Character's MOs

[Y.T.]

Look at gravity control, no mastery at all.. Doom...I say the mooon is falling! The thing about suite powers and normal powers that techniques in suit powers are not as good as stand alone powers.Even those of lower level. Look at elemental Blast, vs q-bolt, or flight vs "propel".

Level 3 suite techniques are not as good as level 2 powers...

[phoenix]

However, lvl 4 suite powers are BETTER, in many cases, than lvl 3 powers. Why? Because Q6 is significantly more powerful that Q5, and the difference is much greater than between, say, Q3 and 4, or 4 and 5. In general a quantum minimum reduction is justified for lvl 3 suite powers, but should be viewed with great scrutiny for lvl 4 and above.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Originally Posted By: Y.T.

Look at gravity control, no mastery at all.. Doom...I say the mooon is falling!

Not without Mastery x2.

Originally Posted By: Y.T.

The thing about suite powers and normal powers that techniques in suit powers are not as good as stand alone powers.Even those of lower level. Look at elemental Blast, vs q-bolt, or flight vs "propel".

Sometimes. Many (all?) of the L3 suite powers have a technique or two that really hit below the belt... and then they have all the misc stuff they do on top of that. Flight is better than Propel, but flight doesn't let you hose large numbers of people with "Storm".

[Warren Verona]

Originally Posted By: David 'Dr. Troll' Smith

Originally Posted By: Y.T.

Look at gravity control, no mastery at all.. Doom...I say the mooon is falling!

Not without Mastery x2.

I've been through this arguement before. I've actually calculated the numbers and there is no disputing it.

While the entire moon may be out of the characters capability Mastery 1 would be all that would be required (while Maxxing) to create a gravity well large enough to rip the moon from orbit.

However, at Q5 with the only the math provided in the Corebook (no extra out side babblingfrom people who think they know the rules cuz they have nothing better to do with life) a character could pull several large objects from space (about the size of a small state) and hurl them towards earth.

So, Y.T.'s theory is correct. If you hurl enough small objects at the moon you could achieve the same effect.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

The Moon has a diameter of 3,476 KM.

TK is laughable, so the only technique that might work is the alter gravity one... which isn't going to have the range as far as I can tell.

What is it's area, (Q+L)x5 meters? So that's 60 kilometers with Mastery? That's 11,304 square kilometers. The moon's surface area is 37,930,000 km², so you can effect one third of 1% (by volume it's going to be a lot less).

What's a powermax going to do for you? It's only going to last 1 round.

[Kultra]

Well Troll, I don't need to remind you that the object that made dinosaurs go extinct was barely a kilometer at it's biggest width?

I mean, yeah speed is everything, but 1% of the moon is probably enough that if you drop it on a polar ice cap, you will just trigger an ice age AND just for the hell of it mess up the magnetic field a little.

Realistically speaking, the most damage you can do with that is attract it to some place in the middle of the Pacific, and let the course of nature take over as Tsunamis at least a kilometer high go destroy all the coastlines they can get their hands on =D

Remember guys, 1% of the a moon sized object, is still rock, and it's acceleration from creating a gravity well THAT strong? I wouldn’t want to be on the Point of Impact for that.

---

Added later:

Just of note, is that a 1% of the moon is still 7.3477*10^20 Kilograms. That's, wow I don't even want to start checking how much is that but it has 16 zeroes after that last 7, damn that's one big number.

More important is, 1% of the Moon's Volume equals 2.1958*10^8 km^2, that's effectible .002% of the earth's size.

And let's just do physics (which might be terribly off from my part, but I will accept any rebuffs and insults. Numbers are not my forte) just for fun =D

To see just how much damage a 1% of the moon does to our precious speck of rock in the universe, we will see how many Mega-Joules does it gives off =D

Formula is = Mass * Height * Gravity = Energy

Mass: as said before, 1% of the Moon is 7.3477 * 10^20.

Height: Assuming you are trying to make this easy for you, we will do it during the Perigee [as you might know, the time the moon is closest to the earth] that's 363,104 Km. Not a bad number, that's about 9.1 times around the earth, and Phileas Fog did it on 79 days.

