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In a perfect world, we just throw MKVI at our buddy Audran. Poor thing wants to die anyway, it either kills our nemesis or gets killed along the way. Win win.
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Jun 19, 2019 14:42
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| # ? May 22, 2024 17:52 |
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And THIS is why we didn't use our Mulligan on Volker. (Says the dude who did all of the Lodge missions. In my defence I had no idea you were allowed a Mulligan) AceOfFlames fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Jun 19, 2019 |
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Jun 19, 2019 15:12
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gently caress the Lodge, there’s a reason why Cyberzombies are a crime against metahumanity. But yeah, going to town on KE with the MKVI was a ton of fun. Minigun plus axe, plus Glory stripping AP and bleeding them up close and Eiger sniping the poo poo out of everything made this an easy fight.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:59
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Definitely the most  METAL of missions.
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Jun 19, 2019 16:15
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Eventually they'll figure out that you can do this exact same concept to animals and call them "biodrones" and no one will give a gently caress.
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Jun 19, 2019 16:57
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do animals have similar essence levels to metahumans? appreciate the point of a cyberzombie is to ~transcend ur weak flesh~ by shooting past 0 essence, but surely the higher essence you got the more you can jam in before it starts being a problem
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Jun 19, 2019 17:09
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Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:do animals have similar essence levels to metahumans? appreciate the point of a cyberzombie is to ~transcend ur weak flesh~ by shooting past 0 essence, but surely the higher essence you got the more you can jam in before it starts being a problem animals dont have souls, op
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Jun 19, 2019 17:31
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I like how the MKVI still takes cover. As if it needs to.
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Jun 19, 2019 17:40
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Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:do animals have similar essence levels to metahumans? appreciate the point of a cyberzombie is to ~transcend ur weak flesh~ by shooting past 0 essence, but surely the higher essence you got the more you can jam in before it starts being a problem the thing with cyberzombies is less the benefit of all the extra cyberware you can put in there (which is not nothing, granted), but more that managing to hit negative essence without touching zero basically creates a mystical vacuum seal on the soul - it's not connected to the body, but is still stuck there through magic osmosis gradients or w/e - and it turns out this causes a lot of really hosed up poo poo to happen. the exact effects obviously depend on the edition, but generally speaking, as seen above magic (which relies on the presence of life) tends to take one look at how exponentially dead the cyberzombie is and decides to just take the day off rather than deal with that poo poo. some editions even let them buff everything they do by the absolute value of their negative essence, as their existence becomes more and more abominable to the fundamental fabric of reality! cyberzombies are fun. (technically I think biodrones are more animals with remote move by wire systems than proper cyberzombies, but I've no doubt some lab somewhere is trying this stuff on basilisks to see what happens)
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Jun 19, 2019 18:01
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communism bitch posted:animals dont have souls, op then how do all dogs go to heaven
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Jun 19, 2019 18:33
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Agnosticnixie posted:With the MkVI the big secret is eventually realizing that axe is way, way better at ending hackers asap than the minigun is. I hinted at this way back, trying to avoid spoiling anything, but the real secret is that the MKVI's cyberfist is much better than his axe. Charge whichever enemy is standing in the best position to flank the other ones and KO him, then unload on the rest of them. And if he shouldn't be KO after the first punch, he's now at point-blank range for the minigun.
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Jun 19, 2019 18:58
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The Cyberzombie is a complete monster of a unit. It could probably solo most of this mission on its own even on hard. Was quite pleased I'd saved my Lodge mulligan, though, I'd be terrified of what the Lodge would do with this tech and the poor troll deserves better than to be locked into that waking hell.
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Jun 19, 2019 19:04
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The Lodge would probably suppress this. The MKVI is tough, but is it really worth the millions of nuyen that went into it when you can just spend that on a bunch of drones and gear for real people? Its real advantage is what being a negative essence cyberzombie does for it, and the Lodge isn't interested in that because they're all Initiated mages.
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Jun 19, 2019 19:14
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Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:do animals have similar essence levels to metahumans? appreciate the point of a cyberzombie is to ~transcend ur weak flesh~ by shooting past 0 essence, but surely the higher essence you got the more you can jam in before it starts being a problem According to the lore, animals tend to go batshit rabid insane when fitted with even modest amounts of cyberware. The *good* news is that if you see cybered animals patrolling the perimeter, you can reliably count on them being the only threat in that perimeter. The *bad* news, well... You're looking at a pitbull with sufficient bite pressure to bite right through your reinforced armor-plated cyberlimb without having to chew.
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Jun 19, 2019 19:40
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Would one of y'all be able to expound a bit more on cyberzombies beyond what Nick Buntline mentioned (if there is anything)? They seem pretty interesting.
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Jun 19, 2019 19:41
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kaosdrachen posted:According to the lore, animals tend to go batshit rabid insane when fitted with even modest amounts of cyberware. You say "modest amounts" and I picture you can fit one with a comms and surveillance cyberpackage or replace a lost limb and they'll be okay once they're out of the cone, which implies they have a non-zero Essence score. I can talk a bit on contrasts with cybered-up animals in a couple other settings. It's not really on topic, so I figured I'd ask first, see if there's interest before I start making GBS threads up the thread. As if that's stopped me before.
