What is the best tactical and strategic offense against...

JohnDoe wrote:

Malahite wrote:

Breed giant pigs and teach the Predators how to use a frying pan?

Get some giant chickens to go with them.

Felaryan Giant Chickens ... I shudder at the thought.

Hey don't forget Silent_Eric's Kayeffsee chicken idea XD! They may not be giant, but they cook themselves!

We do have giant Felaryan chickens... Kinda. Glouteuxes.

In Felarya, chicken eats you!

on that last comment....my rating of felarya dropped... chicken tastes good...

Malahite wrote:

Breed giant pigs and teach the Predators how to use a frying pan?

Knowing Felarya, the giant pigs would turn on the humans.

but...but...but...CORKY's IS AWESOME!!! BAR'B'Q!!!!! DON'T LEAVE ME!!!!!!!!

How about growth potions that turn all humans, neeras, tinies, elves and so on, into 120 foot giants?

I'd even make it a sort of benevolent virus; it gets around and affects everyone who comes near a giant person.

The good news is few things out there can shrink and eat you (notably Gyspas and some dridders); the bad news (for some) is you're gonna learn all about vegetarian cuisine.

Raveolution wrote:

The good news is few things out there can shrink and eat you (notably Gyspas and some dridders); the bad news (for some) is you're gonna learn all about vegetarian cuisine.

Maybe not. I'm sure naga meat's quite delicious. BWAHAHA!

Aww... it'd take a while for me to adjust all my guns to my new size, though.

ZionAtriedes wrote:

Raveolution wrote:

The good news is few things out there can shrink and eat you (notably Gyspas and some dridders); the bad news (for some) is you're gonna learn all about vegetarian cuisine.

Maybe not. I'm sure naga meat's quite delicious. BWAHAHA!

Aww... it'd take a while for me to adjust all my guns to my new size, though.

Nagas won't be easy to kill. That tail whack is a bitch. Also, many can swallow same-size prey. The problem will be that in trying to do so, they may be up against equal-sized prey with knives; at that size, a simple weapon is very very bad news. Especially if you have friends. We haven't even gotten into bows and arrows of the size fit for giants: which would strike from outside the range of a tail-whack. But then nagas would start adapting to bows and arrows, too. Both sides would have to get used to eating some dead prey. Dolcett. Oh noes. *ducks under a table.* JUST KIDDING!!!

You didn't even mention guns and explosives, dude! Ain't no damn way I'm giving those up for a height boost!

Then again, when it comes to bows, you can't build ones big enough. At least, not ones that would withstand the pressure required to fire a proportional arrow with proportional acceleration. Thank the Square-Cube Law, fellas. That'll probably fuck with guns and stuff, too.

Create the Great Ipi'kac River?

ZionAtriedes wrote:

You didn't even mention guns and explosives, dude! Ain't no damn way I'm giving those up for a height boost!

Then again, when it comes to bows, you can't build ones big enough. At least, not ones that would withstand the pressure required to fire a proportional arrow with proportional acceleration. Thank the Square-Cube Law, fellas. That'll probably fuck with guns and stuff, too.

Guns, in Felarya? The only thing anyone outside of Negav City knows how to make is crude stone tools! LOL.

ZionAtriedes wrote:

You didn't even mention guns and explosives, dude! Ain't no damn way I'm giving those up for a height boost!

Then again, when it comes to bows, you can't build ones big enough. At least, not ones that would withstand the pressure required to fire a proportional arrow with proportional acceleration. Thank the Square-Cube Law, fellas. That'll probably fuck with guns and stuff, too.

Oh, I forgot to mention.

You also cannot have people 80 to 100 feet tall, but Felarya handwaves past that. So why can you have giants that big but now bows that big? What scientific limits are we handwaving away and which are we keeping consistent with?

Actually, Raveo, if you wanted to get onto that topic a better example might be giant-sized weapons. For instance, a Giant swinging a sword should shatter it in a single hit - if it doesn't snap itself from the weight when held sideways.

I'd rather not say "can't" in the universe, the correct term would be "unlikely".

It's unlikely that any place could support anything that tall, but various things accept that, at least not to our knowledge thus far.

Malahite wrote:

Actually, Raveo, if you wanted to get onto that topic a better example might be giant-sized weapons. For instance, a Giant swinging a sword should shatter it in a single hit - if it doesn't snap itself from the weight when held sideways.