Gravity: Now, I'm no astronomer, so I will just assume a Gravity-well of 10 times earth's gravity should be enough to bring that 1% bad boy down here. If not, feel free to adjust.

Now, this ends up on:

7.3477*10^20 * 363,104 * 98.1

7.3477*10^20 * 35,620,502.4

26,172,876,548,448,000,000,000,000,000 Joules

26,172,876,548,448,000,000 Giga Joules

(for comparison sake: 1 Kiloton = 4.184 Gigajoules, 1,000,000 Kilotons equals 1 Megaton)

1,000,000,000 Joules = 1 Gigajoule

4.184 Gigajoules = 1 Kiloton

1,000,000 Kilotons = 1 Megaton

26,172,876,548,448,000,000 Gigajoules/4.184/1,000,000 = 6,255,467,626,302.10325047801147227533 Megatons AKA

6 1/4 Trillion Megatons.

Huh. Is it just I, or would that put one big dent on our beloved planet?

Man, just thinking of all that energy...crazy.

For comparison:

Tsar Bomb [50-57 Megatons], Tested by the Soviet Union during 1961.

It was detonated at 4,000m height, with the effects of:

-Fireball touched the ground and reached heights of 10,500m.

-Explosion could be seen 1,000 Km away.

-Caused third degree radiation burns at 100 Km from site.

-Mushroom Cloud was 60km High and 30-40km wide.

-The explosion could be seen, and Felt on Finland (It was sited on the artic circle, it still broke windows)

-Seismic activity went more than three times around the globe, could still be measurable at the third pass.

-Yielded 1% of the Sun's energy output during explosion.

And that's 50 Megatons...

[Hugin]

Oh for fuck's sake. Has it really come to this?

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: Hugin

Oh for fuck's sake. Has it really come to this?

Agreed.

[Courier]

Quote:

Just of note, is that a 1% of the moon is still 7.3477*10^20 Kilograms. That's, wow I don't even want to start checking how much is that but it has 16 zeroes after that last 7, damn that's one big number.

It sure is a big number... but what does that have to do with anything? I said one third of 1% of the surface and that the volume would be considerably less. Your effect only goes down 60 K, but the Moon goes down 1740 K.

My back of the hand calcs show us losing about 6 zeros off the mass that you can throw around. That's really bad right there but still leaves us with a city buster. But it gets worse...

Problem number one is you probably can't carve off big chucks of the moon. We already know with "Nova" physics that things tend to not fall apart. It lets novas pick up mountains, it lets the moon stay in one piece. So you end up with a big cloud of lose dust, not a single solid rock.

Said cloud of loose dust is going to pose several problems in movement that don't really matter because...

You'll drop it (i.e. during the several days it takes you to move it to the Earth, Pax comes up and kills you) and then it ends up making a pretty ring around the Earth.

[Contessa]

We're not discussing Pax saving the world. Only the math involved in whether or not something like that is possible under the guidelines of what's in black in white in the core book.

Consider also that while the moon may not be moveable within the math of a Q5 nova, large asteroids, soem the size of small states, would easily succomb to a gravity well of sufficient size. This size is well within the capabilities of a Q5 nova. Were a nova to 'tow' this large asteroid and 'sling shot' into the moon, or the earth, the damage would be imeasureable.

The game designers I don't think intended the rules to work in this manner, but leave it to people like us to mess up that plan.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Originally Posted By: Contessa

We're not discussing Pax saving the world.

Fair enough.

Originally Posted By: Contessa

Only the math involved in whether or not something like that is possible under the guidelines of what's in black in white in the core book.

A thought just occured to me. I don't think the concept works.

You can put up a gravity field... ok, great. The problem is your ability to tow the thing is going to be limited by your flight speed.

As I understand it, you are immune to your own powers. That means you aren't effected by your own gravity field... for example a nova with Mastery who got 5 succ on his roll wouldn't be crushed by it. That technique is an offensive weapon, you're immune.

You can use your other powers to fly, but the speed of that is limited. Accelerate the mass past your ability to fly and you won't be able to accelerate it or control it.

