Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest

What sort of tone should I shoot for with this Quest?

  • Go as crack fueled as you can we want Ambush Bug, Snowflame and Duckseid

    Votes: 30 7.7%
  • Go for something silly but keep a little bit of reason

    Votes: 31 7.9%
  • Adam West Camp

    Votes: 27 6.9%
  • Balanced as all things should be

    Votes: 195 50.0%
  • Mostly serious but not self-involvedly so

    Votes: 73 18.7%
  • Dark and brooding but with light at the end of the tunnel

    Votes: 12 3.1%
  • We're evil and we don't want anyone to be happy

    Votes: 22 5.6%

  • Total voters
    390
  • Poll closed .
Oh yeah, I already edited that in Neg.

But as of when I first drafted the plan, I hadn't even read that snazzy write-in option.

Aaaanyway. Comparison!



OK, so the differences between "Not Glamorous, But Effective" and "Maximum Spy, Expo, X-osuit" are as follows:

I'm allowing non-LexCorp events. This is because I want Lexpo to be BIG, and I want to network as much as possible with it. It will also make it look less like a colossal monument to our ego, which makes it more effective as a colossal monument to our ego.

I'm demonstrating an exosuit because I want to put "LexCorp makes power armor" firmly in the minds of the public.

I'm showing off our service robots. We want those to go mass-market soon.

I'm encouraging presentations by prominent individuals, showing off some of our new weapons (in addition to the exosuit), and a lot more of our advanced tech, such as our 3-D printers, our tractor/pressor beams and holograms, and our subatomic imaging.

I am NOT showing off our AI because I'm worried about weirding people out; it's still kind of glitchy.

I'm having Lex give a speech; this may be redundant with "Have Lex Luthor speak," which IS in @KnowledgeKing 's plan. Not sure. I'm doing (reasonable) product giveaways.

Aaand the tickets. Basically, @KnowledgeKing is using an older version of the same basic approach as mine; I won't criticize it. I approve of free tickets for employees; that was a nice touch.

Now, as for the drones. Um.



Basically, my Drone 1 is a more or less realistic version of the real US Air Force's Predator drone. It's slow-flying, but high-flying to keep it out of the effective range of AA guns and shoulder-fired surface to air missiles. It's long-ranged- probably even more so than the real life Predator because of kryptonite batteries. It can be armed with Hellfire missiles or the like. It takes pictures and video, and has an infrared camera. It's not stealthy, but it isn't really intended to be.

My Drone 2, the 'Butterfly,' is a small palm-sized infiltration drone for spying on people. It's got urban camouflage (I figure it's small enough that in most wilderness areas it'll be hard to spot even without camo), but its main virtue is that it can give us real-time streaming video from anywhere we can fit it... and because it's so smol, we can fit it a LOT of places.

@KnowledgeKing did things a little differently.

His Drone 2 is a pretty straightforward low-end flying killbot with a camo scheme, weapons attachment, and voice command functionality. Mainly useful for killing things IMO.

His Drone 1 has a lot more trimmings. It's got all sorts of camo and is disguised as a bird apparently, probably a big one since it's like a foot across, it's got camera systems as good or better than my 'Predator,' it's got radar stealth, high flying speed, and a suicide detonation charge if we feel like blowing it up. Or, I suppose, using it as a long-range guided missile and going all Abqaiq on someone.

Honestly I don't have a good feeling about these designs. These are to some extent fighting drones, not spy drones, and they make some design compromises accordingly. We picked the 'spy drones' option to increase our Intrigue capabilities and surveillance. Personally, I'm trying to optimize my drones accordingly while avoiding any unnecessary 'bells and whistles' not directly related to the mission of the drones.

My Drone 1 is for when we don't really need to hide what we're doing- we can just legally overfly something, or we're operating in a part of the world where no one can really stop us except by shooting down the drone. My Drone 2 is a 'spy drone' in the classic sense, something that can get into a crawl-space and spy on everything that happens around it. I wish I could add a few more surveillance features to the 'Butterfly,' honestly, but I hesitate to give up the weapon mount or IR cameras on the 'Predator,' which is about all that's left to cut.



That leaves us comparing the exosuits. My 'Myrmidon' exosuit is modified with a variety of weapons (though I thought we already had the shoulder-mounted laser, @King crimson ). This includes surface to air and (presumably) surface to surface missiles, flamethrowers, blades for close-in work if applicable, along with upgrades to maneuverability and (importantly) a GPS system.

This is something we can probably market to the military, either as a complement or a competitor to STRIPE. It's got a lot of customizability in terms of weapons loadout, it's well suited to fighting enemy vehicles or blasting troops out of fortified positions, and it has the ability to respond effectively if it's attacked from the air.

@KnowledgeKing took a different approach.

His suits are physically faster (not an area I saw fit to upgrade since I don't see that as very useful for either urban environments or the military's likely roles for the suit in the near future).

They have "extra automated arm attachments" and honestly I'm not even sure what that does @King crimson , could you enlighten us?

They have tractor/pressor beam capability, which is cool. I steered clear of that because we haven't really developed that tech much and I'm hesitant to integrate it into our suits until we've worked with it more. Also because of the 11-point cost, for which I could snag, for example, surface to air missile batteries AND a GPS system.

His suits might well be better suited for fighting a lot of kinds of metahumans, depending on what goes into those arm attachments.

The one thing I question is the 'remote detonation.' I don't think it's worth spending points just to install a suicide bomb into our armor suits.
I believe the remote detonations are to make sure that our tech can't be used against us in a IronMan2 way and also to keep the drone's from being hacked so to speak, since his plan has the drone's linked to a central drone base. Last thing we need is someone entering it and infiltrating through an unknown backdoor.
 
@King crimson thank you. I'll include some of the clarifications on some of the options I wrote. Note: This turned out to be longer than I would have thought.

Modular weapons can mean a few things to me that may each be their own category. Either folding weapons like in Mass Effect, or mechashift weapons like in RWBY (everything turns into a gun), or configuarable weapons like in Fallout 4 (the example being the pipe gun that can become a handgun, sniper rifle, automatic weapon, etc depending on what attachments are added, same with laser weapons). I'm focusing more on the last one, but folding weapons could have a market, mechashift I think is a bit out there but it might get a niche consumer group.

I brought up Simon Trent because first "Beware the Grey Ghost" is my all time favorite episode of that particular series, second I'm wondering if there would be a way to incorporate the Grey Ghost with our shows (have Bruce Wayne watch it with Dick Grayson, while having to deal with Lex being responsible for bringing back his childhood show), and third if it could be used to create an actual Grey Ghost themed hero that we use as a mascot/actual hero unit. The Grey Ghost was being shown in theaters during the time Terry McGinnis was a child.

Shadows is a bit tricky, I can't really put into words without either saying the "Void" or Shade's ability with darkness and shadow. Less as the opposite or result of light, more of it being its own thing, a portal to connect to other shadows, or the devouring of light. Not something we've encountered yet but it exists I'd think.

The tournament is just us having a competition that we sponsor, maybe give out a prize, and maybe get some free research or ideas from observing the proceedings. We could have a fighting robot tournament, maybe get some ideas for our robots or drones, approach the winner to buy their design or give them a job, get some PR out of it. Doesn't need to be strictly robots but its what we have available (not like we can have a "create a genetically modified pet/plant" contest)

For the plastics and aerogel good to know they exist under chemistry, we may need that to lower some DCs later, but can we learn about pollutants in general? Like how it affects the environments/humans and try to reverse it? Might just be a dead action though, but Pamela might like it.

Lucid dreaming I understand why it is rejected, but what about ways to influence people's dreams, either through hypnosis or subliminal messaging? As for why I brought it up in general, I don't think John Dee is active as Doctor Destiny but I both want a defense against what he can do and maybe be able to use it against our enemies. He was a low-level LexCorp employee.

For rituals and projections, I figured they'd fall under magic, but I think they need sub-classifications later on. Kind of how biology, plants, and genetics are all about "life" but separate enough to warrant their own options. But we need to first take a few actions to actually learn more about magic in general I'd wager.


Some things I just wanted to ask, because I'm curious, but I understand if you can't answer:
1. DOMA knows about magic, gonna assume ARGUS knows about magic since they split from the same organization, does General Eiling know about magic? Like they are all government entities, and he didn't like the DEO, but I'm wondering if he was aware of what they were containing. If he did know about magic he might want to know how it could help his troops, he just can't bring up the subject around Lex because he doesn't know Lex knows, and I don't know how he'd react if we bring it up.

2. With the League of Shadows, where exactly are we with that? Like we are not allies with Ra's anymore, but we're also not enemies, so are we back to neutral, can we work with Talia again or are they going to give us the cold shoulder if we try to reach out? I get that to Ra's we weren't the best allies, but does he expect us to apologize or reach out, or has he just shrugged and that's it. I don't think he'd hold a grudge over it, but just trying to stay good on this.

3. Who is a higher rank, General Eiling or General Lane? The wiki doesn't ever say. May affect our interactions with them, I'm sure they've met and worked with each other before. Being good with Eiling could be a benefit or a hindrance depending on if they have a rivalry. Comics in general give a person a rank or title like general or commander without establishing the chain of command and where they fit in. It would piss Lois off something fierce if we have those two on our side.

4. Has there in general been any group or individual that has rolled higher than 500? Just trying to picture what would happen when you do that roll and just see that ridiculous number, or what is the highest roll total you've seen in this quest.

Thank you again :D
All of the things you described for modular weapons fall under improving weapons. I can decouple it if you are dead set on having the option.

There is a way to incorporate Simon Trent into stuff but it's a little more complicated than just directly hiring him. He's kind of happy where he is for now so the Grey Ghost won't be coming out of retirement too soon.

What you call Shadows is based on what you described either magic or tapping into the energies of the Shadowlands. Both require more study before you can get to it.

There should be a few go green options that cover pollutants.

The tournament write-in was accepted.

There is no real counter to Dr. Destiny's powers beyond simply not sleeping. His power is derived from an Endless' (he's using Dream's Materioptikon or Dreamstone). Unless you are at an Endless' level of power you can't countermand or brute force it. You can work around it because at the end of the day John Dee is mortal and so his use of this immense power is fairly restricted but you cannot beat it by fighting it head on. As for replicating it, you need to get your hands on the Materioptikon to do so. There will be other ways to influence dreaming (either through learning about magic, learning about psychology or learning about the brain).

They'll get subclassifications much like wards did once you unlocked them. The thing is you need to unlock them first.

As for your questions, I can answer them.

Eiling knows of magic but doesn't know any real specifics and is uninterested in it due to the immense difficulty in mass producing, teaching or replicatign it. He sticks to superscience which is more consistently useful for his purposes. ARGUS is aware of magic and has magic users on its payroll. Eiling is unaware of the specifics of what the DEO dealt in and he finds magic to be ultimately unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

You're back to neutral. Ra's respects you and admires your vision but ultimately thinks those very same traits that are admirable about you make it impossible to team up with you in times of peace since you'll inevitably come into conflict with each other struggling for dominance. He won't say no to any communication and he won't give you the cold shoulder but on the other hand he won't explicitly team up with you again unless he feels he has a mutual opponent he shares with you. He'll remain polite and cordial but he won't go out of his way to help you if he doesn't gain something by it as well. Ra's doesn't expect you to apologize nor does he want you to. He has ultimately concluded that men of vision rarely can coexist and while he feels its a shame you can't work together he doesn't hold a grudge or any sore feelings against you and is content to let you act freely so long as you don't interfere with his plans. In other words Ra's likes you as a person, but feels your organizations goals conflict with his own and as such doesn't think working with you is a going to help him in achieving his goals and is if anything only going to get in the way of them despite him not holding any hostility to you personally. You can try your luck and as long as it doesn't seem to be a trap or conflict with his goals, Ra's will certainly consider any deals you try to strike with him.

Eiling and Lane have the same rank but Eiling's star is on the rise while Lane's is on the decline. Eiling also has much greater ambitions and political connections than Lane and while they don't always like each other they get along well enough most of the time and are nominally allies that cooperate with each other (Lane is far more of a "my master right or wrong" type while Eiling actively goes out of his way to foster and gather power for himself but they hold very similar political views despite this).

Yes there have been rolls over 500. The highest final roll total ever to occur in quest was 859 although the actual gap between it and the DC was closer to 450 or so. Keep in mind that I'm discounting rolls by Gods and Lords of Order/Chaos and such that regularly roll stupid high but usually get blocked by another entity reducing the final result of their rolls to a more reasonable number. Darkseid for example has not had a single roll below 100 but on the other hand neither has Highfather and the two balance each other out.
Using the funeral of an employee we killed to shore up the loyalty of his friend and one of his coworkers was delightfully villainous. Top moment that I can think of off the top of my head.

The whole early Pamela business and Cassandra in general are things I like but can't point to a specific high point for.

I liked our working relationship with the League of Shadows while it lasted, and am enjoying the kind of pragmatic amicable mistrust we're building with DOMA. Light grey agency head Diana Prince is neat.
I'm glad you enjoyed these things. Pamela and Cassandra I think are some of the highlights of what make this Lex unique and the funeral was fun to write.

I'm also glad that you are enjoying the DOMA stuff since if anything that will probably be brought into more focus with the arrival of Superman. Plus Ra's and the League of Shadows can pop back up again in the future once you have a mutual enemy again.
(though I thought we already had the shoulder-mounted laser, @King crimson )
For the basic units but the custom models need to choose whether or not to have that or another armament in its place or even nothing so that it looks less threatening.
They have "extra automated arm attachments" and honestly I'm not even sure what that does @King crimson , could you enlighten us?
A pair of extra arms whose motions are controlled via automation of a simple computer commands like "pick up marked target" "strike marked target with fist" fire at positions marked in HUD" mimic what actual arms are doing" "block projectiles moving over a set speed" and more. Basically extra arms in the suit that can be used to multitask although they tend not to be quite as effective as the more intuitively controlled arms of the suits. Does that explain things?
 
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I believe the remote detonations are to make sure that our tech can't be used against us in a IronMan2 way and also to keep the drone's from being hacked so to speak, since his plan has the drone's linked to a central drone base. Last thing we need is someone entering it and infiltrating through an unknown backdoor.
A drone self-destruct is fine, but Exosuits are meant to be piloted from the inside like Iron Man 1. If we have to keep hackers from controlling them remotely, we've got bigger problems. Also, remote detonation means they can be detonated remotely, which would be nearly as bad of a look.

[X] Plan Not Glamorous, But Effective
 
Oh yeah, I already edited that in Neg.

But as of when I first drafted the plan, I hadn't even read that snazzy write-in option.

Aaaanyway. Comparison!



OK, so the differences between "Not Glamorous, But Effective" and "Maximum Spy, Expo, X-osuit" are as follows:

I'm allowing non-LexCorp events. This is because I want Lexpo to be BIG, and I want to network as much as possible with it. It will also make it look less like a colossal monument to our ego, which makes it more effective as a colossal monument to our ego.

I'm demonstrating an exosuit because I want to put "LexCorp makes power armor" firmly in the minds of the public.

I'm showing off our service robots. We want those to go mass-market soon.

I'm encouraging presentations by prominent individuals, showing off some of our new weapons (in addition to the exosuit), and a lot more of our advanced tech, such as our 3-D printers, our tractor/pressor beams and holograms, and our subatomic imaging.

