The World

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

Stel blanched as she heard the instructions from the COO. She quickly took off a glove and pressed her five fingers to a screen to the right behind her, activating Michael's inner, smaller engine. She put her glove back on and finally donned her helmet, the only part of her outfit still from Pluto, which scanned her head and eyes to ensure that she was indeed the pilot. With that the controls lit up and she flipped several switches behind her to remotely activate the "Can Opener" to close the entry port of the armament. The switches slid back to into the wall to avoid being hit again during use of the Orbital, and as the port closed the inner mech recognized that the METATRON was attached, activating the armament's own engine and dropping that of the inner mech to minimum output simultaneously. The various hexagonal screens in front of and to the sides of Stel lit up, the center seven combining and displaying a small sprite version of a grayed out Michael. A sprite of the METATRON slowly descended onto it, then grayed itself out as well.

She checked her comms first, and once they were active and working correctly she flipped their switch and the sprite's "ears," for lack of a better word, lit up black and red. Next, she checked the visuals, the other screens lighting up to give her a 160 degree vision, with some of the hexagons viewing to the sides and behind her for a further increase in awareness. The eyes lit up green on the sprite and the actual Orbital. The capacitors were next, all full, causing the rest of the head of the sprite to turn black and red. Double checking and confirming the Oberth Reactor turned the left arm the correct colors of the Orbital. Once she made sure that the mechanics' walkways were out of the way and nobody was standing in the way, she activated the wheels in the feet for a moment confirming that they were in an operational state and causing the feet to light up on her screen. Stepping forward a few steps combined with running a diagnosis on the legs lit them up as well. Finally, she clenched the FLAME arm's hand a few times and popped an energy canister into place, lighting up the right arm and the cockpit as well now that a full check had been done. The sprite disappeared from her screen and the hexagon it was on split back into seven smaller ones, taking the visuals from the ones just outside of it which themselves were replaced with radar, comms, ammunition/fuel, a simple "Friendly," "Neutral," and "Hostile" which listed a number by each of them, a duplicated of the center hexagon with those same terms that showed up when she looked at something, and a small representation of the METATRON with various pieces listed at 0% in green.

Stel sighed. Everything was working correctly, but she still had to do some pre-flight work. She opened a comm channel to the engineer who handed her the helmet she was wearing and hooked her PDA into a port below her on the cockpit's "seat."

"Hey, can I get the friendlies data and data on the boosters?" she asked.

"On their way."

A few seconds later, the number next to "Friendly" rose to include all the other Orbitals on the radar and another number appeared in parenthesis to list the number of living people in the same range. Similarly, the small depiction of the Orbital now had several boosters attached to it, each with a green 0% as well, and the fuel screen added a new number and percentage below the standard ones to signify the boosters. She leaned forward, resting her stomach on the "seat" as it was meant to be piloted, ready for action.

"Thanks. I'll need the timing for the booster too. I've... I've never used them before."

The engineer sighed loud enough for Stel to hear causing her to flinch. He rattled off some flight jargon and instructions that Stel was luckily able to understand and she gave a thumbs up with the Orbital's left hand. She carefully stepped forwards to be behind Fox and his Exo-Frame, a pit forming in her stomach from apprehension.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

Stel quickly finished her food and went to drop off the tray as the first of the other pilots left. Soon enough, there was an announcement and the image of the planet appeared on every screen she could see. By the time the captain finished speaking, the other pilots were on the move, so Stel quietly followed a ways behind them to the hanger. When she finally got there, she looked around to see the myriad of different mechs and colors throughout. The ones that caught her attention were the ones the other pilots were standing at. Beautiful blues near the girl with white hair, stark red and white by the guy with the distant look in his eyes, deep indigo and grey by the man with the heavy facial hair. There was striking crimson by the girl with the mask, military green and grey by the mostly cybernetic man, ancient latin markings on the one near the girl who talked about the planet. And then the next, in order of how far away they were from her, was her own Michael cast in its scarlet and black coloring. She began towards it, waving at the supports staff nervously, and took her helmet from one of them.

