SS2 No weapon degradation

[67410be26c8b8Enchantermon]

Branching off of Rayford's idea, but a little more succinct:

Date: <unknown>
From: Chris Wells
To: {Wells} as log entry

As soon as I began my shift this morning, Bronson dragged me up to the Ops 4-3 sub-armory whining about the environmental controls damaging the weapons there. She pulled an M-22 off the rack and stripped it down. I've never seen a gun in such a horrible condition. It looked as if it had been used and unmaintained for weeks, but she said it was brand-new, only used for ten minutes on the firing range that morning, and that it had jammed twice already. I took the parts back down to Engineering and scanned them, and I found some strange mist-like particles clinging to the metal that seemed to be eating away at it. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to get rid of it. I told Bronson that all of the weapons should probably be checked for this and she went beserk, claiming sabotage and ordering me to go check the defense turrets on each deck to see if they suffer the same problem. I'm on my way to the one on Med/Sci right now. I can tell...this is going to be one of those days.

. . . a magical incredibly specific weapons-only entropy field (which if they had that ability, they'd logically use to bust up other machinery as well anyway).

Now that I think about it, though, I don't think they would. It makes sense to try and destroy the weaponry to give the crew less of a chance when they're fighting back, however it doesn't make sense to try and completely destroy the ship; they need it to get back to Earth (and elsewhere). The Many clearly state in one of their speeches that they intend to return to Earth and "cleanse the surface of that place." They can't do that without a functioning starship.

[67410be26cd4cMr Rayford]

I took the parts back down to Engineering and scanned them, and I found some strange residue clinging to the metal. Almost as if it had been left out in a fog, only it definitely wasn't water, because it seemed to be eating away at it.

Just outright saying that it's a mist seems a little too definitive to me, especially if this is being set earlier in the timeline. Something like the above is a more round about way to get the point across without being too blunt.

[67410be26ce84Enchantermon]

I was working from a standpoint of giving the log to Wells. Since he is injured on July 6th, only 5 days before Goggles wakes up, that's pretty far in.

Obviously, of course, we don't have to give the log to him.

[67410be26d221RocketMan]

The log itself can take any number of forms and can be easily edited.  What we're after is a working theory that doens't sound ridiculous or screw up any of the other facts in the game. 

[67410be26d407voodoo47]

I was under the impression we already have that-unspecified mist that corrodes military grade alloys found on weapons. as those really tend to be specific, it is quite believable that the impact on other mechanical systems is minimal (or unknown).

[67410be26d5a9Kolya]

I thought so too, but now it seems we can't reach a conclusion that everyone's happy with. That's why I messaged Xemu to come over here and shed a light on this. Might well be that he has better things to do, but it's worth a shot.

[67410be26d74bRocketMan]

Well I wasn't really suggesting that I had a problem with that.  An unidentified mist/field should be fine so long as it's presented properly.  I don't think we should be specific in limiting it to weapons alloys.  That tends to make it sound less believable (what goes to say that there are "weapons only" alloys?).  It sounds like we're trying to draw attention away from everything else.  Just to say that this uknown field/mist is eating certain "materials" faster than normal and that so far the weapons appear to be the most affected, should be enough.  You could have the discovery stemming from a deliberate weapons check or it could be something stumbled upon as a result of a broader investigation.  I just don't think we ought to make any suggestions to the player that prompt them to think along a particular train.

[67410be26d8b2ZylonBane]

I'm just trying to avoid any explanation that implicitly invokes any relatives of Maxwell's Demon.

[67410be26da8fKolya]

We had arrived at a solution a page earlier, that doesn't refer to bacteria, entropy or Maxwell's Demon in any way. Yet you still rejected it.

Apart from that, Maxwell's Demon is an entropy thought experiment, that has been used in science fiction many times, incl. by people such as Thomas Pynchon and Isaac Asimov. That's not exactly bad company.
Even without Maxwell's Demon locational increase and decrease of entropy happen all the time and could have served as an explanation if we really wanted to wade knee deep into hard sci-fi. Personally I wanted to keep it vague.

Anyway, I wrote this log as a compromise that leaves the nature of the weapon decay completely to the player's imagination. I think I even managed to hint at the Many gracefully enough ("breathing corrosive mist"), which is the whole point of the log. It's not made easier by the fact that the author is supposed to reveal something here that he doesn't know himself.
A fact that Xemu's log circumvented by referring to comedy.

