News: PlanetSide 2 Backstory Part 1 – Jake Duffy, Terran Republic Quartermaster

[Captain B]

/facepalm

I was looking elsewhere. Thanks a bunch.

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by Graywolves

From my understanding he did mostly comic books, I actually felt like if it was in a comic book, everything he wrote would've looked alright and played out fine.

I kind of got that feeling too. It sounded visual, if that makes any sense.

[Traak]

Suddenly, from the sky, a heavily armored, yet strangely graceful, swooping purple figure!

It's a word! It's a plan! It's (David) Letterman!

He lands lightly on his feet and says "My friends call me 'MAX.'"

This gives Clancy McDaniels (The three-quartarmastar) an idea! He builds a similarly armored suit, replete with the EXACT OPPOSITE of the ability to fly, the much dridded LOCKDOON!

"Aye, let's see the NC boggarts spoon fast enough to o'ercome these babies!" He confidently murmered as he attached two rotary machine guns to the arms, with the latest in over-engineered titanonanoauraxium zip-ties (military procurement contract, 250 credits each)

"Och!" he wormed his admittedly overnourished frame into the TR MAX. Unleashing a torrent of bullets, leaving two smoking piles of cartridges at his sides, Clancy had an idea!

He placed a box of bullets into a respawn tube (new, primitive TR invention to harness the power of the Nanites) and deconned it. Stored the matrix, then reconstructed it. And another. And another, and another!

The equipment terminal was on its way to being born!

[Draep]

Yeah, it was pretty embarrassing reading this story..Mt. Lavastorm and the dialogue etc. However I would like some more backstory. Touch upon the respawning mechanics. It must have been a pretty big ethical delima for the NC and TR to adopt technology that allows their soldiers to literally live forever--but I'm assuming they did so because the VS did this no problem and had infinite soldiers as a result.

[Punker]

Loving the mention of NC being corporations, businessmen and private contractors.

Also loving the NC haters comments in this thread -- reminded me of this;

[Captain B]

THE LOCKDOON.

I hate respawn and resurrection as a game mechanic when storyline is in place. As a RPer I (and others) have usually considered it "unconscious" or "wounded". Getting killed and respawned, knowing there is no real means of killing the other person, means that the ultimate war is pointless and unwinnable (word? - is now). However, I was writing a story and I actually think, at least in terms of PS's universe, that the spawning mechanic could be like any other war, especially if this Auraxium resource is at the core of the spawning ability. It would basically be a war of attrition: deplete your opponents' resources so that they cannot continue to respawn indefinitely.

However, this leads to the fact that the war is only winnable after COMPLETELY DESTROYING THE PLANET, which means from the very get-go we're fighting for a draw or a Pyrrhic victory at best. That sorta' sucks. =\

[Aractain]

An infinite war is aboslutely winable. Its just about who is going to run out of resoruces first, or who is going to shut down the systems of the other.

Look at Total Annihilation

Now look at it again. Its great.




Oh yeah and you can win that endless war! That was my point. Now watch it again.

[Captain B]

Total Annihilation is cool, I admit. Great RTS. Love it. My fiancee' and I still play it from time to time.

However, it does prove my point.

You see, the only way they could end up winning was to undergo the process from "flesh to machine" after thousands of years of incessant war. They destroyed all the worlds they could have inhabited as humans, and even in the end the Core had their contingency, so never really stopped fighting. Auraxis would have to be completely decimated in order for "all resources" (since the planet is in and of itself a living entity, as the lores from both games suggest, hence all the crazy shit the Vanu could come up with) to be extinguished. Not just "Auraxium", although it'd be pretty important I imagine.

Can't even suggest destroying spawn tubes, since the world has all these magical nanites the Vanu worked with, they can just respawn their respawn tubes. And then divide by zerooHH SHI-

[Aractain]

How does fighting for thousands of years not sound awesome to you? THINK OF THE INSANITY OF THE TROOPS who have died millions of times (each time painfully). That shit is much better than Planescape torment!

Its enough to drive you to the chaos gods!

[Captain B]

Wait, didn't they say they remake our troops based on a scan of "who they are" before they died? Wouldn't that mean that:

A) They don't remember dying; and
B) They cannot gain experience unless they live and learn, and get back to be re-scanned?

That's both cool as a lore and frustrating as a potential game mechanic.

As far as fighting for a thousand years, assuming I remembered it, I'd eventually just sit in the mess hall playing battle chess (I know it was supposed to be a digital scan of the battlefield, but it looked like a cool tabletop/video game crossover) with my boys, only fighting when we had to defend our Mountain Dew and Doritos (which we garnered XP from instead of fighting) from the space invaders.

[SgtMAD]

I figured long ago that anyone taking part in this "battle" would have to be either on so many drugs to kill the pain of dying over and over again in very painful ways or have parts of their brain "turned off" or adjusted through some sort of "engineering" because who the hell else would keep charging up the stairs only to be cut up in pieces by enemy fire.

[Captain B]

Originally Posted by HtSgtMAD

...who the hell else would keep charging up the stairs only to be cut up in pieces by enemy fire.

Last time I was on PS, not many. I had to manually shove people into the tunnels at times.

On that note, we need commissars.

[SgtMAD]

yea, get the KGB to shoot ppl that won't push inside,sounds perfect for those fascist bastard TR

[Captain B]

Throw credits to lure NC into the breach, and fire a body glitter grenade into the tunnels to encourage VS movement.

[Vash02]

Originally Posted by HtSgtMAD

I figured long ago that anyone taking part in this "battle" would have to be either on so many drugs to kill the pain of dying over and over again in very painful ways or have parts of their brain "turned off" or adjusted through some sort of "engineering" because who the hell else would keep charging up the stairs only to be cut up in pieces by enemy fire.

I read somewhere in the PS1 lore that soldiers respawned without the memory of dying. So to their point of view they would be charging up the stairs and then suddenly find themselves in the respawn tube.