Bikko

Lately, as I ply the skies (and wind up taking multiple dirtnaps when I change aircraft and the keyboard suddenly refuses to recognize that, yes, I am in silly game control mode, and yes, all of the keys are configured so nooooo, why am I stuck in a diving turn and can only turn INTO the ground?) I've been revisiting a lot of ambient stuff I used to use a lot. The latest cycle has been all of my ASURA tracks, most prominently, Galaxies Part Two and Simply Blue (to which I wrote a short story a year or two back). Though those two are my favorite out of all of ASURA's tracks, the most fitting one possible for DCS, or any flight sim where you can take a break and just wander, would be Everlasting. The build up, culminating somewhere around 1:41, is absolutely wonderful for ambience as you pop up from within the clouds. Also commonly have music I've seen that others put to their flight sim videos, whether or not they're actually listening to it. (Like Groove Addicts - Fire and Ice, in the VFAT 2011 promo iirc) Other times I just slap up Ralfi's Alley and try not to laugh myself into the ground, always amusing. (He's also the one that got me back into simming after Fighter Ace was shut down and I'd loooong since forgotten how to play Aces High II on the keyboard without sucking. Well, him and my one-armed buddy who made a joke that him, another friend and myself should all get DCS: A-10C because it had a 600 page manual and had graphics that (at the time) would have caused his computer to shoot itself in the face. We also made a bet that I'd be flying circles around them while they were still halfway through the manual. It's been about two years since we all got it, but luckily for me I'm still in the lead because they're too lazy to install it!) It's also funny to fly to totally unfitting music, like, say, random pirate music.

After getting all of the Idolmaster skins on AC6, this sounds like an idea I will now cling onto, even if they won't alter the aircraft's physics in funny ways like they do in AC6. Zero gravity A-10? An F-16/F-2A that seems to utterly lack drag whatsoever? A Typhoon that goes exactly one gorillion knots but can't lock worth diddly? Hell yeah, let's go surprise some opponents! (I would imagine that the lightning A-10 would be a handy thing to have on DCS, considering it's not half bad in the agility department, though the actual delivery on DCS would be quite different I'd presume. I think everyone'd love the Idolmaster A-10, with its endless supply of explosive funtime. Who wouldn't love bombs for days?) WoT? I used to roll with a lot of GuP skins, and I do roll with a GuP group for kicks, though I have a bit of fun going back to the total conversion skins for shits and giggles- a Marder turned into a Pak 38? One of those wonky german mediums turned into a Flak 88? A Jackson full of W40K Orks? So what if I can't clearly tell what I'm aiming at, I'm having fun watching this Flak 88 fire sideways and float around the map! And just because I'm shameless like that, why not have a random assortment of stuff, including large squishy pillows to grapple with in anger when your controls derp out for the millionth time and you nosedive int othe ground? (Comes with a FREE kneecap!)

Now that I think of it, who said it had to be bipedal? If we're like that, then you've got limitless potential, and I think all we'd need right now is a way to make it mobile, assuming you want legs. If that's the case, I'm pretty sure the bulk of my designs could easily be made real (minus directed energy weapons) because they're little more than big boxes on legs with guns galore, maybe a vehicle hangar. (of course, one or two are meant to drop in from low orbit and use a totally fictional mechanism so they don't topple buildings when dropping near urban centers...) I could likely easily re-create the general idea behind most of these things, and just let progress do the rest, eventually. Also one thing I forgot to slide in in the previous posts, is that the small size of the GDA's mechs allows them to be deployed by air, which I think is how they would get around if we built them in real life, considering mechs will probably be slow to start off. And just for kicks, I'll drop in the sister heli to what the GDA's mechs ride around with (mostly because I don't have a full sheet for the Albatross yet, and because the Anaconda is essentially a smaller, heavily armed Albatross. And because I'm sorta shameless sometimes.) Behold, the Anaconda. Yeah, it's pretty big. As for the actual Albatross, the mechs ride in a carrier underneath the machine, so that in a hurry, the pilot can simply jettison the container if they need to bug out; the mech pilots may not like the bumpy ride, but it's better than being blown up in the air, isn't it? Also this isn't totally final, the numbers are a bit wonky, I think- it carries about as much ordinance as an empty Apache D weighs. And the thermobaric missiles are sort of just a placeholder, they're supposed to be antitank missiles, but it's fiction so they need some degree of flashiness! (Plus I like Dale Brown and the stuff he creates. 27 pound missile with the power of a bunker buster? Please, do tell...)

