[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

Little tidbits keep idiots who have no concept of narrative voice from downvoting as well.

Ultra mega reply post go!

Caoimhe wrote:Went looking but this is infinitely more appropriate: http://derpiboo.ru/74341?scope=scpe5ab939bbf869b2bee6e9b0cb05653f06dce275d4

I can't look at that fanart without thinking Awww.. Blackjack's drinking for two now. Does that indicate a fault in the depiction or the fact to me if you give a female a beer belly she always just looks pregnant?

nebulous wrote:

Katarn wrote:WOW, that is awesome pic..though she look little Japanese..or Chinese...

There's no reason that she shouldn't be. Since Fallout's Chinese are African Romans in this verse, who's to say that humanified Equestrians wouldn't be Asian or Latino or Maori or whatever?

Cultural concerns mainly. And you forget that Fallout's Chinese are not like our Chinese as they also contain lots of Japanese and Korean inspirations in addition to the Chinese mainland itself. It's something most Americans forget since we have a country big enough to swallow most other countries on the planet and we are not like Russia where it's 90% empty space and natural resources. In this case however when you describe Blackjack to me in non-pony terms I think Irish. Hard drinking, hard fighting and amorous fits neatly in the Irish turn of the stereotype from the turn of the century.

Vergil wrote:This is a bit random, but...rumors are flying thick right now that the next fallout game is going to be set in the commonwealth/ the institute.

I hope not, I'm still hoping for Fallout the Cuban Empire or a Florida based game because you know that a Fallout:Alt History Disneyland would be amazing.

iLateralGX wrote:

Caoimhe wrote:
Hah. When The Departed came out I was visiting a friend in Florida and we saw it opening night in a theater there and pretty much all the Floridians did was laugh at the accent. Gawd it was embarassing. :(

Greetings my fellow Floridian, even if I'm a Coronado boy which per my friends down in the swamps and on the Keys just means I'm a nicer dressed Alabamian.

Funniest thing is I am a Floridian, or was I guess. Moved into my grandmother's house here in Kentucky with my mom and sister to get away from my stepfather because he is a bastard he and my mother are going through a divorce.

Point being as a Floridian I know how dumb Floridians can be. I guess you can apply that just about anywhere though.
That being said I apologize on behalf of Florida. For everything. Except for the voting thing. Seriously what the fuck Florida?

Greetings my fellow Floridian, even if I'm a Pensacola boy which per my friends down in the swamps and on the Keys just means I'm a nicer dressed Alabamian. I counter I just happen to be living in permanent spring break.

Also Florida is great, it's nothing but swamps, old people and beaches and hordes of tourists.

Anonymous wrote:

iLateralGX wrote:@1911: Dear lord I could recreate an M1911 in Autodesk Inventor with this document. I don't have the patience though.

Ya could always do CAD then send it to Mastercam or Catia

I had ton of unpleasant flashbacks to CAD classes in college. Had nothing to do with my profession but required by my degree. Thank Xenu I did not go directly from high school into college or it would have been a drafting course instead. I took two classes of CAD which means I know my way around the program and can design all the hinges you could ever want. Beyond that? Good luck as I hit my limit of knowledge. However I can look at that 1911 breakdown and duplicate most of the parts given enough time.

Which again... is utterly useless to my chosen profession as an IT manager. If I crack open AutoCad something has gone disastrously wrong.

Caoimhe wrote:I'm not too knowledgeable on weaponry but I'm trying to think of the practicality of some pony weapons. Swords in general seem to be low on usability. I assume they have hilts and are not just used by unicorns to float around, otherwise it would probably just be a straight blade.

Ideally if a sword was meant to be held in the mouth horizontally I imagine it would be a one sided slashing blade that's be used like a Calvary sword or something you could strike with by waving or jerking your neck (as painful as that sounds). Having it be two sided could make for a world of hurt depending on the length because you'd end up carving your arse up. However, I bet they could come up with some badass ornamental mouth guards for a sword used this way, maybe even turn it into a half helm that fits around the back of the head to reduce some of the stress and weight.

Maybe BJ's sword was originally used by griffins or some other creature with hands, given the description and how it's rather unwieldily to hold in her mouth.

Overall it seems like swords just aren't that practical. Hoofclaws and possibly some shin mounted blades seem like a better use. This leads me to imagine that a lot of pony melee fights would be close quarters brawls.

Have any other artists or writers come up with any unique pony weapons that aren't firearms? This could be nifty.

Three things, out of order.
First BJ sword was implied to be Zebra forged which means it was intended to be a mouth or hoof wielded weapon. We've seen from the show that pony's can grip things with an extra join Earth Pony's down have between the top of the hoof and the foreleg. Their front legs in other words can bend back on themselves at that point which can give you a tight grip on some weapons (Like a sword hilt) but almost impossible for other weapons (Like a shield) but there are alternatives like straps or a foreleg shoe/shield.

