X-COM THINK TANK (Out of Character Discussion about X-COM and the Series)

[Gahlo]

Hi there! I came over from Odd's Reddit post, and registered just for this. This is literally my second post on these forums ever, heh.

The RP aspect is what has me most excited about this, it's something I wish I could get my friends to do in my insert-friends-into-XCom LPs. They're excited to see what "they" do in missions, but there's no conversation or dialogue between the real life people, sadly.

While I would love to see multiple posts back and forth between people, I certainly see how that can rapidly become overwhelming for those not involved. But conversations are some of the best parts of RP, like Sypher.Anthem said. I know that the guy I posted, his primary consideration (from the excerpted conversation) is that he's good with people, keeping morale up (in addition to ... scrounging things).

I see there is a "message" function, though. Perhaps RPers could hold a conversation in messages? Then an additional post each week could be allocated to posting the entire conversation all at once, rather than a string of discrete posts. It does make it harder for third parties to show up unless they were included from the beginning, but it's another possible compromise.

You can send people a PM and invite up to a max capacity of 5 people taking place on the conversation. That's what I did with Meaning before I just added them on Skype. The issue with S3 was there was a -lot- more social butterflies hopping around, causing the volume that people had to read to keep up to explode. It quickly got to a point where I said "I don't have the time for this" and as a result just defaulted into doing my own mission journals(of which there wasn't many, being a pilot of a singular continent) and then waiting for the next week.

Chris how long is 200 pixels?

I'm not Chris but I made this...

 

[Grelite]

Keep in mind that default line of text height in default browser settings is 16px. Read: <--- this line is 16 pixels tall.
Bigger text means you hit 200px sooner.

In default settings, if you can drag this image over your signature and it covers more than the entire height, it's less than 200px:

Keep in mind that wide images automatically get resized to fit the width of the browser by this forum, it is the height of the actual image size that counts toward the total.

 

[AugurOfRuin]

I'l agree with the others. A post limit is fine, but make it 3 per week. 1 per week kinda ruins the whole interaction RP part of it, making it so that we will only be cabable of writing our journal entries for the mission and thats it. If we want to do any collaborations, that means we all have to think do we want to sacrifice our only journal entry this week for this collaboration? 3 posts a week seems fine to me, giving us enough space to make a collaborations and journal entries, and maybe some side interactions. I just can't find inspiration if I'm forced to do only journal entries. Last season my favorite moments we're the collaborations beetween multiple people. 2-3 posts a week seems like the best limit, preventing people from getting completly overhelmed by the amount of posts, but still leaving us the active people some space to work with.

 

[Meaningofbread]

Three posts sounds all well. As stated previously,some people (such as me) began to not be able to cope with the sheer volume of posts, so i began to not care as much. This lead to a "meh" approach to journals, as I just couldn't care enough any more.

Three posts a week limit sounds about the sweet spot, with one dedicated to the mission (If applicable) and the other two dedicated to base life.

 

[DevourerOfSouls]

I have a question of applying as one of the pre-determined characters like Zhang and the others. Is there anything differnet I have to write into the application? I mean do I write the characters name and gender and then for the biographical synopsis the characters backstory? Or what do I do to apply for these characters?

 

[Rocketbottle]

Chris I agree with limiting post is a good thing but I think 2-3 post per week is more appropriate because it allows charters to develop faster and more interaction and if you had 1 post limit people will get around it by posting 1 very long post.

 

[Gahlo]

The morning before a new season is awful. It's like Christmas morning when I was a kid, where I'm sitting there staring at the presents but wasn't allowed to open anything until my parents had their coffee.

 

[Sypher.Anthem]

I'm so ready for Season 4 to get started and to see what everyone does as far as posts a really developing their characters as episodes are released.

 

[ChristopherOdd]

Chris I agree with limiting post is a good thing but I think 2-3 post per week is more appropriate because it allows charters to develop faster and more interaction and if you had 1 post limit people will get around it by posting 1 very long post.

I will definitely consider this. Thanks.

 

[ChristopherOdd]

Who said that?

Each person can only have one character. It's in the recruitment post.

 

[KamiKaze1337]

Hello! I made a profile for the Season 4 X-COM project. So I figured I'd just chat on here, see how everyone's doing and all that. I hope I get picked. It'd be a pretty interesting project to be involved in.

 

[Dahlexpert]

So we can't make any npcs. That made last seasons journals a great read.

 

[excruciater]

First time up for recruitment, love to see what'll happen this season...

 

[Frostlich1228]

Each person can only have one character. It's in the recruitment post.

Really Chris?

Why?

 

[Whiplash779]

I like restricting people to one character for simplicity's sake, but I feel like the prospect of RPing a less prominent, less active character (like an interceptor pilot) is exciting for those of us who might not be active squad members. I get the feeling my chances at being an active squad member are slim, given the quality of the other posts I have seen. I would like to have a chance to RP someone else if I happen to not be chosen as an X-COM soldier. Locking myself in to being South America's interceptor pilot when I could have the chance to be a soldier is simply not appealing to me.

