bibliophile20 wrote:

@ShadowDragon Schlock's team wins, because they fight as a unit, while the Decepticons fight as individual warriors. Furthermore, Schlock's team has the advantage of mostly using ranged weapons, while Decepticons will often stick to melee range, especially when transformed. Add in sensors and fast-thinking AIs that can pick the not-annie-plants, as well as a robotics expert in Para, and the Decepticons will quickly find themselves flushed out once Tagon realizes what he's up against, which will take an encounter or two.

*whistle* Foul, ten yard penalty. Neither Kaff Tagon nor his father, Karl Tagon, were in Sgt. Schlock's deployment team as of that mission, nor were they stated to be in the unit. You've got the weakest senior officer in the leadership position (Kevyn Andreyson,) while the most experienced leader in the unit (Sgt. Murtaugh, formerly Major Murtaugh,) is the most junior NCO deployed. In the middle is Lt. Ebbernoth, striking a balance between inexperience and experience, and also striking a balance between not-being-in-a-position-to-give-orders-to-everybody and being-in-a-position-to-give-orders-to-someone-more-experienced-than-him. I expected leadership problems with them. (Then again, I also expect leadership problems from the Decepticons, especially in the form of Starscream either trying to backstab Megatron at an opportune moment in order to seize command, or trying to flee the engagement area owing to his abject cowardice.)

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Next matchup: Harry Dresden (Dresden Files, as of Cold Days), Kvothe (Kingkiller Chronicles, end of book 2), October Daye (Seanan McGuire's October Daye series), Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan (Vorkosigan Saga) and Tali'Zorah vas Normandy (Mass Effect 3) vs. Aztechnology (Shadowrun). Their goal: bring the megacorp down. Harry and October have access to the Nevernever and the Summerlands, respectively. Miles has various underworld contacts and favors. Tali has her hacking abilities and a sufficient supply of dextro food.

Depends. Are we talking SR 3, or SR 4? If it's SR 3 or below, I don't believe they have any chance whatsoever. I don't really know who Dresden, Kvothe, Daye, or Vorkosigian are, but they're only four guys, and I'm pretty sure they're four individual asskickers. That might let them survive a few engagements, right up until Aztechnology gets ripshit pissed and breaks out the Initiated-Ten-Times Blood Mage circle. Then they all die. If it's SR 4, then the wireless Matrix, inherent weakness of the security thereof, and the burgeoning nanotechnology field will let Tali'Zorah force-multiply [i]logarithmically[/i], much like Para Ventura would be able to. The built-in computers in her suit and her Omni-Tool are light-years more advanced than anything SR4 has to offer; literally the only thing that can offer meaningful battle to her on an electronic front would be a technomancer, which Aztechnology is not known for employing many of. Black IC would be a laughing joke to her, since she wouldn't be using full-sim VR, and the hostile non-Black IC wouldn't be able to touch her suit's systems. The only defense against her, electronically, other than a technomancer, would be a system shutdown. Meanwhile, anything that isn't shut down she can suborn, including combat drones, factories, nanofabrication facillities, etcetera. She's also not just any old hacker, she's a Quarian Engineer, possibly one of the most talented. It won't take her long to start a hard takeoff of improving nanofabrication. If she can source more Element Zero, she'll soon by fielding legions of drones with personal shields and nanite self-destruct systems to prevent AZT and the other Megas (whose attention these shenanigans [i]will[/i] catch,) from catching on. Plus, as of SR4, ritual magic and blood magic got nerfed kind of hard. Or, well, debuffed from their previous heights. The question then becomes whether the badass squad can successfully hide Tali from Aztechnology (who will be after her to kill her,) the other Megas (who will be after her to capture her, or possibly employ her in Horizon's case,) and the Great Dragons (who will be after her to capture her or kill her to prevent her from falling into anyone else's claws,) and Shadowrunners (who will be being hired in record numbers by the aforementioned parties, as well as various oddball groups, to capture or kill her,) long enough to persecute this war of annihilation. I don't give them great odds, honestly, but I'd give them a fighting chance in SR4. At the end of the whole Reaper thing, Tali's going to be equivalent to about a 2,500 experience Prime Runner, and is going to have maxxed dice pools in Long Arms (shotguns,) and most technically-related skills. The equipment advantage bestowed by her ridiculously-advanced space gear is going to be insane; for Matrix actions, she's going to be regularly throwing 30-ish dice on everything she does. Only a TM and Sprites can offer a meaningful resistance in the Matrix. That is, of course, all in SR 4, and predicated on the weakly-secured wireless Matrix and the advancing nanotechnology In SR 3 or below, or SR 5, not a ghost of a chance, not unless Tali's resources include the ability to comm Joker for a pickup and a strafing run from the SR-2 Normandy. Which, they don't. :) Next matchup: Dr. McNinja (of... Dr. McNinja) Vs. Duke Nukem (as of the beginning of Duke Nukem Forever.) The Duke's only weapons are his gold-plated M1911 (and ten spare magazines of ammunition,) and his Mighty Foot, but he has a tallboy of beer, a full bottle of Nukem Rx steroids, and a HoloDuke. Dr. McNinja has all the Doctoring and Ninja gear he normally carries, including his stethoscope-garrote, prescription pad, inkpens, shuriken, sai, kunai, hypodermic syringes, and a tanto blade, but no heavier weaponry. The battlefield is a vast strip mall in Cumberland, Maryland, including a particularly large and well-appointed iron-man gymnasium, several large and well-stocked pharmacies, one liquor store, and one attached restaurant that can serve alcohol. Duke retains his massive star appeal and can get fans to help him, but once it gets out that he's out to kill the literal hometown hero, this turns into a liability because any resident of Cumberland (about 1/3 people in the mall,) will actively seek to inform on his location and whereabouts to Dr. McNinja, and attempt to sabotage anything Duke asks them to do. Neither Duke nor Dr. McNinja can call upon any of their allies (or enemies) during this fight; Dr. McNinja's family and friends are away in Japan dealing with ninja ghosts (yes, even Judy,) and his enemies are all sitting this one out lest they wind up causing Duke Nukem and Dr. McNinja to forge a truce in the name of kicking their asses.The same is true of Duke's enemies, who have enough problems with the roid rager going after them for trying to steal Earth's babes, and don't need to piss off a clan of Ninjas to boot, and Duke's army allies can't intervene in a fight between him and another American citizen. Additionally, the Cumberland, MD, police department aren't stupid enough to try and arrest Duke; if a panic starts, they'll barricade the mall and wait for the National Guard to deploy or for Dr. McNinja to prevail, whichever comes first.