If it weren't for her wearing her flight suit already, she doubted any of them would believe the young girl was a pilot at all, at least until she went up the stairs next to the Orbital and activated what was affectionately known as the "Can Opener." The machine twisted and pulled at just the right amounts in just the right patterns to open the back of the METATRON, allowing her to step inside and open the cockpit of the inner mech. She ducked in and closed the door, straddling the almost motorcycle-like command center of the Archangel unit. As she waited to find out what she should be doing, she set her PDA to play some quiet music and turned on her helmet's comms, fiddling with her suit to make sure it didn't have any problems or tears, since she hadn't inspected it yet. There was an almost cold feeling in her chest and butterflies in her stomach as she nervously sat in her Orbital, waiting for instructions.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

Quick headcount; who has an Orbital that can't fly?

@Krayzikk

Metatron mode can barely fly, if that matters.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

Looks like Stel was sitting at another table entirely, which makes one of my posts back then incorrect. Whoops. Going to do some edits and make a new post soonish.

@Hawthorne

Oh man, I'm so sorry. I would have said something but I must have missed that part of the post.

Edit: Yeah, re-reading my post I didn't really make it very clear she was sitting in a literally empty table rather than the one the others were at, and for that I apologize to everyone.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

Fascinating. Stel was listening in on the other pilots a few tables away as they chatted. Artemie's story was very interesting, though the rest was somewhat less so. Sure, it was interesting to hear that the planet they were sent to had life, and it suddenly hit Stel that she'd never seen a natural planet before, but she was raised on a rock and expected to be landing on a rock. Heck, there was still some debate on whether or not her home even was a planet, so she was possibly going to see her first planet ever, certainly the first with non-recycled water. She lived a life on a planet that got all its resources from other planets or harvested directly from the Kuiper Belt. But it wasn't that thought of beautiful life that got her heart racing, it was the thought of the potentially dangerous alien life on it. That thought only strengthened her resolve to figure out her more personal ultimatum.

After all, she was only on the Pandora because of her Orbital. So it was that Orbital that filled most of her mind. If she had stayed home she would have had all the time she needed to learn its quirks, but now it was a rush to figure out Michael's in's and out's, literally and figuratively. She was no real pilot after all, she was just lucky. She couldn't stand next to war vets or people raised in Orbitals or a freakin' interplanetary hero! (If she was remembering meeting them correctly) She was barely a functional engineer! So in her mind, she had two choices; become a fantastic pilot to match her orbital, or perhaps more likely, find a way to use her engineering skill to remove Michael's hard-lock so a better person could pilot it.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

@Krayzikk

Basically they fire off either heat, energy, or science BS to respectively melt, vaporize, or explode things. Think of them like the Burning Gundam, basically. The main difference is that inside the arm there are what are basically just batteries exclusively for the use of the arm, which allow for it to be fired without draining the actual mech's energy. Then once they run out of batteries, there's a huge drain on the mech's power to use it again above certain limits. The limits are basically if it can damage an Orbital in any way, it's gonna drain quite a bit, and if it fires at full power it's gonna be game over if it misses because of how much power drain there is.

So at about 10.5 would fit a scaled down Oberth and allow for it to be basically as-is? That's still only half the size of a standard Orbital, so I'd be more than okay with that. That would still leave space in the METATRON for a full Oberth too, right? Since it's a 13.2 meter difference.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

@Krayzikk

No worries, I'll figure it out when I get up tomorrow.
The original idea (which I'll probably stick with in terms of the cockpit if I up the size anyway) is that, like the mech it gets its face claim from, the cockpit is horizontal instead of vertical, so the operator takes up less room since they're basically laying on it instead of in a seat, but that doesn't really justify it enough to get by. That's also why I had it use energy canisters instead of running mostly off its own power for damage output and flight, where they would be charged exclusively outside of battle, but again I could see it not being good enough.
Do you have a suggestion on the size that would make sense? I'm sort of of multiple minds about it; on the one hand I could probably make the Metatron bigger to allow for a similar concept as what I have but that would lead to other problems I'm sure. On another I could leave it but scale up the S.A.T.A.N. to the minimum plausible size, but then again it being unable to run very long on its own power is sort of the whole idea, so... I suppose now that I think about it that if the METATRON had an Oberth of its own, then it could be used to recharge rather than be a "drop when no longer needed and recover separately" sort of armor like I had planned.
I guess what I'll need to know is what the minimum size increase would have to be, and how much of a scaling-back the power would need if it was running off a supplemental, or even just capacitors. Or what a good middle ground mixing of the two options would be?

