Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
They can absolutely do damage, either by infowarfare or long range attacks, but these are going to be weaker. Could be as much as two hitpoints.
-
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THRONE//FRINGE: Normal Human Mech-Girl Quest
- Thread starter Cetashwayo
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
They can absolutely do damage, either by infowarfare or long range attacks, but these are going to be weaker. Could be as much as two hitpoints.
[X] Beauteous Ruin. Strip away the Envelope's escort and weaken the strongest infowarfare platform before it gets to work.
Take out the weak, long range enemy with a lot of firepower while we can.
Take out the weak, long range enemy with a lot of firepower while we can.
somewhatLazy
Serial Procrastinator
- Location
- lurking
Hm... will destroying Beauteous Ruin aid DH whenever he chooses to sneak attack the Grotesque Envelope? If so, I'm going to join the bandwagon for it, even though I'm still worried about Vainglorious Stand shivving us while we're trying to bring the support and mystery box down.
- Pronouns
- He/It/Argh!
I beg your pardon, Ishtar...
I generally agree with orchestral support, but in this case I'd prefer artillery support.
The Information Warfare category was further down...
[X] Beauteous Ruin. Strip away the Envelope's escort and weaken the strongest infowarfare platform before it gets to work.
We may have backups, but infowarfare could easily scramble our capabilities. The Beauteous Ruin likely has long range weapons, so we should strike first if we can.
Should the Vainglorious Stand get close, we'll be using ISHTAR//BLOOD to reclaim any damage it might inflict. But it will be a long melee against this one.
SH, can we get an ensemble of when and how you might strike the Grotesque Envelop, or are we leading this dance?
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
At the perfect time, with maximum style.
Are you rolling Acrylic, Steel, or Simulacrum?
[X] Beauteous Ruin. Strip away the Envelope's escort and weaken the strongest infowarfare platform before it gets to work.
I think getting rid of their main intel warrior is a good play but targeting Vainglorious Stand with it's physical firing power might also be a fair move. The Envelope is a gacha right now, we only know that it's one beefy murder bacteria.
I think getting rid of their main intel warrior is a good play but targeting Vainglorious Stand with it's physical firing power might also be a fair move. The Envelope is a gacha right now, we only know that it's one beefy murder bacteria.
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
To make some things clear and clarify questions people have asked in a larger post:
- You can't really signal to Hidalgo when he should arrive. He'll decide it himself and is going comms-silent to maintain secrecy. He is an ancient mercenary so he should have good instincts, and it doesn't make much sense for him to betray you at least until all threats are dealt with. That will presumably include using his needlecaster, which is an interstellar artillery piece relic capable of firing extremely fast and powerful lances of exotic energy at the cost of cycles. Needlecaster rounds have a hangtime, but it isn't very long.
- Information warfare works at every range, and everyone can do it all the time. Both Vainglorious Stand and Beauteous Ruin can do infowarfare to you. You can also do it back to them but you want a target to focus on here because you're not powerful enough to do appreciable damage to multiple combatants at once.
- After some thought and to keep the pacing clean, this will basically be a determinant of your main target for the first part of the fight, so there's a chance that if not to cripple them you'll do a lot of damage. The same goes for you, you'll be in danger of being put under a lot of damage.
- If something is an escort in the Tapestry the implication is the same as in naval and aerial warfare in the real world - it's primed to intercept attacks against whatever it's escorting. So yes, if Hidalgo wants to take down the Envelope, attacking Beauteous Ruin helps.
- To be clear, all voidcruisers and most larger drones have long-range weapons. However, large voidruisers, like hunter/killers and special units like militarized Weaver/builders, can house significantly stronger long-range weapons. So even if their overall firepower is higher, and even if you have a -1 to your long-range weapons, you still have that advantage over them. It's a category difference - hunter/killers (and militarized weaver/builders) are simply stronger than elements in most combat categories. In exchange they surrender a lot of combat flexibility and are rare and expensive.
