King's Domain Weapon Review

Damage 35, Speed 98, Splash 5%, Fork 5% Minimum level 9

Limited quantities for this missile weapon give it more appeal. Not everyone will have one of these in their formation. The combination of both splash and fork will put a crimp in your opponents day. Not as slow as the crystal missiles, this weapon will give you the edge with 98 speed backing up the 35 damage. If you are a low level pilot, this is a weapon to buy if you still need to fill in your missile mechas. At 17 niodes each, they are affordable and you get a discount when you buy them in bulk. It's only here for a short time so think fast!










Submitted by Kristopher Fleet #138130

Synth Bacon Is Not Murder! You Dorks

The other night in a Cogwerk Port bar I was trying to futilely explain to an activist from BAT SHIT that blowing up the kosher pork reserves on New Zion was idiotic. It failed to register the brainwashed dolt that kosher bacon is not actual pork, but simply dyed beef that has been chemically treated to look like pork.  I tried to pay him no mind and was doing my best to concentrate on what most bar patrons do (which is get themselves hammered) when this guy has the gumption to... he starts preaching at me some nonsense that synth pigs had feelings too?! I would have written it off you know, continuing to stare into my Vitridian Elixer except for that after final drink was called at last hour by the bartender (cute buxom gal by the name of Sal with hair that has frosted tips that remind everybody of the colors of a Niode), this guy and some of those other creeps blew up a shipment of sausages I was being paid to help escort by a meat supplier.

I could tell they were the container the merchant had asked me to guard as the bits of meat splattered and squished against the bar windows in a greasy torrential downpour.  The meat which my services as a Samurai Mecha member had been commissioned to help transport. To an orphanage full of poor little rich kids on Rispa. This was my assignment, my job Dammit.  I paid the barkeep, got my coat, gun and sword and was buckling everything where it belonged.  She asked me if this was going to be another messy one and to please not break windows like last time. I said she knew I couldn't promise that if mecha were involved but I'd try not to.  So I was on my way out of the bar to inspect the damages when those drunken actiterrorists did something which I absolutely cannot forgive.

This bleeding heart militant vegetarian with his "crew" decided to spray paint graffiti all over my Krampus I had parked outside next to the cargo container. There were a few swear words I could not recognize along with phrases like "pig murderer" and a cartoon pig with X-ed out eyes.  I'd just had it MechWaxEd!

I sighed.  Somebody had to take these drunken rowdy hooligans down a peg and since the police weren't around I guess I'll have to one more time take up the sword.  I spotted their Warhorses and Anzu nearby and an idea for the correct revenge popped into my head.  To get between a space ronin of Mecha Samurai and his work was inadvisable.

With the finger of my Krampus, I reached its arm out and etched stuff which I don't care to repeat on their hulls about their mothers' "veginas".  Not one of my prouder moments, mind you, but I was pretty drunk at this point.  If it wasn't for how my mecha is polypedal and its recently upgraded targeting computer plus autopilot functions I probably would have tipped over.

What happened next I am trying to explain officer.  Look, The Warhorses and RedAnts evidently were not vacant, okay?  I didn't know the pilots were still in them until they started screaming over the com channels, so I'm not sure you'd exactly say it was completely my fault that in all swarming me they managed to flatten the bar.

While I'm glad nobody is going to press charges for it, and I'm very thankful that you're willing to help me wipe their blood and guts off my mecha, I don't quite agree that I should pay for restoration of the bar.

Okay, okay officer! I was joking! Of course I'll help rebuild it!  Whether I'd committed the property damage or not, if I hadn't instigated things then those BAT SHIT thugs probably wouldn't have wrecked the bar. Sheesh.  You can count on the word of somebody who follows the Mecha Bushido.

Lucky for me, the judge had a sense of humor and my sentence had been commuted down to just a few hours of supervised community service cleaning the wreckage up.  Totally Worth It.

