Bound to Earth: A CK2 Earthbound Quest in an 8-bit Dystopia
- Thread starter Crosswire
- Start date
- Crossover Sci-Fi
KnownParadox
Not a sphere
- Location
- Canada
I'm thinking we should give the omake bonus to either Intrigue or StewardPSI. With maybe a distant third in Diplo, because Porky is total pig, and a major asshole. Two +5's or a single +10?
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Honestly, I've been running the numbers, and I'm thinking a Plus 10 (or at least +7) in intrigue:
Without any omake bonus, Intrigue's effective roll (i.e. the minimum we need to roll to succeed in addition to our normal bonuses) are 12/42/72. Given how much of a problem Pirkle is, the implications that he's actively aiding Giygas, I really want at least a tier 2 success in that, and whilst rolling at least 42 means things are weighted in our favour, it's still close to being a coin toss on whether or not we get presumably just money or something more useful to our cause.
A plus 10 in that makes us need to roll a 32 or higher - which gives us much more breathing room. It also makes the tier 3 much easier to get, which I think is big given how we learned Pirkle is strongly implied to be actively working with Giygas.
Healing's tier 2 is at 40 and needs an effective roll of 30 or more, so it's less of a concern in my eyes. Especially because if it fails, we do still have avenues for money raising by selling the Metorite (we could either steal it back later or find some way to get to space to get another if we need the material. And given it's an endgame item, we might have other ways of getting it by the point we need it, though it would be nicer to not need to sell it)
Without any omake bonus, Intrigue's effective roll (i.e. the minimum we need to roll to succeed in addition to our normal bonuses) are 12/42/72. Given how much of a problem Pirkle is, the implications that he's actively aiding Giygas, I really want at least a tier 2 success in that, and whilst rolling at least 42 means things are weighted in our favour, it's still close to being a coin toss on whether or not we get presumably just money or something more useful to our cause.
A plus 10 in that makes us need to roll a 32 or higher - which gives us much more breathing room. It also makes the tier 3 much easier to get, which I think is big given how we learned Pirkle is strongly implied to be actively working with Giygas.
Healing's tier 2 is at 40 and needs an effective roll of 30 or more, so it's less of a concern in my eyes. Especially because if it fails, we do still have avenues for money raising by selling the Metorite (we could either steal it back later or find some way to get to space to get another if we need the material. And given it's an endgame item, we might have other ways of getting it by the point we need it, though it would be nicer to not need to sell it)
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Brightflame
Lord of the Dance
- Location
- Inkopolis
And our PSI too. 8 is the stat average for the CK system if my memory is right.
Eh, I say we should strive to get at least a 15 or so in every stat we can. If we're gonna be leading a faction, we gotta be well-rounded.
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I believe I have an answer to that:
I suspect that absorbing the power of a sanctuary will boost up our stats.
I suspect that absorbing the power of a sanctuary will boost up our stats.
I can't really imagine how the sanctuary would boost i.e. stewardship or learning, unless it directly made D.C. smarter or imparted knowledge and understanding on her.
To me it would kinda make more sense if improving our organisation raised the (effective) stats.
You know, recruiting scientists or tinkerers for learning, recruiting former sharks for martial, etc.
The standard CK2 approach is that the protagonist matters much much more than the actual organization they are at the top of. But here we're dealing with an org that is built from the very bottom up, so it would make a lot of sense for it to accumulate stat bonuses as time goes by as a consequence of our progression in building and improving it.
To me it would kinda make more sense if improving our organisation raised the (effective) stats.
You know, recruiting scientists or tinkerers for learning, recruiting former sharks for martial, etc.
The standard CK2 approach is that the protagonist matters much much more than the actual organization they are at the top of. But here we're dealing with an org that is built from the very bottom up, so it would make a lot of sense for it to accumulate stat bonuses as time goes by as a consequence of our progression in building and improving it.
KnownParadox
Not a sphere
- Location
- Canada
I dunno, absorbing a magical leyline or whatever it is to generally enhance whoever did it in all manner of ways isn't that out there.
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Could instead affect stat growth, making it easier to raise stats instead of directly improving them.
But Given how Sancturaries have been referred to as something that enhances people, and how we're notably really low down on the scale, I don't think it's that much of a stretch for them to enhance us directly in some form. Heck, it'd even provide us an immediate mechanical reason to try to seek them out.
