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HeavyMetalSunshineSister

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Blog Entries posted by HeavyMetalSunshineSister

  3. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    More Technic fun.
     
    I went tromping off through the Nether Portal I set up in a Siege Castle I captured a while ago, taking only weapons and food, with the intention of acquiring a few Blaze Rods so I could craft an Ender Chest or two... well, exactly two. Thaumcraft plans.
     
    Knowing that a Nether Fortress would be the best thing to find, I set about the task of wandering aimlessly until I found one - finding, instead, this cheeky little pigman in a funky robe who immediately started setting me on fire, making me nauseous (a nasty little effect that makes your vision swim about) and spawning pigmen (not even zombie pigmen, just pigs on two legs) to rush forward and... I don't know, hug me? They weren't very good in battle, and judging by his swift death, neither was the Great Wizard Chuckles.
     
    So more wandering ensued, followed shortly by falling in lava, dragging myself out, and burning to death. This resulted in a knee-##### expedition to find the site of my death, which resulted in abject failure, and the creation of a new escape Portal... which dumped me in a cave, under the ocean, more than three kilometers away from my house.
     
    ...Yeah.
  4. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    So here I am, hiding, terrified, in a shack I hollowed out of a rubber tree, when I see some dude with really long, thin legs marching around in diamond armor, carrying a diamond sword, and kind of walking like a chicken. It's night, so I figure he'd probably stab me if I went outside, so I just watch him through one of the windows.
     
    This goes on for five minutes, until I realize that the only piece he's missing from a full set of diamond armor is the pants.
     
    This disturbs me greatly, until I realize that that's exactly what I'm missing from my iron armor.
     
    Ladies and gentlemen, I have started a fashion trend among creepy tall people.
  5. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    I don't recommend it. It makes you look like an awful person, makes everything that moves think you're an awful person, except for that one guy in the corner telling you that yes, they are all out to get you, and when you calm down he just ends up looking and feeling awkward.
  6. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    One of my friends recently showed me a video of a song from a live performance Metallica did in San Francisco in December of 2011, citing it as evidence that Metallica has "a breakthrough on the way". Intrigued, I listened to the song, and found myself gravely disappointed.
     
    From the beginning, the song failed to sound noticeably different from other songs Metallica has done. Now, I'm not expecting them to suddenly become an entirely different sort of band, or for James Hetfield to pull a flute out of his pocket, but some innovation would have been nice - anything present in the song to suggest that Metallica still has new ideas would have refuted some of what I've said for years about the band.
     
    Instead, what I heard was the same performance in the same old way, and in a world that has Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Buckethead and Joe Satriani, I have no time for Metallica's stale, recycled riffs, simplistic, unchanging basslines, and disappointingly unsubtle lyrics. The only good thing I can say about this song is that Lou Reed was nowhere to be seen.
     
    RIP Metallica
    1981-1988
  7. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    It may or may not be a well-known fact that I despise rather a lot of Christmas music. Songs about Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Commie-Faced Reindeer, and all the rest never really did much for me. Maybe it's because I've heard the same batch of songs performed by either dead people or dead careers for my entire life, but the whole thing seems tired, unartistic, and, oh my I finally get to use this word, hackneyed.
     
    This is not to say that I hate all Christmas music - not by a long shot. No, it's just that there are three ways to do good Christmas music. The first is an old, truly traditional piece, faithfully played by an orchestra, string quartet, whatever - tunes like the Carol of the Bells, Greensleeves, We Three Kings, all good choices. If you want to put an orchestra in, knock yourself out - better an orchestra than whatever pop "star" thinks we don't look at them often enough lately - but I'm quite happy with instrumental versions, because a good composer can convey any intended feeling through instruments.
     
    Way number two is to take a traditional Christmas song - and I mean real traditional, not baby-boomers-grew-up-with-it-so-that-makes-it-a-tradtion - and interpret it in your own way to make a piece of music that's still good and doesn't sound like exactly the same thing but with a different voice doing it. Look up Jethro Tull's version of Greensleeves if you need an example.
     
    The third, final, and perhaps best, is to just write something new. Now, to do this, you have to be a good composer already, so don't all of you tweeny-boppers and dead-beat crooners go running off to hack something into the corpse of your genre. It's got to be two things. The first is a good song. It has to be something someone could justify listening to any time of the year. The second is, and if you didn't predict this go jump in a lake, a Christmas song. It has to have some undeniable relation to whatever you think Christmas is. Two very different examples have been done by Jethro Tull (Christmas Song and Another Christmas Song), but if you want examples that have not a bloody thing to do with Ian Anderson, try John Lennon's shot at a Christmas song (Happy X-Mas War Is Over).
     
    There's my little rant for the night over and done with. Back to inexplicably pumpkin-flavored egg nog (seriously? pumpkin? who thought of that and are they still alive enough for me to hug them?) and avoiding "Christmas traditions" like Frosty the Red Snowman.
  8. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    Yes, yes, I know. I'm a lazy sod and should be shot on sight for so terribly neglecting the Spotlight for this month. I know.
     
    On the plus side, I have great (if stupidly delayed news) for you all.
     
