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Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

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Guyman said:
Going forward - does anyone know if Wildbow intended for "Conflict drive" originally and simply changed his Word of God, or if he intended this "Shards got it wrong" from the beginning?
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Narsauce said:
As for the Conflict Drive, honestly, I have no idea. It's a good way to explain why most capes actively choose to engage in conflict that stimulates their powers. That being said, there might be individuals who are more resistant for one reason or another, and Sabah might be one, or some shards didn't implement conflict drives. Then again, who knows, Wildbow could've just thought the Conflict Drive was a cool idea and went with it, ignoring the previous precedent where it didn't apply.
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I'm not sure if the conflict drive was originally intended, I mean, it's pretty obvious Wilbow wrote Worm by the seat of his pants, but it does make a lot of sense for his worldbuilding. It's one thing that justify superheroes tropes like Reed Richard is useless (superheroes don't use their powers to help society outside of combat, like curing illness) and Cut Lex Luthor a check (supervillains don't just find legitimate work with their... unique skill set) in Worm.
 
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Nimeroni said:
tropes like Reed richard is useless
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I think part of the justification for those in-universe is NEPEA-5 (which crippled capes' ability to use their powers commercially on large scales) and also Mannequin/Ziz (if you try to fix the world one of them might come for you), which is why Joe is afraid to go big. Of course, given that he can now punch through all of the Nine save for the Siberian, and he's mostly Thinkerproof, that might change…
 
Lucifra said:
I think part of the justification for those in-universe is NEPEA-5 (which crippled capes' ability to use their powers commercially on large scales) and also Mannequin/Ziz (if you try to fix the world one of them might come for you), which is why Joe is afraid to go big.
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Yes, there's a bunch of factors. There's also tinkertech being inherently maintenance heavy (unless Dragon / Masamune streamline it - Dragon is the reason why the PRT have access to tinkertech like containment foam) so it's pretty much impossible to improve the world with it, and powers being intentionally designed to produce sweet sweet [DATA] fight, with any other use being happy little accidents.
 
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LordRoustabout said:
I mean, unless Skidmark actually operated out of a high-end split-level south of Downtown, I don't think it was actually him, despite the impressive vocabulary of profanity on display.
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Someone else has already mentioned this, but this is almost certainly the real Skidmark.

Kalmathon said:
There is so many examples of low WIS and every host being a parahuman, of being near a parahuman. I mean look at cauldron.
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Hmm. You know, rather than the Shards looking for low Wis people to attach to, or even knowing what that is considering most of their experience has been with alien species who had who-knows-what kind of thinking processes, isn't it just possible that Wildbow prefers writing low-wis characters?
 
bludvein said:
The Titans and the hangar are both a bit underwhelming honestly, and kind of useless even if they are free. If he wanted mechs he could have an army of 100x better ones in minutes. He's only refrained so far because he wanted to avoid giving the PRT any excuses to sign a kill order for him.
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Clearly the solution is to make them miniature, so that Tybalt can have troops to command.
 
Transreal Cloud said:
No Joe got the medium titan not the monarch.


Thanks for the reminder there's a couple things I had forgotten to update.


I not so humbly recommend my reference document


Based on how Joe reacted to the perk I don't think it comes with Alpha Centauri tech. I've asked Lord for clarification on Ao3 though.
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That's my bad, I didn't see that part of the perk description, but another question, do you (not specifically you) think he can get other Titans like the Monarch/Vanguard chassis (assuming the perk is rerollable) even though they weren't mentioned in the perk (Maybe Monarch wasn't out yet and they forgot about the other ((Brute, Expedition from the campaign)) Titans?)
 
AGiantB said:
That's my bad, I didn't see that part of the perk description, but another question, do you (not specifically you) think he can get other Titans like the Monarch/Vanguard chassis (assuming the perk is rerollable) even though they weren't mentioned in the perk (Maybe Monarch wasn't out yet and they forgot about the other ((Brute, Expedition from the campaign)) Titans?)
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The perk isn't rerollable but Joe does have a perk which is sufficient to repair and maintain Titans so it's likely he could create something like the Monarch Titan.
 
I'm wondering if AzurLane ship girls would be added to the celestial forge. I mean it kind of fits the theme. Want to know the reaction of the Laboratorium to ship girls.
Also how far will this stretch out? Will it ever reach the scale of Stellaris Megastructures? Or perhaps even the Gigastructural Engineering mod for Stellaris.
Looking forward to next installment.
Take care and have a good day!
 
LordR only adds perks he is familiar with that are actually a part of ver. 1 of the Celestial Forge, which
Azure Lane is not. The only exceptions were the Capstone Perks, which build onto perks Jozef already has, and the Warehouse Supplement, which isn't really part of a jumpchain but of jumps in general. Azure Lane does appear as a source for some ver. 3 Celestial Forge perks, but to get ver. 3 Jozef would have to go thru the equivilant of a second trigger, which WOG from LordR is rather unlikely.
 