not exactly a tough one like the others since i am only unfamiliar with a single entity :P I am taking the objective of this would to not be planet bound anymore Star trek engineers would shortly starve to death since they don't know how to do anything without at least a tricorder. Now Sparks being alone would come into second to last because of the whole requirement of having to sleep and being 1 person now the orks and quarians. here is a tough call. Orks by their nature will just get anything to work if they believe it enough or are stupid enough to not know its broken. meanwhile the quarians would find themselves in a paradise of spare parts. Ultimately i am going to have to say the orks win because i think the quarians would not have a terrible motivation to get off planet and their enviro suits would be getting punctured left and right and the orks would really want to get off this dust ball and get to apocalypse for some rousing combat. Now for my contributions. A mash up of some of the greatest fleet admirals of all time. The conditions: A high velocity asteroid field. Their force composition can only be of medium sized in tonnage. The Players: Admiral Honor Harrington <- max size of vessel Battlecruiser Grand Admiral Thrawn <- nothing larger than a standard star destroyer Captain Sheriden Admiral Naismith Ender Wiggin <- No Dr. Device you can have him use anyone else's tech though Admiral Hacket <- here i am not restricting out the dreadnought class on the subject of the dresden team. Dresden is the winter knight of Mab Queen of Air and Darkness- Queen of Winter- Queen of the unseelie Fae. Warden of Demon Reach. he is a powerhouse of magic. not so good with subtlety but if you need something blown up its easily done. also about going with rules sets for power levels of magic is a bad idea. i know SR has this whole ebb and flow of magic idea but with these mash ups its better to stick with fluff rather than game mechanics

Ya the tech disparity is a bit of a problem and i was hoping to combat it by keep ship scale down. I was thinking the asteroid fields could nerf the missiles somewhat. finite ammo as well. As for sidewalls. well they are capable of stopping small particles at near light velocities but out right kinetic slugs has never been brought up. with sheridan i was thinking the white star fleet and the destroyers that surpassed it

mm Nova bombs. Did not know those were in the imperial inventory. that is the big problem with SW. so much expanded universe its kinda impossible to keep track of how much tech there is. and I said fleet admirals for a reason. I thought it would be implicit that they would have a full squadron at their command including support units :P

ORCACommander wrote:

mm Nova bombs. Did not know those were in the imperial inventory. that is the big problem with SW. so much expanded universe its kinda impossible to keep track of how much tech there is.

