Zeropoint

I would expect the Carousing skill to act as a supplementary skill to CON when rolling to hold one's liquor. Being a teetotaler myself, I don't have any direct experience, but I understand that there's a bit of an art to maintaining one's preferred level of intoxication. The Carousing skill should also help avoid hangovers, maybe?

I've completed the image file for a test run of my paper/foamcore tank. We'll see how it turns out.

I've arrived at the conclusion that making my own will be the easiest solution. It'll be a good skill to have in my toolkit anyway.

Greetings, Herodom! I'm trying to get into miniatures gaming for cheap, because I'm poor. I'd love to be able to print and play some paper or cardstock minis of vehicles and troops. Flats would be fine. I'm especially interested in 15mm WW2 stuff, as I'm kind of considering Flames of War. Does anyone have any links or recommendations?

Ghost hugs from me as well. I struggle with depression myself, so I know some of what you're going through. There's nothing I can do or say that will really help, so I'll just remind you that it's not as bad as it feels in the darkest moments, and that you've got people who care about you and want you to stick around and get better.

I'm Laika called. A Russian dog Who flew above The clouds and fog. No plans were made To bring me back. I died alone In the Big Black. And there I met A German crew Composed of mice And monkeys, too. Though we don't come From just one place, We're all the same Up here in space. And all of us Were kind of sad When we got a New fren called Vlad. Georgy, Viktor; Vladislav. Best frens in space A girl could have. Americans Have joined us, too. Two Shuttle's worth Of friendly crew. From Israel, one. And that's enough. To get new frens Up here is rough. We see you weep And hear you cry. But we prefer To watch you fly. And if you want To honor us This doggo will Beseech you thus: Please leave your fights And strife behind; Be frens above The Karman line!

First, "stopping power" is poorly understood. Heck, it's not even well defined. We know that all other things being equal, faster is better than slower, and heavier is better than lighter, when it comes to bullets. Beyond that, it gets complicated. People have been arguing about momentum versus energy and penetration versus expansion for decades. Some people will swear that the .45 automatic is the best manstopper available in a handgun. Other people respond by pulling up police shooting reports and insisting that the data shows that with modern ammo, the 9mm has the same percentage of one-shot stops as the .45. So, does the .300 AAC Blackout have the same stopping power as the 7.62 NATO? You tell me how you calculate stopping power, and I'll give you your answer. Second: marketing hype. Precisely because "stopping power" is a nebulous concept, "they" can claim that their round has the same stopping power as the 7.62 NATO and no one can adjust their taped-together safety glasses and say, "Well, actually . . . " My personal thinking is that lethality mainly depends on work done on the target by the bullet, which is to say, energy delivered to the target. That's mainly my physics background coming through, though, and I certainly haven't tested this hypothesis by shooting hundreds of pigs under controlled conditions or anything. Also: are they claiming 7.62x51 NATO stopping power, or 7.62x39 stopping power?

Yeah, armor or no armor, it's pretty common for un-named characters to just die instantly whenever they're shot with anything, regardless of weapon type or hit location . . . while the hero can take a shot and just slow down a little.

What's interesting is that while kinetic energy is proportional to velocity squared, momentum is only proportional to velocity. This means that as velocity increases, the ratio of momentum to energy changes. In very rough terms, momentum is what knocks the target back, and energy is what blows the target apart. Since humans are used to dealing with things moving at relatively low relative velocities, we have an "intuitive" understanding of things in that regime, but have a harder time with the effects of high-velocity objects. Nowhere is this more apparent than in action movies where people get blown across the room by small arms fire. That depends on what you mean by "practically" and "significantly". Bulk-loaded ammunition has the powder measured by volume, and this is "good enough" for most purposes. A quick look around the internet tells me that muzzle velocities for standard commercial ammunition vary with a standard deviation of about 20 ft/s. A competent handloader putting a little care into the process can expect about 15 ft/s, and someone specifically working for consistent muzzle velocity can expect about 10 ft/s standard deviation. A very skilled handloader putting in a lot of effort might be able to get below 5 ft/s standard deviation. However, such people aren't worried about damage, they're worried about accuracy. How fast a bullet is going affects how long it takes to get to the target, and that affects how much time gravity has to work on it: faster bullets hit the target higher than slower bullets, all other things being equal. For someone doing competitive target shooting at hundreds of yards, the difference between 20 ft/s SD and 5 ft/s SD could be the difference between winning and not even placing. In terms of damage, though, I believe the rule of thumb is that it takes a difference of at least 100 ft/s to notice a change in terminal ballistics. A standard deviation of 20 ft/s could get you a swing that large, but we already roll randomly for damage; I can't believe that even the cheapest ammo would vary enough from round to round to justify rolling a different number of dice.

Where are you getting the idea that anyone is equating Joules (watt-seconds) with grams? The chart lists the muzzle energies (KE = 0.5mv^2) which are definitely measured in Joules, and gives the Damage Classes associated with that value in the Hero System. The chart also lists, for examples, the kinds of weapons that have muzzle energies near the figure in question. Note that the first entry says "BB gun", NOT "0.34 gram steel sphere". Yes, some kind of sci-fi system could accelerate a standard BB to 0.1c, but that is not what a reasonable person would assume that "BB Gun" means. Furthermore, it would NOT "blow [the] carefully plotted examples"; it would just be another example further down the chart, like this: DC Joules Example Kdamage 32 1.575e11 4.5mm Hyperkinetic Rifle 10 1/2 d6 Edited because I forgot to convert from grams to kilograms, like a complete noob.

