It's an issekai-protagonist power fantasy mecha that's been bouncing around the hutch for a while, so I'm interested to see how other folks' takes on the concept align with my own ideas. (Pretty sure I mentioned an earlier take in the context of a wreck-the-Battletech SI, actually) Presenting the latest in rabbit-technology, the BN-1 "Bunny" and BN-2 "Bun-Bun" Rapid Action Binary Interface Tactical Combat System!


A plain, boxy design with a stubby chest cockpit and and a slender optics-turret head, the BN-1's main external distinguishing features under field conditions are its tail mounted "fanny pack" for passengers or cargo and a pair of oblong multi-function drones that may dock to its shoulders in an upward V position or hover nearby, or if closer inspection is possible the saw tooth pattern of large bay doors on its chest and the outer faces of its arms and legs. Its built in armament is light, limited to a single bay on the inside of each forearm, typically fitted with a medium beam projector that can pup up and extend its barrel past the wrist and hand. Along with those hands the BN-1 is also equipped with mounting points on its upper back for various heavier weapons and mission-specific equipment, and combined with an impressive jump-jet system its quick yet exceptionally powerful actuators and heavily reinforced bunker-breaker rams on the feet allow for utterly devastating physical attacks in close combat. More dangerous are the disintegration and reconstruction functions of its drones, which while short ranged can tear an enemy to pieces in moments, or just as quickly build, repair, or fortify structures and ally units or designs from an extensive library of weaponry and equipment using the scavenged material, or augment the BN-1's already formidable self-repair function.

For heavy duty operations or more compact transport, a pair BN-1 units are also capable of combining into a BN-2. The waist, elbows, and knees extend to allow more clearance at the joints, and the limb and chest hatches open up. On the unit that will form the core the cockpit flips up to a head position and the existing head splits into a pair of top-mounted booms, while the head of the secondary unit splits to the sides to be out of the way as the two torsos interlock front-to-front, its cockpit slipping into the space opened by the relocation of the core's. Flexible interface cables extend from the opened limb hatches and pull the secondary unit's arms and legs into position on the outside of the core's as they detach, again interlocking at the edges of the hatch doors. The secondary unit's hands tuck into the interstitial space and link actuators with the core's while the feet latch together directly side by side for the sake of stability and ground pressure, shifting to a longer form only about 50% wider than the single-unit configuration. The secondary units tail and pelvic module also shift to a flatter configuration to avoid compromising mobility. In binary mode the unit's mechanical output and close combat potential are drastically increased, and the combined output of its thrusters allows for limited but sustained flight, along with allowing one operator to concentrate solely on commanding drones without needing to spare attention for piloting the unit directly.

The true danger of the BN series is not its direct combat ability, however, or even its high utility in a combat engineering role, but the ability to self-replicate in the field using scavenged material or dismembered enemy mecha. When suitable materials present themselves a BN-1 can use its interface cables to grab and pull it into position at its binary ports, rapidly breaking down and restructuring the salvage to upgrade itself to a BN-2 before separating and allowing an allied pilot to board or taking the new unit under remote control to provide oversight for the onboard AI. With sufficient materials a BN force is theoretically capable of exponential growth in this manner, though in actual application the limitations of AI with only minimal direction and of material availability impose practical limits. The system has also proven usable for field-expedient cargo transport and the operation of scavenged weapons.

Block-0 test squadron BN-1s had even more extensive AI support and the core unit of the repair system integrated with an independently mobile escape pod cockpit capable of rebuilding a complete unit from scrap if required, but the added cost and complexity was judged to be unnecessary for normal operations and all production models have a simpler escape pod with only the standard survival tools and supplies. Block-5 and later units or those upgraded with refit kits replace the ejection seat with interface lugs for Exo-Gear Extra-Vehicular Armor in couch mode, and the addition of a rack capable of securing a light motorcycle or zero-G maneuver pack in the auxiliary mission electronics bay is a common field modification when not otherwise in use.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/89875...t_Wars_30/

See this, this is Super Robot Wars 30, the first licensed game in a 30-year-old franchise that is legally purchasable in the United States and Europe without importing with a full official English translation.

I just pre-ordered this and can confirm it's real, it's not a joke, somehow, the absolute nightmare of licensing issues that prevented this series from seeing western shores (aside from fan translations and the GBA Original Generation games with all original stuff) has been worked past, we can now get this without importing.

If this is clown world, get me my floppy shoes, red nose and grease paint, cause this is insanity I can totally appreciate

Time for folks to clean out their PM queues...

Note that anything in the Trash still counts toward your limit - you have to empty the trash in order for the space to be freed up.

It's a ten-year-old article, so it isn't "news"...

How to Build a Newsroom Time Machine

Quote:“There’s no number 1 key.”

Quote:Rice had a ratty old textbook stashed in his camera bag, which he referred to furtively and often. After all, one wrong mixture of chemicals, or one processing step out of order, and a roll of 35-mm film or piece of light-sensitive paper comes out blank. And neither of those items come cheap.

