I'm seeing ads creeping into text all around the forums here. It looks like a link, but it's got two underlines and when you mouse over it, a little window pops up with some ad or another. This also isn't just limited to post text, too. Just about any text that isn't already a link is viable to be ad-ified. A few examples are the 'online' in the "Who's online" list, "Forum" at the top of the general list, and words in the board descriptions.
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The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."

>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI

So, for various reasons we know that a lot of old style aircraft have been converted into fen areospace capable.
The Roughriders, even after the war, in fact seem to continue that trend.
Which lead me to thinking.  There seem to be 2 main types of combatants during the war years that appear 'on screen' to date.  Fen vehicles that have been weaponised, or 'large construction' heavy 'warships'.  But almost nothing in between, which is surprising.  Ben Rhoades, in particular, with his manic blue hair adaptation of airfraimes of all sorts seems like the type that might come up with something like this:

Of course I can mostly see it being used during the war, and mostly only as a 'Door Knocker'; designed to strafe and suppress exterior defenses (with extreme predjudice!) while the busses loaded with marines make their ingress?
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

I'm posting this here specifically because the subject is sensitive to some people, not because it's particularly political... unless you count the results of sucking up to a BNF when they obviously fucked up to be particularly political.
http://whatever.scalzi.co...eadercon-harassment-etc/
The irony is that the resulting firestorm from them trying to be nice to someone who was "showing remorse" (I'm going to go have a fit of deeply bitter giggles just from typing that) has done far more to his reputation than a permaban would ever have done. Literally half the first page of hits from Google are links to blog postings about the incident, and there's already a significant number of BNFs that have heard about the incident, including obviously one John Scalzi.
ReaderCon is also reaping the "benefits" of their actions, with again literally half the first Google page being links to blog postings regarding the incident. Pretty much all of it for them is that they basically "bent" a policy that was a "one size fits all" at the moment it was supposed to be applied, which anyone with a lick of legal sense can tell you is never, ever, ever a good idea. You apply it, then you amend it for later incidents. You don't amend at the moment. There is a distinct chance that they might very well not have a ReaderCon for Walling to return to in three years.
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"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

Issue 24 introduces Martial Combat and Martial Assault as free-to-VIP secondaries for Blasters and Dominators

Quote:Martial Combat (blaster secondary)
•Chi Push (repel followed by knockback (cool new animation)
•Storm Kick (melee)
•Dragon Kick (melee)
•Dragon's Tail (PBAoE melee)
•Burst of Speed (AoE self TP)
•Reach for the Limit (Build up auto power—Chance for +dam and +ToHit on every power)
•Reaction Time (toggle—+absorb over time, +revocery, -move on enemy; 10 seconds of +speed on toggle off)
•Inner Will (self heal and ,ez break—only unsable under 50% end or health or when mezzed)
•Throw Sand (cone foe stun)

Martial Assault (secondary for Dominators)
•Shuriken Throw (has a new animation)
•Thunder Kick (melee—MA port)
•Trick Shot (chain power—shuriken bounces between targets)
•Spin Kick (front facing cone like the incarnate power without the teleport)
•Envenomed Blades (build up power; adds toxic damage to all attacks for a time)
•Dragon's Tail (PBAoE melee)
•Caltrops
•Masterful Throw (snipe; chance for DoT damage)
•Explosive shuriken (single target with chance for splash DoT)

Gore Vidal has passed away.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

KnK / Prototype crossover update.
(Some kind of lion-hybrid gets infected)
http://forums.nrvnqsr.com...K-Prototype-Crossover%29

You guys remember the toy rockets that you would fill with tap water and them pressurize, so that they would launch into the air?
Japan has a toy RPG like that.
I want one of these SO BADLY.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

Innovative Fenspace Industries (IFI) was an Australian construction company set up, early 2008, to exploit the possibilities of near-Earth construction in space, using handwavium-based tools and industry.  Their first big project was intended to be a luxury hotel, with the core built on Earth, launched to L5, then construction completed there.
Unfortunately, while they had excellent engineering skills, they lacked on the business and financial side, and by mid 2008 they were forced to sell the project and the part-completed hotel core to an O'Niell organisation, to become an L5 private home, O'Neill Station.  The core was launched 9th November 2008, and successfully placed at L5.  They spent two months, working through Christmas and the New Year at triple-time rate, so by early January 2009 they could give a rough station completion of end of March 2009.  The station officially opened 8th April 2009.
Unfortunately, back on Earth, things hadn't gone smoothly.  IFI collapsed with allegations of mixing drugs, catgirls and Warhammer 40k, 2nd of January 2009.  Existing projects (including O'Neill Station) were pretty smoothly taken over by CHOAM.  The management had seen the writing on the wall, and they were already in serious negotiations.
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"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

