where do you think  'hey diddle diddle' came from... and  of course 'holy Cow"

In reply to Admiral Hack (msg # 201):

Exactly.

Guess who will be riding said winged cows?... Rainbow Unicorn Princess Haley! that's who! so the cows will have rainbow feathers on their wings and the bulls will have 1 center horn and be fluffy!

In reply to Nicole Rutledge (msg # 203):

I think they spiked your drink.

or not enough.  It's okay I got some of my papaws best moonshine and we have the Hermes gin. As well I snagged some unopened bottles of Angel champagne and Burian brandy and a few other things in my quarters. as well as I can say aboard ship I have only been drunk once polishing that rum Shadow had us drink becoming aces.

In reply to Nicole Rutledge (msg # 205):

Humm.. If Justin, provided a bottle of Grandfather would he be able to wrangle a sampling invite?

;^)

Okay, I've gotta say it again...our contractors are AWESOME.  We were scheduled to do a fine-tuning light focus tonight (at the lighting designer's suggestion, for the date...)  When I tried to find out earlier today what time to tell the contractors to show up, I got some evasion that ended up being, "Well, I haven't really had a chance to see the lights when it's not full daylight, and I'd like that, and a little time to think about it, before I finalize any focus points."  (Which is fair, and I'd rather go that route than have a 'final' focus and then have him ask to change five or six things a couple of days later...)

So I told the contractors, 'If you get here around 8:30, everyone will be back from dinner.  I'm not sure how much focusing we'll actually do tonight, but I know we need to reconfigure the LED wall display for sure...hopefully, that won't be the only thing we need you to do...'

Well, they were working on something else up in the area earlier in the day, so by the time they got my text, they were already done with that and already in the area...so they came early.  And promptly solved a problem that I'd all but given up on (we had already changed our video wall layout, due to slowly dwindling numbers of operational LED panels...we bought the hardware to change it even more...from a 6 wide by 5 high array to 7 wide by 4 high, but the mounting bars that we had on hand all had eye bolts threaded and then welded to the top, so we couldn't use them.  They cut through the welds and got the eyebolts unscrewed, so we could mount the correct hardware).  Jumped right in without a second of "Well, that's not really what we're here to do" or anything like that.  Got that done, got the seventh 'stick' of LED panels assembled and wired in, and started looking at how to reconfigure the controller to send the signal correctly.  Found out the software we needed only runs on a Windows system--everything there, including all of the laptops people had for whatever they were doing, were all Macs...so I left the park, ran to the theater, grabbed my laptop and headed back, and they got the software downloaded and figured out how to get it to do what we needed it to do, we spent a bunch of time fiddling with settings to get it looking right...

The director had earlier said, "If you can't get that carrier for the LED panels taken care of, let's just skip it for this year and we'll figure it out later."  Now, he's got his seventh column of LED panels, everything checked out okay with the lights (aside from two lights that...well, one randomly reset itself, somehow...one of the contractors helped me wrestle a ladder out into the house and set it up so I could climb up and check them and that light just suddenly started working again after I bumped a couple of controls.  I don't even remember changing any settings on it, but suddenly, it was doing what it was supposed to.  The other light was just plain old dead...I disconnected the power cord from one of his neighbors that was working and hooked that up to the light, and got a whole lotta nuthin'...so, we'll have to take that one down and swap another in its place (I think I actually have one or two of those that didn't get used in the plot...I'll have to check on that tomorrow!)

But they came in, as they always do, and busted their butts to make me look like I can accomplish damn near anything the director puts on my list.  And they never make a big deal about it.  And when I said that we'd likely actually be doing focusing tomorrow night, one guy was like, "Well, I'm booked..." and the other one immediately said, "I'm not..."  Just, truly, great people to work with.  Still remember the first day I found out we'd hired them, specifically--my boss had told me they'd found new contractors (because the guys we used the year before had been a MASSIVE disappointment--they'd hung lights for a couple of things for us, for Halloween, and we had to go back through and do a LOT of clean-up to get things really presentable...), but didn't say who they were.  When I saw their vehicle parked in front of the theater, I recognized the name--they have done a lot of rigging work for various events that I've worked on through the years, and while I never got to know them there, the company name definitely had a reputation for giving you quality work, no matter how large or small the job...and they do some BIG jobs (the head of the company has worked on the Superbowl halftime show for, like, the better part of a decade, now.)  Unlike some guys we've hired in the past, they didn't come in and say, 'Oh, you need to upgrade this, and this, and you should buy a bunch more of these, and that equipment is crap..."  They came in and said, "Okay...what have you got?  Let's figure out how to make it work the best way we can..."