It was an Imperial super-weapon. If we're giving Thrawn no limits beyond "Imperial technology" and "smaller than an Imperial-II class Star Destroyer," they count. And frankly, Thrawn would be a wiser man than the idiots who built it into a highly unique [i]starfighter[/i]: He'd distribute the damn things amongst his capital ship's ordnance stores.

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And I said fleet admirals for a reason. I thought it would be implicit that they would have a full squadron at their command including support units :P

Aye, but it's the Star Wars EU. With only the restraints "Imperial tech" and "Nothing larger than an ImpStar Deuce," That can be mined for a [i]lot[/i] of nifty ships and ordnance. Like nova bombs, TIE Phantoms, and TIE Defenders. Arguably Torpedo Spheres, depending upon which measurement you're going by, both for the sphere and the Impstar II. I also have to wonder how good the Honorverse's personal combat tech is, because when they're not being made into clowns by ewoks and Jedi Knights, Imperial Stormtroopers are actually kind of badass. All the fleet combat capability in the galaxy does you no good if the other guy can hyperspace in to knife-fighting ranges, collapse your shields with a fast broadside (or worse, get there before you know you need to have shields up,) and suddenly you've got boarding pods full of stormtroopers and war-droids flooding your decks.

ORCACommander wrote:

eru i would say SW stealth systems are very sophisticated since they can also hide from visual

Which would be an impressive boon, if anybody outside of the SW universe used [i]visual[/i] for space combat.

ORCACommander wrote:

Actually weber has made it a point of how completely ineffective point defense is once there is no drive emissions to track so apart from EW sheriden's nukes would hit every single time and nuclear ordnance is pretty damned effective at burning out sidewall generators

The only times I can recall this being relevant were surprise attacks, and the missiles had additional stealth systems. Plain old nuke with no stealth and a big-ass chemical rocket? If Honorverse crews are looking for them, they'll find them. Maybe at a closer range than they'd prefer, but their piddling speed combined with the fact that they're contact nukes should still make it a trifling task for the laser clusters. (And even if not, once Honor's ships picked up that there were inbound chem-rocket nukes, if the PD solutions are too tricky, the ships could always just move out of the missile's engagement envelope. Remember, everything else is ridiculously slow in comparison to Honorverse ships.)

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

when they're not being made into clowns by ewoks and Jedi Knights, Imperial Stormtroopers are actually kind of badass

Leaving the mystical superbeings aside, losing to ewoks is [i]pretty fucking embarrassing[/i]. On Basalisk Station (The first Honorverse book) features a similar situation--A small number of marines and planetary security against a very, very large number of angry natives. It did not go the way of Endor.

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All the fleet combat capability in the galaxy does you no good if the other guy can hyperspace in to knife-fighting ranges, collapse your shields with a fast broadside (or worse, get there before you know you need to have shields up,) and suddenly you've got boarding pods full of stormtroopers and war-droids flooding your decks.

I didn't think SW microjumping was that precise? I seem to recall Thrawn having to specifically use Interdictors to allow other ships that level of precision in their microjumps. Even so, if sidewalls are up, I don't think Thrawn's broadsides would bring them down. IIRC, they are a sort of probabilistic passive defense. Individual attacks might get through, but the sidewall as a whole is going to remain up in most cases (Direct hit from a nuclear or shot to the sidewall generator aside). Even if not, Honor can just roll ship, and if Thrawn's ship is in SW knife-fighting range... That could end very, very badly for them.

MAD Crab, Bibliophile specifically stated that it wasn't a death-match between Buffy, Harry and Mercy. It was a body count competition; IE, who can rack up the most bloodsuckers permanently annihilated before sun-up.

i dunno if we take out the need to hold back collateral damage dresden could go on a very nice rampage. Anyone else remember when she took out bianca's court?

Yeah, thinking about it adding the Scoobies is just going to escalate things, and quickly. Best to stick to the original scenario. Speaking of escalating quickly: Cheradenine Zakalwe vs. Takeshi Kovacs Takeshi is a mercenary fighting for the U.N. Protectorate against a rebellious colony. Zak is, of course, the ringer sent in by the Culture to make sure that rebellion ends in the Culture's favor. Both have a squad of highly trained soldiers backing them. Both have equiv tech (The Culture is trying to stay clean, as usual), both can scrounge equipment from their respective forces. The Scenario starts planet side in squad level combat but can go just about anywhere from there.