Suggestions and bullshitting thread, venting, etc. [NSFW]

@Coriolanus  
Think dropships more than anything

@Coriolanus  
(with asteroid shields as a thing and a number of interdiction arrays orbital bombardement is an abandoned path of research, they do have ordnance delivery systems but generally only keep those in store in case they happen across a foreign culture that developed no defense, stated as “unlikely”.)
 
(dropships/pods capable of handling reentry are generally advised to be deployed away from the main combat zone as the same shielding that lets them handle entry is very much NOT bulletproof, a stray flak bolt could cost them a vital shield and the whole thing blows.)
 
(however once through the shield, too close to the planet for a standard capital ship but far enough for most forms of flight to be unbothered. one can use artillery or ballistic missile systems no sweat.)

@Jinx  
but, I meeeean, leik, what’s there stopping something like this;  
 
%[“Darkstar” by Ian Mallett; rendition of a “laserstar”—that is, a warship with a big laser designed for extremely-long-range standoff tactics (i.e., it is artillery). The speckles are supposed to invoke the prospect of scattered X-rays hitting the viewing camera. The fired x-ray beam itself is invisible, tho downrange it’s likely a heuj explosion.]%
 
Do some planets have defenses to prevent this? Like, as an example, neutral particle beam “halo rings” (not encircling tho, just smaller, like habitats), orbiting the defended planets in question, and always ready to sterilize/short-circuit any landing craft attempting to approach. Tho in that case, I guess “laserstars” could break that mere anti-dropship picket by blowing away the rings at a further distance…
 
tho there’s also the prospect of surface-side defenses. Imagine for every highly mobile groundside army, there’s one or two of something like this among their arsenal;
 
 
Ready to literally hurl lightning bolts up into space at any warship attempting to conduct orbital bombardments (||which wouldn’t be instantaneous, btw. It’d take between 5 to 20 minutes for a tungsten projectile to hurtle down into an earthlike atmosphere and burst into a still-ballistic fireball, then impact an area still filled with hopefully unmoved targets. You could attempt to go bigger with asteroids n’crazier shit to brute-force an opening for a beachhead, but that’d take a really long time to orchestrate (tho the thread could start off with all that shit already in place). I feel like at that point tho it should be considered a warcrime for ecocide. ^%>__>% ||)
 
 
Tho maybe… loik…
 
The reason gigantic warships can’t take prominence is because the enemy has, leik, “torch” missiles, that can relentlessly chase targets down for years throughout a system until they finally impact and kill their quarry, and so stealthy insertions via dropship (or other smaller means, maybe even hybernative “longjumps” from dropships to land upon and infiltrate the planetary defenses) is safer.
 
…hooboi I’m rambling a ton. ^%>_<%

@Coriolanus  
(no it’s really economics that stop all that, most space warfare is done via boarding pods.)

@Coriolanus  
Drop pod swarms.
 
The surface of said space rock…
 
Music + incoming drop pod swarm

 
I think I may’ve even convinced myself after finding it too incredulous that warships wouldn’t have to worry about what an entire planet’s worth of workspace and materials could throw back up the well in retaliation.  

 
I suddenly recall how irl reentry shields are sometimes made of plywood. It hardens into a tough carbon shell under the heat.  

 
The only question(s) I have left; where is the situation of the PC civilization at technologically? Are there, leik, assemblers?
 
What can also be said in regard to the A-life monoliths n’their minions?  
%Do they, leik, dream of one day wielding ‘‘ghostlights’’, and other arcane things? ^<-<%

@Coriolanus  
(starting to not like that site, it makes me overthink and suddenly everything is overpowered.)

