Sundog

I think 5th is a great system, and for me the first one I really loved (though I started with 3rd) was 4th. I'm still of two minds on 6th - it's a purer system with everything equalized as far as stats go, but I don't find it as fun to play.

Eindecker

The first "German" invited to the team, Eindecker serves as scout and fast recon. Compared to other fliers he's not very fast, but his maneuverability and agility are tremendous.

Friedrich Melies was born in the Alsace-Lorraine area, and grew up speaking French and German all but interchangeably, but eventually moved to Germany where he got his doctorate. He became a very good aeronautical engineer, and worked on the Euroair VTOL fighter programme, only for that programme to be shut down and his applications for several patents denied on national security grounds. Angry and disgusted, he built a flight suit using the vectored thrust technology he had been working on, which he was able to massively miniaturize. His problem is that the system has serious weight limits, restricting him to a small number of fire-and-forget missiles as offense, and only very light armour.

His name comes from the Fokker E. III Eindecker ("one deck", what we now call a monoplane), the first dedicated fighter to be used by Germany in the Great War. He commonly wears the Eisernes Kreuz (Iron Cross, German military symbol) on his chestplate. This has made him a lot of enemies in the German military.

The Proud Man

How old is the Proud Man? Even he isn't sure. The human brain isn't designed to keep memories that long. But he knows he has studied at the Sankore University and Mosque before the colonial era, and he remembers things sometimes...things like seeing the Pyramid complex at Giza, under construction near the glory of the Sphinx.

Appearance wise, he has the mien of an African plains warrior, over six feet in height, with a muscle definition that would make most bodybuilders envious. His eyes are a deep brown color, and while he largely used to shave his head, these days he has long flowing dreadlocks.

His current position as a hero is rather new, as well. The Proud Man still has arrest warrants out for him in both France and Britain, because the one thing he has never tolerated has been the European colony system. Any time Africans fought for independence, the Proud Man could be counted on to make an appearance. In the days of flintlocks and swords, his presence could change the course of a battle - but he was only one man. When Maxim Guns and repeaters began rule the battlefield, he learned the skills of the guerrilla, and eventually traded his long spear for an AK47.

But today, he has largely renounced political causes, seeking instead to protect the people where he can and serve as a symbol of emerging Africa. He's a lot happier these days too.

The Proud Man is a combination brick and martial artist. His skin and bones are steel-hard, and he'll basically ignore anything less than a 20mm shell, while he can easily lift a bus. But it's his skill that makes him deadly - literal millennia of experience have honed his skills to the point of being all but unmatched. He can handle any spear, throwing club or short blade with superhuman skill, and unlike many in this day, he has no problem using lethal force if he deems it necessary.

Well, darn.

Maybe a "Dark Net" site. A hangout for pro-Vigilante types with an otherwise innocuous Patreon-style system.

Or you can work like the Saint in the books - rob from the criminal element. If they've already stolen it, it's not really stealing, is it?

Chromic

Oddly enough, probably a modified version of Aberrant.

On 5/1/2022 at 7:26 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

I am unsure that there's a need to be fighting beyond a certain range, since after a while you need specialty shooting to be accurate or useful anyway, but whatever.

Army felt the same way. But in Afghanistan they had a number of cases of insurgents using older, full-power rifles being able to engage US troops at ranges where AR-15 based weapons couldn't effectively reply. This was especially the case with troops issued the M4 Carbine, but it also happened with full-length variants.

My understanding is that the military really doesn't care about body armour. Since any actual hit (as opposed to a ricochet or spall) from a rifle will punch straight through any body armour currently available. What's bothered them was the inability of current gen assault rifles to reach targets at long ranges, especially with carbines like the M4.

On 4/25/2022 at 3:11 PM, pinecone said:

Well, the Army in it's vast wisdom has chosen the Sig, with the 6.8 x51. So it seems that they went with "Battle Rifle" as x51 is not an intermediate size. Not supposed to be super heavy though....

They want the range of a full-power cartridge while keeping the capacity to carry a reasonable quantity of ammo. Plus, I think the ability to base a light MG off the same platform, with all the advantages that gives for logistics, kicked the SIg bid over the line.

Well, there are supposedly rebels, so stopping terror attacks comes to mind. Plus, there would be natural disasters, accidents and problems to be solved, and given the V'Hanian tech level, supers could easily be planetary-wide operatives.

Flight, usable on others is a superb way to neutralize melee monsters.

Used the original Red Doom in a game, maybe a decade ago, where they were caught up in Time Travel shenanigans and wound up in 2008. Wound up with the Red Doom Civil War, with half the team trying to steal as much tech as possible and go back to change the fall of the USSR, and the other half working with the PCs to stop them. Eventually ended up sending them back after the PC mentalist erased their memories.

Outlaw No. 2

George Starr claims descent from Belle Starr, but he's probably lying. He's a little more meticulous than No.1, and usually uses actual, antique 1880s guns, though he's smart enough to use double-action revolvers and cartridge based weaponry, as well as slightly fancier, more gambler-styled gear.

He's also more careful in planning out operations and checking to see all bases are covered, so he does a lot of the group's legwork and setup. He wouldn't call himself the leader of the group, but he often is by default.

Not to say he isn't as ruthless and vicious as they come. No.2 Has been known to slaughter large groups of bystanders as a "lesson" to supers or law enforcement who got too close, or to eliminate the possibility of witnesses. But he's always doing what he does for a reason and with steel self-control.

Hayseed is an older guy, looks like someone's favourite uncle. Tall and lean, he seems a jovial and easy going fellow, usually wearing classic farmer's overalls and chequered shirt.

