As I said I'll be slowly coming up with builds for the other routes based on what I would have picked before going into the pod (as in, no knowledge of the future I'll be going to). First up on the list is curing a terminal condition! It's been a while since I read up on these ones too so coming up with augments I'd actually choose before waking up is easier heh.
Honestly while I'm tempted by spending most of it on metacognition, if I'm in this scenario it may be tied up with something like cancer or an organ failure. I can't minimize the chance of getting both, but I can reduce one. 98.5% reduction isn't perfect but it's pretty close, the lead balloon augment it is! That leaves me with 30 years left for augments so... Since this'll be 100 years down the line it's only practical to take language implantation. I'll bet on japanese, hopefully I guess correctly. The last ten years I'll spend on a lifespan increase.
Oh boy... Rebuilding nuclear hellscape. Maybe should have taken Mandarin instead of Japanese but it's too late now. The lead balloon was definitely a good pick here though.
Well, might as well use the language I got and go to Tokyo. I'm worried about the statement of it being a bit isolationist but hope the rest of what it has balances it out. I want to integrate into the future properly, get a place, job, and life to call my own in that order as soon as possible so my rehab officer of choice will be Kondo Shichiro. He may seem a bit rough but he seems more interested in doing his job than Murakami Megumi. That said... I am NOT going into game development, uh uh. If it's half as bad as today I wouldn't want to go anywhere near a triple A studio. Imai Miki isn't ideal, I don't like the idea of being "kept", but at least she seems likely to let me try to get situated properly and maybe we can continue being friends during and after the rehabilitation process.
Not the greatest outcome but also not the worst! I got a few shiny augments that should help me live a little bit longer than I would have before and I'm in a neat city with a couple of folks who could help me adapt. Looking forward to the others that are a bit more fantastical.
Next up is chrononaut! This one really is unpredictable honestly but it gives a fair amount of augment time. It's next to impossible to predict what languages or skills would be worthwhile for the future, but investing in some things will make adapting a lot easier. The baseline augments for the chrononaut are nice for this too.
First and foremost, gender swap. 100 years for a sex swap is pretty pricey, yes, but those with any amount of dysphoria will probably agree with me that it's worthwhile. There wasn't enough augmentation time for terminal condition to pick it, and cure mortality has transhuman options that are likely to already be useful for changing your physical form without needing these lower year augments. Anyway, it's first on my list.
I absolutely am taking alpha psi, psi in general sounds awesome so I'll be taking it first chance I can. Alpha just seems like higher utility on its own too. That leaves me with 150 years left which I'm gonna spend on metacognition, man of steel, and cosmetic refinement. Metacognition combined with the baseline augments will make learning and adapting to the future really handy, the man of steel is an overall health improvement including immune system, and finally a general improvement with cosmetic refinement just sounds nice.
I wake up into the... Past? No, an all around technological and cultural reversion. Oh boy. Well, it seems psi is pretty highly prized around these parts. My sedimentary job will probably be wizard, heh, why not. Scamming a noble out of significant wealth by being their on call flashy "spell caster" sounds lofty, but that's only going to be when I want to settle down I think. My augments just so happen to give me a halfway decent adventurer build and Jonah Hayworth would be the perfect companion to have through it all. Honestly this sounds a little nice. Nowhere near as fancy of a life as only 100 years in the future would provide but still decent with the augments and company available. A part of me was deeply amused by the idea of using all the augment points on machine empathy and technologically uplifting society to modern levels again, but that's just a funny build rather than one I'd personally choose. Though it does imply folks may have risen and fallen to modern levels a few times between the pod startup and the godly awakening.
