Transformers: Steel Reign

[LadyTevar]

Do y'all grasp the chain of command? Cause if you don't I have an actual fucking chain I can beat you with until you do.

Geee... so Breakout can ignore Prime's orders, but Crimson better not disobey Breakout?

Nah..... no double-standard there, what makes me think that...

[frigidmagi]

Oh bullshit. I was ordered to find the damn assassin and operated on that order.

[LadyTevar]

You were ordered to search the ENGINEERING Section... and you head to the Nosecone, ordering lights on all the way.

You're no better than I am.

[frigidmagi]

You were ordered to search the ENGINEERING Section... and you head to the Nosecone, ordering lights on all the way.

No, we picked the assassin trail and followed it. Find the assassin was part of our orders. You'll also note when Prime said stop I didn't bitch like a 12 year old I reported what we had and waited for orders.

You're no better than I am.

1: I am playing a front line combat mech paired with a combat mech that kills heavily armored opponents as a routine thing. You are playing an underarmed scout. You looking for the assassin is like a 5 year old hunting for a tiger with a stick, it's cute but only when there's no chance of the kid actually finding the tiger

2: In a military operation the overriding order (I.E find the fucking assassin bot) is more important then what would be called placement orders (go stand in engineering). We were attempting to complete the mission, you were going half cocked on a suicide cruise.

3: Breakout is trying to keep Crimson alive. Despite her own best efforts to the countary.

4: You're trying to tool around on some personal thing. Breakout does have personal reasons for wanting the mech dead but he understands that personal is not the same as important. Deathstrike and him are among the two best suited to find and fight him.

[Dark Silver]

At the moment I have two problems.



Cynical - why the fuck does everything attempt, Deathstrike see right through it? Are you intentionally trying to piss me off and see how far I'm going to let it go?

Seriously, you won't let one of your players put up with it, so tell me why the fuck should I let you do it? Answer me that.



The second thing, apparently some of you think I'm nerfing you in the game. The matter comes up, if you beleive I am harming the progress of the game by what is happening, then inform me. If enough of you feel that way, then I will step down as GM and allow someone else to take over.

That is all.

[frigidmagi]

Why is it we can get direct hits on NPCs and it doesn't even slow them down? No Havoc that's not directed at you, it's been consistent through out the game.

[rhoenix]

The second thing, apparently some of you think I'm nerfing you in the game. The matter comes up, if you beleive I am harming the progress of the game by what is happening, then inform me. If enough of you feel that way, then I will step down as GM and allow someone else to take over.

I do think the PC's are nerfed to an extent, but not horribly on a per-character basis. However, the fact that the Autobots are so horribly outnumbered does make that disparity more painful.

It's not something I'd mind so much if the power levels of the Autobots and of the Decepticons were more even on a per-character basis, as the underlying theme of most good stories is that the heroes overcome overwhelming odds and save the day.

As for you being GM, I would not ask you to step down. If you feel it would help you though, the most I'd suggest is nominating someone to become an Assistant GM to you. I'm not sure there should be a vote for this assistant, as this person and you must feel comfortable with one another, communicate well, and hatch plots together well; if you and the person chosen by a vote don't get along, don't communicate well, and/or don't plot together well, then the attempted "cure" for the game ends up being far worse than the disease, thereby killing the game.

The game dying is not what I want, despite my character nearly dying.

(EDIT: added the bit about epic stories)

[Dark Silver]

There has also been very few to no times I've ever stated crippling damage by a single hit to a PC target either frigid, so if I keep the power level low, involving PC combat, it's pretty much standard in all respects.

Hell, even Reaper's shot on Deathstrike (which Cynical decided the damage himself on) wasn't on my call, and was fixed within a few seconds.

The only time you see "one hit kill", or a permanant deactivation occuring so far, is when it involves two or more NPC's going against each other, who also happen to be more powerful than the PC's and most other NPC's - or in other situations where it's for more dramatic flare. Well, I take that back, you PC's have done a few good kills yourselves, fuck, the PC's took down two powerful Decepticon Gestaults, one of the most powerful Decepticon Triple Changers on the planet, and severaly injured Chimera on your first go. You killed Shockwave in the battle of Fort Maximal, with no telling how many other NPC's, and took back a Decepticon base.


