Mecha Space Pirate Quest XXXII

"No. In fact, fuck no. I'll pay you with credits and Red Siren can get your ship fixed." You take off your helmet and put your shades back on

"Really? That's great, pal. Just great. You know, we discovered a lot of incidental damage that must have come from random plasma scatter, the whole hull might need to be replaced..." His stupid scavvie smile grows wider and wider.

You stare him down. You've seen more than one starship hosed down by a mech's guns, "Really? It must be made of cardboard, then, and I'll be happy to replace it with the same. He was going after vital systems, Captain. I wasn't born yesterday, you know."

Captain Ashta gives vent to a world-weary sigh, "Can't blame me for trying. You pirates, you'd think after a guy risks his neck to help you you'd show him some appreciation, maybe throw in a little extra for good service. You know, as a tip." Fucking scavvies!

"'Never take advantage of a man whose most dangerous weapons are on the ends of his arms."' You respond, channeling Oda a little.

"Eh, what's that?" Ashta blinks.

"You wanted a tip, Captain, I gave you one. Anyway, while we're talking about what I owe you..."

You hesitate as a thought strikes you.

>[Trust his people to do a systems check of your mecha]
>[Wait until you're with a crew you trust more.]

At least he's not bloody Camile. Bet he's off somewhere punching a commanding officer.

>Wait until you're with a crew you trust more.]
How about no.

>>[Trust his people to do a systems check of your mecha]
We can get one done with our crew later. Never a reason to not double check.

>[wait]

Were on our way back to auditorium we can stand to wait a little bit

>[Wait until you're with a crew you trust more.]

>[Wait until you're with a crew you trust more.]

Cant we check it ourselves?

Good idea user we have a 13 bonus to our roll so lets use it

Kamille a best.

You could. You're a competent mechanic in your own right. However, you have a lot to do, including being there when Captain Ashta warps so he doesn't do something stupid and scavvie-like such as try to turn you in to the UJCIDF for a bounty.

Red siren or clementine could probably handle that though.

You say that, but for all we know, he could be punching the space pope on the moon because he said "Jesse is a girl's name".

So it's a matter of 'do we trust him enough to not screw us over?' Plus side is they can't really hijack the Kaiser thanks to it's locks and Karen would likely kill the man who tries to steal a bit of the kaiser.

Alroght then instead lets go see the doctor and Athena

Oh shit I forgot they were here. Cant the doc take a look at our mech when he gets a minute?

Hey there's an idea.

That we could do user

Doc's more of a mobile armor technician. I rather wait for Karen and i don't trust Scav crews to not pilfer off something.

Mobile armors are just oversized mechs anyway and we have like two days travel or something so he might as well give it a once over.

We've got more than enough parts to replace something stolen, and karen can easily find a missing part. That won't matter if a mine or bomb explodes on us and destroys the kaiser. Remember, the first Slayer had that sort of stuff too. We also don't want to deal with them following us. If they skim the top, so be it. Better safe than sorry.

A bomb would probably be fairly obvious user.

"How long until microgate projection?" You decide to hold off on letting scavvies inspect your mech. Pieces might vanish, even if they can't get into the cockpit.

"Five minutes, we're getting distance and then folding void. Why?" The scavvie captain scratches his head.

"Because I need to talk to the Clancies. Those people must be awfully frightened, it's time someone stopped by to reassure them." And it's time you got some answers about Suleiman 1.

"What about my fee?" Fucking scavvies!

"Talk to Red Siren for now, she'll sort out all the details." Besides, she haggles harder than you do, and it would distract her from distracting the technicians with her star power. She's thanking them for the rescue, which is good, but you can't help but think of poor Clemmy trapped in her cockpit pod, not being rescued because Rosita is signing autographs.

Forgot my [Continued]

By the way, last time you settled on the basic ship design for the Rhinehawk.

