- Location
- Spain
Elias murdering Alex and turning him into an Atlas would be an excellent way to solve work frictions yes.
Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
Elias murdering Alex and turning him into an Atlas would be an excellent way to solve work frictions yes.
- Location
- Cyberpunk capital of the world
Your mitigation strategies are very optimistic.
Can we get an ItX version of The Troubleshooter? A transhuman/posthuman beep boop mechanical murder machine is surely easier to deal with than Elias 'I kill heretics for breakfast, xenos for lunch, traitors for dinner and innocents for tea' Ritcher.
Horrible, old cold warriors learning to be better (or failing and getting put down) is a theme of this quest.
Anyway, I realised I hadn't actually voted, so here goes:
[X]Lieutenant Anjali Sylia-The Champion
Anjali is solid. No, there's nothing in particular that she has that no one else has, but she's a reliable commander, with a solid record, and she comes with the two-edged advantage that she's not so hooked into the Technocratic power networks. She's loyal more to the Shock Corps than her backers, whoever she is. She's someone you can hand an operation to and trust it will get done. And she'll bring a solid Shock Corps backbone to CAMLANN that everything else can be reinforced off - and also make clear that people can work their way up the ranks with merit.
[X] Agent Alya al-Saud-The Dilettante
And on the flipside, Alya is the gamble. She has potential, but it's unexpressed - but she's going to bring academic credentials and external knowledge and the like. Yes, the risk here is that she's going to take a while to bring up to top level speed, but with Anjali serving as a solid backbone the calculated risk is that her immediate weakness can be covered for.
And she covers the political side that Anjali can't. She's got connections, she's got allies, and she's got internal Technocratic privilege. CAMLANN is going to have to go kick down internal doors and target Technocrats, and having someone who can smooth over these things is an important defence. Plus, the cashmoney. Funding matters.
(the fact that Anjali and Alya will wind up having to work together, one as the professional hardass and the other as the easier-going rich girl, is sort of an added bonus. And also risk if they can't get on. But hopefully they can learn respect for one another and both improve each other.)
[X]Lieutenant Anjali Sylia-The Champion
Anjali is solid. No, there's nothing in particular that she has that no one else has, but she's a reliable commander, with a solid record, and she comes with the two-edged advantage that she's not so hooked into the Technocratic power networks. She's loyal more to the Shock Corps than her backers, whoever she is. She's someone you can hand an operation to and trust it will get done. And she'll bring a solid Shock Corps backbone to CAMLANN that everything else can be reinforced off - and also make clear that people can work their way up the ranks with merit.
[X] Agent Alya al-Saud-The Dilettante
And on the flipside, Alya is the gamble. She has potential, but it's unexpressed - but she's going to bring academic credentials and external knowledge and the like. Yes, the risk here is that she's going to take a while to bring up to top level speed, but with Anjali serving as a solid backbone the calculated risk is that her immediate weakness can be covered for.
And she covers the political side that Anjali can't. She's got connections, she's got allies, and she's got internal Technocratic privilege. CAMLANN is going to have to go kick down internal doors and target Technocrats, and having someone who can smooth over these things is an important defence. Plus, the cashmoney. Funding matters.
(the fact that Anjali and Alya will wind up having to work together, one as the professional hardass and the other as the easier-going rich girl, is sort of an added bonus. And also risk if they can't get on. But hopefully they can learn respect for one another and both improve each other.)
Who do you think Major Jane Clarent is?
Or for that matter, now-Lieutenant John Kessler?
Similarly just because Richter would shoot a one-year old Harry Potter after shooting both Lord Voldemort and Harry's parents and only feel recoil doesn't mean he kills everyone. He's not Gretkov.
In fact my note about workplace friction isn't about Richter deciding to kill someone simply for being insufficiently loyal. I'd be worrying more about Alex, especially because even given that Richter understands how these people are useful assets he's almost certainly going to marginalize someone like Alex as much as possible.
And an old knight templar with bloody hands and the essence of a mercurial trickster-god/dess bound to a human soul is going to be pretty good at it.
And Alex isn't dumb and what they might do when they figure out what's happening might... Escalate things.
Acatalepsy
Firewall Proxy
- Location
- The Diamond Age
My argument for the Ideal is that I like that IterationX is transforming from something that's more than a military-industrial complex (emphasis on the "military" part) with a research wing, and that their contributions to Camlann give the research wing both contact with the messy realities of field work and a way of making themselves more valuable to the Union as a whole.
