Queen Raidne

Patchwork: A Multiversal Factions NRP

KabenSaal:
Ta'veren (out of order because the other RP'ers might be interested in this) - Oh, that's being settled on the far side of the planet. Trust me, the far side needs Ta'veren way more than the near side. The Lone Intelligence is (foolishly) using the far side as a "glitch buffer" for all the things that should logically make this planet implode in a poof of mixed scientific laws, weather patterns, and yin and yang/good and evil balance. The Wheel is going to play a role in the Lone Intelligence's major screw up that's coming up soon-ish.

Taint on Sadair - Still there. The Lone Intelligence's computational galaxy, as a matter of fact, is simulating it. If you pay a whole hell of a lot of attention, you might be able to sense some greater intelligence effecting Sadair as the computational galaxy (which is really somewhat sentient; no computer that big won't be) ((AND WHO DOESN'T THINK A SENTIENT GALAXY IS COOL)) unintentionally rubs off on the simulated taint.

Bubbles of Evil - "It is indicated in A Memory of Light that bubbles of evil are actually the effects, propagated backwards in time, of the Dark One's final onslaught against Rand al'Thor at the end of Tarmon Gai'don." - the wiki. The bubbles would happen, but the computational galaxy is working fiercly to localize them to the White Tower hex (and then the shoving the overflow onto the far side of Patchwork). The bubbles would also be different - less overtly hostile, and more weird. Several would be laws of physics from the various alternate universes suddenly asserting themselves, while others would be the standard "something suddenly animates and tries to kill people". Point being that they're not from the effects of just Rand vs. The Dark One, but also the effects of the Wheel Multiverse vs. the Lone Intelligence.

More?

Joegreenbeen:
Thanks for your honesty!

Dingo:
So long as you post.

Seriously though, don't worry about it. I've had that feeling. If you ever need a break, I can take temporary control of your faction if you're okay with that.

Men vs Women Race to 1000

-12

:D

(edited)

Calculus Challenge #1

So I saw that honorary math challenge thread and I decided to make a calculus-based one bouncing off of the other thread, because, let's face it, calculus is fun.

---

1. A typical tennis ball cannister has three tennis balls. Find an equation for the area of the space in the cannister not occupied by the tennis balls in relation to the circumference of a tennis ball.

2. The most common wheel size for a standard mountain bike has an outside tire diameter of about 26.2 inches. Cross-country mountain bikes typically use the 700c standard wheel which has an outside diameter close to 28.5 inches. The mountain-bikers travel over a hill defined by the equation y = -x^2+50, where y is height in meters. If the cross-country mountain bike takes 3 minutes to travel a quarter of the way up the hill, how long will it take the standard mountain bike to get back to y=0 on the other side, assuming both bikes' wheels rotate at the same rate?

3. [Edited. Thank you mdk.] Presently, the National Hockey League (NHL) plays an 82-game schedule. Instead of winning percentages, the NHL regular season standings are based on a point system. Two points are awarded for a win, one point for losing in overtime or a shootout, and zero points for a loss in regulation. The Canucks gradually get worse as the season goes on at an exponential rate, and never go into overtime or shootouts. If they finish the season with a total of 42 points, what game number was their last win?

4. I'm thinking of joining the US Navy. Thoughts?

OPTEVFOR JDF-1 [Modern Day][Naval][Ship-Based]

The OOC is up!

OPTEVFOR JDF-1 [Naval][Ship-Based][Modern]

OPTEVFOR Joint Divisional Fleet 1
(Operational Test and Evaluation Force)

{Closed (see here for more details}
Interest Check (Just for posterity's sake)


"Where good ideas go to die thrive."