    On April 2nd (3rd in the States, aka where I'm at), Ian Anderson, frontman for Jethro Tull (you might recognize them as the legendary band behind albums like Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, and Stormwatch) released a sequel to Thick As A Brick, forty years after the release of the original. Owing to, from what I've heard from a couple ill-remembered sources*, a certain disinterest on the part of guitarist Martin Barre (who is doing his own solo tour and album, so fret not about him!), this album was released as an Ian Anderson solo album, but, with a full cast of other musicians assisting him, including a couple of full-time Tull members, Ian has managed to produce an album that is every bit as powerful as the original, if a little bit less nostalgic.
     
    Unlike the original Brick, TAAB2 is split into multiple tracks, each one outlining a different possible past for Gerald Bostock, whom you might remember as the fictional boy credited, on the mock-newspaper album sleeve of the original, with writing the lyrics to Thick As A Brick. The premise of this sequel album is, essentially, a musing on what might have become of the 10-year old boy, forty years later. It's an interesting question, and one that is answered in four different ways - he either ended up homeless, a corrupt banker, a preacher, a soldier wounded in action, or a shopkeeper with a fondness for model trains.
     
    If you enjoy progressive rock, or just liked the original Brick, I suggest you buy this album, as its feel is much more like classic Jethro Tull than Ian Anderson's solo albums in recent decades.
  9. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    Some of you are probably aware of the Minecraft server that caters, in part, to BZP members. Most of you who are aware of that probably frequent the Minecraft topic in COT, and thus may be aware of the recent server crash.
     
    What you might not be fully aware of is the reason for this crash.
     
    A small group of players, led by Madufruit42 (The Invisible Noob) with some assistance from myself, MTMerrick (thoron) and a handful of others, were working on building a railway from Ga-Koro (not an exact reproduction of the Koro, mind - just a village based on it) to a planned train station that would connect Ga-Koro, Ta-Koro, and Ko-Koro. A moderator on that server - a non-BZP member - showed up, and began helping hollowing out the mountain for the train station. The problem has its roots in this - he decided, or so he told us, to use the World-Edit power-tools to hollow out the mountain faster, and warned us that this would cause some lag.
     
    We agreed to this, thinking that the lag would be moderate, and the net result would be beneficial.
     
    The server promptly crashed.
     
    A couple of hours later, the admin (Nav3taX) got the server back online, but with extreme lag. I happened to be in the right place to see what exactly had been done by the moderator "helping" with the railway.
     
    A giant ball of mushrooms had been placed in the air near the track. No hollowed-out mountain, just a great, pointless ball of mushrooms, which, being rather more difficult to render than, say, stone, lagged the server out and pretty much perma-broke it.
     
    The end result? The entire world had to be wiped, and a build-team is now being assembled to restore some sort of order.
     
    There are two possible explanations for why this happened - either the moderator was ignorant of the difficulties with rendering mushrooms, and was trying to be funny, or the goal was exactly what happened - the complete self-destruction of the server.
  10. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    So, umm... In some alternate universe, a lot of people are wondering why I'm a spoon now. They're also wondering why and how I developed the technology for gazing through the void, into the living rooms of people living an another universe.
     
    The answer is not available to you at this time, alternate-universe commies. Instead, I leave you with the greatest question ever asked. Why aren't you a spoon instead of some antennae-faced alien hippie?
  11. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    Yeah, yeah, I know - there wasn't a Musician Spotlight for January. I'm sure all -3 of you that read this thing were livid.
     
    Ahem.
     
    Anyway, I'm probably going to have some more business - sorry, busy-ness - so from now until April 3rd - or, until I update the Musician Spotlight again, whichever comes first - the Spotlight will be focused on Ian Anderson's new album, which is to be released as a direct sequel to the legendary Thick As a Brick... err, 40 years late.
     
    I've heard lots of good things about this album (some of the songs that will be on it! Steven Wilson's involved! Another Ian Anderson album! Steven insisted that Anderson use the same instrumentation [for the most part] as the original Brick! Anderson went along with the idea!) and one bad thing (Martin wasn't interested in working on this album) that's kind of a good thing (Martin is instead off doing his own thing.) so I'm really pretty excited about this.
     
    The one disappointment is that, unlike the live (and lyric-less) performance done in India a while ago, the album version of A Change of Horses is unlikely to feature sitar.
     
    But, hey! This blog isn't about my opinions - no, really it isn't. My opinions matter about as much as the -3 people who read them matter. This blog is about the opinions of those people who 1. don't exist and 2. were just told, in a hypothetical universe where they do exist, that they don't matter!
     
    So, tell me what you think of the upcoming Thick As a Brick 2. Or don't. Probably don't. But do if you exist.
  12. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    I no doubt sound pretty daft here, but that's normal, so I'll plow on.
     
    I've noticed that words like person keep getting changed to a word essentially signifying a small horse. A human being is not a small horse. I do not want every mention of a human being to be changed to a mention of a small horse. If someone knows of a way to stop this from happening, now would be a good time to mention it.
     
    DISCLAIMER: I do not hate small horses. I am perfectly fine with small horses, TV shows about small horses, and viewers of TV shows about small horses. There is, however, a time and a place for small horses. All the time is not one of those times, and everywhere is not one of those places.
  13. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    This is one of those times when the fact that I am incompetent to install a moderator for Minecraft, much less make one, really frustrates me.
     