...and, inside the Union, more synthetics/constructs in leadership positions is a step towards humanizing them and giving them a greater say because the current situation is Not Good.
...and, inside the Union, more synthetics/constructs in leadership positions is a step towards humanizing them and giving them a greater say because the current situation is Not Good.
But... why?
Why put the discipline-issue cowboy with little institutional values and flagged as "known authority problems" and "Major Clarent isn't sure how they'll adjust to the more organized and regimented ways of Shock Corps cybercommandos than being a Iteration X techie" with the training-lacking rich girl who explicitly was flagged as "if handled poorly, she could become a liability"?
Sirrocco
Pedantic
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In some ways, I'd want to ask for plan voting here. Like, Sylia/Al-Saud is a solid combo. O'Shea/Astrea is a solid combo. Al-Saud/O'Shea is combo with... potential issues. Al-Saud/Astrea is... okay, I guess? I'm not sure how to swing it properly, though, given that some folks are plan-voting (where the combos matter to them) and some are waifu-voting (or equivalent) (where they kind of don't). I'd almost want to suggest like voting, except that this quest has never had like voting, and we're kind of deep in the quest (and in the vote itself) to start now.
Maybe they're designing Camlann to be a JRPG boss collection where Alex represents the bishounen sort of puzzle boss who you have to do a quest to counter their gimmick and punch them in the face and Alya is the newbie breather boss?
I mean it's a legitimate design choice since all the Camlann choices are basically all video gamey bosses.
- Astrea is the cute robot girl minion controller boss who ends up becoming popular to the point where more people have seen lewd fanart of her than have actually beaten her;
- Zhao is the Metal Gear Solid type duel boss for a stealth action game where he basically teaches you how it feels to have to deal with your own tactics and techniques;
- Alex is the bishounen looking trickster puzzle boss of a JRPG who ends up being shipped with the protagonist a lot and also as some sort of queer icon;
- Anjali is the Metal Gear Rising beat-em-up boss who basically has no gimmicks but incredibly fast and damaging combos and lots of counters to your moveset;
- Alya is the FPS endboss who basically plays like a multiplayer bot but with a bigger health bar and does everything you can and calls bodyguards as reinforcements between phases;
- And Richter is the semi-optional boss who is probably the real big bad but you won't realize if you haven't been extensively collecting lore and completing sidequests who is just complete and utter bullshit and is coded with an AI that is basically designed to just near-perfectly counter every move you make.
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Acatalepsy
Firewall Proxy
- Location
- The Diamond Age
Which is the boss that beats you up in a cutscene because they're writer's pet and/or waifu?
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, here it is without being split into lines. It's pretty chaotic, currently. (Personally I want approval voting so we can vote for our third favorite choice...)
- Location
- in the trash
Meanwhile Kessler is the indestructible moving obstacle who exists to make players run like hell whenever he shows up, and you never get a chance to shoot back at Major Clarent because when she's shooting at you it's from five kilometers away.
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[X] Lieutenant Anjali Sylia-The Champion
[X] Agent Alya al-Saud-The Dilettante
[X] Agent Alya al-Saud-The Dilettante
TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
- Location
- Northeast Ohio, United States
Whew, I finally made it through the archive. It's nice to join up with everyone here at the end of the thread.
My picks for the current vote:
[X] Elias Richter-The Troubleshooter
[X]Lieutenant Anjali Sylia-The Champion
I was tempted by Alex and Astrea. Alex in particular has spheres like Whoa, but seeing him go loose cannon might be kind of painful. Astrea meanwhile looks like she has promise, but we don't really know anything about her characterization or if she even has one. Also she's not enlightened, which limits what she can do to a single niche.
I'm surprised at all the support for the princess.
My picks for the current vote:
[X] Elias Richter-The Troubleshooter
[X]Lieutenant Anjali Sylia-The Champion
I was tempted by Alex and Astrea. Alex in particular has spheres like Whoa, but seeing him go loose cannon might be kind of painful. Astrea meanwhile looks like she has promise, but we don't really know anything about her characterization or if she even has one. Also she's not enlightened, which limits what she can do to a single niche.
I'm surprised at all the support for the princess.