I've only recently reinstalled DCS world to muck about on Combined Arms, and I'm still getting the hang of everything. (I'm on a real potato of a machine, basically a stock Dell-755. I tried to generate a random scenario and it took ages to load into it and was horrifically slow, exasperating my bad flight skills on DCS using a keyboard and mouse.) I'm still trying to figure out how everything functions at the most basic of levels so I can start figuring out how it work at a more advanced level as I play with other people who don't know squat so we can have much fun driving around on cruise control bumping in to each other as we figure stuff out. It's probably been said before, but the ZSU-23/4 certainly appears to have a radar on it's butt, but doesn't seem to have a display, to my dismay. (Not like it matters much in my current test missions, where I'm sitting right there as a big juicy flight of Chinooks fly overhead for me to give them a cool new paint job called swiss cheese.) Another weird thing, though I think I know the answer, is that MANPADS and some of the IR missile carriers seem to take tens of thousands of seconds to rearm- it's probably just the unlimited ammo function (and that I'm nowhere near a cargo truck) but it's slightly annoying because I kept forgetting to move the one MANPAD unit I had away from being able to shoot from the start so I could actually try the thing out. Another thing I've been trying to do is figure out what has the longest range, and what isn't infurating to try to use. I'd taken out all of the stuff that the player couldn't directly command, but something still was showing a massive engagement ring, and I couldn't pluck it out from the gaggle of units I had, although I'm leaning towards the Gepard, because I only had two of those and I swear I saw only two huge rings. (Unrelated but, the 9K22's missiles are wire/laser guided? Even with a radar lock? Argh...) Another thing I noticed was during one test, nothing had proper gears, it was all Reverse, Neutral and Drive, which was annoying because I couldn't get my Zeus' going at even 5mph for more than a split second. (Granted, I was on a sheer slope, but even when I got the level ground...) It's only happened twice, so it's not a big deal, I just hope it doesn't happen when I try to play for real! And I've seen around that the AI has some godly aiming and detection skills, which would seem to explain why a trio of Pattons smoked a T-90 and then proceeded to wipe the floor with at least two dozen AAA units from lord only knows how far away. So yeah, rambling aside I'm just fiddling around. If someone more experienced would like to get me going on the proper track, instead of me just whimsically switching tracks willy nilly, that'd be more than appreciated, if you have time. (I run DCS on Steam; on an interesting note, I have a copy of DCS-A-10C standalone on Steam too, from before World was added in, which amuses me for some reason I can't fathom.) Just general instruction would be more than great, but if I could also get guidance on setting up a mission, that'd be great too. (Really, the only people I have to play with are two friends who have just World, one who has World and Huey, and one who has A-10C, but who may need to fiddle with World. (I know I had to completely reinstall some windows packages to get World to run on my one computer, which unfortunately completely and totally broke its ability to run Wargame:ALB. Thankfully, the one I play on cooperated without a fuss and runs both!) Just be advised that I am a horrendous driver, my graphics are on the tail end of horrible (Yay for a GT430... said no one ever) and if there's too much going on everything turns to molasses. (Oh and firing the Zeus in first person is probably worse than it should be, I can't see squat past the muzzle flash) And the raretime I'll fiddle around with something in the air, I probably don't have my joystick plugged in (because it refuses to do gradual throttle on the Huey. It has seem to have only two settings: idle and FULL STEAM AHEAD) If you'd like to help me learn the simulation controls for aircraft, sweet, but I'd like to print off a bunch of shorthand pages on how to start everything up and nail them to the wall, because my memory sucks. (I liked it when I had a dualscreen setup and could leave my notes up on the second screen, but that didn't last because my graphics card cried bloody murder when I did that.) Finally, my current goal on Combined Arms is to figure out what constitutes good cover... on the graphics (or lack thereof) that a GT430 can supply, so when I do finally play with my Huey buddy, I can actually find somewhere I'm not painfully obvious with the naked eye, so I can go poke and jab at him until he panics and smacks into something. Other than that, I'm working on figuring out how you groupup units, so I can go out and get a cigar and blindfold for my graphics card, give it both, then let loose 20+ Zeus' and see what happens. (Besides a beautiful sky full of thousands of tracers, of course!)

