NationStates Jolt Archive

I oft note in my experiences near and as it pertains to I, that you people have taken the poor little singularity, and raped it like a man might rape a kitten with flaming chainsaw.

A singularity is suppossed to be one of the most awe inspiring phaenomena in the known universe, yet in II it's less frightful than a gnat trying to attack a rabid cyborg battle bear. Why should one of the most powerful things in the universe be regulated down to the most pathetic thing since Big Brother first aired on TV?

The answer is obvious: a lot of you want too much too fast. I can't blame you though: II has been in arms race mode since forever. If you don't have the best gun of the week, then everyone will try and run roughshod over you. However, this does not make raping every concept of power permissible.

It's not really just singularities in which this thread wishes to address: it's everything. Super Lasers, Singularity Torpedoes, Exterminatus Weapons, anything overly strong is used and abused far too often in II. They're the 'epitome' of power, that are so overused they have become trite. I don't fear super lasers on any account in which I use: they bounce off shields as any other weapon now. Singularity Torpedoes can be destroyed with enough energy or whatever bullshit method I feel like using, and all other weapons of mass destruction are blocked by shields.

If the use of these things had been more responsibly used, and not means in which to kill an RP by owning an opponents forces in such a swift manner, then I would not have the attitude in which I do now. But I think that's expecting a bit much from most of FT II; sorry, not to be an arrogant bastard: but a great portion of you are not very good RPers because you can't not try and own everyone in an RP With your super tech of superness. What this does not only makes you look bad, but also takes your concept and devalues it.

Star Wars is trash, or at least it is now. Same with SG tech, and WH40k tech. There's nothing redeeming about it anymore, or original: everyone has taken those concepts and totally warped and fucked them up to levels I could not attain with a gallon of LSD an a basket of Tom Cruise movies. We therefore have tech trees which no one respects anymore, and which no one really wants to touch sans those who wish to own. The noobs if you will, who exist only to try and win fake mock battles in the FT world.

So were does this all leave us? What is my point? That we need to rein things in. Use the ultimate super powerful weapons of superness when the RP absolutely calls for it. Otherwise leave them in your pocket and let me gaze upon them in a positive light when used; not one in which I wish to rip your brain out through your ass with a pitchfork for ruining once great concepts. That's my point, and those are my words. It's not all cogent, and it has some grammatical and spelling mistakes, but my message stands nontheless.

I would have to agree with most of what you said there, I personally find 'superweapons' are over used, no different then the nuclear weapons of MT, they kill any potential story.

Mind you I'm probably not one to talk, not having actually debued on the FT scene yet, but honestly what I see in both MT and FT haven't been all that different except in terms of technology.

Too many people simply want to win, rather then tell an interesting story, which I realise is no enormous new discovery, I am by no means a great RP'er, but I at least like to consider myself a decent one, if we saw more focus on the story rather then, 'bwahahah, I pwn you!', then I think all would have a bit more fun.

Oh, but I like my singularity weapons... <sob>

Actually, I use singularities in an interesting way: first, I don't haul them around - you can't. I use a space warp to achieve energy densities sufficient to create a spinning charged black hole of microscopic size and send it hurtling toward the enemy at speeds infinitesimally close to that of light (>.99c).

The idea isn't to swallow the enemy ship whole; these little buggers are too small to do that. In fact, they'd likely pass through most ships (and their shields, BTW - no shield can possibly stop a black hole [well ... there might be one kind that would, but I'm not going to say what that is...]) without doing any significant damage (that, or it'd be like a very fast bullet).

No, the idea is to take advantage of the fact that Hawking radiation will cause a small black hole to “evaporate” in a very short length of time (a matter of seconds at relativistic speeds - and that long only because of time dilation). At a certain critical moment the black hole will explode, emitting a burst of pure energy and a nice storm of charged particles.

In other words, it's a really, really big bomb.

Now, to use this right, you try to hit the enemy; that's pointless. Instead, you aim it short and rely on the blue-shift (from the Doppler effect) to the fore of the blast to turn much of released energy into very hard gamma and x-rays. And if it's charged and spinning axis on, the magnetic field it creates (magnetic fields are one of the few things black holes can still possess) acts as a lens to further focus the explosion, much like a shaped-charged nuclear explosive.