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Jun 19, 2019 20:04
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Dr_Gee posted:Would one of y'all be able to expound a bit more on cyberzombies beyond what Nick Buntline mentioned (if there is anything)? They seem pretty interesting. Basically, there's always been a hard limit on how much cyberware you could cram into a person before they just flat out died. Not just from medical complications, they just literally stopped living. Leading theory is that basically the person's spirit or soul or whatever just no longer recognizes the body as its anchor and drifts away, or mumbo-jumbo like that. You could get economical with it by making the cyberware as nonintrusive as possible (alpha-, beta- and delta-grade, with exponentially increasing costs) but beyond a certain point, no matter how healthy or robust the test subject, they'd give up the metaphorical and literal ghost. Megacorps /hate/ "mumbo-jumbo" on principle, and given that they're always looking for the next big edge, there was considerable research in ways of breaking that limit. And at some point, one particularly bright and/or ethically challenged egghead went and said "Hey, so, if the problem is the individual's spirit leaving the body, what if we use magic to bind the spirit back into their body and keep it there?" Somehow they managed to get the funding and go-ahead for lab research into this. You don't *want* to know how many people they went through (Although this would probably be a good summation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJIjNs_s2NI ) until they found a combination of cybertechnology and magic that, in careful conjunction, worked more or less as advertised, and you get an unbelievably cybered-up individual with capabilities beyond anything more conventional technology can achieve. But that's where the problems start. The first problem is that you've got someone -- something - walking around that anything even remotely in touch with nature insists should be dead. Rosa's astral scan of MKIV showed this -- he's basically a walking wound in the Astral, a black void that flat out screams "this should not exist in a sane universe" to anyone and anything who can see it. Spirits and astrally aware critters react in one of two ways - run the *hell* away as quick and as far as they can, or do their utmost best to loving kill that abomination before it spreads whatever it is. Regular humans are just instinctively and viscerally creeped out by the thing even /without/ looking at all the modifications. And then there's the second problem. Basically, once you dip below zero Essence you die because you know you shouldn't be alive. And even though the cybermancy has brought you back, you don't know that, and it's entirely possible for you to fall over dead because you forgot you aren't. To counteract this they have to build another bit of cyberware into your brain that constantly scans your mental activity and if it drops below a certain treshold it rapidly stimulates your memory centers to bring up memories that will hopefully remind you you're alive. Needless to say, that degree of direct manipulation and the severe dissociative disorder means that cybermantic individuals... Don't really display much in the way of initiative, or volition, which further adds to the whole "Zombie" aspect. And since most people aren't remotely crazy enough to volunteer for this kind of treatment, and the corps tend to heavily disapprove of excess personal volition in projects that cost in the billions of nuyen, they usually add some manner of behavior inhibitors to make sure their investment obeys orders... kaosdrachen fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Jun 19, 2019 |
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Jun 19, 2019 20:19
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Dr_Gee posted:Would one of y'all be able to expound a bit more on cyberzombies beyond what Nick Buntline mentioned (if there is anything)? They seem pretty interesting. the zombie part is important. past a certain level of cyberware, you die. your soul attempts to leave the body. modern sorcery has ways around that. sure, you develop a dozen competing types of cancer and tissue necrosis, eighty competing types of depressive disorders, and also a screaming magic-consuming void where your soul used to be. this void constitutes the hard limit on the cyberzombie's power: at some point, it will become prohibitively difficult to keep soul and body together. top-grade pharmaceuticals can keep your body from eating itself. top-grade therapists can keep you from acting on the constant urge to murder-suicide everyone you see. top-grade sorcerors can periodically zip the screaming core of what used to be you back into the grey mass of intermixed steel and flesh that serves as its prison. (Occasionally one of them explodes with the effort involved-this is good for a laugh.) but hey! you can beat a small army in a 1v1, and that's sick as hell.
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Jun 19, 2019 20:29
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The only good thing about cyberzombies is that they're so expensive and require such levels of expertise to build that they're really only seen in R&D contexts thus far and no one can figure out how to mass produce them. Though I do wonder what would happen if a combat zombie prototype contracted CFD. Also, if I'm remembering my AAs correctly, it's no coincidence that AG Chemie are the ones who developed this thing. They're not far shy of being a AAA, but every time they come close some horrific atrocity they've committed comes out and they have to scramble to just keep what they have.
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Jun 19, 2019 20:32
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That's Zeta-Imp Chem you're thinking of, I think. Though there's plenty of AA that fall into the "actually technically as big or bigger than some AAAs and are really sore about not being in the big boy club" category.
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Jun 19, 2019 20:43
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Just in case anyone thought we could talk about something horrible without them coming up, Aztechnology does cybermancy research and has their very own Homegrown Soldier program.
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Jun 19, 2019 20:52
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At a certain point, is there a particular advantage to wiring up a cyberzombie as a rigger-operated killbot over just building a completely mechanical meat-free drone to accomplish the same purpose? Or is creating an affront to life itself that can't be interacted with through magic the point?