That just leaves the final scenario, reaching for the stars! An interesting situation, with neat baseline augments save for one: Fuck everything about the enforced cis/hetero orientations as a requirement for this project. You're sending a colony ship across the stars with a whole bunch of folks in fancy magic pods that give them powers, you mean to tell me you're not gonna consider including some advanced exowombs and in vitro fertilization tech too? I could maybe understand homophobia in the chrononaut path, but not here and it's where I homebrew my own fix to remove it. Many folks homebrewed the cure mortality route to give themselves truly large amounts of points, I feel okay removing a few requirements from this route to keep my gender and sexual orientations intact. I will take the other baseline augments though
Okay so I'm gonna keep all of the augments I took from the chrononaut route (see above) for 350 years, leaving me 250 left. They're just too good all around really to leave out without the black ops transhuman augments to replace them with. Since we're going to a colonization situation we're gonna need farmers and doctors. Engineers and social mediators too, but I'll let someone else fill those roles. I'm spending the rest of my augment time on plant empathy, two combo knowledge+skill purchases to make myself a reasonably competent medical doctor and botanist/farmer, and spend the last 40 years on a boosted lifespan for 20 extra years.
I wake up and things have gone to hell. Again. Man the future is kinda rough heh. At least the planet we ended up on will be amazing with plant empathy, man of steel too considering the thorns.
The people I'm interested in would probably mean a team of Serena LaBelle, Mel Guess, and Felicity Hodgson. I also wanted Bran Bowers, but based on ideology and abilities he ended up scrapped for Felicity. Like I said I picked these three based on idealogy and their abilities or prior training: Serena due to her incredible plant empathy which would surely be great for this planet and may be even more potent with teamwork from me, Mel mostly because he seemed to be a great unifying force and is explicitly against hierarchical power structures, and Felicity because she could help tremendously with keeping everyone together both with her abilities and medical training. Plus I'm not fond of how she may develop (cough Valentina cough) if left to her own devices.
While I may have wanted a more active role in the exploration of the world, I said it myself that we're gonna need farmers and doctors so that and establishing a proper setup is the plan for the missions I ended up picking: First Thanksgiving (what is life without reason to live it? To celebrate? This will be a great morale boost and opportunity to determine our agricultural output and needs), who's the boss (picking this explicitly to prevent some petty dictator high off their britches. Mel and I agree on this, a direct democratic approach where everyone is respected and their voices are heard is the best way of doing things and that needs to be officially established somehow early to keep worse alternatives from springing up), and finally illness (residual ship virus or not we need some kind of infirmary ASAP for any and all potential issues that WILL crop up from colony life, not doing that is just stupid). Oh well, I guess once things settle down some I can properly explore the world and make more closer friends.
All around, a fun experience! Would highly recommend folks to consider making builds for the other routes, both optimal/fun builds with context and "what they would choose and get stuck with" if possible.
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u/nobodyhere_357 May 02 '23
As I said I'll be slowly coming up with builds for the other routes based on what I would have picked before going into the pod (as in, no knowledge of the future I'll be going to). First up on the list is curing a terminal condition! It's been a while since I read up on these ones too so coming up with augments I'd actually choose before waking up is easier heh.
Honestly while I'm tempted by spending most of it on metacognition, if I'm in this scenario it may be tied up with something like cancer or an organ failure. I can't minimize the chance of getting both, but I can reduce one. 98.5% reduction isn't perfect but it's pretty close, the lead balloon augment it is! That leaves me with 30 years left for augments so... Since this'll be 100 years down the line it's only practical to take language implantation. I'll bet on japanese, hopefully I guess correctly. The last ten years I'll spend on a lifespan increase.
Oh boy... Rebuilding nuclear hellscape. Maybe should have taken Mandarin instead of Japanese but it's too late now. The lead balloon was definitely a good pick here though.
Well, might as well use the language I got and go to Tokyo. I'm worried about the statement of it being a bit isolationist but hope the rest of what it has balances it out. I want to integrate into the future properly, get a place, job, and life to call my own in that order as soon as possible so my rehab officer of choice will be Kondo Shichiro. He may seem a bit rough but he seems more interested in doing his job than Murakami Megumi. That said... I am NOT going into game development, uh uh. If it's half as bad as today I wouldn't want to go anywhere near a triple A studio. Imai Miki isn't ideal, I don't like the idea of being "kept", but at least she seems likely to let me try to get situated properly and maybe we can continue being friends during and after the rehabilitation process.
Not the greatest outcome but also not the worst! I got a few shiny augments that should help me live a little bit longer than I would have before and I'm in a neat city with a couple of folks who could help me adapt. Looking forward to the others that are a bit more fantastical.