Krayzikk

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

<Snipped quote by Krayzikk>

How'd you answer 10 seconds after I posted that xD

@NarayanK

Normally I would say that I frequently refresh Subscriptions, but in this case it was pure coincidence. I hadn't looked in over an hour.

So.

Newtype flash.

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

That would work excellently for a casual outfit. And adorably.

Σωτήρ: the Solar Age (Mecha) - Still Accepting

OSDT Jannah: HFV Hangar

"Is there?" The technician's free (un-rinsed) hand pulled her ponytail back over her shoulder, neck straining to turn far enough to get a good look at her own blonde hair. After a few moments of examination, the colonist nodded in agreement and pushed the ponytail over her shoulder. Her focus transitioned without warning, eyes darting over to her monitor and inputting a few commands with uncanny speed for one hand on the keys. The other was bringing the cup to her lips so she could take a long swallow of the hot, sweet beverage. "So there is. Thanks for the latte. Better replacement for sleep than the sludge in the mess hall. Extra espresso? You know I love extra espresso. Even if that starts to stretch the definition of latte, but whatever."

Without waiting for a response, the perpetually-manic technician continued.

"Gotta make sure the G-Valk is in top shape if Star's gotta go out. Don't want servos acting up in the middle of space, computer blue-screening, transformable frame jams, none of that. I don't feel like finding out what happens if I get fired in the middle of space, y'know? Besides, she'd kill me." Balancing the cup next to her workstation, Sasha vaulted onto the HFV without pausing for breath. She spent a few brief moments on top checking energy levels, then jumped back down, grabbed her cup and resumed speed-reading the analytics at her disposal intermittently punctuating a point by gesturing emphatically with her coffee-holding hand. "First real combat run. She's gotta be perfect. Gotta show what she can do. Checking servo status, energy levels, reactor output, control latency, armor integrity, all that. She's gonna go out there feeling her best."

"Running diagnostics on Judah too." Emphatic gesture with her cup in the general direction of the mechanical lion, followed by a long sip. "Results should be done in a minute or two. If there's time I'll do the whole checkup there too, but the humanoid form's what really matters. I mean, what're you gonna do with a lion in space? Aside from look fu- really cool? Nothing, that's what, no traction. Inferior form for zero-g maneuvering. Stay outta it."

"Do we have any idea if you're going out, anyway? Any sign of the pirates? I mean there's no big white sail with a black flag to catch, but really? Nothing yet? Everyone around here's just kinda sitting. Real quiet. Quiet's boring."

Persona - Academic Akrasia (Being rebooted, see new int check)

"I understood like, one outta three sentences there. You come with a translator or somethin'?"

The reformed(?) delinquent didn't mean to come off defensive, but under the circumstances it wasn't hard to see why he might've. Bandages were easy to understand, though, and Daisuke nodded his head in thanks. Benkei walked, without any external prompting, across the battlefield towards where the two students had been coming from when the shit hit the fan. The representation of the long dead warrior monk sidestepped fallen pizza bots from Hell where necessary, grabbing Daisuke's backpack with one hand and bike with the other before beginning his return trip. The bike was deposited next to the teen, supported by the same hand that had carried it, while the Persona held out the backpack for Daisuke to take. The monk got a nod, too, while Daisuke fished his water bottle out and pulled off his thoroughly ruined shirt.

First off, a splash of cold water helped wash the blood off his face. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but he wasn't going to be able to go anywhere looking like he did. Same went for the wounds on his back. The motions were almost automatic, like he'd had plenty of practice, which was a theory backed up when he pulled a few smaller bandages and a small bottle of alcohol out of a side pocket of the bag. He tore off a piece of the ruined shirt to soak up some of the alcohol, wincing faintly when he dabbed it across the abrasions on his face and back.

"Thanks for the help," He continued while covering the abrasions on his face with the bandages from the bag, and starting the process of wrapping bandages around his torso to cover the wounds on his back. He tossed the roll back to the new guy once he was done, knocking back what looked like a generic painkiller from a bottle in his bag with a swallow from his water bottle. A plain t-shirt went on once he pulled it out of his bag, backpack looped over the shoulder that felt a little less shitty. He really, really hoped he still had a spare uniform shirt. "But who are you?"

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

Forgot a mention in my post, and editing them doesn't work so:

@Sho Minazuki, make sure to check the last Ben post.

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Lugubrious @NarayanK @Kaithas

I think I just shitposted at a Manticore.

Absurd though it was, that was the first thought to penetrate the fight-or-flight haze around his mind. It passed quickly, dispersed by a quick shake of his head, while Goodwitch's orders came through the radio. A quick jerk of his tonfa ejected the last spent shell, the few seconds he took to reload used to survey the roof. The Manticore had done a real number on it, but not enough to cause any harm to the survivors on the floor below. Thank God for small miracles. Now, though, he had to figure out how to get back down. The way he came up was still intact, but that'd require him climbing back down through the window to Millade's...

Millade. Ben's frown deepened, and his eyes moved back to the antennae assembly. They had arrived too late, much too late, to do anything for her but his first instinct was to bring her back with him. Daniel Lloyd, as shitty as he was, raised him to respect the dead. And no one deserved to be left behind in a forsaken place like this one. She'd given everything to make sure help would come, and she deserved that much respect. They weren't out of the woods yet, though. The living needed him and his team at a hundred percent if they were going to make it home alive, and failing to bring all the survivors back would only dishonor everything she'd done. If he had to guess she wouldn't have wanted that either. The antenna assembly was near the center of the roof, above the central hallway the floor below, so Ben crossed over to it in a few quick strides and crouched long enough to make sure her eyes were closed. That he could do.