    See, I had what I consider to be an awesome idea for a moderator to use in Survival mode. Basically, the idea is that Creepers would be modified to no longer take fire, explosion, or fall damage, so they explode, then just go ahead and do it again. And again. And so on until you manage to kill them. Increasing their base health to around what Endermen have would also be good for this idea. Giving 1 Creeper in every 10 the ability to teleport like an Enderman would, of course, be overkill, so if I was making this moderator I'd do it.
     
    Sadly, I am, as stated above, incompetent to make or even install a moderator for Minecraft. So this isn't going to happen.
     
    So I guess I'm just venting frustration/giving you a glimpse of the horrorterrors I'm unleashing on an alternate Minecraft-playing universe.
  14. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    Here's a beautiful thing that seriously just happened in Starscape.
     
    ->Discover a Ragnarok-proofed bunker on a recently-defeated enemy's planet.
    ->Manage to break into the bunker.
    ->Tick off heavily armored security drones, who start shooting at you.
    ->Throw a grenade at them. You're in the bunker. They're in the bunker. The grenade's in the bunker.
     

    This is now you.
  15. HeavyMetalSunshineSister

    Clue

    By HeavyMetalSunshineSister,

    Rather a big fan of the movie Clue, but I've got strong opinions on the endings shown. Now, I understand it's meant to be truly ambiguous and, really, impossible to discern which is really the ending (the bit where it says one of them really is the real ending can be safely placed in the same category as communism, they're all equally right and wrong), but the third one, while entertaining, didn't convince me. For one thing, "Mr. Body"s motive for bringing them all there if he really is Mr. Body and not, in fact, Wadsworth, is suspect. Were he truly Mr. Body, and wishing to eliminate his spies, he would be more likely to take the option least likely to put himself at risk - not, as we see in the third ending, the one most likely to put himself at risk. Furthermore, what motive would "Mr. Body" if he really is the butler and not Mr. Body as he was shown to be in the unambiguous portions of the film, have to pretend to be Mr. Body, considering he was in a room full of people with perfect motive to kill him? No amount of money from his employer could be enough for that kind of suicide.
     
    Also, I firmly believe that only the true blackmailer could be that much of a sleazeball. He simply didn't have the personality for a butler - not deferential in the least, not polite, certainly not formal in any way. He did, however, have the personality of someone used to pulling the strings.
     
    I will reserve statement on whether I believe the first or second to be more likely. My goal here is simply to state that I believe the third ending to be the least probable (oh, and also to make sure my blog still works).
  16. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    Today, I'm going to do a one-off feature - my "Premier" Membership runs out on the 28th, and I'm undecided on the matter of actually buying it when that happens.
     
    The purpose of this Tech Highlight is to point out the very real possibility of practical electric vehicles. The Tesla Roadster takes approx. 3.5 hours to charge, and, on a full charge, can go for about 245 miles - not too shabby, considering that other electric cars can take about 20 hours to charge and still don't go as far as the Tesla Roadster, but it still sounds pretty bad for a long trip - driving halfway there and then having to stop for 3.5 hours doesn't sound very good.
     
    But, when you consider that they've been able to get solar panels to achieve about 21% efficiency in commercial applications, it's easy to see how a solar cell on top of the car could help prevent the battery from ever quite falling to zero, getting rid of the annoying stop in the middle of a trip - and possibly accelerating charging when you are stopped. If you want to make things just that little bit better - or throw in a supplementary system for conditions where you don't exactly have the optimal amount of sunlight - then a small wind turbine powered by the wind flowing over the car just might be ideal. Now, of course, neither of these supplementary systems are efficient enough to power a car on their own, but they don't have to - the core of the power system will be the energy you get from the power grid, which hopefully has something like a nuclear power plant instead of a coal-fired power plant at the center of it all. The solar cell and wind turbine are there to extend the life of the main battery.
     
    This concept, I think, is what the future of high-tech energy systems will look like - a central, reliable system supplemented by things designed to make it all work just a little bit better.
  17. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    This is it.
     
    The thing absolutely none of you were waiting for. The thing even I wasn't waiting for.
     
    Because I had no idea it was happening until literally five minutes ago.
     
    Also because I'm a little slow up top.
     
    But yeah.
     

    The First Ever Madman-With-A-Box Drawing Contest,



    to be held from this point onward at no specific time interval.


     

    Basic Idea: Combine two animals that should never be combined, in a way that makes it clear that yes, they totally should be combined. For example, a turtle that is also an osprey. Don't use that one, that would be cheating.


     

    Entry Period: Until the end of the year. Seriously, go nuts. I'm in college and you're lazy, so I'm giving you plenty of time.


     

    Entry Limit: One per person, and each person has to have a unique idea - I would suggest that you announce your idea in the comments for this before you actually submit it, so no-one steals your idea.


     

    Rules:



    -All entries must be your own work.



    -All entries must combine two (2) animals that either really exist, really used to exist, or is part of an established mythos. This means that, if you truly feel like it, you could combine, say, a creature from H. P. Lovecraft's works and something from Doctor Who.



    -Entries may be drawn, and, in fact, probably should be drawn, but if you think you're slick, I guess you can try to Photoshop - just know that a sloppy job won't win. You have to convince me that this thing really is a turtle-osprey or whatever.



