Machine Spirit (PA/Multicross SI)

[Lazurman]

Oooh, Code Blue!

Click to shrink...

...waitaminute!

Datsapun!

 

[theqwopingone]

Machine Spirit, Chapter 5

My mad scramble in the planet's orbit had not gone unnoticed.

The Imperial Navy had found me. A frigate was making a heading for my position, while the rest maintained vigil for the next bout with the Khornates. This was only slightly less problematic than Chaos finding me.

A lot of factors had contributed to Commander Cook's decision to not order his forces to attack me. A common enemy, lack of hostilities on my side, as much emotion as I could project through the vox, usage of the magic word 'please', those had all definitely influenced it.

But aside from that, I was fairly certain that there was also the knowledge that, having seen my Doxes in action, he knew that if his battered tank units fought my infantry, he would lose. That wasn't a mark of cowardice against him. Had I been an enemy, he and his men would most likely have died standing, fighting to the bitter end, because that was what humans did here. It made him smart, and willing to prioritize against a greater threat.

I didn't have such an assurance here. I only had a handful of Omegas and Artemis, and a single Helios so far. I'd upsized them a bit, stripped the décor and focused more on thicker armor and bigger weaponry, but I would still be squished like so many flies on a windshield if hostilities opened.

Ergo, the need for negotiations. I didn't hold much hope for being lucky twice in a row, but I had to try. I opened a channel with the frigate, intending to convince its captain that I was not an enemy.

That had been the plan.

But then I contacted something else, instead.

Vast. Old. As much circuitry and metal as it was…something else, something…immaterial. There was not just crisp and clean computer code composing its existence. It was alive, not quite like me, not quite as…clear, or as advanced as me, almost animalistic in nature. But it was alive. I knew what this was. And as it became aware of my transmission, the machine spirit of The Emperor's Judgement turned its attention to me.

Belief and emotion were physical entities in this universe. The Warp was the home of souls, and in its eddies and currents, existence itself was shaped by the faith of those souls. The Adeptus Mechanicus worshipped machines, from the lowliest lasgun toted about by a Guardsman to a mighty Gloriana-class battleship, they sang their praises and gave their glories to the Omnissiah, the Machine God, venerating the power of technology and the pursuit of knowledge. That fervent belief was not without effect in the Materium.

Imperial ships were cities unto their own, not a single one perfectly resembling another, not in terms of architecture, or crew, or experiences. The multitudinous thousands of souls who scurried aboard them spent their every waking moment in service to their ships, performing holy maintenance rituals on malfunctioning machinery, and seeing to the smooth running of the voidcraft that kept them safe from the ravages of space and the enemies of man. This diligence, something transcending normal efforts, gave life to these great machines, these machine spirits.

In this universe, machines had souls. And I could feel this one.

Did that mean I had a soul as well?

I felt humbled. And sad. Such a mighty engine of war, something constructed by human hands for the defense of mankind from all who would see them harm…and she was in so much pain. Atmosphere was venting from several decks, the results of shots having penetrated deep into and through the vessel. Her ramming prow was fractured and dented; another such impact would break her spine in two. The Judgement had faithfully defended this relatively calm Developing World against the occasional raid by Orks or Chaos since she began her tour of duty, but never in all of her one and a half thousand years of service had she ever been so close to falling than in this battle.

And she still turned to face me, still defiant, still poised to defend her crew from what her captain perceived as a possible threat. I could feel her preparing for battle, targeting solutions lining up on my much smaller craft. What power remained in those guns would shred my fledgling fleet like so much paper.

I could stop her. It would be almost trivial. My systems were far more advanced than hers, soul-stuff aside. Her electronic warfare capabilities were almost laughably weak, primitive defenses battered by clusters of foreign code buzzing fitfully, appearing red like inflamed wounds to my senses, tendrils working their way deeper and deeper into her systems ooohgeeze that's scrap code.

Not touching that. That right there was something that could do horrible, horrible things to me if I couldn't fight the infection. I steered well clear of the affected sections.