I'm going to go a bit meta with this one: a cliche that annoys me is movies where no one did the research, or where no one cared about accuracy, and you get little things that most people wouldn't notice, but which just jump out and ruin suspension of disbelief for anyone with knowledge of the subject matter. Action movies seem to be worse about this, or perhaps they just overlap with my areas of knowledge a little more than other types of movie do.

All of that is true, but to some extent (just how much, I can't say) the need for an increased proportion of structural mass will be offset by the reduced surface area, and also by mass savings through economy of scale on various ship's systems. The real problem that large ships face isn't linear acceleration, but rotational acceleration, i.e. turning. Winchell Chung, our very own Nyrath, describes the problems here.

Thanks for the hard info, Pattern Ghost. It's important to note that not all forms of mental illness make a person dangerous. In fact, MOST forms of mental illness are more likely to make a person a victim of violence than a perpetrator of it, broadly speaking. Looking at you, Portland.

That's an easy trap for the human brain to fall into. What about people with non-humanoid avatars?

He probably hasn't been given an official diagnosis. Until someone has official paperwork indicating that they have a problem, there's nothing to be done about it legally. For example, when I was in the Navy, we Nukes were strongly discouraged from seeking help for mental health issues. You see, a sailor with crippling depression and suicidal impulses but no diagnosis is clean on paper and can be assigned to stand a watch; a sailor who's seen a doctor and is getting help, including therapy and medication, is officially mentally unstable and can't be trusted to fill a slot in the watch rotation, leaving more work for his colleagues. That's how we handle mental health here in the US, and that's why people don't seek or receive the help they need.

Congrats, and thanks for collectively trusting us enough to come out here! Wait, that's basically what Old Man said. A hearty "me too" from me, I guess?

ZOMG, hecking Phillips head. I despise Phillips head screws; there is FAR TOO MUCH cam-out; only an undamaged high-quality driver in an undamaged high-quality screw works acceptably. Roberts drive, AKA square drive, is superior in literally every way, but for reasons I'll never understand (sheer market inertia? "not invented here" syndrome?) people are NOT switching to it in droves, like they should be. If I ever get a time machine, Phillips had better watch have watched his back.

Heroes are allowed to murder as many "unimportant" people, such as innocent security guards, as they want without it counting as a black mark on their character. The movies often want you to accept a mass murderer as a good guy.

And now the letter IS written and sitting in the mailbox. Reading about how the NRA allegedly acted as a conduit for Russians to funnel money into campaigning for Trump was the last straw that made me finally fire up the word processor. I realizes that THAT particular thing is only allegations at this point, BUT even if it's not true, the NRA has committed enough verified wrongs to make me want to disassociate myself from them.

Imagine how many socks they have!

Two observations: First, it's nice to see that the girl with the books apparently likes the brunette guy. Second, I see stacked watermarks in the lower right and a copyright notice in the lower left indicating that the pic's presence here is a violation of terms. I don't really know what that means, legally speaking.

The NRA is "curiously" silent on events wherein black gun owners are mistreated. I got a life membership with them decades ago, when I was young and naive and things were different . . . I keep meaning to write them a resignation letter but not getting around to it.

I might consider just saying that all craft operating in space have infinite Noncombat Multiplier for free. This means that how much Flight a ship has effectively becomes its acceleration rating. Even the most sluggish ship with 2 SPD and one meter of Flight can still get up to any arbitrarily high velocity, but an agile ship with 4 SPD and 50 meters of Flight will run circles around it. Sane pilots will obviously keep their ship within its Combat speed while operating in areas that have collision hazards. I don't remember the rules for turn radius, but obviously a ship's available acceleration relative to its speed will affect how tightly it can turn, and things will look odd on a hex grid. You might have a ship travel in a straight line for multiple turns and then suddenly make a sharp 60-degree corner. Well, that's what you get when you quantize movement.

On paper, of course it is. In practice . . . well, look around. It's becoming blatantly obvious that the people with power have decided that legal protections of ANY kind only apply to the powerful and their servants. I just wish I had some idea of what to DO about it that didn't look like the French Revolution, and that the French Revolution wasn't starting to look reasonable. Editing to add: To clarify: I once swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and I stand by that. I do not want a revolution to depose the government and put in a new one; I believe that our laws would give us a perfectly serviceable and just government if they were applied to everyone equally. That's what I want to see; the corrupt and powerful cast down, and a new batch of civil servants put in place, who know that they are there to serve the public and that the law will come after them with sharp, snippy teeth when they use their positions to do wrong to their fellow citizens. I also want to see a society that disallows extreme inequality of income and wealth. Despite what my avatar might lead some to think, I do NOT advocate a society where the "rich" are brought down to the level of the poor. What I want to see is a society where a rising tide really DOES lift all boats; where the lucky and exceptional people of the world are still allowed to excel and profit, but they pull the wealth floor of society up WITH them as they climb.

I may have missed a word in the thread title when I posted that.