Yet Another Brain Fart -- err, plot bunny

[Jervic]

Once again, the sewer of my mind has come up with a crossover that's so wrong, it's right. People are welcome to take this idea and run with it, as I'm a horrible writer and am not intending to perform such self mutilation anytime soon.

I give you: No Need For Harry Potter
At the age of five, a burst of accidental magic and his desperate wish for a mother in his life ( he vaguely recalled that mothers should have red hair) caused Harrys cupboard to spontaneously generate an opening to Washuu's pocket dimension.
See! Harry Potter raised by Washuu Hakubi.
See! Ryouko beating the crap out of Peeves.
See! Harry Potter, the Cabbit animagus.
See! The Killing Curse blocked by the Wings of the Light Hawk.

Well, you get the idea.
Crawling back into my shell,
Jervic

[classicdrogn]

That actually makes a vague amount of sense, in a frightening way, thgouh I think you forgot a couple of important points:
See! Washuu-chan terrorising the Dursleys with the POWER of SCIENCE!!
See! The Dursleys running away to a seaside shack YEARS early, without Harry, and STAYING there!
(Wide shark-like grin)
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
Dr. Akagi will recover. Observe, Rei smiled. Shinji-kun, are these your clothes?
Ritsuko shot up like a spring loaded meerkat. What? Shinji-kun is naked?
See, Anata? Dr. Hentai is alive and well. - Innortal's _I Do_
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[VladimirTherin]

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See! The Dursleys running away to a seaside shack YEARS early, without Harry, and STAYING there!

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Actually, given Washuu's likeing for certain shapes in her devices, id imagine they would move far, FAR away from the sea.

[Foxboy]

See! Dudley racking back and forth in the corner of his room, saying, "Can't sleep, crabs will eat me....."
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Rieverre]

Personally, I'm still waiting for a story that has him find or otherwise acquire a Magic: The Gathering deck at the end of the summer before fourth year, and, not knowing it's just a game, actually manage to have the cards work.
*first challenge of the Tournament*
"You call that a dragon?" *draws card* "_This_ is a dragon!"
-Griever
is pretty surprised nobody's done this already
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[Necratoid]

I had an anthropology professor that was describing the base principles of behind M:TG on day in class... the base theory is apparently a real belief system. Drawing mana from different types of land and casting spells with it... so logically Harry could pull it off if the info was presented properly.
The cards are just focuses... reminders of spells and places. Also, with my sister having a sand collection at this I realized that taking soil samples of places you have been to as keepsakes happens frequently enough.
Young mages getting ideas in their heads tend to do things that aren't possible after schooling. Half of magic is believing it will work and half is willing it to work. Accidental magic is all about things happening that because you willed it to happen without 'knowing' it wouldn't work.
All you'd have to do is have to do is move the series up 5-6 years so its happening in the late '90's. Dudly has been using Harry as a M:TG sparring partner... he gets to mock Harry endlessly when he wins and if he loses he loses to someone he can intimidate to not telling people about it. Better to discover the holes in your defense in private then in front of a class.
Harry would play the opposing decks, all decks involved are Dudly's except the ones Harry has made out of commons and the occasional uncommon that has been gifted to Harry. That or cards declared useless. Spoiled rotton kids with rich parents do buy the brats endless cards. Covered under the hand me down rules.
This would make Harry and Dudly get along better... set around ice age/Fallen Empires you can have Harry feeling really guilty or vindicated (depending on how much the goblins have annoyed him) after using 'goblin grenade' so often. Also, this would prevent him from encountering Yugi Oh without having a need to kill people.
Keeping it to Harry can cast M:TG cards with a mana cost equal to his current year would help. No jumping the shark with first year Shivan Dragons or 'Wrath of God'ing Privet Drive. Be funny to have Harry make an offhand comment about how he gets that Dark Magic is dangerous (he has seen players eaten by their own Lords of the Pit after all and seen Necropotence decks go bad on players), but Good magic can be just as bad (Wrath of God kills all. Armageddon destroys large tracks of lands. Balance is a killing spree). Also, starting second year... Harry demonstrates the wonder of the universal generic counter spell. For added fun, Harry makes a reflecting mirror... just have him summon simulacrums of things he has actually seen for creatures and peoples. In person or on TV.
As for Washu involved in raising Harry... Ministry of Magic meet Mihoshi... Mihoshi meet MoM. Fudge gets arrested for ordering an assualt on an officer of the law. Mihoshi panics when near Dementors and shoots them to death in panic. Mihoshi teleports into Hogwarts by accident or into a group meeting of Death Eaters who manage to discover she has turned on a deflection shield by mistake (Return spells to sender). Having her keep beaming in and not even notice them (she knows this cave isn't where she was aiming for) would be amusing. You wouldn't even need Tenchi really. Just have Harry accidentally free Washu from imprisonment on a trip or Yosho imprison Ryoko in England instead.

[HoagieOfDoom]

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...or Yosho imprison Ryoko in England instead.

