>>21047822
And we STILL haven't found the kitchens! Quick, play the whiny music Artisanlord was listening to before he started making... was it Larvae & Order? I remember he got a salt and peter wig.

>>21047926
*sigh*

What is it with you and these kitchens?

>Larvae & Order

In the criminal justice system, the Swarm is protected by two separate but equally important groups: the zerglings who investigate crime, and the overlords who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.

>>21047982
I had to fix Artisanlord somehow, and by "play the whiny music" I meant broadcast it over all frequencies in the middle of the battle, as loud as possible.

>>21047822
Okay, we really need to get one of these worldships under control.
Throw a bunch of new boarders at whichever ship is the closest to being captured.

>>21048061
How many?

Warbrate doesn't think it's a matter of numbers, really. The real problem is that the ships aren't all built the same way; finding the bridge on one ship doesn't tell you anything about where the bridge is on the others. We're basically just fighting blindly through the ship looking for landmarks.

Well, we were, until we decided to stop and fire the weapons. We haven't made any effort to take new parts of the ships in a while.

>>21048237
KITCHENS HO!

>>21048237

Why would we ever stop firing our guns?

Fire all guns!

>>21048395
I meant we've been focusing on firing the ships' weapons instead of taking more of the ships.

>>21048432
We must find the kitchens, it might be of even greater import than know about their waste control systems!

>>21048432

Well we can just make safe the rest of the ships on which we have a foothold.

We can have spare units fan out and kill all the xel'naga left over.

>>21048464
Ok, that's a 10d4 kind of command.

Rolled 3, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4, 4, 2, 4, 3 = 27

>>21048513

Make safe the ship!

Rolled 4, 2, 3, 4, 3, 3, 1, 1, 1, 2 = 24

>>21048513

>>21048513

Can we see if we can capture any xel'naga alive?

I can't even imagine what happens when we splice their dna to form a new strain.

>>21048541
>>21048550
As we sweep through the ships, we don't have a lot of luck. We fight through swathes of Makers, wielding energy weapons and psionic power to lash out at our forces, but we only find places of note on two ships. On one, we find the engine room. Unfortunately, one of the Xel'Naga flings a zergling into the air during a berserk rage, and it damages some component (we don't know enough about their engine design to know which component), and alarms are suddenly blaring. The Xel'Naga abandon the room, fleeing for their lives as systems overload and blast doors slam shut. We can't be completely sure, but we think the engines just suffered a catastrophic failure.

Less negatively, the only other ship where we find a major system, it is the bridge, and after wiping the blood from the instrumentation, we find that the rightful owners didn't have time to lock down their systems before our arrival.

Our worldship holdings are now:
Ship 1: Weapons
Ship 2: Weapons
Ship 3: Weapons (Engine room damaged; bridge control still possible)
Ship 4: Weapons, Bridge (ship damaged, but functional)
Ship 5: Weapons (Bridge and Engine Room destroyed, ship immobile)

Roll 5d100, and pray for low scores!

Rolled 94, 44, 71, 22, 38 = 269

>>21048701

Rolling!

Did we manage to evacuate a couple of intact ships out of the battle?

Rolled 62, 83, 66, 29, 37 = 277

>>21048701
Low for the kitchens

>>21048844
>>21048849
(Sorry, beat New Vegas for Mr. House. Forgot how long the ending monologue gets if you've done almost everything)

The Xel'Naga turn their weapons once again on their own ships, blasting Ship 2 repeatedly. It finally buckles, and explodes. Ship 3 takes some damage, as well.

I said I was sorry! Come baaaaack!

>>21049317
No.
I hope you've learnt your lesson from this and will never side with House again.

>>21049317

The house always wins.

>>21049097

Tiem to stack the odds then.

Are ships 3 and 4 movable?

>>21049097
Throw a bunch of guys at ship 3 to take the engines. Do what we can to keep enemy fire off it.

>>21049344
House, Legion, and Side Bets down. Just gotta side with the Two-Headed Bear People, and I'm done.

>>21049370
>>21049422
3's engine room is already disabled. Taking the bridge might allow us to move the ship. 4's Engine room is secured against us, but we can try to move the ship from the bridge (which we control). It would be an opposed roll.

>>21049467

Move forces on Ship 3 to take the bridge. And those on Ship 1 to take the bridge and engine room.

Move Ship 4 away from the battle, use some of our fleet to cover its escape and launch another attack to distract the Xel'naga.

Have our forces attempt to capture a live specimen of the opposing force if possible.

>>21049467
Sorry, I meant to say throw guys at ship 4. Not 3. My bad.
Someone on twitter posted a link to the In God We Trust trailer and I'm having a bit of a rage at how much it rips off Evangelion.

>>21049543
>Move forces on Ship 3 to take the bridge. And those on Ship 1 to take the bridge and engine room.