Second mouth wielding melee weapon is just asking for trouble. What happens the first time someone shield bashes the sword held in your muzzle? With pony strength and charging ability I'm guessing your trying not to be a reverse sword swallower and some broken teeth. However it's still possible if you turning your entire body not just the head for bigger swings.

Third with the four leg situation having one sided blades makes sense (And axes to a lesser extent) as you could hold the weapon in your muzzle, swing it with your body and add extra power by pushing down with a spare hoof just before impact to add extra weight behind it.

Regardless swords would be rare as the only make sense for master Earth and Pegasus users. Most would make do with simple unarmed hoof attacks with hoof mounted edged weaponry like a knife strapped in place. But short blades would make the most sense for ponies if they could be mounted alongside the head, grabbed by the muzzle and stabbed when two ponies were face to face as they hoof wrestle using their front hooves while the back two provide stability. A short dirk you could pull and stab makes a good deal more sense than trying to bite in that kind of situation.

Caoimhe wrote:A radioactive wizard did it.

Ghoul Wizard, those are nasty. All the benefits of the undead and they have caster levels? Nasty.

swicked wrote:

Kattlarv wrote:@Mele: Actually, BJ never took the initiative for rape, so I can't compare that as very comparable at all. And if you recall, a lot,majority of the males in 99 for some reason liked their work as sex toys.

Eh, she pretty much took the initiative with P-21, it sounded like. When she broke him in, I mean.

Correct, it's implied that P-21 met Blackjack when he was P-1 and it's left open to interpretation if Blackjack was his first or just one of his first mares.

Sindri wrote:

IncoherentOrange wrote:I had the impression that Blackjack usually used shotguns. Maybe if I wasn't suck in a pathetic, un-productive, museless state, I'd actually read the damn thing and find out. That's some cool art, though.

She really likes shotguns, but they aren't always optimal. She tends to use pistols for precision or rapid-fire work, and over time she's gone through dragon claws, swords, bottles, the bones of her enemies... generally whatever she can pick up and hit people with. And she goes through shotguns rapidly due to the prevalence of specialized ammo in the hoof (all of which is bad for the mechanisms) and the toughness of most of her opponents.

You mean the toughness of her opponents skulls, it seems like every two out of three lost shotguns is lost because Blackjack uses them as a club at the point where they break under mysterous circumstances that totally had nothing to do with their recent use as a blunt instrument.

canitnerd wrote:Filly Glory is adawable.

That she is, but then filly most anything is adorable, particularly when they are in Bookforts which I can totally picture Filly Glory making.

Caoimhe wrote:
Also I'm pretty giddy about my city having Fallout potential but since I've lived here for 30 years I feel there will be a bit of cognitive dissonance at some things not being correct. I hope they use the Fed building well since it's a giant scary monolith already. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FederalReserveBankBuildingBoston.jpg

They generally speaking keep everything the same if it was produced from before 1955 then make things up as they like after that because that's the rough area where timelines totally diverge.

Downloaded Skill wrote:

ketchup504 wrote:If they do anything like they did with the monuments in DC with Fallout 3, I'm sure they'll make them look abandoned, torched, and with the occasional conspiracy. Oh, and a few related quests and lotsa loot.
With Skyrim's engine, they'd probably make it fantastic looking too.

Oh how I hope they will do that. Fallout 3 was very atmospheric with the destroyed monuments and old buildings. It really gave off the vibe of "shattered old world glory" especially with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mch1W6yPAEk&feature=BFa&list=SP53008A8787CDDA51 in the background. New Vegas just seems too.... clean? Rebuilt? It just didn't feel right with ruins and the glowing, neon strip within spitting distance. I guess I'd rather just explore the old world, like the subway stations or grocery stores that have been abandoned for centuries, than poke around some guy's shack.

New Vegas suffered from a lack of scale, had the in universe world been three times bigger (A fault that Oblivion and Skyirm also share) it would have been much better because the scale would have made sense. Limitations of the engine and all that. The only game to rough scale was Fallout 3 and even that game needed to be twice as big and open up the DC ruins. I wanted to crawl into skyscrappers with thirty floors dang it. Instead almost every building is closed off in the ruins.

Also the Skyrim engine is the same engine from Fallout 3, just tweaked a ton. But the same Engine limitations are present in all those games. Thanks to the march of progress the new engine should really be able to wow us again like the Morrowind engine did. People forget the kind of massives steps we got to take in 2001-2003 with game engines. The last massive jump forward was the Crysis 1 and Frostbite engines, one in scalability and easy editing, the other in context animations and on the fly terrain modification.