- Everyone has four hitpoints. Most combatants will retreat at 1 hitpoint unless they are suicidal or have nowhere to go. You lose hitpoints by losing opposed rolls against their firepower or the appropriate damage stat against your resilience. I'll experiment with how to represent this in a way that doesn't turn this into a turn-based RPG because I don't think the pacing's right for it and I seem terminally incapable of writing less than 1,000 words so I'll just develop carpal tunnel if I am writing out every combat turn.
- Vainglorious Stand will be making a beeline towards you where they can bring their short-range weapons to bear. The Envelope and Ruin are also moving towards you, just more slowly.
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- Location
- PA
Well, if the idea here is SURVIVE, then we should probably snipe Stand. He strikes me as having the most damage that we can appreciably expect to effect via killing, between Ruin being Escort and the size of the Envelope, I don't see Arachnae besting it before it gets to deliver it's payload, assuming it's the 'boss' encounter of this fight, unless she focuses to the detriment of getting the crap kicked out of her by Stand. Which...Has it's own problems.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Doesn't ISHTAR//BLOOD bring Arachne up to 5 hitpoints?
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
No, you can't go above four, so the proper technique is to activate it once you've already taken damage for the +1. This also allows you to hide blood from opponents until the right moment. But you're not really in the position to be doing crazy tricks so you'll just be activating it as soon as you start taking real damage.
somewhatLazy
Serial Procrastinator
- Location
- lurking
Ruin and Stand both seem about equally dangerous with the present amount of information I have. We'll probably want to focus fire on one to take them out quickly. Will Stand going to short-range impede sniping Ruin?
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
Nope! No matter how fast Stand is going it's not going to flash-step behind you. You'll be able to release most of your long-range ordinance well before they arrive.
Size isn't always a useful guide to toughness or combat capabilities. Simply being big doesn't make you resilient, and because being big means you've made compromises to be Huge it might even make you somewhat more vulnerable to high-lethality long-cycle ordnance like the weapons used in long range superluminal engagements if you're using that extra space for something other than defensive systems.
somewhatLazy
Serial Procrastinator
- Location
- lurking
[X] Vainglorious Stand. Counter the encroaching infested menagerie before it can enter intermediate-range and obtain stronger firing solutions.
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So looking at this, it appears to be just an option of which order do we want to engage targets. The Don said he would likely engage the envelope, but he wouldn't be around as long a he has if he was able to adapt to changing situations, so he should be able to complement any course we take.
Option 1 is to target the Ruin first. Assuming we mission kill it or force it to retreat in a reasonable amount of time, we would likely have to engage the Stand next, to ensure that it won't reach it's preferred range, unless it travels fast enough that it can reach it's range while even under our fire. This means that the Envelope will have a large amount of time to get close to us in order to deliver the Mystery Bad ThingTM. It is slow so it won't be able to cover as much ground, but it is also the toughest so it will take longer to put down. With the escort gone, the Don may be of help here.
Option 2 is to engage the Stand first. This is the most likely way to ensure its removal from the field before it can close range with us. Doing this means that the Envelope will still be protected by the Ruin which will be able to attack us unmolested, but it appears that the Envelope has no weapon systems or sensors, leaving the Ruin the only threat. As such, the Don may instead choose to spend his ambush targeting the glass cannon Ruin instead. Before we both turn our sights on the Envelope together.
Option 3 is to engage the Envelope first. This is the most likely way to avoid it getting close to deploy the Mystery Bad ThingTM. It also means that the Stand will be able to close distance with us like in option 1, and the Ruin will be able to engage in long range combat unmolested. This also forces the Don to engage with the escort up like in option 2, unlike the previous option though, the Ruin may already be dealing with trying to protect the Envelope from our attacks, distracting it. I am unsure whether the Don would attack the Envelope in order to try to finish it off in the opening of the battle, or would target the Ruin to remove the escort while it's distracted. Either way we will unlikely be able to give assistance later as we would need to swap focus to the Stand that is charging us.