Continued from first post (I'm such a rambler :cry:) ... Where N25 comes in, is the First Generation of Combat BioAndroids. This generation is the most feared and respected of all (currently) eighteen Generations, and rightly so. They were and ever are, rare, as they were built out of the hardiest stuff imaginable. For a very long time, they were, and almost still are, literally indestructable. The early losses were from exhaustion- as they do not fatigue, they would keep going on and on, but after about a month of nonstop operation, they would have an internal temperature that would be too much for their internal safeguards, and would fry their organs, putting them into an Emergency State, a state where they would be focused on self-preservation to the exclusion of all else. This was a problem because a) they used far more energy in this state, and after a month of hard fighting, they had about two weeks in this state before they would burn themselves out entirely. And b) because they were designed to survive against anything, and as such, no longer cared about friend or foe; recovery teams of First Generations had to be formed just to subdue these dying units in an attempt to keep them from surviving so well that they killed themselves. First Generation CBA's were also living nightmares; they were protected against all known toxins and diseases, and were built to be such efficient living weapons of war that their very blood was anathema to life. They were virus carriers beyond measure, and should one actually manage to fall, it would take whoever was stupid enough to get close with it in a cloud of its own boiled blood, releasing its deadly viral payload into the immediate area. They ate atomic weaponry and crapped death, day in, day out. In space, they were ever more deadly- they didn't need the same bodies as they did on land, which were to protect allies from their own immense atomic signature. Anyone foolish enough to board an ACV manned by First Generation CBA's in anything short of a meltdown suit would quickly fall to the immense radiation emitted by unshielded CBAs. (On the flip side, they could work, body or not, in any ACV, so when the SwarmCarrier was designed, they were perfect for maintenance, as they could shrug off the massive amount of radiation the reactors gave off even through the thick shielding.) The first ever First Generation test unit, Snpr Ex1, went rogue and found and exploited a weakness in the original design, but that was a one-time trick. So N-Class combat gas was born. Even the Quantum Material armour of a First Generation CBA was not foolproof against it, though even in the start, N1 was very weak. Still, even a half of a percent lethality rate against these monsters of war was a major victory. And so the arms race was on. N25 is the culmination of that race, the end of the N-Class combat gas, its inventor dead. But N25 has never been fully analyzed, and has remained so for millions of years, its encryption the product of almost two centuries of quiet study between N24 and N25. For all its advances, it is still only 8% effective against the remaining twenty thousand First Generation units. The point? The GDA's mechs, unlike the UUG's, use bioelectrical currents to allow pilot entry, as well as articulation. If not equipped with a purpose built Phase (Shift) shield, these mechs will seize in an N25 cloud. Ironically, the pilot is safe inside, as the machine is fully made out of the bioelectrical metal, and the N25 will bond to it in sufficient numbers that it clogs in the armour and prevents more N25 from seeping in past it, as well as blocking the pilot's own bioelectric signal from the N25 outside the mech. And N25 is singular in purpose, and will adhere to its target until it itself breaks down, preventing it from simply overwhelming the mech and then turning on the pilot. So, while the pilot is perfectly safe, the mech is immobilized and the pilot can't get out, quite a disadvantage. So, to finally shut up (I apologize for anyone who has died reading all of this, truly, I do...) at least when coming up with mechs in a fictional environment, you can be quite creative in limiting their traditional superpoweredness. You just need to think first of what you don't care about, and make sure they can't do this or that. Sure, it's underhanded, but it often fits. Second, make a list of what you meant it to do, and whatever else you figure it can do based on what you've designed, making logical assumptions. Pick a few of these and re-engineer it so that it isn't quite as good, or sucks at these. Bonus points if you make a second mech that does these things better, but suffers where the first one excels- combined arms is always good, and it makes a freebie weakness that they need to be together for them to cover all the bases, as