KnownParadox
Not a sphere
- Location
- Canada
I'd love like, a universal +2-5 to our stats from a Sanctuary or something. Just to try and predict what it could give us.
Maybe it gives us a trait based on the sanctuary.
"Look, none of us can beat it. The farthest any of us have made it is Saturn. The game is ball-bustingly hard. But we all want to see the ending. You gotta help us!" The Shark bowed his head.
"First off, I thought that game got unplugged or something years ago."
"We moved it." The Shark confessed. "We moved all the good arcade machines deeper inside so that we had private access to them. I mean, most people aren't brave enough to go in at all, but it's just insurance you know?"
"Fair enough. Second question, what's in it for me?"
"The satisfaction of beating it in front of an audience?" The player frowned and gave the Shark a deadpan look. The shark frantically started throwing out offers. "Uh… your high score on the machine? A free pizza? Access to the arcade?"
"Throw in a two-liter soda and you've got a deal."
The Shark nodded, and Porky finally stood up, dusting his hands off. "Alright, let's play."
The corner of the second floor of the arcade was surrounded by chairs, with a swarm of Sharks all facing the same arcade machine. Captain Square
Captain Square was a bit of an odd duck, somewhere between a beat 'em up boss rush and a tactics game. All it did was lay 9 fights in front of you, equip you with the good Captain's abilities, and wish you good luck.
Propped on a nearby arcade machine was a two-liter soda, some nondescript red cups, and an XL pizza. Porky made a big show of stretching, rolling his shoulders, and eating a slice of pizza before the Sharks started getting impatient.
"Pay attention and you might learn some things." Porky boasted as he inserted the borrowed quarters, and Captain Square started up. "Twenty bucks says I'll beat it first try!"
"I'll take that bet!" a particularly foolish member of the Sharks called out.
The intro to Captain Square brought an end to the chatter, the captain flying towards the screen as his name blazed in the background. At the press of a button, the game began
Mercury was the easiest level in the game, with just four weak starter enemies to get you settled in. So Porky took his time to test the joystick and the Captain's moves. It was pretty responsive, clearly the machine had been well taken care of.
Once he was done messing around Porky lined up a Pion bomb and blasted away half the enemies in one shot. The remaining two got close, but he cut them up with the Captain's Tachyon Sword.
Venus wasn't all that much harder. There were six enemies, but they weren't much stronger than the starting foes. They did have a nasty trick if you let them get too close, but he wasn't planning on it.
"Plasma Ball!" The bit-crushed voice of Captain Square called out before lobbing several spheres of plasma at his big-headed alien opponents. Each one went down to a single cast, so all he had to do was play keep-away for a bit.
Earth was difficult if you didn't know the trick. There were four water enemies and a fire enemy. If you killed a water enemy, the fire one would go berserk and kill you. The fire one also had stupidly high defense, so killing it legitimately was hard. However…
"The waterspouts will place down water tiles if they attack you, and they don't hit very hard at all. But if you get the firespout on a water tile…" Porky smirked as the firespout moved closer to Captain Square, and instantly exploded upon touching the water.
"I was stuck on that level for hours…" Some of the Sharks snickered at their friend's lament. The rest just kept their eyes on Porky.
Mars was another gimmick level. One "Broodmother" type enemy and her 6 children. Both enemies had a healing move that they would use after being attacked, that would heal all allies in an area of effect.
The trick here was that all your flashy AOE attacks were actively harmful. For this one, it was best to use the Quark Sword. It was the most powerful attack Captain Square had, but it had a lengthy chargeup. Luckily these guys didn't have a way to interrupt it. And one the brood mother was down, the rest of the enemies instantly died.
Jupiter was a breather, a chance to take a break before the game started really busting your balls. The enemies would place down electric tiles to heal themselves, but a quick Pion Bomb was enough to replace them with fire tiles.
"From here on out, it gets tricky," Porky said, more than a little smug. "Watch and learn fellas!"
Saturn had 3 enemies who couldn't move. They were extremely deadly, with one attack of their own and a counterattack. Taking more than two back-to-back was almost surely fatal, so standing where all of them could attack would get you slaughtered.
"There's a blind spot where none of them can hit you, right here," Porky announced. Parking Captain Square in the spot and watching as the crystalline alien's idle animation ran over and over again
"What?" His audience was in an uproar as Porky chipped the aliens to death with Plasma Balls. He had to leave the safe zone to kill the last one, but that was fine.
