Re: [Official!] Project Horizons Comment Crew Chat thread.

[Ironmonger]

I STILL LIVE

Mostly.

We can change that. *racks shotgun*

Hah! I spent the last ten hours dealing with the dreck of society over a customer service counter. Your buckshot does not frighten me.

Never said anything about bucksh*t. *grins wickedly*

[Quotidian]

Eh. It was mostly just a never-ending grind of low grade stupidity and people buying $250 sets of golf clubs they probably don't need. Although the people buying hundreds of rounds of ammunition always worry me. Especially if they're twitchy and have shaved heads.

And the children. The screaming, crying children. God, I'm getting flashbacks.

My favorite story of the night had to be the guy who came in with his eight year old son and an airsoft gun. Now, let's leave aside the fact that an eight year old shouldn't have something he could fairly easily remove an eye with. The guy wants to exchange the gun with another one of the same type. He says it's broken. I ask what's wrong, and he says the slide is stuck back.

I pull the gun out of the box and push on the slide lock. The slide pops forward just like it's supposed to. The guy and I just exchange stares for a few seconds.

"Oh." He says. I nod. He asks if he can still have the new gun instead.

What.

He has a perfectly functional gun in packaging that has already been opened. We can't resell that. He doesn't need a new one. The old one works fine. But one of the things you learn in a job like this, especially if you want to keep your job, is that you don't argue with customers. Ever. I could grab a manager and ask them, but I know what they would say. So I give him the new gun and fantasize about pistol whipping him for the next five minutes or so.

I could regale you with more tales of people who buy ten thousand things and then return the sizes that don't fit. Or people who lose the receipts to three hundred dollars worth of jerseys and then try to return them. Or people who ask for refunds on snapped-in-half fishing rods they bought six months ago. But my favorite, my absolute favorite, are the people who bring their un-disciplined broodspawn to the store and let them run free for a few hours, where they can run screaming up and down the aisles or knock every single hat off a twenty foot long shelf. Those are just so much fun.

Bleh. At least I wasn't on the closing shift today. Those poor bastards have to clean the entire store up for tomorrow. They're probably going to be stuck there till three AM.

[Stringtheory]

*snip*

once again I salute you for being among those who have to hold the line against such a never ending wave of stupidity

[Ironmonger]

Black Friday Feelings in a nutshell:

[O. Hinds]

Safeguard, safeguard, safeguard!

:)
(I used the Safeguard system because the previous time I sent up the Somber Signal was just a demonstration for people who didn't know what it looked like.)

[222222]

Fuuuuuuuuuuck it's 11:00 at night here. If I didn't have challenge matches tomorrow, I would totally read it right now. As it stands though, tomorrow will be a ponyful day indeed.

[Ironmonger]

Mother fucker, it's 12:18 AM here. I actually dread reading PH at times.
Somber dropped in on IRC for a bit to get some feedback on an idea, I'll just say he has an odd idea-making process apparently.
Won't spoil anything unless asked to lest someone pisses themselves in rage.

[OneMoreDaySK]

@Quotidian
Well, it's over for now. I laud thee for braving such masses.

@Somber Signal
Oh no. (no x 8) . My brain can't handle this. Sleep nao. Reading later.

[Ironmonger]

Despite being sleep deprived I'm manning the fuck up and reading it. And I've gotten to the bottom of my memory issue: I remember the summary of things but forget small details unless they really catch my attention. Seriously, try telling me a set of instructions and have me repeat em back to ya. I'll be like "...What." Don't help that I sometimes lack common sense.

[Guest]

Well, I've watched Skyfall and Life of Pi with the family, and enjoyed both. Former was a lovely little action movie, plenty of clever bits, perhaps a bit light on the action and high on the acting but that's what I like anyway, and it was overall just an enjoyable film. Life of Pi was fucking gorgeous. Very true to the book (skipped a couple scenes, added one or two) and matched the general sentiments of the original very well (though the book was generally darker). Seriously, though: goddamn beautiful movie. (This is what we do for Thanksgiving: come home, eat delicious food, watch movies) Oh, and the preview for the Hobbit has got me hyped, now, so... thanks, Peter Jackson, ya jerk.