apart they will flounder against this or that threat, or are easily counterable. And lastly, try to do some guesswork. I do it a lot for everything I do, to try to make this or that less of a one-man wrecking ball. Tremors are slow, and they will eventually run out of ammunition. Rainbows are squishy, Type IX's can't hit diddily at range. (Going into some stuff I never mentioned here now) Assault Fighters, while turnfighters beyond measure, are limited in flight time and armament- they only have two missiles, and are otherwise based solely around those cannons. The AED-8 Super Heavy Bomber... is really just a modernized B-36 Peacemaker made... huger. The AED-20 Hypersonic Assault Bombers are few in number, are incapable of landing (they refuel and rearm in orbit) and only carry two bombs, if you ignore the fact they're built around a third. The Sterling III Interdictor is a sitting duck for ballistic missiles, as it lacks the high performance engines of the 21A class, as well as the SHEAR (Sudden High Energy Ascent Reaction) protocol engines of the I-700. The AED-12/DRJ-A High Speed High Altitude Assault Bomber is... a morphing body flying wing design built around twelve movable engine sections and a bomb bay. Cripple one, the thing's screwed. The First Generation CBAs can only fight nonstop for a little over a month, and they can't afford to burn out because there's only twenty thousand left of them and no way to make more. SwarmCarriers (which were originally 'godmodded', though they were far fewer in number initially) are basically big, fat rectangles with guns. And about an eighth of a million bombers, or a small escort fleet. But still a bit fat rectangle. One that can ram and come out intact. But still a rectangle. A huge one. Sure it has some of the best shielding technology has to offer, but it's still huge. If you can't aim a hitting shot (it has a lot of CIWS armaments) than you're doing something horribly, horribly wrong. Also one more, for the biggest artillery piece the GDA has, the Indigo Landkreuzer, which, in layman's terms, is basically a Schwerer Gustav bolted to two huge treads instead of rail cars. Sure, it's got a massive gun, sure, it's got the biggest AAA suit any singular land machine in the GDA's arsenal has, sure, it comes in pairs in any Indigo Artillery Division. But that short-range, kill-all plasma gizmo? (Not going to bore you with that detail) All you need to do is shake the damn thing hard enough, and it'll explode. Either that or shatter the recoil diverter drill on the back so it can't fire without blowing itself up. Then it's a fancy, four hundred meter long artillery chassis that doubles as a decorative, oversized paperweight, with a massive, beautiful gun, that doubles as a very large pointing stick. And if you give it a good shove now, it'll burst into pretty fireworks! Where does all this tie in? If we can get real, working mechs, they're going to be primitive, sort of like the UUG's mechanized sniper. They won't be going anywhere fast, probably would be a very bad idea to try to parkour in them, and they aren't going to feature energy blades or big hokin' guns. Maybe they can be used to fire big weapons in lieu of a tank chassis or something, but they're not going to be toting them around like it's nobody's business. And they're going to be targets. And sure, we seem close to getting a bipedal machine to walk just fine, but when you stick one in a warzone, what's gonna happen? What if it gets hit by something big, as I imagine it will be? It's gonna topple over, because our gyros are primitive. You could probably ram it with a heavy vehicle and it'd topple over. We'll get there one day. Maybe they'll be big mechs, or maybe they'll be more like suits for the groundies. Perhaps they'll be like helicopters in the beginning, just utility vehicles that are really good at lugging crap from point A to point B, and we'll slowly but surely find a way to make it so they don't fall on their backs and wind up being nicknamed Turtles when they fire a weapon. Or maybe they really are just a waste of time, and are really just cool but impractical. We'll find out when we get there. For now, we'll have fun imagining how they'll be, what they can do, and always finding out way off topic and wind up making short stories, novels, and TV shows about them. Maybe they're better off staying in our heads. At least that way we'll never be crushed when they don't work out in practice. As long as we are ignorant as to what they can't do, we'll keep being creative. One thing's for sure. If they do come in my lifetime, and they aren't the way I write them as, I'm going to be pretty pissed. I try to keep things closer to realism if I can help it, so I'd feel compelled to alter them to fit how they were in reality. And I hate having to re-write stuff!