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The first thing that came to mind upon reading that was that Alucard was not the corpse Integra found in Hellsing's basement...*********
Touched By His Noodly Appendage
www.venganza.org

[Bob Schroeck]

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The first thing that came to mind upon reading that was that Alucard was not the corpse Integra found in Hellsing's basement...

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This is not the corpse you're looking for.
I think either/any of these concepts are just too freaking cool not to write, so somebody better get cracking.

-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Rieverre]

... here's another one for you, Bob.
The participants? A number of anime/manga characters from various genres and series.
The place? 26 times 26 times 26 ... *evil grin* cubes.
The plot? Who needs a plot? Although, somebody who could actually do interaction not only well but thrived on doing it should write this. Let your imagination soar.
Oh, and no characters who could just blast their way out or somesuch. No easy path, people.
Suggestions for the players of this little game, anyone?
Here's two of mine.
Obligatory Ranma 1/2 character - Nabiki Tendo.
Random Normal Guy character - Morisato Keichii (pre-or-post-Bell, you decide)
Have at it!
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[Valles]

Well, see, I just got to starting to reread Shawn Hagen's old Starblade Battalion stories.
Then a part of my brain jumped up and declared, 'Hey, guess what? I've got this really cool universe for you to play in...'
Well, what about this, presumably RPG-like, universe, then?
Mecha space opera, if small-scale (tens of worlds, not hundreds or thousands). Various suspiciously-human-like subspecies scattered across the known worlds by some unknown precursor race, but still a couple of Real Wierdie Alien types. FTL travel on the justification that the universe's hyperspaces undergo periodic 'crystalizations' brought on by its expansion, wherein nothing is possible until hyperspace 'melts' again... Drive type is keyed wormhole, though, just because it makes things simpler to plan - and gives justification for low-relative-speed space battles at point blank range.
Psi/Magic, yes, although apparently just as another type of technology.
The overall political setting is that all of the worlds that were capable of going into space when things started to decrystalize are now going out and exploring the newly opened universe... and running into each other, of course. No sapient race is older than a certain point in time, which suggests that that unknown precursor civ also either uplifted or wiped out whatever was around before their departure.
How am I justifying the mecha? Well, the primary assumption is a fairly simple one - that Earth, far from being a perfectly normal habitable world, is actually a high-gravity zone. Most of the relevant technologies that the other nations are relying on are ones they're ahead in because, without the gravity to make launches so expensive or stress mechs' ankle joints so much or whatever, they're way ahead in lot of fields.
Naturally, each new star nation has its own, distinctive approach to mecha design and such. Like that one fighting game, but freer formed.
I have varying amounts decided about the different factions - naturally, the United Terran Nations are the best developed. The UTN's primary goal as a collective nation is pretty much the same as Japan's going into WWII - essentially, they want to gain exclusive control of every system with a wormhole into Sol, so that they can fortify them and stop worrying about people dropping troops onto Earth unannounced... They're so dedicated to this mostly because it happened right after Decrystalization, and the invaders... were not well behaved.
Their technology compares to the 'stellar standard' kind of unevenly - power generation and materials sciences are well behind, along with medical stuff, but their computer and nanotechnology defines the cutting edge. Also, their execution of the universal stardrive has the highest mass and energy overhead - they have to build bigger starships.
Their experience at and habit of designing for a harsher environment tends to make UTN non-walkers (tanks, fighters, etc.) more capable than their counterparts in other militaries, but their only mecha unit is a small, agile machine with no real integral weapons beyond its own hands and feet - it was designed to fight with carried and melee weapons, to protect the real core of the UTN army from enemy close-combat attacks. It is good at that, though. Metatextually, it'd be called a fairly typical AS if you dropped it into MITHRIL's lap.
The other two factions I've done, well, any development on carry the working tags of 'The spiders' and 'the fanatics'.
Spiders are, as you might guess from the name, non-human, being shaped sort of like a sand-dollar with seven radially arranged legs and a tube worm on top. They have five genders (three for 'standard reproduction', male, female, and bearer, fully functional hermaphrodites, and neuters), and breathe methane.
Strangely, they get along really well with humans.
Fortunately, since their homeworld happens to share a star system with a world that had a small human population on it, who they've become so closely allied with that the two 'governments' usually just get counted as one by outsiders. They also have fairly friendly relations with the UTN.
I don't know much about their technology except that they like Veritechs/LAMs/whatever you want to call them.
'The Fanatics' actually have about half a dozen different 'sects' competing for political and social influence under the umbrella of their overgovernment, only one of which really deserves the title I've given them.
Unfortunately, that sect managed to push ahead an invasion of one of the new worlds they'd discovered in hopes of securing converts... and, since Earth has a relatively large economic and industrial base, promptly ended up regretting it.
Part of their religious aspect is that the Fanatics are the biggest users of psi-tech, which lets their mecha - but only the mecha - do things like fly without engines, generate forcefields that run along a conducting surface, and other fun tricks. The overall effect should, I hope, be somewhere between Escaflowne and Eureka 7, with maybe a dash of Evangelion's AT fields.
There are at least three other slots open that don't have any sort of faction design associate with them yet - the giant walkertank people (homaging Battletech), the Gundam clones, and the super-duper psi-powered once-off megamech users (Go Nagai et al.)
Oh, and, to avoid having to actually go to war with each other, the various governments are all sponsoring and hiring various small mercenary groups to deniably carry out operations towards their goals. The various corporate and other nongovernmental entities that have been racing in to take advantage of the gaps are also in the market, of course... Who knows what the PCs might get paid to do?
Suggestions?
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Rieverre]

