What are your thoughts on increasing the technology level of a PMD/Pokemon-only World? How can it be done well?
What are your thoughts on increasing the technology level of a PMD/Pokemon-only World? How can it be done well?
What are your thoughts on increasing the technology level of a PMD/Pokemon-only World? How can it be done well?
Shadowrun: Pokemon edition.
Though it can be done well. It's not like there isn't industrial pokemon as it is.
I mean, I played Shadowrun for the SNES, and one of my teammates was a literal fox girl.
So being a Pokémon, using machines and weapons, and maybe request the help of another Pokémon could be doable.
Pity the mods never went that far, but yeah would be cool.
Also bullets would also have some other problems beyond just steel and rock. Water types that can go pure water with Acid Armor, psychics that can use reflect to stop them in air, flying types can given some of the wind attacks throw them off kilter..
Adding ballistic weaponry is a great way to instantly remove all the fun from the setting. Unless it's like a steel or rock type there's no real reason to fight it, just whip out your glock and call it a day.
Well, assuming we're going off of the original thread, the obvious conclusion would be to get to roughly our same level, and then let the Pokemon adapt the technology to their own needs.
Obviously a Stoutland could use transportation, but how are they gonna use a steering wheel and press the gas pedals at the same time? They need a novel approach, like a lever system or something.
Maybe there's a far more efficient magical fuel source in that world than just ethanol. Perhaps there's better ways to cool than our existing refrigerants.
Cyberpunk PMD is something I had not considered. Maybe I should toy around with that kind of a setting.
Anon, if this was the case, police wouldn't have to worry about knives. Close quarters combat invalidate most ranged weapons, and also it's probably not as strong as the higher level Pokemon moves like hyper beam. Otherwise, why would Pokemon pose a threat in the trainer world where they very much HAVE GUNS. Even if it was, protect exists.
>Even if it was
Even if it was as strong as the likes of hyper beam*.
Face it, guns only really make sense in a war-time scenario, or if you're THAT underpowered(but why are you going to a place or chasing a criminal that dangerous if you're not strong enough for it?) You also can't bring a tank into most dungeons, so like... that's not an option either.
Not only that, but given that Pokemon appear to have an inherent need for battle, it's likely that even if guns managed to invalidate all other combat, sports-like battles would still happen, so you still have your Pokemon battles even if in a more constrained form. We don't need swords, and yet sword fighting is still practiced globally.
You're right, that was somewhat hysterical. There's basically no reason to assume that a bullet is significantly more dangerous than any of the energy/explosive/projectile based attacks that pokemon endure in normal battles.
Cyberpunk is a choice. I'm imagining a scenario where cities become so large and twisted that mystery dungeons form in the alleys, turning into impossible non-linear structures that spit you out on the main street when you go deep enough.
Cities being half mystery dungeon would be really interesting. Given that we already know stores do get set up in mystery dungeons, imagine having a storefront in one!
Hey, quadrupeds could work too. For example, you could use a Mudsdale as a gun carrier to bring much heavier firepower into particularly dangerous dungeons!
Huh, never seen Shadowrun before. Was it any fun? I'm looking for new games to tide me over until Pokemon gets good again.
>Was it any fun?
The game starts with you being shot to death on a corner, and the (previously mentioned) foxgirl saving your life because the Dog God tell her to do it.
Is a good game. A bit aimless due to the whole "cyberpunk" nature, but is great fun.
Huh, I'll give it a shot. Not used to CRPGs, Fallout 1 filtered me so hard that I didn't think I'd be trying it again any time soon. Thank you anons.
The ones on Steam are good CRPG fun. The first is the weakest, second strongest, and third middling. They're all unconnected but if you wanna play em all play em in production order since they get progressively better when it comes to gameplay.
Honestly, I can see an entire Cyberpunk take on it where you treat 'Explorer Teams' or the like as Hero groups from MHA or the Hero Squads in [GENERIC MANWHA WHERE PEOPLE USE MMO TACTICS AFTER PORTALS SUMMON ORCS] (There is a bunch of them, You don't need to bother hard).
Hell, the above trope as well explains Mystery Dungeons appearing below massive cities or in parks or local destinations where you need a bunch of trained Pokemon who actively train their skills unlike common Pokemon where a Vulpix would only be able to produce a huff of flame without constant flame-belching practice to make something useful.
