u/CitricThoughts

These two settings tend to get bodied against a lot of other sci-fi when we take just the humans. Therefore, why not put the humans against each other?

On one side we have Babylon 5 itself - a very large space station that originally served to maintain diplomacy across the stars until Earth descended into a brutal dictatorship and all the aliens decided to kill each other. Joining them are The Alexander and Churchill battleships along with all the "enemy" ships from the battle for B5 Independence; the Roanoke, Nimrod, Olympic, and 3 Hyperion class heavy cruisers, 2 earthforce gunships, a bunch of boarding pods and a compliment of marine forces. They'll also have a lot of starfuries.

Even with all that they'll be heavily outnumbered however, as they'll be fighting the Battlestar Galactica and the entire fleet of humanity at full strength. Even if it's ragtag, they probably have 50 ships to B5's 10. That said, B5 is huge and well armed.

The Fleet are the aggressors. They're going to try to conquer B5 and use it to defeat the Cylons or something. B5 will try to drive them off. This doesn't need to be a battle of annihilation. Both sides are led by their most competent commanders.

EDIT:

Round two: It's just the Alexander and Churchill fighting alongside B5. BSG still gets it all.

Bonus Round: The Cylons vs. Minbari.

Terrans are pretty tough on the ground. But how do they fare against the forces of the covenant?

1: Starcraft Marine vs Sangheili trooper

2: Marauder vs. Brute

3: Zurdo Wraith vs Siege Tank

4: Viking vs. Vampire

5: Thor vs. Deutoros Scarab

Second question: How much of a mismatch is it? If one side wins, how many equivalent troops could they make it through? If it's roughly equal and could go either way, that's 1. If it's a curbstomp, that could be multiple.

Bonus Round: Grunts vs. Scv's.

There's an Earth called, "Crossover Earth" where both Marvel and DC characters exist at the same time. This is the one where the various crossovers have happened, like Spiderman/Superman, Batman/Hulk, X-men/Teen Titans, etc. This is not Amalgam Earth. Basically it's a version of Earth where both sides exist and have always existed.

Which raises an interesting question. Marvel civilians are absolutely insane compared to DC civilians. As a few crossovers have shown, DC's civilians basically worship superheroes while Marvel's civilians would try to beat a hero to death for trying to save a disabled mutant child. You'd see a world with both sides of the spectrum existing in full force for once.

We also see some big variance in who they elect. President Luthor is one big issue where he'd almost certainly do a lot to crack down on mutants not because he hates them, but that he hates anyone seeing themselves as "superior" to him. I can imagine he'd be absolutely thrilled to see Marvel's civil war play out as well. Particularly at the point where they decide to kick all aliens off the planet. At the same time, Marvel occasionally elects some truly insane people, like William Stryker who in at least one timeline manages to get all humans and mutants alike killed by sentinels.

You'd see interesting elections like Robert Kelly and Graydon Creed going up against a modernized version of Prez Rickard. I mean imagine Creed against Rickard, that'd be mad.

I can imagine the conflicts between Green Goblin and Amanda Waller as well, considering he's the sort of person she'd prefer to stick a bomb in the head of rather than work with or under. For that matter I can't imagine Val Cooper or Shield would enjoy working with Cadmus. General Eiling and Ross would probably get on like a house on fire though. At the same time they'd definitely enjoy some of that Reed Richards derived technology making its way into government hands. Or how about the Human Defense Corps that Luthor founded and that invaded hell getting Marvel tech and support as well?

What do you think would be the most interesting parts of it? If DC got dragged into the civil war era or other big events like that, who do you think would be on each side? Who would end up the president? How would their government organizations mesh or not mesh? What would be the most interesting stuff to see and the biggest flashpoints? Let me know what you think!

It's a war with dinosaurs! The secret underground realm of Skartaris, land of dinosaurs and warlords fights against the savage lands, hidden antarctic realm of dinosaurs and warlords.