Submitted by Mycobacter#712744

Streamomattic Weapon Review

Weapon class-Fire Minimum Level 30 Damage 62 Speed 102 Abilities-Burn 8%, Splash 10%

This limited drop weapon will only be available a short time, once sold out they will be gone. Burn your enemies and make it count with a splash! You'll feel like you are double dipping with this combo. This fire weapon is truly for those looking to turn up the heat. With a speed over 100, it won't slow you down. This is a weapon better than most can buy at level 30 so don't miss out.

Submitted byRy Hudak #523942

Eviscerator Weapon Review

Weapon Class-Laser, Minimum Level 20 Damage 55, Speed 102 Specials – Crit-Kill 2%, 2x damage 4%

This handy weapon can be used with multiple mechas. Bonuses on this niode choice will transfer to all your crit-kill mechas and the speed of 102 will surely be a great addition to your higher speed weapons. Laser is a choice weapon and the 2x damage is sure to impact nicely when it kicks in. This is a nice weapon for the price and level, the limited offering makes it appealing to collectors as well.









Submitted by Bryan Haycock #138789

Fifteenth

Clan Wars XV... I'd been in a faction war before but this will be a first for me. I'd hate to think that I'm late to the party so I made sure to kit out my Krampus.  Our sensei told us what to expect.  It will be incredibly violent and bloody, he told us and not all of us may come out of the event alive, but also that the spoils of a clan war are especially great.

I was in the Samurai Mecha hangar, washing my mecha down. You could tell because I was playing some NeoAmerican electropunk, the way I usually do. I should probably explain to you why I was washing them down.  There was a simple freighter escort assignment.  Almost went off without a hitch.  We were supposed to escort a caravan of ships carrying a shipment of bacon and sausages destined for an orphanage on the Nomis Reefs.  Some damned fools from BAT SHIT tried to hijack it and well, getting between a space ronin and their pork supplies is unadvisable.  For a bunch of vegetarians those activists sure seemed pretty damned violent... even the guts I was hosing off my Krampus and Buchis seemed angry. Although I'll admit that last part could have just been my imagination.

I'd heard in the news that those BAT SHIT creeps are about also about as dumb as they are violent... that is to say there was an incident this week on New Zion, where the blighters decided to raid Kosher bacon storehouses. Pfft, idiots.  Kosher bacon isn't made of pork... Jews don't eat bacon.  It's processed beef made to look like the real thing!  Some representative was preaching some garbage about avenging the deaths of the fake pigs as he was being carted away.  That's mildly amusing.

Well the good news is the orphans got their pork.  It also seems we'll be taking up the sword again and participate in Clan Wars Fifteen. I for one can hardly wait.

Submitted by Mycobacter# 712744

Nomi Reef

At the edge of the same system as the Yomi Gravity Reefs is a somewhat habitable world in the form of the largely aquatic moon known as "Nomi Reef".  Due to all the strong gravity in the Yomi system there is a constant high tide there.  It has a few settlements that were constructed on floating platforms.  Delivering supplies to Nomi Reef is difficult since there are so many ways to get lost or stranded before even getting to the darned place!

It should come as no surprise then that there is good money to be made in escorting convoys to this little backwater place in such a dangerous and high gravity system.

Submitted by Mycobacter# 712744

The Student Becomes The Master

My prototype Iota Synthman beat TcTt in a game of Go today. That surprised even me.  I'd designed Synthmen to record and study a mecha pilot's moves so that in the let's not go there but horrible event you were rendered unconscious during battle it could take over essential piloting functions for you for the remainder of the battle until a pilot regains consciousness.  He's chosen to name it Gakusei which means student.  The control system is called Sensei,... which fit.

It's a good thing the Synthmen are just boxes containing a biomemetic cyborg brain and that they lack true free-will.  The amount they can adapt is startling and makes me glad I did not equip them as fully ambulatory 'bots.  Well, okay, when you plug one into your mecha's cockpit it can operate the arms and legs of that mech but that's only while under your direction...

