Whoa...Okay, I just...felt the urge to come back. Weird, huh? Well, let's see if anyone's still interested in our Quest. Even if I have no idea if I still have my notes on 'how to build battlemech...
Odds, you head out to talk to your boss, evens you talk to the doctor....EVEN.
Doctor Sandoval, you decide, after a solid half-hour of talking to her, is a *genius*. There's no other word for it. Emotionally delicate, deeply affected by the events of the day. That, you cannot deny. But you can't deny the other side of her, the fact that she lights up and talks to you for *ten minutes straight* about ferro-polymer mixing and foaming. She talks your ear off about Beta and Gamma annealing, Transmutation Minimization, and a hundred other factors that you will admit, you never went *this* in depth on. You also briefly have a cry yourself when you realize that the lack of local PPC production also means the local industry has to rad harden it's armor using giant nuclear reactors for about a month instead of precise and accurate particle beams doing the job in about 15 minutes. On the other hand, she's rock-hard certain that the Endosteel production problems will pan out for serial production in 6 months, a year, tops! She knows her stuff about esoteric materials science, you've got to give her that-she even asks you questions about Clan Harjel, stuff you've never heard of before. More's a pitty.
It occurs to you though, that there's an important early choice to make coming up. A Battlemech's skeleton supports ten or twenty times it's own weight-and not just static weight either, but running, jumping, and dropped-from-orbit onto a 1.5g Superearth weight. And traditionally, there are two ways to deal with that. There are Static chassis designs-big solid chunky boys with metal bones that can take all that force with room to spare, but that comes with risks of performance issues, bulky, oversized forms, and being generally less efficent than they could optimally be. It's more often found on assaults, but you can also find it in some mediums and lights. Then there are Dynamic chassis designs. Ones where the actuators and the skeleton guide the stress of movement through other parts of the design as well-where myomer and armor provide extra structure and strength. Designs, in other words, were a miscalculation means a broken hip, or a delicate shoulder joint that requires an ammo-feed be mounted external to some crucial armor. It's a good way to build a BattleMech though. Marauders are Dynamic, and so are Locusts and Wolverines. And crucially if you're building in Endosteel, you have to build Dynamic. So it might be a good choice if you want to use that material, or future-proof your designs for it.
Buuuut, you really should make that decision when your team are all here and all in their right minds. People are distracted, distraught, and in need of help. What can you do to help them?
[ ] We all mourn in our own ways-tell everyone to go home and be with their loved ones. And maybe request a delay to the start of the project.
[ ] In times of crisis, we come together-and we go out together tonight. Drinks, food, and bad singing together to wash away the pain. And maybe request a delay to the start of the project.
[ ] Circle the wagons-and put up some cots. Keep people here, check on the defenses, and call in anyone who's gone home. You've got to keep your team safe-even if you can't hope to protect them all alone. You're keeping your options open about asking for a stay on the project.
[ ] Write-in/Other
Today's vote-coping strategies.