The Space Opera Working Thread

reply to post by mf_luder


Sorry I have been busy as of late with one of mt latest threads.
Check signature.

I'll be writing this weekend.
Stay tuned.

Dang, I'm afraid if I yell *Hi* in here - I'll hear an echo...

Awful quiet around here...

CindyMars - I've got some info for you for the next post - some ideas/suggestions - sounds like you're computer is slag...

Will send again U2U just in case you might get it checking that way....

Have a good Sunday All!

reply to post by nenothtu


Asher is in his personal cabin, if that helps.

Second line.

Holy crap. IT is dead in here. lol

I've been away doing this all weekend:

www.youtube.com...

Well, that and drinking....

Be back around after the week begins.

reply to post by mf_luder


Woohoo! Is that you???

hehehe

Out of uniform and everything! :O Well I never!

Get back to work! The Penelope await you...

[edit on 28-6-2009 by silo13]

reply to post by silo13


That is definitely me.

Well, it was getting awfully quiet around here so I tossed a fun wrench into the works.

Maybe this little crisis will get everyone going again.

Some tidbits:

Charon - Mythological boatman on the river Styx. Ferried souls to Hades.

Erebus - son of the Titan Khaos, personification of darkness and shadow.




Sorry, I love my mythology.

Whats with everybody saying the ships a wreck?


LOL I had a whole post all written up and ready to post in detail how the ship was all squared away and Luder said it was a wreck so I deleted it. I have to start from scratch oh well.

reply to post by SeekerOfAUTMN

a dry raspy cough of a laugh that carried all the humor of a burning orphanage.

OMG you made me laugh - but how horrid is that!

Great post...

OMG still laughing - slap me!

[You are to board a standard Albatross dropship and pilot it to my ship, the Khaos. You are to bring the Enhancer, Seeker8241, with you. What say you Captain? The two of you in exchange for every soul aboard the Penelope... A fair deal, is it not?]

Wicked cool twist!

Well sounds like we're up a certain creek again.
This might be a good time for slayer to tell luder and neno about what badger did to the dropship.

The actual badger just spent 40 hours traveling (23 hours with his size large butt squeezed into a sized small airplane seat) to the other side of THIS planet and his brain is toast. Why is it that every person who sits behind me on a plane thinks the back of my seat is a jungle gym?
I can't take the time to do any writing right now because I've got to go to work but slayer has details on a little emergency plan that he and badger cooked up a few days ago in the case that the dropship was taken. It might help in this case or it might not. That info might give you a direction to write in.

Later guys, wish I had more time.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Who!?!!?! ME?!!?1?!?!

Did I say a wreck...!!????


I meant everything was ship shape! The weapons and shields are fully operational. I just think some doors are messed up.

Good work slayer!!!

reply to post by SeekerOfAUTMN


Excellent plot twist.

Here are my options I'd like to run by you guys.

1) The "RLH Manuever" or "Run Like Hell" Manuever invented by Luder at the Academy after getting into a bit of a scrap with some larger classmates. SLAYER - would it be possible to cold-jump the Penelope into a random set of coordinates without damaging the ship to the point of destruction? If so - would it be possible to cold-jump directly to Earth?

2) "Quid Pro Quo" - We have a team of theirs along with one of their ships. SEEKER - how much do they care for the lives of their comrades? If at all, could Horkos be used as a bargaining chip?

3) "Boogey Man Cometh" - SEEKER - I know you've been dying to rain death and destruction upon all that is NI..... what say you to a trojan horse type situation? We could fool their sensors into thinking that a dropship has both you and I aboard, but really its you and a team of heavily armed spec ops marines and security personnel.....

4) "Flaming Bag of Poop" - SLAYER/SEEKER - could we eject the engine cores into their formation and destruct them?


Are we even in any kind of position to do anything about this?

Before I start posting in character, I want to know if we can silence the communications relay long enough to talk amongst ourselves?

Any suggestions?

reply to post by mf_luder


Well my thoughts are this...

Option 1 might work, but hopping into a wormhole isn't an instantaneous thing unless you just turn it on without plotting a course. Doing that could put us in the middle of a star somewhere, and that could be unpleasant. While the Penny maneuvers into the plotted wormhole, there's a decent segment of time that they could pound the bejeezus out of us.

Option 2, sorry to say, won't work at all. Charon purposely didn't ask about Horkos because he doesn't give a crap. Disavow and deny, being the policy and all.

Option 3 sounds awesome, but the problem is the other two battleships. The Khaos is the one Charon wants Luder and I to go to, and if we did the boogeyman thing, the other two could pound on the Penny. Not sure that the Penny couldn't take them, but there would be damage.

Option 4 sounds desperate but hilarious. It would theoretically damage their ships, but not destroy them. Make them easy pickings afterwards. However, we would be up excrement creek without propulsion after that.


About the communications, we could silence it, but that would involve self destructing out communications array, which would leave us without one for a while. He'll go away when he gets an answer. Then we can discuss out options.

[edit on 29-6-2009 by SeekerOfAUTMN]

reply to post by silo13




Thanks Silo. I'm trying to keep my sense of humor in check, but that one must have gotten by somehow.

Burning space orphanage!

reply to post by mf_luder


I have another option to add to the above. Assuming weapons are in fine order, and I believe they are, we have multiple, independently targetable, very cool and destructive ways to make other space boats hurt. It matters not if the NI boats bristle with weapons like so many hedgehogs. They have to USE them for it to count, and they can't do that if we just 'splode them first. Just blast 'em all, right in the middle of a sentence.