And Cat knew, when he shot, he wasn't gutting Reaper. For fucks sake, Megatron's own gun doesn't one hit most TF's (aside from the one hit kills we see in the Autobot shuttle in the 1986 movie), and NONE of you have that level of firepower, baring Breachload). At the very least, you cannot tell me I'm putting the odds so uneven that it's unwinnable for the party.

But as I stated, if you have that players have that much of a problem with me as a GM, I will step down and you can let someone else pick up from here.

[SirNitram]

The only one-hits I recall were Galvatron v. Starscream, Unicron vs. Starscream...

I'm sensing a pattern here, gimme a sec...

[Dark Silver]

pretty much how it went.

Galvatron and Unicron where the only two who made one hit kills, I think Brawn may have bite it with one hit from Megatron's pistol mode on the shuttle...but then again, Brawn was a teeny bot being hit by the firepower of a Leader class....

[LadyTevar]

Is it just me, or did this Nerfing argument show up before?

Like ... during the first battle of Fort Maximal (where Overload was melted overcoming 2 combiners)?
Or the second battle of Fort Maximal (where we were getting waves of cannon fodder, and Overload got blown up killing Shockwave)?

Funny.. in both cases where people complained about nerfing and not hitting and how the NPCS were impossible to take down, IT WAS NEVER THE PLAYER WHO HAD HIS CHARACTER REBUILT FROM GROUND UP. He took it in stride and had a lot of fun RPing the new scene. No, it was the Other Players, who rolled with their hits and kept going, who were bitching that the NPCs would get hit but keep on going ... But wait, isn't that what the Players were doing?

Goose and Gander, gents. As a great GM I played under told my gaming group "if you play that way, so will the NPCS." So far, the NPCs are taking hits just like the players are. Nothing that says Nerfing to me ... unless someone's got the idea that ONLY players should be able to take the licking and keep ticking.

Now... this argument has not only gotten our GM upset, but it got my husband upset when he was caught in the middle of the argument between A Player and the GM, and it got me upset when I came home from work to find my stressed out husband was ready to shot the next person who spoke of the Transformers Game. So, now KittyKat is Not Happy. In fact, if you people lived closer, and the GM would actually tell me the names instead of making me take good guesses (eyes the two transformers currently after Reaper), this little KittyKat would be in player's faces right now, sharping my claws on your worthless hides.

If you think the game's nerfed, then fuckin' QUIT. Stop ruining my fun and Nitram's fun. Yes, certain players have great min/maxed powergamed characters on here. That doesn't mean that the NPCs aren't equally powergamed, just to Give You A Challenge. Or did certain players forget that's what a GM's job is. Nit and I haven't forgotten, and up until this little bitchfit came along, we've been enjoying ourselves. If those throwing royal fits want to quit, well... don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

[General Havoc]

I try to do as I am told with Reaper. I was instructed to make him more powerful than I ordinarily would, and to evade at all costs. I did so. My understanding was that Deathstrike and Breakout fired at an indistinct mass of heat , and thus got only a couple of glancing strikes on non-essential systems. He's a heavily armored warbot, and has the capacity to take a fair amount punishment without going offline. My understanding is that all throughout this game, Transformers in general (Hornet being the perennial exception) are pretty hard to take out. Reaper put fifty missiles into Blindside's position (granted, he was sort of spraying), and didn't slow Blindside down at all... even with direct hits in mid-air. I'm not at all objecting to that (I'm the last person who gets to object to the outcome of THAT fight), but I have taken that, and other things that have happened both to PCs and to NPCs as a means of determining what the results of attacks on Reaper are. It's an estimating game.

I don't think at all that anyone's been nerfed (save Hornet, and that intentionally). You guys divined Reaper's position based on the fact that an active volcano had seismic activity. You evaded every attempt he made to obfuscate himself, via the heat exchange, the steam cloud, and even him getting on the radio to make your lives more difficult (it was a long shot, yes, but I had to try!) You then caught him, drove him off with a barrage of fire, and damaged him with a lucky shot without a visual sighting while diving to the floor, and for no damage received yourselves save a minor sensor hiccup. Given what happened to Stryke and to Blindside... I think you guys are doing okay.