Unfortunately, I have bad news about the proposed Shining Finger style sidegrade for the Knuckle Kaiser. It's not a sidegrade, it's not a sidegrade at all. In fact, it's monumentally expensive to replace the Kaiser's fists and heavy plate shielding with an EMW version.

Energy melee weapons are for nerds anyway.

Well, then I guess we look for alternatives. Or a big score, because fiscally unfeasible/inefficient is just a state of mind. A mind that hasn't rolled around in a hot tub full of cash.

So what you are saying is laser fist bits.

I wonder would it be cheaper to just add a second set of arms.

But again, to reiterate, we should just look for alternatives. Speaking of cash I wonder how iron kestrel merchandise is doing now that Oda is doing his magic. Actually I wonder what potential merchandise all of our staff(all crew) and companions have, and which of them have roarke things. Ahahaha.

Were you going for a Quick Variable Beam Shield or something (mated with regular hands to allow for grappling)?

Hm, half an hour break, lads. It seems when my laptop crashed it deleted some of my pre-prepared stuff, and while I can rewrite it I think better with some dinner in me.

Seeing as the rest of them have been relegated to one massed barrage of long range fire and two off screen fights they probably dont have much. The master harpies and maybe the bluegill squad might have something.

I'm sure there's a movie in the works.

Even with a big score, Auditorium is limited in how expensive a mech she can produce. We might already be pushing it with just making the Kaiser bigger and tougher, even without all the bells and whistles attached. As it is, there's nothing particularly wrong with our fists as is, that we'd need to do a complete overhaul for.

That was great.

No, a Quick Variable Beam Shield with Handy, WA +3 (for DA 0 in shield form), 8K base.

This "weapon mating" thing might be a lot easier to pull off, though.

Don't recall actually being able to purchase Handy for EMWs.

After all, it would be rather awkward, trying to handle objects with your high-power focused laser projections without damaging them, wouldn't it?

Would make sense looks wise as well. The beams would be coming from the fists or coating them rather than having beam fists. Would be more space efficient as well.

I still stand by using armored thruster fists as bits though. They'd be much cheaper and provide an alternative attack and defense to our beam knuckles.

It's not on the normal list for them...but the blurb at the start of the chapter recommends doing shenanigans like that if you can't decide what a given weapon would best look like statswise.

Also, what I'd come up with was more like a plasma mitten for the Knuckle Kaiser's hands.

I made a thing. Supposed to be an ace custom pirate mech which is powerful while still somewhat low tech. I am almost certain I fucked up the spaces on the hands and possibly the gun.
pastebin.com/fkCeuZ7A

Fair enough. That's not quite how I read it, but whatever works.

Though, it might not be the best idea to actually call them 'plasma mittens' in-story.

Spaces taken are generally equivalent to the final CP cost of the system, after system-specific multipliers. For instance, 10-Kill Quick, Handy Melee Weapons would take up 15 Spaces. 1.5 CP spent on Space Efficiency would reduce that by 3 to 12 Spaces.

Similarly, the Laser Cannon would take up 13.5. Spending 2.5 CP would reduce that by 5 to 8.5 Spaces.

inb4 I fucked up the math

Who would be the winning waifu because the UJCIDF won't promote polygamy?

Silly user, this is a ODA production. All the harem stuff is there. Surprised noone noticed Oda, Roarke and siren on the front.

I have seen weapons like odas gun that take up less space than the CP however.
Gonna need to spend more on space efficiency for the fucking cannon and mess up my nice clean 220 now anyway

How? Keith and Caesar are pro military pilots and have pools around 16 or 17. First Mate has 20 in three separate skills.

You are assuming it's all natural. When Mask kept mentioning data, it made me think. What would he use the data for? Perhaps he seeks to copy our moves? Use our actions and have the cpu bits do the heavy lifting? A learning computer ala old gundams.

"I won't be an ass and say 'took ya long enough', I know we're damned lucky to be out. I'll just say thank you, and give you my condolences for your friend. He was a brave damned man, taking on that creepy bitch with the red Harpy in close combat. Even Her Royal Generalness was treating that one with some respect." Duncan grunts, scratching his chin as Athena bounces around the room, clinging to your shoulders and laughing.

