Here is a random musing for you: One of the fun things about building such an intricate world as UF's is that, in between the moments of awesome spectacle, you get to envision characters who would otherwise not appear in such contexts doing ordinary, everyday things.

For instance, in the Mass Effect games, we see Commander Shepard's life as a non-stop rampage of action and crazy, crazy times, with more gunfire and explosions and Tense Conversations than even most action heroes will see in their lifetimes. Even shopping for Shepard is all about bigger guns and more destructive omni-tool programs, except on the rare occasions when she's buying a model ship or a space hamster. The only even slightly mundane thing I can ever remember seeing her do in the games is feed her fish, and even then she can get somebody else to do it so she can concentrate on blowing things up more efficiently.

But here's the thing: in the first game she's 29 years old. At some point in her life she must have done a load of laundry or cleaned out a fridge. We'd never see her doing anything like that in the games because it's not good gameplay, but in a world like UF's, we occasionally do get to see people like her doing stuff like that. I think it's fun to develop such moments. Makes the character seem more human somehow if we know that, for example, she doesn't bother separating one type of garment from another and has neither understanding of nor interest in what the "Water Level" knob does.

--G.
fasten, then zip
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Or the moments between adventures when there's NOTHING going on anywhere and we see one of the most hardcore adventurers in the universe bored senseless and playing minesweeper on a random computer terminal.

>Or the moments between adventures when there's NOTHING going on
>anywhere and we see one of the most hardcore adventurers in the
>universe bored senseless and playing minesweeper on a random computer
>terminal.

"Concession of defeat: You have sunk my battleship, Master."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>"Concession of defeat: You have sunk my battleship, Master."

If this does not show up in a story eventually, I'll be horribly disappointed. :D

Agreed, but only if they were using real ships. Can the Battledrome be flooded?

Brian

I don't see why not. After all, if the Romans could hold mock naval battles in the Colosseum, the Battledrome should have no problems doing the same.

There are real-life hobbyists who build remote-control battleships (quite large ones, they're typically six to eight feet long) with pneumatic cannon and hold battles with them. It's expensive but fun.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that this sort of thing continues in the UF future.

>There are real-life hobbyists who build remote-control battleships
>(quite large ones, they're typically six to eight feet long) with
>pneumatic cannon and hold battles with them. It's expensive but fun.
>
>I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that this sort of thing
>continues in the UF future.

"A miniature SDF-17?!"

"It's legal at this level. I couldn't simulate the transformation or the Reflex Cannon."

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>"It's legal at this level. I couldn't simulate the transformation or
>the Reflex Cannon."

NOTE: SDF-17 does not transform.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>"It's legal at this level. I couldn't simulate the transformation or
>>the Reflex Cannon."
>
>NOTE: SDF-17 does not transform.
>
>--G.

Well, not into a cumbersomely large robot, anyway. The booms move out to form the "tuning fork", but that's not a transformation by the strict definition of the term.

It is something that many writers seem to forget. I think we, as readers of adventure fiction (in all of its forms and for a suitably broad interpretation of "read), like to see, so that the protagonists are seen as just folks, to some extent. If you don't have those little moments, you end up with edge-of-the-seat tension 24 hours a day, and as Jack Bauer et al revealed, that gets pretty bloody boring pretty bloody fast.

Ebony the Black Dragon

There were other reasons that show got pretty bloody boring pretty bloody fast, but for me that was certainly one of them.

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."