Uranus was a pretty awful fight, even if you knew what you were doing. There was a single invisible enemy rampaging around, spawning a bunch of electric enemies. The electric enemies looked like Electric tiles but flipped so that the dark side of the tile was in the opposite direction.
Porky parked himself in the corner of the battlefield and had Captain Square use Plasma Charge over and over again to heal himself and raise his stats. Eventually, the boss revealed himself.
The boss was basically immune to normal damage, but it had one weakness. Fire tiles.
"Supernova!" Captain Square released a pillar of orange and blue flames which turned the area around him into fire tiles. The boss took a single step and died instantly.
"We're in the home stretch now." Porky leaned further forward, his grip on the joystick becoming more and more clawlike. If he made a mistake he would lose, no matter how good he was.
Neptune was another one of those levels where the goal was to kill the boss and ignore everything else. The problem is that every enemy looked completely identical. At the very start, it told you which one you needed to kill, and if you slipped up and lost track you were dead.
Porky expertly weaved his way through the star-shaped creatures, slipping past their attacks to reach their boss. Their boss had max defense but was hard-coded to always take at least one point of damage. So rather than using a big flashy move, he just slashed twice with the basic Tachyon sword.
"I've never even seen what Pluto looks like." The Sharks were excited now, pressing in closer to the machine as they watched the game's final level start-up.
Pluto was a cluster. 12 enemies with the same body and design but different colors and stats. All of them had a vicious headbutt that would cancel any move the Captain had that involved charging up, and 3 of them could instantly kill with an explosion if he entered melee range.
This was the only stage where Porky put the stunning Spacephage to use. Over and over again he fired the stream of blue sparks to try and stun and poison his enemies. When they got too close he had to pull out the Shooting Star to send them flying back. He couldn't use his bigger moves yet, because the charge-up would take too long
It was a tense and desperate struggle that had everyone on the edge of their seat as Porky made it out of tight scrape after tight scrape, slowly whittling the enemy's numbers down. Until at last only one enemy remained standing, and Captain Square cried out in triumph
"Qark Sword!" A shining energy sword appeared in the Captain's hand as he made a single, dramatic slash that completely destroyed the final enemy.
On cue, the credits started rolling for Captain Square. The Sharks all cheered as Porky finally released the joystick, trying to play it cool even though he was definitely sweating. The bombastic music and text scroll was a glorious victor march for Porky, who basked in the praise and cheers of the gang.
Finally, the scroll came to an end, and Porky was allowed to enter his name into the Hall of Fame, right at the very top. KPK, King Porky
"So…" Porky slowly drawled, an evil glint in his eye. "Which one of you bet 20 dollars against me?"
"First off, I thought that game got unplugged or something years ago."
"We moved it." The Shark confessed. "We moved all the good arcade machines deeper inside so that we had private access to them. I mean, most people aren't brave enough to go in at all, but it's just insurance you know?"
"Fair enough. Second question, what's in it for me?"
"The satisfaction of beating it in front of an audience?" The player frowned and gave the Shark a deadpan look. The shark frantically started throwing out offers. "Uh… your high score on the machine? A free pizza? Access to the arcade?"
"Throw in a two-liter soda and you've got a deal."
The Shark nodded, and Porky finally stood up, dusting his hands off. "Alright, let's play."
The corner of the second floor of the arcade was surrounded by chairs, with a swarm of Sharks all facing the same arcade machine. Captain Square
Captain Square was a bit of an odd duck, somewhere between a beat 'em up boss rush and a tactics game. All it did was lay 9 fights in front of you, equip you with the good Captain's abilities, and wish you good luck.
Propped on a nearby arcade machine was a two-liter soda, some nondescript red cups, and an XL pizza. Porky made a big show of stretching, rolling his shoulders, and eating a slice of pizza before the Sharks started getting impatient.
"Pay attention and you might learn some things." Porky boasted as he inserted the borrowed quarters, and Captain Square started up. "Twenty bucks says I'll beat it first try!"
"I'll take that bet!" a particularly foolish member of the Sharks called out.
The intro to Captain Square brought an end to the chatter, the captain flying towards the screen as his name blazed in the background. At the press of a button, the game began
Mercury was the easiest level in the game, with just four weak starter enemies to get you settled in. So Porky took his time to test the joystick and the Captain's moves. It was pretty responsive, clearly the machine had been well taken care of.