So, what's the status of our shields, armor, and weapons? How fast can we just SCOOT backwards after letting 'em have it, without any fancy course corrections?

What about blacking out their ability to SEE? Can't shoot if ya can't see. Well, can't shoot EFFECTIVELY. Black out their sight somehow, and jump way backwards like a squid. THEN bomb 'em back to the stone age (literally if we can crash 'em on the planet surface).

Trojan horse variant: Send Horkos and one other NI agent over in the shuttle, instead of Luder and Asher, and rig it to go critical on docking in the flight bay. Horkos and one other NI agent because there would have to be 2 warm bodies to simulate the captain and Asher. Horkos because, well, I just don't like him, but would be willing to send him home to NI, under the right conditions... he'd have to be sedated to stay quiet, though.

Then when the shuttle blew up, we could get all kinds of indignant with the rest of the boats, assuming any were left "You blowed 'em up, just like that! I'm tellin' the Admiral! You just blowed up muh cap'n!" then zap 'em in the confusion.

Then when we get back to L2, just say "NI boats? what NI boats? I didn't see nothin' blow up, did you Bob?"

Perhaps they will think we've gone dangerously unstable, and will leave us alone out of fear after that...

In any event, I'm voting dead against any form of putting Luder and Asher in a raft going towards the NI boats, for any reason.

Send neno instead. He'll go all manner of psycho jihad on their butts.

Originally posted by mf_luder


1) The "RLH Manuever" or "Run Like Hell" Manuever invented by Luder at the Academy after getting into a bit of a scrap with some larger classmates. SLAYER - would it be possible to cold-jump the Penelope into a random set of coordinates without damaging the ship to the point of destruction? If so - would it be possible to cold-jump directly to Earth?



3) "Boogey Man Cometh" - SEEKER - I know you've been dying to rain death and destruction upon all that is NI..... what say you to a trojan horse type situation? We could fool their sensors into thinking that a dropship has both you and I aboard, but really its you and a team of heavily armed spec ops marines and security personnel.....

I say it's time to show a bit of penelope's fire power and do some good old fashion broadsiding. If this means going rouge then so be it. We will eventually make up for it by helping save mankind if and when we hook up with our counter parts to fight the dark lord. Dont worry I'll fix whatever happens to the P. Also "Kim and Horn" can come up with whatever we need to replace our critical supplies.

Besides our new wing commander needs something to attack



Worst case scenario we "UNLEASH" Studious on them He can Gum and Cane em to death.




[edit on 29-6-2009 by SLAYER69]

I'm very cool with the "western style" shootout option. Haven't had a chance to break out the big guns since the Nimitz. Couple thoughts:

1) They aren't pushovers in those boats. The Penny could probably take all three and come out alive, but there's going to be a big price for it. We're talking serious hull breaches and 50% or above losses in our fighter squadrons. Seeing as the Penny is already somewhat limping, Slayer would have some issues to tackle.

2) If we take them out, we won't have to explain jack "poo" to the Admiralty. NI shouldn't be there by any means, and couldn't defend themselves at all if held to it. If they lose all 3 ships, they're going to drop it like it never happened and we won't be able to prove they were ever there.

3) A battle between us and them won't be a quick exchange. They have top of the line shields and armor to match their weaponry, so we can't just waste them before they react. They have many of the same systems that we do, the Penny just has more on a single boat.

4) As far as blinding them in some way, that probably wouldn't work seeing as NI's specialty is electronic warfare. They can probably defend against it in more ways than we can dish out.



Me, I'm all for a gunfight. Got some interesting stuff for that arc if we go that way. Like Neno said:

Originally posted by Nenothtu
Then when we get back to L2, just say "NI boats? what NI boats? I didn't see nothin' blow up, did you Bob?"

reply to post by SeekerOfAUTMN


Well lets give it a few posts.
I'll just get all the critical stuff finished up then it's
HAMMER TIME!

Edit to add maybe we can have the NI on board do something stupid and creates an opportunity for Studios and his Marines or whomever to do them in in some dramatic way.

Decompression anyone?


[edit on 29-6-2009 by SLAYER69]

reply to post by SLAYER69


That's 3 votes for the "OK Corral" scenario.

I like the idea of wrapping up the NI aboard in this scenario. I don't want to kill off too many of Studious' Marines before I can hand them back to him, but they're professionals, trained for this sort of thing, right?

There MUST be some way to blind them, without resorting to electronic blockages. An old fashioned "smoke screen" of some type. Ever try to look through NVD goggles in a driving rain or fog? that sort of thing. Physical visual blockage to defeat electronic eyes. That's why I mentioned the "Squid Maneuver". A squid jets out a cloud of ink, then backs off rapidly to regroup.

Perhaps an explosion or something that's "bright" in the EM spectrum, temporarily overloading their optics, giving us a chance to jet backwards and be somewhere else (and already firing on them) when the optics adjust and level off?

I'm all for hitting them in the middle of a sentence. Element of surprise and all that.

Could be during a discussion on how the "Enhancer Seeker 8241" no longer exists, and has been replaced by Asher. Can't give 'em what we ain't got, eh?



[edit on 2009/6/29 by nenothtu]

reply to post by nenothtu


Yeah, that would be cool. I'm trying to think of a way that would work, let me get back to you.

Using what is essentially a "flashbang" that far in the future seems somewhat primitive to me. It seems like that tactic would have been used and made obsolete long before spaceships were Penelope caliber. We've got optics today that can pretty much negate any kind of EM overkill.

Any kind of "blinding" of the enemy that I can think of in this situation would have to be a hack of some sort. Let me know what you think Neno.