And now, the Somber signal has been sent!

[IncoherentOrange]

Today, Ketchup and I went with our dad to see Red Dawn. (which, unbelievably, has a PG rating. No, not PG-13, PG) Anyway, it was pretty good, but not quite as good as the original.

The rest of my day has been spent bumbling around FiMFiction, here, and YouTube. I haven't seen the new episode yet because I've promised myself I'd finish the next chapter of my story before watching it. It's working, and I'm getting a lot done.

[Ironmonger]

I spent my day doing laundry (I have to fill the washer manually by bucket) and finishing where I left off on Chapter 52. Reading with the TV blaring is a bitch.

I got another idea. A suit of light, winged power armor designed to provide flight to non-pegasi, via thrusters of some sort (maybe jets). The suit itself is designed to carry a payload of heavy weaponry. I call it Project Supermarine.

[IncoherentOrange]

I had a silly little concept in my head for a robot of sorts which would fly wtih metal wings and jets, and had a head-mounted short-barrelled autocannon in the place of a horn, with protection on par with power armor. Larger than a pony, and with wings and a horn-like extrusion, I'd call it an Alitron.

Silly little concept indeed.

[Ironmonger]

I actually put Dreadnoughts from 40K in my story albeit in pony form. Prancinnatti needed some form of heavy support that would make sense given the setting and it was the first pattern that came to mind.

[Harmony Ltd.]

If you want some nasty robotic critter :


Take a Spritebot chassis, cram it with high-explosive laced with incendiary agents and steel pellet ; leave just enough size inside to put the things and stuff that make it a robot intelligent enough to find and identify targets, and to communicate and coordinate with other robots ;


Make them cheap to mass-produce ;


And watch the psychological effect on the enemy troops as you unleash swarms of the stuff.

[Ironmonger]

Essentially a floating Goliath tracked bomb, minus the tracks and wired remote-control and added an AI.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Though I'd see it more as an anti-personnal weapon than as demolition charges. Maybe their secondary use could be as floating anti-tank "mines", but I doubt they would have enough punch to do much.


The main usages I'd see is :

1 - to slow down / break the advance of an infantry formation in the open, as they have to defend themselves against something that can come from above and doesn't fear death (contrary to pegasi flyers who still have to dodge).
2 - in urban assaults to counter the terrain disadvantage and use it as a benefit as the enemy is itself trapped into streets / buildings against an unrelenting enemy that can coordinate itself to attack from the best angles.


Obvious counters are electronic warfare (jam communications so that they can't coordinate and to fight each of the buggers on their owns) ; and portable (preferably automated) AA-turrets (whether using ordinary ammo, laser or disintegration magic).

[Ironmonger]

Imagine FOABs in FoE. Give that to a villain and you have an interesting quest.

Among my other creations is an FoE-ified Chaos Defiler, Sentinels based on the buggers by the same name from Halo, war mammoths with guns, and rhinocerioid soldiers with heavy weaponry. Both the Defiler and the rhino-things are usually amalgamations of magic, flesh, metal, and AI.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Once you get even the crudest form of reliably reproducible and programmable artificial intelligence, some kind of factories to produce even crude robotic chassis, the resources and manpower to use these factories

and just enough genius to assemble all that in a coherent and useful fashion


then setting up your own empire in the wastes become, not really trivial, but you're, like, 50 to 70% of the way there.

[Cptadder]

Once you get even the crudest form of artificial intelligence, some kind of factories to produce even crude robotic chassis, the resources and manpower to use these factories

and just enough genius to assemble all that in a coherent and useful fashion


then setting up your own empire in the wastes become, not really trivial, but you're, like, 50 to 70% of the way there.

The big thing becomes resources and repairs. Your machine army needs mechanics to keep the lines running and if you use robots for that you need mechanics for them, if you use robots to repair the robots now you need mechanics for them instead and if your using robots to repair robots to repair robots you run into having a very easy cascade failure without ponies at some point in the chain.

