? I am not real sure what is meant by "broken" here in this context. The purpose of Hero is entertainment. Yes, Uberman, with 3 million points will beat up any and all bad guys (with the possible exception of some almighty gods). Personally I would not find it that much fun, but then some folks would. ANd if Uberman can aquire 3 million points, what is to prevent the GM from building 5 million point villians to challenge Uberman? But there is a reason why people "round down" comic book supes. If our character dies, we roll a new one. We ain't got stock holders whining about loss of share prices.

Re: Stargate Hero Fairly new to Hero myself, but its impressive what you put together. Would love to see your final writeup of the FN P90.

Re: What is Vacuum Decay like? Okay, the mass of the electron is equivalent to 0.510998918 MeV. On an experiment a couple years ago, we routinely accelerated these babies to 50 GeV. We had a mass increase of almost 100,000 fold. (97847.565) So, using m/m0=1/[1-(v/c)^2]^1/2, where m/m0=~100,000, we get a (v/c) or % C= 0.9999999994999999998749999999375 (roughly). Using the above formula, we get t=31,622.7766. Now granted, electrons are not a whole ship, and we are not the biggest machine on the planet. There are other, more powerful accelerators out there. But this is a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Now whether it counts as "absurdly high fraction of light speed (much higher than a "mere" .999c)," I am not so sure. Do you have decay times for microscopic black holes?

Re: Suddenly... a new and better you

Re: Preamble of the Week This is great, I love it.

Re: Green Lantern Object Creation... Does it specifically say that it is illegal? Or does it state that "neither FW or Entangles are intended to be used to make Bridges"? The intention is irrelavant. If it works, it works. If it ain't banned, then its allowable.

Re: What is Vacuum Decay like? Hmm.. You know you might have a point here. Special Relativity tells us that as particles get faster, time, for the particle, slows down. This is why particles that decay very quickly are still able to reach the earth, when otherwise, they should have decayed high in the atmosphere. So the faster the black hole, the slower it decays (violently) in OUR frame. It would appear to decay slower than if it were standing still. (Well still relative to us.) So the question becomes, what is the slow down factor for a particular speed?

Re: What is Vacuum Decay like?

Re: What is Vacuum Decay like?

Re: What is Vacuum Decay like?

Re: Average Seperation I am familiar with those arguments. I think there is a problem in that, without such a liquid, (i.e a bipolar one) you don't get lipid formation required to make cell walls. Without cell walls, well, you don't really get life forms. Look at the temperature ranges for those other liquids. You see they are all far more narrow than those of water (with the exception of molten sulfer). The problem with silicon life forms is that silicon compounds are too stable. Whatever life that arrose using such chemistry would be incredibly slow. Funny you should mention Asimov, as it was another of his essays that got me thinking like this. About how, if life is out there, it pretty much has to follow the same chemistry as here.

Re: Magic field names

Re: Average Seperation Oh yes, bad typo. I stick with oxygen, because it is my, well, "studied opinion", that life out there will be pretty much like it is here. Carbon based, oxygen breathing, etc. And if you have an intelligent species, it will be pretty much some kind of bipedal critter, much like humans are. You need long chain polymers, which means carbon. Silicon is just not reactive enough. (Carbon dioxide is a gas at standard temperature and pressure, silicon dioxide is sand.) Oxygen usage provides something like 10 times the energy that using Hydrogen sulfide does. And it appears you need a bipolar liquid medium to, well, "grow" life. The range of chemicals, let alone naturally occuring ones that fit that bill are severally limited. Water is great. Other liquids, not so much. Either the range in which they are liquid is too narrow, or they lack even the essential bipolar nature that water has. You are right that evidence of clorine, flourine and hydrogen sulfide in an atmosphere might indicate life, as these chemicals would be depleted without it. But I don't think it would be anything but basic bateria. And definitely not a place I would want to spend my vacation at.

Re: Firefly HERO Website Up As long as its their own money, who cares? But it does point to the function that rich folk have in a free market society. New products come with risks. They also come with higher costs, because of the risks, but also because of the design and research aspects that go into production. So we let rich folks snap them up, test them, find out which ones work and which don't. The products that are bought, those companies are able to expand and achieve economies of scale, with larger plants and operations. The products that fail, well, they fail. Before long, prices for those products come down. It used to be that you needed a lot of money for a computer. Or a flat screen TV. But because rich folks bought them when they were expensive, prices today are a lot less. So it may be vapid, shallow and materialistic, but that does not mean its a bad thing

Re: The Invisibles Writeups These are pretty good. Think you might want to take a crack at Edna, and Jak Jak?

Re: Average Seperation 1) True but only sorta. It depends on how long you look at the star. The longer you look, the longer period of a planet you can pick up. If you look at the sites mentioned, you will find planets with much longer orbits. The shorter the orbital period, the easier it is to find the planet. But the longer period planets are still findable. It just takes longer. 2) And there is also interferonmeters being built to do the same trick without cancelling the light from the central star (Or rather, canceling it out via a different method.) This is great because once you get an optical image of the star, you can run it through a spectroscope and determine if it has an oxygen atmosphere. You got an oxygen atmosphere, you got life.

Re: Something Star Hero needs, but hasn't-PT2 My stance remains, you ain't got deckplans, and this is not a way to get them quickly. Star Hero is a minority product and probably, as much as I hate to admit it, the bottom of the deck right now. They have other, more profitable products to deal with and maintain. It will be at least a year, if then, before "offical" books with deckplans could be out on the market IF they were inclined to take the financial risks to even start. There are plenty of outside sources for starship deckplans, to cover almost every subgenrie one might be interested in. And you can, whether you are a cartographer or not, draw up your own. You can either channel that energy to achieve your desire, or not. Demanding or complaining is not going to achieve that goal. Its that simple.

Re: Firefly HERO Website Up Bingo, its all about infrastructure. We seem to forget that our modern every day world has a large amount of infrastructure, roads, gas stations, petrolieum refining, etc. Infrastructure that takes time to build. The outlying colonies simply have not had enough time to develop, (And probably not enough funds or other resourses as well.)

Re: Things that are cool about Alien Wars

Re: Something Star Hero needs, but hasn't-PT2

Re: Jane's Superhumans

Re: Firefly HERO Website Up I agree, however there is still debate on that point. If you factor in gravitational technology, which would be required for a number of worlds, to make them habitable, (be able to hang on to its air) then maybe not. BUT, if you have gravitational technology, then FTL is probably available as well.

Re: Something Star Hero needs, but hasn't-PT2 Well, what is stopping us from making our own deckplans? Granted, Star Hero does not have a means of producing them, but that is no reason we can't "homebrew" a system and make our own. Heck, maybe the company might want to publish them. Just because the Hero system does not have them, does not mean we have to sit around and wait on them to produce. I am sure they have alligators of their own to contend with.

Re: Average Seperation Grin, that is a toughy. BUt not much of one. Now, if you are a weaker species, facing a galaxy conquering one, bent on destroying your world, what do you do? Run. Where do you run to? Hopefully a stronger species than the one that is invading your space. Plus the fact that you have allied yourself with another species, does present the potential of creating a force stronger than the ones that kicked you out of your homeworld. Another way is persuasion, or commerce. Its a lot less violent, and less destructive. And encourages different species to come together and pool their various talents.