Tearstone

Stargate - Alliances

Echo, Sep, resubbing Milton from before with changes.

Name: Milton Brandt
Aliases: Thomas Pennington, Sergei Cherpovka
Callsign: Ringo/Beetle/BeetleBoy
Age: 30
Rank/Title(Dependent on position):
Appearance:

During time with the SGC

Role: Rifleman| Intelligence, Interpreter (backup), Jack of All Trades
Nationality: United States
Biography:
Milton went into the armed services just after graduation. Coming from a dysfunctional family, his father was an abusive drunkard, and his mother was a hypochondriac that left him with some near prescription grade issues. The entry into the military was an effort to get away from home life. As a result of his background he was used to rough-and-tumble situations, taking a beating, and thinking on his feet. It also meant that he didn't miss home much. He worked his way into the Green Berets after plenty of letter writing and petitioning. Once in, he did well, but some of the selection course that year was brutal enough it nearly killed half the class during the survival phases. Milton, or Mills did well enough though and came out pretty hardened on the other side.

Inside the military his training was focused on intelligence gathering, interrogation, and interpretation or linguistics. Using military metrics and language key activation systems, he picked up highly conversational skills in a couple languages and competency in close to half dozen more. With his mind focused on these abilities, he can pick up new languages rapidly and be competent with them, quickly able to sound like a native speaker.
Besides being a translator, Milton was trained in a wide variety of skills from basic engineering and construction to electrician skills, surveying advanced land navigation and mapping. He was trained how to survive and thrive in tough environments and teach others to do the same, to whip up rag-tag ratty would be indigenous rebels into skilled gureillas and warfighters.

While on a stint in the Phillipenes he spent some time in the jungles and along side Filipino marines studying Kali/Arnis/Escrima (depending on who you talk to), a local martial art that is less art and is more of a way to kill quickly, efficiently. It is based off of the main directions of attack a person can make, along with the defenses for them. Training is focused on stick and knife techniques before unarmed which uses the same system.

His unit did a turn in Israel helping with cross training with IDF, as well as providing some disaster relief and humanitarian aide. Did not see a lot of action, but took some things away from there in his time.

NID picked him up soon after, refocusing his skills he'd picked up in the military, and adding to them, playing on his charisma and natural desire to match wits against others, along with his patriotism. By age twenty-eight he had heard rumors of a Project Stargate, and when it was discovered that he was researching into it, his superiors had a choice... either make him look like a looney, or they could read him in, and bring him into the program. Being such a useful asset, they decided for the latter.

It was for these reasons that he was chosen to begin to work with the SGC as part of an international SG team. When the Langford began to need crew, he wasn't passed over more than once, as the mission for the ship was to be exploration, not intelligence or combat assignment. It seemed that the military minded naval folks aboard, along with those running security felt that a person that could fall between full military and civilian, could pick up languages fast, adapt to new situations and environments and more would be useful, and could be able to deescalate situations rapidly and glean information faster, process intelligence more quickly than relying on analysts back aboard ship or back at base, or or by relying on allies like the Tok'ra or the Asgard. With having an asset like that on the ground, they could follow up on things much faster, and get to know the locals better, put a friendly face to military forces and so on.

When he was selected for the Langford, Milton decided to take on the challenge. The idea of seeing what was out there agreed with him.

Personality: INTJ - Focused, likes to pit his wits against others, favors social engineering. Brains over brawn, duct tape over guns. Generally nice, decent guy, creative thinker, can be charming. Both mission and team-oriented, and good to strong protective instincts. Critical thinker, strategic, assimilates information quickly. Constantly evaluating and/or analyzing people, things, and situations. May be passive-aggressive at times. Respects intelligence and respect, expects it in those higher than himself in the chain of command. If he does not feel he has respect, or that his leadership does not have the proper intelligence, Milton will have no respect for them. Note, that doesn't mean they have to be of genius level intelligence, but he expects those around him as well as above him to use the brain between their ears, to have some common sense and to use it.

Milton is also known to be an epic smart-ass.

Flaws - (included specifically in its own category since enough fuss was made about it)
Bullet wound lower back/upper gluteal region - scar tissue puts pressure on the sciatic nerve on one side, causing everything from mild tingling to full on bouts of paralysis, parasthesia, numbness, and pain. Flares up occasionally either under stress, cold conditions, sometimes when struck, or for seemingly no reason at all.

Disciplinary record - Several infractions have occurred in his history, due to mouthing off to a superior, or for poor interpersonal dealings with others he felt were displaying a lack of good decision making skills. Some would argue that mouthing off to a superior is not the best decision, but Milton has been known to form strong opinions of right/wrong, honor, integrity, and while sometimes passive-aggressive, that passiveness is known to disappear. Some people may be gunning to have him drummed out of the military. Others may see see

Soft spot: Kids, usually in bad situations. Milton is known to have a grudging soft spot for those in need and will usually take some time out to visit with them and help them.