You say nanites. So, is one of the UTN's black projects codenamed 'Quicksilver'? *passes ball to CD*
The Spiders' transforming mecha. I'm assuming they'll only have the biped ones for their human associates, and the other ones look appropriately ... unusual?
The walkertank people - we need some faction that'll be all 'nobles' and 'honor' and 'knighthood' and crap. Why not this one? Mostly too busy with internal politics to do anything but squabble about dynastic disputes fifty years old and fiefdom rights, leaving their head honcho (King? Emperor? Whatever you'd call him.) with an actual _need_ to hire outside or indie operators to take care of things for them. Their mecha would be the most heavily armed and armored, able to act as both ground and space units, which gives them a bit of a superiority complex. Thing is, they may well be that, but the other branches of their forces are lacking. Knights and cannon fodder, the former not really caring much about the latter. Only reason they're still about would be that if anybody from the outside sticks their head into their business all that animosity is going to be suddenly directed outwards.
Hmm ... maybe make them the obligatory nekojin species.
Well, it's a thought.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[Valles]

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You say nanites. So, is one of the UTN's black projects codenamed 'Quicksilver'? *passes ball to CD*

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They're nowhere close to that. Think Ben Bova's 'Moon' books. Which, y'know, is still head and shoulders above what any of the other nations have managed.
And, yes, SpiderBots tend to have between three and seven legs - I'm thinking particularly of the Paranoid Drones from Gall Force, but I think something similar showed up being used by the aliens in Project A-Ko. Spiders are quite capable of adjusting their gait for various numbers of limbs - with practice, they can spare up to four without losing speed.
BTW, due to my own prejudices, all mecha are based on what Gryphon calls Type W or Type N controls.
I'd be more inclined to have a fuedalistic culture associated with the 'Gundams', actually, mostly because canon BT already has that sort of government. Also, battlemechs are a bit groundbound, ne?
And I very much agree that some culture of that sort is needed, although it bears noting that all the bad blood and history we remember in our world is still latent in the UTN.
OTOH, cute catgirls in giant fugly gun-happy robots is a very winning idea, and I entirely agree that the two should be connected.
For some reason, my mind is attracted to the idea of having the enthusiastic 'Up with the POWER OF YOUTH' faction be our other resident Wierd Ass Alien faction. With, y'know, tentacles. Just for the sheer WTF factor.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[classicdrogn]

The nanites are only the medium for the Silver series, the real work is done by force fields and gravity manipulation with a side order of subspace pockets - all areas that Earth lags in, if I read things rightly. Puuling off the base-level pseudo-Venom maybe, but not beyond... then again, that's quite enough for, say, intelligence operatives or ship-board security, whee you don't want to go using weapons that threaten to damage the ships systems let alone being powerful enough to threaten the pressure hull. Doubling as a short-duration EVA suit is only a bonus, at that point (mainly limited by maneouvering difficulties and heat dissipation, I'd expect, unless a rebreather pack was not included as part of the standard fittings... and *I'd* ferdamnsure include one for any space-based personnel. With more environment controls and a manouvering pack, a self-sealing nanite suit makes good sense for EVA duty, espescially one that can also form tentacles or weave its own safety lines as needed.)
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
Dr. Akagi will recover. Observe, Rei smiled. Shinji-kun, are these your clothes?
Ritsuko shot up like a spring loaded meerkat. What? Shinji-kun is naked?
See, Anata? Dr. Hentai is alive and well. - Innortal's _I Do_
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Valles]

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The nanites are only the medium for the Silver series, the real work is done by force fields and gravity manipulation with a side order of subspace pockets - all areas that Earth lags in, if I read things rightly. Puuling off the base-level pseudo-Venom maybe, but not beyond... then again, that's quite enough for, say, intelligence operatives or ship-board security, whee you don't want to go using weapons that threaten to damage the ships systems let alone being powerful enough to threaten the pressure hull. Doubling as a short-duration EVA suit is only a bonus, at that point (mainly limited by maneouvering difficulties and heat dissipation, I'd expect, unless a rebreather pack was not included as part of the standard fittings... and *I'd* ferdamnsure include one for any space-based personnel. With more environment controls and a manouvering pack, a self-sealing nanite suit makes good sense for EVA duty, espescially one that can also form tentacles or weave its own safety lines as needed.)

