Recent content by Endie

Great! I've been waiting for you to discuss your experience in PoD for what seems like years!

I think we're wholly in agreement there: they shouldn't be replaced (well, not wholly) by robots when players are involved because it makes for a less engaging game for many players. I just think the annoying thing is that the rules as currently written would imply that on the nation-state...

Yes, my exact point was that some Japanese became Kamikazes, as a result of a very specific culture that died out within eighteen months. Nowadays we already use automated systems: ffs the Germans already had replaced that role in war with Fritz and Schmetterling systems by 1943/4! Why would the...

Ok, so I’ll grant you that there are a couple of races (Tezcats, I’m looking at you) who might well view intelligent life from their own species as borderline-disposable in the right situation. And if a species is not based on Dawkins’ memetic replication of competitive, personal code then that...

All this seems to make the slightly suspect assumption that you can hire and retain highly capable pilots (although, as demonstrated above, less capable than a robot for a higher price) who will be willing to commit suicide. Since that is no longer the case in moderately-rich TL8 economies, I...

I don't mind the delay between Kickstarter and delivery. I kinda forget and then I get some huge bundle through the post: it's like a present from my younger self.

Absolutely! The ongoing cost to society (both wider society and closer family and friends), the effect on societal stability and the sunk costs over the previous upbringing are all very good points!

First off, you're basing your argument on an immense miscalculation. I think that perhaps you have confused the Battle of Britain with the earliest phase of armed, aerial combat in the First World War, 11 years after the first flight. I'm afraid you're also judging WW1 from the (shocking!) loss...

The robot counts as more than one human pilot, both in parallelism and in longitudinal terms, and does so at vastly lesser cost. It doesn’t need to go on leave and happily works for twenty-four hours a day. It can sit there, fully-charged, on alert, ready to launch with zero warning, round the...

What I think @Sigtrygg is pointing out is that, if the wholly-owned subsidiary is not, itself, publicly traded then the details of the license duration need not be made public in many jurisdictions. That's one of the (many, many) reasons why companies make use of subsidiaries.

If you want to murder them, this will work a treat.

And in some cases they also have to be Zhodani, or members of the armed forces (or specifically *not*), or completely fresh characters in one case.

Just give them adequate armour and have them fight skillful opponents with no AP. They'll get the odd point of damage from Effect 6 hits but they can churn through mooks. Add a couple of points of damage or AP to tune if you need more risk.

Robots with pilot and gunner to level 2 come in as a rounding error of a human-carrying fighter. Even if you go to TL14, boost DEX and bandwidth and go for total bonuses of 4 for pilot and gunner (with some zero-level Tactics(Naval) and the like thrown in), so far above most human pilots, it...

OK: that's still not burying the lede (which doesn't mean a big reveal or a plot-twist, either) but sadly I suspect that you may be right. It's lazy and doesn't make sense for the reasons @Sigtrygg laid out. But I fear that you could be right. It would be a let-down.