Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Derpmind]

Sindri, I love your idea there. It makes the Brood of Coyotl way awesome. But the problem is the zebras could well have the resources to make them without the need to steal resources. First off, it's been said before that Discord wasn't the only 'chaos spirit' to visit the planet. Coyotl could well be a lesser chaos spirit that the zebras had imprisoned. (They probably use zebra tech/alchemy, because zebra.) Secondly, the cyborg parts might come as a modification of all the advanced robots they had. Remember, zebra's are supposed to have the most advanced robots. The zebras solve the problem of training the blanks by putting cyborg parts in their brain and elsewhere to take direct control.

The why is simple: More soldiers. Lots and lots of soldiers, on the cheap. Soldiers that follow orders perfectly and make good cannon fodder.

Also, the infiltrate-manufacture plan means keeping them secret until they're used, and in their first appearance in the memory orb they were out in the open hunting down zebras who had turned traitor.

[Sindri]

The why is simple: More soldiers. Lots and lots of soldiers, on the cheap. Soldiers that follow orders perfectly and make good cannon fodder.

Yes, but what makes them more practical than normal robots? Cloning and cyberware are both very difficult and advanced processes, and we know that the zebras already have great warbots. The Brood are only a better choice under two conditions that I can think of. Either they're designed for infiltration (which they would suck at since they look like zebras rather than ponies, can't eat, never talk, etc.) or they somehow give you more force from the same resource limits than entirely synthetic forces would. There has never been any mention of massive metal shortages or anything, and the highly sophisticated materials and construction for cybernetic means that they probably aren't much cheaper than an equivalent force of robots even if the biological parts are dirt cheap.

So I was thinking that if you couldn't get a big army through, but you needed a significant force on the other side, maybe you could have a small team sneak in and build your army when you get there. They'd only be able to carry the parts for a few heavy bots, but they could bring along the cybernetic parts for dozens or hundreds, and then install them once they were past the secure perimeter. If the bodies will be there waiting for you, or you have enough Ichor and the know-how to make your own clones, a small team of specialists could carry the 'seeds' for a massive invasion force while bypassing most strategic defenses.
It's certainly not the only time such forces would be useful, but it seems like the most likely given the zebras' goals in the area, where we found the Brood, and several reasonable-but-not-confirmed assumptions I've made about the tech being used.


But yeah, the zebras could totally have developed cyberware on their own, or Steelpony could even be copying them instead of the other way around. The prevalence of alchemic modifications instead of cybernetic ones among zebras is easily explained by the expense, maintenance difficulties, etc. I freely admit that that detail was just me being silly and looking for ways in which a story element that looks like it came out of nowhere could be connected to pretty much everything else in the story. Conspiracy theories ho!

The second chaos spirit might be plausible, but it doesn't smell right to me... both sides of the war independently capturing god-tier threats, then simultaneously (or within a decade of each other at any rate) coming up with the idea of using their blood for weird magic shit, and developing cloning tech out of that, while no hints of the existence of the second spirit have ever surfaced? Possible in theory, but much less likely than Flim and Flam smelling an opportunity in a new community.

As for their previous use on the traitors... I'll have to go back and check, but I believe that operation was expected to leave no witnesses, so the risk from it would be expected to be minimal; Twist and Shujaa just have terrible timing from the zebra point of view. They needed forces who were absolutely loyal, since they were taking down dissidents on their own side. And every tech needs a test run, preferably under combat conditions, before you hand it to a team of valuable specialists going after a high-profile target. So it doesn't strengthen the theory, but I don't think it destabilizes it.

[Derpmind]

The second chaos spirit might be plausible, but it doesn't smell right to me... both sides of the war independently capturing god-tier threats, then simultaneously (or within a decade of each other at any rate) coming up with the idea of using their blood for weird magic shit, and developing cloning tech out of that, while no hints of the existence of the second spirit have ever surfaced? Possible in theory, but much less likely than Flim and Flam smelling an opportunity in a new community.

Now if 'Coyotl' is another chaos spirit, it doesn't need to be very powerful at all, but maybe that's going down the wrong track. It occurs to me that there's no way the Zebras didn't use their alchemy to research this crazy flux stuff that's all over Equestria. And with so much flux around, and a few conspirators to help, it wouldn't be that hard to steal industrial-scale quantities. The alchemists might well be able to deduce the source of flux, and moreover the ability to create blanks might be less of an invention and more of a result of harnessing flux's intrinsic effects on organics.

Yes, but what makes them more practical than normal
robots? Cloning and cyberware are both very difficult and advanced
processes, and we know that the zebras already have great
warbots.

Because they have brainmatter that makes it way easier to 'program' than robots? Because they require substantially less resources to create than all those parts and metal needed to make a robot? Perhaps blanks are easier to implant cyberware in, especially as they're forming? Because they look like zebras? Because it's hard to create a robot that does everything a normal zebra soldier can do? Because somewhere in the math it's cheaper and faster or even more effective? Because maybe it is made using dead bodies and they're identical because they use flux in the process? Because there's a wall and with enough glue explanation, lots of different stuff could stick to it?


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https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/viewtopic.forum?t=949

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