Sindri wrote:
Fallout 3 had a more apocalyptic atmosphere, yes. But as soon as you start thinking, it stops working. It's been two hundred years. Salvage is just not a viable basis for an economy over that long of a term. There are thousands of people using up food and ammunition and the old buildings are collapsing all the time, and nobody in the Capital Wasteland ever produced anything; literally all your resources would be gone in a few years and the population ought to have been declining rapidly and continuously. It's a setting that only works in the context of a game that resets everything the moment you stop looking at it, refilling containers and spawning new raiders.

In F1, things were ruined, but people were starting to rebuild. F2 was more about the factions and civilization which had grown since the apocalypse, as people continue to build a new world on the ruins of the old and are actually producing pretty much everything they need to survive. NV continues this trend. But for some reason they felt like they needed to make F3 even more hopeless and broken down than the first game, despite it taking place like four times as far from the end of the war chronologically.

Atmospheric? Yes. Logical? No. Lazy writing? All the way.

This was very much a gripe with Fallout 3 that was shared by many people in the "industry" and by industry I mean real life disaster response and those in the nuclear warfare area. I wish I had a copy still but there was an excellent essay where one of the famous Wizards of the Apocalypse, those who's job it was to target America's nuclear arsenal had taken one took at the Fallout 3 world and determined that DC had to have been hit by no more than about five hundred two thousand pound bombs and no nukes had been used at all unless they were of the tactical artillery air burst variety. The damage levels were just crazy low, the crater sizes inconsistent with the amount of radiation and not to mention everything far to intact for twenty years let alone two hundred. Find an old wood barn and leave it alone for a decade and the first stiff breeze with knock in down any day. Well built concrete buildings start falling apart in sixty years (The famous Nazi Flak towers have already seen one collapse and most need major work despite being constructed to laugh of bomb attacks in the 1940s).

Forty six years in the average survival rate for a home constructed in the 50s, less than thirty for one constructed today with our much cheaper but less durable materials which have many side benefits like reduced flammability, price and availability. If you want to see what an abandon city looks like go look up Chernobyl pictures these days for the kind of fast decay that comes when the tipping point in durability is reached.

Downloaded Skill wrote:

On the topic of producing things that was one of the primary reasons I always chose to support Ashur in the Pitt DLC. Wherner just seemed like someone looking to get revenge damn the consequences. Ashur was building something that can actually work, even if it was on the backs of slaves that he claimed he would release after the infrastructure was built up. Thing is Pittsburgh might be rebuilt, but what about the next city over? He could just keep moving the goal posts. Those things considered, while I wish I could have taken a third option, Ashur was really the lesser of two evils because he was building infrastructure and curing a new disease.

I agree with you about Ashuar, Wherner seems fine at first but the simple fact of how he acting with regards to the kid and his behavior towards the Pitt in general. Yeah I hate slavery with a passion because I've seen the effects of modern day slavery and read about the old time your less than me therefor you deserve to be in chains type. As someone who always goes out of his way in any game that will let me to cleanse the taint of slavery from the planet I have to say Ashur was the first time I held off my righteous vengeance because it felt very much like killing him would just result in Wherner becoming just as bad in six months the way he was talking.

Not that I did not take advantage of the battle chaos to off his worst three lieutenants, the ones who got off on lording over slaves. Gravity is a bitch my friend and it's not a violent act to throw you from a catwalk mid battle.

CamoBadger wrote:To add my 2 cents on the whole Fallout 3 thing, I'll admit it didn't make complete sense considering ammo did appear from nowhere when it was apparently all supposed to be gained from people who had scavenged and found it, but then after 200 years, as has been said, you'd think everything that could be found would be gone by then.

Luckily, with The Pitt, they at least added in the aspect that they were making ammunition down there, so it did give an element of rebuilding and manufacturing as opposed to only scavenging.

New Vegas did better with this, in that the conflicts over power sources made it seem like at least some were trying to rebuild and continue life that way rather than relying on only scavenging. But I felt it lacked a good story as compared to FO3 (others may disagree, but I greatly enjoyed the storyline of FO3 compared with NV. It just seemed better put together and more emotional than NV did.).

Two things, first ammo can be made and easily if you know how. For a game that handles post apocalyptic well look to the Metro 2033 games (Sequel is coming soon!) as it features the kind of home made everything that any proper after the end type story needs to feature. Even AK-47's break down someday... just not to another thousand years of course.

Second the FO3 story was superior because you had a personal stake even if the pacing was much worse than New Vegas at least you had something to look forward to. Shame they pulled another Oblivion, lets get an awesome actor and instantly kill him off. Thanks for your weekend of work, k thanks die.

Sindri wrote:

Ironmonger wrote:*raises a hoof* ...Invade Russia?

No. You know why? If you invade Russia in the winter, you will all die without seeing your opponent. If you invade Russia in the summer, Russia is fucking huge and you will shortly be invading Russia in the winter. Everyone from Napoleon to Hitler learned this the hard way.