This is just the ramblings of a write who focuses far too much on theory and mechanics than actual writing (I'm so lazy) but for the mechs I have within my writing, they are few and far between in relation to other machines- they're still in their infancy, however advanced they appear, and are more for support. They aren't even that large, either, about 2-3 times the size of a man. Now, in terms of modern technology they are light years ahead- they don't even use a hatch, but instead have semi intelligent metal that 'opens up' to accept a pilot from the upper back. They aren't indestructible, but they are hardy, and they act more like extensions of the human body than pure machines, as they are somewhat 'alive' (they can pilot themselves, though they lack the more advanced AI allowing prediction, advanced thought processing, and 'gut feeling' type of stuff.) All in all they perform more like really big special forces infantry- who happen to be able to take a tank shot to the gut and keep on soldering. They even vary in advancement; the most advanced ones belonging to the primary faction (the GDA,) have the beginnings of modular systems, and have more of the superhuman agility found in traditional mechs- they can jump pretty high, and move at a fairly decent pace. There's three of them, which are really one and the same, and instead are really just loadout differences (even the Command version is on the same chassis as the standard one, just with more whizz-bang gizmos than the others.) They're comprised of the Rifleman variant, with a lovely little 57mm weapon system (I like to think I got the idea from Full Metal Panic, as the mechs there aren't too huge, and they use larger but not obnoxiously huge weapons), the Suppressor, with a 30mm rotary cannon and the stereotypical mech machinegunner backpack, and the Breacher, with a larger rifle, typically between 75 and 90mm. The last one's more for cranking tanks (that gun's not terribly accurate) and relies more on agility and cunning to flank and- yes- leap on top of a tank to hit it in the nice, squishy top. The mechs from other factions are more primitive, with the United Universal Government only having one, a bulky sniper that lacks the sort of gryos of the GDA's mechs, and is less a traditional mech than a really big bipedal weapon carrier, as it needs to set up and dig in to fire- it'd fall on its back if it tried to do anything else, and it can't even really run. Heck, in some ways, a tank destroyer's a better choice, but this bugger can fit where a tank can't, so it still has a niche. (Also, the UUG lacks the stubbornness to mount insane stabilization contraptions to their tanks like the GDA, so they rely on this mech to fire some of their bigger guns, so there's that. The GDA, on the other hand, has the Indigo Atlas Hybrid Artillery Tank with its retractable telescoping barrel (not sure how this would actually work in real life, I admit it's shaky) and stabilization-leg-skirt-thing. Basically it's a smaller chassis that mounts a really long gun beyond all logical reason, that happens to be able to collapse and be fired without having to stabilize, allowing it to function as an infantry support tank- the gun's not too accurate when collapsed, and it's primarily artillery, so it doesn't have much business carrying ordinance meant to blow through a heavily armoured tank!) Before I go on, yes, I'm scatterbrained and disorganized, and that sucks. Now put on your brain bucket and let's wade forth! Time to earn that danger pay... (Note: After writing so much, I've decided to spare readers from having a five mile long page and so I'll put this below in a spoiler tag...) (EDIT: Wow, forgot how wide the forums were... I'm so used to narrow forums, where my walls of text drive people crazy, especially on mobile devices, with how long they make webpages.) Continued in next post (15000 character limit?! Arghhhh!)