[Kultra]

Eh...I doubt that if you are really looking to drop it on a planet you need to do more calculations than "I accelerate to Y, without friction it goes to Y^2 so it meets the planet here"

=P

And Hugin, Tempest: I apologize, I guess I got carried away while reading the post, and since I had the Wikipedia already open, I thought it was easy to jut sum up the numbers.

I humbly apologize for having ruined this thread for you two. ;_;

After that:

Troll, Conti made a very valid comment, with a high enough Mega-Int, you can simply calculate the orbit and timing of a good asteroid chunk and gravity sling it off from the moon. That will speed it up tremendously.

[Angelboy]

Tempest here. Poly you haven't riuned the thread for it just seems to me that you have all missed the point.

This isn't really about whether a character "could" do this. Both the mechanics and the flavor of the game suggest this is possible, it a matter whether its "should" be done in the context of this shared story we call N Prime.

There have been many, many breaches of canon here. Some have been accepted while others rejected. The key to having something acepted that flies in the face of accepted canon is basically style and plausibility.

2 examples of what I mean, one of a success the other of a failure.

Example 1 (Success): Ashnod. Ashnod has broken canon twice (as far as i know). First it was revealed that she is the mother of Apep (another character here). She was the first of the characters here to break the "All Novas are Sterile" canon. The second breach was when she revealed she was a pre-Galitea Nova. Basically she was a Nova before there were Novas. Now why did this work? Why wasn't Ashnod given a proverbial stoning?

2 things I think. The first is her amazing ability to write a compelling story. Ashnod is a superb storyteller and her writing makes suspending disbelief so easy. The second reason is she didn't ram it down anyone's throat. These are things she has almost never discussed in the IC section. It's all been reveal through Fictions. Thus these things, while canon shattering, could be downplayed or outright ignored by anyone who didn't like it.

Example 2 (Failure) Dr. Cornelius. What can I say about this train wreck? For anyone who wasn't there, Dr. Cornelious basically claimed to genetically enhance the entire population of Chimps/Apes, efectively "uplifting" them (and giving them blue fur as a side effect) and then taking them all to another planet. He was aided in this by some sort of alien race.....Yes I know how this sounds, but that's the basic rundown. A super high tech blue fured planet of the apes....

Why did this fail? Aside from the obvious, much of this was forced onto the boards. The player didn't care about how this would affect the rest of the board and players here and was only interested getting his story out. While many of us tried to work with him to come to something more reasonable that we could all work with, the player was highly inflexible. Add this his poor ability to tell a rippin' good tale and you can see why this quickly fell apart. Eventually the Player dissapeared and all of this was quickly swept under the rug (and promptly trod upon with big heavy combat boots and shoes with cleats....we still aren't sure if the monster is really dead or just hibernating.)

So here is my advice to stories and plots dealing with canon breaking concepts.

1. Keep it to Fictions for the most part. I'd rather read about an army of genetically enhanced baselanes over just being told that so-and-so has created then and now has an army of Stever Rogers sitting in his back yard.

2. Make it about the process not the end result. If the goal is to create these "genies" then tell stories about the trilas and tribulations that went into the discovery. This kind of story arc is more interesting if we the reader can understand just what happened to make this come about. What obstacles were needed to overcome to acomplish this? What are the repercussions? How do the major players (both PC and NPC) react to it?

3. Realize that your going to be pissing in someone's cornflakes here. It's completely unavoidable.

4. Don't marry yourself to one inflexible vision of the idea, allow it to grow and evolve into something the majority can be happy with. This is especially true if it's going to have an effect on the board as a whole.

5. Be prepared to see your creation used by others in ways you may not expect or have intended. While you are the originator, once you affect us all with it, it becomes all of ours. People will twist it to suit their own purposes.

I'm sure there are other things I could add to that but I'm going to stop there. As always, this is just my 2 cents but I hope it's been helpful

[Hugin]

Originally Posted By: Angelboy

Tempest here. Poly you haven't riuned the thread for it just seems to me that you have all missed the point.

This isn't really about whether a character "could" do this. Both the mechanics and the flavor of the game suggest this is possible, it a matter whether its "should" be done in the context of this shared story we call N Prime.

Thank you.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Well put everyone. Two last comments and then I'll drop it.

RE: Calculations

Unless you're somehow very, very close (like the moon) the calculations are non-trivial (read, impossible). For an example of how hard this is, go to a straight road, then set your car straight at the beginning, then take your hands off the wheel and see how long you can go before needing to make an adjustment. Now imagine trying to do this over on a road bigger than North America. Course adjustments will need to be made.

RE: Asteroid chunk

Again, this is easier said than done. In theory, many novas can fly to the moon. In practice, doing so takes a mind numbing amount of time (days to months) during which you do pretty much nothing. The moon is extremely close, the bulk of asteroids are past the orbit of Mars. So... course adjustments will need to be made, on something that will probably take years.

[Matryoshka]

Warp...

[Tempest]

Not warp. Read the description again. the dimensions of the actual gate would be too small.

[Matryoshka]

Warp let't a nova get form Point A to Point B...From there, nova can use other powers to do things.

[Ptesan-Wi]

*sigh* Yes, Warp lets a nova get from Point A to Point B. However, once they are there, they are still at the limit of those other powers. It's not as simple as warping out to the asteroid belt, aiming an asteroid at Earth like an oversized billiard ball, and lobbing the thing into the planet (via gravity control, momentum control, brute strength, etc). It's going to take years (if not decades) for the asteroid to make the journey... and those are years/decades for miniscule course errors to creep into a major miss and/or other novas to get involved and stop the bloody thing.

[Kultra]

*Being relativly ignorant about the rest of the physics in the astronomic calculations of "How to hit a planet with an Asteroid from millions of kilometers away, in three easy steps" will now shut up and no contribute to the dragging on of this subject*

So back to the old subject!

Signy has a Backing 5 from who?

Signy has Resources 5, with a high Mega-Int that's plausible, where is this stored? banks? trade bonds? gold lingots?

Signy wants to create Steve Rogers. I agree with Angelboy/Tempest on this one, it's much better to hear/read about the process that just about the end product, much more filling.

That's so far what I have tought, and the questions I got. =D

[Matryoshka]

Signy is backed by Sol INC. Signy owns roughly 60% of it. It is diversified in many fields, privately owned.

She keeps her money in a big brown bag.What a thing to do.It is all up to her.

Signy started her mass of money by being a Precog in 1998, and well, used her powers to buy many things. Starting with a Lotto ticket worth tens of millions...

[Hugin]

If she owns the company how is that Backing and not Resources?

[Warren Verona]

Oh for fucks sake, Signy is cooler than Mal.

Just let the god damn kid do whatever she/he/it wants. Let the Directors and/or Chosen be the final arbiter on whether or not this sort of action is acceptable on the site.

Plain and simple.

It can argue with us, but not with them. If they say 'no' it's a no.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Originally Posted By: Hugin

If she owns the company how is that Backing and not Resources?

Same way Anna DeVries' backing works I guess... of course I'm assuming AD has backing.

[Lou Anne Burgess]

Anna Devries does have Backing and Resources of 5.

Elites p23

[Trooper]

Okay, but...well, I mean, I know it sounds silly but she's a canon NPC that basically serves a purpose in the game. Not to be badder ass than anyone else but to provide the company of Devries.

[BlackThorn]

It is a telling point in the game that the second largest employer in the game has her backgrounds capped at 5.

[Catalyst]

Let's look at the amount of money one can get from a loto ticket. Well, in California, that is around 200 million. Maybe only 100 million after taxes. Resources 5 means you have only one tenth of that. Signy, is a nova who in 1998, had precog, and mega int. So all these ways and rules of how to deal with smart novas weren't set up. Yes she is rich. She is worth in the low Billions. In the real world there are as I recall at least 400( maybe as high as 600 or so) people alive who are worth billions.

I would point out that a cannon NPCs the Presucer (sp)wounded Pax,when the numbers clearly state he could at best do a flesh wound.