You neglected the third important season. First comes Winter where you freeze to death, this is six months of the year, next comes Summer where everything is awesome for four months, last comes Mud. Mud is where the land and everything in it becomes coated with ten pounds of mud. Mud is the season which gives you two months to understand that you are very far from home, can't go anywhere(Because all is Mud and the Mud is you) and you've got 51 more days before you freeze to death again.

Sindri wrote:

Erumpet wrote:So I suppose invading Russia is out of the question. That means we can A) try to match wits with a Sicilian or B) stage a land war in Asia. Hmmmm decisions decisions.

I think invading Russia is actually a subset of land war in Asia. And we should be okay with the Sicilian as long as death isn't on the line...

Matching wits with a Sicilian is easy... cheat. As for the land war in Asia, it's a fine choice so long as your chosen method of conquering involves lots of village burning, peasant raping and treasure taking. If your actually try to rule that's when things tend to go bad fast.

How did I get here... http://murderpedia.org/index.htm

I figured as long I was there I would look to see how many murders share my last name (Wise). Turns out it was five. Four males and one female.

Cptadder wrote:Three things, out of order.
First BJ sword was implied to be Zebra forged which means it was intended to be a mouth or hoof wielded weapon. We've seen from the show that pony's can grip things with an extra join Earth Pony's down have between the top of the hoof and the foreleg. Their front legs in other words can bend back on themselves at that point which can give you a tight grip on some weapons (Like a sword hilt) but almost impossible for other weapons (Like a shield) but there are alternatives like straps or a foreleg shoe/shield.

Second mouth wielding melee weapon is just asking for trouble. What happens the first time someone shield bashes the sword held in your muzzle? With pony strength and charging ability I'm guessing your trying not to be a reverse sword swallower and some broken teeth. However it's still possible if you turning your entire body not just the head for bigger swings.

Third with the four leg situation having one sided blades makes sense (And axes to a lesser extent) as you could hold the weapon in your muzzle, swing it with your body and add extra power by pushing down with a spare hoof just before impact to add extra weight behind it.

Regardless swords would be rare as the only make sense for master Earth and Pegasus users. Most would make do with simple unarmed hoof attacks with hoof mounted edged weaponry like a knife strapped in place. But short blades would make the most sense for ponies if they could be mounted alongside the head, grabbed by the muzzle and stabbed when two ponies were face to face as they hoof wrestle using their front hooves while the back two provide stability. A short dirk you could pull and stab makes a good deal more sense than trying to bite in that kind of situation.

First, the blade had etchings of unicorns across it; I doubt that it was zebra forged (and if it was, that's gotta be an interesting story).


Second, a pony jaw is at least as strong as a human hand, and much stronger than a human jaw. Homo Sapiens have just about the weakest, most fragile mouths in the animal kingdom because one of the mutations we got along the way to our massive brains crippled the muscled that are used to bite, and everything atrophied from there. So a force that would take all the teeth out of your mouth would barely be felt by an equine.

I definitely agree that any long blades should be single-edged; a pony's neck isn't flexible enough to make much use of the back side even if they wouldn't be fighting blind, and you could get a lot more force behind it with a hoof on the back. And yes, long blades would only be for serious swordsmares, with smaller forward-facing dagger-bits probably being more common.

Downloaded Skill wrote:

On the topic of producing things that was one of the primary reasons I always chose to support Ashur in the Pitt DLC. Wherner just seemed like someone looking to get revenge damn the consequences. Ashur was building something that can actually work, even if it was on the backs of slaves that he claimed he would release after the infrastructure was built up. Thing is Pittsburgh might be rebuilt, but what about the next city over? He could just keep moving the goal posts. Those things considered, while I wish I could have taken a third option, Ashur was really the lesser of two evils because he was building infrastructure and curing a new disease.

I agree with you about Ashuar, Wherner seems fine at first but the simple fact of how he acting with regards to the kid and his behavior towards the Pitt in general. Yeah I hate slavery with a passion because I've seen the effects of modern day slavery and read about the old time your less than me therefor you deserve to be in chains type. As someone who always goes out of his way in any game that will let me to cleanse the taint of slavery from the planet I have to say Ashur was the first time I held off my righteous vengeance because it felt very much like killing him would just result in Wherner becoming just as bad in six months the way he was talking.

Not that I did not take advantage of the battle chaos to off his worst three lieutenants, the ones who got off on lording over slaves. Gravity is a bitch my friend and it's not a violent act to throw you from a catwalk mid battle.

Yeah, in the final version Asher was definitely the lesser evil. Or at least the less stupid evil. He was doing terrible things in order to eventually make things better, probably, and he didn't see another way. Wherner just wanted to fuck shit up and hurt people, and had no idea what would happen afterward or what he had to do along the way.