We have to find the bridge on 3, and the engines on 1, before we can take them.

All in all, we can try these things. Is everybody on board?

>>21049621
I can't afford DLC, so I don't pay attention to it. It'll just make me sad.

>>21049632

Sounds good.

Doing both at the same time means we have a good chance of getting one done.

>>21049685
Ok. So we're pulling away with 4, trying to take systems on 1 and 3, and presumably firing with 5.

That's 8d100.

Rolled 42, 35, 73, 96, 53, 56, 73, 3 = 431

>>21049729

>>21049761
Just one roller? That's awful brave...I usually take the best of the first two.

Rolled 90, 78, 81, 6, 65, 100, 90, 72 = 582

>>21049838

>>21049761
>>21049877
(...ouch)

It's already hard enough to convince the computer systems to listen to our commands, since we're not authorized users and we don't exactly know how the things work to begin with. It's doubly hard when the owners of the ship are issuing countermanding orders at the same time. Still, Cyberbrate works its magic and convinces enough of the AIs of Ship 4 to its way of thinking, and the ship begins to move away from combat. The engines begin to spool up, and...

Roll 2d100.

Rolled 99, 34 = 133

>>21049941

Rolled 49, 78 = 127

>>21049941

>>21049960
The intense battle doesn't hide us making off with a ship, and the Xel'Naga counterstrike is swift and decisive. Unfortunately for the universe, the engines are interrupted at exactly the wrong moment; as the ship is destroyed, an all-too-familiar wave of red energy flies outward. 4 worldships, and considerable amounts of our forces and Protoss forces are caught in the blast. One of Gorn's mutalisks detects a voice in the chaos. "...before your sun burned hot in space..."

The wave dissipates, and the battle resumes.

Meanwhile, on Ship 1, we fail to discover the bridge. What we do find is the life support control, abandoned by the Xel'Naga workers. We secure the station.

On ship 3, we find exactly what we're looking for: the bridge. Creeping stealthily under the floor panels, we explode into combat, taking the enemy completely by surprise. While several of the Makers fight valiantly, we overwhelm them, and in short order, the bridge is ours.

And finally, on Ship 5, we command the AIs to fire. Unfortunately, our targeting data is partially corrupted following the destruction of the bridge, and the ship fires widely into space, hitting nothing that we can see.

>>21050239

Oh fuuu....

Divert in a new wave to take the place of the fallen.

Units near our protoss allies are to conduct search and rescue efforts and shield units attempting to fall back.

Which way is the tide of battle swinging now?

Now that we have the bridge, have Cyberbrate work his magic again and have that ship get out of combat. We need salvage.

>>21050239
I'm going to be completely unprepared if you guys break this barrier with slipspace explosions.

>>21050283
>Which way is the tide of battle swinging now?

Good question. Toss me 3d100 really quick.

Rolled 22, 29, 92 = 143

>>21050309

>>21050290
Ok, every highliner in there now. Place them at optimal points to catch as many worldships as possible in chain reactions and then detonate.

Rolled 19, 92, 50 = 161

>>21050309
Ship 1, shut down life support to all sections not controlled by us.

Ship 3, get out of the fighting and safely behind our forces.

Ship 5, try to fix the targeting data and resume firing.

>>21050330
That's too dangerous! Not only would we lose our ability to reinforce our forces, but we have no idea how much more the fabric of space-time can take before it tears completely.

>>21050353
On the other hand, this guy who's older than stars sounds interesting to chat with. I'm sure he has a lot of stories to tell.

Considering that our zerg forces have consumed a good amount of xel'naga, can sciencebrate and internbrate come up with any weak points we can capitalise one? Say bio warfare or something?

>>21050373
>before your sun burned hot in space
That's the Guardian of Forever. We do NOT want to go around messing in time, trying to put right what once went wrong. Too many things could change.

>>21050330
If you Google the clues, you'll figure out what kind of shit is on the way if you do that. I don't think you guys are ready for this.

>>21050322
>>21050332
From the look of things, the Protoss have taken some big losses. It looks like almost half of the fleet that arrived may be gone (though we can't give exact figures).

Almost a third of our forces are gone (that is, about 1/6 of the air units of the entire Swarm, dead).

The Xel'Naga have paid for those deaths in blood, though. Of the nearly 200 worldships they held at the beginning of this war, less than 50 remain, 4 of them at least partially under Zerg control.

Unfortunately, following the last slipspace explosion, conventional warp travel through this area is proving completely impossible. Units come out of warp pureed or spaghettified. We don't know if heighliner traffic is similarly impaired; with less than 5 remaining, we haven't brought any of them into the system.

Until we do, we won't be able to deliver reinforcements.

>>21050430
Correction: You do not want to go around messing in time.

