[X] Yes (consumes Hardware Boost)
[X] Read How to Win Friends and Influence People (Difficulty: I can read! It's just the whole talking part is hard...)(Reward: Social?)
[X] Yes (consumes Hardware Boost)
[X] Rewrite logbook (Difficulty: Crap, I'm starting to forget stuff, make things up?) (Reward: Better logbook??)
We need to do this
[X] Yes (consumes Hardware Boost)
[X] Rewrite logbook (Difficulty: Crap, I'm starting to forget stuff, make things up?) (Reward: Better logbook??)
We need to do this
Also, uh, it's been three months since you started, so some logbook stuff is just permanently lost. On the other hand, you are quite literally starting a new chapter in your engineering process, so you can be far more detailed now.
(psst this is your QM whispering to you that Matylda's Social made her contribution literally four times as effective as yours, despite her low Hardware score)
[X] Yes (consumes Hardware Boost)
[X] Read How to Win Friends and Influence People (Difficulty: I can read! It's just the whole talking part is hard...)(Reward: Social?)
Also, uh, it's been three months since you started, so some logbook stuff is just permanently lost. On the other hand, you are quite literally starting a new chapter in your engineering process, so you can be far more detailed now.
(psst this is your QM whispering to you that Matylda's Social made her contribution literally four times as effective as yours, despite her low Hardware score)
Yeah, we keep on abandoning it whenever we get any progress so the logbook is not only a mess but an increasingly worse mess.
We've already permanently lost stuff because we kept dropping it for other stuff.
A/N: Thanks guys. There is a narrative way to combine the two results though, don't worry. Also, you rolled a 2 out of 10 on your improvement roll, so uh, yeah, that book isn't doing jack.
Read your books, they said. They'd make you better at talking to people, they said. Colene could now confirm that those were one hundred twenty percent lying, just like Ahmad's bragging about making top 500 players in some game or another. No way he was actually that good; if he was, well, why wasn't he rich?
Besides, it was the dumbest shit too. "Don't insult people, ever"? Seriously? If they couldn't handle a little criticism every now and then, they needed to toughen up, not babied. It's just the truth; why should they be hurt by it?
(a traitorous part of her mind said no wonder you have no friends)
Now, if she could just find where Matylda had hidden the goddamn logbook, she could get back to doing that, instead of reading this garbage.
Oh well. At least it was more interesting than reading about some girl in Brooklyn. Seriously, when was that ever going to be a useful life skill?
At least the team was doing far better; Ahmad beelined for the computer, showing some good initiative. You and Matylda worked on making the robot perfect, one nut at a time.
It was nice, Colene thought. The hum of silent activity fit her far better than the enforced silent murmur that her classes usually ended up as, and was way better than the noise and bustle of parties that Matylda seemed to revel in.
"Kay, sis, that's as good as it's gonna get."
"Yeah. Good work."
Out of the corner of her eye, Colene saw Matylda freeze for a moment, before moving as if that hadn't happened, hands just slightly faster than before.
"What? Colene, giving out compliments? Matylda, when did the world turn upside down?"
"Shut up, it's not that funny!"
"He has a point, sis."
They managed to keep the silence for a second before breaking into giggling.
"Alright, hand over the computer, wise guy."
Ahmad did, giggling the whole time.
"And would you two stop giggling!"
The two obliged her in the worst possible way: bursting into full-on, genuinely rolling on the floor laughter.
"I hate you too."
"Love -ha- you -ha- too!"
Well, those assholes certainly didn't make your job easier. You do have a decision to make right now, though: how complex do you want your code to be? Code Complexity:
[][CC] Extremely Low Complexity
[][CC] Low Complexity
[][CC] Medium Complexity
[][CC] High Complexity [][CC] Extremely High Complexity ahahaha can your controller even handle what this would require?
Well, you had best choose well, seeing as there was another tournament six weeks away, and the ever looming deadline of States was 28 weeks away.
Free Time! 1 Free Time available per week!
[] Recruit at your school (Difficulty: Should be pretty easy, right? Everybody will want to join me, robotics is great and I'm so good at it!) (Reward: ??? teammate)
[] Recruit in the wild (Difficulty: I dunno, randomly looking for people probably isn't a good idea, and they probably aren't that great) (Reward: ??? teammate)
[] Try to get corporate sponsorships (Difficulty: Those suits will be falling all over themselves to support a new cool STEM program, right?) (Reward: ??? Revenue)
[] Try to get money from friends and family (Difficulty: Huh, my immediate family's pretty receptive. I wonder if my distant relatives are the same?) (Rewards: ??? Expenses)
[] Try to get donations from random people (Difficulty: It worked for the Girl Scouts, why won't it work for me?) (Reward: ??? Expenses)
[] Try to get a job (Difficulty: Some minimum wage job should be willing to hire fourteen year olds, right?)(Reward: 1 Revenue)
[] Rewrite logbook (Difficulty: At least starting over makes this easier, I guess?) (Reward: Better logbook??)
[] Figure out how to prevent disasters like what just happened (Difficulty: Okay, so I might be forgetting some of the details)(Reward: Increased Disaster Resistance)
[] Read How to Win Friends and Influence People (Difficulty: I can read! It's just the whole talking part is hard...)(Reward: Social?)
[] Forum Crawl (Difficulty: Too easy, nothing to learn here, right?) (Reward: ???)
[] Programming Tutorial (Difficulty: How do I find the good ones for robotics?) (Reward: Software+)
[] Sketch a design (Difficulty: Not hard at all) (Reward: One time bonus to Hardware check)
[] Chat with Mrs. Conner (Difficulty: I literally see her almost every day) (Reward: ???)