Plus, Tev isn't wrong. The people who have the most to complain about in terms of relative power levels (Overload, Stryke, Blindside), are not doing so. Granted, I play Hornet, who is sort of a weird case, and that gives me a weird perspective, but given that they seem all right with what's been happening (to an extent), I don't see a problem with Reaper not dying outright to a few shots from Breakout and Deathstrike.

Power levels are relative, not absolute. Compare what the big beefy PC Autobots have done with the actions of comparable NPCs, and with those of the PCs that by all rights should NOT be as mighty as their fellows. I think you'll find it's actually a pretty even progression.

[Cynical Cat]

Who asked for one hit kills? I didn't. NPCs are doing one shot drops though, NPCs who aren't scoring direct hits with armour piercing missiles or packing heavy cannons. I don't think its unreasonable for Deathstrike's hits to seriously hurt most 'bots.

Deathstrike doesn't see through everything. He is, on the other hand, pretty good about putting things together once he has enough data available. On things like why the fuck Sixshot took out Hornet and didn't even fire at Deathstrike, he's just got guesses.

Reaper is able to drop PCs without scoring a direct hit with an missile volley. He's able to one hit cripple PCs with his gun and most of his wanktastic abilities are melee. I score a direct hit on an NPC with an shaped armour piercer and I score minor damage.

I miss easy shots. I have two bursts of weapons fire at Reaper, starting when he's a stationary target at close range and I know exactly where he is, and I manage one hit with a character who is a good shot under good conditions. He has no cover, he's in a corridor and can't do much dodging. He's firing back wildly and I posted taking hits from his weapon. Hell, I took more hits than he took, despite being in a situation where I should have laid out a serious beating.

As for divining Reaper's position in the volcano while digging, TELETRAN-1 did that in the cartoons with the Constructicons. So yeah, I'm using precident for that one.

[Cynical Cat]

An air ventilation system big enough to accomodate a big robot? WTF?

[frigidmagi]

one of the most powerful Decepticon Triple Changers on the planet,

After he swallowed almost a dozen anti armor missiles and smiled. Which tells me the missiles are damn near useless.

and severaly injured Chimera on your first go.

It was half the party and a bunch of NPCs.

You killed Shockwave in the battle of Fort Maximal,

No we didn't he blew himself up. And when a PC has to annilate himself to get an NPC kill... Oh wait that was Nitram, he's had to do it twice!


We had NPC one hit kill Autobots, even when they're not warmachines. Meanwhile the guys who are suppose to be brutes can't do much besides kill cheap Chinese knockoffs.

Come on DS, let us be as badass as the NPCs we're suppose to be able to beat at least.

[Cynical Cat]

A


Cynical - why the fuck does everything attempt, Deathstrike see right through it? Are you intentionally trying to piss me off and see how far I'm going to let it go?

Seriously, you won't let one of your players put up with it, so tell me why the fuck should I let you do it? Answer me that.

My players are supposed to do this kind of stuff. Do you know how often my players don't pick up on clues and put them together? Of course I'm a clue dropper. The latest part of my IK adventure was specifically about the players doing exactly what Deathstrike did, find the bad guys who are in hiding. And do you know what? If they hadn't, they would have been royally fucked because he's reacting to counter how the players drove him off the first time and he has his top grade minions with him. Now they have the advantage of surprise against a powerful foe (instead of the reverse) and his first grade, non canon fodder minions.

[General Havoc]

This is REALLY not something I should be arguing, as I take my orders for Reaper's actions direct from DS, however I think the above statement was telling...

Reaper is able to drop PCs without scoring a direct hit with an missile volley.

The point there is that despite a volley of fifty missiles at point blank range, Reaper missed with every single one (either that, or the missiles he did hit with did no effect whatsoever). The only target he reliably hit with his missiles was Stryke, who was laying motionless on the ground, having taken repeated (check back, it wasn't one shot, it was many) blasts direct to the face from an energon scrambler, shots he was able to get off because he happened to jump Stryke by surprise in melee range, and use the fact that he significantly outmassed Stryke to force him down, and even so, Stryke managed to completely spoil Reaper's entire plan by blasting away with artillery cannons and alerting everyone. I've made it abundantly clear that Reaper would be utterly thrashed by you two if he stands and fights. That is the precise reason he is not doing so.