A superweapon? Not really. More like an upscale photon torpedo. But it's a nice counter to people who do like to throw superweapons around. And it's theoretically feasible.

While slightly profane, Johranhor is right on all counts. FT these days is completely, totally beyond believable. I'm asking you lot; do your homework. Read up about the uberhyperquantumsextemporalbombthing that you're mounting on your ships, chances are it doesn't work, or wouldn't work in the way you describe. For example, I once RP'd with someone who tried to stop time by using a 'controlled neutron emmission into a black hole'. The only thing that results from that is a controlled number of neutrons entering a black hole and being annihilated in the way that things do in black holes.

I would suggest that anyone who RPs in FT should read up about a few things. Namely, the basics of physics, fusion reactions and the like, as many articles on laser weapons as you can find (hint: SW/ST Lasers/Phasers do. not. work, although star trek got closer) and how things behave in a zero-gee environment. Also, try RPing without teh ubzer tech for once, maybe with a trusted friend ;P. See if you can confine yourself to chemical lasers, basic missiles and nukes. No shields, just armour. Duke it out, have some fun, perhaps? I tell you, hard/semi-hard sci-fi is addicting. I'm still trying to learn my physics, but I'm already a devotee, I suppose.

Ahem. Singularities evaporate almost instantly unless they're of solar mass. They're not that worrying unless you happen to be the one 'firing' them. Superlasers... Are only special if they're mounted on a Death Star. The Space-Huey in Attack of the Clones had them. Didn't mean it blew up a planet. In SW they're an old technology, the Death Star was only really special because it was huge.

And 'exterminatus' weapons are ten-a-penny in their source material ;) .

The critical problem as I see it is a general lack of basic common sence, and reasonable people. Science Fiction is not about 'advanced' technology, it is about people in relation to 'advanced' technology, in Science Fiction technology is a plot device used to help tell an interesting story in a setting that right now couldn't happen.

Think about the truly good Sci Fi shows/movies/books you've ever read/saw, how many of those were more interesting before some guy decided to sit down and makeup how they figure it would really work.

I mean really, take Star Wars, at what point during making A New Hope did George Lucas go, "No, no, no, we can't do lasers this way, that's not realistic, scrap it untill we have something that can really work."

When it comes to FT, it really is, "This is what it's called, this is what it does," one should not need to bandy about inane technobable about a fictional piece of technology in order to tell there story.

I know what most of you are likely thinking about right now in regards to my last paragraph, "But if you don't have the information on how it works, you can't reliably RP with it," or something along those lines, there we come back to common sence and reasonable people.

Unlike in MT where you can go, "Well, X cannon can penatrate Y amount of armour at Z range, so my tank with Y armour at Z range would most likely be destroyed or disabled if you hit it," in FT you have no basis for something like this, using 'canon' information or not.

I'll use an comparison just because I find it more effective, lets take the most popular arguement for a moment, "Star Trek VS Star Wars, who would win?"

Your average die hard Trekkie will immediately say Star Trek would win, hands down, while vice versa for a die hard Star Wars fan. Another person might even go so far as to work out the amount of energy each 'tech' created and used based of what they've seen/read on this subject. But this is unreliable information since I somehow doubt, for example, the special effects guys went, "Well you know what, the Death Star's superlaser uses X amount of joules of energy when it fires, and since Alderaan had a planetary shield, Y should happen," rather I'm pretty sure as will most all Sci Fi shows it was, "Lets make the coolest explosion we can."

Now lets take a Sovereign class starship up against a Imperator class Star Destroyer, who would win? Once again you'd likely get some of the same comments I mentioned above. However if you have two people RP'ing this who both have some basic common sence and are reasonable enough people to give each other some leeway, it could be an interesting fight to read about. In my own common sence my money would be on the Star Destroyer however, why you ask? simply that a Sovereign class is much smaller and significantly less armed then the Imperator, I mean, when was the last time you saw a single ST ship dehabitate a planet on it's own, however the Sovereign is more maneuverable, it would be a harder target, in a decently writing RP I could see said Sovereign doing some damage to the Imperator, but in the end I would see the Sovereign either disabled or retreating.