My big problem with the Pitt is that there was a third option. They wrote it in and everything, and then just railroaded you away from telling anybody about it. In the course of my wanderings through the terrible, invisible wall-filled maze that took up the majority of the DLC, I happened upon an old factory. Filled with old but entirely functional robots, and records indicating that each worked as well as a dozen skilled, motivated workers. There was some tragic story about the old workers rebelling at losing their jobs and getting massacred, but the point was that this was a workforce equivalent to over a hundred good factorymen or at least a thousand rebellious slaves, but which was immune to the radiation and toxins filling the area, required no food, would never rebel, needed minimal supervision, etc. I had Science and Repair at 100; I could easily have reprogrammed them, fixed up any that weren't working, and handed them to Asher on the condition that he free all his slaves. If he accepts then the cure becomes a non-issue because there are no workers down there, the industrial complex works better than it has since the war, he gets to change the world without hurting anybody else, and if Wherner still tries to take vengeance after his people are freed I can kill him on my way out. If Asher refuses it means that he never cared about progress anyway and just likes lording over his slaves, I kill him, and spend a few days finding one reasonable person in all this mess to leave in charge when I leave (and killing the worst of the monsters around). But no, I'm not allowed to mention it, so the closest I can do to helping is to remove the stupider and more evil of the evil assholes around, leave the other in power with the vague hope that he'll do a little better someday, maybe, and wash my hands of the whole sordid affair.

Sindri wrote:Homo Sapiens have just about the weakest, most fragile mouths in the animal kingdom because one of the mutations we got along the way to our massive brains crippled the muscled that are used to bite, and everything atrophied from there. So a force that would take all the teeth out of your mouth would barely be felt by an equine.

Can you cite source material on this? It sounds rather interesting.

Cptadder wrote:

Caoimhe wrote:
Also I'm pretty giddy about my city having Fallout potential but since I've lived here for 30 years I feel there will be a bit of cognitive dissonance at some things not being correct. I hope they use the Fed building well since it's a giant scary monolith already. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FederalReserveBankBuildingBoston.jpg

They generally speaking keep everything the same if it was produced from before 1955 then make things up as they like after that because that's the rough area where timelines totally diverge.

Oh, damn. The city has changed a LOT since then. This also means they can't use our hideous brutalist city hall which would have been perfect in the game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BostonCityHall2.JPG

ketchup504 wrote:

Sindri wrote:Homo Sapiens have just about the weakest, most fragile mouths in the animal kingdom because one of the mutations we got along the way to our massive brains crippled the muscled that are used to bite, and everything atrophied from there. So a force that would take all the teeth out of your mouth would barely be felt by an equine.

Can you cite source material on this? It sounds rather interesting.

Eh, don't remember specifically at the moment. IIRC, basically scientists were looking through the genetics of humanity to try to find the major divergence points between us and the other great apes, and they found something very similar to a genetic disorder they'd identified which causes weak useless muscles, but it was present in all of humanity and almost no other animals, and took place in the code for the jaw muscles. You feel the little flexing when you put your fingers on your temples and clench your jaw? If you were any other kind of primate those muscles would each be about as strong as your triceps. This change simultaneously gave us more room in the skull for the brain, and probably encouraged us to develop tools and weapons (because we couldn't kill prey by biting it) and eventually fire (because raw prey was too tough and we needed to cook it). Which then led to the upward spiral of increased brain capacity and advancing technology to make up for our natural disadvantages which continues today. I'll see if I can find the articles.

Sindri wrote:
First, the blade had etchings of unicorns across it; I doubt that it was zebra forged (and if it was, that's gotta be an interesting story).

It could have been a guest gift or peace offering, point being it was in the Hoofington historical museum and was in a display case about Zebra artifacts or next to such a display case meaning it could have been Pony or Zebra forged, gifted or taken by either side... point is it was a historical artifact and there are reason why it would be in a Zebra section with unicorn inlays. The only thing we can rule out are minotaurs or Griffins having anything to do with it..... and now that I've said that Somber will related to us in Chapter Fifty One that the Starmetal sword was forged by Minotaurs and commissioned by Griffons as a gift to the Unicorn Prince but was stolen by the Pegasus General who gifted it to the Caesar as a guest gift who used it to trim hedges.

Sindri wrote:
Second, a pony jaw is at least as strong as a human hand, and much stronger than a human jaw. Homo Sapiens have just about the weakest, most fragile mouths in the animal kingdom because one of the mutations we got along the way to our massive brains crippled the muscled that are used to bite, and everything atrophied from there. So a force that would take all the teeth out of your mouth would barely be felt by an equine.

Your thinking only about simple push/pull forces. I'm referring to the entire thing. Lets say your a pony and I'm a pony and we come at each other with weapons, my hoof strapped shield arm vs your sword arm. You swing your sword, I block my shield and we are both matched, problem is if one of us has a strength advantage not only are we forcing the weapon toward the other we are also turning the head which in a fight if I can force my opponent to have to watch me from the corner of my eye or deny him sight of me all together it's a huge advantage.

