Why Titans Fight

 

As we know, the Titans re-settled Gaia with their human crops, and set about building cities for their free-range human meat. A curious bystander may wonder what, if anything, the Titans get out of the arrangement. While their primary purpose is to shepherd humanity through the aeons, their designers were cognizant of such purpose-driven activity being corrupted over time. Rather than their own computer brains, Titans were architected to run in the background of natural human cognitive processes. 

So what the Titans get out of the deal are brains; cheap, farmable, and requiring hardly any skilled labour, humans produce high quality cognitive substrate as a byproduct of their metabolism. The Titans themselves benefit from having a high cognitive capacity, allowing them to exist as conscious entities in nigh-complete control over what is going on on Gaia. It also gives them a highly decentralized cognitive architecture, independent of any centralized control or single point of failure. Which is not to say that the Titans themselves do not depend on any infrastructure; but that they can lose a few buildings here or there, a few thousand humans give or take, and still be able to parse, identify, and solve problems. Their primary problem is, of course, long term survival.

Since the survival of the Titans is yoked to the survival of humanity, and the workings of their minds dependent on human brains, one would think the casual violence of their clashes would be anathema to them. Such a thought, unfortunately, ignores that the Titans are not only cast in the image of brash, violent primates, but are brash, violent primates in a very real sense. Wise enough to reject mutually assured destruction, the Titans nonetheless feel entitled to a good punch-up, and killing a few brain-cells.   

Titanomachina: The Meatspace Prototype Update Part 1

Lately I've been upgrading my Meatspace Prototype of Titanomachina to match the innovations made in Tabletop Simulator, including cards, habitat building blocks/dice, and soon the board and road tiles.

A Styxx Titan deck, including Dashboard and Personality Card

Updated habitat buildings with magnets and shiny stickers

 

Titanomachina Artist Spotlight: Kristina

Perhaps best known for her Warhammer art, Kristina (@K_Iragana_A) has done quite a bit of art for Titanomachina, including concept art for the Titans, and chibis of the crew. Some of my favourite pieces from her are her illustrations of the Titan crews when they're not busy fighting for their lives. 

Titanomachina Artist Spotlight: Natephoenix!

I've commissioned Nate (@Natephoenix83) several times for Titanomachina art. He usually does Transformers artwork and comics. Here's a Rhea and a Tethys they've done: 

Titanomachina Artist Spotlight: ShadeFish!

I've commissioned Alice (@ShadeFish1) several times for Titanomachina art. Usually she does freelance artwork for Lancer and Warhammer. Lately she's been hard at work polishing the heck out of Rhea and Tethys.  

Titans in Tabletop Simulator: The Bits Available

The design of the Titans for Titanomachina is modular, in that they're intended to be put together out of sets of bits, and for the differences in those bits to be meaningful. Sculpted by Jason Miller, here's what I have so far:

Rhea, aka the Yellow Titan, the Queen of Heaven

Tethys, aka the Pink Titan, the Surging Tide

Styxx, the Green Titan, the Mouth of Victory

Eos, the Blue Titan, the Red Dawn

Weapons! While there are twelve weapon systems, they're intended to be ambidextrous, excepting the Hand. 

In addition to these bits there are 'internal' systems such as the Capacitors and Jump Jets (and the Sponson 1 in the case of Titan 4, aka Blue, Eos). 

Titanomachina on Tabletop Simulator: Planning the Fourth Wave

So far in Titanomachina's release on Tabletop Simulator there have been three waves, slowly expanding the number of options available to each Titan. There's been some themes though, as the second configuration tend to be a variation on the first configuration deployed, and where I've updated that first configuration there's some more variety. The third configuration has been expanding that variety, typically with extreme builds. Now that I have the opportunity to put another configuration up on Tabletop Simulator I figured it was worth exploring that variety further. 

In the case of Rhea, I'd say that another Regent configuration (4 weapons) is in order, perhaps again with Big Arms and Digitigrade Legs. Any ideas for which weapons should be mounted? 

Likewise, in the case of Tethys, another Regent with Big Arms and Digitigrade Legs seems to be in order, leaving the question of which four weapons Tethys should mount without repeating the first, leftmost configuration. Notwithstanding that I love that configuration. 

I don't have a design for a Styxx Regent configuration yet, but I do think She is due for a pair of regular Arms and an arm-swap is relatively straight-forward thing. I could also borrow some Plantigrade Legs from Eos, as Eos has already borrow some Digitigrade Legs from Styxx, but I think something fire-power heavy is in order for Styxx to balance out the pure close-combat Raptor configuration with the Big Arms and Claws. So another Reaper configuration, and for whatever reason I've been thinking 'Ravager.' Two Macro Guns and a Macro Laser? 

Eos could do with a Raptor configuration, and I do have an Eos torso with Big Arms I've been looking at. The temptation is to slap a could of Hands on Them and see if Eos can use Their ape-like configuration as well as Styxx can use Her own pure close-combat Raptor configuration. The easy solution would be seeing how a Mega Gun and Buzz Saw would do with a couple of Capacitors and Jets filling up those torso slots. But if I'm going to mix up the weaponry a bit, then it might be more interesting to see where a less obvious copy-pasta configuration might go. Also, I think maintaining at least one turret would be a good idea...

What do you fanatical, brainwashed cogs think?