That could lead to the use of weapons, better if you are leaning towards and Anthro setting instead of having to discriminate against some Pokemon due to lacking arms or legs or the like to fight back.
It might be interesting, but they aren't going to make any more PMD.
True, SMD was the love letter game. It's so thoroughly over.
It can't in the way that pic depicts, imo. "Pokemon in essentially the human world" is uninspired, their development would be radically different
Why not? The world we've seen has surprisingly human towns, if you just ignore the obvious theming of the tents and buildings.
The stuff there is low tech, it's believable enough for a fantasy village, but cars or guns are bit odd for them to create. Again, in my opinion
No, I'm just curious. Frankly, I'm in agreeance that some obvious tweaks would have to be made.
Cars may take on the same shape(only so many ways to put a box on wheels and make said wheels effective,) but how they control would be totally different in order to support it. I came up with the two levers system, where one acts as gas and the other acts as steering, but there's probably more elegant methods.
For weaponry, assuming they have them, quadrupeds may have an eye-piece that lets them guide a gun mounted with a robotic arm(assuming the tech is advanced enough.) Hell, even if they don't have guns, they may still utilize a robotic arm for other things.
It isn't "tweaks", it's "the population varies so much that economies of scale don't actually work". Even if demographic trends SOMEHOW do not pressure fungible populations to consolidate so body-types are about proportional across socioeconomic class, you still have to engage in dramatic redesigns to expand the customer base.
To say nothing of what significant fractions of the population being able to fly or living underwater does to city layouts.
Yeah, I think skyscrapers might be out. Maybe high buildings completely to account for flying Pokemon
I was more referring to ending up with wider than usual cities with certain establishments who's relative position only makes sense when you completely ignore the street layout and any hills or rivers to measure as the very literal bird flies. Plus "port" cities that don't actually have any practical harbor because their functional equivalent is to do with the very different functions of practical interface between above and below water society.
Very basic matters of society advancing beyond small villages CANNOT work the same way when such a large spread of the fauna are people.
You'd see the more typical Water-type Pokemon in the rivers rioting over the health issues before it did anything to the ocean... Who could well be screwed over by the boom of Trubbish and Grimer fighting to keep it attractive to them.
I'm not even sure how to properly approach this post.
Anon, you do realize that most Pokemon fall on either anthropomorphic, quadrupedal, or bird-like body plans, right? That narrows it down immensely. Furthermore, the mass majority of Pokemon fall within the 3 foot to 7 foot range, which we already design for in the human world(well 4-6 but it's not a stretch to make it 3-7.) More specialized goods would have to be made for other Pokemon, but that's how the cookie crumbles for them.
It's likely that as technology progressed, most Pokemon would segregate based on body-types anyways. That way, the birds are making cities built for bird people. A Zootopia like city is idyllic, but ultimately very unlikely.
Ignoring all of this for a second though, you would've realized I used the phrase "obvious tweaks" BECAUSE THE THINGS I WAS POINTING TO WERE THINGS THAT YOU CAN'T FUNDAMENTALLY DESIGN DIFFERENTLY. Firearms and cars work off the same principles no matter HOW they control. You cannot design a firearm as anything other than a tube, some sort of explosive, and a projectile. Likewise, you cannot design a car as anything other than a container on at least 2 wheels.
>Anon, you do realize that most Pokemon fall on either anthropomorphic, quadrupedal, or bird-like body plans, right? That narrows it down immensely
Not on the level of the Ford Model T as is frankly necessary to get a LOT of how IRL society developed. The "minor details" make a lot of difference in what seating you'll fit in, and the wider size range is of independent distributions rather than properly centered in the middle for the incredibly vast majority of adults to utilize something designed for "the average"
>More specialized goods would have to be made for other Pokemon, but that's how the cookie crumbles for them.
And that trivially reaching only a third of the population sharing reasonable standards CRIPPLES economies of scale behind altering society with mass-market products. You got any idea how much of a nightmare a genuinely multi-species society would be for medical science and the pharmaceutical industry?
>It's likely that as technology progressed, most Pokemon would segregate based on body-types anyways. That way, the birds are making cities built for bird people.
Undifferentiated cities would have a LONG time as the power centers, during which they'd specialize districts and building elements for the different parts of the population to make use of the different labor efficiencies of each rather than losing out on Flying-type mail or Water-type dockworkers
>Ignoring all of this for a second though, you would've realized I used the phrase "obvious tweaks" BECAUSE THE THINGS I WAS POINTING TO WERE THINGS THAT YOU CAN'T FUNDAMENTALLY DESIGN DIFFERENTLY.