Thus my point swords, any kind of swords would have to be limited to ponies trained from birth to compensate for the problem of holding your weapon with the most important bit of your anatomy.

Sindri wrote:
I definitely agree that any long blades should be single-edged; a pony's neck isn't flexible enough to make much use of the back side even if they wouldn't be fighting blind, and you could get a lot more force behind it with a hoof on the back. And yes, long blades would only be for serious swordsmares, with smaller forward-facing dagger-bits probably being more common.

I imagine pole arms would be the weapon of the day. Big hammers, big axes, big spears and Halberds which can be all three as that lets you drop down on your eye or hold it in the crook of the foreleg and stab with it since swinging would be hard with a foreleg but stabbing quite possible

Sindri wrote:
Yeah, in the final version Asher was definitely the lesser evil. Or at least the less stupid evil. He was doing terrible things in order to eventually make things better, probably, and he didn't see another way. Wherner just wanted to fuck shit up and hurt people, and had no idea what would happen afterward or what he had to do along the way.

My big problem with the Pitt is that there was a third option. They wrote it in and everything, and then just railroaded you away from telling anybody about it. In the course of my wanderings through the terrible, invisible wall-filled maze that took up the majority of the DLC, I happened upon an old factory. Filled with old but entirely functional robots, and records indicating that each worked as well as a dozen skilled, motivated workers. There was some tragic story about the old workers rebelling at losing their jobs and getting massacred, but the point was that this was a workforce equivalent to over a hundred good factorymen or at least a thousand rebellious slaves, but which was immune to the radiation and toxins filling the area, required no food, would never rebel, needed minimal supervision, etc. I had Science and Repair at 100; I could easily have reprogrammed them, fixed up any that weren't working, and handed them to Asher on the condition that he free all his slaves. If he accepts then the cure becomes a non-issue because there are no workers down there, the industrial complex works better than it has since the war, he gets to change the world without hurting anybody else, and if Wherner still tries to take vengeance after his people are freed I can kill him on my way out. If Asher refuses it means that he never cared about progress anyway and just likes lording over his slaves, I kill him, and spend a few days finding one reasonable person in all this mess to leave in charge when I leave (and killing the worst of the monsters around). But no, I'm not allowed to mention it, so the closest I can do to helping is to remove the stupider and more evil of the evil assholes around, leave the other in power with the vague hope that he'll do a little better someday, maybe, and wash my hands of the whole sordid affair.

See I could have easily written that to work, the third option is to kill both or leave on in charge with the robots but paint the robots as very much a possible problem because your programing could be overwritten to turns workers into soldiers and the slaves freed will simply be freed and releasing a thousand barely clothed souls into the wasteland to fend for themselves means a lot of deaths by starvation within the month.

I can even write the endings now

If you repair the robots and give them to Asher he goes on to find the cure less than six months later and releases the slaves however only one in five is alive a year after they were released which is in fact worse odds than if they stayed slaves. But the Pitt is a humming city now even if some of Ashers men went raider without slaves to lord over and they are plaguing someplace up north now

If you give the robots to Wherner he finds a treatment but not a cure for the disease but the baby grows up a vegetable and the mother kills herself, however the city is now a massive Raider camp and Wherner is dead thanks to his lack, mismanagement and mental issues. However the slaves are free and there is a thiriving community north of the capital wasteland as Wherner made good on his promises to the slaves and he stripped the Pitt bear and heavily supported their first few months so the free slaves, so while the Pitt is a raider den their community is well armed and well protected and a beacon of light in the darkness of the wasteland.

If you kill both and give it to a third party then no cure is ever found by you as the mother takes the child and flees in the chaos of the battle to parts unknown. After an orgy of violence the city is left with a third of the population before you survived. But with your leadership and your robots it's a safe and secure city even if the disease still threatens explorers the Followers of the Apocalypse have arrived to begin studying the problem and it might take the fifty years but while the city is recovering slowly but it will recover in time.

So your three choices, short term payoff, medium term payoff or long term payoff which each having it's own pluses and minuses. Figure an hour of extra dialog, an extra mission or two and the Pitt gets a much nicer ending for those willing to track down everything and dig up every plot thread.

@Sindri I read in an article humans actually have a very efficient jaw for their skull size. Scale it up to the size of a gorilla and we suddenly have at least 40% more bite force than any other primate, with a few exceptions.

Sindri wrote:

ketchup504 wrote:

Sindri wrote:Homo Sapiens have just about the weakest, most fragile mouths in the animal kingdom because one of the mutations we got along the way to our massive brains crippled the muscled that are used to bite, and everything atrophied from there. So a force that would take all the teeth out of your mouth would barely be felt by an equine.

Can you cite source material on this? It sounds rather interesting.