>>21050473
(3 of them partially under our control. Sorry. Hadn't crossed that last one off, yet)

>>21050430
I knew that was too direct a quote. Nobody caught Gary Mitchell. I got cocky.

>>21050473
Have one heighliner attempt to slipstream in at the edge of the system at the old rally point. Hopefully the fabric of space-time is still stable at the outer edge to allow for slipstream travel.

Our forces will have to attempt to close in at sublight speeds.

Do we have any drones? Can we land anything on the planet and attempt to set up a colony to create reinforcements on-site?

>>21050473

Oh well.

Do we have drones in system? Or can we mutant some zerglings into drones?

Start up some bases on derelict worldships.

As long as we have factories, our universe wide income stream can supply the forces.

>>21050531
>>21050530
We don't have magical resource delivery, guys. If you set up a colony on that planet without a connection to Accountantbrate's network of supplies, it'll just be a remote colony.

>>21050557

Well, those are worldships which are made of stuff.

Just need to chew more, harder and longer to spit out them resources.

>>21050557
Can we get any idea on how long this screwy warp stuff will go on? Because if it will take a while it might be worth eating dead things to make new not-dead things.

>>21050557
Isn't that what Zerg do, though? Set up a remote colony, have it acquire local minerals and vespene gas, and begin expanding Creep and producing more Zerg?

>>21050583
Yes, but reinforcing a system-wide galactic war based off of a one-hatchery one-drone startup colony is like trying to resupply the US armed forces in Afghanistan based off of one dude's hourly wages at Taco Bell.

>>21050580
(Correct me if I'm wrong...)

The only time a heighliner has broken open in our space was the first one, and it took months for that to go away (it's still a rough ride, but it's little more than turbulence, anymore). We don't know how cumulative the effects might be.

>>21050473

Eh.

We can still get resources in.

Have the bases setup near our warp in points and send in cheap units enmass. No expensive stuff or upgraded stuff like our power armoured hydralisk. The drones at the base will produce and salvage biomaterial and resources from the corpses and producing new units insystem.

Us zerg gonna go old school.

>>21050641
Well, you see, we're not talking about one drone, one hatchery.
We're talking one drone, one hatchery, for every usable piece of debris.
>>21050675
Ayup.
'lings, 'lords and Scourge. No wasted resources on upgrades, specialist units, et cetera.
Get spammin'.

>>21050641
Well, alright. Have we been able to infest any Xel'Naga in order to acquire their IFF codes, or ship control codes? Maybe enough to be able to tell the weapon AI's to take better aim when they fire?

Can Labbrate and Internbrate use the sensors of Ship 3 to attempt to measure how bad and how far the slipstream interference extends?

Finally, that one hatchery does have access to a hell of a lot of biomass to work with. Besides, it'll give Defencebrate something to do. We'll make Scourge, Overlords, and Mutalisks. The old kind with no upgrades. Just zerg-rushing.

>>21050675
>>21050724
Are you guys under the impression that the universe-bending forces pulverizing our units as they come into the system are allowing for pinpoint accuracy in delivery of the remains? Because it's more like throwing a water balloon in a tornado.

>>21050764
Who's doing what now?

>>21050734
1d100 could try for Ship 3's sensors. The Xel'Naga computers might even know what these explosions are really doing, physics-wise.

Rolled 85

>>21050800
Here's hoping we find out how badly we've fucked ourselves with these explosions.

>>21050764

Well in any case, the just have them jump in in ones from all sorts of vectors and to all coordinates.

There must be at least one safe route through the bendy windy shit.

Rolled 65

>>21050800

Rolling!

We need a way through.

Rolled 99

>>21050800

Rolled 35

>>21050764

Then at least have them use the biomass available in the sector.

1/6 of all zerg dead is a fuck ton of biomass.

>>21050794
Sometimes everything pops out mangled at the point it was supposed to. Sometimes it comes out a hundred kilometers away as a tightly-compressed ball that explodes outward. Sometimes it comes out inside-out on the other end of the system.

Sometimes it arrives evenly distributed across a ten kilometer radius sphere.

We assume most of the ones that we can't account for are emerging from warp inside the sun, or under the surface of the planet.

>>21050832
No, I meant, why are we warping when it clearly doesn't work? Surely we can slowboat to a few wrecks, they can't be THAT far apart.
Unless Zerg forces are blob A, Xel'Naga forces are blob B, and there's a big ol' patch of nothing in between?

>>21050855

I'll assume its sciencebrate and internbrate using trial and error to find a safe path through.

>>21050803
>>21050815
The computer readout contains, among other things we don't really understand, a few consecutive line that say,

"Local space dimensional integrity critical. 75% chance of spontaneous breach. Warp capabilities impaired. 40% chance of irreparable damage to local space. 5% chance of irreparable damage to dimensional plane."

