Venus is creepy Edition
OFFICIAL BOOKS
>Eclipse Phase PDFs
http://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs
>Zone Stalkers
http://www.mediafire.com/view/d0hpgo776xpx50p/Eclipse_Phase_Zone_Stalkers.pdf
>Morph Recognition Guide
http://www.mediafire.com/download/j4bjbba89kw8v0y/Eclipse_Phase_Morph_Recognition_Guide_%286098716%29.pdf
>Million Year Echo
http://www.mediafire.com/view/f53f1c5yq777tpk/Million_Year_Echo.pdf
>Firewall (Updated):
http://www.mediafire.com/view/9jg6q9d9kqa59qu/Eclipse_Phase_Firewall_(7029562).pdf
>Transhumanity's FATE (FATE Conversion)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ae113ujgd3hggpl/Transhumanitys_FATE.pdf
PLAY AIDS:
>10 things you should know about Eclipse Phase
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qnrh0w7H0Jl2_CSsySRxcs4ugw27xsBIk5MYwXq2nDQ/edit
>Advice for new players and GMs
http://pastebin.com/e0EErN6X
>Online character creator
http://eclipsephase.next-loop.com/Creator/version4/index.php
>Eclipse Phase hacking cheet sheet
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?axe1vs35muk4juh
>Eclipse Phase xls Character sheet
https://sites.google.com/site/eclipsephases/home/cabinet
>Package Character Creator
https://firewallagency.wordpress.com/
COMMUNITY CONTENT:
>3 new adventures for your use in convenient PDF form
http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/
>Ander's Sandberg's Eclipse Phase fanmade content, including several modules
http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/
>Farcast: An Eclipse Phase yearblog full of items, locations, NPCs, and plot hooks
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dhqd1m83xc1wmpj/Farcast_Yearblog_2013.pdf
>The Ultimate's Guide to Combat
http://eclipsephase.com/sites/default/files/UltimatesGuideToCombat11a.pdf
/EPG/ HOMEBREW CONTENT
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19Gy02gp6-WPQ3SoN_24kLPTUu5EjFO8qh_9pjJSVrrY/edit
Previous Thread: >>47863924
What's the deal with Venus anyway?
>>47953596
>>47954091
Well that puts a damper on my plan. I'm running a game for players new to the game and I wanted to have a simple premise: they're hypercorp asteroid miners, on a return leg to their mining station in the asteroid belt with their haul of ores. They get a distress call from a disabled mining ship that belongs to the same hypercorp.
They stop, get on the ship, find no survivors but finds creepy organic growths on certain parts of the ship (ie foreshadowing). They retrieve the cortical stacks of the ship crew to be resleeved back on the mining station. On returning to the station they update their own backups...
And cue to a week and a half later, when these backups wake up and the station's gone to shit, in the process of being turned into an exsurgent hive from the cortical stacks the PCs brought back.
Just a rough outline right now, might throw in other events/things to do/space pirates.
>>47957274
It's where all the TITANs are, o'course.
Is there Baneposting in the future?
>>47957472
Well, while the Asteroid Belt is probably well documented and tracked, and not as densely populated as fiction would have you believe, it's still a region that's fairly densely populated. A ship would probably want some maneuvering room should any sudden course corrections need to be made, or have plenty of fuel if you need to plot a slightly lengthier course.
Combine with the fact that it's a friendly ship from the same corp, probably headed back to the same place, it's entirely possible it might be relatively close, close enough to run an SLOTV or EVA Sled over.
Now, this has other complications. Full Stop in space is hard and uses a lot of resources, both to stop and get started again. This means you'd either have to match speed, or, much more interesting and prone to have the PCs make bad horror movie decisions, they have a short window in which to examine the ship before they HAVE to leave in order to make their own rendezvous back to their ore hauler.
that got me thinking of a post-post humanity solar system. I wonder what the setting would be like one hundred years later if\when mankind fails to survive or die out. Leaving a solar system warping from the AIs warping planets.
>>47957472
Why not have them receive the call shortly before their departure? No need to waste reaction mass for a grand decceleration, just plot a little detour. which of course would still cost some additional fuel, but my guess is that possibly securing an entire ship is worth that. They could even get the order from the station to do so if they are the only ship near enough.