Snip

Makes sense. Humans are sorely lacking in natural weapons compared to other primates, but we ended up with the brainpower to develop more tools and adapt better to changing environments and conditions.
Come to think of it, our heads aren't shaped to provide much of a bite, either. Canines have smaller cheeks and more easily exposed teeth for biting, while our cheeks cover most of our teeth. Some apes have elongated jaws that would facilitate biting more so than ours.

swicked wrote:@adder
Time out, do we even know what a pony's field of vision is? Their eyes are on the sides of their heads and we know they are capable of moving them independently, if only to roll them about comically. I'm not sure a mouth-held weapon would really be that restrictive, vision-wise.
Most of the rest of your points I'd agree with. Swords like the starmetal one seem more suited for fencing-style swordplay than bashing against shields, though.

Horses (And their smaller pony friends) have excellent all around vision but there is a problem. I'll let Horse Hints and Ontario's gov explain.

Simply put Pony vision while excellent is less visually accurate that human vision, think of all horses as slightly near sighted. They can see farther than humans but the detail they can pick up is less. Second the muzzle creates a blind spot directly in front of the pony and below the pony. If you want to get a visual idea of this take your hands, extend one hand flat and place it against your chin as if making a chin shelf, you'll notice instantly how much peripheral vision you lose as the pony loses because their muzzle is in the way. The muzzle blind spot you really can not picture physically but it's much smaller so of less note except for the fact that if you were to punch a pony in the nose it could see the start of the swing but six inches away to impact it can't see anything, something else a master swords-pony would be taking advantage of.

The big problem however is that the muzzle creates monocular vision. Simply put the field a Pony can use both eyes to see something is less than what a human can and monocular vision creates depth perception problems... which is a BIG problem when trying to prevent sharp bits of metal from getting stuck in you if you can't tell exactly how far away to the millimeter the tip of that sword is. So if your wielding a sword in the pony muzzle it does not take much effort to force the other pony to face to the left or right which means your two eyes to their one eye (I'm assuming front leg wielding warrior vs sword in muzzle pony)

And lets just take a minute to reflect on the fact we are discussing two ponies one with spike pony shoes facing off against another pony with a sword in it's mouth.

Somber wrote:

Congratulation!!! Don't let PH stay in the way of your life, but don't forget it either!

Random brain-fart (I learned a new expession in english today, yay!):
Why Equestria's numeral system is decimal (base 10)? Wouldn't make more sense if it was quaternary (base 4)?

Wait what? How do we know this?

Rafafidi wrote:

Somber wrote:

Congratulation!!! Don't let PH stay in the way of your life, but don't forget it either!

Random brain-fart (I learned a new expession in english today, yay!):
Why Equestria's numeral system is decimal (base 10)? Wouldn't make more sense if it was quaternary (base 4)?

Time to bring back the Pratchett-Warhammer Theory of Anthrodependent Psychomanifestation! :D Wherein ponies get visions of human technology, and recreate them as best they can, and their BELIEF that these machines and concepts should work makes them actually function. Thus, they get concepts like a base 10 number system.

I know where the 'Warhammer' part of that comes from. The red wunz go fasta, after all.

hmm...i got two choices today:

A) write a FF someone requested
b) Read Fallout Equestria (never read any of it yet)

Which one? O~O

swicked wrote:

Ranger wrote:hmm...i got two choices today:

A) write a FF someone requested
b) Read Fallout Equestria

Which one? O~O

C) TV Tropes.

You know you wanna.

Sweetie i don't know what that is :P

Oh Goddess, you don't want to know!!
Just never look- no, never THINK of it, and you'll be fine and productive.

Rafafidi wrote:Why Equestria's numeral system is decimal (base 10)? Wouldn't make more sense if it was quaternary (base 4)?

Translation Convention.
That is to say, because the stories are written for and by English-speaking humans, and translating between bases on the fly in your head is a bitch.

SilentCarto wrote:

Rafafidi wrote:Why Equestria's numeral system is decimal (base 10)? Wouldn't make more sense if it was quaternary (base 4)?

Translation Convention.
That is to say, because the stories are written for and by English-speaking humans, and translating between bases on the fly in your head is a bitch.

I am now having high school academic team flashbacks.

Ranger wrote:

swicked wrote:

Ranger wrote:hmm...i got two choices today:

A) write a FF someone requested
b) Read Fallout Equestria

Which one? O~O

C) TV Tropes.

You know you wanna.

Sweetie i don't know what that is :P

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage God help you if you click this.

Quickly, get a distraction!



What this is, I don't even.

Thread saved by Israeli hiphop

Somber wrote:Well I have some news. I got the teaching job. 11th grade English in Fallon, NV. I have no idea what's going to happen with Horizons. I hope I'll be able to manage a chapter or two a month, but I just don't know. I don't want Horizons to wither on the vine or fade away. Many of you have given your time, attention, and money keeping the story going. You deserve an ending.

