site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   2249 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 21, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Another gripe I had with it was the gear system. A Rogue Trader, even one down on their luck, has more money than God.

I personally felt the gear system did a really good job of capturing that. There's no such thing as money for you, you can always afford to buy everything that the vendors have on offer. The only gating factor is rep and game progression (which is really what profit factor boils down to). The latter wouldn't be a thing in the fluff, but eh... the nature of video games requires that the player have a power curve, so I give them a pass on that one.

I'm happy to concede that RT does a far better job at diegetically gating stronger gear than the average RPG, and the setting of 40k makes rare relic gear and one-of-a-kind antiques very easy to justify.

I still felt that the profit factor was wack, a single gun could cost as much as you deciding to be merciful and preventing a planet from starving by providing subsidized grain. It very much wasn't the kind of gear where that would make sense, such as some kind of adrathic weapon or a set of Terminator armor.

I'd much rather have had some form of accounting, even if the units of exchange you had to bother to consider were millions of Thrones, or have the weapons be doled out through quests or loot drops in the kind of scenarios where that makes eminent sense.

Maybe I just didn't get far enough in the game (I'm only in chapter 2), but I never saw a situation where you spent profit factor to get gear. It was always a check where as long as you had enough profit factor, you could buy everything the vendor had and not take a hit (because as you said, rogue traders have more money than God). The only times where I would gain or lose profit factor were based on quest decisions I made.

It's entirely possible that I'm the one remembering things wrong. If that's the case, my criticism would lean more towards the rather disproportionately high profit factor that certain weapons were locked behind.

While I could see the gameplay justification behind doing so, there were things like krak grenades, explosive charges and standard med kits that were limited purchases.

I can only reiterate the level of ludonarrative dissonance that induced in me. Even an impoverished RT should be able to buy enough explosives to blow a factory sky high. They can certainly afford standard issue militarum medkits. It would have made far more sense to limit players in how many could be brought at once into a mission, which is already the case thanks to inventory limits.

If you do nothing with your planets, it's going to get impossibly high, but if you develop them which costs you only a little of time on decisions, you're going to easily have the profit factor.

It's not hard at all.

Also the weapons don't cost you anything - you simply unlock them by having

  • enough trader reputation unlocked by giving them common items they likeň
  • are in general rich enough

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats