Fallout Equestria

Makes sense. I don't remember if a specific number of towers was given or if they were, as Seraphem says, outside of sight range of one another.

There can't have been that many towers, though - the time and resources needed to build even one would have been enormous (and on a wartime budget!), let alone installing the various high-tech gizmos inside. Kilometer-tall buildings aren't exactly cheap to build, furnish or maintain.

For reference, a quick swing by Wikipedia suggests that the world's tallest building (the Burj Khalifa in Dubai) cost ~$1.5 billion just to build.

Which kinda brings into question the whole point of the towers, come to think of it. Why the gigantic expenditure to free up the pegasi, when the same investment of time, energy and technology could simply have been funneled into the war effort itself?

edited 16th Apr '14 4:39:51 PM by Snipehamster

The number given was 50, can't recall where that's from though...

Because as huge as they are, once they are built it's a permanent drop in resource needs. Plus the added defensive uses of them in the event Zebra's cross into Equestria again, PLUS the communication systems installed in them as well. Luna added a lot to RD's original plans to make the towers useful in more then just as SPP control.

Wasn't the reason that they were expecting to win the war, so the towers would be a permanent investment for all weather control in the future? They built it during wartime because it also had military applications, but it was a greater project than that.

No the initial pitch was simply to free up more pegasus forces for the war. The Luna saw the other applications in it that RD missed. Though it's post-war uses was likely a factor as well.

Where are you getting all this?

That makes me think about something else. Despite the Mane 6 being pretty much in character, the amount of over/hindsight is astonishing.

Fluttershy: Oh I'll just give both sides the technology to make the deadliest weapons known to equine kind. It's not like they'll actually reverse engineer them and make lethal megaspells out of them!

Twilight: IMP is an extremely dangerous mutagen, doubly confirmed now that I've seen the effects of it. I better make giant vats of it and start testing it on ponies in controlled amounts!

Pinkie Pie: I'll just pop these helpful yet addictive drugs like candy and spy on everypony. EVERYPONY. Won't that be fun?!

RD: As stated above by Sera.

I honestly can't find any over/hindsight moments for AJ and Rarity.

The Lighting Orb. RD's entire pitch for the SPP to Luna was only about being able to control the weather in Equestria with a single pony. Freeing up far more pegasus forces for the front lines. That was all she mentioned it would be for. Luna then instantly started seeing other uses, that if it could control the weather, couldn't it be used as a weapon? Lightning and tornadoes at will. And since they'll be building these huge towers, why not stick some communication gear in them?

Fluttershy simply could not conceive of anypony or Zebra wanting to use the megaspells offensively. She saw them as only being used to create healing or protection spells. By the time she learned otherwise it was to late. Saw it as stalemating the war by making neither side able to hurt the other.

Twi, no issues. What was the issue, and what basically became Taint wasn't IMP.. well not completely. The barrels of it stored under Maripony, the stuff that created the Hospital Horrors, and that lead to most of the taint in the wastes was byproducts of IMP. Or early tests of it. Impure samples of the stuff. The actual waste created in refining the IMP process. Close but not exact. That actual potion itself and the vats inside Maripony were the final, true version of it. And the instant she found out just how dangerous that waste really was, she began creating The Gardens to completely purge all of Equestria of it.

Pinkie. But the enhanced Pinkie Sense DID let her predict actual Zebra attacks, DID let her save lives and stop some attacks or plots. But yes she took it to far.

AJ's biggest failure was the early MWT and trusting the business ponies to run it without oversight of their own. Something she fixed herself as soon as she found out about it.

AJ did such a poor job of keeping her ministry in line that they tried to kill her.

Rarity presided over widespread literary censorship, produced and/or endorsed scathingly racist propaganda, and cut her soul into bits as part of a zany scheme to reunite her friends, which ended up failing miserably^note and totally wasn't all an elaborate setup to give Littlepip's bobblehead/figurine collection literal stat-boosting powers.

Fluttershy's mistakes - giving megaspell tech to the zebras in particular - are particularly outstanding because she'd already had first hand experience of the fact that healing megaspells don't do anything to stop people from fighting. In fact, all the first deployment did was press the Reset Button on a brutal trench warfare battle so that it could be fought all over again (and if you accept Kkat's PnP canon, this also cursed innumerable people to existence as ghosts). I mean, I know show!Fluttershy is naive, but that's really pushing it. Not to mention that handing technological breakthroughs to the enemy during wartime is, as PH points out, an act of treason.

And then there's the fact that Fluttershy isn't exactly well-versed in either technology or magic. At the very least, she must have had some help designing and building the megaspells in the first place. More likely, she'd have commissioned the designs from a department within her ministry and/or the MAS. Didn't anyone realise that mass-produced Amplifier Artifacts could be used to boost offensive spells along with defensive ones, or take the time to warn Fluttershy of this?