>>47957668
>or have plenty of fuel if you need to plot a slightly lengthier course.
Propellant requirements are not closely correlated to travel distance. Orbital inclination and ascending node differences are likely to be the biggest determining factor in delta-v requirements within the belt.
>>47957931
Probably should have said "a more complex course". In space you can travel very short distances but still spend a lot of fuel if you're doing a lot of hard maneuvering.
>>47958010
You can transfer between any two asteroids with just two maneuvers
>>47958364
In the same family?
>>47958511
Any two asteroids, in principle. In practice minor course corrections will be necessary due to finite precision in the initial maneuver.
Latest X-Risks preview in case people missed it
>>47959055
As much of an X-threat as any other AGI.
>>47957472
This comment has the right of it I think:
>>47957756
Just have them get news of the distress call from their company shortly after leaving. That's enough time that a detour is cheap in fuel, and it makes it so they get less prep than getting to pack from the start. That detour is probably a low relative velocity pass, so time is limited to move around on the ship.
>>47957583
I'd hope that hundreds of years from now, they'd have newer movies to meme about. So there probably is, but it has nothing to do with the nolan batman films.
Y'know, this line of discussion has me thinking about some things.
We've talked about some ships before, but have we ever discussed ideas and layouts for the Bulk Carrier before?
Personally I reckon they'd be like a modern cargo carrier ship, only even more skeletal and modular. Just rack cargo containers in the front end, primary propulsion and command in the back, which can be modified to fit the appropriate fuel and crew needs. The skeleton would probably have some maintenance tubes so drones or crew men can scuttle around and poke things.
Probably about as aerodynamic as a brick, so they wouldn't see use in an atmosphere, which probably helps making their designs simple and easy to operate in micrograv.
>>47959603
My guess would be something like a string ship. Propulsion module on the front, trailing containers on tensile cable, and a crew module hanging at the very end, behind a good x ray shield. A stringship design saves a fair amount of weight, as CNT or similar strings are basically weightless compared to the propulsion module (probably fusion) and the cargo.
I'd imagine that a lot of EP bulk carriers are carrying huge amounts of raw materials, so saving ship weight helps a lot.
I agree that drones would be really common on board, and the crew would probably be even smaller than a modern cargo ship.
>>47959603
Bulk frieghters in Traveller have a similar design using standardised cargo containers. Small craft, lighters or shuttles, service the larger vessels ferrying the containers to the surfaceor to orbital staitions.
Seems efficient
>>47959716
Something like the ISV venture star or a Project Valkyrie space craft.
>>47959603
Always imagined them as spindly things with loads of containers attached. Really small cabins for crew and buttloads of reaction mass. Then again, there might be lots of variant designs around.
God damn the Fate book has some dubious rules.
>>47959716
How do you decelerate? Sounds like the crew hab, or more likely the shield, would need decent sized retrorockets.
>>47959603
Probably have a rear engine structure and a forward truss structure, then just strap everything down to the truss.
>>47959716
This creates all sorts of problems with your engines being pointed at stuff.
>>47960161
You turn it around and burn, just like anything else. It's the turning that's tricky.
>>47960268
That's fairly manageable, so long as your cargo is x-ray tolerant.
>>47960161
Spin the whole thing around when you're not burning the engines.
>>47960302
Sounds easier with retrorockets.
>>47960512
>That's fairly manageable, so long as your cargo is x-ray tolerant.
And also doesn't mind being exposed to plasmas significantly hotter than the sun. You know what? Scratch the manageable bit.
So, we talked about general structure. What do you think about the crew compliment and crew sections are like?
How do you think cargo haulers are crewed? I know everyone wants to just be Alien, but that's a lot of crew for humble space truckers. And the Nostromo was very roomy too.
Personally, I think that, like, pure hypercorp transports which are wholly owned by companies like ComEx who ship generic "stuff" in bulk, these are probably as cost efficient as possible, smallest number of indentures and AIs needed to operate the ship with as little impact as possible, but I would reckon smaller companies and contractors probably can handle a few physically instanced crew (y'know, because hands and no need to worry about if infomorphs can run nicely), and if an "indefinite" life support maker for a single person can fit in a hard suit this could have pressurized sections. Not accounting for Bulk Carriers converted to have passenger modules too.
