*The Behemoth-Pattern Mobile Fortress has a DR 3000 armor on top and
over its primary turret; the rest of the armor is DR 1500. All armor
is composite (double DR vs plasma weapons and shaped charge attacks)
*The Phalanx-Pattern Orbital Artillery has a DR 2500 armor on top
and the rest of the armor is DR 1000.
All armor iscomposite (double DR vs plasma
weapons and shaped charge attacks)
*The
Sancutary-Pattern Emergency Response Vehicle has DR 250 on the front,
and 150 on the sides, top, rear and its gunshield. This
armor is composite armor: double DR vs shaped charges and plasma
weapons.
Today, we continue the series on military vehicles in the Psi-Wars Galaxy. Last time, we looked at the Empire and their "Imperial Combine" manufactured military vehicles. Today, we look at their prime enemies and the default "heroic" faction of the Alliance.
I've been wanting to talk about them for awhile. When I wrote up the Empire back in Iteration 6, I also wrote up a series on how I saw the Empire fight their wars. With the Alliance, I began to do something similar, but I don't think I ever released it, and I know I didn't finish the vehicles because they proved complicated and, by this point, I had already grown disgruntled with the Spaceship design system. I needed to really build everything from scratch and think my way through their different tactics.
But I like the Alliance because it presents such a contrast to the Empire, but they also represent a fairly unique faction for the setting. The Alliance, with their focus on elegant aristocracy, space knights and a precognitive preisthood, represent an obvious deviation from the Psi-Wars inspiration of Star Wars, and I feel like their doctrines and military vehicles, despite some obvious inspirations from Star Wars (such as the Valiant by way of Starhawk by way of X-wing) represent a very different way of war.
So, as usual for these series, I'll start by talking about how the Alliance engages in war and what their priorities are.
A friend of mine pointed out Katana Zero to me a few years ago and promised it to me for my birthday. I only just now got it because it only just now released. Was it worth the wait?
In a word, yes.
I had high expectations of the game. I expected lightning fast combat, nintendo-hard levels reminiscent of Super Meat Boy or Dust Squad. I expected a brilliant soundtrack. I expected a moody, cyberpunkish, neo-noir storyline with hints of unreality and conspiracy in it. What I got was a masterpiece of game design crossed with an amazing storyline and a wicked good dialogue system. I didn't expect a retro action-platformer to evoke so much from me, from the frustration of the wild, brilliant, super-hard boss fights to the satisfaction of watching a playback of my fights where my character is moving too fast for you to track thinking "Is that me playing?" to a wild, convoluted, amazing storyline that has me wanting to play it again, to better explore the world, to understand what's going on.
It's about $15 on GOG (or Steam, if you prefer). It plays like a cross between side-scrolling Hotline Miami, Prince of Persia and Spec Ops: the Line. If that speaks to you, then the game is better than you think.
Normally I fill these reviews with the good vs the bad and an analysis, but I'm still digesting it, so my thoughts mostly boil down to "Wow. WOW!"
But is it Psi-Wars?
I'm not going to lie: that trailer there inspired the Dark Vigil chapter. I loved the idea of a samurai lounging in a nightclub with time control powers that let him rip through his opposition while navigating an underworld filled with crime, and so that's what came out of it. After playing the game, I think I can give you a few more Psi-Wars elements out of it.
I do want to say this, though. One of my big frustrations with Star Wars and people who are "strong in the force" is that this always translates into how well they fight or how much they can lift. We never really get a visceral sense of what the Force can do other than telekinesis and occassionally some people sit around glaring at one another and we go "Oh, telepathy," or they find no useful information in the future.
In Psi-Wars, I wanted to emphasize how "power" might mean deep insight into the future, or absurdly good reflexes. I wanted to make you understand what makes a Templar a monster to fight, and it's not that he can throw big rocks at you.
Katana Zero captures that perfectly. Most games sort of give you victory, with most NPCs having slow or dull AI handling them so you can creep really close or kill a bunch before they've even noticed you. Katana Zero does no such babying. If someone sees you, you have maybe a second before they shoot you, and they can see you and shoot you from all the way off-screen. I've seen minor NPC mooks shoot thrown weapons out of the air (mostly by accident, but still).
Your character sees it all. Every mistake just means you reset and now you know how it will play out. You know every move they will make before they make it. Nothing will surprise you. You can slow time to a crawl and parry bullets, dash past opponents and take out 5 guys before they can blink despite their armor, shields and guns, and the game didn't just give it to you, you earned it.
That's honestly how I think a Jedi should fight. Perhaps it's too hard to bring across in film, but perhaps I can achieve it in RPG form, and this game certainly achieves it in video game form.
For this month, my patreons voted for "Technomagic," which in this context means technology that fulfills the same role as magic in a fantasy-like setting. I was pleased to see this topic voted up as it was, as it's been a bit of a hobby of mine for the past few years to ponder how one could create a fantasy-like character with nothing but material out of GURPS Ultra-Tech. The ideas found their way first into the Dark Engine in my unpublished Protocols of the Dark Engine, then into the Deep Engine of Psi-Wars, and it informed previous games I've run like Blackout Saga. I personally find that a dash of science fiction, if handled well and noted used as a bait-and-switch, adds quite a bit of spice to a setting.
This document focuses on setting building, do's and don't's of techno-fantasy settings, suggestions for handling an overall magic system using technology as its basis, and what specific technologies, if taken out of their usual context and given a fantasy skin, might look like.
