WIP Discussion (Part 1!)

[GeoModder]

"Oh no, my pikemen tanks are being overrun by TANKS! PIKEMEN!"

Talon: "well you seem to be on Deity level....."

Fixed that for you.

It wouldn't be Civ if a Phalanx didn't beat a tank, Ghandi didn't nuke everything, and the entire world didn't hate you for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

It's been a while since CivII, III, and IV.

[Razor One]

It's been a while since CivII, III, and IV.

...

Now I feel old. So old.

Oh well. SMAC will take the pain away. SMAC will make everything better. SMAC is love. SMAC is life.

[Arent]

By the way, maybe there are real dragons. You know, in master of orion there were space dragons and crystals etc. Maybe the area is off limits because scout ships got lost repeatedly. I always lost my scout ships to these damn space dragons!

SpoilerShow

Stellaris style space dragons?

Yes please!

Haha, yes. I just imagine a high tech galactic chart Beryl is looking at & then there is a little patch covered in dark clouds & a "there be dragons" sign on it. & then Alex is pointing to it (Can not read the Loroi letters) & says: "Earth is here".

[Arent]

But where Dragons are, usually treasures can be found too.
Something like the Desolation of Smaug comes to my mind.

You have to cross the desolation to get to the treasure, which will also be well defended.
It may, in the tactical analyses of the Loroi, simply not be worth the effort. Preparing to cross a desert by assembling a large self-sustaining caravan, to corss the desert to look beyond.
That may simply be beyond the curiosity horizon of the Loroi.

But that wouldn't explain why she is surprised.

On the other side, I just noticed that Alex hand is pretty close to her shoulder/on the back of the seat.
Maybe she is reacting to an unconscious touch.

[GeoModder]

Oh well. SMAC will take the pain away. SMAC will make everything better. SMAC is love. SMAC is life.

You're simply asking for a SMACX!

[Overkill Engine]

But that wouldn't explain why she is surprised.

Maybe a warning of an unidentified vessel approaching? (With weapons primed to finish what it started with the Bellamarine now that the shuttle is far enough away from the Tempest.)

[novius]

But that wouldn't explain why she is surprised.

On the other side, I just noticed that Alex hand is pretty close to her shoulder/on the back of the seat.
Maybe she is reacting to an unconscious touch.

Unconscious? From her reaction it would be like him copping a feel of her posterior full-on. After all, she seems to be standing again. Hilarious, but no. He surely has better manners than that.

[Absalom]

By the way, maybe there are real dragons. You know, in master of orion there were space dragons and crystals etc. Maybe the area is off limits because scout ships got lost repeatedly. I always lost my scout ships to these damn space dragons!

Sadly, I think those ?whale? things that the Historians have are probably closest to dragons, and they're aquatic. Some sort of biomechanical post-natural living-ship remnants of the Soia era would be neat, but I think they would have been found by now if they existed.

[thicket]

It wouldn't be Civ if ...... Ghandi didn't nuke everything, ......

"In the original Civilization, it was because of a bug. Each leader in the game had an “aggression” rating, and Gandhi - to best reflect his real-world persona - was given the lowest score possible, a 1, so low that he’d rarely if ever go out of his way to declare war on someone.

Only, there was a problem. When a player adopted democracy in Civilization, their aggression would be automatically reduced by 2. Code being code, if Gandhi went democratic his aggression wouldn’t go to -1, it looped back around to the ludicrously high figure of 255, making him as aggressive as a civilization could possibly be.
In later games this bug was obviously not an issue, but as a tribute/easter egg of sorts, parts of his white-hot rage have been kept around. In Civilization V, for example, while Gandhi’s regular diplomatic approach is more peaceful than other leaders, he’s also the most likely to go dropping a-bombs when pushed, with a nuke “rating” of 12 putting him well ahead of the competition (the next three most likely to go nuclear have a rating of 8, with most leaders around the 4-6 region)." https://kotaku.com/why-gandhi-is-such-a ... 18245?null

[orion1836]

A possible story direction occurred to me a long time ago, and seeing Beryl's shocked reaction brought it back to me: what if the shuttle gets shot down, and Alex and company have to survive on a hostile world?