I think I'm going to have to go with:
[X] Vainglorious Stand. Counter the encroaching infested menagerie before it can enter intermediate-range and obtain stronger firing solutions.
We went for the mental defenses over the physical defenses for the last option, and the info warfare may not be as much of a problem if the Don ambushes the Ruin and pulls its attention.
Option 1 is to target the Ruin first. Assuming we mission kill it or force it to retreat in a reasonable amount of time, we would likely have to engage the Stand next, to ensure that it won't reach it's preferred range, unless it travels fast enough that it can reach it's range while even under our fire. This means that the Envelope will have a large amount of time to get close to us in order to deliver the Mystery Bad ThingTM. It is slow so it won't be able to cover as much ground, but it is also the toughest so it will take longer to put down. With the escort gone, the Don may be of help here.
Option 2 is to engage the Stand first. This is the most likely way to ensure its removal from the field before it can close range with us. Doing this means that the Envelope will still be protected by the Ruin which will be able to attack us unmolested, but it appears that the Envelope has no weapon systems or sensors, leaving the Ruin the only threat. As such, the Don may instead choose to spend his ambush targeting the glass cannon Ruin instead. Before we both turn our sights on the Envelope together.
Option 3 is to engage the Envelope first. This is the most likely way to avoid it getting close to deploy the Mystery Bad ThingTM. It also means that the Stand will be able to close distance with us like in option 1, and the Ruin will be able to engage in long range combat unmolested. This also forces the Don to engage with the escort up like in option 2, unlike the previous option though, the Ruin may already be dealing with trying to protect the Envelope from our attacks, distracting it. I am unsure whether the Don would attack the Envelope in order to try to finish it off in the opening of the battle, or would target the Ruin to remove the escort while it's distracted. Either way we will unlikely be able to give assistance later as we would need to swap focus to the Stand that is charging us.
I think I'm going to have to go with:
[X] Vainglorious Stand. Counter the encroaching infested menagerie before it can enter intermediate-range and obtain stronger firing solutions.
We went for the mental defenses over the physical defenses for the last option, and the info warfare may not be as much of a problem if the Don ambushes the Ruin and pulls its attention.
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Olivebirdy
mook.
[X] Vainglorious Stand. Counter the encroaching infested menagerie before it can enter intermediate-range and obtain stronger firing solutions.
It's not as if our defenses are particularly good. I'd prefer to keep Stand from shooting us.
It's not as if our defenses are particularly good. I'd prefer to keep Stand from shooting us.
Olivebirdy
mook.
If we heal when we inflict damage, shouldn't we save the easiest one to hurt for after we get hurt? Looking at it like that, using our first attack to hit Ruin while we're still undamaged is a waste of a hitpoint.
On the other hand, there's only a minor difference between Ruin and Stand since a +2 on a d20 isn't that big a deal.
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- Location
- in the trash
Pre-Empire history is an absolute mess even before the Collapse made everything worse by several orders of magnitude because of all the causality breaking and reality warping weapons employed (so you have literal retcons and paradoxes snarling up time) and the mass destruction and sabotage of records (which includes tampering with memories).
The Empire existed for an unfathomable length of time and there was probably also at least some reshaping and smoothing over of the records regarding anything that existed before it to better suit its own narratives. Anything from pre-Empire times is literally myth.
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- Location
- England
While true in the abstract, in this particular case the Envelope does have Resilience 4, making it easily the toughest thing on the field.
Olivebirdy
mook.
Not to be the bearer of bad news or anything, but I think these three attackers are just the first wave...
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
Nah, because each voidcruiser has an individual warp signature it is not a 1:1 of signatures and elements. If I wanted to end the game I would just say so, not throw ten elements at you XD
Good assumption tho, I am going to go back and clarify that because I can see how you could make that mistake.
Also going to keep this vote open a while longer than last time so people can ruminate and get their votes in ^^
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