    -Concepts should be announced in the comments for this. It's not my fault if you get a great idea, never announce it, and then somebody else takes the idea.



    -All entries should be awesome.


  18. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    Every month, I've decided, I'm going to put a shiny little spotlight on a specific musician, generally one who also composes (or composed, I've nothing against dead guys), give a brief description of them, and recommend a small sampling of their work for curious listeners to get started on.
     
    This month, it's the father of ragtime, Scott Joplin.

     
    Scott Joplin is widely considered to be one of the most important composers of ragtime, and, indeed, the innovator that basically created ragtime. Ragtime, in case you don't know, is generally piano-based music characterized by a playful use of syncopation, and, in the hands of a creative composer, can have pretty awesome applications in contemporary music.
     
    There's really quite a lot of Joplin's work out there - you can even buy little books full of his sheet music so you can have the satisfaction of having the most fun with a piano since Beethoven got evicted from his apartment for rocking too hard.
     
    If you want to get started, here's three pieces to look up:
    -The Entertainer Yes, yes, I know. To those all too familiar with ice cream trucks, this song just sounds like diabetes. Gotta forget the ice-cream-truck connection and just listen to the song itself.
    -Maple Leaf Rag This one's just cool.
    -Gladiolas This is an awesome title, and a very good example of what ragtime should sound like.
     
    Use those three as a jumping-off point for jamming with Scott Joplin, and tune in next month for another Musician Spotlight!
  19. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    So, I liked X-Men Apocalypse. Haven't had more than a few hours for it to sink in yet, but, you know, so far so good.
     
    I like how the main villain's early actions make it understandable how someone could choose to follow him without personally desiring the end of the world. I mean... nuclear disarmament? Good start, buddy!
     
    But
     
    What if
     
    What if there were a story where some mighty immortal, trapped under rocks for literally thousands of years, woke up, got to see the world
     
    And had an overall positive reaction at first? Like,
     
    They saw cars, and were impressed with the speed at which a machine, unaided by any beasts of burden, could move
     
    And they saw trains, and got excited about trains, because trains are exciting
     
    And then planes. Wow, planes. Planes! If I were that old, and had been asleep that long, planes would blow my mind.
     
    And then someone tells them that smallpox isn't a thing anymore, and oh my good golly gumdrops, smallpox isn't a thing anymore! Again, coming from that far back in history, I'd be blown away.
     
    So they're impressed by that, and by the scale on which people live now (because Cairo ca. 1984 is much, much bigger than Cairo back when there were still working out the issues in pyramid-building), and at first this mighty, immortal ruler, this ancient world-ruler, is just walking around, taking in the sights, and they're thinking, y'know, this is good. I like what you've done with the place. A+ work, kids.
     
    And where they go from there kind of depends on the tone you want to set. Do they remain impressed? Do they decide that humanity, while it has progressed, still needs them at the helm for some reason? Do they see something, some darker side to this advancement, that convinces them that they need to do something big to change things?
     
    Can't really get into that last one without discussing what it is that would convince them that the world needs re-making, and I'm not in the mood to make it something ridiculous like Adam Sandler movies (though, to be fair, "burn the world" is a perfectly understandable reaction to Adam Sandler's financial success), so... yeah. Fun thing to think about.
  20. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    So
     
    It's been a while. Things have gotten... kind of weird, since the last time I made a blog entry.
     
    I haven't composed a new piece of music in more than a year, thanks to my computer's speakers and headphone jack breaking - followed, back in May, by the computer itself. About to go ahead and install a couple of programs for that on this borrowed computer, once I can verify that the owner is cool with that.
     
    In less aggravating (but probably more important) news, some of you might have noticed I've flipped the gender marker on my profile. Not joking about that one, in case you were wondering. To be honest, I should have figured it out a bit before I did, but hey, I was busy.
     
    Lastly, to leave things on a light note, finally bought and played through The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Ghirahim's a pushover, Demise is a filthy cheater, the game itself honestly talks too much, and the whole thing leaves me yearning for Skyrim's world design - not heavily-modded Skyrim, either. Pure vanilla, with all of its failings and, as I judged it at the time, emptiness.
  21. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    10. Inbred Chocobo Spies
     
    9. National Lampoon's Dog Hospital
     
    8. Invisible Landmine in the Outback
     
    7. Deep Space Spelling of the [consigned to an unpleasant afterlife]
     
    6. Shady Pachinko Encounter
     
    5. British Sushi - The Game
     
    4. Relentless Furry Dancers
     
    3. Olympic Ninja Desperados
     
    2. Children of the Cheese-Fight
     
    1. Flying Hamster Combat
     
    Honourable mention: Mario's Wrestling Power, Heavy Metal Sunshine Sisters, NCAA Dwarf Fiasco, Narcoleptic Harpoon - the Gathering Storm, Muppet NASCAR Overload
  22. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    For a personal project, I find myself needing to know what ships of the medieval Chola Navy looked like - my particular interest rests with the Thirisadai and Vajara classes. My own searches on the topic have come up empty, for the most part. Accordingly, I am asking you to assist in this search, in the hopes that you might have better luck finding good sources than I have.
     