Then he took two steps away, facing the cafeteria, and brought his foot down hard. Then again. And one more time. Hard enough to smash through to the floor below, creating an opening big enough for him to drop down through. He gestured for Amy to follow and dropped to the hallway below... A couple yards from Sangue and the survivors, the former of whom looked about ready to run him through. He waved.

"We're getting the fuck out of here. Let Lauren know and come on." Switching the radio on again while he headed back towards the stais to the ground floor, Ben started relaying Goodwitch's instructions to Jack; "Goodwitch says to get the survivors to the courtyard. Beastie up top's distracted. I've got Amy and Sangue and we're taking the survivors up here down now. You guys need any backup?"

Gundam RP?

@Onarax hit the nail on the head in half the words. Smart man.

Gundam RP?

<Snipped quote by Plank Sinatra>

Implying that both factions aren't already equal evils? Yeah, I said it. Both the Federation and Zeon are equal parts asshole, so why should I be forced to choose one when I could just say fuck it and stick it to both of them?

@Double

Because not everyone else necessarily wants to say fuck it? And the rewriting and narrative bending-over-backwards necessary to make that happen is a headache and a half? And you could debate endlessly the morality of the Federation and Zeon?

Just three reasons. And to expand on my perspective of them, I don't see a point in playing a UC game wherein the PCs are against literally every faction. Not to mention the fact that it would have to be one beneath the Federation and Zeon's notice; ships cannot carry enough supplies to be self-sufficient for all that long, so a third group would have to stock up at a colony anyway. Which would be pretty hard to do once you've said "fuck it" and pissed both factions off, because they outnumber you, have better tech, have reinforcements that you do not, and Side 6 is the only neutral Side.

It doesn't work.

Gundam RP?

Potential Solution: We don't side with either Zeon or the Feds.

This is just a hypothetical, but what if we took a page from Gundam F91's book and center the story around some ragtag third party? In F91 it was essentially space pirates in the form of the Crossbone Vanguard. Suppose we're playing as something similar? People whose homes (be it a colony or a place on Earth) was hit by war between Zeon and the Feds and were forced into doing whatever it takes to survive in a harsh world/space that's being torn apart by a war. The idea is that we're essentially scavengers. We try to salvage shipwrecks and especially mobile suit parts. We do it to both make money and arm ourselves so that we aren't defenseless. Naturally, neither the Federation nor Zeon take too kindly to people like this potentially learning the secrets of some of their machines and so we'd probably be treated like outlaws or pirates.

In my hypothetical scenario, we have a plausible reason for why no one would start out with a Gundam (because their parts are just that hard to come by for us) but also gives us the potential to acquire one or two of them as time goes on, assuming we survive long enough to reach that point.

Edit: I also think at least one person ought to play as a masked antagonist of some kind. It just wouldn't be Gundam without a Char clone. Hell, I'll gladly volunteer for that part myself.

@Double

At this point, to be completely honest, I think we'd be cutting out all the reasons to play a UC-based Gundam game. And actually F91 was set around the Federation, just not including Zeon. The Federation was just really weak and borderline unrecognizable by the time of F91, and there wasn't much of a focus on the fact that the soldiers helping Seabook were from the Federation.

But I digress. The point is that cutting out the conflicts between Zeon (and its derivatives) removes pretty much all of the defiining aspects of everything up until the Late UC era. And the alteration of the timeline needed to make it fit really takes away any incentive to use the UC. If you're choosing to make a game that doesn't directly involve the setting's actual conflicts, then there really just isn't a point in using that setting.

It's several unnecessary leaps in logic to explain why there are no Gundams for the PCs yet, too; Gundams were not at all common. They were all very limited production, if not completely unique. There's no explanation needed for why we don't have any, because it's not a given that we would. We're just not in a situation where we would have any.

But given the sort of setting changes you guys would seem to want, it honestly seems like it would make more sense just to craft an AU whole cloth.

Gundam RP?

Plank is completely correct. Also hello, I've mostly been hanging back and observing.

But anyway, Gundam-types are the bleeding edge of mobile suit technology. With few exceptions (the RX-79[G] and Hazels spring to mind) Gundams are mobile suits that are unmatched in technological performance compared to other mobile suits of the period. The RX-178 was still in the fight against units as advanced as those in the first Neo Zeon War. Was it doing as well as it did in the Gryps Conflict? No. But it was holding its own.

And that's the problem. Early UC Gundams are a full generation ahead of everyone else, and won't actually be outclassed until the generation after that comes along. The Zeong was a better mobile suit than the Gundam, but it was also a single incomplete prototype created at the very end of the OYW.

The later you go in UC, the more pronounced the difference becomes. Until Victory, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Putting any player in a Gundam right off the bat is making that player's character several leagues above everyone else. You don't get 'flawed' or 'limited' Gundams, either. By definition a Gundam is supposed to be a top-tier mobile suit (again, with a few small exceptions). Even a flawed Gundam is still leagues above other mass production models; the Hyaku-Shiki is a Delta Gundam with the transformation system neutered because Anaheim couldn't get it to work well. And like the RX-178, it was still in operation through the entire first Neo Zeon War. And it only left service because it was mothballed, not because it stopped working.