You feel the lurch of the ship's tesseract tricking space into thinking two very distant points are actually right next to each other, and the unsettling elevator-stopping-too-quickly feeling of returning to reality. Athena makes a face and hugs into your orange mane while the doctor's bluff face goes pale and he clutches his stomach. Fortunately, you'd brought him some coffee in case of this eventuality.

>[What say?]

That creepy bitch actually did most of the heavy lifting you know.

It probably has the cost for Space Efficiency folded into the cost of the weapon for brevity. I'm guessing a 14 CP weapon plus 2 CP of Space Efficiency. Making some assumptions, and doing the math:
9 (base 6-Kill Beam Weapon) * 0.88 (drop 500m range to 75% ≈ 350m) * 0.8 (WA -1) *2.5 (BV 4) * 0.9 (Clip-fed) * 0.9 (10 rounds per clip) = 12.83 CP ≈ 12 CP and Spaces.

Dropping that to 10 Spaces takes 1 CP, and 3 CP is used to purchase 3 clips (which take no Spaces in themselves).
In total, the weapon takes 10.83 Spaces ≈ 10 Spaces, and costs 16.83 CP ≈ 16 CP, with Space Efficiency included.

user, the flowerhorn was yellow, not red. The creepy bitch is a third party.

Take your time to relax and explain what happened during your stay. Do you happen to have any files or recordings of this creepy lady? Might want to see if their sound file and the first mate's overlap somewhere.

>taking on that creepy bitch with the red Harpy in close combat
Tell me more.

First Mate Lysa confirmed?

"Well the thanks is appreciated. I may be a lawless pirate with a rapsheet long enough that you would never have to worry about running out when you went to wipe, but I like to think I have my moments. Like a big damn hero from a movie or game. And people say they rot your brains out. T.V. did right by me."

Pretty sure oda's autocannon shoots bullets. The Epoxy Guns also take up less space then their cost.

Follow that up with a sick air guitar from one of our favorite movies

Final Soul B line up is Jesus and his two whores of Babylon.
That is going to be one satisfying fight considering my hate for Seed and those 3 characters.

As do all of caesar weapons.

Be that as it may, the general rule is that weapons (and most other systems) take up as much space as they cost. As I proposed, the Space Efficiency is likely folded up into the total cost of the weapon rather than listed separately.

I could, of course, be wrong, but then that would mean that I can't exactly offer you any helpful advice here.

Its quite confusing. There are a few in the core book that are the same. I think I understood how it worked at one point and that I forgot annoys me more than anything else.

The Corebook likely uses slightly different means of calculation than the ATM. There are slight differences here and there (for instance, the standard Main Sensors having 2 Kills in Core, but only 1 in the ATM).

Apart from that, quite a few things seem to come down to rounding. For instance, a Light Beam Gun from Core is a 1-Kill, 1-Space Beam Weapon of cost 2 CP.

A 1-Kill Beam Weapon in the ATM would cost 1.5 CP and take as many Spaces. Hypothetically, to reduce it to 1 Space, you would need to purchase half a Space Efficiency (if such a thing is possible), which would bring the final cost to 1.75 CP (rounding to 2). Alternatively, you could get 2 CP flat and 0.5 Spaces rounded to 1. Either or.

Similar comments are made about the cost of Hands in the Errata, wherein it is stated that the cost is rounded from 1.75 CP to 2 for convenience.

Its a pain in the bollocks is what it is.

Made a small error, here. That should be green Harpy, not red Harpy. Obviously there wouldn't be any point to having a red one, and I was thinking of the Harpy that vanished from Red Siren's ship.

All that speculation destroyed in an instant

WHOOPS, makes it more important. If they have audio logs we need them and the Mate logs. If by chance this is the actual pilot.. we might be able to pin the data. Still, I stick by

HOLY CRAP first mate is Neo Roanoke/Mwu Lla Flaga!