    To be useful, pictures of these ships should show them from the side, front, back or top. A view of the ship from beneath is unlikely but would be nice. Colour images are preferred, but black and white is acceptable as long as there is enough detail. Photographs are probably more than we could hope for, but don't ignore the possibility.
     
    If you choose to help with this, thank you. If you do not, it is not your project and you had no obligation to do so.
  23. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    This document gives a pretty good overview of the principles of shipbuilding.
     
    ---
     
     
    Spaceships vary wildly in their designs, based on their intended function, however, they can generally be classified according to their size and intended function. However, there are no standard ship classes; if you like, a good general principle is to build your ships along real-world Navy ship designs. However, your species’ biology and culture will influence this, and you’re free to design your ships however you like.
     
     
    Ship classes in this format
     
     
    Name:
    Description:
    Reactor:
    Propulsion:
    FTL Drive:
    Armament:
    Defensive Systems
    Detection Systems:
    Cost:
     
     
    You fill out every detail except the Cost, and send it to me in a PM; I’ll look it over, and if it looks good, fill out the cost.
     
     
    SHIPBUILDING CONSIDERATIONS
     
     
    You are not expected to know everything about a spaceship’s design. You’re not an engineer, after all. However, you should understand these basics of what spaceships are like, and how to build them.
     
     
    Power and Thrust
     
     
    The first step in designing your ship’s power system is picking its Reactor. Much like real world Naval ships, a spaceship needs a massive reactor. However, in space, a reactor is far more important, because it is usually also your main Propulsion system. The following are a list of a few basic Reactor types; feel free to pick from these, or choose your own system.
     
     
    Nuclear Fusion Reactor
     
     
    Your basic Fusion Reactor uses either lasers or magnetic pinches to force atomic nuclei to fuse, which produces a massive amount of energy and heat. Reaction mass(Hydrogen, Water, Deuterium, and Helium-3 are all common choices) is fed into the fusion reaction slowly enough that it is self-sustaining. This energy can be captured, the heat this reaction gives off used to produce power with temperature differentials. To produce thrust with one of these reactors, the reactor is simply opened to space; White hot streams of post-fusion gas race out into the night, propelling the ship forward. This reactor requires light elements to be fed into it as reaction mass, and thus increases the CHON cost of maintaining the ship.
     
     
    Ramjet
     
     
    A Ramjet is a Fusion Reactor, with the addition of enormous, kilometers-wide magnetic “sails” which, as a ship travels, capture free-floating hydrogen in space, and force it down into the ship’s reactor for use as Reaction Mass. Originally, Ramjets were designed as the best design for a slower-than-light ship, and were probably used if your species launched any. The advantage of a Ramjet is that its reactions get more and more efficient the faster a ship is going, and, more importantly, it does not require fuel to be carried with it. However, they are expensive to build and maintain, increasing the Money cost of ships they’re used in.
     
     
    Gravity-Trail Propulsion: An option only available to species who have Artificial Gravity, Gravity-Trail Propulsion is an excellent option for propelling a ship; a gravity field is generated in front of the ship, strong enough that the ship “falls” directly forward. Gravity-Trail Propulsion is useful because the gravity waves it produces are difficult to detect, and the ship itself produces no bright Fusion Flares or other telltale signs of existence, making this one of the few options for a Stealthy ship.
     
     
    Laser-Reaction Drive: Essentially, this drive is a fusion drive which emits its Fusion Flare in the form of a laser. There are two advantages to this type of drive; one, its drive can be used as a long range signaling device. Two, it can be used as a close range weapon, as this laser is incredibly powerful. These drives are more expensive to build than Fusion drives.
     
     
    ORION Drive: Explode nuclear warheads behind an extremely thick shell built into your ship. Propel yourself with nukes. What more do you want from life? An ORION drive can be made far more useful by coating the shell in a Stasis Field, increasing the efficiency to nearly 100%.
     
     
    Ballistic Sling: A Ballistic Sling isn’t a power production method, or a drive, per-se, but a means of getting from place to place. Using conventional rocket fuels to give an initial boost, or other low-intensity drive methods, a ship travels a long, slow, leisurely curve through a solar system, ending at its destination. These systems are useless for going anywhere but the place you actually planned on ending up, as there’s no steering and no power. However, these systems are also essentially free. For this reason, they’re popular when launching colony ships from one planet to another planet in the same system. This is the method that most Real-World deep-space spacecraft use.
     
     
    Defense
     
     
    Every spaceship needs armor, even if it’s just there to hold in the atmosphere. The most basic spaceships use metal layers, often Steel or Aluminum. Some spaceships, especially those preferred by races with more advanced material science, prefer Aerogel or Foam Aluminum armor, but armor is all essentially the same; a solid material designed to take impacts and energy, to keep the structure intact.
     
     
    Interceptors are a critical system for defending your ship from missiles, because missiles, while slow, have insanely high damage if they do score a hit. Interceptors can come in the form of tiny kinetic-interceptor counter-missiles, bullets, or laser beams. All are about equally valuable. The effectiveness of these interceptors depends on how far away the missiles are launched.
     
     
    Energy shields are, in the time of Starscape, mostly science fiction. The closest thing available is a large Magnetic Field, probably made with the same projectors the ship uses in a Ramjet. This Magnetic Field serves to deflect incoming plasma and particle beams. If dust and iron filings can be held in the field, it will actually serve as an effective shield against laser beams, relativistic-velocity kinetics, and missiles.
     