And any time they come lend a hand, I walk away feeling really great about what we've accomplished in the time they were there.

In reply to Justin Kase (msg # 206):

You keep you grandfather in a bottle? lol

Is he a genie? if he finds out in story you could possibly get that invite... only Anteela, Harry, and Lizzy knows she has it and only Anteela has tried it.  Harry almost did but she had gotten shots and if she drank any her stomach would have been ripped free of lining.

In reply to Nicole Rutledge (msg # 208):

It's a Port.

So will the ladies be stepping out to the Nutbush tune.

Shadow's first Ball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...5160EE&index=252

Nutbush is fine.  Nikki does not mind sticking out in a crowd.  She might blush a tad, but she'll take what's tossed her way and come out shining. from podding into a jungle, or singing in public, to even sitting on her but in the tunnel covered in larg handler blood head to toe.

Hey Roy, The OOC reason the AI uses 5mm is that I got it from the Expanse and I think the smaller calibre is intended to avoid punching a hole through the hull of a ship and venting everything into space. Their ships are somewhat smaller and more fragile than the Hermes.

In reply to Tarja Vanska (msg # 213):

Considering.

  yeah 5mm is  for  personnel, maybe  smaller  vehicles , Like Vans  , cars, cycles  ,maybe  some of the  heavy trucks . There isn't much worry about  punching through  Ships  hauls , unless its a sloop..maybe a corvette..Tenders are even armored   , because to  the scrap they pick up.

 Depending on the make up of buildings, 5 MM  could  get through  some walls, and  the   thinner Metaglass.

we use  50 cal MGs on the shuttles, they have  AP  and  HP rounds to  knock  down or  wound  fighters

our Fighters have   heavy Pulse on the wings ( current  fighters) and  Gatling cannons   with 37  MM hard  ammo runs with..whatever mix is loaded  Ap , HP and Thermite ..they Punch trough the armor designed for  Fighter  class Heavy  Pulse... Cap ship class Heavy Pulse will make fighters  vanish

 Metaglass on ships and fighters  are thick, Fighters can only take so much, as do Shuttles.., The Hermes  and  Empire  Cap ships  have  windows , a few  feet thick..Carrier staions have  their 'half  domes'.. Yards  thick.

 anyway..that is the  rundown..  Since this was tarja's develpement  with some oversight from me...I am assuming the   minimissles  are made for damaging , heavier  things

Yeah the mini missiles are used for blowing things up or taking out armoured vehicles depending on whether you use HE or AT.

 Nikki?

https://www.bing.com/search?q=...&bep_csid=158246

Yes??
not all are turning orange.  nut it does gave to do with some areas strip mined 100 or so years ago.  Ores mines and the unwanted sediment blah blah blah. glaciers and water, plus rocks tumbled it all to dirt and it runs down hill.  newbies in the state panic too damn easy.  should panic when its algae green, thats abnormal here.

Ooohhhh hey we are creeping up on 146K folks!!!!