In the interest of joint divisional cooperation within OPTEVFOR, JDF-1 was recently formed to be a total-fleet testbed for ship designs, fleet composition, and tactics for the United States Navy. New ideas, eccentric captains, odd ship designs, and unusual missions are par for the course. So are equipment failures, poor interpersonal and intership discipline, crew nobody else wants, really bad plans, and utterly banal missions. Everything from untested submarines to not-quite-crazy-enough to discharge captains to combat airship test platforms are now quietly shoved into this fleet and left to hang themselves.

---

Premise
This is a ship-based fleet RP. You will roleplay an entire ship in conjunction with the other players (and their ships) to acheive the mission objectives given to you by COMOPTEVFOR. There's a twist, though - your ships are experimental. They should (mostly) be based on real-life or concept ships, as that makes it much easier to fill out the dimensions, speed, and other fields on the ship sheet. Additionally, the RP is set in the modern day, real-life Earth, so no hyperlaser mecha ships that transform into crabs and can walk on land. Acceptable breaks from reality might include an anti-missile laser ship, for example, as the military (as far as I know) is at least testing that technology. As a general rule, if a modern military is testing, using, or used the technology, then it's probably okay. If you'd like to make an airship, that's fine, too - but I'll only allow one airship in the RP (first come first serve).

Missions:
This RP will be mostly player-driven. I'll give you your orders and mission briefing (including an intelligence report), but from that point on what happens is up to the players. I will try to be as transparent as possible as to what obstacles you'll encounter; however, your characters only know the information in the intelligence report. Obviously your characters can discover this information as the RP progresses, but they might not know what you, the player, knows.

One of the benefits of this transparency is that you (the players) are free to roleplay as the NPC forces. I retain the right to veto the actions of NPC's in player posts, however. I'll only do that if I think the NPC actions are out of character for said NPC's, or if the story demands it (theoretically, you should know what the NPC's are planning to do, anyway, so that second reason likely won't come into play). The other benefit is that if I should be absent for a few days (I'll notify you in advance should this happen), the RP will be able to continue.

Between missions, of course, is travel time. Missions may not take place in the same part of the world, so the fleet has to move to the next place. So what the heck do you post when the fleet is travelling and the plot isn't directly advancing? Here's a few options:

• Resupply! Your guns need ammo, your ships need fuel, your crew needs consumables (food, water), and you need an excuse to go to Singapore.
• Character Development
• 21-year-olds (the average age of US Navy sailors) being idiots
• Equipment Malfunctions
• Steel Beach Picnics
• Storms
• Intership Rivalries and Pranks

I'm sure you'll be able to come up with something.

Remember, the more you give other ships and players to react to, the better the RP will be!

Command:
One of the "experiments" in JDF-1 is the command structure. Strictly speaking, Rear Admiral Walter Davis is in command of the fleet. RADM Davis, however, is happily behind a desk in San Diego. The most commanding that he ever does is issuing orders via secure transmission. The captains of the ships are then left to figure out amongst themselves how to carry out said orders. All of this stems from some Admiral's son's thesis paper entitled Eusocial Groups and their Applications to the Modern Navy. Like many other things that ended up in JDF-1, the Navy had to pay lip service to said paper (even if the Admiral firmly requested that they didn't), and therefore shoved the idea into JDF-1 to either die or emerge victoriously.

Of course, just because RADM Davis is in San Diego doesn't mean that there'll be hell to pay if the fleet fails to carry out orders.

Combat:
Will be decided entirely via roleplay.

Setting:
This RP is taking place on our modern-day Earth. Tensions are rising between the West and East due to the Crimean/Ukraine crisis. JDF-1 is only one month old. Your ships may be older, but they've been reassigned to JDF-1 last month. That means that your ship crew will have had time to at least get acquainted with the other ships in the fleet. The first mission you receive is the first patrol JDF-1 will ever perform. The majority of the US Navy (and the world) has never heard of JDF-1, which by rights is hardly even a fleet (it's more a task force with an inflated name).

Rules:

1. Have fun!
2. Any drama or horrible arguments should take place in PM (if at all). If there's a major issue you feel is not being addressed, please PM me.
3. Don't be a tool.
4. Forum rules apply.