I am NOT showing off our AI because I'm worried about weirding people out; it's still kind of glitchy.

I'm having Lex give a speech; this may be redundant with "Have Lex Luthor speak," which IS in @KnowledgeKing 's plan. Not sure. I'm doing (reasonable) product giveaways.

Aaand the tickets. Basically, @KnowledgeKing is using an older version of the same basic approach as mine; I won't criticize it. I approve of free tickets for employees; that was a nice touch.

Now, as for the drones. Um.



Basically, my Drone 1 is a more or less realistic version of the real US Air Force's Predator drone. It's slow-flying, but high-flying to keep it out of the effective range of AA guns and shoulder-fired surface to air missiles. It's long-ranged- probably even more so than the real life Predator because of kryptonite batteries. It can be armed with Hellfire missiles or the like. It takes pictures and video, and has an infrared camera. It's not stealthy, but it isn't really intended to be.

My Drone 2, the 'Butterfly,' is a small palm-sized infiltration drone for spying on people. It's got urban camouflage (I figure it's small enough that in most wilderness areas it'll be hard to spot even without camo), but its main virtue is that it can give us real-time streaming video from anywhere we can fit it... and because it's so smol, we can fit it a LOT of places.

@KnowledgeKing did things a little differently.

His Drone 2 is a pretty straightforward low-end flying killbot with a camo scheme, weapons attachment, and voice command functionality. Mainly useful for killing things IMO.

His Drone 1 has a lot more trimmings. It's got all sorts of camo and is disguised as a bird apparently, probably a big one since it's like a foot across, it's got camera systems as good or better than my 'Predator,' it's got radar stealth, high flying speed, and a suicide detonation charge if we feel like blowing it up. Or, I suppose, using it as a long-range guided missile and going all Abqaiq on someone.

Honestly I don't have a good feeling about these designs. These are to some extent fighting drones, not spy drones, and they make some design compromises accordingly. We picked the 'spy drones' option to increase our Intrigue capabilities and surveillance. Personally, I'm trying to optimize my drones accordingly while avoiding any unnecessary 'bells and whistles' not directly related to the mission of the drones.

My Drone 1 is for when we don't really need to hide what we're doing- we can just legally overfly something, or we're operating in a part of the world where no one can really stop us except by shooting down the drone. My Drone 2 is a 'spy drone' in the classic sense, something that can get into a crawl-space and spy on everything that happens around it. I wish I could add a few more surveillance features to the 'Butterfly,' honestly, but I hesitate to give up the weapon mount or IR cameras on the 'Predator,' which is about all that's left to cut.



That leaves us comparing the exosuits. My 'Myrmidon' exosuit is modified with a variety of weapons (though I thought we already had the shoulder-mounted laser, @King crimson ). This includes surface to air and (presumably) surface to surface missiles, flamethrowers, blades for close-in work if applicable, along with upgrades to maneuverability and (importantly) a GPS system.

This is something we can probably market to the military, either as a complement or a competitor to STRIPE. It's got a lot of customizability in terms of weapons loadout, it's well suited to fighting enemy vehicles or blasting troops out of fortified positions, and it has the ability to respond effectively if it's attacked from the air.

@KnowledgeKing took a different approach.

His suits are physically faster (not an area I saw fit to upgrade since I don't see that as very useful for either urban environments or the military's likely roles for the suit in the near future).

They have "extra automated arm attachments" and honestly I'm not even sure what that does @King crimson , could you enlighten us?

They have tractor/pressor beam capability, which is cool. I steered clear of that because we haven't really developed that tech much and I'm hesitant to integrate it into our suits until we've worked with it more. Also because of the 11-point cost, for which I could snag, for example, surface to air missile batteries AND a GPS system.

His suits might well be better suited for fighting a lot of kinds of metahumans, depending on what goes into those arm attachments.

The one thing I question is the 'remote detonation.' I don't think it's worth spending points just to install a suicide bomb into our armor suits.


Well to do it quickly.

1. Not allowing others because it doesn't contribute to us in any way. We're already the largest company and other exhibits only distract from us.

2. I DON'T want exosuits being associated with us, as I don't plan to sell them. That should be in house. I don't plan to show off weapons at all. This is public friendly only.

3. I'm showing off the products we want to succeed.

Drones:

1. I wanted one drone made for ultimate surveillance and stealth. The other is just weapons because that's needed in case of attack. Two separate drones doing the same thing is useless IMO.

My bird drone is for ultimate stealth WHILE doing surveillance. Watching people who know they're being watched is useless. When they don't see you watching them is when it works well.

My drone 1 is the definition of a top notch surveillance drone and has nothing to do with fighting. It can only self destruct to keep it out of enemy hands/keep us from being incriminated.

Exosuits:

1. Speed is obvious, it allows no escape for the enemy, and easy chases. Plus an easy escape for us.

2. The automated arms means the user doesn't have to focus on weaponry, it automatically backs him up. Making fighting one of our exosuit users very difficult.

3. Tractor Beam is something different and it allows for easy capture, which we often have to do. Weaponry's covered by the automated arms.

4. Self destruct is again, to make sure no one can study it and incriminate us or steal our secrets.

@Simon_Jester
 
A drone self-destruct is fine, but Exosuits are meant to be piloted from the inside like Iron Man 1. If we have to keep hackers from controlling them remotely, we've got bigger problems. Also, remote detonation means they can be detonated remotely, which would be nearly as bad of a look.