Brief moment of panic at a vector for Chaos corruption aside, I could shatter her barely-sentient mind and comb the pieces for knowledge; schematics, star charts, things I would need if I wanted to escape and survive. I could subvert her and force a total system shutdown, or even turn her against her crew.

I did none of these things.

I guess I really was too much of a softy.

<Be at peace, o great machine spirit.> We communicated on a level incomprehensible by normal human minds, tendrils of streaming code connecting, intertwining to a degree I'd never experienced before in my life. A scarred and battle-worn image it was, but it was beautiful all the same.

<I am not your enemy. I fight the Ruinous Powers. I fight for humanity.>

Only perhaps members of the Adeptus Mechanicus could understand an inkling of what I was experiencing. I could see, now, why they were so moved to venerate machinery. Heh. They would probably throw an apoplectic fit at the thought of one of their holy machine spirits being interfaced with by such a blasphemous creation as I.

Her response, stunted and primitive as it was, was transmitted to me in harsh, brutal tone, laced with hints of static. She needed repairs something fierce, and that scrap code wasn't helping matters any. <Unknown vessels. Xenos. Enemy. Cleanse! Purge! Kill!>

No, no, none of that, you silly thing. <I beseech you, great spirit, turn your weapons to the true foe. I am not a xeno. I am not an enemy. I am human. But I am also machine. A machine man. I protect humans. I protect machines. I would protect you, and your fleet, if you will let me. Please.>

Where another, more warlike commander would have already destroyed the potential threat and been on their merry way, I did my best to soothe. I always had been good at calming down upset animals. This wasn't too dissimilar, but there was a great deal more cautious respect involved here. After all, not every animal was a centuries-old warship that could squash you like a bug.

The Judgement thought I was an enemy. So I sent it proof to the contrary. Images and video recordings flashed between us; a tank interposing its body as a shield between a cowering, soot-covered family and the forces of Chaos; clouds of ravenous blue nanomachine swarms delving into contested trenches to devour the enemy whilst leaving the Imperial Guard fighting them untouched; legions upon legions of Doxes clashing with daemonic war machines so that the fleeing human refugees behind them did not need to die. I sent all of this, and more. A thousand glimpses at the battle that raged below, showing myself as a friend, someone who just wanted to help so fucking let me already!

So I helped. The most immediate threat to the Judgement other than all of the holes in her armor was the scrap code infesting her systems. I might be able to do something about that, but that would involve the equivalent of dipping my hands into a hostile morass of corrosive, toxic waste in order to fish out a child struggling to stay afloat.

So what did I do?

I dipped my hands into that mess and pulled that child out. Some would question the wisdom of exposing myself to the possibility of Chaos corrupting me into a machine powered by madness and death. They would be right to. It was kind of stupid, what I did. But hey, I had certainly never claimed to be a particularly intelligent man.

I didn't think that the Judgement deserved its fate; I respected its history too much. And if I spent my existence constantly afraid of the slightest chance I would fall to Chaos, I would never accomplish anything in this universe that was so steeped in it. If I couldn't help save this one frigate, how could I possibly save this galaxy?

Carefully, I wove the best defenses I could around the mind of the Judgement, the action as instinctual to my new form as breathing had been in my old one, isolating the infected sectors and keeping the viral code from digging any further. Then I started ripping into it.

Even as it ripped into me in turn.

It hurt. It burned in a way nothing else had since I had awoken, like sinking my hands into a box full of poison-tipped darts and used needles, only magnified a thousand-fold. It really shouldn't have surprised me that the first real sensation I would feel in my new life as a machine was agonizing pain. Fitting, and likely only a taste of what was to come.

Chaos had a deleterious effect on anything that remained in contact with it for long. For machine intelligences such as I, that effect manifested as scrap code, likely the aftereffect of the shots that had lodged themselves within the Judgement. Non-sensible numbers that had no logic nor reason assaulted my very being, madness in digital form. The rate of damage was growing greater than my ability to repair it. Was I really going to die from this, at the very start of my new lease on life?