Some ship ideas

(Feel free to steal these)
Perfectly normal ship; crazy captain
Drone warfare carrier airship
Electronic warfare command and control airship
Slightly faster and more maneuverable, but significantly less well-armored cruiser
Stealth ships
Anti-missile sea-based laser system
Perfectly normal actual US Navy ship, no frills

Ship Sheet

|Ship Name:
|Ship Class:
|Ship Hull Classification Symbol: (See Here, or Here for airships. Make one up if you can't find it.)
|Ship Role:
|Armament:
|Dimensions: (Length x Beam x Height; Draft)
|Speed:
|Crew:
|Motto:
|Other:

|Captain's Name:
+Appearance:
+Personality:
+Bio:

|Name:
+Rank:
+Role:
+Appearance:
+Personality:
+Bio:

Example

(okay, I completely skimped out on the crew part, but you get the idea)

|Ship Name: USS John F. Kennedy
|Ship Class: John F. Kennedy
|Ship Hull Classification Symbol: CV-67
|Ship Type: Aircraft Carrier
|Armament: 2 × GMLS Mk 29 launchers for Sea Sparrow missiles; 2 × Phalanx CIWS; 2 × RAM launchers; 80 x aircraft
|Dimensions: 1052ft (length) x 252 ft (beam) x 192 ft (height); 32 ft draft
|Speed: 34 knots (63 km/h)
|Crew: 3,297
|Motto: Date Nolite Rogare (Latin for "Give, be unwilling to ask")
|Other: Modified for strictly drone warfare; no manned aircraft

|Captain's Name: John Phillips
+Appearance:

Picture

+Personality: Entirely too friendly
+Bio: A former tugboat captain, Captain Philips was promoted via clerical error. It was a happy accident, however, as he's done such a remarkable job that the Navy kept him as captain (although they also quietly reassigned him to Upsilon task force and demoted the clerk that made the error).

|Name: Ron Swanson
+Rank: Commander
+Role: XO
+Appearance: Brown hair, chiseled face, mustache, thick body (from muscle, not fat), though not very sculpted
+Personality: He's a manly man, and won't hesitate to be direct and to the point
+Bio: At some point he realized that he didn't feel like enough of a man, so he joined the Navy.

Accepted ships

USS Leviathan - Wernher (Gargantuan SSBN)
USS America - Gunther (Amphibious Assault Ship)
USS Lyndon Baines Johnson - Gunther (Multirole Destroyer)
USS Fenrir - Slypheed (Guided Missile Cruiser)
USS Navassa Island - TheEvanCat (Heavy Escort/Battlecruiser)
USS Hermes - Sylpheed (Electronic Warfare Corvette)
USS Wyvern - DeltaWing222 (Multirole Littoral Combat Ship)

Pending ships

USS JFK - Raidne - Crew bios, planes, weapon systems (Carrier)
USS Tripoli - Rare - Crew sheets (Amphibious Assault Ship)
HMCS Gander - TheFake - Accepted, pending someone dropping out (Multirole Corvette)

Gunther's List of Ships (not necessarily accepted)

Don't be afraid to ask questions or make comments!

Orbitum 2 - SciFi Space Nation RP

|Nation Name: Kerbal Interstellar Program

|Race(s): Kerbals

Appearance

|Physiology: Kerbals have very bulbous eyes, a comparitively small torso and large head, two teeth (one attached to the jaw and one attached to the skull), two arms with four-fingered hands, and two feet with four toes. Their blood uses vanadium rather than hemoglobin, giving them a greenish tint. 80 percent of a Kerbal skeleton is actually cartilage, significantly increasing their squishiness and allowing them to survive falls from great heights... not that that, honestly, helps them significantly. The majority of their organs are housed in their cylindrical heads, leaving only their lungs, heart, and "intestinal piping" in their torso. They have no nose, instead relying on their mouths to breathe. Nor do they have ears; instead, sound is detected through vibrations in the fluids contained in their oversized eyeballs.

