Posts made by Packrat

So I have been working on military units and mass combat some.

The basic idea is that any given benefice holder who cares about such things will likely have between two and five military units, discounting militia or somebody very very rich who spams cheap infantry hordes. Each unit is a discrete formation which is able to meaningfully do War Stuff by itself though varies in size depending upon exactly what it is.

There are only six basic types so far, three grades of infantry (Regular, Elite, Special), with the better troops coming in much smaller numbers and so actually weaker units overall, then Armour, Artillery and Flitters. They have fairly specific roles and so there should not be an optimal choice, it depends on both an individual's resource distribution and their goals.

So are you a rural baroness? You absolutely want to go for lots of regulars, you have plenty of Manpower and are liable to need to actually fight battles. A Guilder and a city mayor? Perhaps you fulfill your feudal obligations to the Duke with a couple of tanks, or have a flight of fighter bombers, relying on arming up your militia to guard the city walls.

Each unit then has a 'Training Level' from 1 to 6 and can pick a Speciality for every point in excess of 2. Specialities could be something like 'Desert Expert' (Better in deserts), 'Ranger' (Better for scouting or raiding) or 'Terror Troops' (Messes up average or lower training foes).

Unit types come with a base training level but you can work to increase it for individual units, mostly through persuading a PC to spend multiple strategic actions working on things. So hiring a badass to come lead/train your troops is seriously helpful. Also units can be given more/better equipment as expensive options, so you might have a unit of Regulars as cavalry, or equip a unit of Specials with powered ceramsteel armour, if you are rich enough.

So moderately complex but each person who does have an army only needs to deal with a few units and they can be recorded as say 'Regulars, Training 2, Mounted' or 'Elites, Training 3, Motorised, Grenadiers Specialisation'. The main idea is that it is not just 'Jill has more troops than Bill and so matters more'. Jill might have a horde of desert cavalry raiders who are super devastating at skirmishing in deserts, Bob might have a bunch of stalwart line infantry and some artillery who are inferior overall but a lot better for sieging a castle or holding a mountain pass.

Jane might then have nothing but a few dozen cyborg space knights in powered armour who are really not a match for either on a battlefield despite costing at least as much but you absolutely do not want disgorging into your palace unexpectedly or boarding your spaceship.

That kind of dynamic is the goal at least, with the plan that just going 'I have three units of regulars and one unit of elite retainers' should be completely valid for anyone who does not want to do anything fancy and, overall, the optimal strategy if you do not have particular goals in mind.

@autumn Moving is immensely stressful even when things go well, my last big move (most recent one I literally moved less than two miles) I paid for a removal company to do ninety percent of the work and I was still utterly exhausted and stressed out by the time it was done. I think I slept for about twelve hours on my sofa that evening because I was too tired to put my bed together the day I got there.

I honestly do not mind socializing with most of my coworkers but there really is a limit. A few months ago I was at a conference and some bastard scheduled stuff every single evening until midnight, every day.

I just... No, after 10 hours of conference and workshops I need to go and relax with some alone time. Occasionally I do very much enjoy a night out with people drinking beers and chatting about stuff but no more than once or twice a week. Definitely not every day until midnight when we are putting in long days in an unfamiliar place and I want to be properly awake.

Personally I am in a weird place here, I am actually fairly extroverted IRL on the surface, I can chat with strangers without feeling self conscious, I can be charming, I regularly stand up in front of rooms full of people and deliver presentations to them for hours at a time.

Frankly I am probably overly chatty at times.

But I find socialising most of the time builds a steady stress meter and I increasingly often think about how I would so, so much rather be at home where I would likely be bored out of my skull but would be nestled securely in my safe space. I cannot last more than a few hours at most before being outright miserable.

People phoning me when I am at home and thus not in 'socialise mode' or (far worse!) knocking on my front door can launch me into full blown panic attacks. The joys of chronic severe depression.

Well I have been poking at this on and off all day now and actually started getting stuff done.

I need a noble house to rule Khangai though. Khangai is kind of like a... Partially de-terraformed Mars? Low gravity, lots of elevation, atmosphere half stripped away in the millennia since the end of the 2nd Republic. People still live in the deep canyons and crater bottoms but there are myriad abandoned cities in the highlands that are picked over by scavengers or bases for pirates using oxygen tanks or space suits.

The duke or duchess ruling the planet has only minimal actual control but remains pretty rich, decadent decaying palaces, vassals who pay only lip service and travel between the oasis of remaining civilisation by rare and expensive flitters.

Not sure if I should go major house or one of the minors.

The Good Place really is excellent, the writing is so good and they obviously did have a (crazy) plan in place right from the start. I love it.

Sadly not, I basically lost all impetus when my grandfather died over the holidays and have not done any work on the game for a few weeks.

I am trying to get back into it now that the funeral is done but burnt out after only writing a few paragraphs of stuff yesterday.