[] Write in (veto/approval/reinterpretation at GM discretion)[/B][/Code][/B]
[X][CC] High Complexity
[X] Read How to Win Friends and Influence People (Difficulty: I can read! It's just the whole talking part is hard...)(Reward: Social?)
Our last robot was medium complexity, lets go a bit higher this time. Also lets focus on upping social since that in turn will help with improving our logbook quality.
[] Figure out how to prevent disasters like what just happened (Difficulty: Okay, so I might be forgetting some of the details)(Reward: Increased Disaster Resistance)
[X][CC] High Complexity
[X] Read How to Win Friends and Influence People (Difficulty: I can read! It's just the whole talking part is hard...)(Reward: Social?)
In the meantime we're losing data. It doesn't matter how well the logbook is written if you already lost the information to record!
Data we need to actually manage this robot.
Remember when we accidentally bricked the robot and had to rush out sub par code to make it functional?
Logbook, even an incomplete one, would let you do a rollback.
[X][CC] High Complexity
[X] Rewrite logbook (Difficulty: At least starting over makes this easier, I guess?) (Reward: Better logbook??)
I still have no idea what we wanted to do. I'm just trying to get at least one of our actions out of the way. Don't know if we should bother with this next tournament, we should probably use the time to get better and go to a competition after it.
A/N: This may come as a surprise, but the action explicitly labeled "Increases Disaster Resistance" increases Disaster Resistance. As is, your logbook is a poor substitute, given, uh, the way you write logbooks. I also reformatted the options at the bottom, let me know what you think.
[W] [CC] High Complexity
[W] Logbook
Okay, if you wanted your logbook back you were going to need to resort to drastic measures. Time to stop holding back. If you were your sister, how would you hide your logbook from your sister?
By hiding it somewhere you either didn't know about, couldn't access, or weren't willing to go to.
If you didn't know about where it was, you had to assume it was inside the house, or somewhere easily accessible. After all, if your sister hid it somewhere you couldn't access but she could, then you were going to need to do something unthinkable, like ask your sister, or worse, your parents, for where logbook was.
That was an unacceptable outcome.
The other alternative was that it was somewhere you knew, but weren't willing to go into. Both could be true at once; you could find out about it and be temporarily unwilling to go there.
Either way, this called for a search, beginning with the most likely of locations: her bedroom!
...
It was under her pillow.
It was under her pillow.
You feel incredibly dumb.
And with that cheery note, Colene set about updatin the logbook, making sure not to waste the judges' time with small execution details like Matylda did, because the judges only had so much time, after all; why not abbreviate it, and save the judges some time?
After all, they could just figure out that the variable "t" meant "duration of event" in this context, and "change in time" in this one! Perfectly clear.
...
Was it?
...
This doubt was wasting time, when there was more logbook to update! "...This is harder than I thought."
"Oh? What's this I hear? Colene, humble? I can only have so many world-shattering events a week, ya know."
"How 'bout you go off in a corner and think of a new insult with those two precious brain cells you got?"
"Stop fighting you two! Geez, I leave you alone for a week and this happens!"
"No, but seriously, I'm the best out of all of us at programming, and I'm telling you it'll take at least another two weeks to even get any of this to work."
"No shit?"
"No shit."
"Ugh, fine. You know, I could always improvise as a driver..."
Code Complexity: Uh oh, it looks like you might've bitten off a little more than you can chew!
[] [CC] Downgrade to Medium Complexity
[] [CC] Minor Complexity shift to Driver
[] [CC] Major Complexity shift to Driver
[] [CC] Keep calm, carry on. (Continue programming)
"Alright, with that out of the way, are we going to the tournament five weeks away?"
Local Tournament; remember, you're already qualified for States, 27 weeks away
[] [Tour] Go (-1 Expense)
[] [Tour] No go
[] [Tour] Too early to decide
Free Time! 1 Free Time available per week!
[] Recruit at your school (Difficulty: Should be pretty easy, right? Everybody will want to join me, robotics is great and I'm so good at it!) (Reward: ??? teammate)
[] Recruit in the wild (Difficulty: I dunno, randomly looking for people probably isn't a good idea, and they probably aren't that great) (Reward: ??? teammate)
[] Try to get corporate sponsorships (Difficulty: Those suits will be falling all over themselves to support a new cool STEM program, right?) (Reward: ??? Revenue)
[] Try to get money from friends and family (Difficulty: Huh, my immediate family's pretty receptive. I wonder if my distant relatives are the same?) (Rewards: ??? Expenses)
[] Try to get donations from random people (Difficulty: It worked for the Girl Scouts, why won't it work for me?) (Reward: ??? Expenses)
[] Try to get a job (Difficulty: Some minimum wage job should be willing to hire fourteen year olds, right?)(Reward: 1 Revenue)
[] Read How to Win Friends and Influence People (Difficulty: I can read! It's just the whole talking part is hard...)(Reward: Social?)
[] Programming Tutorial (Difficulty: How do I find the good ones for robotics?) (Reward: Software+)
[] Sketch a design (Difficulty: Not hard at all) (Reward: One time bonus to Hardware check)
[] Rewrite logbook (Difficulty: At least starting over makes this easier, I guess?) (Reward: Better logbook??)
[] Chat with Mrs. Conner (Difficulty: I literally see her almost every day) (Reward: ???)
[] Forum Crawl (Difficulty: Too easy, nothing to learn here, right?) (Reward: ???)
[] Write in (veto/approval/reinterpretation at GM discretion)
[X] [CC] Minor Complexity shift to Driver
[X] [Tour] Go (-1 Expense)
[X] Rewrite logbook (Difficulty: At least starting over makes this easier, I guess?) (Reward: Better logbook??)
Still not finished huh?
A progress bar would be helpful
I mean, I guess I could run half strength actions on both?