>muh logs

Why? It won't fucking work. The First Mate more or less dared us to try it so they can discredit it last time.

Imagine the headlines "local pirates claim government is full of shit", anyone believing it would be viewed as a loony.

>He was my brother... And even then he still thought of others to the end.

Because there is more uses for it than just going to the press. There is also knowing how to deal with the enemy and forcing their hand. If we know WHO he is, we can deal with him properly. Maybe get Karen to make a virus for those dummy pods? Turn them into bits for the kaiser?

I doubt his voice on a recording will help much with any of that. We already know its him fucking about.

"Red Harpy?"

"Er, I meant to say green. Kind of a key lime pie color, like the ones at Suleiman 1, only without the white skull insignia on it. I was shocked to see it in the Iulia Maesa's mech bay, to tell the truth."

"The thanks are appreciated anyway." You think you looked pretty cool, at least. You have your moments, "The man who died was my older brother. Before anything else, could you tell me everything about the person who killed him?"

"Admiral, I was in a cell for most of it. Yeah, I talked a few times with Lieutenant Blondie and the mechanic who got us out, but I wasn't in on the overall plan. First of all, I don't even know if it was a girl or not, I'm just assuming from the height and build. Some pilot suits are blockier than others, you know, and this one had a bunch of attachments for some kind of system I'm not familiar with that broke up its outline. I know from listening in when they brought me meals that this was some ultra-ace brought in for this 'Soul Bee' thing, whatever that is. Funny thing is, they say she came in on a Harpy, which I didn't believe until I saw it myself. I did see 'em with the General once, and Her Imperial Pinkness wasn't being as shouty and high-handed as usual, but they had the pilot suit on then too. Perhaps I'm just hoping it was a cute girl, but going off the hips I'm about 70% sure there was a woman in that thing."

"Daddy, why do the hips tell you?" Athena looks up with wide, innocent eyes.

"Well, when they grow up, girls have wider hips than boys, usually. I'll explain it when you're older." Duncan ruffles his daughter's hair, chuckling, and takes a swig of his coffee before he gets serious again, "Anyway, she was working on her Harpy when Cassius walked into the bay with us. She held her hands up and stood with the rest the same as everyone else when Cassius used some program on his PC to activate a tampered-with fusion core he'd practically turned into a missile."

[Continued]

This is why we need to have a UJCIDF mole to attempt to dig up info on Fairchild and whoever she's working with.

If she still trusts Clemmy (which she probably doesn't), we could use her. That would be the simplest option, if it works, but also the least reliable.

Or we could try to get Caesar to help. I imagine it would be harder to get him on board, and he'd have less influence than Clemmy.

Or we could get Mohammed (who still doesn't have a record) to enlist 'to get back at those damned pirates, after finally getting free of them, to make sure no one else has to go through the same'. Metal Gear Mohammed 2: Sunnis of Liberty when?

It's that fake idol slut that's making Jesus even nuttier. I fucking know it.

It would probably be easier to just go around and blow up all the people trying to fuck us over than convince anyone to do anything to do anything about the corrupt military. Not like it really helps us anyway because the non corrupt military is still after our heads because we are goddamn pirates.

Yes, but having the people trying to launch a smear campaign on us out of the way will give us that couple more allies in the future.

Colonies that think we're a rapacious genociding warmonger will be less amenable than those who think we're a somewhat reasonable scoundrel who's only doing what he has to.

Not exactly. As is, we just need to keep messing with the fairchild faction and help with the divide. As is, we destroyed two of their big plans. Destroying the Jaburo and Auditorium. They lost the green skulls as well.

In terms of other things they could go for? Mars with That angry guy, and maybe Moon and the church. Getting everyone together under one banner would solidify her power. But if it's just her and her benefactors, then she will be quite easier to deal with.

Any non shady colonies wouldn't help us much anyway because its illegal. There isnt really much point launching a smear campaign against people who are already criminals. Especially ones that could easily be making money legitimately in the military.

