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Author Topic: Masters of Manipulation OOC and Player Application Thread  (Read 3190 times)

Xantalos

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC
« Reply #15 on: September 04, 2013, 12:13:29 am »

Shouldn't you include an actual link to the game in here, gman? :P
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LordBucket

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC
« Reply #16 on: September 04, 2013, 06:35:43 pm »

Shouldn't you include an actual link to the game in here, gman? :P

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=129980.0




Six days since the last update and I'm the only person who's submitted a turn. If people are going inactive, can we bring in people from the waitlist?

gman8181

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC
« Reply #17 on: September 05, 2013, 10:33:50 am »

Yeah there's also the matter of keeping the game balanced which plays partially into why I don't want lifting mountains being no more difficult then lifting pebbles. I suppose I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted things to be more connected to mass or to volume or both. To me it makes sense to have effects encompassing a larger area be more expensive just like affecting more matter would theoretically be more expensive.



I'm planning to have an update up by tonight or early tomorrow regardless. I may end up bringing in more people but I do have concerns about taking in more than I can handle in the long term. Two more players probably wouldn't be that bad though.



Thanks for reminding me Xantalos and thanks to LordBucket for placing one. I'll edit a link into the OP as well.
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LordBucket

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC
« Reply #18 on: September 05, 2013, 06:30:13 pm »

I don't want lifting mountains being no more difficult then lifting pebbles

You've already established that distance is an extreme limited factor. Presumably it would be impractical to lift a mountain into orbit simply because of that. For example, let's say somebody created a one meter wide bubble of gravity at 180 degrees to the planet's surface. Anything inside the bubble would fall up, but as soon as the object started to leave the the upper edge of the bubble it would under the influence of two conflicting fields and would eventually come to rest half in and half out of the bubble. Unless it slid off and over the side. Balance might be tricky. So, go for a cube rather than sphere.

Anyway, assuming 1g, simply because of the need to maintain the field and the fact that the falling object would be moving way from you and out of the field, projecting objects into orbit would be impractical regardless of mass or volume.

Unless you centered the field around yourself, in which case a manipulator could fly. And since atmosphere would tend to move with the bubble, presumably extraplanetary travel wouldn't be terribly more difficult than flying. In fact, if you could maintain it...quick google search...you could travel the distance from earth to the moon in a couple hours.

Given the enchanting system, it might be very easy for any of us to build a spaceship.

gman8181

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC
« Reply #19 on: September 05, 2013, 08:19:36 pm »

Sorry, when I was talking about distance limiting Manipulation, I was talking about it limiting where you can get the energy / matter from. I said you can only drain energy out of something that is a few meters away because I don't want you guys having a stash of bodies hiding on the other side of the planet that you use to power Manipulation rituals.

You could perform other types of Manipulations on objects further away though if it were at an extreme distance, I might require some extra energy to perform the Manipulation.

Yeah, I don't think a small spaceship would be that hard for any one of you to build. Potentially easier than buying one anyway.
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techno65535

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC
« Reply #20 on: September 18, 2013, 09:54:28 pm »

What are the main differences between the different planets other than gross environmental differences? Like what are the variations in government and how cities and towns are organized. Just how hard is it to be an unlicensed practitioner on each planet?
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gman8181

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC
« Reply #21 on: September 18, 2013, 10:08:41 pm »

Heh, I was just admiring your avatar in the rate avatar thread.

*Clears throat* Overall government organization is pretty standard across the board with councils running each of the planets and a more powerful council with representatives from all of them convening to make decisions that might affect multiple planets or the space in between them. The cities and towns are usually in different sectors based off geographic positioning. The human planet is much more industrialized and has a very capitalistic gone wrong atmosphere. The Elven planet is a little heavier on the socialism side, sort of leaning towards communism. Dwarves actually have nobles that hold a lot of power alongside the councils that are present on all planets and there is some power struggles going on there... and yeah that's about it. It's mostly cultural differences which play out in game.

It isn't too hard to get away with being an unlicensed practitioner overall. The hard part is finding someone to teach it to you which is why they are very rare barring the players. Besides government officials catching you in the act, you've got little to worry about as far as getting caught.
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techno65535

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC
« Reply #22 on: September 18, 2013, 10:33:22 pm »

Glad you like it. Should have a character submission up sometime tonight.
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LordBucket

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC and Player Application Thread
« Reply #23 on: September 28, 2013, 02:29:05 am »

(Manipulation roll 12+1=13) (22 heath x 10 damage = 220 damage) (Manipulation roll 19+1=20) You dramatically and unnecessarily raise your hands up in the air as powerful energies are drawn from the corpse into your body. A bright flash blinds anything watching nearby before a thunderous wave of energy issues out, blasting all the poor defenseless creatures into tiny little chunks that splatter about the place and pile into small heaps. Still useable, you then expertly create channels between all the newly acquired matter and link it to your pipe. (400 energy / 10 enchantment = 40 stored energy) It is now enchanted and capable storing 40 units of energy for later Manipulations.