The point is that the books do not really have any internally consonant numbers. Look a cop, just a cop. Could arguably have resources of 3. Novas in the book are said to have eight figure pay checks. All the of the T2M make if not low tens of millions, they do at least make in the high millions. ALL of them. Should they all have resources of 5,then?

Numbers were never white wolf's strong point.Never has and unlikely ever will.

AD should either have higher numbers or the numbers should mean something else. It's up to the story teller.

[Kultra]

M.C. You are forgetting that most of the people who are worth millions, do not have instant access to those fortunes. They are invested in stock, bonds, precious metals, land plots, jets, their own companies.

There is no instant access, when the book refers to Liquidation it means that you sell all the things that can be mobilized in short notice. Cars, Jewlery, States, Bank Accounts, the money left in your pockets and in between the couch seats.

Dosen't matter that Bill Gates is worth 25* billion dollars (* = number throw in the air), he can't just pull 10 billion dollars out of a coffer and pay for something. Only Scrooge McDuck could do that, and we all know how that ended >_>

So yeah, while Signy MIGHT have that kind of money, she is not in the range to have access to such large quantities of money in short notice.

[Catalyst]

That is why she has backing. She own most of Sol Inc but it doesn't mean she has all it's resources at her beck and call. She just can use them. She has vast amounts of money that she can tap into when she needs them.

[Kultra]

But Vast dosen't mean infinite. Cancer research, focused on a single type of body disorder, costs millions upon millions per year, Signy dosen't have that kind of money, no company makes that kind of money to throw around.

She has the backing of a CEO and executive board director, but she can't wantonly use the company money to research a retro virus, or a Gene therapy, or a drug treatment that will turn the average human and rocket them to super human. Not without the express permission of the board of directors and fully knowing that it will take the company to bankrupcy.

[Vox Via]

And you miss the point. Research in the way is nearly impossible for Signy. Signy doesn't have those resources. She doesn't need them.

She breaks DNA codes down with her naked eye. She can do things with pen and paper what most labs need huge mainframes. Think of it this way. You are trying to say because TITAN would take thousands of years to break DNA, you couldn't break DNA down faster on Deep Blue. She like any really high mega int. She has past the singularity . She is in hyperspace. She is trans-human.

[Velvet]

Quote:

She is in hyperspace. She is trans-human.

She is ridiculous.

I'm sorry, but this whole discussion is, it would seem, a gargantuan waste of time and a total farce. You're going to come up with any justification you can think of, ignore rational arguments and appeals to logic, and insist that it's more or less possible for any of your characters to do anything you want. I think it would save all of us a lot of time and frustration if you just cut out the middle-man: don't post asking for opinions you're going to ignore anyway. Just write whatever you want to, because we all know that you will, and don't complain when it's voted NC.

I'm not trying to be rude, but I think these "discussions" about your characters have gone on long enough, as anything critical that's said about them or your plans for them seems to slam right up against the brick wall of your denial.

[Catalyst]

Velvet, you don't like it, shut the fuck up. You think I should come out and say yes I am wrong. Guess what I am not that type of person. If I do change I do so in quit and silent ways.

I have said before this what I think. I have said at least twice now that I am not going to do it. You seem to have not seen the fact that I am not working on big or massive things now. I have put only forth my views. And I get replies that have shit to do with shit. Poly keeps bringing up cost of research. I bring up on how research in that way is baseline. I mean for fuck sake, the cost of research would be even more and slower without computers,right? Well Signy is a fucking computer. And don't you dare tell me that is stupid, cause guess what..You wouldn't like it if I wrote of Velvet as coming off as a crack whore in look..Or only as talented as a baseline. No you would either ignore me or say somethign about it..But what the fuck do i know?

I mean, really.

If you do not like this topic ignore it. I ignore Chicago... Witch is way the fuck more than one post..But hey you must have your way, cause, fuck it. It is your site.

This is the third posting of this. I am not going to try break canon, and I am not going to most of the things i Would like to do with SIgny..Why? Because I have reasoned them to at best ruin other people's fun..You on the other hand do not seem to be capable of making that jump.

SIgny is fucking smart, and transcend-humanity. She is wealthy. She is not going to break cannon.So fuck you very much.