     
    The above idea of a magnetic shield can be combined with a Flak Barrier, essentially a set of cannons that set up a spherical shell of explosions around the ship. This, filled with iron filings held in place by a field, provide a good, if temporary, shield against nearly everything.
     
     
    Detection Systems: See the “Scanners” section of the Technologies post. Most ships will have all of those.
     
     
    Other Considerations
     
     
    Venting Heat: Spaceships build up heat while in space, and have to lose it somehow. Without an atmosphere, you can’t just vent heat to the air, so a ship must use Radiators. These aren’t the big, orange glowing things on the Venture Star in that one James Cameron film, but rather, a Radiator in use on a spaceship is a big sheet of aluminum, painted white, and run through with tubes of water or some other liquid. The tubes carry heat to the radiators, and the radiators bleed off their heat as light. However, these radiators are fragile. Pieces of shrapnel from missiles and destroyed spaceships could ruin them. Thus, in a fight, these radiators must be retracted to keep from being ruined. As all ship’s operations produce heat, a ship’s endurance is mostly determined by the heat tolerance of the crew, more than its ammunition supplies and reactor.
     
     
    Atmospheric Entry: A ship’s gravity and pressure tolerances will determine what sort of planet it can land on. The Discovery from 2001: Space Odyssey might be able to handle the pressure on Earth, but its long, tube shaped structure would snap in half under the gravity. By contrast, the NASA Space Shuttles could fly on Venus’ low gravity without a problem, but would be crushed like little origami frogs by the pressure on Venus’ ground level. As a general rule, a smaller ship can handle less gravity, and a better armored ship can handle more pressure.
  24. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    This document outlines the resources in Starscape, and how you acquire or spend them.
     
    ---
     
     
    Starscape features only two Resources; Money and CHON. Money is a representative value of how much of an empire’s economy something takes to build and support, while CHON(Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen) represents how much a ship takes at creation, and needs periodically.
     
     
    These resources are gathered on Planets, Moons, Asteroid Belts, and generated in Habitats.
     
     
    Planets
     
     
    While a very wide class of object, planets can be grouped into a number of distinct classes. For the purposes of this game, Planet and Moon are interchangeable; the only difference is that Planets orbit a star, and Moons orbit a planet. Each class of planet is followed by a real-world example, and then the basic Resource values it produces. Anything that produces or consumes resources produces or consumes those resources every five days.
     
     
    Airless: Barren chunks of rock, usually large enough to pull themselves into a sphere but too small to hold a substantial atmosphere. Airless worlds are valuable for manufacturing, thanks to their free and abundant Vacuum, highly useful for industries, and low gravity. A good example is Earth’s Moon. Your species may not have its Homeworld on an Airless World.
     
     
    Money: 3
    CHON: 0
     
     
    Reduced Atmosphere: Thin atmosphered worlds, smaller than a terrestrial world, with lower gravity, less capable of holding an atmosphere, and only rarely having a planetary magnetic field. Reduced Atmosphere Worlds can be colonized with the appropriate measures to keep air pressure strong, such as underground habitats or pressure domes. Many Reduced Atmosphere worlds are actually large enough to hold an atmosphere, but had it blasted away in wars of eons past. These planets are particularly enticing to archeologists, and treasure hunters, who hope to find the occasional sample of technology from ancient empires. Mars is an example of an average Reduced Atmosphere world.
     
     
    Money: 2
    CHON: 1
     
     
    Terrestrial World: Rare and valuable, but heavy and hard to lift goods off of, Terrestrial Worlds are always found with a thick atmosphere, and almost always found with oceans or ice caps, depending on the temperature. Rich in fissile materials, heavy metals, and organic substances, Terrestrial Worlds also make better living space than any other class of planet, provided the atmosphere suits one’s needs and they fall within a species’ preferred temperature range. A vast majority of races evolve on these worlds, as they also produce more life than any other sort of planet. Earth is a typical example of Terrestrial Worlds.
     
     
    Money: 5
    CHON: 3
     
     
    Pressure Cookers: Hot, dense, with extreme atmospheric pressure, moderate to heavy gravity, and often close to a system’s sun, Pressure Cookers are created when a planet’s atmosphere exhibits a Greenhouse Effect, retaining heat faster than it loses it. Aside from making wonderful trash dumps, Pressure Cookers often have useful elements which can be harvested from their upper atmosphere. They can have valuable minerals on the surface below, but these are difficult to reach given the rest of the world’s traits. Venus is a typical Pressure Cooker, though not all share the planet of love’s corrosive atmosphere.
     
     
    Money: 0
    CHON: 2
     
     
    Ice Balls: Cold, small gas giants commonly found at the edge of star systems, Ice Balls are around the middle of size as far as planets go. Ice Balls are mostly useful for the elements which can be scooped from their upper atmosphere, and occasionally for the valuable metals found on their moons. Neptune is a typical Ice Ball.
     