What I want to know is, is Felarya about fantasy or about fetish? If it's about the fetish then we can use real physics to deny the existence of giant swords but not the existence of giant people. That would also explain a ton of other things that fall victim to the outright denial and disregard of basic realities that I've seen over the months.

Raveolution wrote:

What I want to know is, is Felarya about fantasy or about fetish?

Yes.



(This response is both a joke and an explanation; "Or" in a logical sense is true if one or both of the conditions are true. This is also true of Felarya; it is a combination of fetish and fantasy, which explains some of the oddities. The general rule of thumb is that the giants get to act as if were human sized, but merely bigger. Thus they don't suffer from their crushing weight, nor do they require realistic calorie expenditures or intakes. They do, however, get the benefits of being larger and heavier. Or at least that is my opinion on the matter.)

Oldman40k2003 wrote:

Raveolution wrote:

What I want to know is, is Felarya about fantasy or about fetish?

Yes.



(This response is both a joke and an explanation; "Or" in a logical sense is true if one or both of the conditions are true. This is also true of Felarya; it is a combination of fetish and fantasy, which explains some of the oddities. The general rule of thumb is that the giants get to act as if were human sized, but merely bigger. Thus they don't suffer from their crushing weight, nor do they require realistic calorie expenditures or intakes. They do, however, get the benefits of being larger and heavier. Or at least that is my opinion on the matter.)

Well then that makes a lot of things make sense...

Nano rifles. Nanites can't cause a grey goo unless seriously designed to do so (this was explained ironically by the very guy who proposed the threat of a gray goo) but a sufficiently powered swarm of nanites could destroy a large object before running out of power and expiring on their own. A sufficiently advanced society - 200 years in advance of modern day Earth at the furthest - could be passing out these weapons and ammo like candy. Once introduced into a place like Negav City it would be hard to control their proliferation. It could even be produced as a handgun. It isn't loud like a railgun and such a device would produce absolutely no kick. Additional modules could be added such as species identifiers which profile targets by DNA (allowing you to kill a kensha beast without killing the nekos it's chasing).

An automated turret with DNA profiling systems would almost be as effective as the Isolon Eye, with the exception of being ineffective against non-corporeal preds. It would literally be able to whitelist non-preds like Rin...

Of course, one can imagine that the rules would somehow be changed in short order to make the existence of such a weapon impossible...

Or that the guardians would lay down a little biblical level smackdown before long.

While we're on the subject of sci fi weapons, I've got a couple characters that favor hollowed bullets that can be filled with various chemical payloads. Say, an extremely powerful sedative or paralyzing agent. Is that plausible?

Oh, and something else. This is a little off topic, but these preds that have the super durable stomachs, does that durability extend to the rest of their digestive system?

Giant darts, you mean? Sure, why not.

As for the durability thing, it shouldn't, if you have to get down to the intestines for the plot to move... I think we'll move away from the plot.

I wasn't planning on going there, Stabs. Maybe just shoving in a grenade while trapped in the stomach or something.

Tuc135 wrote:

I wasn't planning on going there, Stabs. Maybe just shoving in a grenade while trapped in the stomach or something.

Don't let Oldman see what you said there.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

Tuc135 wrote:

I wasn't planning on going there, Stabs. Maybe just shoving in a grenade while trapped in the stomach or something.

Don't let Oldman see what you said there.

He means Vortex Grenades

Tuc135 wrote:

I wasn't planning on going there, Stabs. Maybe just shoving in a grenade while trapped in the stomach or something.

RAAAAAAAAAGGGGE! (See my mega post on the subject, starting about a quarter of the way down the page.)

Tuc135 wrote:

...these preds that have the super durable stomachs, does that durability extend to the rest of their digestive system?

No idea, but I would assume that it extends at far as sharp objects are able to make it before they are digested/dulled by acid. Potentially this could mean the entirety of the digestive tract is extra tough.

Tuc135 wrote:

While we're on the subject of sci fi weapons, I've got a couple characters that favor hollowed bullets that can be filled with various chemical payloads. Say, an extremely powerful sedative or paralyzing agent. Is that plausible?

