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Galactic Citizen

The Shield of Faith, GC

Long ago, in Azguard Myth, the great god Yunos protected an entire city from the catapult-rocks of the army of Jarl, soley by providing a shield made from the raw courage of the people who defended it. Wheras many would characterize this as fantasy, Azguard have reasons for believing it.

Why? Well, namely they asked Yunos, who (between mouthfuls of pie) told them a long, meandering story about the war, his back-itch, and the quality of rice these days.

So the scientists of Azguard got together, bickered for some time, and eventually dug up the lost city of Upyermuckluck. In the middle, a great, ancient, rock artefact was found. After some prodding with bread-sticks, it came alight and provided a tiny energy shield around the scientists.

It was returned to the lab, tested, poked, stabbed, sampled, tasted, chipped, moulded, danced upon, peed upon, kicked, stabbed thrown off of buildings, set on fire, until finally, the scientists figured out not how it worked, but how to copy it until it worked.

What they know so far is this: A crystal, found in the fore-head of the Fraxian dragon on Azguard, feeds off of the light-force-energy generated by people, particularily by people who are corageous. When stationed in the right-shaped reciprical, it will funnel all the excess light-energy into a protective dome.

A network of such devices, across the planet, could create a huge energy shield of light, covering the whole planet.

The dome comes in three intensities, based on threat.

1. Regular level. This shield is powered by the general feelings of the people. It is strong enough to last for days on end against all types of weapons, before the force-shield gets burned faster then it can be replaced. Usually it remains in this level, hence the name. An advantage to this level is that ships can get through it, albiet they are slowed heavily and the force-mystics (more on them later) can detect their entry.

2. Super-holyness level. This level creates almost a solid wall of light energy. There are two ways for this to happen. One, and this is very unlikely, is that the entire population is galvenized into heroism and courage. The second is that the mystics (more on them later) or indeed anyone, puts their hand on the orb, lifts it, and drops it back into place. Suddenly, everyone feels the tug of light-energy, and it pours off of them to immeadietly power the shield. This can only be maintained for a day at most, and afterwards the shield is completely gone for a day, but for one day the shield is indestructible, nothing can get in or out unless it is generating light energy. That includes ships and bad people.

3. Burn-out level. The shield is down for a day, until then it cannot be reactivated.

There is one small problem with this system, we need someone to tend it.

Enter mystics. And no, not those ones with the incense, going "ooooOOOOOooooohh" at people ad rolling their eyes all the time, people who mastered the force with no outside training. These mystics, that can be found throughout the galaxy, have an important job to play in the maintenance of the shield. Two to be precise.

One is the Premonition. How are you supposed to know when the enemy is going to attack? How are you supposed to get the shield up in time? These mystics, tending their stations, constantly sense the space around the planet. Should they forsee a danger, or detect the dark side, they prepare to raise the shield, and do so very quickly. The crystals at the station help amplify their powers, so that they can reach into space, even hyperspace, to sense incoming doom.

The other is mechanic/revrend. Someone has to keep to people generating light-energy and the stations intact. They make sure the shields are always ready to spring into action, and the people are warned. We have yet to find out what would happen if a people channling dark energy would do should they ever get ahold of one of these stations.

(OOC: This is a planetary defence, taking the place of traditional shields. They're amazingly powerful, extreemly mystical, and provide people with some assurance - at last - that they can go out fleeting without getting attack, and defend against WMD-waving madmen.)

Comments

#24 11:50am 15/02/04

Hex, you are missing something.

OMFG WE ARE REVAMPING THE RULES WE HAVE SAID THAT 10 TIMES WTFRUTINKINGROFL.

Why do you think I said, no mention of reinforcements, SINCE WE ARE DRAFTING RULES REGARDING SUCH? FOR MY OWN AMUSEMENT? AM I A PUPPET? WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO DANCE? DO I MAKE YOU LAUGH? HA? HA HA? HA HA HA?

#23 11:15am 15/02/04

Hex, getting to the location of the battle takes time, realisticaly the forces that were two days away at top hyperspace cant suddenly bend the rules of space time to be there becuase they are needed. If theres a significant gap between your worlds on a map of the galaxy, that equates to a significant amount of IC time to get ships from point a to point b.

[quote]This does not apply to jumping into combat, except in cases of groups sending reinforcements.[/quote]

This is an old rule which will be changed, as it leads to a moronic two post reinforcement idea only a retard would imagine. If your in the middle of combat, it takes a post to leave combat, then a post to jump into hyperspace and exit.

If your outside combat, it takes a post to exit hyperspace, and a post to enter the battle. These two posts are independant of the time it takes for reinforcements to arrive from a predescribed destination elsewhere.

Basically, it follows as such:

1. Reinforcement fleet launched from where ever.
2. Fleet travels set amount of posts prescribed by whatever rulings are made.
3. Fleet arrives in system (Post 1 of stated quote)
4. Fleet enters battle (Post 2 of stated quote)
5. Fighting ensues...

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#22 8:49am 15/02/04

I seem to be missing something, here..