[X] Plan Not Glamorous, But Effective
I don't get the last part? Remote detonation allows us to have it detonated when the person in side the suit has been removed or killed, and for the drones to not be a problem. How is that bad?
 
Eiling and Lane have the same rank but Eiling's star is on the rise while Lane's is on the decline. Eiling also has much greater ambitions and political connections than Lane and while they don't always like each other they get along well enough most of the time and are nominally allies that cooperate with each other (Lane is far more of a "my master right or wrong" type while Eiling actively goes out of his way to foster and gather power for himself but they hold very similar political views despite this).
Ah. Excellent. We can help boost Lane's career as well. It's better to have more friends and we can help ease the tensions between them as allies.
 
I believe the remote detonations are to make sure that our tech can't be used against us in a IronMan2 way and also to keep the drone's from being hacked so to speak, since his plan has the drone's linked to a central drone base. Last thing we need is someone entering it and infiltrating through an unknown backdoor.
Detonators on the drone kind of make sense, among other things because they do let us use the drones as a sort of weird improvised stealthy missile (if the remote detonator is big enough). Detonators in the power armor, I don't agree with, because:

1) Unlike @KnowledgeKing , I have every intention of making this armor marketable, and the US military probably isn't going to be too keen on having self-destruct bombs built into its fighting vehicles. That's not something the military normally does in real life. There's always risk of the self-destruct malfunctioning and blowing up the vehicle, even without the possibility of hackers or (more exotically in the DCU) weird technopathic metahumans.

2) I don't consider "preserving our secrets" to be quite so paramount because I fully expect to continue developing better and better tech and rapidly outpacing developments. We're a weapons manufacturer, we make weapons. Occasionally someone will steal some of our tech. It's gonna happen. Our best bet to avoid it is to fight well and not dangle out individual armor operators where our enemies can easily disable them.

There is no real counter to Dr. Destiny's powers beyond simply not sleeping. His power is derived from an Endless' (he's using Dream's Materioptikon or Dreamstone). Unless you are at an Endless' level of power you can't countermand or brute force it.
On the other hand, as soon as Morpheus breaks containment, Dr. Destiny is probably toast, so at least it's a self-limiting problem as long as John Dee doesn't actively destroy the world or something.

He has ultimately concluded that men of vision rarely can coexist and while he feels its a shame you can't work together he doesn't hold a grudge or any sore feelings against you and is content to let you act freely so long as you don't interfere with his plans. In other words Ra's likes you as a person, but feels your organizations goals conflict with his own and as such doesn't think working with you is a going to help him in achieving his goals and is if anything only going to get in the way of them despite him not holding any hostility to you personally. You can try your luck and as long as it doesn't seem to be a trap or conflict with his goals, Ra's will certainly consider any deals you try to strike with him.
Well, it might be worth doing him a favor or two just to stay on his good side, since he does have the power to significantly complicate our operations... but on the other hand, yeah. I think his analysis is essentially correct and we should probably feel about the same way about him.

Yes there have been rolls over 500. The highest final roll total ever to occur in quest was 859 although the actual gap between it and the DC was closer to 450 or so.
The hilarious part is, you're almost certainly never going to tell us what that roll was because no matter what it was, it was a spoiler. :p

Like, seriously, even if it was something like "a child goes to school" and somehow it critted absurdly beyond all measure or reason, the sheer massive margin of success would probably be indirectly universe-shaking somehow.

A pair of extra arms whose motions are controlled via automation of a simple computer commands like "pick up marked target" "strike marked target with fist" fire at positions marked in HUD" mimic what actual arms are doing" "block projectiles moving over a set speed" and more. Basically extra arms in the suit that can be used to multitask although they tend not to be quite as effective as the more intuitively controlled arms of the suits. Does that explain things?
Hm. That's... actually pretty cool. I could plausibly be convinced to sacrifice some of the armament on my "Myrmidon" design in favor of it, though I'm not going to just up and do it.

[For anyone who's interested, my armor design is: ]

-[] LexCorp Land Systems Mark IV 'Myrmidon' Exosuit
--[] [Suit] Rocket launcher attachment (4 points)
--[] [Suit] Shoulder mounted laser cannon (5 points)
--[] [Suit] Increased flight maneuverability (7 points)
--[] [Suit] Rudimentary GPS (4 points)
--[] [Suit] Surface to air missile attachment (7 points)
--[] [Suit] Hidden wrist-mounted blades (2 points)
--[] [Suit] Flamethrower attachments (3 points)

I might, say, trade in the wrist blades, flamethrowers, and maneuverability for the extra arms.

@King crimson , are you open to a write-in option or two for 1 point on the Exosuit? Something relatively minor, maybe, like...

[] Pilot survival kit
-A bugout bag for the pilot, attached to the suit somewhere, so that if the armor is put out of action and the pilot has to get out, escape and evade, they can.

[] Pilot comfort upgrade
-Upgraded padding, air-conditioning, or other features that make it more comfortable to use the suits for sustained combat operations.

[] Built-in universal translator

[] External power plug
-The suit's kryptonite battery is wired to an external plug that allows military hardware to be plugged directly into it for electricity.