I'll have to double-check that part at some point, though I'm still not sure that the benefits would justify the cost.

edited 17th Apr '14 4:35:13 AM by Snipehamster

So yeah, Fluttershy is supposed to personally know how to create them.

edited 17th Apr '14 4:57:55 AM by ILSS

Yes but she didn't develop them on her own, the very first memory orb we see is her announcing to a whole audience chamber of ponies in her ministry that they will start work on developing the megaspells. And it was never even hinted she developed them on her own. But once they WERE devloped, she did understand how they worked. And is the only pony left now who does know that.

Hmmmm, given he has access to all of Twilight's research, and the MAS definitely worked with Megaspells.... shouldn't Spike be able to find the information too? Though doubt he'd agree to do it once Fluttershy said no.

While a megaspell would probably be overkill for such a purpose, it does raise an interesting moral question. Going by the PnP rules, ghouls need radiation not only to fuel their regeneration but also to avoid going feral.

Alicorn healing relies on radiation as well - without rads they heal at a quarter of the normal rate.

GoE might set Equestria back on the path to recovery, but it would also make it a deeply hostile place for the races that rely on the presence of radiation. The afterword mentions Derpy bringing back supplies of dirty water from elsewhere, but I doubt that would cut it on a large scale or in the long term.

edited 17th Apr '14 6:10:52 AM by Snipehamster

... okay the rules from the PNP aren't mention anywhere else, and also go against how going feral has been made out to work everywhere else. That it depends on the ghoul having something to stay connected to, some reason to keep going. Some tether keeping them sane. And Alicorns were never said to only be able to heal via radiation, and are unlikely to actually need it. They simply can use radiation to aid them with it. Regular pony level healing without it, Healing Factor with it. Versus ghouls who kind of do need some levels of it.

And the idea was more then just for the ghouls, but also to provide fuel for the radiation engines that could generate power.

Meh. Kkat wrote the rules - if you don't think they accurately reflect the way things work in the story, ask him.

Edit: Okay, Kkat edited and approved the rules, if you want to be pedantic about it. They're hosted on his Google account.

edited 17th Apr '14 6:26:58 AM by Snipehamster

No, most of the rules were written by a few people with her adding some advice. Plus PNP rules are really hard to go by given Game Play And Story Segregation.

edited 17th Apr '14 6:14:46 AM by Seraphem

Him, not her.

Okay, so I'm finally 100% caught up with Project Horizons. This is the very first time that's happened—I've been lazy in the past, and I was always two or three chapters behind. I finally decided to catch up for real because I heard that we learned what Project Horizons actually is in the latest chapter.

...Lies! Okay, sure we now know what Horizons is—as in, the actual mechanics of it—but we still don't know why Horizons. What did Goldenblood plan to do with it, and why? That's the important part! Argh!

On another note, we also learn in the latest chapter what Blackjack's cutie mark means. I'm surprised I never thought of it before. I like it. I mean, sure, it's really blunt and unsubtle and over-the-top, but that describes the story as a whole, so it's very fitting.

Hah!

You can sum up Goldenbloods plans and the projects in four words: Goldenblood. Is. A. Dick. If you take nothing else from the story, from the numerous tragic backstories of the Reapers, main cast and basically everyone, to the action sequences, to the constant theme of do better or even the ending, take that fact with you. Goldenblood is the biggest dick to ever live in Equestria, and every single one of his actions after war is declared is proof of that.

Still, if his plans do work, it just might save Equestria. SO maybe some of it was slightly, slightly justified?

Bear in mind the source. I'm betting it'll turn out to really mean something else.

I really enjoy this quote about PH in this video. I don't agree with the video as a whole, but this quote describes the story very well:

I'm not used to not having a PH chapter to read. Now I have to wait like the rest of you.

edited 17th Apr '14 6:21:57 PM by Unknownlight

Sure wasn't easy waiting a month after the Boo reveal. Glad it turned out she's still more than an empty shell, was worried for her character there.

edited 17th Apr '14 7:23:04 PM by darkabomination

That question is Goldenblood in a nutshell, really. I'm pretty sure he was always supposed to be a controversial character, though perhaps not quite as controversial as he eventually turned out to be.

He's obsessed with saving Equestria (and he's a dick). The problem is that he's going by a different definition of 'saving' than everyone else.

edited 18th Apr '14 2:48:15 AM by Snipehamster

He's kind of blue and orange morality in his extremes to do what he feels is necessary.

He'll throw an accidental eavsdropper down a elevator shaft, work with psychos and power-hungry oppertunists like Horse, and betray everyone no matter the emotional cost while showing occasional empathy and ruthlessness in equal measures when you least expect it.

Ultimately I'm not sure if he's a well intentioned extremist, just thinks he is and is a straight up villain, caused most of the crap himself and is trying to fix it the only way he knows how, or a broken man that no longer knows the difference.

And I think that uncertainty was the point Somber was trying to make.

The more I hear about him, the more Goldenblood starts to remind me of Prince Schneizel from Code Geass. I mean, nobleman who's in charge of a ton of behind-the-scenes research, is incredibly inconsistent about whether he does or doesn't care about other people, dupes and manipulates just about everyone who's important to the proceedings, retroactively hijacks the plot to become the ultimate Big Bad of the setting...all he's really missing is being terrible at chess while the plot acts like he isn't.