[quote]Jumping to hyperspace from a scene of combat must be done over 2 posts, interspaced by the required 72 hours allotted for an enemy reply. [i]This does not apply to[/i] jumping into combat, [i]except[/i] in cases of groups sending reinforcements.[/quote]

This is the only [i]implication[/i], let alone outright mention, made of reinforcements in the rules.

By "based on IC time," do you mean to say that the standing system is set on what, uh, "creativity" can conjure up, when the inevitable IC - OOC translation is made?

Or is it that the above applies, still, just there's an unknown extension of IC time in such posts? In that case, what is the realistic jump time? -- And this would realistically allow for more action of the starships already present, or what?

In other words, what [i]is[/i] the latest policy on reinforcements, if that dull, post-based standard isn't it? I'm wondering if there's anything to even circumvent.

#21 6:56am 15/02/04

Reinforcements always have been (unless you're a retard or newbie) been based upon IC time. The new reinforcements rules are based upon IC time, as people have been attempting to circumvent the timeline by saying that the rules don't require realism.

Essentially, base this on time and construct extras.

#20 7:07pm 14/02/04

Hm... Good idea.

Because the practical use of the shield is to allow for reinforcments, and if those rules are under review then I best wait.

If however it remains only two posts needed to get reinforcments in time, then two hours is plenty.

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#19 4:35pm 14/02/04

Ahnk. Just say so, you @#%$-head, and leave what's there to its worth. If you really need to go out of your way to delete all mentions of the current rules, implying their irrelevance...@#%$, I don't see why you're jumping the gun to begin with.

And so much change to, uh, reinforcements, eh? Quick ones like you and your friends don't have the time to piss over priorities, Ahnk, or nothing will get done.


And Dolash..

[quote]Jumping to hyperspace from a scene of combat must be done over 2 posts, interspaced by the required 72 hours allotted for an enemy reply. This does not apply to jumping into combat, except in cases of groups sending reinforcements.[/quote]

That's the page I'm on. Two hours, five minutes a piece, [i]presently[/i] gives you twenty-four posts of shield activity, with a mere two spent to send reinforcements.

Of course if the wisdom of the Staff is leading us to reinforcement revisions, I'd advise that you wait on this, pending these changes...

#18 3:53pm 14/02/04

If you can tell me how long in IC time it takes reinforcments to get to a planet with the Shield then I'll be able to tell wether 2 hours is reasonable or not.

If, say, it takes just one hour to get from anywhere to anywhere in the galaxy, then two hours is more then enough.

If, however it takes even a minute more then two hours then the very purpose of the shield is defeated. It exists to prevent enemies from getting at an otherwise undefended planet before reinforcments comes to save it. If it can't accomplish that then it's WORSE then a regular shield and takes like twice as long to build.

And redundancy is nice, but i'd need at least two, probably four shields per planet, doubling the time it would take to prepare each planet with the shield! At that point it just becomes ridiculous, and the shield becomes too difficult to use.

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#17 8:48am 14/02/04

Again: Two hours.

Ahnk's Edit: Removed mentions of reinforcements, as rule revisions are in work.

#16 3:05am 14/02/04

There is nothing preventing you from a redudency in this matter.

Two hours, is my position.

#15 1:16am 14/02/04

Two hours??? But that's useless! At TRF, any situation where the shield might be useful will be just as bad two hours later!

I mean, if I raise it and send a fleet, how long will that take to get there?? I doubt they'd make it in two hours unless they were right next door. Also, it's not hard for the bad-guy to launch two phages, one two hours before the other, so that he'll hit with at least one of them before defenders make it in time to stop him.

Two hours would make it useless at any of the tasks for which it is intended.

#14 12:54am 14/02/04

Too long.

Cut it down, to ideally, two hours at most.

#13 2:33pm 13/02/04

Well, the durations may seem a little long, but it takes a day to muster and send relief forces, which is baisically what I want to be able to do.

Also, I want to keep out nasty things like cloak ships and WMDs, so if they launch one to harden the shield then wait 24 hours to launch another when the shield's down, I'll have time to get defences in place and people to safety, which is very important these days with the huge fleets and cunning tacticians all over the place, but mostly on the other side of the fence.

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#12 5:34am 13/02/04

If not the limitless strength, my qualm is with the duration of either or both its activity and inactivity.

A single battle [i]never[/i] lasts more than twenty-four hours if each post is roughly five minutes in length (assuming the length of a "day" won't change from planet to planet in the calculation), and moreover, I've never seen a battle fought and finished one day only to have it resume the next.

To compensate for this, I guess, someone may intentionally take on the above strategy. However the question of how to calculate the elapse of time between threads becomes an issue, otherwise I think it'd be [i]too[/i] easy to get around it. Of course this all may be moot if you wouldn't end up activating the second mode until the height of a battle, anyway. But then again, an entire "dummy force"..

Eh - all scenarios may cancel. I'll need to think on it.

#11 3:36am 12/02/04

forty days, maybe?

#10 2:56am 12/02/04

How much of a build time are you thinking about?

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