[67410be26dca1RocketMan]

Perhaps this is a good time to make a summary.  We have a few mechanisms that we can use so far:

1. Toxic/Corrosive Organic Particles - Eats away at all sorts of materials, including those in complex systems.  Origin unknown.

Explains the poor condition of the ship and the high failure rate of weapons
"organic" implies bacteria or some sort of living material that feeds on the weapons/ship
May invalidate the anti-entropic skill unless we say that anti-entropy simply supresses the activities of the particles.
May interfere in other texts explaining the poor state of the ship.


2. Entropic Field - Acts on weaponry, increases the tendency towards disorder of a system.  Caused by the Many.

Using entropy requires a suspension of scientific disbelief (as does the anti-entropic skill) unless we get very detailed.
Implies intelligent control, which suggests an enemy or opposing force.

3. Elusive mist/field - More vague still, affects everything, source unknown, degrades certain materials.

Explains the poor condition of the ship and weapons.
May interfere in other texts that explain the ship's condition already.
Affects certain materials only, which can be used to explain why damage is worse in weapons than in equipment.

[67410be26de4aNameless Voice]

I'd argue that psi powers' names are not necessarily accurate as to what they do.  Quantum Molecular Relocation, what?
The people who manufacture the psi amps give them all those technical names to make them sound fancy!

[67410be26e441ZylonBane]

1. Toxic/Corrosive Organic Particles - Eats away at all sorts of materials, including those in complex systems.  Origin unknown.

Explains the poor condition of the ship and the high failure rate of weapons
"organic" implies bacteria or some sort of living material that feeds on the weapons/ship
May invalidate the anti-entropic skill unless we say that anti-entropy simply supresses the activities of the particles.
May interfere in other texts explaining the poor state of the ship.

The anti-entropic skill would only seem invalidated if one doesn't know what entropy is. Molecular breakdown, by any means, is most certainly a form of entropy.

On a massive ship the size of the Von Braun, there's plenty of room for different things to contribute to its poor condition. Like for example:

• Rushed launch of the Von Braun
• Corrupt leadership
• Compromised personnel
• Murderous paranoid security chief
• Hacked Xerxes
• Hostile security systems
• Psychic monkeys
• Exploding robots
• Toxic eggs
• Nurse staff all forcibly converted to cyborgs
• Various murderous horrors roaming the halls
• Organic goop clogging the elevator shafts
• Gigantic alien lifeform wrapped around both ships

The notion that adding just one more problem to that huge pile of problems would somehow cheapen anything, doesn't make any sense to me.

[67410be26e61aFironkkuify]

The idea of a mist seems like the safest way to go if you guys intend to keep it vague.  The guy reporting all these problems could indicate what he observes but not directly state what it is (even if he were to take a wild guess).  His observations would lead one to ponder the cause of the detoriation of the weapons but also nonetheless state that there is something acting on the weapons.

The whole point is to let players know something's contributing to the faster, unnatural degradition of the weapons right?  It should be fairly easy to remain vague.

[67410be26e7b3RocketMan]

On the one hand I'm sure there are a lot of people who don't know what entropy is.  On the other hand, if they don't, they are less likely to give any information in the game with that level of detail much thought so who cares.  Actually, every option we've come up with so far CAN be explained completely but we wouldn't necessarily want to because it would sound confusing to the lay people and it would sound like we were trying too hard to someone with the appropriate level of education.

Also I agree that adding an alternative explanation for the ship falling apart in order to explain the weapons is perfectly fine.  I can see Kolya's concern is also valid but IMO the risk of contradicting other explanations in the game is pretty minimal.  Then again maybe I'm not the right person to speak to that.  I don't play the game that often.

[67410be26eaebZylonBane]

I can see Kolya's concern is also valid but IMO the risk of contradicting other explanations in the game is pretty minimal.

That's pretty much my position. The Tau Ceti mission was a gigantic ball of utterly smegging doomed. Explanations for failure don't contradict, they accumulate.

The secondary basis for my position is that, to me, any nontrivial deviation from the closest thing we have to an official Irrational-written log is fanfic. Making stuff up for your own missions is fine, but when it comes to the original, I'm a noisy purist.

[67410be26ec49Kolya]

Only that the closest thing we have to an official Irrational-written log is an off the cuff parody in an internet forum post from 6 years ago. Anyone can see that this log would never have appeared like that in the game.
If we're gonna take it seriously and use it just because it's straight from the horse's mouth, we'll embarrass ourselves as the most naive fanboys.

