Let's Play Fighting Fantasy #18 Rebel Planet
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angelfromanotherpin
- Overlord
- Posts: 9745
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Elmonite is a sensitive and powerful explosive which is automatically detonated by contact with the air. You know that from the time you break the seal of the cylinder, you have 3 minutes before the explosion. Will you break the elmonite into 3 pieces, one for each main computer, or will you consider that if you break it up it may not do enough damage, and pack it all against a single computer? If so, will you choose: the left computer, the right one or the one against the wall opposite the door?
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Darth Rabbitt
- Overlord
- Posts: 8869
- Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:31 pm
- Location: In "In The Trenches," mostly.
- Contact:
You quickly leave the building in case the explosion should harm you as well. But right outside is a platoon of Northern Arcadians, spiked tails restlessly swinging from side to side. Just as they move in for the kill, however, the crump of a muffled explosion sounds from the building behind you.
Immediately, the Arcadians' faces go vacant; they look around, heads lolling, you’ve done it!The Arcadian Empire is finished. The computer queen of the colony is destroyed, and with it went the will of its workers.
Well that's it. I said I thought it was the best SF based FF, and although some of it was goofier than I remember, I still do. I like the puzzle of getting the number, I think it's one of the best crafted puzzles I've seen in FF, even if the rationale is a bit silly.
Arcadian security is something of a joke. (We kill 2 security officers at the Uni, then admit we're up to our necks in rebel business, they let us go on. In Halmuris this avowed rebel is missing for an entire day after an unknown human cuts his way through the security gate guards and causes trouble at the agricultural centre including the loss of a ship), but not really any worse than the mess most FF antagonists make of creating a defensible stronghold. I'm not sure what happened to the metal detectors on Arcadion regarding your sword.
As far as I can tell the only possible way to run afoul of the “if you don't have enough money to pay, you lose” is not having the money to pay for a cup of coffee in the student bar at the uni, this requires a sequence of decisions: get trapped by Grus/Indus, fail the roll to escape, unwisely mention you have at least 500 credits, then regain enough sense to say you don't have any more, ask about “Fission Chips” in the grocers so you have to go to a hardware store to ask further, buy a load of expensive shit you don't need in the hardware store, insult the hardware store clerk so she adds 50% on, say you're a nobody from Earth at the Fission Chips, pay the membership, choose the Zodiac, don't get into a fight with the Chief, choose the Science Floor, don't get into argument, get close to one of the students who gives you Z's office, speak with Z, (who asks you to meet him in an hour, either way you fail to make it and end up with an 11 next morning appointment instead), choose to go to student bar instead of attend his lecture.
My money is on the Arcadians recovering from the shock of losing the computer in their head and still swatting down the humans, after all they did it before from an inferior postion.
Some stuff we missed:
If you confront Musca's guard straight away, he doesn't shoot you down like a dog, but shows you this device that he has developed that he believes can override the humans hard-wired resistance to the computer. If you submit (otherwise you get shot) you go through a VR sequence in your own mind, where the Arcadian computer offers you knowledge, then money and power. If you refuse all 3 and win a mind-combat with an appropriate guardian of each, you turn the tables on Musca's guard and brainwash him. As well as the arsenal info he lets on that there are 3 computers all of which need destroying.
The history museum represents one of the most brain-dead forced choices I've seen from a FF hero, like drinking the barrel in Nightmare Castle. If you remain on good terms with the guard he'll offer to show you through the door, or you can bribe him if you insult him. Either way you spot a baryon grenade that you don't know whether it works properly. So, you're on a secret mission, mainly involving covert reconnaissance, you have no reason to believe you'll need a grenade on Radix, and you certainly wouldn't be able to take it to Halmuris. You don't even know it's in working condition. The book tells you you must have it and attacks the guard for you. Predictably there’s a search party as you flee through an unfamilar basement. At the end, if you go the right way you have a straight 1 die 50% chance of death roll to escape . The grenade will destroy the Street Fighter outright on a Lucky and be a dud on unlucky.
On Halmuris, the guys in blue aren't cops, they're the engineers an technical guys. A subsection of them, including the guy you happen to choose are black marketeers. You can end up doing a job for the black market or buy a sword outright before being betrayed and having to fight your way out.
Arcadian security is something of a joke. (We kill 2 security officers at the Uni, then admit we're up to our necks in rebel business, they let us go on. In Halmuris this avowed rebel is missing for an entire day after an unknown human cuts his way through the security gate guards and causes trouble at the agricultural centre including the loss of a ship), but not really any worse than the mess most FF antagonists make of creating a defensible stronghold. I'm not sure what happened to the metal detectors on Arcadion regarding your sword.
As far as I can tell the only possible way to run afoul of the “if you don't have enough money to pay, you lose” is not having the money to pay for a cup of coffee in the student bar at the uni, this requires a sequence of decisions: get trapped by Grus/Indus, fail the roll to escape, unwisely mention you have at least 500 credits, then regain enough sense to say you don't have any more, ask about “Fission Chips” in the grocers so you have to go to a hardware store to ask further, buy a load of expensive shit you don't need in the hardware store, insult the hardware store clerk so she adds 50% on, say you're a nobody from Earth at the Fission Chips, pay the membership, choose the Zodiac, don't get into a fight with the Chief, choose the Science Floor, don't get into argument, get close to one of the students who gives you Z's office, speak with Z, (who asks you to meet him in an hour, either way you fail to make it and end up with an 11 next morning appointment instead), choose to go to student bar instead of attend his lecture.
My money is on the Arcadians recovering from the shock of losing the computer in their head and still swatting down the humans, after all they did it before from an inferior postion.
Some stuff we missed:
If you confront Musca's guard straight away, he doesn't shoot you down like a dog, but shows you this device that he has developed that he believes can override the humans hard-wired resistance to the computer. If you submit (otherwise you get shot) you go through a VR sequence in your own mind, where the Arcadian computer offers you knowledge, then money and power. If you refuse all 3 and win a mind-combat with an appropriate guardian of each, you turn the tables on Musca's guard and brainwash him. As well as the arsenal info he lets on that there are 3 computers all of which need destroying.
The history museum represents one of the most brain-dead forced choices I've seen from a FF hero, like drinking the barrel in Nightmare Castle. If you remain on good terms with the guard he'll offer to show you through the door, or you can bribe him if you insult him. Either way you spot a baryon grenade that you don't know whether it works properly. So, you're on a secret mission, mainly involving covert reconnaissance, you have no reason to believe you'll need a grenade on Radix, and you certainly wouldn't be able to take it to Halmuris. You don't even know it's in working condition. The book tells you you must have it and attacks the guard for you. Predictably there’s a search party as you flee through an unfamilar basement. At the end, if you go the right way you have a straight 1 die 50% chance of death roll to escape . The grenade will destroy the Street Fighter outright on a Lucky and be a dud on unlucky.
On Halmuris, the guys in blue aren't cops, they're the engineers an technical guys. A subsection of them, including the guy you happen to choose are black marketeers. You can end up doing a job for the black market or buy a sword outright before being betrayed and having to fight your way out.