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Jun 19, 2019 20:53
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paragon1 posted:That's Zeta-Imp Chem you're thinking of, I think. Though there's plenty of AA that fall into the "actually technically as big or bigger than some AAAs and are really sore about not being in the big boy club" category. Ah, crud, it was Zeta-Imp. They're cartoonishly evil even by the standards of the Megacorps. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Jun 19, 2019 |
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Jun 19, 2019 21:00
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lightrook posted:At a certain point, is there a particular advantage to wiring up a cyberzombie as a rigger-operated killbot over just building a completely mechanical meat-free drone to accomplish the same purpose? Or is creating an affront to life itself that can't be interacted with through magic the point? I bet it's harder to hack but that's about all I can come up with. I think it's more a display of your resounding corporate might and mastery over God and earth.
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Jun 19, 2019 21:09
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The invading horrors are basically doing nothing wrong and infact are doing a mercy to humanity in summation.
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Jun 19, 2019 21:11
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lightrook posted:At a certain point, is there a particular advantage to wiring up a cyberzombie as a rigger-operated killbot over just building a completely mechanical meat-free drone to accomplish the same purpose? Or is creating an affront to life itself that can't be interacted with through magic the point? I'm struggling to think of one, honestly. Way harder for a competitor to reverse engineer, I suppose?
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Jun 19, 2019 21:17
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It's like you forgot the point of capitalism is innovation for innovations sake, jeez. Never gonna progress metahumanity with nagging questions about pie-in-the-sky research such as yours.
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Jun 19, 2019 21:21
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habeasdorkus posted:Ah, crud, it was Zeta-Imp. They're cartoonishly evil even by the standards of the Megacorps. That comes with owning Nestle
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Jun 19, 2019 21:21
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Was just digging through some folders of old SR artwork, looking for some inspiration for a UGC and... https://imgur.com/OBu2De0 Is that friggin Dietrich back there? e: imgur's being dogshit again:
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Jun 19, 2019 21:22
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It's probably academic for most people reading this thread, but you can buy the complete Shadowrun Trilogy plus all the deluxe extras and DLC at 75% off on Steam till the 24th.
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Jun 19, 2019 21:23
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It’s very much a Pursuit Of Immortality thing. Cybermancy is presented in the tabletop rules as a poorly-understood and rapidly-evolving field of study, partly to preserve the whole “abhorrent crime against nature” theme central to cyberzombies, and partly to give GMs more creative leeway when introducing one as a plot element. Each cyberzombie created is a new unique step towards learning how to cheat death. Meanwhile, Dr_Gee posted:Would one of y'all be able to expound a bit more on cyberzombies beyond what Nick Buntline mentioned (if there is anything)? They seem pretty interesting. Are you looking for more about how they’re made, or what they’re like?
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Jun 19, 2019 21:32
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True, the corporate elite who don't have magic would LOVE to be cybernetic superhumans if they could eliminate the downsides.
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Jun 19, 2019 21:45
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kaosdrachen posted:(Although this would probably be a good summation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJIjNs_s2NI ) You got to love how despite the countless deaths, no one at OCP ever figured out the simple concept of "don't use live ammo in demos".
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Jun 19, 2019 21:55
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paragon1 posted:True, the corporate elite who don't have magic would LOVE to be cybernetic superhumans if they could eliminate the downsides. i mean they already don't have souls!!!!!
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Jun 19, 2019 21:55
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The corps literally experimented on the poor with variously modified HMHVV strains until they developed one that was safe enough to use for Leonization, and if you think they've stopped then I admire your faith in metahumanity.
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Jun 19, 2019 22:05
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habeasdorkus posted:The only good thing about cyberzombies is that they're so expensive and require such levels of expertise to build that they're really only seen in R&D contexts thus far and no one can figure out how to mass produce them. Though I do wonder what would happen if a combat zombie prototype contracted CFD. Are cyberzombies valuable assets against threats to the soul, such as bug spirits or vampires? If so, I could see an extreme niche where you'd go out of your way to want those instead of just... robots or something.
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Jun 19, 2019 22:24
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Couldn't you just ride power armor and control it as a rigger and basically have tr same capabilities as a cyberzombo?
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Jun 19, 2019 22:27
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lightrook posted:At a certain point, is there a particular advantage to wiring up a cyberzombie as a rigger-operated killbot over just building a completely mechanical meat-free drone to accomplish the same purpose? Or is creating an affront to life itself that can't be interacted with through magic the point? Well there's a certain magical advantage. Cyberzombies being magical abominations, they're hard to kill with magic, on top of being hard to kill with conventional means.
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Jun 19, 2019 22:36
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AceOfFlames posted:You got to love how despite the countless deaths, no one at OCP ever figured out the simple concept of "don't use live ammo in demos". That would involve the suits caring about their coworkers. Having a murder machine go on a rampage just means less competition for that promotion!
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Jun 19, 2019 23:32
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| # ? May 22, 2024 17:52 |
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OCP used to be a parody. It used to be a bleak joke. Then Amazon fulfillment centers happened, and the american healthcare system.
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Jun 19, 2019 23:36
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