I'm hoping to find something that's only worth 1 point. Any of those features would make the armor more marketable (the Army would love an exosuit that doubles as, basically, a portable generator when not in use), but wouldn't hugely impact its direct combat performance.
 
Lex-Corp is a weapon manufacturor, why wouldnt we promote our avalaible weapons at show we are doing?

I just said. I DO NOT want to sell our exosuits. That's asking for trouble from anyone who decides we're an enemy or a problem. It's literally empowering our enemies.

I also said I don't to show off weapons for this one. This is just civilian stuff. Things we want to sell to the commonfolk.

EDIT: Imagine Apple showing off the iPhone, a new Apple clothing line, Apple TV, an iPad, some new programs/AI and...then also having their super explosive gun and their ultra anti-tank gun. In the same expo. It's weird as hell.

EDIT 2: If we're selling exosuits, can we agree to raise Lex's Martial? If not, like a handful of exosuit users could easily kill us.

@Simon_Jester
 
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Unlike @KnowledgeKing , I have every intention of making this armor marketable, and the US military probably isn't going to be too keen on having self-destruct bombs built into its fighting vehicles. That's not something the military normally does in real life. There's always risk of the self-destruct malfunctioning and blowing up the vehicle, even without the possibility of hackers or (more exotically in the DCU) weird technopathic metahumans.
... But why, fam?
I believe there is a reason in comics that Luthor and Stark never made their Warsuit and Iron Man Armor "marketable".

How long until someone re-engineers the tech from military side, third party or the US itself? Not long, I reckon.
 
@King crimson , are you open to a write-in option or two for 1 point on the Exosuit? Something relatively minor, maybe, like...

[] Pilot survival kit
-A bugout bag for the pilot, attached to the suit somewhere, so that if the armor is put out of action and the pilot has to get out, escape and evade, they can.

[] Pilot comfort upgrade
-Upgraded padding, air-conditioning, or other features that make it more comfortable to use the suits for sustained combat operations.

[] Built-in universal translator

[] External power plug
-The suit's kryptonite battery is wired to an external plug that allows military hardware to be plugged directly into it for electricity.
I'm very hesitant to throw in a write-in for this vote and am somewhat resistant. Like unless it is very, very good I'm going to not include it. All of the options you listed are good enough that they are certainly things you can get in upgrading the exosuits but aren't things I'm adding in to this specific subvote. All of these things will be available they just won't be now. A lot of the choices I made were to hopefully allow it to fulfill unique and distinct functions. The proposed write-ins are universally good and contradicted the design philosophy I was going with for this vote (let people develop a more specialized kind of exosuit). Is that fair? I'm aware that I'm a bit biased on this specific subject so if you think I'm being unreasonable about it call me out on it and elaborate why. I'll make my own argument for the position I'm holding and then hopefully a conclusion will be reached.

I'm a bit hesitant with this ruling because I don't want to cave on every little thing but on the other hand I don't want to be unreasonable and I'm self-aware enough that this is cutting it somewhat close. I think an open dialogue can help with this dilemma so talking about it would be helpful to sorting it out since I feel like its a very fine line and I could be making a mistake here.
 
[X] KnowledgeKing

Selling our weapons and suits would be stupid, let's not make an obviously poor decision.
 
I'm a little reluctant to throw away mobility in favor of even more offensive power for the exo-suits, personally. I like the wrist mounted blades as a close combat option, though I guess the suit is strong enough to simply crush and pulverize things as it is...
 
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I just said. I DO NOT want to sell our exosuits. That's asking for trouble from anyone who decides we're an enemy or a problem. It's literally empowering our enemies.

I also said I don't to show off weapons for this one. This is just civilian stuff. Things we want to sell to the commonfolk.
By that logic let's say someone comes up with the first laser gun, it's powerful more so then most guns currently around.

But the guy hoards it because he doesn't want his laser gun to possbile go to the enemy's hands.

Here's the thing, we hoard it or not eventually it'll get out, may as well sell now make connections and turn a profit and continue making bigger and better exo suits that we keep for ourselves and sell downgraded ones to others.
 
... But why, fam?
I believe there is a reason in comics that Luthor and Stark never made their Warsuit and Iron Man Armor "marketable".
Namely? I mean, again, making weapons for the US military is a big part of our schtick, and unlike Tony Stark we don't have some bizarre hangup against anyone buying and arming themselves with our tech, as long as they're on our side and potentially someone we can control.

How long until someone re-engineers the tech from military side, third party or the US itself? Not long, I reckon.
The US is already working on an exosuit project of its own (Project STRIPE). They need that to counter the Russians' own power armor advantage. What I want is for LexCorp to be an acknowledged supplier that can compete with Project STRIPE's product, profit hugely off the government's desire to have advanced power armor, and get lots of funding to develop sophisticated armor of our own.

Now, we can also work on super prototypes of our own that are superior to what the military has- no problem- but I don't want the government racing off in this direction without us. Especially since I have some ambitions of taking the 'President Luthor' path or otherwise having Lex gain control of the United States of America as part of our... midgame, I guess?