Again, Model T. What it did to society only happened because virtually everyone could use the same car. When that isn't the case, the business model loses efficiency critical to bribing the educators before the government finishes making up its mind to invent an impropriety for not leaving public works to your product. No, that is not a hypothetical.
>Not on the level of the Ford Model T
Unless the car is telepathic, which it could be. Or it could be sentient, a Pokemon of its own(ala Revavroom or Golurk.) Ta-dah... the tweak has been found.
>medical science and pharmaceutical industries
Well it seemed to have worked out for not just our world, but also the trainer world. We may not treat our pets as equal, but we can still provide them incredible medical care and surgeries even on the strangest of animals. The trainer world sure as shit figured this out, enough to be doing the literal same exact thing we do, but on a scale that includes fricking GEARS as living creatures alongside actual dragons and extraterrestrial beings.
Also apparently Pokemon share enough biology that an oran berry heals wounds regardless of what Pokemon you are. That seems to suggest that most pharmaceuticals can be heavily handwaved with the exception of like... Flareon's air sac getting infected or whatever.
>Undifferentiated cities
Yeah, okay. Skyscrapers for all then. Whatever, this isn't really worth arguing, I like both views.
>again the Model T
The model T is a container on at least 2 wheels that is self propelled and has both steering and braking capabilities. How it achieved its steering and braking was vastly different to the likes of Benz Model 1 or the 1905 Curved Dash Oldsmobile, but they do the same thing. That was my point.
Reinforced concrete bunker. Most Pokemon can't deal with that.
>Or it could be sentient, a Pokemon of its own(ala Revavroom or Golurk.) Ta-dah... the tweak has been found.
Then it's not mass-produced transportation, it's an example of labor specialization. The exact opposite of the hyper-fungible labor markets industrialization was fueled by.
>That was my point.
And my point is that crapping them out in the millions to massively transform society and cause physical restructuring of cities took everybody being able to work with just the one. You can't get away with "any color as long as it's black" levels of cost-minimized standardization here, and that's what's needed for technology adoption to outpace social adaptation.
That's MY point. Numerous examples of transformative industrial goods rely upon near-total interchangeability of operators.
>Then it's not mass-produced transportation, it's an example of labor specialization
Revavroom, sure. Golurk, however, is a manufactured Pokemon and more can be produced in a factory.
Additionally, if the vehicle is capable of reading minds of whoever is at the driver's seat, that doesn't necessarily mean it's ALIVE. It just means it has some means of input, which would theoretically be no different to a wheel or a lever.
Additionally, the mass majority of the work goes into producing the engine and the chassis. You can still make them for sizes between 3 and 7 feet, because that's where 90% of your market lies. Anything else would be a niche market. You could make the control scheme and seating arrangement modular, thereby mitigating(albeit not removing) much of the problems you keep trying to say are there between different body types.
>near-total interchangeability of operators
And the easiest way to achieve this is if cities segregate based on body types.
Cities with mostly quadrupeds and that are built with quadrupedalism in mind will outperform undifferentiated cities by the simple fact that they are effectively interchangeable operators. They may trade in goods that are designed for quadrupeds in mind, but they are not needing to consume those specific goods themselves.
>designed for quadrupeds
NOT designed for quadrupeds, damn it.
But yeah. I like both views, I really like the idea of both a Zootopia-like city which has Venice like canals for water types to swim alongside the sidewalks, but the most obvious solution to the problem you keep presenting as some sort of gotcha is "we don't have many of the other kinds here."
Honestly I'm more curious about some aspects of pokemon. Revavroom is one of the few pokemon we've seen used industrially in some form. Where we see a human changing it from its normal form to the much more powerful Starmobiles.
>Revavroom, sure. Golurk, however, is a manufactured Pokemon and more can be produced in a factory.
So you consider cloned slaves to be economically interchangeable with building a forklift?
>You can still make them for sizes between 3 and 7 feet, because that's where 90% of your market lies.
Versus the vast majority of our market being between 5 and 6 feet. It's a much wider distribution even if the range is only "mildly" larger, we do not have double-digit percentages of the adult working population as midgets who struggle to reach the peddles.
>Additionally, the mass majority of the work goes into producing the engine and the chassis.
