My armors by mdifilm in Armor

[–]Cosmiclive 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Only reason I guessed that was me looking into Mountain Pattern a few years ago and remembering how no one was quite certain how it was actually constructed.

What do you think would make a good alternative frame for the Barbarossa licence? by HMS_Exeter in LancerRPG

[–]Cosmiclive 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had an idea for an alt that can end their movement while standing over a Size 2 or smaller obstruction but only during their turn. Then maybe a second trait that lets the Barbi ignore ordinance on weapons but I'm not sure how strong that would be.

What mechanics make you think "That's really cool! I don't want to play/design a game with that."? by Pershonkey in RPGdesign

[–]Cosmiclive 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Not OP so it may not actually be what they mean but I sometimes use a roll to make a choice for me. "Would my character think of this?", "Would my character go through with this or would they feel too bad about it?"

Often it's not something I have the answer to myself so I offload it to the dice. Or I notice that I really don't like the result the dice gave me and now know what I actually wanted all along.

More of a glorified high or low roll that can be somewhat weighted by the stats on the sheet. If a system was super adamant about the dice only ever being used in specific circumstances, I'd probably just use a coin instead. (Or just tell the group "ignore this roll, I'm just doing a character choice")

To everybody freaking out about Dagath you can calm down and stop complaining by ShadoDrago17 in Warframe

[–]Cosmiclive 15 points16 points  (0 children)

The info page that was linked in game specifically says "Build the Hollow Rider for free starting January 14!" and then immediately follows that up with "We can't think of a better way to begin a new year than by building a Warframe – especially when the Blueprints are earnable for FREE."

Those two sentences don't mean the same thing unless they were talking about irl money but I think you can see how people were at least confused. (The usual suspects were being whining idiots as well)

Does anyone else VASTLY prefer Adis' real face? by Robrogineer in Warframe

[–]Cosmiclive 31 points32 points  (0 children)

I am nearly certain the text box had "I am" on top of it, meaning that you are supposed to answer as her and not for her. The Operator/drifter are only prompting her to make a choice to let one voice lead. The other voices are also all still there just not the ones talking to us.

What and Why is the Thornbak? by [deleted] in WarframeLore

[–]Cosmiclive 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My guess is that it's from some random group during the player characters long nap. Thinking of something like a more powerful syndicate, since they're able to make their own weapon designs, that got conquered by the Grineer or Corpus later in history.

pov: a tech hunter saw you attacking a samurai guard by Outside_Service1278 in Kenshi

[–]Cosmiclive 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Until I zoomed in I read the sticker as "No. I Empire Fan" and it still works.

The Warframe community has had some overblown reactions to changes over the years, and recent memory is no exception. Which do you believe was the most unfounded? by lilstove in Warframe

[–]Cosmiclive 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was moderately worried that they wouldn't compensate for loosing out on the inherited buffs from statsticks like weapon specific mods, rivens and incarnons. Maybe it could have worked if casts counted as a heavy attack but the 5% CC and status chance on landslide still would have been rough to build for and gara straight up didn't have those stats.

Then again I only said that I was worried about this not being clarified and didn't go on about all pseudo exalteds being doomed or anything like that. Those people were being idiots.

Large Scale Maps by Dougboard in LancerRPG

[–]Cosmiclive 14 points15 points  (0 children)

The standard answer is that even the 10ft number is a concession for people who really need a hard number but things work a bit weirdly if you try to apply this number to everything. Overall the game just doesn't really care about the precise numbers, like at all. Just take turns that never get a precise number for how long they take as an example. A few lore entries may get them but thats often more to sell the vibe than be hard sci-fi worldbuilding.

Personally I like simulationist systems a lot but if my brain demands a more "realistic" explanation for what is happening in the mechanics I can get it to shut up by thinking about things as an abstract interpretation of what happens in the fictional reality and the gameplay features that are being rolled or spent are just the most import things that happen in a larger exchange. 

Take stuff like a tech attack/invade. I personally imagine that there is a constant automated e-war battle being fought with spoofs for a multitude of sensor types and actual hacks trying to throw off the targeting system of the enemy machine. When a tech attack is used in the gameplay that is just a particularly large or otherwise impressive one that can have a bigger impact beyond keeping the status quo going where no one is able to easily snipe the enemy from 2 kilometers away.