I just finished Iron Gold, the new Red Rising book by Pierce Brown.

Conclusion? It is pretty great, I would say better than Morning Star though I am unsure if it is better than Golden Son. It has multiple viewpoint characters and so rather than getting a Darrow-centric view of the setting you get a nice slice through different parts of it, also the glorious revolution to overthrow the wicked dictatorship and break the chains?

Well it broke a lot of other things and mostly succeeded through co opting the existing members of the ruling class, then only won in some places before settling into an endless, grueling war, leading to more compromises for the war effort. It is wonderful especially seen through the eyes of characters who are this time actually adults.

Also the fucked up solar system resulting would be a pretty great RPG or MUSH setting. Kind of a gritty space opera cyberpunk almost with everything from space-mafia vikings on hoverbikes with cybernetic eyes to Space Knights fighting aerial duels with cool sword/whip things. Also refugee camps, half smashed cities on a terraformed luna, etc.

@ortallus I loved Don't Starve but have yet to give Oxygen Not Included a go. I think I am going to wait for it to leave early access.

@thugheaven Which, you know, great if you are a veteran who has been playing the game for years, but was fucking awful for somebody playing for the first time.

@admiral I can definitely confirm the fun of Northgard and They Are Billions, both really fun RTS games, I have been playing a fair bit of Northgard multiplayer with my brother and his fiancee and had a lot of fun with it. They Are Billions is singleplayer only but brutally difficult and fun.

@auspice I probably cannot pilot well but I managed to get behind and murder a few Pythons so I guess I can pilot with sufficient mediocrity.

Playing in VR is just jaw dropping though, it is immersive enough that weird little things like the pilot chair having a higher back than my actual chair I am sitting in are more immersion breaking than 'I am flying a spaceship in space'.

@thugheaven Things were far worse than that, I had a character who joined one of the noble families as a guard, met a Templar, bowed to them and called them 'Sir' and was generally super respectful, then got turned on because I did not use the correct flavour of 'Lord High Exalted Master' or whatever it was that (apparently very high) rank of Templar expected to be addressed as. It required intervention from the head of the noble house to save my character then they were in the shit over it for some time.

@auspice No real exploration but I did not find it hugely interesting in itself, a really pretty and immersive thing to do whilst listening to podcasts? Sure! But I mostly found myself bounty hunting and pirates murdering which is starting to get a little dull.

Another stumbling block is that whilst I do not have any issues piloting using a mouse and keyboard? Trying to use the galaxy map in VR using a mouse and keyboard is some kind of horrifying impossible nightmare that obviously nobody ever tested. It is the worst thing ever.

Anyway. Bridge crew is downloaded and I will have to give it a go over the weekend.

@auspice Thanks for that! I was not going to pay full price, having heard it runs out of content fairly quickly, but definitely wanted to give it a try.

Elite Dangerous is amazingly immersive in VR but I got to the point where I had a fully equipped Vulture with money in the bank and just sort of bounced on further content.

@thugheaven Not even stuff like eating mystery fruit, things that characters really should know along with all sorts of other complete bullshit. What is the right way to address a Templar to avoid insulting them and what do their robe colours mean? Did you forget to pose to an empty room whilst code practicing your swording on a dummy and have a staff member take offense? Did your conversational RP take a few OOC hours and thus you get ICly in trouble because now it is some hour where you are no longer 'off duty'?

I recall trying this years ago and it suffered a lot from the classic 'You should learn that ICly!'

Regardless of if this was really basic stuff that anyone actually living in the world would know or not, actually putting said information on a website or wiki or whatever to read was anathema, you had to bumble around like an idiot and get murdered for it like they did back in the day!

I live dangerously close to a fish market with a really good, really cheap fish and chip shop in it. For four pounds I can get fish and chips with the fish caught the same day, generous helpings and excellent quality chips.

It is tremendously lethal and I find myself doing this at least once a week given I basically have to walk less than four hundred yards for an immediate delicious yet fattening feast. It does not even cost all that much more than cooking a full meal for myself.

My goals for 2018:

• Start actually playing on a game, even if only at low activity levels. Maybe give Arx another go? Tempted to make a Whisper so that I can do the social and event running stuff without having the responsibility of being a duke like when I played it last.

• Get New Fading Suns MUSH launched. It is actually looking doable, a ton of work done, a grid, an awesome person actually doing code (Holy shit I failed at trying to even port in the Star Crusade code with full access to the database). Then like, run the place and hopefully make it cool instead of falling into the pit of previous Fading Suns attempts.

@arkandel Agreed there, I remember running a tournament on Arx with a multiple bracket knock out jousting contest then a grand melee with over a dozen participants and it took less time than I have seen completly inconsquential stuff take in WoD, for some reason. It is not even down to code, the jousting was just people making rolls using a random system I threw together in advance.