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Well, no, even that much really wouldn't be practical - see, the main difference these have from your typical sci-fi nanites is speed... Namely, they're a lot slower-working. About the fastest thing I can see these nanites doing is bonding together two like surfaces, and even that would take a couple of seconds. A UTN drive towards the Silverseed concept would do things like add cyberpunk-esque subdermal armor, myomer strength enhancements, and other things of that nature - weaving them in and around the existing cells over a period of weeks or months. A full execution would add protective armor fibers wrapped around pretty much every cell in the body, especially as far as replacing all that goo the neurons of your brain are floating in with something better designed.
But even that much is a long way off. Saying that the UTN's nanotech is relatively advanced is essentially only saying that it exists at all... Pretty much all it's good for yet is growing specific small parts in about a week or so.
None of their assembler types are capable of surviving out of a controlled cleanroom environment.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Rieverre]

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I'd be more inclined to have a fuedalistic culture associated with the 'Gundams', actually, mostly because canon BT already has that sort of government. Also, battlemechs are a bit groundbound, ne?

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The groundbound thing is pretty much reliant on where they're deployed - local gravity, etc. I'm not saying all of them, but the more beefed up ones ... well, I'm not exaclty thinking Battletech mechs here, come to think of it. Something bigger. Possibly equivalent to a walking Destroyer, with reaction drives on the more exotic models strong enough to lift them out of the gravity well of the usual worlds they operate on, enough armor to be able to hande re-entry (or an appropriately armored entry 'shell' ... sort of like Starship Troopers had, just on a very much bigger scale), and the ability to operate in hard vacuum while being on par with a light destroyer or really heavy gunboat in terms of firepower.
When you said walkertank, my imagination kinda ran away with me and shoved Battletech to the side.
Plus, I was thinking the f*ugly appearance of the common walkertank would make a neat contrast with the kawaiiness of a female nekojin.

*snicker* So, to preserve cinematics, the mechs of the Fanatics should board through the upper atmosphere when doing re-entry, right?
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[Valles]

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When you said walkertank, my imagination kinda ran away with me and shoved Battletech to the side.

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Ah, okay. My bad - I'd specifically been thinking of this as an at least 'crunchy' universe, and had so been envisioning relatively small mechs only - a 'small' mecha would be perhaps six meters tall, an average one eight, and only the very largest topping ten.
So, lets see, we have:
Macross-homage transformojets - Giant crab aliens!
Near-future military sci-fi, circa Gasaraki or FMP - Resident super-strength brigade, the Earthpeople. (Hey, 9.8 m/s^2 vs. 5, how do you think they come across?)
Skysurfing Fantasy-homage mecha - The True Church (which one?)... who really need to have their 'faith' designed before they can go any further. Also, these folks are the resident Space Elves.
Sentai Combiners - The Shapeshifting Blob Things From Beyond!
Battletech/steel battalion walking bastions - The cute kitty people with the 1:3 male-to-female ratio. For a value of 'cute' that varies depending how audacious I feel at that moment. ^_^
Knights in Luna Titanium Armor - A feudalist collection of squabbling and competing lords. Also the most common baseline for what constitutes 'human' in this universe.
Oh, and here's a tidbit I think might be a good idea - many colonies are not on worlds with breathable atmospheres. Just because it makes things more interesting.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Necratoid]

