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[Lithium Flower]

IIRC Duster Clones are specially constructed, with reinforced skeletons, etc (to handle the weapons and for strength) making them generally superior to run of the mill baseliner meat sacs.

I can name at least three capsuleer player characters who can rival them with all these augmentations they got, but I think further discussion in this key belongs here http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=4235.0

My characters are rather meat sacs 

[Lyn Farel]

Heh, well, considering Lyn's stamina and constitution, even a pet furrier could beat her down. ^_^

[Saede Riordan]

Anything goes, with caveats mostly relating to godmodding and non-consensual permadeath.

If somebody's playing a blood-soaked, frankly kind of boring psychopath who goes just crazy-wrong with it, I get to play the aftermath of a crazy-wrong encounter with a blood-soaked, kind of boring psychopath. THAT is fun, even if the encounter is not.

As a side note, I've never actually had any such RP encounters involving Aria.

This is largely my take on it as well.

Personally I feel capsuleers shouldn't be ninjas in the first place. We spend much of our time floating in jelly and avoiding use of our long muscles.

I can see a capsuleer employing goons, or drones, to do the dirty work. I can't see one lasting in a protracted fistfight longer than 15 seconds, because that's about as long as an untrained individual's stamina lasts. There was a story I was planning ages ago, where my character gets quite embarrassingly beaten to death. Well, a death, anyway.

this too.

The question with any description is this: does the added detail serve to increase impact and enrich the play experience, or is it gratuitous?

It's easy as a roleplayer to feel that Moar Is Bettar, when describing all that occurs -- but that's not always true. If anything, veteran RPers who have the chops to be exceedingly descriptive should aim for brevity, distilling their work.

A good rule I try to follow with this is to try not to let my posts/emotes continue for more then the amount of space allowed in one text block.

In general I don't subscribe to anything other than pre-written combat, due to the very unstable ground it has in roleplay communities. The closest I've gotten is a roughing up of sorts in EVE, where Ghost was thrown and stucko'd to a wall in The Last Gate.

My biggest gripe with the concept of non pre-written combat is the amount of ego play involved. Unless it comes out to a stalemate, someone will lose, and I rarely encounter those who play that idea straight. Thus, it's more productive to simply have it pre-planned and hassle free than argue about it on the fly.

This is something I've definitely noticed. The whole 'my character is a badass' 'no, my character is more of a badass' thing gets a bit annoying. I'm not opposed to getting into, and losing an RP fight, but I don't want the reason I have to lose be that the other person says their character to be invincible or some kind of super-commando, which seems to happen...rather often.

I do, however, also think that (1) what Hellgremlin said is a solid "rule of thumb" and (2) no capsuleer (I can imagine exceptions, but they're pretty deep in Mary Sue/Gary Stu territory) should claim to be able to take a clone soldier in hand-to-hand, to say nothing of armed combat. That would be the equivalent of me hopping in an assault dropship and claiming to be able to shoot your Merlin down.

Yeah this. I think what the issue I have when people get into out of pod fights is there is no objective mechanical way to determine the outcome, it all comes down to collaborative RP. That's why I'm generally much more willing to engage in that sort of RP with people I trust OOCly. Because RP is always consensual at the end of the day (the other player can just close the chat tab and walk away with no real consequences) there's nothing your character can really force on the other character, or vise versa. Unlike in space, there is no real way to force non-consensual conflict on a character. Because of that, it always seems to come down to people just trying to one up each other and everyone trying to be more of a badass super-soldier then everyone around them. People can claim anything they want about their characters, and make them as badass as they want, but I don't have to let that effect my RP, so those characters are largely irrelevant to me.

Saede is, while not exactly weak outside of the pod, definitely not actually a soldier, and she knows it. Thus, she's never gotten into a situation that would have her in a hand-to-hand fight, she's got people for that, she's not so incompetent as to let someone like, slip into her quarters and hurt her. I have no problem with people trying, but I'd need some sort of really, really compelling reason why they wouldn't be stopped by the soldiers and guards Saede has.