     
    Money: 1
    CHON: 2
     
     
    Gas Giants: Massive, not very dense, taking up a large chunk of a solar system’s mass, Gas Giants are what they say; gigantic planets made up of gases. Often, a Gas Giant’s gravity allows it to capture dust and asteroids, leading to thick systems of moons and beautiful rings. Gas Giants are excellently useful for industrial purposes, as their moons often contain useful metals, and even fissile materials. The atmospheres of the Gas Giants themselves, however, are where the real riches can be found, mining and refining useful gases. Saturn is an excellent model Gas Giant
     
     
    Money: 2
    CHON: 5
     
     
    Proto-Stars: The largest class of planet, a Proto-Star is a Gas Giant of exceptional size, known because they emit more heat than they absorb. Proto-Stars are often just a few masses short of becoming a Dwarf Star, and can actually be made into Dwarf Stars artificially if Fusion is ignited in their core. Proto-Stars feature the same attractions as Gas Giants, though their higher gravity makes elements more difficult to recover from the atmosphere.
     
     
    Money: 2
    CHON: 4
     
     
    Other Features:
     
     
    Asteroid Belts: Leftover detritus from the formation of a solar system, Cosmologists are interested in Asteroid belts because the thinner they are, the older the system is. Merchant corporations are interested in Asteroid Belts because they provide all the advantages of an Airless World without being so heavy that it’s expensive to lift ships off of them. Asteroid Belts are often critical to a system’s economy, however, they are dependant on planets for organic elements.
     
     
    Money: 4
    CHON: 0
     
     
    System Upgrades
     
     
    System upgrades are constructs you build to make your system more effective at its industrial tasks, add new capabilities to your system, or protect it better. Each System Upgrade costs a fixed amount to build for a fixed time; once complete, it has a Resource effect. This is written in the format.
     
     
    Build Cost/Time(In real-world time)
    Resources
     
     
    The Resource effect, if positive, means that this upgrade produces resources. If negative, it means this upgrade is a draw on resources.
     
     
    Interstellar Launch: An Interstellar Launch takes the form of either a Launching Laser, which propels Light Sail Craft to enormous speeds by means of hitting the Light Sail with a laser, or a Mass Accelerator, which uses magnetic rings to do the same. They are necessary for use of the Superlight Drive.
     
     
    10 Money, 1 CHON/10 Days
    -2 Money
     
     
    Floating Habitat: Space stations, floating in space. Valuable for industry or farming, and especially useful because their goods do not have to be shipped out of deep gravity wells. Floating Habitats are very fragile.
     
     
    4 Money, 4 CHON/5 Days
    +1 Money OR +1 CHON
     
     
    Defense Stations: Armed defense stations use the Ship profile, and are essentially spaceships with less engines. Use the Ship profile for these.
     
     
    Shipyards: Space stations, designed to both fabricate ships from raw materials and assemble ships which were built on the ground; Shipyards are critical to producing any sort of Space Navy. For each Shipyard a system has, it can produce one Starship at a time. You can only have one Shipyard for each Population Level in a system(Example, if a system contains a Terrestrial World with 4 population and an Airless World with 2, you can have 6)
    5 Money, 2 CHON/5 days
    -1 Money
     
     
    Planetary Upgrades
     
     
    Planetary Upgrades are constructed in much the same way as System upgrades. However, they are obviously attached to a specific planet. Otherwise, they are identical.
     
     
    Space Elevator: A set of long cables placed on a world’s equator, used to cheaply ferry goods and supplies from the planet’s surface to space.
     
     
    6 Money, 1 CHON/10 Days
    +3 Money
     
     
    Tiara Ring: Multiple Space Elevators around a planet’s equator, connected to an artificial ring around the planet, whose spin counterbalances the planet’s gravity to make Zero-G. Requires at least two Space Elevators before construction.
     
     
    4 Money, 1 CHON/10 Days
    +6 Money
     
     
    Developed Factories: Your planet has been colonized long enough that it has a sizeable industrial presence. This upgrade may only be built once for each Population Level, beginning at Outer World. Your Homeworld starts with three levels of this, for a total of +6.
     
     
    5 Money, 1 CHON/5 Days
    +2 Money
     
     
    Developed Farmland: Counterpart to Developed Factories, Developed Farmland allows a world to put out a massive amount of food and other vitals, allowing it to contribute directly to the space effort. This upgrade may only be built once for each Population Level, beginning at Outer World. Your Homeworld starts with three levels of this, for a total of +6.
     
     
    1 Money, 5 CHON/5 Days
    +2 CHON
     
     
    Population
     
     
    A planet’s population is divided into abstract “Levels” These levels are used to represent massive increases of population. There are no set in stone numbers on how populous a planet is, because how are the slow-reproducing sentient whales, the slaughtering rat people, and the race of sentient Nanotech supposed to use the same scale?
     
     
    Level 0: Colony. Planets begin their colonization at this level. Here, a population is beginning to eke out an existence, often living in a single city.
    Level 1: Protectorate: The population is expanding, growing and slowly bending the planet’s environment to their will.
    Level 2: Outer World: Your people have colonized much of a continent, and now the world is able to significantly contribute to your species. If contact with the rest of the species has been intermittent, it may have begun developing its own culture as well.
    Level 3: Inner World: An Inner World is an industrial and economic power, able to maintain a small spacefleet of its own.
    Level 4: Core World: The Core Worlds are the oldest, most settled worlds in an empire, often including a species’ Homeworld, Core Worlds are industrial powerhouses, dominating the local economy, and often having every continent on the world be settled. Your Homeworld begins as a Core World.
     