But how much crew and how much crew space do you think would be common? Is it cost effective to have an Alien-level crew and crew section?
>>47960726
You either get two, maybe three Hybernoids to push buttons or you just use an infomorph crew. Why pay for food, water, and life support when you can just slap a server in there and use the saved space for more cargo?
>>47960726
No crew. There would be nothing for them to do. Bolt a few EVA-appropriate synths to the hull and farcast some specialists in if something goes wrong.
>>47960795
> farcast some specialists in if something goes wrong.
Isn't a proper farcasting rig like, really weighty? And normally need somebody to run them at the other end?
>>47960809
For synthmorphs all you need is a comms array, which the spacecraft needs to have anyway.
>>47960550
You can put the engines on booms, or point them slightly outwards if the small reduction in efficiency is worth it. Plasmas cool super quickly so distance shielding is pretty easy to use. Tractor/stringship designs are something which has been around for a while as a weight saving measure.
>>47960809
If you want neutrino comms those are pretty big, but that means you'd need a pickup truck to move them around. That's peanuts for a space ship. You can also use radio or laser link if you're at close range or have good sight lines.
>>47960726
For bulk haulers moving on common routes leaving them uncrewed even as automated ALI vessels seems reasonable. There's just not much to run into in space.
>>47961044
>For bulk haulers moving on common routes leaving them uncrewed even as automated ALI vessels seems reasonable.
Zbryny or however you spell that vowelless abortion of a company beat you to the idea, anon.
>>47961085
Actually, mentioning Zbryny and "Zombieland", isn't hugely massive bulk transports crewed by nothing but ALI kind of a security risk in the post-Fall world? Like, people don't often use Pods crewed by ALI because of mass AI subversion during the Fall.
>>47961044
>You can put the engines on booms, or point them slightly outwards if the small reduction in efficiency is worth it
Sure, you can do those things, but all of that adds mass or reduces delta-v. Also, now you need two small engines instead of one big one, which reduces efficiency and creates more potential points of failure.
>Plasmas cool super quickly so distance shielding is pretty easy to use.
Still have to avoid burning the cable, which is non-trivial.
> You can also use radio or laser link if you ... have good sight lines.
You have good sight lines.
>>47957274
>The Titanian Commonwealth is modeled after Finland instead of Sweden
>>47960106
That's what happens when you try to go from heavy crunch to low crunch.
>>47960789
>>47961044
>>47961085
You could always stick a solitary Neo-Octopus infomorph on with all the tentacle porn he could possibly need and he'd be content to chill and jam bots when needed.
>>47961568
The Finns aren't Nordic, though.
>>47961568
There's only one thing about Titan I want to discuss
>>47961583
Neither are baby TITANs and talking animals, but the Titanians don't seem to mind them.
>>47961224
True, the sight line caveat only really really applies to orbiting transmitters which get occluded by planets from time to time, and that's easy to relay around.
EP space ships don't really have points of failure during normal operations, so the extra engine is only a potential efficiency loss.
Those losses are ok if the mass savings from using tensile strength rather than compression strength outway the less efficient engine design, which definitely can.
Settling this depends on the minutia of EP materials science, which is pretty hard to judge. CNT tethers are super light, but maybe there's some almost as good compressive strength supermaterial available.
>>47961600
Those are small fish. Huldra are exsurgents. They obviously use TITAN tech and just look at the voting records of anyone who's sleeved in one. They need to be exterminated.
>>47961664
You have to deal with precision issues, though, which get worse with distance.
>>47961667
>X morph or technology is obviously TITAN tech
When will this meme die.
Alternatively, when will all the TITANs come back and kill everyone?
>>47961715
It dies when they start following the laws of thermodynamics.
>>47961715
>When will this meme die.
It's not a meme, it's established in the books that lots of post-Fall tech is knocked off from TITAN leftovers.
>when will all the TITANs come back and kill everyone?
They already have. The world described in the corebook is one of their many simspaces.
>>47961715
I doubt it'll ever really die, like REMOVE SURYA.