We should go about rounding up some more allies, they has to be some merc groups of other pirates we can get to join us

Colonies aren't uniformly purely shady or non-shady. As opinions of us rise, those few marginal colonies that otherwise wouldn't have taken us in will begin to consider the possibility. That means a handful more places to draw recruits from, and a handful more ports open in a storm.

For what reason would they take us in? Maybe they hear we arent really a bad guy but that doesn't stop helping us from being a huge crime.

Will likely be easier than we think. We just made a huge vacuum in the pirate power structure and become king of the hill now that the green skulls are dead. They will likely come in droves, though that would be a good time to do the tourney to see who is capable of joining up for the main crew.

Plus we'll have some aces from outside coming in to win the prize that we can recruit, and hopefully Hamon will try to send a mole that we can catch and get info out of

"She'd been doing some pretty serious modifications to her Harpy, adding some sort of major system. I remember wanting a better look because I wasn't familiar at all with the technology she was using, which is quite a first. Anyway, Cassius had hacked the Iulia Maesa's computers and faked orders from the general to release the Pure Pure Puru from impound, so it was floating outside and we were going to take a Bluegill from the mechbay to get there. Makes sense, right? I may be years out of practice, but even I've played enough Bluegill Joe to at least maneuver one of those things. Although I've got real concerns about their thruster efficiency. Honestly, yours looked better and had a better setup, I think Bahamutcorp really just wants to sell those stupid flying mech vehicle 'Flounder' things for planetary use and the new Pumpkinseeds more than they want to update the current line. Fucking tragedy. A Bluegill's cheap, it's got clean lines, it's efficient, it's everything you could ask for in a front-line mech. Anyway, so Athena and I get in, I nearly crash into the wall because piloting a real 'Gill is a little different than flying the ones in Bluegill Joe, but we manage to avoid it and run for the catapult, which Cassius had set on a timer.. As I'm going, though, I see her slug Cassius with a stun rod and knock the PC out of his hand. She kicked it and managed to get into her Harpy's cockpit. Suddenly, this huge mech with a mask for a face lights up and starts chasing us. It was about to drop more missiles on us than I'm comfortable remembering when Cassius physically dragged her out of her cockpit. We launched then, but I saw him go down with something in his neck, probably a knife. I think I saw her kicking him too."

You aren't sure when your hands clenched so tightly into fists, or why your words sound more like a growl than normal speech, "My brother...he still thought of others first until the very end."

[Continued]

For what reason does any colony take any ship in? The promise of work.

It's just that in this case, the possible consideration varies between "It's illegal, but as long as we don't get caught, we make a quick buck, and I hear this fellow isn't too bad of a guy." and "It's illegal, but as long as we don't get caught, we make a quick buck, and this guy's a fucking serial murderer-rapist-arsonist-jaywalker-genocider oh god help."

Why else would we be doing all that PR shit with Gretchen, except to raise people's opinions of us and make life easier?

Why get rid of the mole? Once we find out who the mole is, we keep a strict eye on them. All the while carefully feeding misinformation to them. Better yet, turn them against Fairchild.

>Why else would we be doing all that PR shit with Gretchen, except to raise people's opinions of us and make life easier?
Because roarke is an attention whore who does it for shits an giggles and to get a rise out of people.

I was just thinking getting quick info out is better since they might figure out that were giving them false info, plus Hamon probably wouldn't send anyone she didn't trust 100%

And you're proposing that such an attention whore would willfully choose NOT to plaster his face on a counter-campaign to out-smear the people trying to smear him?

>The first mate is some bitch in a harpy with a giant infinite range drone.
Well at least its not an EXAM system gone rogue.

So we have the target at least. If we can get to the ship's hanger and crush the harpy, First Mate is dead. No more Slayer units. Just need to get close to her.

Not necessary. Fairchild would just continue try infiltrating our crew. Better to have one we know of, rather than the unknowns we have to root out again and again.