And you need different chassis for the different volume constraints of different body-types, as well as different engines the different loads of different passenger weights.
>And the easiest way to achieve this is if cities segregate based on body types.
Not enough. The first Ford facility in Michigan eventually pumped out Model Ts for the entire United States, and then some for export. A single factory complex covering HUNDREDS of cities is how you get modernity. That's the level of production streamlining these things run on, it's not something every city can do for itself.
The narrowness of design economizing production is a work of generalization, not specialization. You're still insisting the opposite direction is a fix for the problem because you misunderstand the point I am making.
Basically me arguing that a world of Pokemon won't recognizably industrialize for a much larger stretch of technological advancement because you just don't get economies of scale out of it until MUCH later, only to be countered with a moron who thinks that insulated specialized markets are efficient.
So it's fairly clear that the other guy thinks that Pokemon society would look like a bunch of hyper-specialized, industrialized cities only catering to one specific body type each.
What do you think society would look like?
High-skill physical labor from the way Pokemon-power is mostly uncapped replacing a LOT of small and medium scale mechanization as we see in mainline, medium-skill machine shops all over the place running the last-mile work for end users that ends up precluding most mass-market products, and large-scale infrastructure and raw material refinement being "properly" industrialized.
>They're automata.
They're fellow 'Mon. Designing away higher reasoning to serve as tools, if even possible for the magic in question, is effectively eugenic selection for drooling morons only fit for grunt labor.
>Engines? No. The mass majority of Pokemon are under 220 pounds.
Do I seriously have to run the numbers on SV ranges to show you just how non-normal the distribution is?
>yeah somehow the modular design you keep proposing isn't enough
Because such modularity is historically a derived design costing extra after the generic cost-minimized design initiated social changes that made such conveniences relevant.
>ignore the fact it's just a fancier version of countries
The segregation is removing the historic labor specialization like Flying-type couriers, reducing economic efficiency in the transition. Mass expulsions for the sake of fricking bean-counters not having to deal with people who can't use their product.
>So you're saying that countries like Japan can't have different needs to countries like the USA? That Italy's needs are identical to Russia's needs?
The different needs are not to the point of altering roadwork principals from the mobility of operators and scale of vehicles.
>Please, PLEASE for a moment actually consider what you're saying.
I repeat the same to you, genocidal eugenicist. Everything about my points are concerned with how to get from PMD as shown to recognizable urban society, everything about your points seems to be mere possibility of a functional end result.
If you do run the numbers in weight I encourage you to exclude legendary mons, megas, and mythicals. I suspect the former twi will seriously tilt the scale upwards and are not worth considering due to their rarity
I promised I wouldn't respond, but...
>They're fellow 'Mon.
And they were designed by an ancient society to do grunt labor and protection work.
>It is said that Golurk were ordered to protect people and Pokémon by the ancient people who made them.
>Some say that ancient people invented Golurk to serve as a laborer. It follows its master's orders faithfully.
Is it really that unethical to produce them?
>this is effectively eugenic selection
Buddy this means that Porygon being a projection of a computer program is a form of eugenics.
>genocidal eugenicist
I'm not even made, I'm just confused on where the actual hell you drew this from. Not once did I say we should commit genocides, let alone eugenics.
All I said was that cities would begin to modernize, they'd specialize into certain body types because it was easier to handle standardizing that than it was to try to make their infrastructure entirely universal, let alone the products they were using like vehicles.
>And they were designed by an ancient society to do grunt labor and protection work.
Bit of a difference between "long ago these guys were created to do X" and "let's rip out what had them turn out to be people for voice-controlled cars". The things CAN breed, if only with Ditto by game mechanics, so it's not likely every single one came out of a workshop.
>Buddy this means that Porygon being a projection of a computer program is a form of eugenics.
No, that'd be if you consciously decided to continuously tweak the program to optimize for a specific result rather than letting it shake out as it will. There's a point where you need the eugenic form to get them stable, but continuing with that once you're there is very much a pointed "We'll Make Men No Longer Equal" moment.
Which is a bit of a silly position for Pokemon in the first place, but another important part of that massive block of dependencies for the Industrial Revolution you seem to be deliberately ignoring in favor of "this end result could work".
>All I said was that cities would begin to modernize, they'd specialize into certain body types because it was easier to handle standardizing that than it was to try to make their infrastructure entirely universal, let alone the products they were using like vehicles.