Once he was done messing around Porky lined up a Pion bomb and blasted away half the enemies in one shot. The remaining two got close, but he cut them up with the Captain's Tachyon Sword.
Venus wasn't all that much harder. There were six enemies, but they weren't much stronger than the starting foes. They did have a nasty trick if you let them get too close, but he wasn't planning on it.
"Plasma Ball!" The bit-crushed voice of Captain Square called out before lobbing several spheres of plasma at his big-headed alien opponents. Each one went down to a single cast, so all he had to do was play keep-away for a bit.
Earth was difficult if you didn't know the trick. There were four water enemies and a fire enemy. If you killed a water enemy, the fire one would go berserk and kill you. The fire one also had stupidly high defense, so killing it legitimately was hard. However…
"The waterspouts will place down water tiles if they attack you, and they don't hit very hard at all. But if you get the firespout on a water tile…" Porky smirked as the firespout moved closer to Captain Square, and instantly exploded upon touching the water.
"I was stuck on that level for hours…" Some of the Sharks snickered at their friend's lament. The rest just kept their eyes on Porky.
Mars was another gimmick level. One "Broodmother" type enemy and her 6 children. Both enemies had a healing move that they would use after being attacked, that would heal all allies in an area of effect.
The trick here was that all your flashy AOE attacks were actively harmful. For this one, it was best to use the Quark Sword. It was the most powerful attack Captain Square had, but it had a lengthy chargeup. Luckily these guys didn't have a way to interrupt it. And one the brood mother was down, the rest of the enemies instantly died.
Jupiter was a breather, a chance to take a break before the game started really busting your balls. The enemies would place down electric tiles to heal themselves, but a quick Pion Bomb was enough to replace them with fire tiles.
"From here on out, it gets tricky," Porky said, more than a little smug. "Watch and learn fellas!"
Saturn had 3 enemies who couldn't move. They were extremely deadly, with one attack of their own and a counterattack. Taking more than two back-to-back was almost surely fatal, so standing where all of them could attack would get you slaughtered.
"There's a blind spot where none of them can hit you, right here," Porky announced. Parking Captain Square in the spot and watching as the crystalline alien's idle animation ran over and over again
"What?" His audience was in an uproar as Porky chipped the aliens to death with Plasma Balls. He had to leave the safe zone to kill the last one, but that was fine.
Uranus was a pretty awful fight, even if you knew what you were doing. There was a single invisible enemy rampaging around, spawning a bunch of electric enemies. The electric enemies looked like Electric tiles but flipped so that the dark side of the tile was in the opposite direction.
Porky parked himself in the corner of the battlefield and had Captain Square use Plasma Charge over and over again to heal himself and raise his stats. Eventually, the boss revealed himself.
The boss was basically immune to normal damage, but it had one weakness. Fire tiles.
"Supernova!" Captain Square released a pillar of orange and blue flames which turned the area around him into fire tiles. The boss took a single step and died instantly.
"We're in the home stretch now." Porky leaned further forward, his grip on the joystick becoming more and more clawlike. If he made a mistake he would lose, no matter how good he was.
Neptune was another one of those levels where the goal was to kill the boss and ignore everything else. The problem is that every enemy looked completely identical. At the very start, it told you which one you needed to kill, and if you slipped up and lost track you were dead.
Porky expertly weaved his way through the star-shaped creatures, slipping past their attacks to reach their boss. Their boss had max defense but was hard-coded to always take at least one point of damage. So rather than using a big flashy move, he just slashed twice with the basic Tachyon sword.
"I've never even seen what Pluto looks like." The Sharks were excited now, pressing in closer to the machine as they watched the game's final level start-up.
Pluto was a cluster. 12 enemies with the same body and design but different colors and stats. All of them had a vicious headbutt that would cancel any move the Captain had that involved charging up, and 3 of them could instantly kill with an explosion if he entered melee range.
This was the only stage where Porky put the stunning Spacephage to use. Over and over again he fired the stream of blue sparks to try and stun and poison his enemies. When they got too close he had to pull out the Shooting Star to send them flying back. He couldn't use his bigger moves yet, because the charge-up would take too long
It was a tense and desperate struggle that had everyone on the edge of their seat as Porky made it out of tight scrape after tight scrape, slowly whittling the enemy's numbers down. Until at last only one enemy remained standing, and Captain Square cried out in triumph
"Qark Sword!" A shining energy sword appeared in the Captain's hand as he made a single, dramatic slash that completely destroyed the final enemy.