In reply to Tarja Vanska (msg # 213):

I don't have any problem with where you got it from.  But 5mm is .20 caliber (an inch is 25.4 mm, one fifth of an inch is .20...)  That's basically BB-gun ammo.  The rounds, unless they are MASSIVELY density-enhanced, just don't have enough mass to actually carry any force to penetrate a target.  That's great, if you're shooting at extremely fragile EVA suits, but not much use against anything else.  The armor is firing high-velocity pellet guns, basically.  One of the big selling points for a .45 ACP (sidearm) round is it has a lot of mass (as bullets go), and applying a little basic physics...Force equals Mass x Velocity.  If you cut the mass down to almost nothing, you have to REALLY ramp up the velocity to compensate, or else just accept the fact that you're hitting with minimal force.  The .45 is a heavy bullet, so it doesn't need to travel as fast to deliver the same force at impact.  The .223/5.56 round that is currently NATO standard is what Roy described, being intended to wound, rather than kill, and they're also not very ballistically stable...there's a reason almost all the sniper rifles and competition shooting rifles are .30cal or heavier...the bullets have enough mass to remain stable against the wind resistance at trans-sonic speeds, which you need for distance shooting.  The 9mm became a widely accepted utility round because it's a good combination of mass and velocity...lighter than a .45, so it doesn't need as much force to send a round down the barrel and therefore doesn't cause as much recoil, but still heavy enough to readily convince someone to lay down and die when they get hit by it.

Pre-Korea, standard US military doctrine was 'teach them how to shoot effectively with a round heavy enough to kill the enemy'.  After Japanese human wave attacks in WWII, and Chinese and North Korean human waves in the Korean War, the doctrine shifted...there was less focus on marksmanship and more reliance on volume of fire (which is why US forces stopped using bolt-action and semi-auto rifles and changed over to assault rifles with full-auto options).  The average infantryman wasn't trained to shoot any further than 300 yds, really, and 'spray and pray' was regarded as a viable firing tactic, with the intention being to tie up as many enemy troops as possible by either wounding them or occupying others with moving the wounded.  But snipers shunned the new assault rifles and stuck with .308 rifles (generally) or converted .30cal M14s because they couldn't afford to screw around with dubious long-range ballistics and also needed their target dead with the first round.

If you're duplicating Vietnam/post-Vietnam tactics and hoping to tie up enemy forces with lots of wounded to deal with, high-velocity 5mm might work.  If you're trying to make a lot of dead enemy troops on the battlefield (especially when they're in armor, or they are significantly larger than human sized, like Tank Demons, Largrans, and a lot of Creshians), 5mm is a peashooter that can't carry enough force to penetrate decent armor.  Look on YouTube and see if you can find a .223 or 5.56 round that penetrates steel plate (which isn't even technically armor, because it isn't alloyed the way armor plate is), and consider that those rounds are appreciably heavier than a 5mm round would be.

That is why Roy doesn't like the 5mm (which I SWEAR I've seen listed as 4mm in posts, somewhere, but I can't find them, but it doesn't matter, the complaint is the same).  The Expanse may have had some logical explanation for using it...but as a legitimate, fighting-on-the-ground caliber, it's practically useless.

we had  this  with Garrat , when the   when the pooch screwed their assassination of Lady V. Everything was set up for the  new PC  guy sniper to take her out.. 3 hits  in one day at the same time..should have been perfect...but..we only got two..for whatever reason, they decided to fly over the top and use a  Mini gun to shoot up the   Mansion, and i deemed the   roof over the  patio  couldn't be  penetrated...

 in the end after  , many, many PMs  i made the  ruling  and it changed the whole course of the game, since Lady V  escaped. It changed the flow of the game, but there have been dozens of swings in this game, and if a GM  can shift on the run...maybe shouldn't be  the GM...

If they had  a 50 cal..or  a 37MM Gatlin..that would have been different...

hey everyone, sorry for my absence, I've been stuck in a bad mindset for a while. A sudden bout of depression that lasted way longer then it normally does or should have

thanks for checking in!.... if you want, we are  at the Ball..Angel  would have  picked out an AngelSilk dress that The Captain provides  for every ball( and you get to keep)

 you can drop in there.

 if you aren't ready, that's fine, just jump in when you are.

 I am going to apologize now I wont be around much o post this weekend but I will try so many cookouts and party's, also trying not to think of the date coming up it has me off my game a little as well, I still miss her will be 2 years.  Love you all have a great weekend \o/

not a problem, I understand..we undestand..try to have  fun and get out there,