And how exactly do the Pokemon who aren't that body type leave? What happens to the ones who's vested interest in the community from before this don't WAN'T to go? Getting to the efficiency gain requires you actually reach homogeneity, and every way to do that is throwing out previous labor specialization efficiency in-between. To say nothing of having so many more factories competing over resources!
I think this side of the autistic nitpicking, which seems much less so than my first touched on, ends up becoming Held Item development. Work with the Pokemon capabilities rather than make new ones from scratch.
>let's rip out what had them turn out to be people
Still not the presented option. The option was that we make things that are powered autonomously have some mind of their own.
Golurks can co-exist. You also seem to hyperfocus on this instead of my option of a telepathic sensor, which would more or less solve this conundrum with all but dark types...
>No that'd be if you consciously decided to continuously tweak the program to optimize for a specific result
So... Porygon is eugenics, got it.
You constantly iterate over programs to improve them to a specific end result. That's the entire profession of software development.
>And how exactly do the Pokemon who aren't that body type leave?
I never said they had to. Though many probably would as the price of goods rose for them, those who are stubborn enough because of how much they've invested in the given community will probably just keep around and work harder to make ends meet. They'd probably even form their own Chinatown-like communities over time.
It's not like they can't have dedicated jobs in such cities either. Obviously most of the bipedal Pokemon can utilize screwdrivers, allowing them to make repairs on otherwise critical infrastructure. Flying Pokemon can help with the mail services. It's just that the city will simply specialize into a certain architecture, and everything else will follow suit.
>To say nothing of having many more factories competing over resources!
This has been so far your only valid criticism, but is heavily mitigated by the fact that many Pokemon are infinitely better at excavating ore and harvesting resources than our current day society's capabilities.
Not to mention, dungeons seem like they have infinite resources, so if that holds out true, they don't even live in a proper scarce environment. It probably won't though and it's a gross misunderstanding of how dungeons fill with such loot and material.
>Held items
Yeah, this would probably evolve like that.
>So you consider cloned slaves to be economically interchangeable with building a forklift?
So you consider mass produced single board computers to be economically interchangeable with human beings?
They're automata.
>Versus the mass majority of our market being between 5 and 6 feet
Firstly, our market 4 and 6 feet. My nana is a short woman but she can drive her BMW all the same.
Secondly, yes that is still a wider gap by 2 feet.
>You need different chassis and engines
Engines? No. The mass majority of Pokemon are under 220 pounds. You are not transporting a thousand Groudon on a daily basis, you are transporting Furret, Lycanroc Dusk, and Galarian Stunfisk, which are only 71, 51 and 45 pounds respectively. If anything, you can get away with one stroke engines that are LESS powerful than what the Model T had because of this.
Chassis? Sort of. Not really. Yeah, some Pokemon need to have special considerations, like Furret or Ninetales. That's why you build a car to have the capacity of 4. You can change out the back seats for more space for longer Pokemon. Yeah, you loose out on some additional seating, but not as much as you're arguing for.
>Not enough.
>yeah somehow the modular design you keep proposing isn't enough
>nor are any of the universal designs that would cover 70% of all Pokemon
>nope you can't mass manufacture that either because you can't
>and your city concept doesn't work because it just doesnt cover enough Pokemon
>ignore the fact it's just a fancier version of countries
>The narrowness of design economizing production is a work of generalization, not specialization.
So you're saying that countries like Japan can't have different needs to countries like the USA? That Italy's needs are identical to Russia's needs?
Please, PLEASE for a moment actually consider what you're saying. I could barely pick apart what that was supposed to say to begin with because it's not a proper sentence, it's a fricking gaggle of terms held at gunpoint.
>just mass produce pokemon as a slave class
If you're making golurks they're still sentient because it is a golurk and not a forklift that's fricked up bro
That seems a little extreme. Abandon the city to the poison, steel, and dark types, come live in a cave like all the sensible folk.
I wasn't going to manufacture Golurks(me saying that was just saying that Golurks were originally manufactured and not bred,) the point was to make automata with the same general principles. A vehicle that is powered by some sort of magical power and that takes (probably verbal) commands to ride around.
It wasn't even floated as a proper idea, just a desperate "if we can't do the mechanically 'universal' design, then how about these potential alternatives instead?"
Of course that doesn't matter. None of this did.
I may not want to be alone but I really don't deserve to be around anyone.