That done, you decide it’s best to make your escape. There’s a pretty good chance that such an act will draw unwanted attention and you’d rather not be here when they arrive. While jogging out, you slow down and grab a chunk of meat left over from the shockwave. It’s not exactly a steak but you’ll make it work for tonight’s dinner.

Congratulations, Maya. I'm pretty sure you just, in a single turn, generated more energy than every player over every turn since the game started combined.

Incidentally, gman...

1) This has some interesting implications. I notice, for example that a 400 energy absorb would be sufficient to create a +8 weapon. Or generate four points of skillgain. Speaking of which, energy absorption for skillgain absolutely now needs to be clarified, or this is completely game-breaking. It's taken Trisha over a month of gameplay to go from 1 to 4 manipulation skill, and because of the slow-down effect from increasing use-requirements for each additional point...checking the math...at my present rate of skillgain it would take a little over six additional months of gameplay to reach 9 skill. If I can simply AoE blast a bunch of cows to go from 4 to 8 in a single turn...that's seems pretty much game breaking to me. I suggest establishing that skillgain costs are cumulative. For example, 100 for the first point, 200 for the next, etc. Even so, what if Techno had buffed Maya's armor instead? She has a +1 shirt and +1 shorts. So, 20 energy to increase from +1 to +2, 30 energy to increase from +2 to +3...400 energy would have been enough to go from +1 shirt and +1 shorts to +6 each, for 12 points of protection.

2) Why was it 400 points? She only did 220 damage. I can buy that she somehow managed to selectively target cows with her supposedly AoE blast such that none of the damage was "wasted" and none of the cows were only injured not killed and therefore unharvestabe....but even so, where is the 400 coming from?

3) If you'll recall, I asked about working crowds like this a month ago. You didn't give a direct answer, and since you've been generally limiting number of actions per turn (my fight with the skeletons was broken into multiple turns for example) I assumed what Maya just did wasn't practical. If we can get around the turn limitation simply by AoE blasting things...that makes what she did the winning strategy. Again, in one turn she just generated more energy than every single player combined over every turn over the past month combined. If we can do what she just did, then there's really no point in doing anything else.

4) Why was there meat left over? Up until now, absorbing energy has destroyed all remains. I would think that either, all her energy was precisely enough to exactly kill a number of cows with no energy wasted, and therefore cows would be either dead or uninjured, and she'd then siphon the dead cows thus absorbing them completely...or, there would be some cows hit by the blast but who didn't take enough damage to kill them in which case there would possibly be chunks of meat from still living cows. But not both.

techno65535

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC and Player Application Thread
« Reply #24 on: September 28, 2013, 02:34:07 am »

As to number 4, I had specified she leave a piece of meat behind so she could have a good steak dinner afterwards.

Could have been a case of critical damage to one animal blowing it apart before full damage was done to it too, resulting in more health than damage. But I'll leg Gman answer that one.
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LordBucket

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC and Player Application Thread
« Reply #25 on: September 28, 2013, 02:46:05 am »

As to number 4, I had specified she leave a piece of meat behind so she could have a good steak dinner afterwards.

Could have been a case of critical damage to one animal blowing it apart before full damage was done to it too, resulting in more health than damage. But I'll leg Gman answer that one.

Chain reaction cow explosions. Ok, that's a direction I never anticipated. :)

Do you see what I mean though? If this is how things are going to work...it's really a waste of time to do anything else. And there's no reason for you to leave. There were more cows, right?

So...just stick around in the field, kill another cow, and AoE blast another group of cows, +400 energy. How long would it take to do that? A minute? You'd run out of cows and be long gone before anyone could show up to do anything about. And even if they did show up you'd have enough energy to do anything you wanted to stop them. Once you charge that pipe, that's 400 damage you can release in a single turn, anytime you want. And since you've just demonstrated that AoE blasts are 100% efficient and all released damage hits a target with no misses...basically you can kill 20 people instantly at any time. Actually, more than 20 if your chain-reaction-exploding-cow theory is correct.