However said example isn't exactly a fair fight, more likely you'd see a small fleet of ST ships engaging an equivelant fleet of SW ships, I don't know who would win that, but I tell you this, two reasonable people could most likely make that one damned good read.

I realise I've kind of gone slightly off topic, and am bringing up a more common problem in NS in general, but I believe the two problems are related. There is no problem in using any tech frame super weapons in a story so long as you use some basic common sence. If in every battle you bring out the Death Star to slaughter your enemies, where's the interesting story.

I kind of like The Cosmic Balance's use, it doesn't really matter if in reality it doesn't work, but if he can use to the benifit of telling an interesting story, more power to him.

In case anyone was wondering, I tend to consider myself a general Sci Fi fan, I could even have been called a light version of a Trekkie, heh. I've seen every episode of Star Trek, all series and movies, but I've also seen all the Star Wars movies, I've watched Stargate and its TV shows, Andromeda, Babylon 5, Battlestar Gallactica, both old and new, and many more, I personally found them all entertaining in there own way, despite whatever technology they used. The truly great Sci Fi series were the ones that were about the characters rather then explaining how every little piece of tech worked, becuase I doubt that they considered how everything worked at the time they used it, more likely some poor bugger got told the following, "Well, fans are really in on us to tell them how all this stuff works, that's why we hired you, you get to make up the reasons all this stuff worked."

There would be no real problem in having a cross universe RP as long as you take into account the pros and cons of both and above all be reasonable. No one ever wins all the time and you can't 'play' an RP like you would a typical online game.

Joranhor;11719229']
Star Wars is trash, or at least it is now. Same with SG tech, and WH40k tech. There's nothing redeeming about it anymore, or original: everyone has taken those concepts and totally warped and fucked them up to levels I could not attain with a gallon of LSD an a basket of Tom Cruise movies. We therefore have tech trees which no one respects anymore, and which no one really wants to touch sans those who wish to own. The noobs if you will, who exist only to try and win fake mock battles in the FT world.


I think that this really represents more your view than an actual fact. There are many good RPers who use what you describe as "trash". Its the story that matters, and if people can use said techs to their advantage in writing a good story, that doesn't infringe upon the sensibilities of others, that doesn't senselessly godmod it into invulnerability, then more power to them.

Theres no reason why a minority should tarnish the good roleplayers who embrace such techbases, and no reason to wholely dismiss them as "trash"

This is why adopt a variable defense and offense strength to my forces vs superweapons. When someone tosses out, say, 2,000 singularity missiles or starts firing off superlasers like they are going out of style, then I'll treat them with the same casualness they do, and they won't do much damage in return.

If however, someone treats tactical superweapons with respect in terms of RPing (making it a rather big deal that a ship is even equipped with them, let alone the authorization to fire, and in reasonable numbers) then they'll do appropriate damage.

So, IIers, continue to toss them around by the thousands, and I'll continue to treat them as nothing more than a common nuclear bomb in FT.

Do Napalm and Thermobarics count as Super-Weapons?

I think that this really represents more your view than an actual fact. There are many good RPers who use what you describe as "trash". Its the story that matters, and if people can use said techs to their advantage in writing a good story, that doesn't infringe upon the sensibilities of others, that doesn't senselessly godmod it into invulnerability, then more power to them.

Theres no reason why a minority should tarnish the good roleplayers who embrace such techbases, and no reason to wholely dismiss them as "trash"

Seconded.

good luck getting anyone to listen, i mean it!


People need to start comming up with origenal stuff for NS FT, it is so sad when two nations cant face....because they both have SD, SSD, or star trek ships. go out and bust your balls abit (like i have been doin for 2 months, comming up with new ships and tech for ships, because i believe when i use them, i will get the satisfaction of knowing no one else has these ships or guns.

Do Napalm and Thermobarics count as Super-Weapons?

no