[Esna Pitoojee]

This is something that concerns me as well - not because Esna is a cigar-chomping, muscle-bound, machine-gun-toting, cybernetic badass - but because his character has developed in such a way that he plans out every little encounter. He walks into situations where other people - other RPing players - may not have been expecting that degree of pre-planning for every possible angle, and I sometimes feel that players are frustrated that Esna is "ready" for things they throw at him because he has - IC - thought of it or seen it already.

[Gottii]

"Why would my capsuleer invest training time in Kung Fu, when she still needs to master her battleship?"

Certain Matari would, as well as old-fashioned Khanid Cyber Knights

I have Gottii practice martial arts, because pretty much thats what Brutor culture is, those "ancient martial traditions theyre trained in since childhood", all the better to make him "physically robust and intimidating to meet in the flesh", which is what PF tells us is the standard Brutor.  But hes not particularly special in that regard. 

Also, I wrote quite a bit of his background as a Valklear, which Ive really enjoyed.  Even got my background blog linked to the chronicle comments by the devs, which was humbling and quite an honor.  Granted, Gottii's told all of one other character about this background IC (at least since they reconned that Valklear background as secret.)

 Its been really fun, having a secret background that your character tells no one IC is quite entertaining, liberating, and interesting.  I can drop little nuggets into IC conversation that makes these interesting and nuanced, at least for me.  Also, makes for a bit more realism in my opinion.  The actual soldiers who have seen and done things will almost always tell no one.  They dont need nor want to. 
 
That said, I believe in something I've called "Gottii's Law"  -- i.e.   "how interesting, compelling, unique, and realistic a pod pilot character comes across is often inversely related to the amount of combat training/uber cybernetics/badassness the character professes to possess."

[Anslol]

Reserved for my own thoughts at a later date because I am WAY too tired to put together a coherent post.

[Aria Jenneth]

In the first place, main difference between clone soldier and capsuleer is consciousness transfer type.

Well, that might be the single largest difference, at least. I think the "main" one is that a clone soldier is, by definition, a professional soldier, while a capsuleer is normally a professional pilot.

Although CCP depict them as 'superhumans' with extreme strength, during the fight (in dust) they look rather clumsy.

Please to bear in mind that there are three classes of suits. Two of them are a bit clumsy, but that's when wearing heavy combat armor (extremely heavy, in the case of the Amarr heavy suit).

The third class, properly skilled, is next to invisible to electronic surveillance, depends on agility to evade most enemy fire, and runs at 29.5 kph (roughly 18 mph) without further modules.

That's what Yun Hee uses.

I believe that properly trained in hand-to-hand combat capsuleer (or a baseliner) can take down clone soldier disregarding its strength and implants quite easily if will use proper techniques.

Out of a dropsuit, maybe. Remember that fight between Deckard and Roy at the end of "Blade Runner"?

Yeah. That one.

Roy strikes me as a pretty good example of what you can expect from an unarmored clone soldier.

Add in the dropsuit, and you've just given Roy power armor that can absorb a handful of direct hits from a plasma rifle, augmented strength, and a fast-regenerating personal shield. That's maybe not an insurmountable problem (one of the lower-level DUST weapons is a submachine gun apparently popular with the Angel Cartel for ages, and still quite effective), but it's a seriously unhappy one if you're not similarly equipped.

And remember that most clone soldiers, as CCP Eterne, I think it was, once put it, "don't take off their helmets much."

[Ollie]

This is something that concerns me as well - not because Esna is a cigar-chomping, muscle-bound, machine-gun-toting, cybernetic badass - but because his character has developed in such a way that he plans out every little encounter. He walks into situations where other people - other RPing players - may not have been expecting that degree of pre-planning for every possible angle, and I sometimes feel that players are frustrated that Esna is "ready" for things they throw at him because he has - IC - thought of it or seen it already.

Ollie Rundle > /emote cancels all future "Red Wedding" type plans for Esna and returns to drawing board.