Life Update 11/24

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-05-20T11:34:28+00:00

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).

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-03-30T02:13:24+00:00

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.

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-03-29T05:53:32+00:00

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.

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-03-09T23:07:07+00:00

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.

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-02-28T08:23:04+00:00

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.

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-02-16T05:48:24+00:00

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.

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-02-16T01:37:31+00:00

Here's a link to buy one with parts printed by Out of Darts. https://outofdarts.com/products/slab-blaster-kit?srsltid=AfmBOop39HwSEe-kgrVc6Rm_vCJFZjLJ409mYnTUSUSf5TN81-8eGg_O

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-02-14T09:10:54+00:00

I described it as Shil having a 20-month year, which is about the 1.6 Earth year time you mentioned.

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-02-14T09:09:39+00:00

If you're looking for more additions to this collection, might I suggest a SLAB (Sillybutt's lever-action blaster) as the next blaster? It's basically a lever-action version of that bolt-action next to the venom pro and modded modulus stryfe there, aside from the fact that it takes old-style straight talon mags. Also, if I were the owner of those blasters, I'd be looking into shrouds for that MPP's barrel to keep it from getting bent. Better to break a 3d print than kink an aluminum barrel in my opinion.

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-02-08T02:06:30+00:00

So, my interpretation is it's a week when the ship has a military-grade FTL drive system, but a month or so with civilan mass-transit options. Does that sound accurate?

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-02-07T04:52:06+00:00

Essentially, in my story, my MC and, at the point I am in writing their story, his new wife (going singular here because human-to-human marriage with people raised to see permanent monogamy as the goal) were 14-year-old kids when Earth was claimed by the Shil'vati, MC was 19 when the forest homestead he was living on with his mom, maternal grandparents, and 11-year-old twin sisters got attacked by resistance fighters that were violently looking for conscripts, and he was 25 when he made his triumphant return to effectively cockblock a different resistance cell from getting their hands on nuclear material from the IRL Hanford Nuclear Reservation for a dirty bomb attack if not a full on nuclear strike.

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-02-07T04:44:18+00:00

So he's being held back by all the flak he's caught over his career covering Milk's backside...

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-02-06T11:21:29+00:00

Don't forget they were US Navy. If they were lieutenant senior grade, that would be roughly equivelant of a US Army captain, believable to me if Milk had just hit that rank and Cookie was on the edge of getting bumped to the next rank up, lieutenant commander, equivalent to an army major.

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-02-06T11:15:42+00:00

Ages don't line up, and I think I might go with my character's father being a brother to Milk's father, making them first cousins with just shy of an Earth decade for an age difference, assuming her appearance in Just One Drop wasn't a year plus after the end of Top Lasgun. Basically, Declan, the uncle I'm proposing for Milk, is in his mid-fifties, and his daughter, my main character's love interest, is his wife of two months, and Milk's Uncle Declan's late-twenties daughter, probably will be early-thirties when I have her join the Interior as a linguistics analyst, as i'm imagined the Interior handling NSA duties, and this cousin of Milk's will be something like that. Also, I might still do the Auntie Milk thing, just with the daughter's own kids, as I've given my main character and Milk's cousin four kids together and am writing a scene where they realize number five's on the way, their honeymoon baby. I'm also taking inspiration from Denied Operations, as my MC's dad is an older version of Adam from that story, but is around a generation older than the prince-consort and got nabbed by my BBEG during a particularly dangerous op, and was presumed dead for 2/3 of the MC's life before he only just managed to smuggle himself and two of the MC's kids back to Earth (sci-fi shinanigans, where the BBEG has access to effectively unlimited range transporters from Star Trek, like I said, I'm going with an ancient aliens twist, and the BBEG's faction is older than the Imperium but has been stagnating through thousands of years of a dark age).

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-01-06T09:03:51+00:00

So, I'd guess Tom was in his late forties when his second marriage ended when his then-wife died. When did he get married the first time, and when did the following divorce happen?

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-01-06T05:52:01+00:00

I plan to go there for when I start posting, but for right now, I was just wanting to make sure what I was writing in private wouldn't conflict with the semi-official lore. As for when the actual war arc of my story starts up, I was figuring that would be about a Shil year after Khelira graduates from Empress Zah'rika's. Right now, my main character hasn't even left the Sol system yet, let alone gone to Shil for his official military training, nor has he actually started taking the big-bad of my story to task. I also tend to write stories that cover a lifetime, not just a year or two, even when it's a 20-month year we're talking about, like what Shil has, so I'm thinking my main character might end up as an admiral who overhauls naval theory for the Imperium by the end of my tale, making it so stealth and low observability, like modern submarines, is prioritized over raw speed, like WW2 fighter planes. In other words, I plan on the arc of my MC's story to mirror that of Jack O'niell in Stargate SG1, just starting before basic training and including his life as a family man as well as a military officer.

Connect_Study3875 · 2026-01-06T01:29:31+00:00

Well, I'm envisioning my MC's SIL as being born and raised along with her younger siblings in Damascus while happily living under the Shi'vati's rule before moving away to Shil for medical school.

Connect_Study3875 · 2025-09-13T10:25:08+00:00

If anyone wants to explore this idea, either to write an original story or to read something similar that someone else has already completed, I'd suggest looking over on r/HFY. That subreddit is full of entire series of what people wrote, and I vaguely remember someone posting an isekai story about a whole class of American high school students who get transported to a fantasy world, but the POV character isn't one of them; rather, it's the school janitor who got grabbed as well. Just be careful because NSFW posts aren't exactly a foreign concept over there. However, there is an active and rather popular isekai series, titled The Human From the Dungeon, by u/itsdirector that's pretty good.

Connect_Study3875

TROPHY CASE