Atlas

The first Midnight Dark supplement, Operation Plantagenet, is on its way and will introduce some new features to the game that folks have been asking for. I've been teasing a few of these already either here or on the Discord, but there's a lot more to come and a lot of fine tuning that needs doing before some of it will be ready even for beta test consumption.

I've been undertaking some consulting work for the NHS after my last contract ended. But that should be done in no more than two months. And, right now, I'm looking ahead to gainful unemployment and getting some solid writing done before we get there.

However, enough of that. I wanted to talk about the new Netflix movie, Atlas.

If you've not seen it, it stars Jennifer Lawrence as an analyst who finds herself the sole survivor of a military mission to eliminate a rogue android hellbent on killing off humanity. What makes it relevant to our interests is that her character, the eponymous Atlas Sheppard, finds herself the pilot of a mech and has to learn to cooperate with the mech's artificial intelligence. The movie is supposed to be about human coexistence with artificial general intelligence, although I'm not sure it does a very good job of that.

Before we get to the meat of this, let me just address something important.

Lots of things in this movie make no sense at all. I know this. If you are at all familiar with good sci-fi writing and movie making and have a passing acquaintance with relativity, you will have to switch your brain off. And it's arguably not a good enough movie to make it worth switching off your brain enough to actually enjoy it.

However, for our purposes, it does have some interesting ideas.

For a start, it does mechs very well. They have an apparently not-very-well-armoured clear canopy for no very good reason*, but put that to one side. Everything else is really good. The first great feature is that the mechs are obviously inspired by Titanfall, as they have their own pseudo-sentient AI that can act at least semi-autonomously. The concept pushes a bit further than Titanfall because the AI and human pilot have to achieve a certain level of personal integration for the mech's full capacity to be available. And because the mechs are also relatively small (we would consider them to be P1 mechs, only a little bigger than heavy infantry), they have a range of movement and agility as a result that makes their battlefield utility immediately apparent. They have tremendous manual dexterity. We see a mech bring someone a cup of coffee and, later, handle very small items of equipment without serious issue.

When it comes to the question of "why would we deploy a mech instead of a tank", Atlas answers that question extremely well. In one scene, we see these mechs, in freefall, fight efficiently and effectively against overwhelming enemy odds (although I did say that Atlas was the only survivor - but this is in the trailers, so I don't feel bad telling you, if you haven't see it).

The movie also offers some great inspiration for mission design, including a fighting retreat and a "Stop the Launch" race against time, which would make a great solo mission.

It also includes some interesting ideas for dangerous terrain and similar, in which performing certain actions within an area of, say, treacherous terrain might trigger additional effects. Move too fast, or fire a weapon, or dig in and you might find yourself opening a sink hole and becoming trapped or worse.

Anyway, I'm spending my bank holiday working on some new rules and trying to make it through an awful painting backlog. I'll try to give you guys some content worth talking about. Sorry for not prioritising the Patreon more frequently.

*The reason is that they paid Jennifer Lawrence a lot of money to be in this movie and, damn it, we were going to see her face in the fight scenes!