These lands are unified, meaning that heroes and villains will be fighting on the same side in this case. Also outsiders like the x-men or justice league can't interfere. These people have to either be natives or permanent immigrants to qualify.

This is a war of conquest. When one side has conquered the other, they win. The two realms are connected via a single massive portal large enough to march an army through.

So I'll be upfront - I hate Gleba, I really do. I fully understand it and can make systems that work, but I just don't like the system. But there's one thing I love, and that's the music. I honestly think Gleba has the best music of any planet period. Vulcanus has big, booming orchestral music, Fulgora has somewhat tense and exciting music. But Gleba just has fun music that's a little weird, and I love it.

How about you? What's your favorite planet for the music?

Most worlds are lucky to only have one kind of zombie virus show up at once. On one extremely unlucky world, a number of non-traditional zombie viruses show up at once.

1: Trioxin (Revenge of the Living Dead)

This is a chemical weapon similar to agent orange in its chemical composition, but it has the rare advantage of making its zombies just as intelligent as they were when they were alive. However, they're in perpetual pain which is only eased by eating the brains of the living. They are uniquely hard to kill, remaining animated basically no matter what, and burning them or even nuking them just spreads the Trioxin wider.

2: Cordyceps (The Last of Us)

This is a fungal infection that turns people into mushroom-men monsters, and spreads through aerial spores.

3: Crossed Virus (Crossed)

This is a rash-like infection that turns people into insane and depraved psychopaths obsessed with basically being the worst people possible. They retain their full intelligence, but zero rationality or humanity. They're still alive and can die like any living person, though. Also most are not good at long term planning, but they are quite relentless.

4: Nurgle Plague Zombies (Warhammer 40k)

This is unique in that it's a spiritual infection and mortal medicine won't halt or cure its progression at all. It's basically Papa Nurgle's spirit infecting people, creating barely living people in perpetual despair. Note that we're ranking the infection, not Daemons. Out of a sense of "my infection is clearly the best and I'll prove it," Nurgle isn't going to bring down chaos space marines or daemons. He's just working with the locals, though what he can make out of them is fair game.

5: The Green Flu (Left 4 Dead)

This zombie virus is infectious and creates fast, dumb zombies. Most interesting are the powerful mutants it creates, like Tanks and Witches. Several of these have far more combat power than a normal zombie.

6: The Knoxville Infection (Project Zomboid)

While quite "basic" in that it creates dumb, slow zombies, it is extremely infectious, and may well spread faster than anything else on this list considering it basically ended the world in a week. It's almost certainly airborne/waterborne and spread across the globe from a single point of origin in mere days.

7: The Rage Virus (28 days later)

Although it requires fluid contact to spread, the Rage virus is also extremely infectious, turning normal people in mere seconds after contact. The zombies are fast and regain some intelligence over long periods of time. They're still alive, though, and can starve or die of thirst.

These plagues show up in various parts of the United States at different times. Each one is exclusive; if someone is infected with one, it can't be infected by the others. They will then fight to the uh, second death, I guess. Whatever zombie plague is left standing at the end is the victor.

Honorable Mentions:

I wanted to include the hunger from Marvel Zombies, but since it targets superhumans primarily and there are none on the actual Earth, it'd turn out to be a fairly basic infection. They do retain intelligence but there's a lot of crossover with the Revenge of the Living Dead style zombies who are arguably stronger without supers involved.

Phyrexians seemed interesting, but I figured they'd be too overpowered.

World War Z zombies would be too generic so I left them out, but I did consider them. Most other generic zombie universes were discarded for similar reasons.

I tend to play only random planet maps for a simple reason. No matter who I play, no matter how many times I restart, I always seem to start on the western continent next to the lake below the pholus ridge. I never seem to start on the eastern continent, and I think I can recall starting on the central island once or twice. In like several years of play.

This is always on the standard "map of planet" maps. I've been putting up with this for years and it just never occurred to me to ask why this happens. It's not that I hate the spot per se, but it'd be nice to use literally any other start position sometimes. Does anyone know why the game has this bias?