Submitted by Mycobacter# 712744

Clan Wars XV Special Edition News Feed

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, mech fans, and wild ones of all ages this upcoming Clan Wars XV is a VERY special war for one clan in particular of course I am talking about 99th Chessmen R&D Corps. Why  is it so special for them ? Because they are one Gold medal away from being an UNBEATEN clan for an entire year!

Some facts three RND clans have won two CWs in a row thus far, if they all can pull it off again the RND family would be three clans with three golds three wars in a row! While that is impressive in and of itself for a clan family the spotlight as well as the heat is on the 99th Chessmen RND Corps, think about it folks an unbeaten clan for an entire year! That is a  historical event. Currently only one of the original  99th players is left from Clan Wars IV and that is the current C.O. Mel Gibbens.

Over 30 players have passed through this particular unit over the past year and the roster at one time or another included names like  Justin Bertelli, Nathan Williams and Jim Beller. What makes this so astounding is that the 99th has been able to take new recruits in and get them up and running with new folks each war. What a real accomplishment to take and make a cohesive unit in line, up to snuff and still be able to continue the winning streak.

Now on the flip side how bad are they feeling the heat? To win 11 in a row only to be tossed an upset at the historic final fight. How devastating would such a loss be? The 99th with 33 straight wins, 11 Gold medals and only to be defeated at the finish line ruining their chance at a truly golden year. Can they muster their resources, their strategy, and their ranks one more time to make that final push and complete a truly golden year? Will there be another clan to rise and ruin the dreams of total domination? Who would have that kind of power and passion to play that hard? This will be a fight to watch, a true fight for the ages. History will be made possibly with this next Clan War, they stand on the verge of a one year streak a one truly golden year! We here at Galaxy Gathering Wish them well and happy hunting. We will be watching closely to see if history is made here this will be a fight for the ages!

Submitted by Pat Willis #2244534

What Bioptics Are

Bioptics are high powered organic neural network style computers that are grown rather than built.  Woven together into processing bundles that are analogous to a nervous system they can be conditioned to perform specific types of calculations and feature a readable/writable nucleic and amino acid based instructional programming language that genetic engineers code with.  Much like stem cells, after reaching maturity, you can still subject a bioptic mesh to specific treatments to revert the fibers back into a more flexible juvenile state where they can be reconditioned for new purposes.

Anyone can salvage bioptics from mecha wreckage but what happens after you turn them in when buying things at mecha shops is a retraining technician then repurposes the "junk bioptics" for use in the new mecha, weapons and equipment you've purchased. Think of bioptics as "quasi-living" wires and electronic components.  Bioptics fall under the category of biologically engineered "smart material".

Submitted by Mycobacter #712744

Synthetic Pilots... The Synthmen Are Upon Us

I blew through most of my Niodes and crystal doing application field tests of a number of my experimental designs and through reverse engineering what I could from some Novum Delorum based Drone AI notes and salvaging some of Drake's original cloning tech I think I've come up with an answer to the cloning problem...synthetic pilots.  Now, I know what you're thinking and it's probably "Hey myco, what's your problem man? You've hybridized together something that costs more than a drone AI or a clone to make..." and that's the part where I'd slap you and point out the advantages... once I've ironed out the kinks to this process a bit further, you'll see it too.  Look at it this way, the cloning procedure for producing ALTS has already been proven to be detrimental to long term pilot health.  It's been documented that for each ALT produced the ability and intelligence of the parent pilot gets fractioned to a degree in clone offspring, causing them to start out with only a percentage of the person they were cloned from's skill.  AI Drones though pricey and occasionally glitch prone can provide a useful stand-in for an actual pilot in situations where stations or bases are critically understaffed and what's more they can handle decently in environments far too dangerous for a human pilot.

So by hybridizing cloning and robotics techniques together I believe I've managed to overcome the errors inherent in the two processes when they are used separately.  When you're a transfected human, you spend time awake at night wondering about how different things may function when hybridized.

