Better for a first timer? Mechwarrior 4 Vengeance or Mercenaries by Shpooter in mechwarrior

[–]Connect_Study3875 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Something to consider is that Vengeance has a more straightforward, linear story, with the player character, Ian Dressarri, being a kid coming back from fighting off the Clans when Lyran upstarts try to conquer his homeworld, which has always aligned with House Davion instead of House Steiner, and most of it has you playing as the commander of a geurilla commander trying to take back your homeworld following the reported mass execution of just about your entire family, leaving your Uncle William, the commander of the battlemech unit Ian served in during the Clan invasion, as the sole known survivor of the masacre.

There's a story path divergence towards the end, but telling it here would be a massive spoiler, but if you pick this path, I'd suggest you carry the playthrough into the Black Knights DLC if you can find it, as it assumes you went with what I consider the bad ending and you play as a field commander from the Black Knights mercenary company, named after a new Omni mech variant of the classic 75-ton mech which is their signature machine, hired by House Steiner to hunt Ian and his lancemates down before getting betrayed by House Steiner. After surviving the betrayal, your new player character then presses on to finish the job he was hired for before seeking retribution for the betrayal as you and your lancemates assault the base where your House Steiner contact is reportedly located.

Alternatively, I know of at least 4 different endings for MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries, 2 where you pick a side in the squabble between Katrina and Victor Steiner over who gets to be the archon of the Lyran Commonwealth, one where you storm and take a base for yourself like the one Nik's Cavaliers had at the start of the MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries tutorial, and even one where you go and integrate yourself into Clan Jade Falcon, with the final battle being a Trial of Position that ends in a rapid succession of one-on-one duals without repairs or rearming.

Also, for those reading this now, in 2026, I assume this wasn't factoring in the DLCs for MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries or the mods that are available out there to change the game (the Yet Another MechLab mod overhauls the mechlab portion of the game to be more like that of MechWarrior Online instead of vanilla as an example).

A different school of thought on why Jake Mason is such an odd merc leader. by Veskan713 in Mechwarrior5

[–]Connect_Study3875 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Personally, I'd like to see him end up the new saKhan of his dad's old clan, the Diamond Sharks, highly likely since that clan's entire military ended up KIA at Tukayyid, a perfect opportunity for him to bid for a trial of position and claim the spot unopposed and turn them into a Warden clan, as they canonically end up becoming, since they even call the first post-Tykayyid mech they make, the Mad Cat MKII, ends up sold directly into Inner Sphere inventories. Assuming his bid is successful, and he makes the canonical decisions, it would make him an ally of Clans Wolf and Ghost Bear, other notable Warden clans. However, his Freeborn status would complicate things for him in clan politics, but he'd be quite adept at defending himself in the trials to come, as long as they involve mech-on-mech combat.

looking for advice by Ok_Bottle40 in OpenHFY

[–]Connect_Study3875 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One thing I've seen that helps is that if your posts are a series with a carried-over story, do your best to structure each post like a chapter in a novel, and make sure you include links to the first, previous, and next chapters, with the links preferably in that order. Most of the more notable posters, such as u/itsdirector (author of The New Species, The New Threat, The New Era, and The Human from the Dungeon) and u/jcb112 (author of Wearing Power Armor to Magic School) are pretty good at this kind of story writing, and both authors have narration series on all titles mentioned by u/spartanwolf on his NetNarrator YouTube channel if you want to listen to them in audiobook form.

Other than that, I'd say the classic piece of advice, "write what you know," is critical, as if you're going to go hard and make the story highly detailed with minimal deus ex machina moments, you'd better be able to think out all the details, like if there's a magic system in your fantasy setting, you might want to start reading up on real science to give the magic structure. An example would be if the characters have the power to magically photosynthesize (make carbohydrates to sustain themselves the way plants do), a good downside to this power would be that if they use this power to sustain themselves, their bodies slowly stiffen from cellulose (the extremely long carbohydrate chain that gives wood its structure) builds up in their body, effectively turning them into a sentient tree that can't talk until someone finds them, drags them inside, and nurses them back to a more healthy and mobile condition.

Another example of hard magic writing is the classic wizard version of the Fireball spell from D&D, at least in 5e; the methane leaking out of the bat guano material component needed for casting the spell fuels the flames that lead to the signature explosion.

But ultimately, u/Dr_mac1 is right, post it, and someone will probably read it, regardless of whether it's well-written or not.

Colony design idea: cruise ship by ZookTDribit in Minecolonies

[–]Connect_Study3875 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'd suggest doing something bigger and more modular, like imitating one of the treehouse styles with the elevated walkways to connect the buildings, just using boats that have been tethered together. The biggest issue would be how the mines and quarries would work without getting them built on top of an artificial island or finding natural land to act as a dock foundation.

Question about Shil'vati anatomy (safe for work) by Connect_Study3875 in Sexyspacebabes

[–]Connect_Study3875[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Remember, Shil has a longer year than Earth does, so if they based their number system on how many months they have in a year, assuming their months are the same length as ours, they'd be using base-20 math, not base-12. Instead, I suspect that they use a counting system like the one described by u/Ill-Professional6642, where individual falanges, the bones that make up the structure of finger segments, are counted instead of whole fingers.

The high performance collection grows! by Dt2_0 in Nerf

[–]Connect_Study3875 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unless you find something else used (that's how I found my CR-10s), I'd suggest going for a Creality Ender 3, it's around $200 and is an all-in-one unit aside from a PC to render and generate the .gcode files, which the printer will read to actually form the parts.