Hey guys. I think some of you are readers/fans of the EPU material and Ben "Gryphon" Hutchins. 
Maybe you should know that he's had some serious medical issues. I won't detail the whole thing here because Gryph did himself here, and here. I had NO idea of this stuff until just a few days ago myself, as I hadn't been over to the EPU forums in a couple of months. But kind of a shock to hear about. 
Well he had his surgery yesterday, and it was dicey. VERY dicey.  Gryphon is out of surgery but he's in a medically induced coma. There were.... complications. 
Megazone posted on his FB page here about it. 
In part, MZ says:  

Quote:All I have are the details his clearly shaken mother relayed to me by phone, but apparently his renal vein tore during the surgery and he had a massive bleed which they had trouble staunching. They had to transfuse a lot of blood and she said he coded and had to be resuscitated twice on the table. They did decide to proceed with the primary objective and removed the kidney, and apparently that went well and they believe they got the entire mass and it doesn't look like the cancer had spread. So at least that is good news.
...
...
I'll pass on further news as I get it. Right now just think positive thoughts. He's not out of the woods yet, but they're going to be keeping a close eye on him in the ICU. Since they stopped the bleed, removed the kidney, and managed to resuscitate him, hopefully he's past the worst of it.

blackaeronaut Wrote:Sorry guys.  Things have been kinda hairy on my end.  :p
The
primary finish of most Roughrider ships (with the notable exception of
Blackbirds) is mirror-finish chrome in honor of the Apollo Astronauts,
whose capsules were finished in a similar manner.  On the Peacemaker,
it'll still have the blacked-out area over the nose simply to keep any
glare from the Sun out of the command crew's collective faces.  Of
course, this is gonna be one of those matte black finishes.
The Air Force roundels should be replaced with Republic of Texas flags
and the SAC shield with the Gonzalez Banner.
Every Peacemaker is a flagship, so it would only be appropriate that the
Unit Patch would be proudly displayed as tail art.
And, of course, replace USAF and US AIR FORCE with RR and ROUGH RIDERS.
(EDIT:
Oh yeah, and nix the checker marks on the landing gear doors, tail-fin
tips, and the yellow on the propeller hubs and engine intakes.  I don't
think I've ever seen a picture of a B-36 like that before and it looks
ghastly to my eyes.)
F-EZigs are carried on pylons under the
wings, between each engine (with the last ones outboard of the fusion
torch engines).  Properly fitted, a Peacemaker can touch down and take
off at a 'Dane-side airfield with its F-EZig accompaniment docked.
By
all means, Star, hack away.    And I don't lay sole claim to the
F-EZigs.  If I like what I see, I'll just say, "Yeah, Roughriders got
those, too." 
One final thing... Ben wouldn't be so evil as to
make that many people operate on a forward-deployed basis like that...
He'd give them several small facilities, hidden in the Belt on which
they can rest, recuperate... and, when needed, scramble and come flying
like bats outta hell.  It wouldn't even have to be an asteroid.  It
could be a small space station.  Nothing huge, probably on the same
scale as the ISS because it would have food, living quarters, plus parts
and munitions for the entire squadron.  (At this point, I'm gonna say
that a typical Roughrider Squadron is two Blackbirds, twelve F-EZigs,
and a Peacemaker.  Peacemaker carries eight F-EZigs each and each BB
piggybacks two more - their hulls are so short, after all.)
Long
duration configuration on a Peacemaker would probably be three-of-four
modular bays fitted with a living unit (racks for the entire crew plus
eight fighter pilots, plus galley and hygiene) and one heavy missile
unit (incase they run across something really tough).
For
more flavor, Peacemakers, despite being well built machines, are quirked
to break down in some bizarre way.  However, during the design phase
Ben did foresee a need for them to be easy to work on. 
Therefore, most breakdowns can be repaired in-flight by the flight
engineer.  Therefore, you can have the engineer grumbling about some
repair he/she just finished up (easy to work on, yes - convenient, no).
For
the flight engineer... you could use that character I thought up that
riffed off of All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku... she was the one
that started out as a farm girl who just wanted to help her dad out by
making sure the tractor never broke down again... and got herself a very
unique kind of catgirl biomod.  (The 'bio' part of that is debatable as
she is roughly 20% cybernetic now.)  Ah, yes!  Here she is: http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/topic/5426
Someday I am really gonna have to do a better job getting some of this stuff wikified so it's not a big question mark.  :p
EDIT2:
Just for scale, Star.  Nothing really brings home the sense of scale on this thing like this picture.  Yes, those are chairs they're sitting in.