Lurkily

I'm glad you like it! /r/WritingPrompts is a good subreddit fior that. It's handy for reminding you that there's still some magic in you, when you doubt.

This is one of those rare ones I was really happy with. It just worked. Period. I liked the intensity it picked up, I thought that I was able to convey disorientation and panic without resorting to cheap tricks. This one made me happy. In response to the prompt: "In the future, to pass college you no longer must pass written finals. Instead, you are simply dropped into a real-life scenario related to your major, and left to fend for yourself with your new found knowledge." Trial By Engine Failure I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t studying to be a doctor, after all. I didn’t get a degree in Emergency Management. I was an engineer. How bad could this be? I stepped up to the chair, and seated myself, as the doctor droned on. “As part of your graduation exam, you will be placed in a real-life scenario requiring the use of your skills. To do this, you will be transited to an alternate universe briefly. Be advised that there will be consequences to your activities there. Your placement will branch into a new parallel universe, and the people there will go forward dealing with the consequences of your performance. Do you understand?” The doctor paused for a precise moment, then began speaking again. He’d given this speech a lot, it seemed. “While there, you may be exposed to stressful events. Be advised that any extremes of stress that may threaten your health will return you from your presence there, and a re-examination will be required. You will not . . . .” He droned on, and on. I had stopped listening at this point, waiting for it to be over so I could build a clock or repair a generator, or maybe design some primitive waterwheel. The doctor cleared his throat. I looked up, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat the last sentence?” “Do you agree to the terms and conditions as detailed?” His eyes fixed on me, disapproving. He knew I hadn’t listened to a word. “I do.” Then an impact made my head ring like a bell. Gunfire was all around me, and I hit the ground. I touched my head – my helmet – and took it off. Blessedly cool air touched my scalp, and I realized that under the helmet and body armor I was sweltering. There was a groove carved into the helmet, and at the end of that groove, a hole in the metal. A burning pain swelled over my right ear, and wetness was dripping on my shoulder. This . . . was a military helmet. With blood on it. My blood. I looked around, and soldiers were taking cover all around me in the tall grass, firing into the trees. Something whined inches from my face, and sweat-sodden fragments of my own hair fell onto my nose. Someone snatched my helmet, and slapped it down on my head – it caused a burst of pain that blurred my vision. “That helmet just saved your life, soldier! Take it off again, and I’ll kick your ass myself! Now get on the tank! If we can’t get that gun up then we are dog meat!” His voice carried such command and authority that it caught me and carried me. I didn’t even know him, but . . . he inspired me, a little. It drove home the urgency of my situation, and I scrambled up and toward the tank. As I climbed up the side of the hulking mass, my hands burning from the sun-baked metal, knowledge – the knowledge possessed by the man I was standing in for – bloomed in my mind. The model of the tank, the engine, the construction, I even thought I knew what was wrong with it. I dropped into the tank, opening the engine compartment, working quickly to confirm my thoughts. I grabbed the fire extinguisher, cutting tubing off of it to replace a burst hose – thank god for duct tape – and began disassembling my sidearm, stripping the spring that drew the hammer down; with that, I worked to fix the broken linkage. There. I tried to start the tank again, then I tried again while simultaneously kicking the engine. Suddenly the beast roared to life. I heard a cheer from outside, and someone else dropped in, frantically working levers. The whole beast rocked as the main gun fired. I was back in a chair, confused and disoriented. “You’re back at school. Are you okay? We registered a lot of stress, but not enough to pull you.” I touched my head to take off the helmet. My hand encountered hair instead of cropped fuzz, and no blood, no pain. “Where is my rifle?” The doctor raised a brow but seemed to understand at once. “Take it easy. You’re back at school, taking your exam. There’s no rifle. There’s no war, no danger. You passed.” As the cloud of another man’s knowledge dissipated, so did my fog. I looked up, my past and my soul becoming coherent once more. “I’m here. I’m back. You said I passed, right?” “You passed.” I stood up, stepping away from the chair, shivering in the cool air, after the sweltering heat. I must have been sweating here, but while I had been aware of heat, the sweat made the air conditioned room chilly. “If there’s nothing else, I’d like to leave.” The doctor nodded, and I left the examination room. A left turn out of the waiting room, another left into the hall, and straight on until I reached the doors. The summer warmth wasn’t as warm as I had been during the exam, but at least I wasn’t cold anymore. I went to lean against a wall, but first reached up for something, and found only my shirt. I realized I had been trying to tug the strap of the rifle on my shoulder, to shift its position so I could lean back. It had been a vivid trip, and the man I’d shared space with had been strong. It seemed some of his habits had rubbed off on me. I had never wanted to own a gun, but I realized I was already considering visiting a shooting range. I vividly remembered stripping a pistol to pieces to get at a spring, and thought about the construction of the weapon. The other man’s knowledge was fading, but I remembered what I saw, and my engineer’s mind questioned the design, the inefficiencies. I saw ways to strengthen, thus lighten the barrel. They said that people sometimes found their calling in the exam; I thought such an idea was silly. You are who you are. But perhaps, by mere chance, it had helped me stumble upon something I’d enjoy. “Nathan Young, Gunsmith.” Then I blushed, as somebody passing into the school glanced at me, catching me talking to myself. I thought about how the words sounded, though, and imagined myself with a workshop and a range. I think I liked the idea.

