Avatar of Sierra
  • Last Seen: 4 yrs ago
  • Joined: 9 yrs ago
  • Posts: 639 (0.20 / day)
  • VMs: 1
  • Username history
    1. Sierra 9 yrs ago

Status

Recent Statuses

4 yrs ago
Current For those wondering where I fucked off to ... the apple iphone 14 pre-order launch is this thursday and I work software dev for a cell carrier. Been a lil slammed.
2 likes
4 yrs ago
As someone who once unironically used grey-on-black text .... don't. Its impossible to read on OLED screens, which include most modern phones.
1 like
4 yrs ago
Sometimes I feel like this site is a Thai buffet. I'm sure there's delicious things here, but for the life of my I can't find anything that really speaks to me right now.
6 likes
4 yrs ago
When not prepping for my D&D table, I should spruce up some of my stuff here. Not all of my old content is the garbage I presumed it was. But some things I wrote we won't talk about ....
2 likes
4 yrs ago
Reflections on characters past: "Adi really was a spoiled brat. How did I ever think her motivations were compelling?"

Bio

Peace is a lie. There is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

Most Recent Posts

. . . certain players cannot be trusted with them and that's all I'll say about that.


I see. I will not formally be expressing interest then at this time.
@mattmanganon They weren't in the previous version. If that's changed though that would be not properly stated in the main post, and would be a deal breaker for sone people.
Well in that case I've gone ahead and moved it over to the relevant section.
[ R E C I N D E D ]
Firstly, a question. Do pilots pair to their mechs? Essentially, do they synchronize with their mech over time to the point where it's very difficult to switch to piloting another mech (even if its very similar in formfactor)? I've kind of imagined yes.

Also, final version of Mira after a formatting & clarification pass. I may make a future revision for adding color once I decide on one, but content-wise this is pretty much final.
Miranda ‘Mira’ Amaar
“No one can pilot a mechanical.”

Age 19
(personal notes: moroccan-nigerian)

Personality:

Brilliant, tenacious, and fiercely independent. She’s willful, but that’s what makes her scary as a mech pilot. She has the makings of a great engineer in her, but it’s somewhat gone to her head and grown a degree of arrogance. To that end she’s fiercely protective of Legion and is picky with who she lets work on it. Those on the service team for the machine are among her most trusted associates, most being transfers from Tshwane for that reason. The mech is very much her baby ... a massive, 80 ton metal baby.
(personal notes: Amara + Shuri)

Backstory:

She never really did what the legends say. Even the elements of truth to her tale are dripping with hyperbole. But even since before the Great Fire, truth was never more than half of any good legend.

They say she did it alone. Really she was only one of many worked on the project and a mal-envisioned one at that. Just inside the fringes of Paragon territory in what was once Morocco was a chaotic region with both bandits and Paragon soldiers constantly a threat. The families that lived there were constantly in fear of the next attack, struggling to get by every time their supplies were pillaged. The settlement needed a weapon, a mech of their own to hold off bandit raids and scare away hotshot corporals coming to impress people into service. The big break would come one fateful day when the dust settled from a corporate skirmish.

Three full-size Neural Combatants had fallen just a few kilometers away. The shantytown had been rattled for hours by the explosions of the battle. A few warriors were able to ambush a salvage crew trying to recover the precious neural nets from the downed mechs. The neural cores themselves were all shot, run through with anti-tank warheads or heavy piercing weapons, but the salvage mech being utilized was completely intact barring a few bullet holes and a blood stain on the harness. The industrial salvage suits weren’t neurally interfaced, relying on the less-capable mechanical control interface, but a working skeleton of a mech was still a better trophy than nothing.

Mira was among those working on the machine, being an inquisitive youth and a brilliant mind. Her unique way of thinking solved several problems with the armor fitting and with ammo feeding. She also served as one of the regular test pilots and became rather proficient at it over time, though she would not go on to be the mech’s regular combat pilot. Nevertheless she did operate the mech in combat once out of necessity, when a surprise raiding attack pinned down all the other trained pilots. The machine, christened Vanguard by its design team, was brutally effective at defending against raiding attacks by bandits and even Paragon, but the news that an independent village in northwest Africa had a working combat-capable mech ended up drawing more frequent attacks rather than deterring them even if they were easier than ever to put down. A variety of bandit clans thought they could steal the mech for themselves, but none were ever successful.