The Terrarian has defeated the moon lord and built the world of Terraria into something like a paradise, or as close as a hellworld like it could become. The peace is disturbed one day by the arrival of a new force. Descending from orbit comes The Engineer from Factorio, having escaped the system he once crashed in.

The Engineer and the Terrarian are both at an end game level. Both have every item, skill, and power they could possibly have access to. Neither can leave the planet until the challenge is completed. Unless an item specifically allows for respawns we're not counting them here; neither participant is immortal. This is equivalent to a hardcore game mode.

A quick summary:

The Engineer: The Engineer is from a highly advanced but seemingly collapsed civilization dedicated to precisely one thing: Industry. A single engineer is capable of creating a system that can convert whole continents into dedicated machines of industry, exploiting, extracting, and weaponizing everything on a world. This process is extremely destructive, left unchecked all indications are that the Engineers civilization destroyed the planet Fulgora by converting the oceans to oil. The Engineer has access to flying mech armor, a variety of ranged weapons from missiles and flamethrowers to small, tactical nuclear weapons. Perhaps most fearsome is his logistical power. Through a small army of robots the Engineer can consume the land itself and extract every possible value resource without even leaving the comfort of their spidertron. Speaking of, the Engineer has a near limitless number of combat robots as well, culminating in the missile-spamming spidertron.

The Terrarian: The Terrarian started off as a normal young adult with a copper pickaxe and a dream. Along the way they mined, exploited, and crafted new gear in the process of growing to a supreme level of power great enough to challenge a god. The Moon Lord, the remnant of Cthulhu himself, is the main power behind much of the hellish nature of the world of Terraria. Though the Terrarian can build elaborate, complex machinery they do not have the logistical power of the Engineer. They do have access to one thing the Engineer doesn't however - magic. From summoning literal star dragons to endlessly reproducing star spores to swords that can cut down swarms of enemies and even gods, the Terrarian is a fierce combatant. They have fought everything from giant monsters to literal demons to the beam-spamming Empress of Light. Few characters can be said to have equivalent combat power as an end-game hardcore-mode solo Terrarian.

The match only ends when one of the two combatants is dead. Who takes it?

It's well known that 4chan made the SCP universe. Generally speaking, that's where the knowledge ends. There was one post made on /x/, and no one really posts or talks about the broader context. For good reason I suppose, most people don't want to admit to having visited 4chan.

I will admit that I browsed their occasionally in the late 00's, mostly on a few boards. Those boards being /tg/ and /co/. /tg/ Is the board for traditional games. Think Dungeons and Dragons and Magic the Gathering. /co/ Is the board for comics and cartoons. /tg/ is the most relevant here. These were the early days so things weren't very heavily moderated, which often led to some pretty horrible stuff being posted. Think "rotten" level bad stuff. However, those two boards didn't have too much of it which is why I stuck to them. What /tg/ did have at the time was a ton of roleplay and creative communities. I helped to make some, in fact.

There was an april fools crossover event where certain boards were combined, making people who usually have zero reason to interact do so. Most relevant to this was that /tg/ and /x/, the paranormal board, were combined. So what do you get when you combine highly creative roleplayers with paranormal enthusiast schitzos? Ludicrous creativity. I 100% think that both SCP and the Backrooms came out of this era of combination. The crossover lasted far longer than the two boards were combined, leading to a silly roleplay thing called 4chan house where the boards made characters to interact with each other. This matters because it kept the two boards interacting over a long period of time. Because of the loose moderation that let people make off-topic posts regularly, there were a lot of discussions where people on /x/ were introduced to roleplaying games like Delta Green, Call of Cthulhu, and more. One person even made a mini-RPG set in an infinite walmart where everyone was trapped. Hmm, I wonder why people being trapped in an infinite huge store sounds familiar.

/tg/ loved Dr. Who. So whoever invented SCP-173 probably came from that cultural crossover, since it has so much in common with weeping angels.