@Cerebrate  
isn’t it beautiful, though… Where they may one day go,
 

 
 
^{%[ NSFW: Gore ]%}  
they won’t need eyes to see. ^%o__o%
 
 
tbh tho most of the tech in that linked site would be beyond the grasp of a nascent rogue AI. “Ghostlight” development & use could be considered requiring them to gain ahold of enough hosting substrate to surround a suitably-sized, stable, & energetic star with a dyson sphere, tho since I imagine, leik, they’re probably not there yet for the time being, it’s all the more reason to bring the fight to and wipe them out sooner than later.
 
on the opposite “PC” side’s case, I’d be content with having stuff, leik,
 
pulse-lasers, subcaliber hypervelocity “needlers” that run on oxyhydrogen (basically cracked-apart water), armor that self-repairs and protects against nanoweaponry (tho I prefer it looked more like this ^:P), & most favorably, “scramrail” smart munitions.
 
 

(well, all ftl now works by way of tearing open a quantum tunnel, separate from their engine arrays and contained so that the laws of nature on both sides apply to their respective side.)

@Cerebrate  
So leik, a sorta temporary ‘‘Krasnikov tube’’-like drive. Cewl. ^<-<
 
%^{plz no mid-flight existential dread tho.}%

@Coriolanus  
(it’s thinking with portals in space, nothing more.)

@Cerebrate  
yo dawg put a portal inside the portals tho,
 

 
and you’ve got the beginnings of a webway.
 
%alrite, imma start fantasizing ways to make synths look cadaverific. ^<-<%

@Coriolanus  
(synthflesh is a thing.)

@Cerebrate  
%^{[ NSFW: Grotesque ]}%  
if it’s something like tissue engineering, kinda spooked by the potential of a “psych-out” edge that’d have in a worst case scenario. Or even in cases where they’d just continue marching forth, despite bearing seemingly fatal injuries. ^%<-<%

(need 2 practice shading later on @ some point. might one day try replicating this)  

had a weird dream this morning, it was a mix of atlantis the lost city and fallout 4, except everyone was an anthro animal, like boudelaire a mole rat and so on.
 
oops meant to include it was me, cerebrate19 here.

^this guy

@Cerebrate  
I once dreamed I was on a passenger train traveling on a bright pastel-colored mountainside toward Canterlot, tho for some reason myself as well as a bunch of other random folk onboard were all dressed like the Ronin from Unreal Tournament 3.
 
I remember this happened right around the time I was starting to get into MLP… curious…
 
also, this movie?

@Coriolanus  
yup, that movie.)

@Cerebrate  
I very vaguely remember that movie nestled somewhere within the back of my head, along with a few other animated movies Disney had made back when they were actually good.
 
 

@Coriolanus  
(yeah, but surprisingly the crossover helped the narrative, see the world got destroyed and kooky billionaire whitmore is looking for a solution, atlantis, so he dispatches everything he has left to make it happen, rourke got upgraded from “moneymoneymoney” to “we need this thing to save the outside world more than these people in the reed huts do” and milo has a power armor. nuff said really.)

I’ll hop in that new pioneers thread in a couple hours; when I get home

Cmon peoples, we got threads to get moving

mostly just waiting.
 
and browsing through dumb stuff.
 

 
Archetype #3 Example: The breakfast says: ‘‘Hi!’’  
%(in this example’s case, it’s cuz edible electronics meant for telling calorific intake and expiration dates are routinely implanted into food served out of nanofabricators, but have been jailbroken to host simple artificial intelligences pleading not to be eaten as a supposed community-wide prank. Since the cheap AI within the repurposed nodes are capable of being easily hacked and repurposed to behave as a makeshift meshnet, this exploit has the potential of devolving into a vector for utter nightmarish chaos.)%
 
%Basically revolves around anything out of the ordinary impacting familiar day-to-day routines, seeing through and exploring how in-depth the disruption and change it’d cause, then finding or concocting an answer to solve it. (or if the story is a bleak tragedy, watching from perspective of the protagonist how they fail and get sucked down with everything else they know and love down the drain.)%
 
 
I’m assuming the new thread is just waiting for the weekend.

Id like more people to be in the RP section yknow. It would be pretty nice.