>>47961741
You know you're still wrong about this, right? Long Term Life Support requires steady intake of Carbon and Water and regular intake of chemical supplements to a maximum length of 1 year.
All this wanking about "perpetual motion" is STILL stupid because it's not perpetual.
>>47961834
IIRC the problem with LTLS is where all the energy for the recycling comes from, unless the chemical packs are really just elemental oxygen or something.
>>47960106
I haven't checked it out yet. What specifically?
For reference I'm this >>47957472 anon.
>>47961044
>For bulk haulers moving on common routes leaving them uncrewed even as automated ALI vessels seems reasonable. There's just not much to run into in space.
>>47960795
>No crew. There would be nothing for them to do. Bolt a few EVA-appropriate synths to the hull and farcast some specialists in if something goes wrong.
>>47960789
>You either get two, maybe three Hybernoids to push buttons or you just use an infomorph crew. Why pay for food, water, and life support when you can just slap a server in there and use the saved space for more cargo?
Yeah, but...I kind of really, really don't want to alienate my players, none of whom know anything about the setting. I don't want their first exposure to the setting be "well you're basically just inside a server/robots on a ship since it's more efficient to not have any biologicals onboard. TRANSHUMAN FUUUUTURE".
Also, what about >>47961132 this? I'm sure automated transports are a thing, but isn't that risky, especially in the crowded main belt where piracy and violence erupting over asteroid claims can be a thing? No crew means that ship's basically at the mercy of the first pirate that knows their way around electronics.
Who's gonna take care of stuff when the maintenance drones break down, or there's a problem with the ship that automation can't handle? I GUESS you can install an expensive egocasting facility inside the ship, but if the issue or problem is bad enough where time's a luxury, I really don't think that's efficient.
>>47962156
Well, when talking about "Hulders are TITANs", usually people shout about LTLS being "perpetual motion" and the like.
Personally, I think it's ambiguously written enough to not need to worry about, it never specifies the nature or amount of the chemical reserves or specialized bacteria it integrates, and lots of power is just assumed in EP. Like, a Hard Suit can fit a maker which can indefinitely supply air/food/water, and you can get a laser gun installed in your hand and powered by a nuclear battery pack pretty cheap. The life support implant has an actual hard cap on how long it runs before it can no longer recycle with is usually more detailed thinking than some implants or tech has.
>>47962213
It's actually really good but Morphs cost Refresh despite having zero mechanical impact beyond determining Durability.
>>47962258
As the guy you quoted about automation problems, honestly, like I know everyone wants to go "oh, we can just streamline this shit with AIs and drones", but at the same time the system doesn't purely reflect that.
Systems and economies based on AI and drone management almost always have transhumans available to coordinate and do the "hands on" work handy at all times too. Running infomorphs properly is expensive, and while fine to have an ALI run the basic ship functions given stuff like the fact that makers and other life support gear can be pretty efficient means that like, if you're hauling really huge masses around compensating for the crew and their gear is probably not a huge deal. Yeah, sure, a newer model might replace all that with some efficiently running servers but that's still expensive to do properly. Just cramming infomorphs into random devices really hurts their effectiveness.
>expensive egocasting facility inside the ship, but if the issue or problem is bad enough where time's a luxury, I really don't think that's efficient.
Also unless you're rolling like a beast, almost everyone will have some physical and mental side effects to a resleeve immediately after, which lasts hours.
>>47962454
>>47962213
I really dislike some of the design decisions. 'Xeno Contact' and 'X Risks' in particular seem like a poor kludge solution to reconciling massive lists of knowledge skills with the FATE approach.
>>47962508
Really? I found the Skills list quite elegant. Fate thrives on simplicity, and too many more past what made it into the book would've flown in the face of the Fate design aesthetic.
>>47962533
Well, I mean, that's kind of the fundamental dichotomy here. FATE thrives on a style and approach which gets more and more streamlined each iteration and makes a specific tone of game (which in this case I've heard described as "If it was Eclipse Phase The Movie"), whereas the original style and direction and tone of the EP Core is not that. It's very much about modability, specialization and broadness. It has a lot of elements to the setting and you can use any number of them to solve problems which can occur in your game of "Transhuman Conspiracy and Horror". You're supposed to string together modifiers, and be specific about if you have a PhD in Geophysics or Astrophysics and create a plan to get your perfect storm of bonuses for that all-important digital intrusion or rifle shot.