And lest anyone think I'm complaining, in my view, all of the above is fine! Even if Reaper were my PC, I would have no objections to it whatsoever (Stryke and Blindside may beg to differ, but that's their call). Missiles miss sometimes. Plans go awry. Bad things happen. People don't react in the way one anticipated.

Moreover, every attempt Reaper has made to conceal his presence or his exact location through evasion, deception or whatnot failed, just because you said so. Every attempt he made to throw you off his trail failed, just because you said so. Every attempt he has thus far made to simply drop everything and escape has failed, just because you said so, and now you guys are annoyed that you missed a shot? Hell, Reaper missed every shot he made against Blindside (again, if I mis-understood how that went down, my apologies). He's doing nothing here but trying to escape, not trying to stop and kill people, not trying to do anything else. I'm sorry, but coming atop the six consecutive feats of mind-reading that you guys performed in finding him in the first place, the fact that what you were trying to make was not an easy shot by any means, nor even close, the fact that even so you hit him with glancing shots, and forced him to basically turn and run...

I dunno, I'm just not too sympathetic to claims that of all the PCs in the game it's you two that are somehow being discriminated against. Cynical Cat, you mentioned that little tangle with Sixshot before. I'll remind you of what resulted from that fight? You beat Sixshot's head in, and Hornet wound up with holes drilled through him and shot down, alive only thanks to Overload's intervention. As I recall (and I could be wrong), Sixshot failed to score a single hit on you (that MIGHT be because he failed to fire a single shot at you, I'm not sure). You shot him down while remaining unscathed yourself, blew him flatly to pieces, and then screamed bloody murder because you hadn't actually killed him. Forgive me... but which one of us was at that point lying in pieces patching themselves together with duct tape?

Black Ice disabled Hornet with a single shot from his energon scrambler, did the same to Crimson, and then nearly tore Hornet limb from limb with monofiliament. Blindside got blindsided (forgive the pun) by his own autocannons and torn to ribbons, Overload has been disabled after every single battle and had to switch to a new protoform many times. Stryke got hit with an extremely dirty trick by Reaper (sorry about that, I was only following orders!), blown up while unconscious and unable to defend himself. None of these people appear to consider themselves put upon by the vexations of an unfair GM (or at least haven't done so publically). I admit, I don't remember if there were any instances of you guys getting torched that badly, but I don't think there were, and yet every time one of your shots merely fails to be lethal, we wind up in here having this same old fight.

Anyhow, I can't speak to the ventilation thing or anything else about the Reaper-posts, because I'm simply doing as DS tells me to do, and putting his instructions in my own words, and thus I have no idea how the ventilation chamber is constructed or whatnot, but merely that this is what I am to have Reaper do, so for answers on that, you'll have to speak to DS, but just speaking as a player, I don't think anyone's being at all unreasonable to you guys. You're both by far the most potent of the PCs so far (with the potential exception of Shellshock), and have been acting like it, and that's fine, in fact that's probably how it ought to be. You guys just happened to predict exactly what Reaper was doing every time, and that was allowed to slide. Don't start claiming now that you should be allowed to profit by that by killing at will. DS has been clear enough that your weapons are not supposed to be as lethal as either of you are making them out to be.

I really really really think that you guys are overstating your cases here. I may be biased or ill-informed or whatnot, but I don't think you're at all put upon, and certainly no more than the rest of us. Moreover I don't think the rest of us are all that put upon, given some of the GM tricks it has been my displeasure to meet with (and even use) over the years.

[Cynical Cat]

A fifty missile alpha strike in one post and not having to score a hit and you still take out a PC. I wonder what would happen if I tried to post a fifty missile alpha strike on Reaper? No I don't. It wouldn't be permitted and even if I did hit, he would still be moving easily.

Reaper's attempts to conceal himself have failed because I'm smart enough to figure out ways of detecting him.

Did I know he was in the lava bath? No. I did suspect as it was the only place to hide close by.

TELETRAN-1 can detect digging, so I called upon it. In the cartoons, it was quite capable of detecting digging and dispatching the Dinobots to go kick ass on the diggers without prompting from anyone. I asked less than that.