This trip to Seren is supposed to take "many days." Weeks' worth of conversation on a shuttle does not make for a compelling story. Unless there's a time skip (possible), I don't think the good ship Highland-Seven is going to make it to the sector capital.

I'm going to laugh if that's what ends up happening. Even if it doesn't, it'd make for a good fic. I could see Alex vastly underestimating the Loroi's survival skills, not knowing about their caste initiation rites.

[Absalom]

"Forced to hide" strikes me as more likely than "shot down": I don't think there would be much to land if they got shot at.

[Starne]

A possible story direction occurred to me a long time ago, and seeing Beryl's shocked reaction brought it back to me: what if the shuttle gets shot down, and Alex and company have to survive on a hostile world?

This trip to Seren is supposed to take "many days." Weeks' worth of conversation on a shuttle does not make for a compelling story. Unless there's a time skip (possible), I don't think the good ship Highland-Seven is going to make it to the sector capital.

I'm going to laugh if that's what ends up happening. Even if it doesn't, it'd make for a good fic. I could see Alex vastly underestimating the Loroi's survival skills, not knowing about their caste initiation rites.

There'll almost certainly be shenanigans and complications en route to Seren, but the trip isn't going to be in the Highland. In the last panel of page 105, Beryl tells Alex that the shuttle will be rendezvousing with a frigate that will be actually transporting them to Seren. Beryl states that meeting up with the Frigate will take 19,000 Solon. Assuming that a Solon is roughly equivalent a second, the shuttle trip is going to be fairly short. Granted, there's still a window for trouble there.

Personally, I think that Beryl and Talon's apparent surprise has more to do either with either the data they're all going over, Stillstorm's strike group, or possibly another ship.

The "Data Surprise" possibility has been talked about. In the case of the other two, we could see Stillstorm's strike group being called away before being fully resupplied, indicating that yes, things are looking bad for the Loroi. Another possibility is that the frigate "Clearbrook" which is stated to be the crew's transport to Seren might not be the only ship waiting for them. Picking up something like an Imperial Guard cruiser or Historian ship waiting at the rendezvous point would likely elicit some surprise on the part of the Loroi.

Just throwing stuff at the wall here: There's been a change of plan that the crew hasn't been informed of, and Ashrain's ship "Black Razor" has been pulled off the line to escort Alex to Seren. Ashrain is a relative of the Emperor, and might be seen as a bit more reliable in the current climate of caste and personal politics. This would explain Beryl and Talon's surprise, and Ashrain's presence on the dramatis personae sheet.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Having a time skip wouldn't be unprecedented, there was a sizeable skip after the battle in Naam where Alex was confined to the brig. But yeah, that does seem unlikely.

Even something as simple as learning they are being re-directed to a different destination without any explanation would be a surprise. Or if the Clearbrook gets pulled into a strike group to help fend off an incursion on a different front, they could end up making the rest of the trip on a Barsam courier ship. Now that would be a surprise!

(Probably not though.)

[DevilDalek]

Or they arrive to find the destroyed remains of the frigate, the Umiak feint having allowed a quick strike group through to destroy it, only problem being they got to it before the shuttle did?

[cacambo43]

Got anything in the WIP pipeline to tease us with, Arioch? I hope you're doing OK. You weren't in any of the hurricane-affected areas, were you?

CJSF

[Arioch]

Got anything in the WIP pipeline to tease us with, Arioch? I hope you're doing OK. You weren't in any of the hurricane-affected areas, were you?

CJSF

Nah, just slammed with the SIS DLC, along with the usual nonsense. But I should have something for you this week.

[E=M.C^2]

You now have my complete attention, not good for my job…

[icekatze]

hi hi

I don't know what Beryl is saying in the latest WIP, but her expression makes it seem like a "Don't worry yourself, just let the grownups handle it." sort of thing.

[dragoongfa]

I think Beryl is a little high on something

[dragoongfa]

I wonder...

"You think Tenoins are fun? Lets go to the bathroom there and I will show you how Listels have fun."

or perhaps

"And that's how Tenoin Arrir Talon lost the wager about who gets dibs on the next male."