The story of her time in combat swept the desert faster than the summer dust storms, twisting itself into a legendary fable as it traveled. It became farther from reality with each passing mile and by the time it reached former Somalia, it was the story of the girl who built her own mech. Somewhere along the way some charlatan had snuck in the rumor she had taken on a real NC and won, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth. The largest thing ever destroyed by Vanguard was a lone IFV, and not at Mira’s hand. Vanguard stood barely 3 meters at full stature and couldn’t take a hit from anything larger than 9.3mm high-power, lead alone any of the gamut of energy weapons a real NC could be carrying.

For quite obvious reasons, Tshwane Mining was very interested in the supposed ‘girl who built her own mech’. Despite the exaggerations in the so-called “Legend of Mira Amaar”, she had still piloted a mechanical in combat at the age of sixteen. Mechanicals, non-combat mechs notable for their mechanical control interface harnesses, were widely considered impossible to utilize as combat platforms due to sluggishness, lack of feedback, and the physical exertion of controlling the machine. The interface style had never even been considered on a combat vehicle due to its inability to compete with neural interfaces. She was recruited by the company as an apprentice engineer with the offer to construct her own mech at their expense. Thus began the long process that would culminate with the completion of Legion. She, and the mech she calls her own, are on loan with a mercenary company based east of the horn of Africa.

Tactical Preferences and Skills:

Interfacing:
Mira pilots her mech through a hybrid interface, perhaps the only one in the world. Sensor data, sensory and haptic feedback, and secondary control functions are handled through a neural interface. The primary movement control and weapon triggers are a physical harness. The mechanical interfacing favors her existing experience and lets her cheat the sync score system in order to pilot when she should not be able to by all accounts.

Synchronicity:
Her synchronization score for a full-control setup is far too low to ever operate a true NC, measuring around 35% in testing. The unique hybrid interface of Legion essentially cheats the system. The reduced neural load of not controlling the mech’s movement inflates her sync score to 60%, making effective piloting possible. Her neural implants are located just behind her temples, maximizing interface with the sensory regions of the brain but do not interface at all with motor control.

Combat:
Legion is a behemoth of a mech, built for heavy fire. Being such a massive vehicle makes it sluggish in combat, but the vehicle’s lack of mobility conceals the sluggishness of her unique interface setup. The pacing of the mech is in many ways a necessity, though it also enables a very methodical combat style.

Mira opted to mimic the combat capabilities of the Vanguard mech which essentially served as a prototype for Legion’s design. The left arm would carry a high volume of fire weapon to suppress and shred lighter targets, while the right arm was a massively powerful weapon that could obliterate targets given an accurate shot. To this end, she naturally gravitated towards the fitting of a rotary cannon and a railgun, and then opting for more military-traditional ammunition types, rather than Tshwane-signature diamond-boron rounds. She fervently argues that depleted uranium APFSDS penetrating slugs are better against armored targets anyway.



Legion
“Fear Nothing.”
Long-range Heavy Weapons Specialist, bipedal humanoid, hybrid-mechanical
Development:

Legion bears the same rough formfactor as its Vanguard predecessor, though with several key upgrades made during its development as a military grade war machine. The weapons are bolted directly to the elbow joint, rather than being underslung against an existing forearm structure. The torso region now fully encloses the com-pod rather than leaving lightly-armored protruding arm housings. This has necessitated the vehicle be quite large, even moreso than initial expectations. Its natural hunched posture reduces its height by several meters, though if it stands fully erect it exceeds 14 meters from ground to sensor pod.

It is fitted with a modern neural net and interfacing, though it was at Mira’s insistence that the primary movement and weapons control remain tied to a mechanical interface. This hybrid control scheme is unheard of in modern mecha, widely considered impossible, and is possibly the only example in the world. The mech also features voice key detection and a mixed reality display in the com-pod as backup systems in the event the neural interface fails for whatever reason. It is thus theoretically possible for anyone to pilot Legion regardless of sync rating, though in practice it is not that simple at all.

Its backside features four modular mounting positions in a four-square pattern. One on each side is always used for ammunition storage for the mech’s primary armaments, and the second is available for mounting ancillary weapons systems. Different options are available depending on the use of the upper or lower mount for a given side. Generally, the upper mounts are utilized for missile-based weapons while the lower mounts receive smaller direct-fire weapons. Both secondary armaments are fully retractable, concealing them from frontal fire.
Armaments:

Primary:
-35mm ballistic rotary chaingun
A vicious high ROF weapon chambered in large caliber SAPHEI-T ammunition firing from a rotary tri-barrel on the left arm that is used for shredding through unarmored to moderately armored targets.

