Yeah, Renny isn't going to quit. Sorry Drac. :3

As for his motivation? He's scared! Scared for himself and his pokemons. He's barely even could be considered an adult, has no military training of his own, and his personal combat rating is "civilian" or "semi-medic" at best. (which obviously sucks for self defense). In all the previous missions, he basically only fought pokemons (and one guy with a knife). As a trainer, he could fight fire with fire and come out on top. Now he's dealing with snipers and military grade weapons that if targetted his way would be sure to kill his civilian status figure nigh instantly. That and hiding behind his pokemons as they take the full brunt of the attacks makes him feel like shit!

And to make matters worse, the people he work with are not that reassuring either! Pierce opted to have Lexhur blast the shit out of Togekiss instead of fighting around him or giving a chance for Renny to successfully bring him back. Impact threatened to shoot Renny and his pokemons during the pokegeddon fight. When some of your own team-mates are not much better than your enemies, you start wondering why you are on their side in the first place.

Mind you, there is still some room for inspiration with NPCs like Lola, Kurika and such, but even with them, he'll need some drastic change in order to stick with the group, and even then it might take some time to regain his full composure. Firstly being some way to become stronger to allivate his fears. Cue the pokebrid thing in a short while.

Good.

There's a difference between high-tech combat armor and personal strength amplifiers. Similar shape, drastically different funtion. Also, the former exist (because there was a need for them), the latter don't (because there wasn't), but probably would if not for fighting pokemon.

Well, like I said before
a) the benefits that technology brings to people are generally way greater than the destruction caused by misuse of this technology. Even if weapons are made from that incredibly efficient portable energy source, it can be used in so many civillian ways, you wouldn't believe.
b) the only tech that'd be developed is the useful tech. The stuff that benefits you. Country-melting bombs don't really benefit anyone, at all. Not to mention that, in a sane world, WMDs don't really get used. If the world goes insane, you have a problem, but when everyone's thinking with at least some degree of common sense, then there probably won't be any nukes flying around. Much less Countrymelters.
and again,
c) Impact isn't the only guy capable of sane, effective government. Attempts to turn technology to uses that'd destroy the known world would probably be prevented by people in whose interests it is to keep the countries they rule whole.

Yeah, there'd be mistakes, and errors. Disasters would happen, people would die. But on the whole, society would advance.

How will they gain the ability to build better generators?

Fighting battles, risking their lives is a-ok, but a lifetime of being fed and taken care of, in return for producing something that comes naturally to them is somehow inhuman? That's like paying a human to sweat.

Yah, that's what I mean. Gah. Tired.

Nah. Pokemon have so much variety, so much power, it's way beyond what people would have on the "prerequisite" level. I mean, a society that uses pokemon and just pokemon could pretty much reach our level of technology without actually using any technology. That's not basic. And besides, how will you know that pokemon have "outlived their usefulness"? You'll know that pokemon can only take you so far. How will you know that there's any other way to go further?

Okay.

Do you really want to give people the power to pound another human's skull into a fine dust?

Pokemon at least are docile and can be put into pokeballs.

Also, my point stands. Scientists wouldn't have researched personal strength amplifiers before high-tech combat armor. Or if they did, it would've been for military purposes.

And they're only just happening now. And they would still only be happening now without pokemon around.

All it takes is one mistake or one crazy super-resourceful person.

And those happen far too often. Especially in a place like the Umbral world.

Basically, the nuke made nuclear reactors possible. And those are great! Except now all it takes is one fuck-up and the whole world goes straight to hell.

Now give the Umbral world nukes and how much easier it is to fuck it up.

Nukes didn't exactly benefit anyone either when they were first made. But they were.

Honmyr is far from sane anyway.

Sorry, there's another country that's so much bigger than us about to wipe us out.

How's that Countrymelter going?

Right up until the world ends. Or at least gets sent back to the stone age.

Same way they'd build generators without pokemon around!

Fed? I guess. But being stuck in a room constantly with little contact to the outside world?

Also, pokeballs mean their lives aren't really at risk. Besides, it's only some people that actually use their pokemon to fight. Most actually just live peacefully.

And in the case of the ones that do fight, it's not that different from a human participating in Ultimate Fighting.

Okay, maybe basic tech was an understatement.

Good thing society had the sense to not just rely on pokemon!

Same way you'd know if there weren't any pokemon around?