Maybe try offsetting the upper or lower legs both left or right; not enough to change the look too much, but just to damage its symmetry. Also, find a spot or two (probably near that crossbar) to cut a triangle or two out and offset it, fragment it a bit.

When I hear Red Vs Blue, a different fiction comes to mind.

I like it. The "Y" and "H" dissatisfy me a bit, now that I look at it critically. Y is a bit too spindly to match. Maybe slim the H, or distort it from a typical shape the way the stock "A" does, or frag"ment it like the "N" and "M". Aside from line thicknesses, the trianges the "K" uses are a bit on the large side.I didn't have a problem with the difference between "Q" and "O". I think the biggest issue, though, is that this font size won't do it justice. I think this is a font that really only shows its colors at large size.

I'm in favor of additional thruster and propulsion options, but I'd like additions to be kept simple and elemental. Some have suggested thrusters working better in thicker atmosphere, or in hot or cold. I'd be in favor of simple things like a thruster that gains strength in proximity to terrain (which aside from hover would have application in cave maneuvers and racing) but that's also something that's possible with current tools. (Not easily, it would require multiple sensors just to judge distance and logic to make sense of the input.) Hmm. Gears are turning. To get back on subject, I'm not sure I like the idea of giving players a ready made "plug this in to hover" package, but I'm beginning to get some ideas about how to make customized and smart components that must be designed. Keep the reward for designing well, but also enable advanced components. I need to think.

Ow! How can I be so dang carele--OW, GOD DANGED MOTHER HECKING SON OF A BEETLE!

Everybody was kung-fu fighting Those cats were fast as lightning In fact it was a little bit frightening But they pounced with expert timing They were funky Dragon Li's from funky Chinatown They were clawing them up and they were clawing them down It's an ancient Chinese art and everybody knew their part From a feint into a slip, and slashing from the hip....

Like I said, I'm perfectly open for ways to let us engineer more compact subdrones, and I'm not a dev, so don't take my word as any kind of authority. I'm just not a fan of complex and intelligent prefabs. The game is about engineering, largely, and prefabs take some of that ability away, and by extension take away part of the reward we can provide the player for succeeding. We have the tools for complex and intelligent drones. If we need complex and intelligent minidrones, let's make tools suitable to building those, too.

There's nothing stopping you from dropping that quickly. Use a detector to find terrain, extremely close range to your turret. Fly down, jam it on the ground, use logic to fire a moment of bio weapons and decouple. Logic can give you very complex behaviors, if you let it.

Yes, but prefab construction undermines the core design tenets that seem to be in play - provide very simple tools to enable very powerful and complex behavior. This is just a freebie toy handed out that you can't design, can't repurpose, can't program or make smarter, and that won't be rewarding to successfully design.

Look, you have a lot of ideas, and they sound like a lot of fun, don't get me wrong. They just don't sound a lot like Nimbatus.

Planning and engineering successfully is half the point of the game.

Design is part of where they're trying to build the fun. Autonomous combat drones are quite possible, (though complex, as they should be,) so I'm not sure why we'd want to resort to prefab drones. I'd be perfectly happy with options to make smaller non-prefab subdrones and missiles, though.

You can manually handle it with a laser, or drop a construct with a couple of Flamers on each side with zero speed (so particles spread all directions) with a logic timer to fire for only a short time.

Use a downward facing directional sensor to fire thrusters, set to trigger on 'terrain'.

There is a search tool on the site that can help you find ideas. Because this forum is also a tracker for recording idea popularity and completion, we're more regimented about merging similar ideas.

This is achievable with current tools.

Merged a wheel suggestion in.

This is in the dev roadmap.

Try using a bio weapon, maybe?

Moved anchor blocks in with sticky blocks, as they seem to want the same things.

Why not build your own deployables on a factory, with your own design?

Merged three feature requests basically wanting the same thing.

Ah, smutty fan fiction. It's like the junk food of authorship.