Quote:(They enjoyed playing stupid and asking me questions like, “Who’s Marge?” Huh? “MARG RELEASE!” At least, I hope they were playing.)

Quote:And no one tried to get high by huffing the rubber cement. (An improvement over my days at the University of Florida newspaper in the mid-’80s.)

Quote:Just like the reporters have learned that “cut and paste” once involved actually cutting and pasting, the copyeditors have learned that the copydesk was once a real desk.

Quote:Mariam, our managing editor, was previously our rock-star art director. So she resumed that role for All On Paper. Her designers mostly deserted her after they learned a terrifying reality of pre-computer layout…

You must do math.

Quote:The editors had the nifty idea of compelling the writers to paste up their own pages. That didn’t survive the first week. Many staffers learned that, while they can deftly manipulate a mouse to kill hundreds of bad guys in a videogame, few of them can draw a straight line.

Right here.

So stop asking, already...

Been doing a reread of DW8 the last couple of days and I suddenly had the thought:

Whenever the next DW chapter drops - whichever chapter it is - this will be the first time I won't read it first in my email when the post hit the FFML.

I'm not sure how to take that, honestly.

Starting this thread on Canada Day, July 1... but giving it a title that'll let it be used for July 4 as well.

Who else is just taking the entire weekend off?

This has just (sort of) resolved in the last twenty minutes, so I figured I'd share it with everyone as I threatened Amazon.com I would.

So... two weeks ago I made an Amazon order.  A one-pound box of freeze-dried mushrooms, four bottles of sugar-free vanilla syrup (for Peggy) and four bottles of sugar-free butterscotch syrup (for me to make ersatz butterbeer with).

What came five days later was a pound of freeze-dried mushrooms, four bottles of vanilla syrup... and four bottles of raspberry syrup.

Okay, no problem, contact Amazon customer service. "Oh, you can't return it, but that's okay, keep it and we'll order the right stuff for you. However, we can't expedite the order, it won't arrive until early July." Well... that's not acceptable because as I noted in another recent thread we're going to be elsewhere in early July, but I negotiate a delayed shipping arrangement that will drop it on our doorstep the day we get back and think, cool, all resolved.

Until suddenly I get a notice in email a couple days later that my butterscotch syrup has shipped and will be arriving on Monday the 21st. Bwah? Well, okay, that's cool even if they told me they couldn't do that. Gotta love the efficiency of the Amazon machine, right?

Come Monday, the package arrives, I open it up... and find a box two-thirds the size of a box of syrup bottles, with six-inch-wide "Oregon Chai" logos on several sides. It's holding six cartons of... you guessed it... Oregon Chai. On one of the sides without a logo is a one-and-a-quarter-inch long inventory sticker with a bar code declaring to all the world that despite its labeling and contents this is actually a box of four bottles of no-sugar butterscotch syrup.

i disbelieve, and contact Amazon customer service again.

"Oh dear," they say. It can't be returned, but I can keep it, and they'll ship the right thing out to me. Sadly, the order can't be expedited, it'll have to come at its own speed. I'm not surprised -- it's almost exactly the way the first contact went. What I am surprised about this time is that now it can't be delayed, either. They can't make any kind of special arrangements at this time, and I am told that I'll just have to wait until I get an email saying it's been shipped, call them back and then change the shipping instructions.

Well... okay. I want that damned syrup, it's been out of stock for months and dammit, I paid for it. So imagine my surprise when yesterday I get an email telling me that my butterscotch syrup has been shipped and will be arriving late today.

Not only that, imagine my surprise when it arrived about half an hour ago, and I open the box to find that inside is... Butterscotch-Caramel syrup. A very similar but not identical product to what I ordered.

Back to Amazon. Oh, they're very sorry. Do I want them to reorder? I very bluntly tell them I have no faith that they will ever get this order right. Refund my fucking money and I will never again bother them about sugar-free butterscotch syrup. And tell the boneheads in the warehouse to actually pay attention to what they're putting in the smiley-face boxes.

Oh, and I'm going to share this story on social media. (Which I will, when I get around to taking pictures of all three wrong products standing side-by-side.)

Now I'm just waiting to find out if they're refunding me the cost of just the syrup, or of the entire order it was originally part of. The way this has gone, I would not be too surprised if I see a near-$80 credit on my bank statement instead of a $25 one.

So, come the 3rd of July, Peg and I will be heading off with her family to Long Beach Island for a week once again, as we have for something close to twenty years, if not more.

As is usual in latter years, this won't disconnect me from the Net in any way, so what used to be a warning that I'd be away is barely more than a minor heads-up.

However, this year is slightly different in one way...  the 28th through 30th of June, the Monday through Wednesday immediately before we go to LBI, Peg and I are heading to Atlantic City for my birthday, where we'll be staying at the Hard Rock Hotel.  So I'm getting almost a two-week vacation here. 

Unlike with LBI, it's actually likely that during the AC days I will be somewhat less present on the forums, if only because Peg and I will be out on the beach, pool or boardwalk, or at one of the restaurants, for most of the approx. 48 hours (Monday afternoon to Wednesday morning) we'll be there.