That's a foolish conceit. No one "deserves" anything, but we do it anyway.
Let me rephrase that: I have not earned my presence. In fact, I have actively earned a swift social removal.
... man I really hope I don't become a Ninetales. Loneliness for a thousand years sounds like it'd suck.
Anon, this is a silly thing to beat yourself up over, it's a conversation about cyberpunk and industrialization in a world where cartoon animals shoot lightning at each other. It's in the nature of this website for people to use hyperbole and call each other gays so don't take it personally. You're still welcome at my forest hovel
Yeah, but I got a little too passionate about the whole thing and ended up shitting up the thread.
I'm afraid I'll burn down your forest hovel next if I get passionate again. 😛
Eh, it's whatever. I don't think it was the best thread topic from the start since it got talked to death in the last one.
On the note of industrialization in pmd though it's funny how a small number places clearly touched by industrial society just exist in pmd, like the power plant friend zone. Where do those come from, I wonder? Are they post humanity? Did humans just leave or die off? Does the ideal habitat for a magnemite just happen to look like a power plant by sheer coincidence?
I was about to say that it was likely post-human, but I remembered the decrepit lab. Its describe outright STATES that it was built by humans long ago.
>An abandoned lab built by humans long ago. Left to fall into disrepair, it is now home to Pokémon.
Makes me wonder, where DID the humans go? Did they just leave the planet? Were they originally visitors, or were they a home species? This was unfortunately later retconned, because SMD's story line involves the first human to arrive.
>SMD's story line involves the first human to arrive
Did it? I somehow don't remember that
I vaguely remember Mew revealing that the player is actually a part of a reincarnation cycle that keeps fending of dark matter, that stretches back to the very first human that arrived.
It's been a few years though so I could be off about what it actually was about.
>immediately restates your question
I... I'm gonna be honest I'm fricking exhausted and can feel my thoughts trickling through the brainfolds. The heat's making it impossible for me to sleep though. Sorry.
But yeah, I think it'd be interesting if humans weren't actually native to the PMD world and were just visitors who had to abandon their colony.
Perhaps that's even why Pokemon have human-level intelligence and have settled into towns. They were uplifted, or are mimicking what they saw from humanity.
The oddest part to me is that when the pc says they're a human the partner always mentions that you don't look like a human which means they not only know what one is but have an idea of what they look like. I suppose that means knowledge about humans is widely known, even if they aren't around.
Makes me think Arceus decided that humans were to much trouble from some reason and just kinda Dimurged us back into the Consciousness pool to reborn, maybe as a way to right the cosmic balance.
Just clocked his heels and poof Humans go bye bye.
Hey, Arceus could've split the worlds in twain. A human-exclusive world, with animals to fill the gaps left in the ecosystem, and a Pokemon-exclusive world, where Pokemon filled the gaps left by the absence of humanity.
Haha how awful can you imagine if Arceus stripped you of your humanity and turned you into a cute lizard or something?
There was a fimfiction story that didn't delve into it deeply. Just a vehicle for pokephillia where everyone got turned into pokemon.
Also for every cute lizard someone is getting a form as a form of toxic sludge.
I'll compromise and be a toxic lizard
That being said the shear amount of cute creatures in this world leads you to say most would be cute.
Ans yes I am even saying the bugs are cute, like I look at Nimble or Crickitot or Snom as adorable.
Klefki is cute but I'm not so sure about actually being a pair of jingly keys.
I wouldn't mind being a klefki, I love that damn thing.
To be fair, that also could just be because they're looking at a Pokemon. "You look a Charmander, not anything else. Why are you saying you're human?"
>restraint
I haven't shown it in the 20+ years I've been alive and I probably won't be able to show it 200 years later.
>Mildly interesting theory.
Thank you. I am like... the only space exploration anon in the last thread so that'd be fun for me, but still lonely.
>Why the Pokemon?
The first game I think did something funky. I remember reading that the human was actually in human form and just got cursed to be a Pokemon, but I was told by other anons that was false. I can't really recall the details.
I know that Explorers had it so that the human actually STAYED human in the paralyzed timeline, and only donned a Pokemon form partially because they needed to hide and partially because they were sucked out of the time hole they were using a bit early.
I don't know about the other games to be honest. SMD makes sense because it's reincarnation, but GtI? You got me. GtI is weird because the human even remembers the human world.