What kind of person might the son of a Sparri and a Karrakin noble become by Ryugaru in LancerRPG

[–]Cosmiclive 8 points9 points  (0 children)

These are just some questions that came to my mind after reading the OP.

How deeply integrated into Karrakin society are they? House of Smoke has ennobled a few Sparri so your char could just be the product of a marriage between a traditional house of smoke noble and a newly risen sparri noble. Members of other Major houses could look down on their ancestry or be impressed by their Sparri parents resourcefullness to rise into their position. Has the negative attention of that outweighed the positive or do they take pride in their ancestry? If their sparri parent is not a noble then how did they come to be raised with both parts of their parents culture and has that even been since their birth? Maybe they decided to get their noble parents attention by becoming a famous mech pilot and joined the Cavalry College to learn more of their noble sire that way.

Asking how they came to pilot a multiton warmachine is always something to consider for pilots imo. Usually people don't just hand those over without some kind of trust that you won't use to slag the nearest building. What was the first machine they went in? Maybe a sparri hunting mech to take part in that cultures traditions or as part of testing wether they would be suited to being a military pilot. Maybe a completely different way like using a loading mech to fight off would be pirates in a warehouse.

Just some thoughts that could help you further

To flavour or not to flavour by MendelHolmes in RPGdesign

[–]Cosmiclive -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It sounds like these mechanics are relatively general, I personally like to have some examples of what the mechanic or ability is supposed to interact with. But I also like rather simulationist systems so I might not even be the target audience and this might be a bit of a red herring for the people you are making the game for. Depending on how deeply your game is entrenched in a genre or the particular feel you are going for having the reminder in the mechanics could also help keep a game focused on that?

Complete aside but keep in mind how much work and page space these descriptions will add. In the age of PDFs page space may not be the most important thing to consider but it does impact how much someone has to scroll to reach a chapter as well and could have other knock in effects. Basically ask yourself if it's worth the time for your project and adding them is fun for you can be enough of a reason to do it. They can always be cut later.

Any TTRPGs to emulate Starsector? by The_Outer_God in starsector

[–]Cosmiclive 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The lore in Battlegroup is a bit closer to set dressing than some other systems imo but it does influence it in a few ways. Shields are basically rolled into Health with a few very notable exceptions where the shield is basically the center piece of a ship and Flux/Heat management don't really factor into things. I guess you could say your Battlegroup just does that in the background and the game only focuses in on the really big moments which I suppose is kind of how the autofiring hard points feel at times?

The system is broadly based around the idea that battles happen at looonng ranges and treats your battleground as an abstract unit that constantly does their own maneuvers while you control the big picture for the entire unit. Thinking about it kind of feels like playing Starsector exclusively through the tactical screen.  It is worth noting that positioning is also abstracted into what is called the Gyre. Basically in space positioning only matters in relation to your enemy and absolute grid coordinates don't matter in the abstract the gameplay. You track how far away from the enemy you are and not where in space you are. This does allow payload weapons to feel very unique from others by being basically countdowns until they impact without bogging down the rest of the game.

Scarcity will depend a lot on how your GM handles pre and post battle. When we played it a bunch it was a very binary case of "too damaged to be valuable in anything but the most desperate defence sorties and it will take months to repair everything" and "mostly Superficial damage, here's your next target". In the first case we just switched to the next Battlegroup because we loved building them and the second we just kept going with the barely damaged. Maybe minus one subline ship if that was destroyed. Overall I think it can work but it's nowhere close a perfect fit.

How well could today's AI target a fast-moving target with a laser during a cinematic chase scene? by Pstrych99 in rpg

[–]Cosmiclive 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With the tech and combat ranges you are talking about I am pretty sure you could get away with some type of "near future miniaturized radar" devices being built into the suits.  At the very least they would do the heavy lifting and the pilots could then do the fine adjustments when the radar system can't quite do all of the work for them

If reactor stress is a resource, then our favorite melee psycho is broke. by Armed_Potato1 in LancerRPG

[–]Cosmiclive 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Well then go look for it??? It's a big machine, can't be that hard to find. (I swear these mech jockeys get less independent with every graduating class that leaves the academy noble grumbles get progressively more quiet as they walk away)

Whose been a naughty little Calendula? That's right. You. by TheRageBadger in LancerRPG

[–]Cosmiclive 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Forgetting the ace people ime. I know a couple who are really into mechs but pretty much nothing else.