>>47962533
Generally I think knowledge skills in games like FATE should work like they do in Gumshoe. You pick a few fields your character knows about and, when push comes to shove, you just know them, you don't have to buy and roll them like normal skills.
Also I think X Risks and Xeno Contact should be treated like the Cthulhu Mythos skill, you might start with points in it, but you shouldn't be able to just buy as much as you want during character generation.
>>47962724
But Fate isn't Gumshoe, and what you're proposing would involve bolting a whole new subsystem onto the game. The last thing a Fate game needs is more complexity.
>>47962844
>The last thing a Fate game needs is more complexity.
Then knowledge skills should be removed entirely. Cutting all of them out except one or two is lopsided and absurd.
Can someone sell me on Gatecrashing?
EP is a game about politics and technology and a gatecrashing game seems to abandon both.
>>47962874
Well, really EP is a game of Transhuman Conspiracy and Horror. You'll find plenty of both beyond the gates - just check out the Gatecrashing book.
But specifically
>politics
Not only is there a sociopolitical element to the political power of controlling a gate, but there's a lot of opportunity for politics and interesting social issues to come up.
> technology
Gatecrashing actually offers a twofer here. On the one hand, there are a lot of diverse, complex and straight up dangerous environments which can occur and can be overcome with technological solutions. And then there's the potential of alien species and alien technological artifacts which can be studied out there too.
Broadly, Gatecrashing is a way to touch on a lot of themes, potential settings and elements you can't necessarily access in the Solar System itself, while still playing to EPs core ideas.
>>47961664
>EP space ships don't really have points of failure during normal operations, so the extra engine is only a potential efficiency loss.
What?
Do you think thusting off-axis isn't a problem?
>>47962156
Yes, this issue is not addressed in the books. It would be quite conceivable to run them on nuclear batteries though.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186537-biologists-discover-electric-bacteria-that-eat-pure-electrons-rather-than-sugar-redefining-the-tenacity-of-life
(explanation in article is terrible, but the bacteria are real)
>>47962258
>Also, what about >>47961132 this? I'm sure automated transports are a thing, but isn't that risky, especially in the crowded main belt where piracy and violence erupting over asteroid claims can be a thing?
What is a crew going to do about that which couldn't be done by automated security systems which are far less likely to surrender?
>No crew means that ship's basically at the mercy of the first pirate that knows their way around electronics.
Step 1: shoot pirates before they get close enough to access your maintenance panels
Step 2: profit
Alternatively, just send mercenary kill teams after pirates who hit your haulers as a deterrent to future pirates.
>>47962258
>I GUESS you can install an expensive egocasting facility inside the ship
Literally just need a comm array, which you want to have anyway
>>47962258
>but if the issue or problem is bad enough where time's a luxury
There's no life support failing and the spacecraft is floating through space without doing anything anyway. It can wait a few hours. Frankly I'm not even sure what could go wrong until you start your deceleration burn.
>>47962454
Disgusting
>>47962471
>Also unless you're rolling like a beast, almost everyone will have some physical and mental side effects to a resleeve immediately after, which lasts hours.
That's why the corp retains some specialists who are extremely at home in the morphs they use. Also paying a guy to sit for a few hours while lack wears off is way cheaper than paying a guy to sit there for the whole trip and probably not do anything anyway.
>>47960514
Retrorockets and the fuel lines to go to them cost mass. More mass means more fuel. More fuel means *more* fuel. This quickly becomes uneconomical, especially for applications like bulkfreighters where you're trying to get paid. Using a tiny puff of RCS reaction mass and waiting a few days for the ship to turn around while it's coasting between its Hohmann burns is infinitely cheaper.
For military ships, the reduction in maneuver time would probably be worth it though.
>>47963589
>What is a crew going to do about that which couldn't be done by automated security systems which are far less likely to surrender?
Narrow programming, vulnerable to infosec attacks and manipulation are pretty fucking big.
>shoot pirates before they get close enough to access your maintenance panels
But you're not physically present, so...with what? The infomorph who can't do jackshit with the drones the minute the pirates hack into/jam Mesh communications?