It's possible legends of humans is a thing.
What makes you assume Rescue Team is the first time a human has made an appearance in the PMD world?
It's entirely possibly many many have come before and that's where the legend started, stories passed down through folklore.
Where that lab came from too, humans brought from the past trying to build something from their old world.
In PMD2 a human was in the world, but that human notably never regains their memories. Meaning thanks to the dying world it's possible they too came from another world but the world just didn't have enough strength left to grant them a stable pokemon form so just left them as they were.
It was only when they went back to the past, where the world was full of life that they were changed.
Passion isn't a bad thing; sometimes it just needs restraint. A thousand years is more than enough time to learn that.
They're almost certainly post-human relics, yeah. I don't think we can really say anything more than that while staying in canon territory, though.
This is a mildly interesting theory. Imagine the space-exploration anons taking off just to find observational space stations or something around the planet.
Does make me wonder where the humans that are turned into Pokemon come from (and to some extent why).
>Reinforced concrete bunker. Most Pokemon can't deal with that.
How would a moderately trained supernatural creature fail to shred one?
The more mundane human shit you introduce the more bland and lame it becomes.
>How would a moderately trained supernatural creature fail to shred one?
I don't know, how did Garchomp fail to destroy half of Lumiose? It was just an example. It could have just as easily been like... 9000 planks of wood, a sheet of paper folded 92 times, or floating rocks for all I care.
Not all Pokemon are not all strong or all powerful. Weaponry still can fill gaps. Even more so if you can make said weapons elemental in some way, such as using typed gems to power lasers or something.
RPG type equipment is fine. Straight up human tech analogues is worldbuilding poison, takes away from what makes Pokémon unique which is their inherent power. Excadrill fissuring a bunker will always be better than it setting up an a generic human explosive.
Okay, what about a bundle of blastseed?
Better, but why do that when you can slam your claw into the ground and crack it open with an earthquake? Just about every physically oriented, fully evolved pokemon learns it.
A Lv.3 rattata could make use of it.
If you have money you instead hire some electrodes, they love it.
That's fair enough. That said those same pokemon could probably learn it via tutoring as well provided they had a guildmate willing to dedicate some time to it. Besides, as far as investments go, a tm for one of the most reliable and powerful moves available seems like a solid one (just make sure your buddies can get off the ground)
>Via tutoring
Now maybe it works different in the PMD games, I never got around to using the move tutors in those games. That said, Dig is never available as a move tutor... move in the trainer games, so that's a thing.
The mass majority of the Pokemon that can learn Dig via TM are like Vikavolt or Venusaur, where they either have options that play far more into what they are, or they're so bad that Dig isn't enough to really make them viable in any tough battles that would need them to know Dig. Unfortunate, really.
>Dig
I MEANT EARTHQUAKE FRICKING HELL
I am, admittedly, just assuming that if you're capable of making earthquakes then someone that can already do it might be able to show you how to make use of that potential. More senior guild members should be teaching the less experienced ones after all, right?
This is going purely into headcanon territory though
If don't mind me indulging in my own headcanon, I don't think that works as well as you think. That's because the elemental powers come from different biology. For example: Vulpix can control its fire as orbs. Flareon has a flame sac. These are two very different approaches but still lead to flamethrower.
I'm fine with stuff derived from things pokemon already use.
Okay... so now what if we distill the explosive compound and distill it? I'm just curious where this ends.
Yeah, 298 Pokemon do learn the move. There's a bit more nuance than that though, because of those that do, only 62 can actually learn it naturally. The rest would have to be finding rare TMs, and frankly there's better options for those 236 remaining Pokemon to spend their hard earned cash.
>distill the compound
>and distill it?
I meant "take the explosive compound and distill it", Christ almighty. I'm a moron.
Anyways, if you can tame that, then you not only have a good gunpowder substitute to make guns with(that could launch iron barbs,) or use it for TNT explosives. I imagine you wanna stop around here, which is fine.
>I'm just curious where this ends.
It depends on how potent it is. If they become stronger than a self destruct then you have officially made pokémon whose entire shtick is exploding things good redundant.
A tutored Pokémon won't be able to make good use of it if it's just weak. This is where equipment and tools could help as a shortcut to power. Whereas moves will continue to grow stronger with you and cost no resources that you can't recover from a nap.