Detecting heat disturbances is easy and after a long bath in 2000 degree lava, that means Reaper is carrying a giant thermal sign saying "I am here" and "I was just here a minute ago." Easy to track.

Cooling down with the coolant leak was a good idea. Hiding for longer to lose the rest of the heat would have been even smarter.

That has nothing to do with "my say so" and everything to do with simple physics and the universe's backstory. Stop being such a whiny bitch about it. It's not my fault if you forgot about that capability of TELETRAN-1 or high school physics is beyond you. If DS didn't grossly favor Decepticon PCs, Reaper would be already be dead. You entered the Ark when it was at full alert. You should have been caught long ago.

As for the shooting. Reaper was stationary. In a corridor. At close range. Detected. By a skilled warrior with a big fucking gun. Easy. I was firing max power, needle beam. Specifically sacrificing damage to burn through armour. And you ignored, not even bothered to acknowledge the existence of, one post of being shot at at close range. So go fuck yourself.

Nice distortion about Sixshot by the way. I screamed bloody murder because I had him lined up for easy shots and then magically missed. So I posted a hit and then bitched about what continues to be the case, that those of us who are playing heavily armed skilled warriors are hit with a nerf bat while NPCs get to run around and one post fry people.

[Cynical Cat]

A ship built by robots on a planet of robots for robots will not giant airducts. It doesn't even have a reason to have tiny airducts. They don't breath.

[Cynical Cat]

Stop being such a whiny bitch about it.

Ahem...

"WAH! MY CHARACTER IS UNDERPOWERED! WAH! I WASN'T ALLOWED TO KILL SIXSHOT INSTANTLY! THE GM HATES ME! WAH!!! WAH!!! WAH!!!"

Beautiful strawman you've erected there. I've never asked for a instant kill. Reaper's gotten instant kills. I posted the character idea of a powerful, skilled, intelligent warrior. This was okayed. But I'm not allowed to play one.

I took one gun to a Seeker's pair because I wanted that one gun to be hard hitting.

I sacrificed maneuverability for armour and raw power, leaving me in a disadvantage versus other fliers.

I took no special powers and I took weaknesses because I was asking a lot.

I wouldn't mind getting jumped and outmaneuvered by Seekers. I don't mind getting my ass handed to me hand to hand by Chimera. I don't mind being dropped by Sixshot (If he had bothered to shoot me).

I do mind missing easy shots. I do mind my single gun doing not much damage at max power. I do mind missing and missing and scoring minor hits on bots that are not extraordinarily tough. I do mind fucking Gridlock frying NPCs in one post with a gun and and people taking minor damage from my cannon. I do mind my heavy missiles doing unspectacular damage when they hit and NPCs kicking ass with theirs.

So I'm resigning from the game, at least temporarily. I'm pissed enough that my judgment might be subject and so I will hold out a small thread in case I change my mind in say 24 hours.

[Dark Silver]

It's miss worded, it's maintenance shafts, not ventilation shafts. Apparently Havoc misunderstood me on that.


If you want to leave the thread, that's your prerogative, I will not beg you to stay.

[SirNitram]

Apparently, I have the wrong view of power levels in this, since Overload is supposed to be awesome at one thing(Hand to hand) to the point of being unarmed in vehicle mode, unable to fight at range effectively, and having a survivability rating around Wazpinator's, while not having a martial art or any special powers.

Meh. Whatever.

[Dark Silver]

From now on - short of being around a fully operation TELETRAN-1, no one knows where the hell everyone is at all times. And the only reason you can do that around TELETRAN, is because the Ark's internal sensors will be keeping track of the Autobots there.

When Sensors are down (like now) you lose the ability to track your fellow Autobots within the Ark.


We're now transitioning into a more grim world and stark world.

[SirNitram]

We're now transitioning into a more grim world and stark world.

The potential obliteration of the human race and mechaforming of the planet was enough angsting 'grimness' for me, frankly.

[LadyTevar]

So I'm resigning from the game, at least temporarily. I'm pissed enough that my judgment might be subject and so I will hold out a small thread in case I change my mind in say 24 hours.

I'll miss you, but if you're not having fun, I understand. :sad: