Post by Rabite on Sept 7, 2018 20:33:19 GMT -6
Well then, as I said in the chat, I decided to dump all the RPG ideas onto the board, and see if we might have the opportunity to revive them when we have the interest. Let's start with AEU.
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Pitman's original idea seems to be a "one ship saves the world and stops the war" kind of deal, and I had no objections to that. In the first version, the ship was something that was supposed to be a ship that can do everything, or so it was claimed to be. The ship was soon doomed fighting a few units(that I agree are vastly overpowered, but that was done for a reason). In the original setting, both the number and a technological difference between the Terrans and the rest of the world are so overwhelming that I really saw no reason why they are still alive, not when they were being actively hunted by the Krotosi. I don't know what Pitman had in mind with that, other than he wanted to use tons of missiles as the main weapons for his designs... and that ended in disaster in action when they failed to really do effective damage in the first major battle in old AEU against the Krotosi fleets.
[Main Ship, Mobile Units, and Design Concepts]
Let us first talk about the main ship Lazrin. At first, I saw it a problem of the ship, considering I was the one that demolished the old design, and the Terran fleet while controlling the Krotosi, I felt a need to redesign them. I kept the original ideas that Pitman wanted and kept a large number of missiles on the ship, but rather than just plain missiles, I decided to arm the weapons for different functions. Some of the missiles were armed to for anti-air, others for fighting mobile units, and finally a third time to deal with energy shields of enemy ships. All three types were designed to deal with the strong points of Krotosi ship designs, where the focus are drones, some mobile units, and ships armed with powerful shields. That said, not one of these missiles are designed to "overwhelm enemy ships" like Pitman wanted, but they can all contribute to the battle. The fourth type of missile was also added, partly for my own RP purpose, the Psionic Guided Missile. I treated it similar to Gundam's Funnel Missile and was planned so that it'll become an effective weapon against the Krotosi Nightmares. Let's face it, you can't really take on something like that without some serious countermeasures, and the Psionic missiles are one of the ways to deal with something that looks like a Super Robot villain. That said, in action, Pitman just fired everything, so it felt kind of a waste... Carlos used his ship well in the Stellaris RPG, and I was kind of hoping for that kind of playstyle instead.
Now as I said above, missiles are not enough to be decisive in battle, so they did not become the main weapon of the ship. Instead, I gave it a total of 8 Plasma cannons so that it at least have something with the ability to punch through the shields and armor of the Krotosi ships. Before this ship, I have no idea how Pitman planned to use missiles against an army that are armed to the teeth with droids that can easily intercept your missiles, just look at how well it worked in Faster than Light. The cannons worked fairly well in the only battle that took place, but I'll have to say they are not supposed to be that powerful. If the Krotosi ship had their shields up, it might take a few more hits to kill it, but nevertheless, it's one of the best main weapon on board. In addition, there was a pair of Particle Cannon at the front of the ship, designed for taking on heavy targets that the plasma weapons could not punch through... however the RPG was short-lived, and they never got to be used. It also has a very powerful ability, the ability to use the Psi Jump Drive to enter into the space of imaginative numbers, and warp back out without any counterability to stop them. This ability if used well can ensures the ship's survival, and lets it do all sorts of manuver to avoid enemy fire.
For escorts, the ship can load up to four mechas, twelve spacecraft, and twelve repair drones. These numbers are nothing compared to Krotosi, but I never designed the ship to be used the same way in the first place. The mechas form a team of assault unit, where they can quickly attack enemy flagships to cause disruptions. The small number can also make it easy to sent them out for separate stories, as a small number of characters means more interactions between them. For this purpose, what I had in mind are units that can quickly charge through enemy lines, hit fairly hard, then retreat back to the ship or to a safe location.