On a completely unrelated side note, has anyone come up with a plausible explanation as to why gene modded soldiers wear sleeveless armor besides the Rule of Cool? If not, I think I may have come upon a revelation the other day as to why that is the case.

 

[Sypher.Anthem]

Can I hear your revelation then? I think I came up with a simple explanation but I guess when you actually put it against the whole concept of gene modding it might just be dumb

 

[Frostlich1228]

Can I hear your revelation then? I think I came up with a simple explanation but I guess when you actually put it against the whole concept of gene modding it might just be dumb

Well I think they don't wear sleeves because it would cover up those Meld Injection ports on their shoulders and Upper arms.

I like restricting people to one character for simplicity's sake, but I feel like the prospect of RPing a less prominent, less active character (like an interceptor pilot) is exciting for those of us who might not be active squad members. I get the feeling my chances at being an active squad member are slim, given the quality of the other posts I have seen. I would like to have a chance to RP someone else if I happen to not be chosen as an X-COM soldier. Locking myself in to being South America's interceptor pilot when I could have the chance to be a soldier is simply not appealing to me

Well I think that when the RPers have Side characters it gives more life to the Base and makes the RP seem more real.

 

[Dahlexpert]

Hay every one Dhalexpert here,I like most people am not happy with the one journal a week Idea form odd. Now I hope you read this because i'm going to give you a small or long list (depending on how i'm feeling),of why the one journal a week is a terrible idea and if any one agree with this list leave a like,also ill be talking about some of the other rules to.

reason number one:the journals will be boring.After being around for two seasons I learned that things are better when there spreed out,what I mean by this is in the past there use to be one journal a day and that journal talked about what our charter did that day,wither it be training studying the alien spices,or us meeting another charter,it was spread out.But now with the one journal a week idea you will now get a page long of what our charter did for the past week eliminating all collaborations memory logs and us morning other charters,speaking of collaborations.

Reason number two: no collaborations,the point of the journals is to tell what our charter is doing around x-com when there not on missions, and the x-com base is huge, but because of the one journal entry you will never met another solider, and if you do met another solider you will have to wait a week for your character to react to the person they just met and if the person they just met goes out on a mission and dies the will not be missed by any one on the base,basically turning every one into robots who don't care about any one on the base.

reason number three: having only one charter. In the past we made more the one character some of us did this,and if we did make another character that character was ether a doctor or a psychologist to check up on our soldiers and make sure there mental state is normal. Because living in a underground base with no sun light and training 24/7 can make a person go crazy,and with enemy with in it makes more since to have more then one character with the meld technology the mecs and the gen modded troopers who are basically super soldiers,it makes sience for these soldiers to have there own Doctor ore engineer to make sure there patent is getting us to there adjustment from normal people to a new breed of human.
these are my reasons why I think the new rules suck, is there some I missed probable and Odd you read this and not take this down and I hope you go back to some of the old rules.

 

[Whiplash779]

It seems to me that the sleeveless look is to facilitate the "vents" on their arms. When a gene modded soldier is let out of the labs, they have tubes attached to these vents that are easily removed and have a sort of liquid, gel, etc. running through them. I've heard some people say that the liquid is infused with MELD, but that seems silly to me. If the only way to acquire MELD is in the field, then X-COM wouldn't have that much to go around. I think the liquid is really coolant. If the modded soldiers really have (likely) millions upon millions of tiny machines inside them working overtime to achieve a specific superhuman purpose, those machines would produce quite a lot of heat. If a soldier with mimetic skin were to have no way of cooling those machines down, they could actually suffer from a variety of symptoms caused by all of their skin overheating. Maybe the aliens have come up with a way to prevent the need for large amount of coolant in their own kind, but our cobbled together technology needs to be produced quickly. Those vents have been adapted to work as a coolant system for the soldiers. They can use the special coolant found in the gene lab, or they can use simple air as an effective cooling solution.

All that to say, Those vents are for cooling the MELD in the soldiers' bodies. If they were to be covered up by sleeves or anything that doesn't allow for free flow of air, the gene mods wouldn't function properly or the soldiers could be put at risk. It's not like they need them to be uncovered all the time, only when those gene mods would be particularly stressed, like in a combat situation.

Well I think they don't wear sleeves because it would cover up those Meld Injection ports on their shoulders and Upper arms.

That's what I meant by the Rule of Cool. I mean that, within much of modern media, people make the awesome stuff look cool for no other reason than to make it look cool. Just because it looks cooler (although, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that) is not a good explanation for the real world. If those were only MELD injection ports, there would be nothing keeping them from covering them up when they're not being injected with MELD.

 

[AugurOfRuin]

Really Chris?

Why?

yeah Chris Why? Having a side character Can be a saving Grace for us whos character dies early on. Now With side character I don't mean Another Soldier, I mean having a side character Like one of the scientists or a Doctor. The same type of side characters We had last season. Could We atleast make it So that if Your Soldier dies You Can make yourself Some side character Like a scientist, So that You don't just have to sit back and watch otherS rp?