Electrode's shtick is that it's the fastest gen 1 Pokemon and it's a mimic, not that it's a good self-destruct user. Graveler is a better self-destruct user, and Golem blows both out of the water.
Actually, Electrode's attack stat is kind of really bad for what it is.
I didn't mention the trode. I guess a more apt way to put is it that it's base power stat should level off at some point before sacrificial moves.
>I didn't mention the trode
Electrode's the most famous self-destruct user, and there aren't many other Pokemon that specialize so heavily into it. I mean really, are you ever desperate enough to self-destruct Claydol?
Electrode may be known for blowing up, but I would hardly call it specialized into it. I mean, that thing has 50 base attack, it's a pathetic exploder
Yup.
Anyways, I agree with your assessment that making it any more powerful, without some serious drawback, ultimately makes it too powerful. Thanks for indulging me.
A scaling 50 base attack into 200 BP is mogged by other pokemon, not blast seeds which we were comparing it to.
Well, personally I think it would be better for it to be treated as a shaped charge anyways. That's a niche that another pokemon doesn't really fill on its own, and something that would be useful to have access to.
Level 100 Electrode has a chance to do <75 damage, which is less than SPMD's blast seed flat explosion damage.
I need more context for this to mean anything. Against what? Is this electrode minimum attack? What exactly was this calced for?
I did against Abomnasnow, both had max IVs and zero EVs. It's a pretty ridiculous comparison that in practice would be nigh impossible to encounter, but it was still a thing I found really funny.
The absolute maximum possible is 1906, against a zero IV and EV level 100 Chansey and a max IV and EV Electrode.
We can do a little worse than your abomasnow
Welp, I guess this thread proves that A)autists ruin everything and B)a topic makes everything.
Oh I had no doubts that this would be the case. It was just a quick test I found very amusing.
Okay? My point is that tech shouldn't make what Pokémon specialize in redundant.
I don't entirely think so, but it's boring story writing if you can't play into their strengths at least a little.
Either way... See above.
Cars in the form we know them wouldn't make sense because pokemon vary so much in size and shape. They'd need to be something more modular or, more realistically, they'd rely much more heavily on public transit, which would have cabins large enough to support a variety of mons.
Glorious revavroom taxis.
I forgot that this stupid pokemon existed and I'm not happy that you reminded me
POWER MY KILLDOZER, REVAVROOM.
I completely agree with you, yeah. But also, I needed an OP image.
I'm not too much of a fan of Goblinserf's sci-fi art, because I think it relies too much on making things bipedial as a worldbuilding shortcut.
Unfortunately, I don't know of anything better in this category.
Yeah, turning everything into a furry-ish biped with hands is lame. It's cooler to think about how tech and society would develop if a big chunk of the intelligent population is non-humanoid.
I doubt a "modernised" pokemon world would have all the same innovations as ours, and I doubt we've got all the things they'd have.
I can imagine things like ghost-proofing secure areas to stop someone phasing through the walls, but not say... cars when everyone has their own body plan.
tha tbeing said my preffered mon option would fly anyway so I doubt that'd apply.
Something I'd like to see with these kind of industrial imaginings is how the legendaries would react. Like a Kyogre getting pissed about water pollution or something
How would the internet look in the Pokemon world? What do you think Geocities would look like? Surely different Pokemon have totally different brain chemistry which leads to lines of logic that are completely different. I think the internet would be colorful, but I'm struggling to imagine it.
Humans use weapons because we have no natural weapons worth a damn against apex predators. It's moronic for Pokémon to need them.
What is this conversation about, even? I've lost the plot.
Same. I think I'm just going to gather up a bunch of pissed off or listless pokemon and form a primitive society in the woods to return to tradition.
This has stopped being comfy.
And is just two autistics now getting lost in the weeds and yelling Marco polo.
Abandon Thread.
Yeah, you know what? I'm gonna stop. I didn't mean for it to go this far. Hopefully the thread recovers but the damage is probably already done. I'm sorry and I hope I die first when we inevitably get isekai'd.
MD also is, to be fair, the spinoff with the most history of tool-use among Pokemon. It's not necessarily a stretch to say that they might invent better tools.
Where's the carambola-allergic Peppergay when we need him?
Another moronic PMD thread.
That guy is in the hospital and was unable draw last I saw him post months ago.
Well, that was interesting.
Goodbye.
Again. I'm terribly sorry.
I'll take the first bullet... seed when we get there.
Unacceptable; live.