And it's not like humanity is scraping at the mud while letting the pokemon do all their work for them.

They'd have a hell of a head start.

Ok. Why? How do you deduce this? Both of them. The former seems like speculation, and I'm pretty sure that the latter is false.

...
OH LOOK AT THAT LITTLE COUNTRY SO CUTE MAN I AM GOING TO WIPE IT OUT SO HARD AND RAPE ITS POPULATION
...
OHSHIT THEY HAVE COUNTRYMELTERS BETTER STAY AWAY

That's political though. Not the result of technology. And at the moment, everyone's disarming and agreeing not to use nukes on anyone else. You're saying it's impossible that could have happened in the Umbralverse?

No.
Look, researching and building generators takes resources.
There's no reason to invest resources in something if you have something else that does it better. Pokemon do it better.
Seriously, this is basic. And I've explained it half a dozen times. There's no reason for generators to exist at all.

How do you know they didn't? That'd be utterly irrational. And while individual humans aren't always rational, if you give people a way to do something with little effort, and a way to do it with a lot of effort, they will choose the easy way. It's why global warming is currently fucking us over, oil was the easy way.

No?
Seriously. No. You're going to know that pokemon aren't suitable for a task. But you're not going to know that there's a better way to complete this task. Because you're going to be missing the infrastructure, the mindset, everything.

Seriously, stop making me repeat myself. Come up with new arguments, I'll respond to those. But in the absence of that, I elaborated on most of this before. Read that.

I said it once already but I'll say it again.

Impact is the Umbral-verse's Lex Luthor.

That is all. :3

The former makes sense. If people were to build super-strength suits, they'd be building them to kill each other.

The latter, well, because like I said, if they could build them before it'd be the whole unbridled technological advacement.

And that's bad, no matter what you say people would do.

Because while there's all sorts of medical advancements and stuff. Like you said all technology is interrelated. It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to make a weapon out of something that was intended for regular use.

And even the government would do it, either because they were at war, or Impact told them to do it so they could wipe out the pokemon.

I'm not saying Impact would do it, but not every world conqueror has Geminex controlling them OOC.

You know it's more complicated than that. But that shit happens.

More like "HEY LET'S BUILD OUR OWN COUNTRYMELTERS AND END UP IN A STALEMATE UNTIL SOME CRAZY SON OF A BITCH MAKES US KILL EACH OTHER".

And all it takes is one Faynoc or Burkmont to make it happen. Except it wouldn't be like both countries killing each other. More like one killing the other and the first one only suffers acceptable casualties and hey! Now Faynoc or Burkmont is president!

Or Impact.

Honmyr could very well be the most advanced country in the world right now. They're just busy actually dealing with their pokemon threats. Take pokemon away from everyone and you'd have one super-advanced country steamrolling everyone else because why not?

No. Pokemon don't do it better. Like I explained, not every city or town is going to have a Magnezone generator.

Those cities are going to need to their own. In the Umbralverse, this is what happened. Not that it just happened, it happened a while back.

Are you looking at Honmyr right now? The games and the anime? They have cars and cities and hospitals and hotels and law enforcement and all sorts of shit.

Shit that doesn't run on pokemon.

It's already happened.

Again, are you looking at the Umbralverse? They don't. They're doing it.

I've had to repeat myself a few times in my last couple of posts.

What if there's no need to kill each other?

What do you mean? Yeah. If people could build exosuits, it'd be a sign of technological advancement. What's the point?

It's more complex that that, to quote you. The fact that a weapon is powerful doesn't mean it has much potential to cause great harm. Because the greater the harm it can cause, the more hesitation to use it there will be.
And look, people don't need high-tech WMDs to kill each other. They have pokemon that can control the weather and cause natural disasters. Just as an example.

See above. Sure, terrible weapons are gonna become a possibility. But it doesn't take humanity long to realize that super-destructive weapons aren't very practical, since you can't really use them. Since if you have them, so do your foes.

Hell, I'd go as far as to say that, after a few decades of "cold war", no more WMDs would be built, cause it'd be utterly pointless.

If Hommnyr's super-advanced, it'd be steamrolling the others regardless of pokemon.

Well... no. Path of least resistance. Even if magnezone generators are a rare thing, settlements would simply have clustered around them. And why would said generators be rare at all? There's plenty of pokemon available.