[X] HITMark VII Test Unit 02 'Astrea'-The Ideal
[X]Captain Lixing Zhao-The Treadstone
Tactical voting time! I don't want Alex on the same team as Alya, and I'm pretty sure Alya's a shoe-in for the team. So I'mma vote for the options most likely to keep him out of the lead.
This has a decent chance of getting us a Alya + Astrea team, which I wouldn't consider ideal, but would certainly be interesting - being willing to put a construct in a high position says good things, IMO, and having good contacts and good PR could be really handy.
The power of moe is strong. As is the power of actually having a budget. Plus, we know she wants to be more than just another technocratic princess - if she actually wanted to just coast through and live the good life she wouldn't be here for us to pick.
[X]Captain Lixing Zhao-The Treadstone
Tactical voting time! I don't want Alex on the same team as Alya, and I'm pretty sure Alya's a shoe-in for the team. So I'mma vote for the options most likely to keep him out of the lead.
This has a decent chance of getting us a Alya + Astrea team, which I wouldn't consider ideal, but would certainly be interesting - being willing to put a construct in a high position says good things, IMO, and having good contacts and good PR could be really handy.
The power of moe is strong. As is the power of actually having a budget. Plus, we know she wants to be more than just another technocratic princess - if she actually wanted to just coast through and live the good life she wouldn't be here for us to pick.
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UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
[X] Lieutenant Anjali Sylia-The Champion
[X] Agent Alya al-Saud-The Dilettante
Seems a good mix between reliability and chance. Plus, Syndicate dosh! And princess!
(also, they totally can be sequel hook)
(though it likely won't happen, Panopticon is already big as it is.)
[X] Agent Alya al-Saud-The Dilettante
Seems a good mix between reliability and chance. Plus, Syndicate dosh! And princess!
(also, they totally can be sequel hook)
(though it likely won't happen, Panopticon is already big as it is.)
- Location
- Cyberpunk capital of the world
Astrea is 2B?
It would definitely be easier for Itinerator not!Yoko Taro to scream at his design people and threaten to fire them to ensure she has maximum demographic appeal by demanding a "literally objectively perfect ass" when you have access to Progenitor research that shows it actually does exist.
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I was thinking going by existing references, she looks like the new Daoying unit for Yu Jing in Infinity.Astrea is 2B?
It would definitely be easier for Itinerator not!Yoko Taro to scream at his design people and and ensure she has maximum demographic appeal by demanding a "literally objectively perfect ass" when you have access to Progenitor research that shows it actually does exist.
- Location
- U.S.
She brings interesting things to the table. I'll note that she's the only option outside Elias to bring DSci to the table, which I think is disproportionately valuable for Camlann, due to TN fuckery. It's not a ton, but with a little work on that sphere, and maybe on forces, she could really make a dent in spirit enemies, giving Camlann an option outside Kessler and just throwing gear at such a problem. She's kind of like Jamelia when we started out, but with weaker spheres and more augmentations, in exchange for having waaaaaaaaaay less ability dots (because I suspect Jams and Alya have dots in about the same number of areas, but Alya has one or two and Jams had 3-5. Because experience showed) and less Wp/Enlightenment. We have the assets to give her some training in important areas, Kessler and Clarent are both scary, as are a lot of our other candidates.
On that note though, I really don't like her with Astrea, just because we get so little Enlightened umph from the pair. Astrea.... she has value, but Camlann doesn't seem like it wants less Enlightened personnel. The performance gap is just too big, especially when shit goes south. Alya will get better, but until she does Kessler and Jane are probably going to have to do a LOT of heavy lifting they wouldn't need to with another high-end mage around, like Zhao, Alex, or Elias. Anjali is also less powerful, but she hits all the core Itx combat seriousface spheres, so eh. Astrea just...feel like she's asking for trouble.
TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
- Location
- Northeast Ohio, United States
That's a great analysis, it's very helpful.
Why aren't people supporting Elias? He's got an amazing sphere loadout and his past seems rife with interesting hooks, and most of all he's got a proven ability to track down Autocthonian infiltration and that's the biggest threat out there.
- Location
- Cyberpunk capital of the world
I was thinking going by existing references, she looks like the new Daoying unit for Yu Jing in Infinity.
It lacks fanservice, therefore it doesn't have mass demographic appeal, therefore you are objectively wrong.
She is much more likely to be 2B!