Looks, in this case, are deceiving, Timothy Rowan made a pile of money by exploiting his encyclopedic knowledge of plants and understanding of genetics. He'd find a well-running farm and stealthily sow crop killing plants in their fields, looking like the very crops they were destroying. When the farm went bankrupt, Tim would buy it cheap and rehabilitate it, easy enough when he knew exactly what was wrong. After a couple years of bumper crops, he'd sell the land again for a massive profit.

Tim's brutal ways were uncovered by Colonel Clemson, a "southern gentleman" super. What really annoys Tim is that Colonel Clemson is a classic brick, super strong, extra durable and dumb as a post. Clemson stumbled across Tim's methods purely by fortuitous accident.

Since being denied his source of income, Tim has invested his remaining money in creating super plants. He can throw a seed and the instant vines will entangle a target, or a huge venus flytrap will spring up and attack, or a wall of plant will form. As Hayseed, he plays up to all the farmer stereotypes, even having a grass stalk in his mouth...with the seed on the end being one of his venus flytraps, of course!

On a pure trade basis, a city at the mouth of the outlet river would be sitting pretty. If it also has naval resources sufficient to require all trade vessels passing from the lake to the major river to pay a transit tax, it's pure location would make it rich. Of course, wealth has it's own problems - sprawl as people come to the wealthy city for opportunity, and rivals jealous of it's location. And any large nations nearby would find it desirable to take such a city under their own "protection".

On 3/20/2022 at 3:40 AM, Grailknight said:

 

Vehicles are something you expect to use multiple times though. These are just attacks .

I've written up missiles for Star Hero, as well as Autonomous Kill Vehicles. They're both single use.

50 minutes ago, Logan.1179 said:

Asteroid half the size of a giraffe strikes Earth off the coast of Iceland 

 

What kind of measurement system is that??

American. Anything to avoid metric...

On 3/14/2022 at 1:53 AM, Cancer said:

 

The EM pulse ... frankly, I'd wouldn't want to have a helmet radio when using that.  Would be interesting to put it on a tabletop, one scattered with staples, straight pins, BBs, or whatnot, and see how those respond during weapon discharge.

 

Also wonder about the weapon's signature in the infrared (since this seems like a night weapon to me) once it gets warm.  But, all that's future considerations.

Having worked a little with modern capacitors, heat bleed is a thing. If you're going to charge them more than once you're going to get a distinctive heat signature.

We got rid of it about a decade ago. We'd already had a couple of attempts to introduce it, including a "test" season, and both times the following referendum was a clear "no".

So, this last time, the government decided that the will of the people meant nothing. They were going to introduce it, for a 3 year "trial period", with a possible referendum at the end.

Well, the year after, there was a state election. And the opposition ran on an end of the "trial". And they won HANDILY. And first thing they did was cancel the whole thing.

Hasn't come up since.

Read through both of the first and second trilogies of Thomas Covenant. Actually pretty much enjoyed the second trilogy. Never tried the later books - as far as I'm concerned the second trilogy ends very well and finishes the story.

Later tried Donaldson's sci-fi series, The Real Story or something like that. Hated every word, never finished the first book.

40 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

That was literally the entire point.  As the story goes, to make a movie based on a book about a fascist society, the studio forced a man who had grown up in Nazi-occupied Europe to direct.  So, he put fascism on the screen, and SF fans have been pissed off ever since.

Part of the problem. Verhoeven saw it as a fascist society. And I reject that interpretation, which I think is shallow and undeserved.

The fact Verhoeven has boasted about not having read the book doesn't help.

1 hour ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

Many of those ideas deserved it.  Limiting the franchise to a group of people who had performed a specific set of tasks, and then taking it away from those who were best at them, is the mark of a dictatorshp. His "Moral Philosophy" department at Johnny's school was neither philosophy nor moral. Rather, it was indoctrination -- at least they were open about it though. Everyone is trained to fear or even hate change. Humans had developed weapons capablke of cracking planets open, yet continued to put boots on the ground.

 

Starship Troopers is fun to read, but I question juist ow worth defending its society is. And I can;t decide whether RAH was satirizing other writers or endorsing his ideas as some sort of ideal society.

I always saw it as a set of ideas that Heinlein considered worth talking about. A limited franchise based on voluntary service. A specific ethical/moral position endorsed by the government, which you could reject, but you had to understand. I don't get the "hate change" part - where do you get that? As to taking the franchise away, if you're referring to the fact that officers couldn't vote, neither could enlisted men - the franchise was only offered to people who had completed their service, and officers had voluntarily not done so yet.

As to why they still put boots on the ground when they had planet crackers, that's actually addressed in the novel. The Skinny Raid at the beginning of the book is an attempt to pressure the Skinnys into changing sides with military pressure, they don't WANT to do too much damage in a demonstration raid. The second attack, when Rico is an officer, is seeking to take a forward base, so they can't just blast the planet (plus, the planet-crackers aren't ready yet). Rico also notes that Space Force actually DOES think boots on the ground is an obsolete idea. The final attack, on the Arachnid capital, is conducted because the Arahnids have human hostages (and implied to be a large number) present to prevent the Humans just blowing the planet. (We don't see the results, but Word of God is that Rico is killed in the fighting there).

If Verhoeven wanted to counter the ideas, he could have adapted a book that was, according to it's author, an answer to Starship Troopers - The Forever War. Instead, he just decided to denigrate the book, it's ideas, it's author and it's fans with ludicrous bombast while not offering one iota of actual response.

No, can't agree at all. The latest Dune. Or even Lynch's flawed adaptation. These were made with respect for the source material. Likewise Blade Runner.

I have a great deal of respect for Verhoeven - Robocop was a superbly well designed and crafted film. But I can't watch Starship Troopers, because what he did was take Heinlein's  ideas and concepts and take a big dump on them, then post the result to the screen.