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TypoNinja said:
That's like asking a rat what its favorite sci fi author is.

They don't understand. That's the point. "Conflict" won't even be something that maps, they don't think like us, they don't understand our thoughts, our motivations, nodda. If they could they wouldn't need us.

Their manipulation of us as hosts will be entirely A does B. Poke this hormone, host does this.

Pushing for conflict will work in general, because as a species we generally bring whatever we have to bear on any given problem in front of us. But that's in general. The shards aren't going to be specifically seeking conflict anymore than they are specifically seeking mint chocolate chip ice cream. The goal is [DATA].

People who don't use their powers start going stir crazy, and get the urge to go out and use them. If your name is Hookwolf that means picking a fight. If your name is Armsmaster that means building something.

Combat capes are the flashiest, but Tinkers go fugue. The goal is to get the power used. A precog like Contessa will have the urge to plan something, the more complex the better. Thinkers like Tattletale will have the urge to drag obscure conclusions out of limited data sets.
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You're making an assumption that the shards are completely logical in their behavior, while the Canon of the matter is that shards have their orders from the Entities: Spark conflict, conflict generates Data. Mauling Snarks has the usage drive rather than a conflict drive, while we have blatantly seen that the conflict drive is present in even Cauldron capes in DLfFaP, due to Alexandria's aberrant and obsessive behavior.
 
From my understanding shards are basically a physical representation of an evolutionary algorithm. They mostly aren't intelligent at all they simply perform a task and report the results to a higher order shard or entity, they insert minor variations into how they operate and of course reality will also intrude and this is enough to ensure that each "run" is different enough to produce valid "data".

Of course if they actually wanted to do evolutionary algorithms right they'd have given lots and lots of people similar powers with very slight differences and then culled the variants that didn't produce before seeding the next generation. It would have taken several hundred years (you'd probably want to do at least 20 generations) to do a proper run-through of a single power and you might get only a slight improvement but it would be very nearly guaranteed.

What the entities are actually doing though is throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, it might look superficially like science but since each power is unique and each recipient is unique what they actually have is a mess that through pure luck maybe once in a blue moon produces a better use of a power.

If I were these entities I'd copy every person on the planet onto other versions of Earth a couple of billion times and have the same people in each reality receive the same powers with slight differences. Maybe give a few million Taylors the exact same power just to see what random chance would produce so that I could filter it out of the data received from all the power variant trials. Lots of repetition is the basis of good bioscience since you really don't know how a chaotic system will progress unless you can control all the variables.
 
Archeo Lumiere said:
You're making an assumption that the shards are completely logical in their behavior, while the Canon of the matter is that shards have their orders from the Entities: Spark conflict, conflict generates Data. Mauling Snarks has the usage drive rather than a conflict drive, while we have blatantly seen that the conflict drive is present in even Cauldron capes in DLfFaP, due to Alexandria's aberrant and obsessive behavior.
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We have blatently seen that the conflict drive was present, even in Cauldron capes, because we heard Taylor talk about how she turned it off.

mp3.1415player said:
"OK, then. Let's see… We've disabled that stupid conflict drive, locked out the undeployed test units, and put the deployed ones into standby… What's next that's really urgent?" she murmured, pulling up a log file and inspecting it. "Don't want to interfere too much all at once or the prime node might notice, and I'm not quite ready to risk that… Hmm…" She poked around in the data that Admin had so far given her, much of which was somewhat worrying at best.
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Given Alexandria's subsequent escalation, it seems that the the conflict drive was holding her back — you can't get much useful [DATA] from a Scorched Earth scenario, after all.
 
Let's say that Rebecca is, powers or not, a massive control freak that makes Carol Dallon look positively laid back. And this has been severely reinforced over the years because she always ended up getting her way whether anyone else liked it or not.

This combination isn't one that leads to a well adjusted personality... Her Cape name should probably be MegaKaren The Annoying.

;)
 
Vyrexuviel said:
SHHHH! She said not to talk about that! >O.O< *looks warily around for Sauriel*
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"Ahem."

Looking up at the sound of the rather deep voice, you find yourself nose-to-nose with a very large copper dragon, somehow hanging upside down from your ceiling, and still having room for you to walk underneath them, and not have your ceiling collapse under the load of what has to be decade multiples of tons.