In the Age of Genetic Engineering, however, a few things changed from their natural physiology. The first was the invention of asexual breeding via mitosis, preventing all those tricky times when Kerbals forgot about Kalentine's Day. This also had the effect of quadrupling their birth rate. The second was the addition of symbiotic algae to their skin, enabling them to survive without food for longer periods of time. This was totally the intended result, and not brought about because a genticist was embarrased at the paleness of his skin.

|Habitat: Earthlike

|Summary in a Sentence: Lovable idiots with rockets, whose main goal is to land on every celestial body that they find (they're still figuring out how to land on their sun).

|Racial Traits:
-Extreme Stupidity (Or is it just courage?)
Kerbals will generally try anything at least once, no matter how ridiculous. Perhaps it stems from an innate trust that the Kerbals before them knew what they were doing. If a rocket was designed with thrusters off-center and only on one side (because the engineer's printer ran out of ink halfway through), then the builders will construct it without question. Similarly, the pilot will fly it without question. And then die when it inevitably explodes -spontaneously lands- 50m from the launch pad.

+Incredibly Rapid Reproduction
One of the more prominant families on Kerbin, the Kerman line, has over 1,000 siblings in the current generation. At least half of those have died.

|Systems Occupied:
|Name: Kerbol
+Planets:

Moho

burnt planet, no atmosphere, close to the sun.

Eve

toxic purple world with a surprisingly thick atmosphere

Kerbin

lovely temperate world, quite habitable
-This is the Kerbal homeworld. Although interstellar rockets are now assembled in Uranian or Joolian orbit (to take advantage of those planets' magnetospheres for antimatter production), much of the space industry is still centered here.

Duna

thin atmosphere, full of iron and therefore red
-Beyond a few mining and research bases, not much is on this world.

Dres

no atmosphere, small, orbit is eccentric; possibly a moon that escaped Uranian orbit

Urania

blue gas giant with many moons, two of which are habitable (though cold), and one of which (a captured planet) is so hot, it nearly qualifies as a brown dwarf
-Although the Jool has a better magnetosphere to collect antimatter from, Urania's moons are significantly warmer. Therefore, Urania is home to most of the Kerbal's interstellar manufacturing industry.

+Hestia:
Remarkably warm (only -7 C!) world covered in mats of algae and moss
-The plentiful algae and moss is extracted to make space food
+Ares:
World rich in iron, similar to Duna, except Ares managed to hold on to its oceans
-Ares is the second-most populated world in the Kerbol system aside from Kerbin itself. Many kerbals live on Ares and commute to the interstellar construction yards in Uranian orbit.

Jool

green gas giant with several moons, one of which is habitable (and also, at -40C, very cold)
-Due to a strong magnetosphere, Jool is Kerbal's primary antimatter collection site. Therefore, it is the primary refuelling site in the Kerbol system.

+Laythe:
Kerbal-like world... only the oceans are incredibly salty, preventing them from freezing
-Despite its temperature, it's the third-most populated world in the Kerbol system, to support the burgeoning fuel industry

Eeloo

distant frozen iceball

|Location: In the middle of a galactic arm, not unreasonably far from other civilizations

|Civilization Tier: 3
The Kerbals have finally, after many thousands of deaths, stranded kerbalnauts, and mysterious accidents, just managed to crack the secrets of FTL travel. Now if only there was any guarantee of their rockets actually making it anywhere....

|Population: 25 billion

|Culture/Society: The Kerbal way is trial and error. They got into orbit only after losing their initial crop of volunteers, and then they realized that they never put parachutes on the oribiter. Luckily for Jebadiah, he was rescued after only 7 more attempts. His rescue went down in history as the first successful orbital rendevouz. Missions to Duna, the fourth planet in their system, regularly ran out of fuel until they managed to guess the correct amount (and the correct thrust-to-weight ratio of the rocket).