     
    Now, with that outlined, the question is, how do you get from one to the next? Obviously, this includes reproducing, raising the new adorable little baby alien monsters, teaching them to be productive citizens, and providing housing and jobs for them. This is represented in game by a single action a planet can take, known as Go Forth And Multiply
     
     
    Each species will have a different timespan they have to spend increasing a world’s population; the slaughtering rat people will reproduce far faster than sentient whales, and such. To that end, when you make your species, I will tell you the length of time and economic costs this action has on your world.
     
     
    Strip Mining
     
     
    Strip Mining is the opposite of colonizing in many ways; it’s not intended to produce a sustainable, long term population, but merely to get at what resources are easily available and move on.
     
     
    When you begin Strip Mining a planet, its resource production is normal for the first five days, and then doubled. However, after thirty days the planet is Depleted; it cannot be Strip Mined further, and if it is colonized, will produce half as much resources as before.
     
     
    Treasuries
     
     
    Resources can be stockpiled, money stored in bank vaults, and CHON elements kept in vats. If a system is not building anything at any given time, its production automatically goes into your Treasury. For example, say you have an Airless World, which produces three Money per turn. You can feed that money directly into building spaceships of some sort, or you can save it up. In that case, it is sent to your nation’s treasury, and can be spent later, and in other places. Resources can be spent all at once, or, if you’re building things, spent in increments, like spending three Money in a week on building a scoutship.
     
     
    Producer-Ships
     
     
    Producer ships have two functions; they can sustain a species on an Exodus Fleet by producing food and manufactured goods, and they can serve the same function for Deep-Space fleets in unknown or hostile territory. To that end, Producer Ships are vital for invasions, embargoes, and occupations. However, their massive size makes them vulnerable.
     
    Producer ships work very simply; you feed them a resource, and they give you more of that resource. However, the resources they produce can only be devoted to Upkeep of ships. The numbers vary depending on the size; I’ll tell you when you submit the profile. Producer ships come in two varieties, Forgeships and Garden Ships. Forgeships work with Money, and Garden Ships with CHON.
  25. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    The following is a brief overview of the technologies you can expect everyone to have.
     
    ---
     
     
    Every race has access to the following technologies; this means they have the science and industry needed to mass-produce, use, and understand them.
     
     
    Scanners
     
     
    Electromagnetic sensors: From radio waves all the way up to X-Rays, every race has an understanding of how to build these. These include devices such as infrared scanners, radar, LIDAR, and the like.
     
     
    Gravimetric Sensors: Finely calibrated, sensitive pieces of machinery which track changes in gravity. Subtle changes can only really be noticed over the course of months, but using these is critical to getting a general idea of a star system’s setup. Every ship should carry one.
    Note: Gravity waves travel at the speed of light.
     
     
    Magnetometric Sensors: Scanners that detect magnetic fields. These are good for picking up ships using Fusion reactors, and especially Ramjets, which always involve a massive magnetic field. However, Magnetometric Sensors are easy to distort and confuse.
     
     
    Cameras: Able to detect on all spectrums of light, not just visual, and easy to equip with a zoom lens, cameras are critical to a ship because they allow a ship to be built without fragile portholes.
     
     
    Reactors
     
     
    Every race has the technology to produce Nuclear Fission and Fusion based reactors, of varying design dependant on needs. Fusion Reactors peak at 300 watts per cubic meter.
     
     
    Weapons
     
     
    Lasers: Firing electromagnetic radiation on any part of the spectrum, Laser stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Lasers are the boring but practical choice for weapons in space; long range, lightspeed projectiles, and moderate damage. Their only downside is that the high heat lasers go through means they require constant repair and maintenance. These lasers are all approximately 99.6% efficient, leaking only .004 of their energy as waste heat. However, since gigawatts of power are being pushed through these lasers, this still means they produce a lot of heat.
     
     
    Kinetic Weapons: All races have the technology to create Magnetic Railguns as well as conventional explosive-powder based guns.
     
     
    Blasters: A Blaster is essentially a railgun, but rather than a solid shell, it fires a high-velocity ball of plasma. Short range, but high damage capabilty, as a general rule.
     
     
    Missiles: Every race has the technology to create guided missiles; these can have chemical warheads, but a Nuclear Shaped Charge is preferred, and of course every race can create these.
     
     
    Hyperwave
     
     
    Hyperwaves are a strange thing; they behave like electromagnetic radiation in most ways, aside from moving roughly forty times the speed of light. However, they are only stopped by very few materials; Neutronium, Degenerate Matter inside of stars, and Stasis Fields, to name a few. Most usefully, however, a Lithium crystal antenna can be used to project them and pick them up. Thus, Hyperwaves are useful for communication systems, but only useful for sensors if one is hunting Stasis boxes.
     
     
    Computers
     
     
    Computer science is essentially over. Computers have reached their peak speeds. These speeds are so fast that the modern measure, FLOPS, is pointless because the numbers are laughably high. However, any equation can generally be solved by a computer faster than it takes to program it.
     
     
    Other Tech
     
     
    All races have access to any technological idea that was invented before 2000 in the real world.
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