There's one other aspect, which is that there was a creepypasta style of story called "The holder and the keys". Basically they were rather silly, because they involved some complex, esoteric process where you'd get a key that would get you killed by sending you to a hellish realm. After SCP-173 one of the very first SCP's involves keys that open a portal to a dangerous dimension.

I hung out on the irc chat for a while when it first started. I didn't like Kondraki or Bright, and I did like Right, but I had my own projects so I didn't join in and write one of the first series. After that I didn't feel like I should join because it got too big. I have followed it since the start though, and remember all the ones that got deleted. Just like the first version of the site got replaced. Like the controversy the technopathic girl, the original 808 caused.

Anyway, I'm 100% sure the origins of SCP's came from that inter-board crossover. Feel free to ask me whatever. This is mostly trivia but some of you might be entertained.

There's been a murder in the small town of Murderville! Shock and horror! Fortunately there's a detective convention ongoing at the time and several legendary detectives were all in appearance.

Since so many of them have solved so many murders, they propose a competition. The first to solve the case wins.

-Detective Columbo (Columbo)

-Jessica Fletcher (Murder She Wrote)

-Ben Matlock (Matlock)

-Hercule Poirot (Poirot)

-Dr. Mark Sloan (Diagnosis: Murder)

The case takes place in a generic town in the USA, but involves European immigrants, legal and medical fraud and arrogant rich Americans. While we as the audience know that the Butler did it, none of the detectives know this from the start.

Which of the detectives would be the first to solve the case?

An alien warlord summons a perfect copy of every single great Trek captain across time and uses mind control to bloodlust them. They'll fight to the death. Temporary team ups are allowed, but everyone has to turn on each other in the end and they all know it.

The participants are:

1: Captain Archer

2: Captain Pike

3: Captain Kirk

4: Captain Picard

5: Captain Sisko

6: Captain Janeway

7: Captain Freeman

We're going to pretend Discovery doesn't exist.

They're scattered around a vast citywide arena covered in ruined and derelict ships. They've all got a phaser from their era, which is enough to kill each other in any event. All phasers are set to kill. The wrecked ships are a mixture from across the timeline. There's no third option that lets them all leave or make peace or something like that. It's just a fight.

Seven enter, only one can leave. Who takes it?

I've been rewatching Star Trek over the last few months. I made it through TNG, DS9, lower decks and Voyager. Now I'm on Enterprise. While Enterprise is one of my least favorite series of the lot, it's not because the cast or ship are bad. The ship is cool and the cast are great actors. It's mostly because the Temporal Cold war devours the series and I hate that plot. My favorite episodes are ones like the Andorian Incident where the show is actually setting up the federation. They make the show great, though there's far too few of them.

Still, as I'm going through season 3 there's one big highlight: MACO's. It's still early enough in Earth's history that they remember what special forces are and actually have and use them. They are freaking badass! I forgot just how good and effective they were at their job. When they go down to the mining colony and just outright win a fight and do it handily I was like, YES! They're so freaking good the Federation had to nerf them.

Personally it's one concept I wish never disappeared from Trek. While the Federation is definitely not a military with its giant fleet of warships science vessels, there are way, way too many times where a team of elite, trained fighters would just solve their problems. Granted, they're so cool and effective that the bridge crew wouldn't be able to get kidnapped as often as they do. That'd be like, half of Trek plots right there. Still, the concept makes so much sense and they're so damn cool. They'd also make way more sense to send down to some Cardassian planet than, say, a random brand new ensign that immediately gets killed. I just wish that at least one series decided to bring them back.

I mean why not have MACO's during the Earth-Klingon war? Why not have them during the Dominion War? Sure, Trek humans seem embarrassed by their skill at combat, but that's no good reason to bury the concept of a team of well trained badasses. They're cool!

Anyway I don't expect we'll see them ever again, I just wanted to express my appreciation for one of the most underrated parts of Trek.

(Also Enterprise had some of the best mirror universe episodes.)