They also are a remarkably one-purpose civilization. Their society goes through different phases, each marked by a remarkable drive for the entire species to work toward a singular goal. In the modern era, they are obsessed with rocketry, spaceflight, and aeronautics. Their entire economy is devoted to that goal, which is good for them, because the cost of the sheer number of failed spacecraft is astronomical.

These guys generally have three emotions - terrified, bored, and ecstatic. Arguably they also have a fourth - terristatic, a combination of the first and the last. Kerbals are adrenaline

|Military: The Kerbals don't have a real military. In the Age of Hunting, they developed the standard spears and guns with which to defend themselves, but once they progressed to the top of the food chain, weapons development practically stagnated. They've stumbled upon space weaponry via rocket staging accidents and wildly overpowered communications arrays, but never having a need to use them, there's no military to speak of. They do have a few weapons lying around that they like to use on uninhabited planets and to deorbit space stations, though.

Kinetic Missile: This is an unmanned rocket. Explodes rather nicely.
Mass Driver: If you put a big ball of ceramics in front of a rocket, it gets launched at speed. Great fun.
Maser: Early experiments in beaming power via microwave lasers occasionally roasted chunks of Kerbin and the Mun.
Lasers: A kerbal engineer accidentally designed a vastly overpowered communications laser once, and this is the weaponized result.

|Government: There is no government. Any actual progress in society is due to emergent behavior, generally speaking. This makes it difficult, however, to reassure other civilizations that treaties will be respected. Not that they've met any other civilizations yet.

|Economy: Kerbal economy is generally capitalist. Given the complete lack of law, several megacorporations and monopolies have cropped up, and the stock market tends to crash and peak rather spectacularly every few decades. Most Kerbals don't actually care, instead being focused on whichever goal their society is working toward at the moment. That means that any company that doesn't demonstrate its usefulness towards aerospace in the current age will fail. Even restaurants are sponsered by aerospace groups, if not owned by them outright.

|History:
Age of Hunting: Lasting from the initial Kerbals wading ashore (and waving goodby to their tunicate cousins) to the moment Tombal Kerdison discovered steam power.
Age of Steam: Lasting from the first steam engines until Nikla Teska discovered electricity.
Age of Electrics: Lasting from the first dc generator up to Howie Kendel's completion of the Kerbal Genome Mapping project
Age of Genetics: Lasting from the first hesitant steps toward mitosis to the moment Wernher von Kerman's lab exploded so violently that some of the ceiling tiles never fell back to Kerbin.
Age of Aerospace: From the first rather explosive rockets all the way up to the present day Alkubierre Drive technology.

|Ships:

KIS Jebediah

The Kerbal's first (relatively) successful attempt at a truly interstellar ship. The Jebediah was named after one of the three great heroes of the early Space Age, Jebediah Kerman. It comes fully equipped with a science lab, various comms dishes, an external analog computer (just in case), more science experiments than you can shake a stick at, an antimatter-initiated fusion reactor, alkubierre faster-than-light technology, and the reconfigurable KIS Bob/Bill lander/space plane system (to be assembled in orbit). Crew of seven.


The Bob/Bill cockpit segment in the Jebediah's cargo bay.


The Jebediah in FTL.

Who's ready for the Spam Awards?

Squee for Best at Starting Promising Community-Driven Threads

Men vs Women Race to 1000

15

RP Discussion/Game: "1000 GM Sins"

40) GM's should be prepared for players to go off-script and off-story; in other words, they shouldn't be afraid to improvise.

OPTEVFOR JDF-1 [Modern Day][Naval][Ship-Based]

Since we have four interested people (which was an arbitrary minimum that I had in my head), I'm going to make an OOC for this RP. Expect it to be up in one or two days. I'll even PM you, just so you won't miss it.