Bay 12 Games Forum

Is there a pressing reason to make a slab if one possesses a corpse?

You could make it a gimmick that you ARE fighting a stupid A.I.. I would avoid too much stat weighting, as that tends towards harder counters. You end up with your all-damage build being swarmed by fast+tough that overwhelm your damage output. Your speedy build gets out-speeded and can't escape, it is just a bit too much of a methodical assassination. But if they follow paths which resulted in fewer deaths...
This reminds me of my ancient idea of tunnelling D.F. goblins. Tunnelling would have a high "distance multiplier" and the goblins would generally take the shorter route. Goblin deaths would also add distance. And their end-goal would be based upon how far ambushers and sieges(and snatchers and caravans, rumours and all...) had gotten previously and lived to tell the tale(with a few exceptions to keep them sensible...) so they would generally route to a point in your murdertube unless your fort had already been mostly broken once. Eventually they would accrue so many deaths that the open-path's length plus additions for previous deaths would outweigh the 40 steps-per-tile or whatever that soil would have and they'd dig a shortcut to a deeper point in your defences... They'd probably form squads and make a path for each squad collectively at the start of the siege to save on processing given that it would be pathing through solid tiles... then squads could go off to their objectives and the individual members would run around the squad trying to be helpful to its objectives...

Something similar could work in a shoot'em'up. The A.I. would start to avoid places where loads of them had died previously, and teleporters would jump over it or whatever. Meanwhile they have bonus options they can use if they get desperate, like adding spawns or moulding the terrain or what have you, should the player just refuse to die. And anything that resulted in player damage would be given added weight. It would be simple and predictable, but if it was up front about it, outright stated that you were fighting stupid robots that could be manipulated into evolutionary dead-ends... well, it would be a game of bluffing your weaknesses and saving your strengths...

My biggest problem with the Galileo is that it's probably not going to reach Cheap. It's doubled the number of pilots and oxygen systems, and just generally doesn't lose much of anything as compared to the VVF. We're risking another aircraft in the same cost bracket, likely not helpful to us.

Wouldn't doubling the pilot's half the cost? Costs are based upon how many units they can equip, so halving the number of vehicles for a given number if personnel... Granted, given the number of vehicles is halved would also reduce their performance within their cost bracket...

I am half inclined to propose a harrier...

Were there any survivors? Should we, like, off them? Dig up some ash and play mad scientist with ghoulification? Interrogate them? Add them to the harem? Get into the slave trade? Discover that a blunt object to the had is actually fatal and lament that all those stories we heard we lying to us?

Does our watch let us, like, rub two broken guns together and make a better one?

Large Annelid that Propagates, and Thrives in, a Sandy Environment
This creature seeks t perform two basic roles. 1: processing of dispersed materials into easily-harvested and valuable parcels. 2: Preprocessing of planets for terraforming.
To achieve the first, they grow into massive creatures, consuming the terrain, and storing heavier particles, which are slowly infused with psychic energy before being deposited on the surface.
The latter relies upon a ludicrously environmentally-tolerant biology and a life-cycle that involves a potentially permanent larval-stage that stores water and converts solar energy into chemical energy that is seeded into the ground for consumption by adult and increased arability.
In larval form, they are a small cluster of black grasses with a large bulb with a rapid-growing root that digs directly down until it hits an obstacle, which it wraps around until it meets with sufficient other roots to tear the obstacle apart, thus deepening the surface layer by destroying the rocky layers beneath. The roots automatically sever if pulled upon, allowing them to be consumed, and will periodically sever of their own accord to be driven down by a new root system. If the roots go undisturbed for long enough, the larva will have an increasing chance to transition into a initially rapidly-growing worm that will dig into the ground and begin harvesting.

The creature's biology is of very low complexity, with almost no distinct organs while being heavily segmented. It's "mind" is spread across its entire body, composed of psychic brain matter. The very low density results in a very slow mind, but its massive volume results in a very powerful mind which is primarily focused upon reinforcing its own vital functions, making it extremely resilient. The immense psychic field also soaks its contents in psychic energy, thus the material it deposits is extremely psychic ally active, and can be used to enrich psychic profiles, allowing for some common strains to gain the psychic profiles of royals, albeit with none of the physical or mental benefits of royalty and a high mortality rate amongst candidates. The influx of expendible forces to maintain the psychic requirements of field-equipment though would be of great value even if they will never be true royals.

The result of an established colony should be accumulation of surface-water, deep, rich, sandy sol, sufficient heavy elements in the larval colonies to sustain life, and enough biomatter for more conventional ecologies to get started. Hopefully they would also transition the atmosphere to a more familiar one, but other agents could perform that with the provided head-start, and the priority here is to survive in any atmosphere, rather than to perform the specific processes to alter one specific chemical composition to another...

I say give 'Loin the 10mm, we have no reason to believe that she is a better shot than Blitz, other than her age combined with this being a deathworld. The 10mm is decent, there is less gun-shuffling, and someone is going to be on suppression duty regardless...

Making something sink to the bottom is easy, making something remain at a depth is difficult. They could just use anchors to chain them to the floor at whatever depth the chains rise to, but that would likely involve adding some sort of attachment point without compromising the fuse, and to the best of my knowledge they never made trains, so know nothing about attaching two rigid objects together. Not to mention that anchors to floats would produce a crude form of chain-netting. I do not believe that they have any netting at all, so that would be a completely new technology, thus requiring a design!!!