I had my eyes on transformable mobile suits and designed something similar. The Phantasm Refined Model can transform with much of their thrust powers towards the rear and allowing them to gain speed quickly, ignoring any sort of dog-fighting ability because we don't need that, we only need the speed to charge in, and to charge out. The weapons had to be fairly powerful but at the same time they can't slow down the unit too much, and the Zeta Plus and the transformed Super Gundam gave me the right idea. All of the Phantasm's weapons could be used in both MS or MA form, allowing it to fight no matter what mode it is in, but are used differently. The Phantasm gets a Long Range Plasma Rifle as its main weapon, one that can retain its speed while having enough firepower to take on units of similar size. In MA mode it can be fired quickly with less accuracy, and in MS mode it can be used as a sniper rifle to hit units after you have gained enough distance using the speed of the unit. To deal with swarms of drones we got twelve micro missile launchers on the backpack, which can also be used in MA form to disrupt enemy ranks, making it easier to charge through them. The rail vulcan is basic stuff, and the energy sabers are in my opinion just decorations... but I thought Pitman would like some sword fighting, after all, cool stuff doesn't have to be practical and I like to throw in interesting things in my designs as well.
The main mobile suit was the Sylph Alpha, and that bothered me a bit during the design stage... how exactly should I set it? As the main character unit, it'll have to be unique, fairly powerful, but it can't be all-powerful either. If it is that powerful, it is easy to predict that future enemy designs would improve just as much. So I went the opposite direction, I made it a very plain unit, but yet it has weapons that are highly suitable to deal with Krotosi units and that it is an interesting design that would draw interest to it. The shields are solid metal, ones that are the same material as many weapons and armor of the ship and allows quick repair if necessary. The melee weapon is an energy halberd that could be extended to become a long pike, one that can be used to keep larger units such as a Nightmare away at a safe distance. At the same time, the halberd can shorten into an energy saber for infighting, and can also catch the enemy by surprise if they did not expect such design. Two handheld shooting weapons are designed for the Sylph Alpha, one is the Rail Machine Cannon. Now as a solid projectile weapon, we have the problem of ammunition, a flaw that missile weapons also shares. To get around this, I relooked at the other designs and decided that it should have the unique ability to create its own ammunition at a low rate. In the long run, one can say it has unlimited ammunition. As solid projectiles pretty much have an unlimited range in space, I personally believed this is the most suitable weapon even if it is less flashy. Next is the Particle Beam Rifle, while the machine gun is for general usage, this one is for cracking heavy armor with overwhelming power. It is designed to be similar to beam weapons in Gundam, the ability to pierce through armor with energy and cause an explosion when particles make an impact. If used well it should be able to take on units that may otherwise be too hard for the machine gun to punch through. We will need another way to deal with energy shields as well, but I had already added two handheld weapons, and any more would affect the speed of the unit... so I added it on the wrist instead. The particle disruptors were designed to temporarily take down shields and would be invaluable against a Knightmare where the disruptor would have greater effects on units of similar size rather than a ship. But weapons are not the only things that make a unit interesting. Like the Lazrin, the Sylph Alpha has the ability to warp into imaginative number space; now, the main character is not a psychic, so how can he achieve the same without any support? The answer lies in the black box, "the shard of the artificial devil". The black box is to remain a mystery until later on in the story, but throughout their journey, it would attract assaults from not just the Krotosi who wishes to use it as a weapon, the Andarsi who is afraid of such creation, and BYDO who seeks to regain its long-lost pieces. The original BYDO won't need to do something this, but hey, I stole the setting from R-Type and changed it around, so it's not exactly the same. The black box provides the calculation needed for subspace warping, and allows the smaller Sylph Alpha to warp around consecutively, giving it great mobility in combat, but will be very stressful to the pilot as the aggressive influence of the chard will test the main character's minds.
Other than the mobiles units, we also have the slots for fighters. For that, I used a simple fighter, the Hamsa. The Hamsa is not really for combat, as they will be at great disadvantage against the Krotosi drones and their numbers. Instead, I designed them for scouting, with their equipment being sensors, and systems such as ECM and Afterburners to keep them alive. They will likely to suffer casualties as their journey continues, but they are easy to replace. Finally, the drones are just for repairs, don't even attempt to use them in combat.