The nekojin are easy. Make then powerarmor speiciallists... Battletech elementals to the rest of the mechs. They like up close and personal, hunting instincts carnivores, minus a few herbs and medicines. The males tend towards techs and medics, the females towards warriors.
As up in your face specialists they tend to get injured repeatedly. Limb loss is common, a missing eye is a fact of life by your 20s. Ripped ears and areas where their light fur is permanently burnt off are normal. Medics try to save lives not limbs. Cybernetics are functional but ugly and clunky. You can tell they are dangerous if they have all 5 original limbs and most of their facial features intact, by their 30s... making it into your 40s is the near legend status, especially for active ground troops. As a side effect they are notoriously hard to kill, not damage or take down so much, they live through most not instantaneously fatal wounds if not functionally.
Females must have a certain level of kills/medals/battles before they are allowed breeder status and not be sterilized from injury. Pregnacy without an upper rank is not an excuse from combat. Males tend to live longer, but as capital ship/fight pilots, techs, and medics they tend to die mainly of when the battle is already lost or from random collateral damage... or maintenance issues. As a people theyre rather Darwinian.
Command and ruling jobs are merit based (you have to survive long enough to get the chance for these positions) and available to both sexes. Ranking females aren't offen not pregnant as number of offspring and how long they survive is a status symbol. Gambling on which offspring of who survives a battle are common. litters (3 or more offspring) are common and a single child pregnancy (1 kid no still born) freak them out and they are considered bad luck or cursed until they prove otherwise. Which considering your not getting much help in combat at first in a swarm tactics race, means living long enough to get your name. Getting a name as a single kid is a ticket to squad commander... you must be good.
Getting your own name (and not a number or a hey you) is a rite of passage involving living through enough battles or getting enough kills in one battle. Basically like much of Africa, breed a lot and hope some survive... only the main cause of death is early combats and not infant mortality. The race raises kid as a group (segregated by sex) once past the age they think sticking your hand in the shiny, shiny energy field is a good idea. This leaves them fickle on relationships that last less than a few year past first combat.
In general they are rather human with extra bits, cute until they start getting messed up, by human standards. Humans tend to throw them off for social reasons rather than looks. Humans invented bizzarre things like scarless surgery and not obvious cybernetics. They hide wounds and take people off combat duty to heal limbs (a few days as even slow medical nanos heal fast). Where these nekojin would cut off the offending lib with a fracture and slap on a replacement.
The first time they encounter an human going avenging berserker for a lost or wounded team mate they freak. The concept is alien to the combat class, the older one kind of get the idea. Already cut off from most smells in their suits (in space is the worse) they have a proficiency in sound equipment... they have constantly open channels so they can hear each other and always hack into other communication frequency(partially for background noise)... the silent enemies they fight in space freak them out. Listening to trivial banter of human troops baffled them and hearing a human flip out and get far more dangerous in combat due to the avenging berserker caused routs at first. It was just so alien to them.
The older ones deal with humans much better... living long enough to get a breeder/command job is rare enough. At that point they have free time and constant companions, so they get more cultured at that point. Human culture fascinates the older ones, though the idea letting the younins hear about the concept of a 'teenager' is freaky. That would FUBAR the social order. Its was bad enough the young males learned all those human tricks of engineering that gave them free time. Letting the over-large number of females get the concept would cause civil wars and chaos.
This lets you toss a lone survivor female nekojin into a pack humans and watching her endure culture shock. Kind of like in Great Teacher Onizuka where he puts all the students in rooms with people they won't get along with, specifically the genius girl who ends up in a room with the Gundam freaks and couldn't understand anything said in several hours of conversation. 1 subculture is brain melting enough, having several in a squad is a nightmare till she snaps and fits in or goes mad. Day by day that changes.
Humans boggle over the fact every official they run into is competent. The hideously mangled percentage throw humans off to. Their human looking enough to cause issues with their damagedness.
Their supply ships are large and have several levels containing herds of food animals they raise on board. These often end up command ships as they are to be protected anyway. Their weapons are a swarm of single man (male nekojin) gunpods coating the ships and fighters that have melee weapons and heavy shields with one or two powerful, but short range (for space) range weapons.
For smaller than Battletech mechs look up Exo-squad.
The above is a bit rambling, I'm guessing but it took like 5-10 minutes to think up and far longer to write. Sorry if parts contain plothole equivalents.

[classicdrogn]

I was thinking more of a non-intrusive smart swarm forming a suit, and some fast clotting/wound sealing, mainly. That's enough for an emergeny pressure suit, anything more is gravy.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
Dr. Akagi will recover. Observe, Rei smiled. Shinji-kun, are these your clothes?
Ritsuko shot up like a spring loaded meerkat. What? Shinji-kun is naked?
See, Anata? Dr. Hentai is alive and well. - Innortal's _I Do_
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Kokuten]

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None of their assembler types are capable of surviving out of a controlled cleanroom environment.

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For the record, I see this as a _benefit_. I live in terror of Grey Goo Bombs.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[Valles]

So, sort of somewhere between the Kzin, the Ctarl Ctarl, and BT's Clans?
Hmmm. I'm reluctant to make a group that, given the anime influences, would be likely to end up being viewed as protagonists so... hardcore?
OTOH, the predatory 'Cat' angle goes perfectly with their use of actual power armor, so that much, at least, is solid.
For hardware, perhaps something close to that seen in the Starship Troopers anime, or maybe slightly more flexible to allow for their likely preference for the 'personal approach'.
More on the Paladins...
They tend to use a small variety of mechs, all of which have the distinctive antigrav generator/shielding device/cool ass cape, and while they do copy the distinctive Eureka 'skyboards', theirs are more akin to a surfer's Longboard than the smaller, snowboard-sized things seen in that anime, being as the items in question are actually seperate (unmanned) vehicles - carrier sleds - rather than just a component of the main mech. Paladin weaponry tends to fall into one of three categories - wierd-ass psi effects, the 'force lances' that are the local Obligatory Giant Robot Lightsaber, and plasma cannons.
Those last, BTW, work by taking a small, short-lived forcefield generator, wrapping it in armor, then having it generate a force field bubble around itself before dumping the field full of water and heating the water just short of fusion-hot. Then you fire the whole damn thing at a target. The generator that's the core of the whole weapon doesn't last long under those kinds of conditions, but ideally, they're moving so fast that they don't have to.
UTN weapons, now that I think to mention it, are mostly either highly refined kinetic weapons or accurate and powerful individual missiles - again, pretty much what you'd expect to see in the real world or near future.
For space combat...
Depending how you look at it, the UTN either has only one class of starship or a tremendous number of once-offs. Basically their jumpships are a jumpcore, a power reactor (usually fission), and a structural spine. Everything else is from plug-n-play modules which are added and subtracted from each ship as the situation calls for. A 'typical' Jumpship will have plenty of cargo and fuel space even for a ship its size - and they're larger than anything else in space - maybe one or two weapons-grade particle accelerators, and a packet of offensive drones that are, frankly, too smart and capable to be degraded by the term 'missile'. In combat situations, they'll also often carry manned sublight parasites. Due to the limitations of Terran orbital lift techniques, their ships are not armored, although they are so tightly compartmentalized that that fact doesn't make much difference to their combat survivability. And, of course, that's assuming that you manage to get close enough to one to try and attack it, which between their drones, powerful energy weapons, and superb sensors and dataprocessing, is no mean feat. They have extensive on-board smelting, refining, and manufacturing abilities - essentially, these things are self-propelled fleet yards. The parasites come in all types, but are all optimized for particular roles.
The Spider navy is unabashedly carrier-driven. Given that they have perfectly capable fighters that can also operate effectively in most other needed roles, this makes perfect sense and saves them a lot of money without costing tactical effectiveness. Aside from the variously-sized boxes full of fighters, they have a few fairly capable escort ships, but nothing in their arsenal is really suited to a ship-to-ship slugging match. Their ships are fairly fast and have a large available delta-v, along with stealth capabilities.
The Paladins use three main ship classes, what you might call 'Corvettes', 'Frigates', and 'Ships of the Line'. Despite their name, those last are fairly rare, typically seen only in a fleet command role. All Paladin ships are lightly armored but have actual defensive shields, which is something no other nation can manage, and have limited endurance but high acceleration. Their weapons are short-ranged but powerful - in short, the Paladin fleet is designed to take and hold jump points and planetary orbits, which are both fairly small environments where agility, firepower, and toughness are at a premium.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[drakensis]