Sho aweshome! I wish I could teleport you celebratory chocolate.

RandomBlank wrote:

Ironmonger wrote:
Blackjack killed a dragon? When?! And Stygius is going to be back? Where did you get this. Sorry I don't do a ton of lurking.

When she had the bounty on her head. She met some Crusaders hiding from angry farmers that were accusing them of killing their brahmins. The dragon lived in some kind of underground crevice near the farm, she collapsed the roof on him.

And shot out his eye, and walked into the eye socket, and fired poison rounds directly into his brain.

Cptadder wrote:

Sindri wrote:

Ironmonger wrote:*raises a hoof* ...Invade Russia?

No. You know why? If you invade Russia in the winter, you will all die without seeing your opponent. If you invade Russia in the summer, Russia is fucking huge and you will shortly be invading Russia in the winter. Everyone from Napoleon to Hitler learned this the hard way.

You neglected the third important season. First comes Winter where you freeze to death, this is six months of the year, next comes Summer where everything is awesome for four months, last comes Mud. Mud is where the land and everything in it becomes coated with ten pounds of mud. Mud is the season which gives you two months to understand that you are very far from home, can't go anywhere(Because all is Mud and the Mud is you) and you've got 51 more days before you freeze to death again.

Maybe invading Russia with a fleet of climate-controlled hovercraft would work.

Rafafidi wrote:Random brain-fart (I learned a new expession in english today, yay!):
Why Equestria's numeral system is decimal (base 10)? Wouldn't make more sense if it was quaternary (base 4)?

Base 10 is way more convenient for math and science, I think.

Sindri wrote:This change simultaneously gave us more room in the skull for the brain,
and probably encouraged us to develop tools and weapons (because we
couldn't kill prey by biting it) and eventually fire (because raw prey
was too tough and we needed to cook it). Which then led to the upward
spiral of increased brain capacity and advancing technology to make up
for our natural disadvantages which continues today

Inventing a new tool gives a benefit to the whole tribe as everyone starts making and using their own copies, and it happened only once every several thousand years in early human history, so there wasn't much reproductive advantage gained by being a stone age Tesla. Human brains getting bigger probably wasn't driven by tool invention but by people trying to outwit each other in high school-esque social games.

nebulous wrote:Base 10 is way more convenient for math and science, I think.

Only because that's what our current systems are designed to work with, I think. If we were designing from the ground up, I think that octal, duodecimal, or hexadecimal could be better (leaving aside the fact that we have ten fingers).

BASE 16 FTW!

swicked wrote:Adder. MLP ponies have crazy huge eyes and rediculously diminuative snouts. At least, the mares do.

...Eeyup.....
That only eliminates the front nose vulnerability and leaves the below the snout blind spot. It also increases the argument that ponies don't have the bite strength and retention ability of a horse thus making swords even more rare.

swicked wrote:
Edit:
And if we took a minute every time we had a conversation about something silly we'd never get anywhere.

Sometimes it takes a minute to sit back and acknowledge that things are silly if only to put them into perspective.

Overlong Analysis Cobalt wrote:
Time to bring back the Pratchett-Warhammer Theory of Anthrodependent Psychomanifestation! :D Wherein ponies get visions of human technology, and recreate them as best they can, and their BELIEF that these machines and concepts should work makes them actually function.

Thats Orky thinkin! Red ones go faster and choppa's chop best when they got lots of teeth to chop wif.

RoboRed wrote:BASE 16 FTW!

Get thy computer friendly Hexadecimal heretical heresy from this thread this instant! I shall not be burden by your love of the sixteen digit F, it makes no sense in pony, it makes no sense in monkey and it makes no sense in hairless ape, only your contankering contraptions have any love of anything but the good and proper base10. I can deal with base2 if I must but base16 must go the way of the walk through laundromat and the home sauna suit.

swicked wrote:
Quick, someone make up a BS reason that makes sense!

The first scholars in the world were Griffins who having nothing better to do besides being awesome took the time to invent mathematics to improve logistics during their military campaigns thus the first math all races uses is Griffon math which is base10 because four claws and a thumb on both forehands.

If the two sisters are the gods, didn't they come first before others? Seems an early immortal divine presence would lay all this out.

swicked wrote:If both fore-hooves and back-hooves count, you'd have expected our system to be base twenty, no?

So pony count in binary!
The IF-98 shotgun is now IF-1100010 and EC-1101 is EC-110001010001001101 (I know it's binary already). And their currency is "bits"!
EDIT:

Cptadder wrote:The first scholars in the world were Griffins who
having nothing better to do besides being awesome took the time to
invent mathematics to improve logistics during their military campaigns
thus the first math all races uses is Griffon math which is base10
because four claws and a thumb on both forehands.

Griffin have 3 claws and 1 "thumb".