That will be all for the Terran designs, I'll continue on to the background stories in the next post, first with the actual history timeline I had in mind and then in a seperate post my thoughts on that.
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Pitman's original idea seems to be a "one ship saves the world and stops the war" kind of deal, and I had no objections to that. In the first version, the ship was something that was supposed to be a ship that can do everything, or so it was claimed to be. The ship was soon doomed fighting a few units(that I agree are vastly overpowered, but that was done for a reason). In the original setting, both the number and a technological difference between the Terrans and the rest of the world are so overwhelming that I really saw no reason why they are still alive, not when they were being actively hunted by the Krotosi. I don't know what Pitman had in mind with that, other than he wanted to use tons of missiles as the main weapons for his designs... and that ended in disaster in action when they failed to really do effective damage in the first major battle in old AEU against the Krotosi fleets.
[Main Ship, Mobile Units, and Design Concepts]
Let us first talk about the main ship Lazrin. At first, I saw it a problem of the ship, considering I was the one that demolished the old design, and the Terran fleet while controlling the Krotosi, I felt a need to redesign them. I kept the original ideas that Pitman wanted and kept a large number of missiles on the ship, but rather than just plain missiles, I decided to arm the weapons for different functions. Some of the missiles were armed to for anti-air, others for fighting mobile units, and finally a third time to deal with energy shields of enemy ships. All three types were designed to deal with the strong points of Krotosi ship designs, where the focus are drones, some mobile units, and ships armed with powerful shields. That said, not one of these missiles are designed to "overwhelm enemy ships" like Pitman wanted, but they can all contribute to the battle. The fourth type of missile was also added, partly for my own RP purpose, the Psionic Guided Missile. I treated it similar to Gundam's Funnel Missile and was planned so that it'll become an effective weapon against the Krotosi Nightmares. Let's face it, you can't really take on something like that without some serious countermeasures, and the Psionic missiles are one of the ways to deal with something that looks like a Super Robot villain. That said, in action, Pitman just fired everything, so it felt kind of a waste... Carlos used his ship well in the Stellaris RPG, and I was kind of hoping for that kind of playstyle instead.
Now as I said above, missiles are not enough to be decisive in battle, so they did not become the main weapon of the ship. Instead, I gave it a total of 8 Plasma cannons so that it at least have something with the ability to punch through the shields and armor of the Krotosi ships. Before this ship, I have no idea how Pitman planned to use missiles against an army that are armed to the teeth with droids that can easily intercept your missiles, just look at how well it worked in Faster than Light. The cannons worked fairly well in the only battle that took place, but I'll have to say they are not supposed to be that powerful. If the Krotosi ship had their shields up, it might take a few more hits to kill it, but nevertheless, it's one of the best main weapon on board. In addition, there was a pair of Particle Cannon at the front of the ship, designed for taking on heavy targets that the plasma weapons could not punch through... however the RPG was short-lived, and they never got to be used. It also has a very powerful ability, the ability to use the Psi Jump Drive to enter into the space of imaginative numbers, and warp back out without any counterability to stop them. This ability if used well can ensures the ship's survival, and lets it do all sorts of manuver to avoid enemy fire.
For escorts, the ship can load up to four mechas, twelve spacecraft, and twelve repair drones. These numbers are nothing compared to Krotosi, but I never designed the ship to be used the same way in the first place. The mechas form a team of assault unit, where they can quickly attack enemy flagships to cause disruptions. The small number can also make it easy to sent them out for separate stories, as a small number of characters means more interactions between them. For this purpose, what I had in mind are units that can quickly charge through enemy lines, hit fairly hard, then retreat back to the ship or to a safe location.
