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 Post Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 5:01 am 
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I expected you to light them up and be done with it. I put the Blood Bees in because they're a completely non-magical foe which is practically immune to sword and bullet damage for very good reason.

But hey, if you can make this work for you, all the better...

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 Post Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2017 7:53 am 
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I dunno; stab a blood bee with a bastard sword and it'll probably die.

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 Post Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2017 3:53 pm 
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Ever try to hit a fly with a sword mid-flight? It's not as easy as it looks; they tend to flow with the air and easily dodge. Sure, if you hit it, it's dead, but...

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 Post Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2017 10:29 pm 
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Thats why you use a shotgun loaded with table salt, or really small shot. Or a flamethrower. Fire is always popular.

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 Post Posted: Mon May 01, 2017 1:31 pm 
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Better living through high explosives...

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 Post Posted: Mon May 01, 2017 7:07 pm 
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Methinks computer guy Roger should be the one trying to find methods for insect containment, since searching the computer database is a science roll and he's our resident science god. Arkady and Felix can both work on the mechanical containment themselves, with whoever rolls the highest being the one whose lead we take. Then we augment the design with what Roger finds and boom. Bug box.

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 Post Posted: Mon May 01, 2017 8:21 pm 
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Scooping them up is Felix's plan from the beginning. If they're just normal insects then knocking the nest down and locking it into an airtight plastic container would be child's play.

If we want a couple of truly intact hives to use later on after we've finished studying, we should put two of those airtight containers inside portable refrigeration units. The cold will make those hives go dormant while we break apart and study the other hives we've captured/destroyed.

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 Post Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 11:37 pm 
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I don't really get why we're going this far so early on when an airtight plastic box and a refrigerator would work just as well to contain them.

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 Post Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 10:34 am 
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I think it's because the Captain won't okay the expedition until Arkady and Felix are in agreement that the safety precautions in place (to protect the colonists from the blood bees) are "suitable". (He actually has no idea what makes or does not make suitable precautions, he's just waiting until he's got agreement from two people who seem to know what they're talking about. A lot of his management style runs in a similar vein, which is why Dr. Vanderbilt thinks he's a pretty useless manager).

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 Post Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 12:27 pm 
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At least he listens to his experts. As a designated expert that's a plus in my book.

Though I suppose it could get irritating if he always does this, like if fifty people say one thing and five people say something else he won't move unless all fifty-five are in agreement?

Also, as a way to streamline this can we both just roll engineering and whoever rolls highest is the one whose lead we follow? Then modify it by any science rolls Roger or anyone else wants to do and a bonus from the Zalasbra's Blood Bee Illustration aspect.

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 Post Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 6:26 pm 
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That'll certainly work, though a high roll from either would could well favor Arkady's method because it's somewhat more complicated. Two low rolls would pretty much force them to go with Felix' more basic approach.

In passing, Arkady is not being a hardass out of deep love of murderous bugs. He grew up in an industrial city in Ukraine at the tail end of the Soviet era, when the environmental laws boiled down to 'oops, we needed that' and the largest nature preserve for a thousand miles in any direction was the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. He thinks the Terrans should avoid that precedent and walk softly until they know what the pieces they want to remove actually do. He may even take it a bit too far, though he's still a long way from taking the side of anopheles mosquitoes and tse-tse flies simply because they're there.

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 Post Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 10:11 am 
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Part of the trouble is that he'll also often listen to non-experts just as much, because he has trouble telling experts and non-experts apart sometimes. (But if it's a fifty/five split, he'll generally interview a spokesman for each side and then go for whatever seems to be the lowest-risk route - or go with the majority if that's not clear).

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Also, as a way to streamline this can we both just roll engineering and whoever rolls highest is the one whose lead we follow?


It's not really an engineering roll. If there's a roll to be rolled here, it'll be Rapport, or some other social skill - you're not demonstrating whose argument is the best, you're trying to persuade someone (i.e. the Captain) whose argument is the best. Given that, I could still roll it if you like...

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 Post Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 1:04 pm 
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I meant more like an engineering roll to determine who has the better design idea to go with, without going into specifics. Just between Arkady and Felix. We use that to determine whose ideas are better so we can come to an agreement quickly.

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 Post Posted: Wed May 10, 2017 3:54 am 
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It's not a matter of how well you can turn your proposals into reality. Either proposal can work, and can work very well. But there's an important difference of approach. Arkady wants an entire hive safely contained for study purposes, preferring the increased knowledge and believing that the risks are negligible. Felix is taking more of a scorched-earth approach, preferring to destroy the hives almost entirely and then study the remains.

Arkady's solution will give the colony better benefits (such as a continual supply of blood bee honey) at the risk of having a swarm of blood bees remaining near the colony. Basically, if you follow Arkady's route, the colony will gain the aspect Blood Bee Hives, which can then be used (positively or negatively) as any other Aspect can. (For example, if you later need to roll to see whether or not Dr. Vanderbilt can whip up a cure for the Galloping Measles, then you could spend a Fate point on Blood Bee Hives, suggesting that her study of the honey has revealed interesting new antibacterial properties and improving the odds of finding a cure quickly enough; or alternatively, perhaps someone will visit the colony, find out about the Blood Bee Hives, and the Aspect could be compelled to make it harder to make friends on the basis that anyone who keeps such dangerous creatures isn't someone one wants to keep too close.)

Felix's solution will remove the threat of the blood bees entirely - and remove the benefits as well. If you destroy the hives completely, the colony won't get the relevant Aspect.

Either is a reasonable strategy. Either strategy has pretty near the same odds of successfully dealing with the Blood Bees in the *immediate* future. The real question is a long-term one - is it better to keep the bees around for study purposes, thus gaining the Aspect, or is it better to eliminate them completely, thus losing access to the new colony Aspect?

If it comes down to a roll, it will not be an Engineering roll. We can handle this by majority vote (let's hear what Roger and Nate think on this matter), or we can handle this by an opposed Rapport roll to each persuade the Captain as to the correctness of your course.

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 Post Posted: Wed May 10, 2017 9:58 am 
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Unsure if I worded it incorrectly in-game, but Felix's goal is to kill most of the workers, leaving the hives and queen intact so they can be studied in safer conditions. The existing honey could be used to slowly raise a new generation of workers that could be studied with minimal risk because there aren't enough of them to kill a human if they escape containment.

Additional captured hives could be kept intact in cold storage and domesticated later using knowledge gleaned from the smaller, safer hives.

EDIT

Felix will take whichever course he's sure will eliminate the bees as a physical threat to the colonists. He doesn't want anyone dying to them and would rather destroy them outright if it appears they can't be domesticated safely, thus why he wants them studied using the slow but steady route.

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