AntaeusTheGiant said:
isn't it just possible that Wildbow prefers writing low-wis characters?
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Well, it is VERY hard to write smarter and wiser characters than oneself. Without taking in the cliche of magical know it all or cookie cutter wisdom.
I've read some good writers opinions on writing characters smarter or wiser than they are, and that requires time, deep thought and careful consideration.... Things we know WildBlow didn't have
 
Ziggrrauglurr said:
Well, it is VERY hard to write smarter and wiser characters than oneself. Without taking in the cliche of magical know it all or cookie cutter wisdom.
I've read some good writers opinions on writing characters smarter or wiser than they are, and that requires time, deep thought and careful consideration.... Things we know WildBlow didn't have
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That's a tad harsh. A lack of wisdom and intellect isn't the only reason someone could write such a crapsack world as Worm. If anything, the details of the worldbuilding and the thoroughness of the misery implies nothing less than deep thought and careful consideration. I would argue that the reasons Wildbow had for writing Worm and its sequels could be something as simple as spite and an overall hatred of whatever the readers feel happy about. /s
 
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Ziggrrauglurr said:
Well, it is VERY hard to write smarter and wiser characters than oneself. Without taking in the cliche of magical know it all or cookie cutter wisdom.
I've read some good writers opinions on writing characters smarter or wiser than they are, and that requires time, deep thought and careful consideration.... Things we know WildBlow didn't have
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... are you calling wildbow low wis. I won't disagree if you are tho I do find it funny cause it fits with his larger issues when you break it down. The way I see it is wildbow's writing or worldbuilding rather suffers from large amounts of telling what he wants in the way he wants it which works fine for things like what's going on in Russia that we never see but it tends to conflict with what we see because we don't see things we should or worse see things that go against what he's said. A pretty good example is how he's gone on his Jack slash is a gary stu whose power means he can't lose to any parahuman ever or in any situation where they are even tangentially involved spiel which kind've goes against what we saw in canon.
 
If we are Wildbow ranting, I guess mine would be how his WOG says that everything Cauldron did was necessary to prevent greater chaos, but mostly what we actually saw them doing onscreen was be utter assholes. Which it's amazing how few problems in real life were solved by greater assholery. I would have found his Cauldron claims more believable if he had shown way more incidents of them fixing things. (subrant... how is their whole Brockton Bay experiment thing not distilled racism? I mean, they were like, sure, what we are trying to create in Brockton Bay is what is already happening in Africa and South America, but let's see what happens when actual American white people are put in that situation.)
 
AntaeusTheGiant said:
I mean, they were like, sure, what we are trying to create in Brockton Bay is what is already happening in Africa and South America, but let's see what happens when actual American white people are put in that situation
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Well, the way I see this, its less about racism and more about that in Africa civilization all but collapsed at this point; so Cauldron tries to simulate what would happen if Warlords arise in typical American city.

I still don't get like half of their actions though so do not quote me on that. Most of it sounds like pure idioticy to me but hey, desperate times and all that. If end of the world is inevitable, you don't exactly need to care about any long-term consequences
 
Path to Victory give you Victory, but it don't care about the cost of Victory, and so it default to the shortest, most collaterally damaging path. It should be called Path to Pyrrhic Victory, because unless you are very careful, you'll do more harm than good long term.

Also to be fair to Cauldron, they are fighting a pretty loopsided and desesperate battle, with the deck entirely stacked against them. Their morality is one of the first thing that must have died in their shadow war.

In short, Cauldron is made of humans, and humans make mistake. But at the level they play at, mistakes are very costly.

Luckily for Cauldron, this time they found the silver bullet they were looking for. Or I should say the silver simian.

Unluckily for them, all thinker analysis confirms Apeiron would very much prefer to be left alone.
 
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Nimeroni said:
It's almost as if Path to Victory didn't care about the cost of Victory, and so it default to the shortest, most collaterally damaging path. It should be called Path to Pyrrhic Victory.

Also to be fair to Cauldron, they are fighting a pretty loopsided and desesperate battle, with the deck entirely stacked against them.
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I agree that the path to victory is damaging them, I'm almost 90% sure that it would work as a true Path to Victory if Eden had not sabotaged it. Their (hers and Zion's) Shards are meant to encourage, nay, violently push their hosts to conflict with everything and everyone. When Eden sabotaged PTV, she probably added that little conflict drive along with all the blindspots she could.


Eden turned PTV into PTPV (Path To Pyrrhic Victory), which is why, for any reason, Contessa didn't either push Manton to he would pop into a different city, or do anything to make sure that hero didn't die, I mean he was the best tinker, the best path would have both the Siberian and Hero living.
 
I'm wondering, can anyone tell me if there is Stargate TECHNOLOGY in this version of the Celestial Forge? I know he has xenolinguist or whatever, but Alteran or as garden technology would definitely be a game changer.

Or God forbid, he unlock Culture, Xeelee, or Time Lord tech! Anyone know if those are there too?
 
Stormlightranger said:
I'm wondering, can anyone tell me if there is Stargate TECHNOLOGY in this version of the Celestial Forge? I know he has xenolinguist or whatever, but Alteran or as garden technology would definitely be a game changer.

Or God forbid, he unlock Culture, Xeelee, or Time Lord tech! Anyone know if those are there too?
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I don't know if they're in the Forge, but Time Lords and Culture aren't in Lord's current one, not sure about Xeelee
 
Nimeroni said:
Path to Victory give you Victory, but it don't care about the cost of Victory, and so it default to the shortest, most collaterally damaging path. It should be called Path to Pyrrhic Victory, because unless you are very careful, you'll do more harm than good long term.
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Personally, I would call it "Path to victory of least resistance ". The Path is designed to, not find a Pyrrhic victory, but the simplest victory achievable. It's just that most of those simple victories tend to end up in some form of Pyrrhic victory.
 
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