Depends on exactly how powerful the agent is. I don't know the proper measurements for sedatives or paralytics, but I did some simple calculations for other chemical agents. Lets assume a giant pred standing 75 feet tall. According to the application I used in another thread (the one where I showed the wiki people's relative heights), a human that is 75 feet tall would weigh about 150 metric tons. The LD50 for VX nerve agent is 0.0023 mg/kg (estimated), which comes out to be 345 milligrams (roughly 1/3 of a cubic centimeter if made of water). You probably couldn't fit that amount into smaller bullets, but in larger ones you probably could. It would still take some time to kill though. Botulinum toxin has a "better" LD50; for a 75 foot tall human the LD50 dose is about 0.15 milligrams, which you could easily fit in even pistol bullets. Still would take time to take effect though.

For nagas, since they have more mass (their tails), the LD50 doses would be considerably larger, probably four or five times larger. Also, this assumes that they have human like biochemistry and no proteins or enzymes that suspiciously and conveniently (*cough*Deus Ex Machina*cough*) allow them to quickly metabolize these agents.

It's not exactly trivial to make VX or purify botulinum toxin though; I doubt they could be manufactured outside of industrial areas.

Raveolution wrote:

Nano rifles. Nanites can't cause a grey goo unless seriously designed to do so (this was explained ironically by the very guy who proposed the threat of a gray goo) but a sufficiently powered swarm of nanites could destroy a large object before running out of power and expiring on their own.

The ability of nanites to cause a grey goo incident depend on two things: how they replicate, and how resistant they are to "mutations". If every single nanite is capable of building new nanites from scratch, the possibility of a grey goo incident occurring is higher than if the nanites can only be created in special factory modules... though if the nanites can build the factory modules (which you would want them to be able to do in order to be able to produce nanites in volume), there is still some risk. How resistant a nanite is to mutation is the other important factor; self checks and "deviancy detection and removal" routines can be built into the nanites, but that merely lowers the risk, not eliminate it... and it's also a trade off, as those self-checks take up time, energy, and space, making heavily protected nanites less efficient than less protected ones.

Raveolution wrote:

A sufficiently advanced society - 200 years in advance of modern day Earth at the furthest - could be passing out these weapons and ammo like candy.

I don't think they would be passing them out like candy. It would be the rough equivalent of giving yield limited nuclear weapons to the European powers of say 1800. Sure, they're yield limited so the destruction they can directly cause is also limited, but science does exist in 1800, so there is a very real danger of one or more of the yield limited bombs being studied closely, causing rapid advancement of science, and allowing for the eventual construction of non-yield limited nuclear weapons.

So while an advanced society surely could hand them out like candy, it would be pretty reckless for them to do so.

Raveolution wrote:

...such a device would produce absolutely no kick.

Why would it produce no kick? If it is throwing the nanites at the target at any speed it will almost certainly produce noticeable kick... conservation of momentum and all that.

Raveolution wrote:

Additional modules could be added such as species identifiers which profile targets by DNA (allowing you to kill a kensha beast without killing the nekos it's chasing). An automated turret with DNA profiling systems would almost be as effective as the Isolon Eye, with the exception of being ineffective against non-corporeal preds. It would literally be able to whitelist non-preds like Rin...

Yeah, while it would have to actually have nanites on the target, it certainly could be very selective about what it actually damages. Nanotechnology is powerful, dangerous stuff.

Raveolution wrote:

Of course, one can imagine that the rules would somehow be changed in short order to make the existence of such a weapon impossible...

You have a rather... cynical attitude, and I'm not sure you quite understand what Felarya is supposed to be. In my opinion, Felarya is supposed to be a place of great danger to humans. Because this is a primary goal, "patching" the world to prevent "exploits" is not a bad thing... in fact it is a good thing.

It's similar to why there are "shot clocks" in many sports. It's a perfectly rational strategy to get a lead on an opponent and then just hold on to the ball for the rest of the game, but this leads to very boring games. Because the goal of most sports is "be interesting and exciting", the rules are patched when someone finds a way to break them. As I mentioned, "shot clocks" were introduced in order to prevent people from just holding onto the ball forever, even though it's a perfectly rational strategy. This is not a bad thing, as the "patch" brings the games back towards what they are supposed to be: exciting.

Or for another example, consider why units in video games are sometimes "nerfed". The primary goal of a video game is to be fun; if there is a single unit or strategy that dominates everything else, the game may not be fun. Since the primary goal is "fun", the game's rules are changed to nerf the unit or strategy, making it less powerful, allowing other units and strategies to have a chance at winning, and thus making the game fun again.