Do you even know what Signy is doing? No. I am going work on her stories later, but you wouldn't get the part where I said that, here is what I want to do. I will not do these things. IT doesn't matter why I think I could or not. SO fuck it. Yes, Signy will not do what I want her to do... THat is not the same as she can't.

And yes, I mean to be rude,mean,cruel. If you read my post I would not need to be....But fuckit, why read?

[Jager]

The above was totally unnecessary.

[Butterfly]

I now remember why I avoided this thread.

Much as I truly hate to say this, but Dreamer has a point about Mega-Mentals making someone like a computer. You can make a 30NP character with Analyse Weakness, Mental Prodigy: Tactical and Strategic, and Enhanced Initiative who could truly be called a tactical computer.

It does not, however, give said character and their player to ride roughshod over everyone else and their wishes. If this were a game in the truest sense of the world, it might. But this is a collective environment shared by dozens of people.

So majority rules, Dreamer.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Originally Posted By: Catalyst

...Novas in the book are said to have eight figure pay checks. All the of the T2M make if not low tens of millions, they do at least make in the high millions. ALL of them. Should they all have resources of 5,then?

Those 8 figure pay checks are for T2M and a few other Utopian novas. And yes, they should have resources 5.

It's trival for a nova to get a million dollars a year... although there's a whole pile of novas who spend it that fast too (the curse of winning the lottery).

With a decent power and/or skills, it's easy to get into the 10's of millions, 100's of millions is harder but still reasonable. Billions is very much harder, but even that can be done. More than that probably can't be done without effecting cannon. Anna DeVries, Pedro, Mr. Eufiber, it can be done, but now we are starting to run into a wall...

And that wall is, "Now what?"

This is a very human problem, experienced by many billionares now days. What do or can you do with that kind of money? Any material want that you have can be met, wine, women, song, houses, even minor companies. But you can't buy big companies, or countries, because the law and the system won't let you.

Some of the big money types run for office (Ross tried to buy the Presidency, Arnold did get the Governship). Bill Gates is trying to cure various diseases and reform various parts of government (good luck with that).

This is why Resources caps at 5, because at this point we run into limits as too what money can do. Run for office? Go for it. Give baselines nova powers? There's about six different problems with it... but it might be fun to try.

However I'm not sure that can actually work in this environment. For example to actually try to research this sort of thing you need to get away from the tech police, and you need vast resources, and seriously unethical experimentation.

And that's where I start to run into contradictions for discribing how this could be done here. Secret base on Mars? If you secretly build this kind of tech on a secret base, and never let anyone on this public forum know, then basically nothing has happened. If people do know so it can influence our shared reality, then the tech police and such should be shutting it down.

[Warren Verona]

You know, a part fo me wants to defend Velvet considering my close relationship to her, but I'm not going to make this one of those threads, or formus where every time someone is pissy with Vie I feel it's my macho duty/right to stand up for her.

So in short, I agree with Jager.

Quote:

The above was totally unnecessary.

[Velvet]

Congratulations.

You've managed now to completely alienate one of the last remaining people on the board with any semblance of respect for you as a human being, either out of pity or blind optimism that one day you might join the rest of the world in reality. I have, at least out of character, been nothing but civil to you, and your little obscenity and insult-laden rant was completely and totally unacceptable and unwarranted.

After what you just posted, I no longer care. You are clearly incapable of anything remotely resembling social interaction, refuse to make the effort to change this, and I therefore have no pity for you.

A decent person admits when they are wrong. A decent person will listen to the constructive comments of others, instead of taking them as attacks. A decent person will acknowledge the boundaries of, if not politeness, civility and treat other decent people with respect. I could go on, but it's really rather pointless. You aren't a decent person, in my opinion, and I intend to completely ignore everything you do from this point on as the ravings of a regrettably psychotic individual who deserves no respect because none is given.

You needn't bother replying, unless it's somehow a salve to your own wounded ego to grandstand here. I won't be reading it.

[Catalyst]

Um, note how I said in above statements I understood what I could and could not do within on this forum. I will go into greater detail in my reply to Velvet.