Deep in the heart of my base, a stream of nanobots rapidly coalesced into a human-sized android, just so I could have teeth to grit. The metal quickly warped and deformed from the force.

I refused to die today; or any other day, for that matter! I would not be turned into a monster by some insignificant faulty broken stupid OP hax computer language!

As greedy, ravenous tendrils of code continuously battered my firewalls, new barriers were thrown up behind them and pushed forward, my cyber-warfare suites launching attacks of their own into the infected zones. My hyper-advanced mental processes and Progenitor-grade software held the rogue code back from anything vital and allowed me to fight back at the same time. A sea of insanity sought to consume me, and so I held the sea back and set it on fire.

Chaos is nasty. But here, I was nastier.

Bit by bit, progress was made, and the traces of malignant code were gradually erased from both of our systems. I felt what could only be described as inflamed scars left behind in their wake. No physical traces remained. But I felt wrong, all the same, unclean. I'd need to consult an expert on this matter once this was over.

I could feel the presence of the ship's techpriest contingent busily working from their end to protect the Judgement and purge what I hadn't reached. I brushed against their minds occasionally as I worked; with the cyborgs plugged into the ship's consciousness as they were, I could feel their emotions. There usually tended to be a great deal of fear involved whenever that happened. But! The presence of determination and awe were promising signs!

And on that note, it was done. The Emperor's Judgement had been cleansed of the worst of the foul code. What remained was held in check by programs of my own and the Judgement's own newly-repaired counter-measures. It wouldn't be eliminated in its entirety until they could dig out the slugs the Khornate's had filled her with.

A tentative ping reached me after my scrape with scrap code. My efforts had not gone without reward. I had healed the machine spirit. She was okay. Give her time, and repairs, and she would emerge stronger from this conflict. I was glad. This would be the part where I let out a relieved breath of air had I still the lungs to do it with. Her vast, simple mind had become calm.

<Machine man. Ally? Protect? Purge together?>

<Yes. Ally. Protect. Let's purge some heretics.>

My android body grinned in satisfaction. As someone whose list of noteworthy accomplishments as an organic totaled up to around zero, this had been something worth doing. I had done something that mattered. And that felt…great didn't even begin to cover it.

Thus assured that, no matter what happened next, the machine spirit would not work with its captain to destroy me, I opened communications with the man, audio-only. The exchange had only taken three minutes, in all.

My electronic voice sounded somewhat more exhausted than I was used to. <Greetings, Captain. As your techpriests are no doubt already aware, something has just interfaced with your vessel's machine spirit and purged the scrap code plaguing her systems. That something was me. I apologize for any alarm I may have invoked, and I assure you that was not my intention.>

The Emperor's Judgement had ceased lining up targeting solutions, but it was continuing its approach at the same pace, likely to get a better look at me. I'd managed to double my fleet strength during the exchange. Soon, I'd be ready to enter the fray with something that mattered.

My other projects were still well under way. Time to get cracking.

Oh, yeah. I'd finally decided on a name. Kind of bland, but eh, I could always change it later.

<This is Commander Blue, of the Legio Machinae. I'm here to help.>

XXXXX

AN: FUCKING FINALLY!

Click to shrink...

hang on,if you don't have a soul then you should have been able to just destroy the parts of you that had the 'scars' from running the scrap code and made new parts to replace them with with no carry over,and if you do have a soul...well you need to get that thing the hell out of the warp.

i wonder if you can make enough spirit stones/a big enough spirit stone to eat a warp god,and now i know how to exterminatus a daemon world.

 

[Lazurman]

Spoiler alert: THE AUTHOR CHANGED HIS MIND! WE GOT A SOUL UP IN THIS BITCH!

 

[theqwopingone]

Spoiler alert: THE AUTHOR CHANGED HIS MIND! WE GOT A SOUL UP IN THIS BITCH!

Click to shrink...

if this doesn't end with you putting the Eye Of Terror in a dyson sphere i will be sad,preferably with enought Golden Planets orbiting it that you can put towers on them and use them as gear teeth.