Calling mercenaries achieves nothing when your ore's already been stolen. Or just station the damn mercs on the ship.
>Literally just need a comm array, which you want to have anyway
You need a quantum farcasters to egocast. Which are much more difficult and time-consuming to set up than a comm array.
>There's no life support failing and the spacecraft is floating through space without doing anything anyway. It can wait a few hours.
That implies that a) the technical problem involves life support, and b) it's only a few hours away from its destination. If something bad happens in the middle of the trip, and that problem can't be solved by automated AIs or robots, then it's fucked.
> Frankly I'm not even sure what could go wrong until you start your deceleration burn.
Dunno, I've never been on or seen a spaceship as complex in any sci-fi setting. I'd think that even with Eclipse Phase's extremely generous granting of capabilities to nanotechnology and materials science, technical problems can and do frequently pop up that needs direct human oversight.
I'm sure that completely automated ships are around, but I really don't think that they're the norm, especially after the Fall and especially with the fact that fabricating ships is expensive, no matter how much magical nanofabrication you apply to it. If you really want to leave the security of your expensive as fuck ship to vulnerable ALI and automated maintenance systems without direct human supervision, go right ahead.
>>47964448
>Guise hacking into a spacecraft is just as easy as hacking into a poorly secured hab system.
Quantum cryptography exists.
>Calling mercenaries achieves nothing when your ore's already been stolen. Or just station the damn mercs on the ship.
False. Once the mercenaries are done torturing the pirates to death a few times people think twice about knocking over one of your haulers. Organized crime organizations operate this way and it's very lucrative for them.
You can afford to lose a shipment.
>You need a quantum farcasters to egocast.
False, but you're going to want that anyway for secure communication.
>That implies that a) the technical problem involves life support, and b) it's only a few hours away from its destination. If something bad happens in the middle of the trip, and that problem can't be solved by automated AIs or robots, then it's fucked.
No, it implies that technical problems that aren't life support related can wait long enough for someone to egocast to your spacecraft.
>If you really want to leave the security of your expensive as fuck ship to vulnerable ALI and automated maintenance systems without direct human supervision, go right ahead.
You know what ALIs don't do though? Accept bribes from pirates.
>>47964647
Now it seems like we're overinflating things. These commonly used Bulk Transports carrying slow-boat low priority goods are now loaded with cutting edge quantum computers, ECCM suites, full blown anti-ship weapons and an expensive and bulky farcasting equipment, spare unused morphs, and backed with expensive "kill team" insurance to wage space war on people who still are brave enough to try and fuck with you.Or, since the Bulk Carrier is described as a refitted Standard Transport template, just with cargo holders instead of the external habitation rings, you can probably just scale back the life support components to keep a handful of space truckers alive in hibernoids (not like those were made for any reason) and give them some space guns and hands to use physical access keys and tell anybody who tries to freeboot you to fuck off
Honestly, like, a Bulk Carrier has to carry a lot of shit. Practically, Pirates shouldn't have access to the Delta-V to move around all that cargo. If they did I feel like they would be in some other business. So you either have to go through a whole lot of trouble to only take a little cargo, or have a way to capture a ship and haul it off course somewhere where you and your pirate friends can start unloading it before the ship or cargo's owners can send out a team to recover it.
It seems much more profitable to try and accost small, high-value cargo or hit up passenger ships to have people trying to travel physically and have them payout.
Or to cruise up next to a bulk carrier and be like "transmit your manifest and then give us the container we name, or we'll fire one of the HEAP missiles bolted to our fuselage into your drive section".
>>47965300
This. The best thing, as a pirate, you can do with a bulk carrier is probably hold it for ransom.
>48 DUR
>66 DR
>12 INT
>16 fuckin' SOM
>and 10 COO... but don't tell anyone you leveled that up, you fucking faggot
>>47964873
>These commonly used Bulk Transports carrying slow-boat low priority goods are now loaded with cutting edge quantum computers
Not how quantum cryptography works
>ECCM suites
Never said that
>full blown anti-ship weapons
Simple anti-personnel systems
>and an expensive and bulky farcasting equipment
The comms array that you have anyway because farcasting isn't special
>spare unused morphs
Way cheaper than crew
>and backed with expensive "kill team" insurance to wage space war on people who still are brave enough to try and fuck with you.