As well as having higher gravity, what if Earth was also unusually cold by habitable world standards. Say it's relatively unusual in this era for a habitable world to be in an ice age, even in an interglacial, or to be so far out from the sun. And Earth has what is considered to be extreme seasonal variations.
As a result, most other races tend not to wear too many clothes and think it's odd for Terrans to do so - right until they land someplace just short of the arctic circle, confidently expecting the weather to be a 'cool' 70 or 80 degrees Farenheit. And what's this 'snow' stuff?
Terrans visiting other worlds have a slightly deserved reputation for sweating a lot.
Plus, Terran's probably have bases on Mars. Have all basic training happen there - earns an instant reputation among other species for being horrifically demanding just for the location.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Bob Schroeck]

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Sentai Combiners - The Shapeshifting Blob Things From Beyond!

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For the specifics on this race, may I suggest some variation on the giant immortal morphing amoeba philosopher people I created for GURPS Shapeshifters, whose race name I'm blanking on entirely now?

-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Necratoid]

I'm not sure lightly armored is sensible for large Terran ships after all, unless they are constantly landing the main ship on the surface of the planets. For merchant ships and the like that makes sense... the warships it just seems odd. Drop ships, shuttles, and the like it makes sense for. The hangers mean that ship is also naturally larger.
If we take the compartmentalized view of ship design your going to drive other races nuts... half the ship is gone and it hasn't exploded yet. Combined with the gravitically sturdier frames and temperature tolerance differences your going to have a race that doesn't die when it should. Humans consider room temperature what other races take as freezing cold.
The spiders are going to take a weird slant on things. They breath methane and are cold in summer, so they are going to burn real easy unless they are build for a moist environment... which is going to require exotic compartmentalized technology. The first time they see a smoker its going to be like when the pipe seen in 'The Gods Must Be Crazy'. Cold weather creatures that breath fire, toxic fire... on purpose. That is just not right.
Perhaps the reason humans can get along with the spiders so well is that they are so alien in shape. Humans expected aliens to be well 'alien' (in shape.) Your fanatics are mostly rubber forehead alien types. Combined with the nekojin the humans sometimes decide the universe is playing mind games with them. If the fanatics keep using the 'Force' on people and are cutthroat that means the fanboys are going to be insufferable. Hence the Fanatics are constantly dealing with the confusion over why they ended up with the name Sith. Not that that is their official title to the humans, its just that they keep getting called that. It also manages to baffle them that they ended up with nonofficial name from an unbeliever race that isn't an insult to them.
Anyway, the reason I made the nekojin so 'hardcore' is that you gave me a 3-to-1 female to male ratio... of a carnivorous species that is prone to multiple births. This means massive high maintenance population. They need the die off so they aren't a massive plague to the universe. Life expectancy get longer as you live longer... its the first decade of being an adult that causes life expectancy issues. That is why they have so much time devoted to practical survival skills and then end up getting culture later. The human concept of birth control devices that provide effective temporary sterilization never occurred to them... and provide them with a new out. They go into a temporary nonblinding heat after the second puberty (physical, then sexual) that hits right about the same time they leave the grunt stage of their lives. Older warriors get bigger mechs and become less predator from the blood chemical make up changes of second puberty.
The Spiders should regenerate limbs given time. The Fanatics go for intimidating weapon limbs, the nekojin for functionality. The humans went for a combination, cloned limbs and cybernetic limbs are a personal choice on style.
The humans are exporting their cultures by osmosis. The fanatics quickly discover that gathering intelligence on human culture is mind warping. They just have so much random culture... often conflicting. On the other hand humans also do this weird thing where they understand the fanatics view point, but don't agree. That never happened before. Peoples either didn't get it and attacked or assimilated. They have a split over whether or not humans are some bizarre psychological experiment the old ones left behind. Does this mean that they are being tested? Did the gods decide the universe was stagnating and needed an influx of change? Did they get things wrong and the gods are just insane? Do the humans know something useful that they missed ? Humans certainly know a lot of useless information, so much mind scans are strangely hampered. So much that they can't figure out how this happened without purposely trying on the humans part. With most races you get 1-3 world views with humans you can get hundreds and as many world conflicting histories. It doesn't help that some humans assimilate and other don't, even human siblings with the same upbringing clash.
If humans like colder planets this changes our role here. We take over world unsuitable for anyone else world, reducing our need to compete for resources. Can take high gravity better, for spiders antigravity was a blessing they always grow as they age and pre-space they often died from collapsing under their own weight. Only the young go planetside.
Make humans able to eat a vast variety of foods others can't. On diplomatic meetings each race use to have a different buffet table. The humans pick and choose. Humans also aren't consistent. Even mated humans and siblings differ, its to the point some humans eat things that cause digestive issues for the taste.
(edited for spelling/grammar check)