These synthetically grown cyborg brains use the same type of bioptic mesh for their nervous system as a mecha (just greatly miniaturized) and they can be produced in batches.  They lack free-will and are obedient to their owner, so you can plug a Synthman into a module of your cockpit and like a blackbox it will record all that goes on during operation of the mecha, learning from the human, android or clone pilot at the same time he or she is gaining experience.  My squadron has been complaining and seems to think I've obsoleted their jobs by introducing yet another type of automated pilot. I tried bribing them with Niodes to encourage them to "train" the alpha generation of Synthmen.  That resulted in boxes that learned how to swear (I for one had never taught them to speak such colorful language!). Since that didn't work I re-engineered the Synthmen so that the organic pilots could direct them via a non-invasive wireless electrode chip placed on the forehead.  I called this generation Beta.  Dividing up tasks between you and your Beta Synthman ups the efficiency of piloting. Just remember that the little box is there to help you!

My other pilots found the whole concept rather creepy and a number of them quit, which led to another discovery about my Synthmen.  If you wear more than one control chip, you can control multiple units by yourself.  The Delta generation does have one major drawback though; sideffects produced were physical strain and headaches when operating large squadrons of Delta Synthman piloted mecha by oneself for an extended period of time.  This necessitated revising the original model somewhat.

Version Gamma has a improved networked feedback since each Synthman is not only connected remotely to you, the master pilot, but also to each other via a transceiver. This allows them to function with a hive mind, something that was way harder to pull off in the Delta generation.  When well harmonized, a pilot and his Synthmen can achieve high quality teamwork. Not quite as high quality as that experienced by regular pilots who have worked, lived and trained together for many years but basically, since the Synthman is an organic learning-machine, they do train together. With you.  Each time you send your team out.

My clan's leader doesn't want me to replace all the pilots with "cereboxes" as he calls them though so at the moment each pilot is only allowed a few which they are told to treat as apprentices and assistants.  There are still reports of the occasional migraine but it's nowhere near as incapacitating as when test pilots were guinea pigs to operating whole squadrons of synthmen controlled mechas.

I've drafted a few plans for Kappa, Iota and Lambda generation SynthMen but at present coming up against limited funds has forced me to shelve these for a more prosperous economic time.  I'm nearly convinced that if a system that cycled a drip feed of painkiller into the pilot's bloodstream were utilized in conjunction with the Synthman box as part of the rig, that the whole intense headache thing could be avoided... but the idea of drugging pilots or doping artificial life-forms 24/7 seems ethically dodgy.

Submitted by Mycobacter# 712744

The Ballistica Computer Equipment Review

If you like using projectile and missile based weapons for your mecha as much as I do, then the cockpit accessory module you are definitely going to want your grease monkeys to install for you is the ballistica computer.

This special gadget is available to you for purchase at a reasonable standard price of 513 ferrite, 513 bioptics and 39 crystal.  A basic every-man's targeting computer for dummies, it helps take some of the guesswork out of determining trajectories and calculating angles to free you the pilot up for other more pressing tasks, like not getting yourself killed while out on the battlefield.

A minimal fuss, easy to operate user interface boosts your mecha's precision by 4 and the amount of damage its missile launchers and projectile shooters can dish by 5% each.  How it does this involves using algorithms that institute more efficiency increasing advanced power-saving features onto your weapons systems at the software level, freeing up energy to electrify and supercharge their ammunition on the hardware level.  The Ballistics Computer overall functions as a dedicated console which redivides and takes over some of the main processor load of your mecha's in house gun and missile guidance computers for it allowing improved precision by having all the CPUs work together co-processing.

The ballistica computer is self-installing straight out of the box when you turn it on and its drivers are fully compatible with the OSs of all heavy division mecha and the lighter of those in the huge weight division (55-75 tons).

Submitted by  Mycobacter# 712744