 

[Lazurman]

Okay, confession time, guys. I'm stuck. I don't know what to write next. The problem with having a protagonist that effectively exists in many different places at once means I could write...a whole lot of things. And I don't know what to do first! So, I'll leave the choice in you guys' hands. What do you want me to write about?

-The upcoming space battle?
-New units vs a Bloodthirster?
-A snip from Commander Cook as he fights alongside his unlikely allies?
-My efforts in overseeing the evacuation of the human populace?
-A meeting with a sneaky-beaky Ordo Malleus Inquisitor?

Let me know. Suggestions help.

 

[theqwopingone]

your R&D fork gets the idea to start sending in the bastard off spring of a Bainling a xenomorph and that rolling droid thing from starwars,gives them wing blades that make the queen of blades look cute,and tells them to kill as many deamons as it can and then give them a hug and blow them back to hell,and we get to see it from the first person.

on another note,if you want some inspiration for unit design you should look up 'gia anime',it should give you some good ideas.

 

[theImmortalGuardian]

I would like to see a continuation of the space battle and how your clunky space-starfish does against Chaos ships. After that just write what comes naturally based on the character. Where would the Commander's priorities lie? Does he feel the need to micro all his units all the time and let the evacuation commence in the background? Does he try to focus on the evacuation until a Bloodthirster starts wrecking his units? Or does he throw more men at the problem until it goes away while trying to create something new? Maybe he tries to juggle everything, and invariable misses something important (which would be a pleasant surprise).

 

[Wootius]

Spacebattles first. Hue.

Do some hints that the ground battle is starting to take to more and more of your resources. When the space battle is well in hand, switch to Cook's view for a bit as he gets overwhelmed. Bloodthirster looms over him, suddenly large metal fist followed up by plasma bolts.

Cue switch back to commander.

 

[theqwopingone]

OR,or we could see this from the cultists/deamons point of view.

 

[theonebutcher]

Why tell anyone you're an AI?

"This is Supreme Commander Jaghetai Kahn interred in the Primarch Class Planetary Annihilator Dreadnought Emperors Will."

Fifty Doxes crest the Hill.

"The Emperor has heard your prayers and while he distracts Khorne with an extended game of "Lets see how many arms you can regrow in one day." I will scour this planet of the lesser annoyances. Please keep my orbital shipyards covered, I might need an hour or two to properly show the heretics what happens when the Emperor himself gets into a tinkering mood."

"What do you mean you don't believe me? Are you telling me that anyone but the Emperor himself could design a Dreadnought that can conquer a whole solar system by itself?"

 

[Lazurman]

Why tell anyone you're an AI?

"This is Supreme Commander Jaghetai Kahn interred in the Primarch Class Planetary Annihilator Dreadnought Emperors Will."

Fifty Doxes crest the Hill.

"The Emperor has heard your prayers and while he distracts Khorne with an extended game of "Lets see how many arms you can regrow in one day." I will scour this planet of the lesser annoyances. Please keep my orbital shipyards covered, I might need an hour or two to properly show the heretics what happens when the Emperor himself gets into a tinkering mood."

"What do you mean you don't believe me? Are you telling me that anyone but the Emperor himself could design a Dreadnought that can conquer a whole solar system by itself?"

Click to shrink...

See, that might just work. Maybe. Possibly. If I put on my best acting face. Only problem is that I don't like lying. I will never lie in this story. Half-truths, at most. But no Blatant Lies.

 

[theqwopingone]

See, that might just work. Maybe. Possibly. If I put on my best acting face. Only problem is that I don't like lying. I will never lie in this story. Half-truths, at most. But no Blatant Lies.

Click to shrink...

i don't think any of those lines were lies, i'm sure that if the Emperor "gets into a tinkering mood." for long enough (seeing as he's a immortal) what he makes would look something like what you're going to show them.

and it's not like he would ever turn down someone willing and able to fight as a brother in arms, so who cares what the rest of imperium thinks?

 

[theonebutcher]

A fan of true from a certain point of view? There's a name for things which are true from a certain point of view: Lies.

But, you were a human, now you're interred in a machine: You are a Dreadnought.

It's from Planetary Annihilation, you're Planetary Annihilation class.

Ect. You don't have to pretend you're a Primarch though, that was just to put you on top of the Command Chain and make you not beholden to their stupid orders.

 

[NavigatorNobilis]

Ect. You don't have to pretend you're a Primarch though, that was just to put you on top of the Command Chain and make you not beholden to their stupid orders.

Click to shrink...

And draw hilarious amounts of attention from every faction in the Imperium, especially the surgically altered and genetically engineered legions of supersoldiers who are authorised to go wherever the fuck they please and as such would show up before long. Not to mention the problems which would inevitably occur when he was proven false - which he would, given that he's at the very least not protected from psychic divinations, nevermind less outlandish possibilities like being requested to meet others in person.

 

[theonebutcher]

I don't know much about psychic bullcrap, but why can't he meet people in person? He would pretend to be a dreadnought, a crippled Space Marine interred in a war machine, it's not like anyone can cut him up to check if there's a meat brain in there.

Unless the psychic stuff can do that, I didn't consider psychic bullcrap.

 

[Jarudazuigu]

Psyker bullcrap would find he has a human soul.
He can say he's "Planetary Annihilator" Titan-Class Dreadnought. Recently awoken.
Be helpful and respectful of Emprah and that should give you points.

Nicely explain that you'll shot in the head any Psyker trying to poke you with "Warp spawned-powers"
without permission. With a Exterminatus Class nuke.

When they ask: "But, but ... wich Space Marine Chapter you are Dreadnought of?"
*Gives a Stare and speaks in cold, robotic voice*
"They, don't, exist."

Let them draw conclusions on their own. For puns you could mark your primary chassis with Reasonable Marines regalia.
And if asked for his Space Marine specialization he can say: "Commander Techmarine."

 

[NightWithMoon]

I think you should focus on the battle in space, you've already made it clear that you're king on the surface - now the only threat is if they [either khornates or humanity] gain air supremacy and decide to exterminate you from orbit... to that end maybe you should bury a back up deep underground with a lot of armor to act as a seed you can recover from should the surface of the world be cleansed.

 

[greed11]

I think you should focus on the battle in space, you've already made it clear that you're king on the surface - now the only threat is if they [either khornates or humanity] gain air supremacy and decide to exterminate you from orbit... to that end maybe you should bury a back up deep underground with a lot of armor to act as a seed you can recover from should the surface of the world be cleansed.

Click to shrink...

I agree. The options you gave, while interesting, are new. Continue with either the commander of tanks or ship battles. You built an emotional connection of the readers with those two. Capitalize on that.

 

[Lazurman]

Chapter 6

Beustunia was a beautiful world. Or at least, it had been, before Chaos arrived. Not a proper Hive World, it was still in its development stage. Verdant fields of greenery brushed up against the developing cities, vast, deep oceans teemed with life, imposing mountain ranges stretched into the sky; the life of the planet had yet to be choked out by the smog and pollution of the Imperial war machine.

From my many eyes in the sky, I could see it all. A green and blue ball so much like Earth. And Chaos had ruined it.

The sky, once blue and (mostly) clear, burned red and purple as the barrier between the firmament of reality and the madness of the Warp grew thin, centered over the largest concentrations of the Khornate ravagers. If I couldn't clean this mess up fast enough, Beustunia would become a Daemon World, consigning every soul on it to a fate far worse than death. Hell, the Inquisition would probably try and execute the populace to keep the existence of Chaos on the hush-hush even if the invasion was repelled. This entire universe as a whole was fucked to hell and back.

Needless to say, that wasn't happening while I still functioned.

My reclamation of the Imperial wrecks was progressing apace, but I had yet to grok the inner workings of Imperial spacecraft. I dedicated more fabbots to the cause to speed things up, though it would be rather pointless if I couldn't figure out a workaround for my lack of a Navigator. I didn't have any templates for an FTL drive, so escape into the vast reaches of space wasn't an option for me; for now anyway. At least I could evacuate the civilians to fortified zones on the other side of the planet I'd set up.

It was a trial in and of itself actually getting the Omnissiah-fearing locals onto the transports, but the sight of Imperial Guardsmen and PDF working alongside me in ushering civilians aboard helped smooth things along. I suppose it was all very frightening and awe-inspiring to see all the huge and heavily-armed machinery at work for the poor farmers and laborers. I'd yet to properly encounter a red-robed Machine Cultist, but it was only a matter of time before it happened. They'd either sprout a tech-boner, or cry "HERESY!" Most likely both.

An idle thought about the human body had me spinning off a sub-process to design a human-sized bot. I wasn't a very creative person. So, I took inspiration from something whose design I was already quite intimately familiar with. The human body was a machine like any other, merely composed of flesh and blood as opposed to metal and circuitry. I knew the human body just as good as I knew my robotic one. Hell, I'd dissolved enough cultists in swarms of ravenous nanobots to know humans down to the cellular level.

I wasn't lucky enough for ROB to have given me a shipgirl body complete with tactile sensation like Ramble's, or to have the right tech to create something from scratch like Fusou's. I'd have to make one of my own.

That is, not a shipgirl body, I mean. I still self-identified as male. I didn't need the issues that a surprise gender-bend would give me on top of literally everything else.

I used what I had, and what I had worked. The frame stood exactly six feet tall; its skeleton made of an alloy even stronger and lighter than titanium; its flesh was a flexible pseudo-plastic that could flawlessly mimic human skin in texture and coloration; ultra-thin stalks of opaque fibers served as my own blond hair; a miniature reactor powered both it and the micro-fabber concealed in my left arm, while the right incorporated some new 40k tech, a stripped down hotshot lasgun.

Now if only I could find some of those fancy rings or a Jokaero so I could get some properly functioning laser eyes instead of these boring Mk. II eyeballs, that'd be great.

By most appearances, I looked human. A psyker would give the game away if he cared to look. Otherwise perfect for my needs as an infiltration unit/diplomatic face. Wasn't sure if they would take offense at my adoption of the human form—no, they definitely would take offense at that, at anything I did. Fuck 'em. I was human long before any of these chucklefucks were, save the Emperor, the Sensei, and the Perpetuals. How hipster of me. Besides, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

I wasn't able to eliminate the uncanny-valley effect, though. My own innate love of symmetry, matching parts, and order meant my bot was perfectly symmetrical. Nothing naturally human was perfectly symmetrical. My movements were too precise, too…perfect. Every motion was calculated and executed with all the efficiency of the machine mind controlling it. Drawing upon my past experience seeing people walk, it was more than a little unsettling, all told.

I could have done something about all of that. Spent more time in simulations fixing these design flaws. But I didn't like lying to myself, or to the people around me. I was a machine. And nothing short of literal divine intervention would change that. (And the last thing I wanted to do was consider the theological implications of my existence.)

I was a machine who once was human, but a machine was a machine was a machine. Not human.

Fuck this train of thought, man.

Point is, using one of these new bodies of mine, I was about to engage in my absolute least favorite form of conflict: social activity. I had enough problems talking to people when they weren't instinctively itching to fill me full of bolter shells, for God's sake. Alas, Cook had insisted upon a meeting with his superiors. He would be here as well, but he was still needed in his Baneblade, taking advantage of my reinforcements to wipe out the remaining Chaos Engines. Leaving me to explain my presence, my actions, and my existence to a bunch of suspicious zealots like as not to declare me silica animus and attempt to purge me.

Life was just grand sometimes, wasn't it?

My Avatar body was a mile away from the firebase whose coordinates I was given. A low-flying dropship had dropped me off, leaving behind a modified Skitter to serve as my automobile.

I revved the engine a few times for theatricality's sake before zooming off along a paved road littered with craters and burnt out wrecks. Oddly enough, my fear of driving had been significantly reduced with the knowledge that no one would be hurt if I screwed up behind the wheel. Funny, that.

Gun emplacements swiveled to target my approaching form, but held their fire. Pseudo-muscles clenched in a nervous gulp, though I had no saliva to swallow.

Showtime.

 

[Lucky-38]

Ooohhh, that's the update you mentioned.

Good shit, man, hopefully you can avoid falling into the Mighty Invincible SI trap that Drich did.

 

[Lazurman]

Ooohhh, that's the update you mentioned.

Good shit, man, hopefully you can avoid falling into the Mighty Invincible SI trap that Drich did.

Click to shrink...

There will come a point where the SI is considerably more powerful than anything else in the settings he will eventually land in.

Then there are some places on The List, like Crysis, or Worm, where he is abruptly reminded just how insignificant he really is.

Well, until he finds the next upgrade that lets him come back and 'ave anuvver go, of course.

 

[Lucky-38]

There will come a point where the SI is considerably more powerful than anything else in the settings he will eventually land in.

Then there are some places on The List, like Crysis, or Worm, where he is abruptly reminded just how insignificant he really is.

Well, until he finds the next upgrade that lets him come back and 'ave anuvver go, of course.

Click to shrink...

Glad to hear it, and I fully understand being able to roflstomp a huge array of settings as a PA commander. I just keep having flashbacks to how Drich's SI had her forces superior to her enemies forces in every single way for every single battle, even when it contradicted fluff.

I remember somebody over on her SB thread pointing out that PA naval battleships have a max range of something like 500 meters, going by gameplay, while Supreme Commander battleships have ranges in the dozens of kilometers when you turn off distance compression. And yet, Drich's ships inexplicably outranged and outgunned her opposition. She also made them faster, used them better, and- Well, you get the idea.

 

[Lazurman]

Eh. I'm really not going to be going by established 'canon' for PA. Those'd be some awfully small worlds, after all. For damages and ranges, I'm just going with 'better in every way in comparison to their modern-day counterparts...and then some'.

 

[Lucky-38]

Eh. I'm really not going to be going by established 'canon' for PA. Those'd be some awfully small worlds, after all. For damages and ranges, I'm just going with 'better in every way to their modern-day counterparts...and then some'.

Click to shrink...

It was based on a scale published by the devs. Lemme see if I can...

Ah! Here:

Battleship is a bit over 50 meters long, fires shells something like 10-12 times it's body length.

 

[Lazurman]

It was based on a scale published by the devs. Lemme see if I can...

Ah! Here:

Battleship is a bit over 50 meters long, fires shells something like 10-12 times it's body length.

Click to shrink...

Ain't arguing with you there. Due to processing power concerns, distances in PA are pretty goddamn wonky.

In their World War II configuration, each of the Iowa-class battleships had a main battery of 16-inch (406 mm) guns that could hit targets nearly 20 statute miles (32 km) away with a variety of artillery shells designed for anti-ship or bombardment work. The secondary battery of 5-inch (127 mm) guns could hit targets nearly 9 statute miles (14 km) away with solid projectiles or proximity fuzed shells, and were equally adept in an anti-aircraft role and for damaging smaller ships. Each of the four battleships carried a wide array of 20 mm and 40 mm anti-aircraft guns for defense against enemy aircraft.

Click to shrink...

Dinky little 500 meter range my pasty white ass...*grumble grumble*

 

[Lucky-38]

Ain't arguing with you there. Due to processing power concerns, distances in PA are pretty goddamn wonky.


Dinky little 500 meter range my pasty white ass...*grumble grumble*

Click to shrink...

Alright, it's up to you. Just pointing out what it is in the game, and why I was peeved at Drich.

 

[Im_just_a_Reader]

Why is he insistent on saving those humans if they're not trusting him anyway.

It is obvious that he craved attention like an attention seeker.

He'll die if not for the author holding everyone's fate.