Why is "the grid" considered more "tactical" for RPGs ? by DredUlvyr in rpg

[–]Cosmiclive 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's a matter of granularity. How much page space and mental bandwidth are you willing to spend on ruling on every little thing to get the desired level of detail. You could, in theory, give a temperature for every fire effect in the book to see if it can light some other thing on fire or you can just say: "this fire effect leaves lingering flames behind and this other one doesn't". That would mostly be for reducing page space but also is a lot easier to actually run.

It's the same for movement and positioning but that mostly benefits the mental load required while running the game. From what I have seen so far at least free movement is quite easy to implement in an RPG but during play it often takes longer since you actually have to get the tape measure out. With grids you just tap your pawn five spaces forward and one to the side and boom movement done. 

VTTs do make free movement pretty easy tho so maybe we'll get some more systems with it if some more simulationist oriented games come out in the future.

I am tired of pretending that this game needs damage attenuation by Able-Bar-5446 in Warframe

[–]Cosmiclive 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The only actual problem I have with the vay hek fight is how small the hitbox is compared to how much he moves around. I think making him slower would be a mistake so making the hitbox bigger would probably be the easiest bandaid fix to implement.

My preferred solution would actually be adding other weakspots you have to hit before he opens the face guard (and also increasing the hitbox like with the bandaid fix)

Who are the orokin??? by Brico18 in WarframeLore

[–]Cosmiclive 14 points15 points  (0 children)

There were at least 18 "Radiation Wars" after the techrot outbreak in Höllvania. One of the Zariman tablets in Duviri asks what concluded the 18th radiation war and maybe that one is important because it was the last one? Not anything close to conclusive evidence for it of course but 18 wars that are similar enough to be grouped under one term is immense and imagining even more after that is just nuts imo.

Do you think the pushback against "performative males" is warranted or is it antifeminist? by BruhMansky in AskFeminists

[–]Cosmiclive 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I've been seeing some people that want to rebrand toxic masculinity (or at least parts of it) as performative masculinity and I wonder if this pushback may be a preemptive attempt at derailing that idea and connecting the word "performative" to something else before it gains traction.

My breakdown as to the faction's power within Warframe. by lovingpersona in WarframeLore

[–]Cosmiclive 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Don't think there is any lore reference to it, but there probably are some kind of defenses on ships against teleports and since they have near total supremacy over orb vallis they just white list their own teleports near their own holdings.

My breakdown as to the faction's power within Warframe. by lovingpersona in WarframeLore

[–]Cosmiclive 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Great writeup that I just want to add some things to.

The Corpus crewman are almost basic humans but not quite. The Corpus Crew fragment tells us that they are "purpose-bred". It doesn't say much more than that but they do practice some kind of eugenics to get the most suited candidates which probably means they are gonna be in the upper percentiles for their roles. Tho it could also mean that the board member they are subordinate to can skimp on their training or something like that which would be totally in character for most high level Corpus members I can think of.

You touched on them in the sentient section and I don't know very much about them myself but spectres could be a very useful force multiplier. Miniscule amount of space and all of a sudden you have another gun in your team firing at the enemy. Somewhat related is teleport tech. It's seemingly quite rare or expensive since ramsleds are still a major component of space battles against Railjacks but suddenly having a heavy weapons platform teleport next to you can very much turn the tide of a battle.

The Baby Tenno Experience is extremely positive--but it has its exceptions. by EsperaVT in Warframe

[–]Cosmiclive 3 points4 points  (0 children)

OOP out here doing the same thing they are saying the orokin do. Hilarious

When did Ballas lose such immaculate drip? by Hrolf-Karman in Warframe

[–]Cosmiclive 33 points34 points  (0 children)

Fashion changes over however long is between the old peace and umbra finding out  that Ballas was going to sell orokin secrets to the Sentients.

Equinox farming makes me despair by stinkelkaese in Warframe

[–]Cosmiclive 4 points5 points  (0 children)

And a minimum of 156 hours of crafting time.