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

<Snipped quote by The World>

Pretty good sized. Big enough that smaller machines usually run on fusion instead. The capacitors are a bigger factor than the size of the reactor itself, but for all intents and purposes they can be counted as the same unit due to the most common layout. Considering the size of an average Orbital at ~20m, but the Fortuna at 16.8, gives about a 6m clearance for its height. Taking into account everything in its torso I'd guesstimate that an Oberth reactor isn't usually any smaller than 4m tall at the usual scale.

<Snipped quote by FlappyTheSpybot>

Okay, just wanted to make sure you had forewarning. I'd have felt bad if you didn't. You're all set.

@Krayzikk

Hmm. Glad I asked, that means I need to specify either in my CS or IC a few things, since it must have slipped under the radar how small the S.A.T.A.N. is, heh. Which would be better to specify that in? Basically I just need to say that there's a full sized Oberth in the Metatron but the Satan uses a smaller one for itself.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

<Snipped quote by ArmorPlated>

Plenty of room!

<Snipped quote by FlappyTheSpybot>

Nothing worries me here, but a model that small would definitely be running a scaled down Oberth reactor rather than a full size version. Wouldn't change anything for its own purposes, but it just wouldn't be pumping out as much juice as the larger ones.

Feel free to move him to the character tab. Before you do, though, I do want to warn you that the Outrider could stand to have some issues when it comes to combat encounters when they start. If you want to stick with it you're welcome to, but I wanted to give you the heads up.

@Krayzikk

That does raise the question of how big the Oberth reactor normally is?

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

Stel felt the warmth of life once again for the first time in fifteen years, almost five-eighths of her waking lifespan, gone just like that. Dreamless sleep, if it could be called that, had stolen away so much time. The first thing to come to her mind as she groggily stirred from her pod was that she really wasn't going to be seeing her loved ones again. Not unless they happened to turn right around and go back, and that wasn't likely.

She already didn't like being here; the air tasted strange, the lights were too bright, and the artificial gravity felt off somehow. Perhaps it was due to her hibernation, but the influx of senses all being different than she expected threw her for a loop for several minutes before she finally planted her feet outside of the pod. She was likely one of the last ones out. A techy looked over at her and she gave him a thumbs up, a signal that he had done his job of waking her correctly, if not very personably.

A voice was resounding through the ship to follow the post-hibernation routine... What was that again? Stel was having trouble remembering. Luckily there seemed to be instructions on what to do posted on signs leading towards the showers and lockers. Standing to keep her balance for a few moments, she finally built up the courage to move over to the showers and begin the arduous task of satisfying her mind in terms of cleanliness while not taking far too much time to be acceptable. Her locker contained a standard flight suit, but it fit just fine and was just comfortable enough to not cause problems. She also grabbed one of the two PDAs in there, a perfect fix for her forgetfulness. After checking a picture of her family to help reassure her, she opened up a simple checklist of "To Do" items on waking up. Get out of the pod? Check. Shower? Check. Grab PDA? Check. Eat? Well, not yet. She looked around at the signs to find her way to the mess hall, grabbing some food and sitting at one of the few empty tables.

Unfortunately it seemed that she was missing out on the opportunity to mingle with her fellow pilots, not that she had much interest in it considering their age gaps, and furthermore found that she didn't like the taste of an MRE, or at least the one she had chosen. Then again, she figured that nobody probably actually liked MREs. That wasn't the point of them, after all. Still, she could hear the other pilots talking, and sat for a moment trying and failing to remember their names. Still, she gave a slight wave to those facing her.