On cue, the credits started rolling for Captain Square. The Sharks all cheered as Porky finally released the joystick, trying to play it cool even though he was definitely sweating. The bombastic music and text scroll was a glorious victor march for Porky, who basked in the praise and cheers of the gang.
Finally, the scroll came to an end, and Porky was allowed to enter his name into the Hall of Fame, right at the very top. KPK, King Porky
"So…" Porky slowly drawled, an evil glint in his eye. "Which one of you bet 20 dollars against me?"
This one was just for fun. Another Live A Live reference, and Porky being an expert arcade gamer, which I find hilarious. I was planning on linking a picture of Captain Square's title, credits, and the music for Captain Square but I couldn't find any that it didn't feel weird to borrow. I couldn't find an unedited one from the game, just ones that people were using as thumbnails for LPs. And taking those seems wrong. Same thing with linking to the credits or music.
Don't worry though. If you want the full experience, all you've got to do is take a peek at the OST
Don't worry though. If you want the full experience, all you've got to do is take a peek at the OST
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Alright, not gonna get this omake done before vote closes. Getting writers block on parts of it, so gonna burn the EXP I currently have. I really want that second threshold.
[The3rdCorinthian would like to use 400 exp to boost Break into the Mayors House]
[The3rdCorinthian would like to use 400 exp to boost Break into the Mayors House]
It's on rule section under the tab psi
Not that, as in the tiers of the abilities themselves
like PK Lifeup alpha or PK Starstorm Omega
What are the actual tiers of different abilities.
Oh sorry basically omega is the ultimate level of psi like omega pk life up while alpha is the beginner level of psi abilities
Ah yes, that's something I should add. That slipped my mind.
It's a little inconsistent between the games. As far as this Quest goes, PSI abilities are split up into four separate tiers:
α: Alpha. The weakest, most basic version of an ability, but also the most cost effective. Effects single targets only most of the time.
β: Beta. Medium tier, more costly than Alpha but also more damaging and effective. Targets single targets only most of the time.
Σ: Sigma.
Ω: The ultimate version of an ability, the most powerful but also the most costly. PSI abilities that only have one version are Omega by default.
and if we chose kinetic, what would be the name of the tiers beyond possibly.
Notably, to connect the dots a bit - Buzz Buzz has PSI Shield Σ; making him a very potent defensive unit against general energy-based attacks. He'd be extremely useful if we ever came up against anything that harnesses energy from the Dreamlands (magic, PSI, ki, the power of friendship, etc.) - potentially even more valuable if we can get an opportunity for him to train and remember his PSI powers.
Yeah, it really is. For the longest time I thought PSI and PK were meant to tell apart offensive PSIs from every other, which probably came from Earthbound Zero and a fangame, but apparently, in Earthbound, only offensive PSI that starts with PK is Starstorm? In fact, most PSI's don't even get "PSI" in the beginning of their name, and it is actually for a good reason (else you would much less space to fit in PSI names), but certainly doesn't helps.
Speaking of, was Gamma (γ) merged with Sigma for the purposes of this quest? Since in Earthbound only two shields had Sigma tier (which actually was the second one and was an upgrade from Alpha in that it shielded all allies), while most other PSIs had Gamma for their third tier. So you could say, in a way, Sigma was a sidetier.
Supra, probably. Earthbound Zero has Healing Supra (or Super Healing) which revived an ally (normal healing iirc couldnt do that, not even Omega, but description from Starmen site doesn't make it clear if four tiers of Healing healed separate status effects, or each one could heal additional one - it could be both, really, considering EZ is a NES game). Alternatively we could just go with Omega+ or something.
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For 'Kinetic' PSI users they are capable of learning Ø 'Nulla' Tier abilities.
Which are not a thing in the game. I added them, and the concept of Kinetics, to add more diversity and explain some instances of specialized psychics in
Yeah, I merged some things together. Gamma may read better when going down the tiers, but I figured this 'felt' better and stands out a little more.
Alright, voting is closed! And the winner is...
Youthful Subversion and Thievery!
I'll get to work on the results!
Youthful Subversion and Thievery!
Your EXP will be reduced and the bonus will be added~
I'll get to work on the results!
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