The words CRITICAL and WARNING are spelled in all caps throughout the sensor readouts.

>>21050855
The forces in combat aren't warping. Our reinforcements were warping in from a few light-minutes out of the system, where they arrived by heighliner.

>>21050905
IRREPARABLE and DIMENSIONAL PLANE are not good indications.
Nor is the 75% chance of a breach.

Is there any indication of how far the damage extends?

>>21050934
What's the top speed of our Love Muffins' sub-light engines? Could they arrive at the fight in reasonable time if they red-line their engines?

>>21050905

Eh. We can deal with the death of the dimension later. Worst case we abandon this plane and go munching on stuff in Metaquest.

Get sciencebrate and internbrate to use the telemetry from the signals, try to find a safe warping in zone. Transmit what we know of the warp bend to the protoss. Warn them NOT to warp out or be pureered.

Continue the attack!

>>21050905
Uh. No more popping heighliner engines, guys.
>>21050934
Okay then. So can we drop some drones on the assorted chunks floating around? Any reinforcement at all would be good.

>>21050905

Wait guys.

How about.

We put nukes in them heightliners

Then we detonate them.

Nuclear red pulse destruction wave.

>>21051031
please no

>>21050961
Without hitting speeds that will accrue relativistic delays, they could reach the battle from the heighliners' current drop points in about eight days.

(Realistically, much much longer, but since I don't have enough relativistic physics training to be anywhere near accurate, I'm gonna make these ships really, really fast. Please don't do the math and hold me to these speeds)

>>21051085
Well we DID roll super-well when we made them.
Strap a bunch of zerg to the sides and send them on their way.

>>21051085

Eh I could do them but i'll need distances, acceleration rates and all but im lazy to do so too.

Send out the first wave of love muffin normal space reinforcements. If its not over in 8 days, those guys will help our severly depleted forces.

Warbrate, what is you assessment of the battle, any suggestions on how to attack or proceed?

>>21051140
>>21051123
Cyberbrate sends all of its remaining Love Muffins on their way. ETA 8 days from now.

>but im lazy

Good.

Warbrate's assessment is that if we refrain from tearing the universe in half, the odds are about even as to who will come out ahead in the battle; but even if the Xel'Naga are the last ones standing, it can't imagine them getting away with more than 15 worldships, probably fewer. And then, there's the question of if they'll be able to even leave the system.

It isn't sure whether to ask us to send one of our remaining heighliners in to test their ability to navigate this space (and hence, to find out whether the Xel'Naga will be trapped in this system, waiting for the Zerg to pour in at sublight speeds, or if they can just pop out at will to escape and regroup), or if the danger of the ship exploding and tearing space open is too great.

>>21051232
Let's ask Friend Computer if slipstream travel would be safe right now.

>>21051266
1d100 to see if the computer responds.

(It's more like a Computer Congress, really...)

Rolled 64

>>21051294

DICEEE

Rolled 35

>>21051294
CHANCE TIME!

Rolled 12

>>21051294
Come on for a clear answer!

>>21051314
>>21051328
"Slipspace travel possible with excessive turbulence. Approx. 5% chance of 5D shielding failure."

Rolled 99

>>21051364

slipspace behind our lines then.

Can we put tow lines on the heightliners and have them drag big stuff into the system with them?

>>21051364
I think it's still too risky. Even if there isn't catastrophic shielding failure, the turbulence could still result in the heighliner coming out where we don't want it, such as partway through a worldship.

But, it does mean that the Xel'Naga could escape. We must stop them here.

File: 1349764467986.jpg-(13 KB, 507x360, Picard the line.jpg)

>>21051404
Towing any significant mass will increase transit time.

>>21051418
You might even say a line must be drawn.

Anyway, I'm going to sleep. Monday will definitely bring a new Quest.

If I don't get all social and go hang out with people and/or get all lazy and do nothing and/or get all proactive and start getting my life right, then there might be a Quest tomorrow (er...tonight? Tuesday the 9th. Whatever). There's a lot of if coming off of that plan, though. No promises.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/21047822/

>Contagiosus pentRe

Captcha is summoning disease demons. I hope you're all up-to-date on your vaccinations and exorcisms.

Rolled 95

>>21051660

I summon the plagueson of nurgle.

That'll send those pathogens back into their dens.

>>21051660
I think what we need to know is what slipstream turbulence entails. If it means that we can't control the exit point, then it's too dangerous in such a crowded space.

And trusting in the /tg/ dice to let us survive a 5% chance of failure is suicidal.

>>21051756

Me thinks anon has not ever attempted to model a turbulent air flow problem before.

>>21051770
No, I have not. My brother is the aeronautics engineer of the family; I just handle servers.

>>21051920

Suffice to say its not fun and not that easy either. (its a headache)