I just said. I DO NOT want to sell our exosuits. That's asking for trouble from anyone who decides we're an enemy or a problem. It's literally empowering our enemies.
...I don't see your logic here. We are known to be a weapons manufacturer supplying advanced weapons to the US military. This is common knowledge. LexCorp and its ancestor companies have been doing it for pretty much the entirety of American history.

EDIT: Imagine Apple showing off the iPhone, a new Apple clothing line, Apple TV, an iPad, some new programs/AI and...then also having their super explosive gun and their ultra anti-tank gun. In the same expo. It's weird as hell.
Apple doesn't make weapons and everyone knows this. LexCorp is not the same.

EDIT 2: If we're selling exosuits, can we agree to raise Lex's Martial? If not, like a handful of exosuit users could easily kill us.
Why are we MORE vulnerable to exosuit user attacks when our own exosuit tech is common knowledge? Ignition, a very powerful exosuit user, attacked us without any idea that we had exosuits of our own as far as I know.

Well to do it quickly.

1. Not allowing others because it doesn't contribute to us in any way. We're already the largest company and other exhibits only distract from us.

2. I DON'T want exosuits being associated with us, as I don't plan to sell them. That should be in house. I don't plan to show off weapons at all. This is public friendly only.

3. I'm showing off the products we want to succeed.
1) I think that this extremely clamped-down, fixed mindset that focuses only on LexCorp would make the Expo less of a success than it otherwise would have been. Also, it deprives us of the opportunity to network with other powerful corporate figures who may be useful allies. The world is not a zero-sum game and we cannot and should not strive to go it alone, even if we plan to eventually outshine and even dominate all others.

2) LexCorp is a known weapons manufacturer, widely known, with a long history of supplying the US military with high-tech weapons. Exosuits are 'cool' and known to the public as a scary foreign weapon that the US cannot match, so seeing an American company model something that at least superficially looks like it could equal what Ignition was using in terrorist attacks on this very city has a certain patriotic vibe to it.

3) Do you want our service robots and holograms to fail? Because you didn't show those off.

Drones:

1. I wanted one drone made for ultimate surveillance and stealth. The other is just weapons because that's needed in case of attack. Two separate drones doing the same thing is useless IMO.

My bird drone is for ultimate stealth WHILE doing surveillance. Watching people who know they're being watched is useless. When they don't see you watching them is when it works well.

My drone 1 is the definition of a top notch surveillance drone and has nothing to do with fighting. It can only self destruct to keep it out of enemy hands/keep us from being incriminated.
The catch is that "surveillance," "reconaissance," and "infiltration" aren't all exactly the same mission.

The perfect drone to track a single individual in a city or to maneuver into position to act as a spy camera and watch someone do something... Is just plain not the same drone as the perfect drone for flying around a large land area looking for hidden installations.

My 'Butterfly' drone is a small fraction the size of your "Drone 1," and can provide us with streaming video feed. It can hide in places where yours would basically just be a conspicuous giant eagle flying around or something. Meanwhile, my 'Predator' drone is less sophisticated than your 'Drone 1,' but still manages to have the core surveillance features and (like real Predator drones) the ability to blow shit up if chosen for the purpose.

Exosuits:

1. Speed is obvious, it allows no escape for the enemy, and easy chases. Plus an easy escape for us.
I think this is oversimplified. We have a lot of things we'll need the armor for besides speed, and straight-line speed is rarely easy to achieve in a built-up environment. A suit of armor that can run (or bound, or roll on rollerskates) at 300 km/h is useless if there are no roads or terrain features around that give us open lines of sight on which to achieve such speeds. And while our armor may have upgraded speed, it's not necessarily going to be able to outrun a supersonic jet or other dedicated aircraft.

2. The automated arms means the user doesn't have to focus on weaponry, it automatically backs him up. Making fighting one of our exosuit users very difficult.
I mean, in hand to hand, yes. But on the other hand, your suit relies on its fists for a lot of combat purposes as far as I can tell- well, except for tractor/pressor beams for ranged combat, I guess. Just having automated arms doesn't automatically confer superior combat performance; a two-armed man with a machine gun will usually defeat a four-armed man who fights with rocks or knives or his bare hands.

My 'Myrmidon' suits carry wrist-swords, flamethrowers, laser cannons, bazookas, and surface to air missiles. Your suits have none of those things, relying only on the extra arms and tractor beam for combat performance.

4. Self destruct is again, to make sure no one can study it and incriminate us or steal our secrets.
I consider this a bit counterproductive because it increases risk of accidentally detonating a suit and makes it harder for us to market the tech.

I don't get the last part? Remote detonation allows us to have it detonated when the person in side the suit has been removed or killed, and for the drones to not be a problem. How is that bad?
Even if no one can hack the suit, and no weird techopathic metahumans trigger the self-destruct mechanism by other means... Such mechanisms can simply fail. Someone can fuck up the software and have the "dispense coffee" button accidentally cross-wire to the "self-destruct" button when the suit is moving and the weapons targeting suite is active. Or some other weird combination of unexpected glitches.

Shit happens.
 
Namely? I mean, again, making weapons for the US military is a big part of our schtick, and unlike Tony Stark we don't have some bizarre hangup against anyone buying and arming themselves with our tech, as long as they're on our side and potentially someone we can control.