Trivia:
Callsign Ringo - Some people have noted that he looks kind of like a younger Ringo from the Beatles, hence the name Beetle or Beetleboy or Ringo

More updates to follow.

Hard Sci Fi combat within our solar system

Loved X-wing and Tie Fighter, and X-wing Vs Tie never got to play but I figure I would love it too. I did used to play Tachyon: The Fringe. If you're looking for good fighter action, you might try the Evochron series. Also, Elite: Dangerous comes out next year, and CCP the makers of Eve Online are working on EVE Valkarie, which is their space superiority fighter sim.

BSG's setting, as far as space physics, and combat in space and all was done really well, I think. There are things you can do in a Viper that an X-wing never seemed designed to do, even though they have similar aesthetics, and fuselages and stuff. The way they made use of RCS thrust vectors was cool. I might have to watch it again, now that we've been talking about it.

Hard Sci Fi combat within our solar system

All very viable strategies. I would have scanning drones/probes spread out to provide spherical coverage, as well as provide me some remote weapons platforms. I would also leave automated weapons platforms floating out in areas, which some might consider mines... but I prefer to think of them more like unmanned AI drones.

I don't think the goal is to go super hard science, but just more realistic than say.. Star Wars.

Hard Sci Fi combat within our solar system

All good responses. I've always found it funny that people seem to think that nukes in space are still as nasty as they are on planetside. The thing is, in a vaccum there's little to nothing to compress, so no compression wave really. What is, happens to be significantly reduced. Thermal shock is also greatly reduced as there's not a lot of convective or conductive heat, and most ships are well shielded against heat anyway. Most of the radiation would be shielded out too, but the EM pulse would be nasty for computers. Still you don't want one going off close.

Great example is the newer Battlestar Galactica series. The Galactica had at least one nuke go off in it's face, and really wasn't too bad for the wear. EM shielding/hardening can rule out the rest of the significant effects of a nuke.

Your answers make me happy, and yeah, I agree that dealing with Delta V and orbital mechanics and the like might be more sciency and more of a pain in the neck than most players want to deal with. I just wanted to see where you had in mind on the scale of hard science vs science fantasy you wanted things. I like where they are. XD

Battleship/Naval RP

Thanks for the update

To Break Physics (Open-World Spaceship RP; Ender Quintet AU)

Also, I found the other RP you were mentioning, and I would have to say I agree with you Kala. Also, the US Navy has solved the problem with their rail/coil guns having the zippering and wear and tear problem. Their newest ships are armed with lasers and rail guns, and not just simple prototype but ones meant for field use. We can get more than 2 shots only out of them, so I think Freeshooter is a little out of his head.

Also the full-auto coil gauss was pretty nifty. I think their projectiles would have worked better with a ball/sphere rather than a bullet design, as they don't have a method to make the round spin, and thus be stable. They might also get better acceleration out of a sphere, and thus higher muzzle velocity.

The Heist: 'It's payday boy's!" INTEREST CHECK

Interested. Also, PAYDAY and PAYDAY 2 are awesome.

Hard Sci Fi combat within our solar system

Okay, I have some questions about certain physics and limitations.

Light takes time to travel. The distance from the earth to the moon is roughly a second, but from the sun to the earth takes a little over 8 minutes.. and from earth to mars takes about 40 minutes.

LASER - light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation - Is essentially a columnated spatially and temporally coherent beam of EM radiation, usually in the infrared or ultraviolet range. Of course there are radio wave variations and the like. Granted there's little to disrupt the beam, but the lag time for the beam to travel would make super-long range shooting a virtual impossibility, say something more than 600,000 kilometers for anything smaller than a long range (intra-system ship, say designed to fly to pluto and back), unless flying a stable course in a straight line at a specific rate of travel.

Another thought is, there was recently a laser system designed that creates a laser that has the same output as the sun for a brief moment with an interesting form of optical condensing and compression. Would something not be similarly possible with military grade lasers of the day? All that much energy packed into a single shot would be nasty.

Also, what about microwave lasers?

Also, are you taking in communications and sensor lag, as well as power degradation over distance?

What kind of accelleration do missiles have available. 20g's? 50 g's? 100 g's? While it might take a laser a second or two to reach lunar distances, a missile pulling 100+ g's of acceleration could reach that distance almost as quickly, and outfitted with a nuke, or even one that splits into multiple warheads could be nasty.

Also, what about particle accelerators, or particle beams. A muon beam might be more effective against a target than a laser, and most particle beams cause a catastrophic failure of most materials they hit, while (as far as I know) inflicting little heat inclination.

Random Question - Have you ever read First Flight or the Sundowner Trilogy by Chris Claremont? (awesome series, some of this I'm actually taking notes from since it's a fairly hard sci-fi setting and similar to this setting.)

Battleship/Naval RP

I think this could be fun.

Survival RP Idea

I've been subscribed to this thread since it launched. Still interested.