Well, hey, at least we got two Astartes.
Hell yeah! Honestly, I was expecting it to be a lot longer before you found even the first guy, let alone more.
woo (and wow, some rolls)
only the recovery one's actually bad, but we're still in an awkward spot
not sure where to invest right now, though sort of still want to heavily focus scouting so we find a long-term base before properly turtling up?
depending on other necessary actions doing the scouting carefully may also be good, might increase chances of hitting that DC 80 that stretches out the time before something bad happens? and if that gives us extra turns before whatever it is that's more chance to realise/prepare
if we chose to investigate the catatonic astartes we may be better off being stingier with AP too? since seems like there's less worry about a bad diagnosis ruining things than initially feared? (we both have multiple now, a low success didn't permanently screw things up and there was the option to go back and fix previous mistakes). that said, this may be different if investing there is the best thing for personal security?
regarding at least some research/improvements, maybe it'd be more dynamic/satisfying if they're rewards for puzzles and stuff? like trying something out, maybe it works, maybe it's a dead end. or is this tech heresy?
or maybe gaining it from specific stuff in the ship? rather than the knowledge just being printed out of thin air it may make sense for the information/insight/resources for it to be gained from challenges that may require specific prerequisites/strategy?
As for where to invest, there's plenty of directions, but also kind of limited at the same time. On properly turtling up, I wanna see all the cool stuff happen, but I also don't want people to be frustrated by sinking in a ton of time and effort into a base that you then tear down and set up shop elsewhere. But also, if you don't have good defenses or plans and poor event rolls occur, whatever happens is just down to you and your little las emitters, and hitting something with a stick. Though, to be fair, you haven't been looking for a long term base. Also to be fair, trying to find nine foot tall power armored post humans is an extremely smart thing to do.
Being as stealthy as possible is very much not a bad idea. Though that particular check is intended as a stressful unclear ticking time bomb that will go off eventually, just a matter of when. And poor rolls may fuck over stealth attempts too. So do you take the chance of rushing as much exploration as you can, trying to find a good long term base and some good loot to help survive, banking on getting enough success for stuff to work out despite less time? Or do you take it slow, being careful, but also knowing that it might come crumbling down and you might not have enough salvage to protect yourself, your servo skull, and two currently useless astartes.
You did get really lucky with the diagnosis. If it had gone poorly, things might have gone very differently. But also, in this current medical case, Astartes are sturdy as hell. But also this one is horribly injured, so who knows
I do like the proposal for research here. I'll have to figure out how I want to integrate that with the rest. Maybe unlocking research as you discover it in the space hulk as well as being able to do the long slow route if you let having no luck there or need something specific.
Huh, well, if nothing else there's an Astartes with working parts right here! And a working suit of armour!
And the injured Astartes isn't slowly dying now! Huzzah! It'll be a bit of trouble to make a new leg for him, dunno if he'd accept taking his brother's armour over cobbling together something from the remains of his suit.
Working parts! Exactly what I thought! Oh. You meant the armor. Yes. Working armor parts for sure.
Just found this story. Pretty enjoyable so far. My only major gripe is that the QM lied about the unknown device during character creation. It was supposed to be GUARANTEED to be something decent. If the QM guarantees don't actually mean anything then his WOGS are untrustworthy and that's bad.
Thanks, but also ouch.
That may have been poor wording on my part, and I apologize for miscommunication. To an extent I'm figuring the mechanics out as I go on this quest, which may account for some discrepancies. I think I discussed this earlier in thread, but the gist of the first chunk of rolls was general conditions. Anything above 25 would have been repairable with degrees of function until full repair, anything 2-25 would be broken but salvageable. I hadn't really had any specific plans for a nat 1 condition roll, but it would have been the same for any item. Axe, servo skull, any limb. The only things I ruled by QM fiat as full health was head and torso, cuz starting dead doesn't really work.
The I figured nat 1 made sense as broken, unrecoverable, unsalvageable, can't do anything about it. A limb probably would have just been flat out gone or a crushed pile of useless metal bits. For the unknown device, I ran with unspecified damaged function caused it to simply not exist.
I suppose I intended "guaranteed" to mean "whatever it is, it's pretty neat" less than "this will be an awesome thing you can't lose". Which I suppose is reasonably fair and pretty frustrating.
Can we create another servo skull? I wasn't seeing any options for it, but i wanted to make one for communication and base defence that our dear protagonist mentioned.
Been tinkering with a plan
You can create additional servo skulls. General limitations are quality of components leading to quality of the end result. A CRUDE servo skull could probably hover around in a limited area and so its intended task poorly. A BASIC skull would have more range and capacity in its task. Your current skull is an IMPROVED skull intended for scouting and adjacent tasks, thus sensors, good travel range, etc.
Skulls also have a trade off. A skull with no particular focus can do most things, but not particularly well. A skull focused on targeting or communication could do that really well, but not much else. This can be changed or upgraded
it probably still was decent, just that didn't stop it from getting hit by bad rng?
that might seem like we never got it in the first place, but it was rolled for so if things were different we would have them fine
i think this was mentioned earlier, we're not allowed to make another servo skull without first having a suitable skull due to religious reasons iirc?
That's pretty much it. It sucked, but dice gonna do dice.
That would be correct. You are in need of a skull to make servo skulls.
Yeah, but the update also mentioned how we went past several corpses. So, we could find a skull if needed, does it need to have some kind of religious deed attached to it before we can convert one?
I think the general idea with servo skulls is that they are usually made of the skulls of favored servants or something to that effect. A "I liked that guy, he did good work, I'm gonna keep his skull" kinda thing. I'm willing to let that not be a hard rule, either because I'm sure we can come up with a reason to justify it (they stayed at their post to the last/died in the service of the emperor) or because our MC is relatively young and may not have that intense doctrine as baked in.
no clue what the requirements are for sure, presumably if desperate someone *should* be able to use an unsuitable skull in the same way we're not following various rites perfectly due to limited resources, but out of universe there needs to be factors to stop us just cranking a ton out and getting tons of AP?
possibly needing some pretty specialist parts to make an automatous drone may be a factor too, bunch of possible reasons.
also note even if we get more they might give less extra AP since they could be lower quality/get in eachother's way/need more micromanagement than we could easily to manage?
Out of universe, I'll probably limit you in terms of how much additional consistently useful AP you get from building a ton of servo skulls. Mechanically, your main limitations right now are component requirements (I paused in the middle of writing this and I don't know what other limitations I had to put down…, I think you get the gist) and a couple other things. If you get to a point where I think you are hitting too many, I'll let you guys know, either narratively and/or directly. Right now I'm thinking that would be maybe three-ish skulls equivalent to what you currently have. Also, I'm realizing that even if you have a bunch of scouting skulls, you still need to go to the places to get the things. Scouting info is invaluable, but also still just information.
You can probably do a more or less unlimited number of "targeting" servo skulls, or similar types of things that definitely provide benefit, but not necessarily AP.
maybe it'd be possible to rig some weapons directly to sensors so that they fire when something passes by (if not specifically disabled by some remote)? should be far simpler to set up, though probs needs more weapons/aiming would be an issue, as could friendly fire from any randoms we don't want killed
You can absolutely set up some auto targeting type stuff. Typical restrictions apply. You can make them targeting servo skulls for flavor if you like.