The US is already working on an exosuit project of its own (Project STRIPE). They need that to counter the Russians' own power armor advantage. What I want is for LexCorp to be an acknowledged supplier that can compete with Project STRIPE's product, profit hugely off the government's desire to have advanced power armor, and get lots of funding to develop sophisticated armor of our own.

Now, we can also work on super prototypes of our own that are superior to what the military has- no problem- but I don't want the government racing off in this direction without us. Especially since I have some ambitions of taking the 'President Luthor' path or otherwise having Lex gain control of the United States of America as part of our... midgame, I guess?

...I don't see your logic here. We are known to be a weapons manufacturer supplying advanced weapons to the US military. This is common knowledge. LexCorp and its ancestor companies have been doing it for pretty much the entirety of American history.

Apple doesn't make weapons and everyone knows this. LexCorp is not the same.

Why are we MORE vulnerable to exosuit user attacks when our own exosuit tech is common knowledge? Ignition, a very powerful exosuit user, attacked us without any idea that we had exosuits of our own as far as I know.

1) I think that this extremely clamped-down, fixed mindset that focuses only on LexCorp would make the Expo less of a success than it otherwise would have been. Also, it deprives us of the opportunity to network with other powerful corporate figures who may be useful allies. The world is not a zero-sum game and we cannot and should not strive to go it alone, even if we plan to eventually outshine and even dominate all others.

2) LexCorp is a known weapons manufacturer, widely known, with a long history of supplying the US military with high-tech weapons. Exosuits are 'cool' and known to the public as a scary foreign weapon that the US cannot match, so seeing an American company model something that at least superficially looks like it could equal what Ignition was using in terrorist attacks on this very city has a certain patriotic vibe to it.

3) Do you want our service robots and holograms to fail? Because you didn't show those off.

The catch is that "surveillance," "reconaissance," and "infiltration" aren't all exactly the same mission.

The perfect drone to track a single individual in a city or to maneuver into position to act as a spy camera and watch someone do something... Is just plain not the same drone as the perfect drone for flying around a large land area looking for hidden installations.

My 'Butterfly' drone is a small fraction the size of your "Drone 1," and can provide us with streaming video feed. It can hide in places where yours would basically just be a conspicuous giant eagle flying around or something. Meanwhile, my 'Predator' drone is less sophisticated than your 'Drone 1,' but still manages to have the core surveillance features and (like real Predator drones) the ability to blow shit up if chosen for the purpose.

I think this is oversimplified. We have a lot of things we'll need the armor for besides speed, and straight-line speed is rarely easy to achieve in a built-up environment. A suit of armor that can run (or bound, or roll on rollerskates) at 300 km/h is useless if there are no roads or terrain features around that give us open lines of sight on which to achieve such speeds. And while our armor may have upgraded speed, it's not necessarily going to be able to outrun a supersonic jet or other dedicated aircraft.

I mean, in hand to hand, yes. But on the other hand, your suit relies on its fists for a lot of combat purposes as far as I can tell- well, except for tractor/pressor beams for ranged combat, I guess. Just having automated arms doesn't automatically confer superior combat performance; a two-armed man with a machine gun will usually defeat a four-armed man who fights with rocks or knives or his bare hands.

My 'Myrmidon' suits carry wrist-swords, flamethrowers, laser cannons, bazookas, and surface to air missiles. Your suits have none of those things, relying only on the extra arms and tractor beam for combat performance.

I consider this a bit counterproductive because it increases risk of accidentally detonating a suit and makes it harder for us to market the tech.

Even if no one can hack the suit, and no weird techopathic metahumans trigger the self-destruct mechanism by other means... Such mechanisms can simply fail. Someone can fuck up the software and have the "dispense coffee" button accidentally cross-wire to the "self-destruct" button when the suit is moving and the weapons targeting suite is active. Or some other weird combination of unexpected glitches.

Shit happens.
But...that kinda applies to everything. Nothing stops the drone's from being spotted and camouflaging not working, nothing stops the suit's flamethrower from suddenly exploding or overheating pre-emptively. Nothing stops the flight from failing and the exo-suit's rider going squish, and all of these features(Besides the drones) can be used against us by an enemy if they tried. The remote detonation is a removal of evidence, and a backup incase of theft. Someone may have been trying to activate automated arms and instead starts blasting rockets. We can't just say something can happen to one minor part and gloss over the way it covers the entire thing.
 
So this is one of the most contentious votes yet. I think I'm going to wait a bit longer before calling the vote on this one. The vote is close enough that one or two voters could tip it one way or the other. I'm excited and I think the customization point buy deal is working better than I initially expected it to when it comes to sparking discussion. I might start using it more if people also enjoy it as much as I do.
 
By that logic let's say someone comes up with the first laser gun, it's powerful more so then most guns currently around.

But the guy hoards it because he doesn't want his laser gun to possbile go to the enemy's hands.

Here's the thing, we hoard it or not eventually it'll get out, may as well sell now make connections and turn a profit and continue making bigger and better exo suits that we keep for ourselves and sell downgraded ones to others.

Welcome to every single super villain and superhero. They explicitly don't sell their stuff and keep it hoarded so this doesn't happen. And guess what? It never gets out to the public. Hell, IRL the Gov't has explicitly said they have a heart attack gun? How many of those are on the market? None? OK then.
 
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