The big thing once you have an automated assembly line is resources as steel and scrap don't carry themselves to the furnaces.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Red Eye~~

[Ironmonger]

Aye, one of the main issues is having enough guns to say "this is mine". Setting up a factory as you said makes that a hell of a lot easier. One of the grayer factions in my story, the Iron God, has a rather large army of these magitech soldiers and industry to back it up.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Tactics win battles.

Logistics win wars.

[Ironmonger]

I could imagine one of the bigger factions having slaves for work. Not the "PUT YOUR BACKS INTO IT" brutal slavery where they starve you (okay maybe) but the more polite form of slavery, if there ever was such a thing, like the Ottoman Janissaries.

[Cptadder]

I could imagine one of the bigger factions having slaves for work. Not the "PUT YOUR BACKS INTO IT" brutal slavery where they starve you (okay maybe) but the more polite form of slavery, if there ever was such a thing, like the Ottoman Janissaries.

Your thinking of contract workers or indentured servitude.
Or a little bit more modern "Company towns and Company stores"
IE your workers get payed in money only good in company facilities and the company owns all of those facilities thus making money coming and going. It's known today as "wage slavery" but back in the day it was simply the way things were at certain remote jobs like mining or prospecting.

[Ironmonger]

I could imagine one of the bigger factions having slaves for work. Not the "PUT YOUR BACKS INTO IT" brutal slavery where they starve you (okay maybe) but the more polite form of slavery, if there ever was such a thing, like the Ottoman Janissaries.

Your thinking of contract workers or indentured servitude.
Or a little bit more modern "Company towns and Company stores"
IE your workers get payed in money only good in company facilities and the company owns all of those facilities thus making money coming and going. It's known today as "wage slavery" but back in the day it was simply the way things were at certain remote jobs like mining or prospecting.

If I understand this right (I've said before I'm sometimes slow), the company essentially gets free labor because the money all comes back to them.

What I meant with the Janissary reference is that you are taken by force to be a slave and have to do whatever you are told no matter what it is, but you are treated really well. The Society has something like that with their servants.

[Cptadder]

If I understand this right (I've said before I'm sometimes slow), the company essentially gets free labor because the money all comes back to them.

A little different, the company gets labor which is powerless since if you quit you can't just leave. Your spot in the barracks is rented to you by the company, the food your eating is sold to you by the company. Any healthcare is from company doctors. And all you have is company script. In essence your "money" is worthless if you quit your job and try and move elsewhere. If you leave in essence you leave with the clothes on your back and nothing more as all of your wages are not being payed in a form that is accepted anywhere else besides the company town.

What I meant with the Janissary reference is that you are taken by force to be a slave and have to do whatever you are told no matter what it is, but you are treated really well. The Society has something like that with their servants.

That's just slavery, being treated well is true of quite a few places that practiced slavery. Keep in mind there are two different forms of slavery as I alluded to in the last post, indentured servitude which is slavery of a fixed period or your contract is of a fixed amount and pure slavery where you are a slave have no chance for anything else

In the first form of slavery your freedom can be bought or earned, in the second your a slave and that's the end of it. Wasteland slavery would most likely be slavery of the second kind even if the Society seems to practice slavery of the first kind.

[Ironmonger]

I think I get it now, I'm considering using that for my story since it has caught my interest. Gotta look into that later. The form that seems more appealing to me is the "wage slavery" with the company stores and whatnot. Heh, I try to sound smart and I end up learning something.

[Caoimhe]

ACK I'm back from Thanksgiving stuff and now have to catch up on new chapter and agghhhhhh!! Gotta avoid everything here.

Just caught new poni though, Babs is awesome and I want to be her but she has a freakin' (very forced) BROOKLYN accent, NOT Boston. I am dreading the impending confusion.

Edit: Actually, it's more Staten Island. HMM

[Ironmonger]

I'm considering using something like this in my work. Talk about half-assing your writing!

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