"No ceiling lizards here," the dragon states with a snicker. "Will a ceiling dragon do?"

Taking a moment to facepalm, and the massage some of the stress away, you ask "If I ignore you, will you go away?"

"Maybe. I could just turn invisible and keep watching you."

Pausing for a moment, you sigh. "I wish the world still made some sense," you mutter. "Please go away, you silly creature."

"Awww." With that, the enormous dragon slowly fades from sight.

"Been up way too long, I need some sleep."
 
Archeo Lumiere said:
... So you're agreeing with me?
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I'm agreeing with your conclusion ("conflict drive present"), but not the reasoning you used to get there ("Alexandria having a large redwood up her backside")

Example: Simplifying the fraction 49​/98​ can be done, erroneously, by cancelling the 9s (49​/98​) to arrive at the correct answer, 4​/8​. However, trying the same thing on 42​/54​ would give 2​/5​, rather than the correct answer, 7​/9​.

(These are known as "Digit Cancelling Fractions")
 
Archeo Lumiere said:
You're making an assumption that the shards are completely logical in their behavior
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Of course they are. They don't know how to be anything else.

Their lack of ability to innovate on their own is why they need us. If they were the slightest bit creative they wouldn't need a host species.

They run on rules, and priority trees. Everything will be Action to Goal decisions. Generate conflict to promote DATA.

But direct combat will be actively hazardous to certain kinds of data gathering. Sure your Brutes and Blasters getting into scrapes is ideal, but you don't want your squishy thinkers turned inside out by an angry brute. A thinker with the same urge to get into fist fights that Lung has will be a thinker that stops providing you with data very quickly. Generalized conflict means your thinkers will end up in somebody's planning department and then start producing you data, but you don't want that thinker on the front lines.

Coil hides in his bunker behind lots of mercs, but he uses and abuses his power. He's doing what his shard wants. Challenging Glory Girl to an arm wrestling competition doesn't figure into it.

People keep equating 'conflict' with 'fight' when that's not the case. We're having a conflict right now, and its generating data to an outside user. It's a Thinker Fight. We're looking at incomplete data sets and drawing conclusions.

I'm looking at Shard goals and saying what their operating methods would be based on reaching those goals. It's exactly what they want, because if I think up something they aren't doing, they can then test my idea to see if they should be doing it. I'm the creative problem solving ability they don't have.
 
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mp3.1415player said:
"Think! Think! Think!"

"The first rule of Think Club is...?"
"Ah. Yes. I see. And the other sixteen too. Sorry."

:D
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Two thinkers step into a ring together, the lights focused on them, the crowd surrounding them is dim and quiet.

They glare at each other a moment, one twitches, the other raises an eyebrow, the first snorts and the second one removes a five dollar bill from a pocket. The lights come back on as he speaks. "First beers on me. Find a table."
 
Jormuungaand said:
I'm not watching you. Ceiling Lizard is watching you. He told us.
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Aha! I will find it and skin it and make boots out of it!
...BEFORE it dies!
Vyrexuviel said:
SHHHH! She said not to talk about that! >O.O< *looks warily around for Sauriel*
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I. WILL. FIND. YOU.
Kryslin said:
"Ahem."

Looking up at the sound of the rather deep voice, you find yourself nose-to-nose with a very large copper dragon, somehow hanging upside down from your ceiling, and still having room for you to walk underneath them, and not have your ceiling collapse under the load of what has to be decade multiples of tons.

"No ceiling lizards here," the dragon states with a snicker. "Will a ceiling dragon do?"

Taking a moment to facepalm, and the massage some of the stress away, you ask "If I ignore you, will you go away?"

"Maybe. I could just turn invisible and keep watching you."

Pausing for a moment, you sigh. "I wish the world still made some sense," you mutter. "Please go away, you silly creature."

"Awww." With that, the enormous dragon slowly fades from sight.

"Been up way too long, I need some sleep."
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See, that what the ceiling lizard/dragon want you to think happens! In reality, they just sit somewheres else and keep recording.....