I guess my next turn is going to be spent looking for cattle ranches. Or malls.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2013, 02:49:24 am by LordBucket »
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techno65535

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC and Player Application Thread
« Reply #26 on: September 28, 2013, 02:48:38 am »

Heh, hadn't thought of it from a meta-gaming perspective, and not really going combat route, just easiest way to get energy to start with.
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Scratch that, throwing-axe-wielding cats in the dark.
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LordBucket

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC and Player Application Thread
« Reply #27 on: September 28, 2013, 03:49:18 am »

...actually, I just noticed that Sahal just picked up two plus THIRTY weapons:

The equipment has been unloaded and inventory has taken place. There are 8 (+2 swords), 2 (+1 armor piercing maces),
10 (+1 light armor sets) and 5 (+3 medium armor sets) and a (+4 sword) There are also 2 (+30 plasma blasters with 150 CP or 5 charges each).

Maybe the scale in this game is different than we've seen up until now. Maybe we're supposed to be AoE-spamming crowds for energy. But if these are the kinds of numbers we can expect to see, we're back to skills being completely useless.

And with those +30 weapons now in play...I guess we need the enchanting rate for weapons and armor clarified. I assumed costs were cumulative per each point of bonus, but if so, those plasma blasters cost 4650 energy each to make. That seems kind of unlikely, so it's possible 300 energy makes a +30 weapon, therefore you could have made a +40 piece of weapon or armor from your cow-fueled blast earlier. So, just for fun let's say you'd made a +40 fork. Die rolls are d20, so me, wearing my current armor with a net +2 protection...assuming you rolled a 1, I'd need 19 agility to have a 5% chance to dodge. Assuming I'm danger room training and get an agility skillup every turn, two turns per week...it would take four years of gameplay for me to get that 5% chance to dodge...against your attack roll of 1.

gman...are these numbers real? The stuff we're suddenly seeing this turn is completely inconsistent with everything we've seen in the game up until now.

gman8181

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Re: Masters of Manipulation OOC and Player Application Thread
« Reply #28 on: September 28, 2013, 12:22:55 pm »

It was 400 because she scored above 16 on the creation roll which reduces the cost by half thereby multiplying the resulting effect by two. You can't do that every turn, she was lucky in that she happened to find a place with concentrated living things that she could kill and thus took advantage of it. Meat was left over because... well fluff and she wanted to leave a steak. You may also have noticed that it resulted in a huge blinding flash of light which means that there are potentially people who witnessed what happened...

That means Maya's more over the top approach may draw attention which hopefully balances out the gain with some risk. Your approach however is almost guaranteed not to draw attention making you much safer in the long run.

Also, there aren't any more cows in the field. There might be more in the buildings I mentioned but no guarantees and they might be guarded.

I keep writing stuff that's misleading and for that I apologize. By +1 for skill gain, I meant going from something like 4 (1/8) to 4 (2/8). So yeah you could theoretically sacrifice 10 people at 20ish health each to get 200 health and then jump up 2 skill gain fractions or maybe even get a lucky roll like Maya and gain 4 skill gain fractions but doing something like that is almost guaranteed to draw attention if you don't do it carefully.

LordBucket, you could save up corpses and in just a few turns have as much energy as Maya available for use but without the risks she had from not acting more discreetly. You could also work towards recruiting or creating more followers and sending them out to gain more people as well. Although still, the more metaphorical waves you make, the more likely the government will come investigating. Not to mention the risk of attracting attention from Void Beings which you will find to be much more challenging enemies later on.

Enchanting is also more expensive and requires 10 times the HP as casting a similar spell would cost
Enchanted items run out of charge (CP) but automatically recharge 10% CP every turn or can be recharged with a sacrifice, 1HP for 1CP
           Example: If a lightning shock costs 2 HP then an enchanted orb capable of casting a lightning shock once would require 20 HP of sacrifice
           In order to have an orb capable of casting that spell 5 times, 100 HP would need to be sacrificed

Hmm my rules for enchanting need some serious work. Anyway, I gave him really good weapons because he's going to be fighting something really strong. I kind of hinted at that with the whole ritual thing going on in his turn. That's really the only reason he has overpowered stuff compared to you guys, he's going to need it. It's also government property, so there's a good chance it'll be taken back when his current mission is complete (along with that assassin droid).

Um let's see with the current rules it would be 3 energy to cast a 30 damage spell. Enchanting is 10x cost so 30 energy for a weapon capable of casting a 30 damage spell once and five charges is 150... yeah a bit overpowered. On the other hand, the scenario you brought up wouldn't actually apply because the damage doesn't get factored in until after they've successfully hit you and because it's a Manipulation based weapon, you get to add your Manipulation modifier to the dodge roll to avoid it in addition to agility. There's a pretty good chance the weapon wouldn't hit you but yeah...

Some of these game mechanics sound good at first but have problems as things go along. Better suggestions are welcome of course and I appreciate you all putting up with the funks this thing has. Hopefully somewhere down the line, this game will transform from the hard lumpy coal it is now into a beautiful diamond. :P

Edit: Heheh, I was just thinking LordBucket would probably be better at running this than me.
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