[Valles]

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I'm not sure lightly armored is sensible for large Terran ships after all, unless they are constantly landing the main ship on the surface of the planets. For merchant ships and the like that makes sense... the warships it just seems odd. Drop ships, shuttles, and the like it makes sense for. The hangers mean that ship is also naturally larger.

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You're assuming there's a distinction - they use the same ships for civilian and military purposes... It all belongs to TASA. And, at least for the time being, every kilo of the ship's mass first has to be hauled up out of the gravity well.
For a sense of scale, a UTN Jumpship will be several thousand meters from nose to tail... and a Paladin frigate only about three to four hundred. Even a Spider supercarrier barely breaks a kilometer.

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If we take the compartmentalized view of ship design your going to drive other races nuts... half the ship is gone and it hasn't exploded yet. Combined with the gravitically sturdier frames and temperature tolerance differences your going to have a race that doesn't die when it should. Humans consider room temperature what other races take as freezing cold.

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Not that extreme - remember, for all of titles like 'space elves' and 'cat people', these alien races are actually, well, races, rather than seperate species. Humans, when you get down anywhere below the totally superficial. The difference in attitude to temperature is cultural, rather than biological.

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The spiders are going to take a weird slant on things. They breath methane and are cold in summer, so they are going to burn real easy unless they are build for a moist environment... which is going to require exotic compartmentalized technology.

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Well... No, then yes. I don't see their homeworld's atmosphere as having anything more than trace amounts of oxygen, see - their human associates live the next planet over. You'd better believe that they use encounter suits!
Which is part of why they get along so well - the only things that they and humans might possibly compete for are so unbelievably common that the only reason not to cooperate would be just sheer malice.
Spiders have a long and detailed history of their own, too, with wars, clashing cultures, great dramas, etc. But, like dealing with the UTN, you have to scratch below the surface to get a look at them.
The fact that, five genders or not, they're quite capable of figuring out what makes humans tick, then making dirty jokes about it, does a great deal to help.

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Older warriors get bigger mechs and become less predator from the blood chemical make up changes of second puberty.

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See above on why I don't agree - whatever characteristics our Killer Katgirls have, they evolved from the same base stock as all other humans... although, in their case, admittedly maybe with a bit of outside tinkering.

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The Spiders should regenerate limbs given time. The Fanatics go for intimidating weapon limbs, the nekojin for functionality. The humans went for a combination, cloned limbs and cybernetic limbs are a personal choice on style.

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Yep, nope, yep, nope. ^_^
Spider limbs are noticably more fragile than you'd expect from a critter that size - their 'adult weight' starts around 45 kilos, btw - specifically because they picked up the ability to discard and replace extremities well before they picked up sapience.
Having something that registers on your subconcious as 'Not Me' grafted onto your body disrupts the brain's ability to generate psionic effects - which is why the Paladins' combat mecha are pretty much the most humanoid - the pilot has to be able to visualize themselves as their machine. Just having something... gone... is less convenient on a personal level but doesn't cause the same problems.
The cats were already pretty much covered in your original post.
Terran medical science is still sort of working on the 'grafting metal to existing nerves' thing, and they're nowhere close to having biotech down well enough to handle specific body parts. Again, if you can't see how to do something in the next five, ten years, they likely can't.
I figure that the Spider exoskelton is actually something like keratin over skin over bone, rather than chitin - more like a turtle's shell than any sort of insect. Not saying that they don't keep growing, though, just that they would be getting pretty danged big before they started having problems, seeing as how their circulatory and respitory systems are decentralized and would tend to grow with the rest of them... I'm seeing 'nostrils' on the rim of the body, between dorsal and ventral plates, feeding into a series of small, interconnected 'lungs' that let them pass air around through the whole ring almost indefinitely, and the body's primary blood vessel right inside of that. Their blood, BTW, is more by way of a thin, tremendously rich sludge than the thin stuff we've got - their circulatory system moves it by peristaltic action rather than a specialized pump organ.
And, yes, the Terran willingness, even desire, to colonize heavy-grav worlds is an aspect of their interactions that I'd been thinking of from the get-go. As for the other things, well, the Paladins' Sects vary from each other as much as the... five? branches of the Abrahamic tradition do. There are very few points that they actually agree on, really, but in the face of a heathen universe, those are enough.
As for the rest, one of the things I'd been specifically wanting to get away from was the meme of contrasting a variety of human cultures with these monolithic alien societies - I mean, look at how much variation there is just within the bounds of Europe!
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Necratoid]