Edit spelling
 
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Amdar210 said:
I. WILL. FIND. YOU.
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Ahem.

*the two huge suns in the distance blink at Amdar, followed by a constellation opening wide beneath them, outlining a wide, toothy grin.*

{Post-Posting EDIT: Methinks this one is unfamiliar with Taylor Varga. I recommend a read. It takes about a week or so, what with sleeping and work and eating to get in the way. And then you have the -sidestories-....}
 
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Jacen1 said:
You do know our Ceiling Lizards are humanoid, start at over six feet tall, and are tough enough that any man-made skinning knife will not even manage to give them a paper cut, right?
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I. WILL. STILL. TRY! VICTORY OR VICTORY! THERE IS NO DEFEAT!
Vyrexuviel said:
Ahem.

*the two huge suns in the distance blink at Amdar, followed by a constellation opening wide beneath them, outlining a wide, toothy grin.*

{Post-Posting EDIT: Methinks this one is unfamiliar with Taylor Varga. I recommend a read. It takes about a week or so, what with sleeping and work and eating to get in the way. And then you have the -sidestories-....}
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....
....
.... Shiny....
.... I'ma gonna need a bigger net!
*Scampers to the G.I. Joe surplus down the street*
Be right back!
 
TypoNinja said:
Coil hides in his bunker behind lots of mercs, but he uses and abuses his power.
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You mean the sleazeball that kidnapped and drugged Dinah, kept Noelle in his basement, and wanted as many things under his control as possible? I'm not disagreeing that certain Capes don't get into direct fights, but I am saying that they do things that generate more conflict of the stereotypical variety for other capes.
 
Hell, even Tattletale routinely engages in activities which are incredibly stupid. Things like mouthing off to Glory Girl and threatening to expose New Wave's dirty laundry. Smart money when in that situation would be to either surrender immediately or skedaddle. It would not be "mouth off to the teen that is seconds away from putting her fist through your head while threatening the nutbar's sister".
 
mp3.1415player said:
Thinking what he'd said over, Emily finally nodded. Writing a short paragraph on the relevant page, she closed her folder. "Ensure that we're keeping an eye open just in case someone decides to do something spectacularly stupid and we can get to them before the Marines take them out, because that would be embarrassing if nothing else. But other than that we'll stay well out of it. I don't have any inclination at all to borrow trouble." No one seemed inclined to disagree, she saw, so she added as she stood up, "Thank you, everyone. Dismissed."
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You know, Piggot really missed out on a perfect chance to build up some goodwill between her people and DARPA, here. And that's something that'd be very important to her, considering how DARPA appears to have turned her backyard into their backyard.

She should've sent along their info to DARPA, making sure that they got it. Does she assume they already have the information through other sources? Of course she does. They've already shown that they can, multiple times previously. It's still polite, and professional, to make sure your neighbors know that there might be a problem they need to look out for. Just in case.

FaerieKnight79 said:
Hell, even Tattletale routinely engages in activities which are incredibly stupid. Things like mouthing off to Glory Girl and threatening to expose New Wave's dirty laundry. Smart money when in that situation would be to either surrender immediately or skedaddle. It would not be "mouth off to the teen that is seconds away from putting her fist through your head while threatening the nutbar's sister".
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To be fair to Lisa regarding that specific situation... as far as she knows, capture will end in her being quietly "disappeared" by Coil. If we fans can think up the possibility so easily, then she would be able to, as well.

Now, if you had brought up her mouthing off to Jack Slash, on the other hand... I might have to agree with you. But she was fucked there no matter what she did, so it's still a little iffy. That could've just been her not wanting to die without insulting the bastard first, out of spite.
 
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FaerieKnight79 said:
Hell, even Tattletale routinely engages in activities which are incredibly stupid. Things like mouthing off to Glory Girl and threatening to expose New Wave's dirty laundry. Smart money when in that situation would be to either surrender immediately or skedaddle. It would not be "mouth off to the teen that is seconds away from putting her fist through your head while threatening the nutbar's sister".
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Teenagers making poor decisions? That never happens.

We can't blame shards for all the stupidity. Also gotta remember that literally every single one of these people are traumatized teenagers. By definition, none of these people are well adjusted.
 
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