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TITAN Warmachines

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Fri, 2011-06-24 22:58

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

TITAN Warmachines

The titan killbots and headhunters are a bit too static to me. I see TITAN warmachines as more of an adaptable and "creepily" strong machine to fight. Something like Megatron from Transformers would be perfect seeing as nanotech can act like Robotech and allow a machine to transform itself into essentially anything from flying machine to submarine. I keep my TITANs like this, though I do have some static models, as machines go. I'm looking for some more input on TITAN warmachines, what do all of you have out there?

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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Sat, 2011-06-25 18:27

Tango

Re: TITAN Warmachines

In my mind titan machines are very asymetric both in shape and function. The new xcom game has pretty cool designs: [img]http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2010/04/xcom-announce-screen-... [img]http://www.gameon.co.uk/game-gallery/albums/images/games/x/xcom/standard... [img]http://www.gameon.co.uk/game-gallery/albums/images/games/x/xcom/standard... I feel that players should never have idea what to expect when facing titan machines (except death if they decided to hole in). Encounters with titan hardware should be bizarre & creepy a'la call of cthulhu and there should be a sense of urgency to gtfo before they notice you and call in reinforcements. My titan bots? Well, my players havent met any yet, but when it happens , its going to be something like in the images above.

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- "Mom's chicken soup, maybe?"

Sun, 2011-06-26 11:13

Galactophage Galactophage's picture

Re: TITAN Warmachines

A nice creepy concept: TITAN war machines are not so much manufactured or grown as much as "evolved." Each carries onboard nanotech able to not only self repair it, but adjust/modify it for future encounters. The PCs take it down with an EMP weapon? Perhaps it shows up hardened against such attacks afterwards and follows them... Maybe they use a ballistic weapons? It's now armored against it. All of these make them harder to destroy for good, and provide asymmetric, unique designs based on an original 'template.' For even more fun, give each the ability to infect any nearby networks with the Exsurgent virus or maybe even fragments of TITAN code to bootstrap another AGI to seed AI status. Of course, acquiring such a TITAN warbot "template" would be something plenty of hypercorps and other parties would pay handsomely for.

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"Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est."

Sun, 2011-06-26 17:30

petros

Re: TITAN Warmachines

I see it like this; The TITANs left behind two kinds of thing. Either AGI that was always intended to be nothing more than a simple machine, very advanced, but never recursive, or Seed AI that hit a dead end and could not be repaired, and so is full of absurd obsessions and weird blindspots. And, of course, the machinery that goes along with these things. Dealing with the basic killbots is fairly straightforward. They are 'just' very advanced AGI inside a very advanced killing machine. They may be very adaptive, but they are also very limited. They were set to patrol an area, or to attack a target, and they just kept doing it when the TITANs left. They are capable of repairing themselves, making strategies, and communicating with each other and with exsurgents, but at the end of the day they are just machines. The broken Seed AI are somewhat different. They are the TITAN equivalent of something between vapors and ex-humans, and they are loaded with TITAN grade insanity. They get some mad idea in their head, and they apply their insane reasoning in achieving it. Maybe one of them wants to send a message to the people on Luna, and so they gather as many exsurgents and killbots as they can to spell it out in a physical string of letters each a kilometre in size. Another one decided deeper was safer, and so dug down as far as it could to the core, developing heat dissipating technology beyond anything transhumanity could imagine just trying to get to the center of the earth. Some of them have projects like this, while others just sit and wait for someone to come and talk to them, or for the TITANs to return. The latter are highly effective enemies, but they always have a weak spot. They can order around any killbots or exsurgents they can get a hold of, and even make more of them if they like. Only another broken Seed AI can really challenge them.

Sun, 2011-06-26 18:31

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: TITAN Warmachines

I would just make up a suitably creepy or unusual description, and use the relevant stats for the function. So a multipurpose builder might be based on the fractal, but I would describing it as a metal anemone of writhing "liquid metal" tentacles. A headhunter might look like a very thin and fragile geometric diagram, yet show surprising strength when hit and smelling intensely like liquorice. Simple war machines are likely simple to grow: fractal, organic patterns. The ones that are built in factories can look like ordinary tech. More advanced are strangely shaped, for reasons no human will ever fathom - maybe it is TITAN aesthetics, maybe there is a very good reason why the killbot has a fish scale pattern and long tendrils with thin needles. Or maybe the creator was just nuts.

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