And ok, assume that people started by using magnemite, then realized that they were limited. What then? By the time the limitations really started showing, they'd have been using them for centuries. You're saying society's gonna respecialize, just like that? The time wasted on learning better ways to use magnemite, plus the time necessary to respecialize and discover some other way of generating electricity. That's how much magnemite would have held scientific development back.

Huh. We know they have technology, of course. But how does that prove any point?
I'm not saying they can't have technology. I'm saying they would have had technology one hell of a lot quicker if not for pokemon.

And I don't want to know how long it took them to develop the way they have, and how long it'd take them to develop if not for Impact's intervention.

If it was something I missed, I blame the fact that I'm tired. But I'm pretty sure it was something that I felt I had adequately countered, but that you felt was still valid. Misunderstanding, in a way.

Y'know what, once again, quick train of thought:

1: Humanity uses resources where it is necessary
2: Assuming that pokemon came into existence before humanity reached 1900s level technology, pokemon training would have provided a better way than technology to do almost anything, making technology unnecessary
3: This would have resulted in little "investment" in technological advancement, also in a degrading in education (because no longer necessary) and economy (because of an individual providing for itself, also lack of tech)
4: This would be a bad thing
5: Without pokemon, technology and with it standards of living would have improved considerably over what they are now
6: Continued technological advancement, while bearing risks, would have been worth it

Those are really my only 6 points. Which are you attacking? 6 and... 2? 3?
Anyway, bye. It's way too late for me.

Short of mass mind control, how are you going to do that?

A) You're going to need those weapons for your initial takeovers.

B) You're still going to need them for anyone who revolts to the death after your takeover.

Even my proposed "immortality for everyone" idea doesn't fix that.

It's not just the exosuits. It's everything else that would come along with the exosuits. Humanity would choke itself on new inventions.

And all it takes for them is one pokeball. True, pokemon are walking WMDs in and of themselves.

So yeah, my example about Countrymelters was probably too much.

All people need to kill each other is nukes and ballistic missiles, at most.

But anyway, look at Russia and the US. All it takes is a big enough spark. In the Umbralverse, which is ruled by the laws of plot and fantasy, it'd be stupidly easy to get them to kill each other.

Why? I dunno, I'm sure a madman can figure something out.

Eh, I'm sure they'd keep a few, just in case.

Honmyr's not super-advanced right now. But it would be without the pokemon.

Because way over there in the south there are no Magnezone. How do you think they're going to get their electricity?

And then the word just spreads. There's no reason people wouldn't want a generator that doesn't involve putting a pokemon through torture.

See above. Pokemon of all types don't just run around on all regions and climates.

You don't see ice-types running around in the tropics. Pokemon have their own habitat. So then, people living in a habitat that doesn't contain Magnemite or Magneton? What do you think they'd do?

Oh, you were implying that people were content to live only on pokemon-tech.

I was just saying they weren't.

Why not?

All we'd have to do is ask AB.

You know, one could take this as a sign that you already know what AB's answer is going to be.

'Kay.

Well, pokemon have been around for more than sixteen hundred years.

It was sixteen hundred years ago that Malcolm Elliot only first captured Primal Exist and make the Ruin pokemon and Ruin Generals. So pokemon would probably have been around for a while before Elliot's time.

Actually, it might help your case to know how Elliot trapped Exist in the first place. I doubt he did it in a bamboo cage, and since the only magic in the Umbralverse is pokemon powers, and there's no way for humans to channel that, then he would've had to use technology, wouldn't he?

So if there was technology to trap a being like Exist sixteen hundred years ago, that would mean one of two things:

1) Technological advancement really has been hindered A LOT by pokemon.

2) Society has been reset (sent back to the stone age by some calamity or another) at least once. I don't know why, but I have wondered why it is that, even though they presumably broke off sixteen hundred years ago, the Rogue Ruin Generals are only acting up now.

But even that explanation doesn't quite fit, does it?

Nope. People in one region would still have needed to master electrical engineering because they didn't have Magnemite, but yes, they may have been stunted in other fields because pokemon already filled that void.

Then, as society advanced, they all melded together and shafted a good number of pokemon jobs.

Would it? With my example above, it may have meant that there were in fact more people to specialize in one field, potentially even advancing it further than if there were no pokemon and everyone had to dedicate themselves to everything.

And then when societies communicated with each other, then they would have access to all the super-especialized fields.

See the above two trains of thought.

I disagree and I've already said why.