-75mm high precision railgun
An extreme-range weapon chambered in DU-APFSDS penetrating slugs on the right arm optimized for effectively defeating heavily armored targets.

Secondary:
-Multipurpose Tactical Missiles (upper)
These missiles include a highly advanced targeting computer enabling a variety of different flight profiles, ranging from direct attack to a high-arc artillery style approach that rains death from above. They come in various sizes, each striking a different balance between individual destructive power and raw quantity. Mira tends to prefer fewer missiles with each packing a sizable tandem HEAT warhead.

-MGL cannons (lower)
Magnetic Grenade Launcher tech was developed to lob high explosive shells long distances in the hands of a rifleman. The magnetic acceleration coils provided far more punch than traditional grenade round propellant charges. When adapted to mechanized combat, the technology takes the form of a short-barreled 60mm gun firing polymer-stabilized HESH shells. The weapons are useful for short to medium range combat, being limited by low velocity and relatively poor aerodynamics.
the last major concern I have is that the 'Mechanical' should have a clear advantage over, say, a super-tank or even an ordinary tank, so as to answer the question of: 'why not just use a tank'?

It really isn't supposed to. The idea behind a physical control harness was developed for salvage rigs, powered exeoskeletons and such. It was never intended as a combat platform. Compared to a neural link, it is meant to be inferior in virtually every metric. If there must be an answer to that question then though I'd say this: Tanks require a crew of 2-4 people generally plus training, but fielding an equivalent armament on a humanoid form that uses direct movement control requires one person with far less training to be similarly effective.

Tanks, APCs, and IFVs can bring down a 'True' NC if used in enough numbers and if said NC is alone.

Not even a badass mecha pilot can override the Law of Gross Firepower.

Aren't pilots supposed to be part of Electrum Company? Is she being contracted out by Tshwane Mining?

I figured that would be assumed. That's the correct assumption that she's officially on loan.

also, I kinda pictured Sync-Rating as a measure of some kind of NC signal integration into brain function or something like that. Lore thread says 50%-sync is the lowest viable, but does that mean low-end pilots use Mechanical control methods like Mira does, or is the implication that 50% is required to fully mentally control an NC?

You're on the right track. A 50% sync is the minimum to fully control a mech through a neural link. Since pretty much all mechs everywhere are built with full neural interfaces, it's also the minimum to be a pilot. Mira would never have been accepted as a pilot had her overinflated reputation not preceded her. However since she had the opportunity, she found a way to cheat.

I've made the assertion that if you reduce the amount of information travelling over the neural link, the reduced load will inflate the synchronization of the pilot. In Mira's case, this boosts her sync rating high enough to achieve a viable interface. She still has some tactile feedback coming over the neural link but the primary movement control and weapon firing is handled through the physical harness. This makes Legion unique in that it's a hybrid between neural and mechanical interfacing. This hybridization is the reason that Legion is a viable low-sync mech despite relying on the inferior mechanical control harness.

It's theoretically possible that another hybrid combatant mech does exist somewhere, but it's equally likely that Legion is the only one of it's kind and Mira is the only viable hybrid pilot in the world. By all account she should never have been a pilot in the first place.
@Letter Bee ... I want critique now so I only have to do one revision pass. Lemme put it this way: I only want to do one revision pass, so if there's anything you feel needs to be changed pending acceptance, you should tell me that now rather than later please.

@ArmorPlated The mech never struck me as overtly cyberpunk (though admittedly you could describe any hardsuit in that way) but I've always liked it. Shame the game was such a grind though.
You know how I said I wasn't going to follow up on this ... I guess I lied. I couldn't shake this from my head.

This needs a severe formatting and revision pass but I am making some serious assertions regarding lore. I figured it was worth posting it prematurely. After all I'm introducing the entire concept of 'the mechanical' as a lesser form of mech. Go ahead and tear this to shreds before I do my revision pass on it. I usually get bitter if I have to do more than one big one.

@SleepingSilence From two weeks and three pages ago in this very thread:

Just putting this out there so I'm not spammed with tags later. I do not intend to participate further at this point. I have too many concerns to be comfortable doing as much lore work as I previously intended.
(emphasis added)

I guess so much for the "not spammed with tags" part ...
© 2007-2026
BBCode Cheatsheet