Current human tech allows for replacement arms that feel heat, cold and pain as well as pressure. I can't really seeing us losing that tech... Star Wars fanboy engineers. We have some guy in England who has subdermal implants that let you control robotic arms by thinking about it. So okay, no cloned limbs, but currently the remote arm guy is thinking he'll have neural chips for surfing the web in a decade... I don't know how close that really is though. Regardless, we have most of the tech for replacement limbs already... grafting them instead of strapping them on is not quite their yet.
On the jumpships verses merchant/military.... I'm saying that jumpships going planet side is a stupid waste of resources. You have smaller ships that land on planets... and you build the jumpers in orbit/space as you can mine asteroid belts and moons, then drag the resources to the construction sight. Not landing the big ships is a matter of cost. It is far too expensive to be worth it. I'll give you the that the jumpers fail to differ military/merchant, but it is unwise to send your pack mule into combat if you can help. So they'd be ship haulers and transports with guns, but in system military vessels make more sense.
I say the above because it matters in ship design. Do you mean the humans have that annoying tendency to try and make every ship do everything? The fighter/bomber obsession of certain generals after WW2 has hampered a lot of development... Specialized craft work better at their jobs. If they are all strict multi taskers then they may do something stupid like insist on terrestrial docking of jumpships. Currently, I can only really see that as useful if they are physically dropping off entire colony environmental biodomes or something equally massive. Otherwise atmospheric travel is only good for smaller lighter ships.
How long does a jump take? That effects a lot of technical desisions for me. If a jump takes less than a week its going to carry less in-flight supplies than a month or year long voyage. It looks like a really long time from what you said so far.

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The difference in attitude to temperature is cultural, rather than biological.

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Earth has this tribe in South America that has funky veiny blob things for feet. The Japanese are lactose intolerant, this is cultural as they didn't have cows so they don't have the natural ability to digest a particular enzyme... yet have no gene for alcoholism.
Genetics are surprisingly useless for telling what a species is really like. Regardless of changes in genetics form follows functions. This is true. Dinosaurs that held the same 'jobs' as modern creatures look the same. pigs and bears are close genetic relatives. One of Darwins(?) studies found that birds of the same species living on different parts of one mountain couldn't cross breed after a few centuries or so. Bears and pigs are rather close genetic relatives... or was it bears and a type of mole (its been a few years sense that class).
Basically, unless your going with the genes causing sentience being constantly tweaked or the old ones actually being intelligent DNA your going into bad plot device genetics here.

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You'd better believe that they use encounter suits!

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I meant they had sensitive equipment do to the moisture on their own ships, so they like compartmentalization. I'm thinking swampy home worlds for the spiders (correct me if I'm wrong here). Electrical devices tend to spark during testing and methane explodes/burns well. What percentage of methane do they breath? On Earth oxygen it is 21% and 78% nitrogen. What kind of mix is their methane environment?

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As for the other things, well, the Paladins' Sects vary from each other as much as the... five? branches of the Abrahamic tradition do. There are very few points that they actually agree on, really, but in the face of a heathen universe, those are enough.

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What are the base tenants of the faith. That tells me a lot about them. Also, have they actually written them down anywhere? This may seem odd, however with the Muslim faith they wouldn't write anything down for around 2 centuries as the word Mohammed prophet of Allah was to holy and incarnating it in text was a sin (which lives on in the no pictures of Mohammed riots from last month.). So you had to ask the priests who wouldn't write it down what is said. This involved killing people with other gods or having them convert. That and being nice to other Muslims. The Jews wrote it all down and had an entire book about hygiene... which made other people hate this unnaturally long lived race. Christians wrote some of it down, then the priest kept it in Latin picked and chose which books and letter they liked. Then kept it written in the secret code called Latin, Aramaic and the like... in fact the ceremonies were done in Latin. It didn't get translated until Henry the 8th made his own Church and then it got translated so the random non priests could actually read what this life defining document said. So having these Paladin guard their holy texts and be the only ones translating it should be involved.