[67410be26ed83RocketMan]

Don't worry Kolya.  We are not putting the spleen in there (I hope)....I think we can all agree on that.  The log falls apart a bit at the end.  Like NV said, a serious tone would be more appropriate but this should not require much editing as most of it isn't "funny", just a bit snarky.

[67410be26ef7eZylonBane]

Let's reexamine that post:

Sir, I can understand your confusion as to why the sanitary regulators in subsection 22-A failed today. While I admit the diagnostic logs look as if I haven't properly done routine maintenance on it for many months, I assure that I have been vigilant in my dutiies. I did some electron phase scans of the area and discovered that some sort of fine mist of organic particles, barely detectable, was eating away at the bulkhead.

What's worse, when I scanned for this same phenomenon elsewhere in the ship, I found it was almost everywhere! This stuff is really toxic for all kinds of machinery -- if we can't do something about this soon all our equipment is going to start suffering really high failure rates.

Look, I don't care so much about the equipment, I just don't want you to blame *me* when it starts looking like everything hasn't undergone typical maintenance procedures for 3 years -- it's this mist. No, seriously! An invisible mist!

I'm getting fired, aren't I? Hey, what's that weird sound over there... hey! ow! (indecipherable) my spleen! (chewing sounds).

The first two paragraphs are fine. Third paragraph, a bit silly, but consistent with a game that also has logs about holo-prostitutes, monkey poop, and AIs singing Elvis songs. Fourth paragraph, okay, very silly. So that gives us two, possibly three, perfectly usable paragraphs.

I disagree with the position that some silliness at the end invalidates the entire thing.

[67410be26f102Kolya]

It's not just the end. As I mentioned before it has an obedient maintenance man telling his superior that he doesn't care for the equipment. And it blatantly lamp shades the mist as an ridiculous out of universe explanation.
If Xemu had actually given us that as a real log I'd demand a refund. Only he never did that.

[67410be26f393ZylonBane]

I think you may be mistaking the cranky tone of the log for lampshading. As further evidence, consider this:

System Shock 2’s missing log

“One of the most controversial design decisions in Shock 2,” says designer Dorian Hart, “was to have the weapons degrade with use, and so be in regular need of repair. From a pure design standpoint, the goal was to ratchet up the feeling of constant tension. Part of what made Shock 2 such an emotional experience was that we never let the player get comfortable; having players know that their guns could jam in the middle of a fight played straight to that goal.

“There was, and continues to be, backlash from the fans about that system — and a majority of that criticism comes as complaints about the realism of the system.  In real life, weapons don’t noticeably degrade with each shot fired, and so it angered players that the Shock 2 weapons had that behavior.

“The maddening truth about that was, at least once during development, we talked about having an audio log in the game that talked about why that was happening — enough so that some people on the team thought we actually shipped with it. The log would have explained that as part of their takeover, the Many had released a special corrosive gas into the Von Braun that damaged weapons but was harmless to organic creatures.

“Of course, in hindsight, the team has been kicking themselves for not including that audio log. In one fell 30-second swoop, we could have prevented about 80 percent of the complaints, or at least redirected them toward Xerxes and the Many, and away from the development team.”

http://irrationalgames.com/insider/five-cut-features/

[67410be26f4d4Kolya]

I know that of course. Privately I have some doubts about this story because they did start on the patch as soon as they were finished with the game and could have easily included the log, just like the much better ending that Levine supposedly had. There may be a bit of retroactive legend building/rose tinted memories going on here.
Anyway, this mentions a corrosive gas, that damages weapons, not space ship eating bacteria nor a feeble minded engineer.

[67410be26f617ZylonBane]

The difference between a mist and a gas is hair-splitting. They both represent the same basic concept.

Why are you so opposed to this explanation that you're trying to reject the word of the people who created the game?

[67410be26f747Kolya]

I don't make a difference between mist and gas. I merely pointed out that the quote speaks of a gas with selective damage - to weapons. Don't reject authority now!

[67410be26f8f7RocketMan]

So if I understand you correctly (please interject if I'm wrong), your main concerns are that:

1) There is an apparent discrepency between the development team's comments referencing a weapon-damaging, corrosive gas and a semi-official log referencing an organic mist that damages everything but without any explicit mention to weapons, rather to the ship. 

2) That the log does not carry the right tone to fit with the atmosphere of the game.

I'm hoping I didn't distort what you were saying but if these are your concerns, I think we can work on 1) since we are probably all in agreement on 2) to some extent.