I had my eyes on transformable mobile suits and designed something similar. The Phantasm Refined Model can transform with much of their thrust powers towards the rear and allowing them to gain speed quickly, ignoring any sort of dog-fighting ability because we don't need that, we only need the speed to charge in, and to charge out. The weapons had to be fairly powerful but at the same time they can't slow down the unit too much, and the Zeta Plus and the transformed Super Gundam gave me the right idea. All of the Phantasm's weapons could be used in both MS or MA form, allowing it to fight no matter what mode it is in, but are used differently. The Phantasm gets a Long Range Plasma Rifle as its main weapon, one that can retain its speed while having enough firepower to take on units of similar size. In MA mode it can be fired quickly with less accuracy, and in MS mode it can be used as a sniper rifle to hit units after you have gained enough distance using the speed of the unit. To deal with swarms of drones we got twelve micro missile launchers on the backpack, which can also be used in MA form to disrupt enemy ranks, making it easier to charge through them. The rail vulcan is basic stuff, and the energy sabers are in my opinion just decorations... but I thought Pitman would like some sword fighting, after all, cool stuff doesn't have to be practical and I like to throw in interesting things in my designs as well.
The main mobile suit was the Sylph Alpha, and that bothered me a bit during the design stage... how exactly should I set it? As the main character unit, it'll have to be unique, fairly powerful, but it can't be all-powerful either. If it is that powerful, it is easy to predict that future enemy designs would improve just as much. So I went the opposite direction, I made it a very plain unit, but yet it has weapons that are highly suitable to deal with Krotosi units and that it is an interesting design that would draw interest to it. The shields are solid metal, ones that are the same material as many weapons and armor of the ship and allows quick repair if necessary. The melee weapon is an energy halberd that could be extended to become a long pike, one that can be used to keep larger units such as a Nightmare away at a safe distance. At the same time, the halberd can shorten into an energy saber for infighting, and can also catch the enemy by surprise if they did not expect such design. Two handheld shooting weapons are designed for the Sylph Alpha, one is the Rail Machine Cannon. Now as a solid projectile weapon, we have the problem of ammunition, a flaw that missile weapons also shares. To get around this, I relooked at the other designs and decided that it should have the unique ability to create its own ammunition at a low rate. In the long run, one can say it has unlimited ammunition. As solid projectiles pretty much have an unlimited range in space, I personally believed this is the most suitable weapon even if it is less flashy. Next is the Particle Beam Rifle, while the machine gun is for general usage, this one is for cracking heavy armor with overwhelming power. It is designed to be similar to beam weapons in Gundam, the ability to pierce through armor with energy and cause an explosion when particles make an impact. If used well it should be able to take on units that may otherwise be too hard for the machine gun to punch through. We will need another way to deal with energy shields as well, but I had already added two handheld weapons, and any more would affect the speed of the unit... so I added it on the wrist instead. The particle disruptors were designed to temporarily take down shields and would be invaluable against a Knightmare where the disruptor would have greater effects on units of similar size rather than a ship. But weapons are not the only things that make a unit interesting. Like the Lazrin, the Sylph Alpha has the ability to warp into imaginative number space; now, the main character is not a psychic, so how can he achieve the same without any support? The answer lies in the black box, "the shard of the artificial devil". The black box is to remain a mystery until later on in the story, but throughout their journey, it would attract assaults from not just the Krotosi who wishes to use it as a weapon, the Andarsi who is afraid of such creation, and BYDO who seeks to regain its long-lost pieces. The original BYDO won't need to do something this, but hey, I stole the setting from R-Type and changed it around, so it's not exactly the same. The black box provides the calculation needed for subspace warping, and allows the smaller Sylph Alpha to warp around consecutively, giving it great mobility in combat, but will be very stressful to the pilot as the aggressive influence of the chard will test the main character's minds.
Other than the mobiles units, we also have the slots for fighters. For that, I used a simple fighter, the Hamsa. The Hamsa is not really for combat, as they will be at great disadvantage against the Krotosi drones and their numbers. Instead, I designed them for scouting, with their equipment being sensors, and systems such as ECM and Afterburners to keep them alive. They will likely to suffer casualties as their journey continues, but they are easy to replace. Finally, the drones are just for repairs, don't even attempt to use them in combat.
That will be all for the Terran designs, I'll continue on to the background stories in the next post, first with the actual history timeline I had in mind and then in a seperate post my thoughts on that.