Crew won't stop you from wanting that
>Or, since the Bulk Carrier is described as a refitted Standard Transport template, just with cargo holders instead of the external habitation rings, you can probably just scale back the life support components to keep a handful of space truckers alive in hibernoids (not like those were made for any reason) and give them some space guns and hands to use physical access keys and tell anybody who tries to freeboot you to fuck off
Physical access keys are less secure than quantum encryption, the guns cost essentially the same amount either way, the employees cost money and are a big security hole, the life support costs money and is heavy
>>47965300
Do you just not know how pirates work? They generally take the whole ship.
Personally, I'm with >>47965689 here: dealing with Pirates should be as simple as using ALI systems, automated miners (if extraction is necessary), a closed network and self-destruct measures if your ship gets taken.
I promise that after the first ship blows, you'll never have a hijacker again. Even pirates don't want to waste resources.
>>47965864
>Even pirates don't want to waste resources.
Except you, wasting valuable resources to blow up your huge ships full of cargo.
>>47965509
10 is leveled up?
>>47965689
Literally all you would need there for egocasting securely to a rig would be a receiver with one-time pad decryption connected to a synth or small server.
>>47965864
Then they'd just hijack it with expendable clankers and collect the scrap when you blow it up.
Just saying, Dazzlers are [Moderate], and Lens Crazers are [High]
Post questionnaires
>>47965956
>Any amount of breakage is unacceptable
Are you 15?
>>47963423
No, but I don't think having multiple smaller engines is a problem. This isn't like building an N1 in the 1960s, rocket engines don't just break at the top of a hat.
>>47962471
That actually sounds like an interesting lead in for a one shot game. A repair crew egocasted into an automated bulk hauler which has gone dead. There's a lot of directions you could take that, from cargo containing active TITAN weapons, or just simply pirates.
>>47964647
If pirates are jumping a ship mid journey, there's no amount of info security which is going to keep them out. They've got the time to physically replace every computer.
>>47965864
Blowing up your ships when they get taken by pirates is a policy which quickly has other shipping hypercorps buying off suicide forked pirates to ruin you.
>>47966717
Destroying an entire very large, presumably very expensive ship and all of it's probably large mass of cargo isn't "any breakage", it's like, all the breakage.
You're asking terrorists with suicide forks to just crash your business, like >>47966724 said. You gain nothing from such an action besides smug satisfaction.
And the fact that pirates can probably squat unclaimed asteroids and make Cases for days will take that last part away.
>>47966724
>No, but I don't think having multiple smaller engines is a problem. This isn't like building an N1 in the 1960s, rocket engines don't just break at the top of a hat.
If you have two engines on pylons and one of them breaks, you're fucked.
>If pirates are jumping a ship mid journey, there's no amount of info security which is going to keep them out. They've got the time to physically replace every computer.
Not if you shoot them when they board. That said, the proposed physical key system is just as vulnerable to this.
>>47966724
>Blowing up your ships when they get taken by pirates is a policy which quickly has other shipping hypercorps buying off suicide forked pirates to ruin you.
I'll agree that it shouldn't be the first layer of defense, but why would this ruin you more than just stealing the stuff in the first place?
>>47966784
>Destroying an entire very large, presumably very expensive ship and all of it's probably large mass of cargo isn't "any breakage", it's like, all the breakage.
First off, I proposed the mercenary kill team, particularly since they might be able to recover it after they finish torturing the pirates to death repeatedly.
Second, big shipping companies actually do lose ships from time to time. This is what insurance is for.
Third, a crew will not prevent this loss.
>>47966790
Theoretically stolen items can be recovered. You pop the fusion drive powering a bulk carrier and have it flash out and local pirates and scavs will have picked any scraps clean before you can get any back. It is like, all loss.
>>47966863
>First off
Then why are you poking at my response about how "nobody wants to waste resources" except the guy blowing up ships to keep pirates from having them?
Surely you can see the irony in this.
>Second, big shipping companies actually do lose ships from time to time. This is what insurance is for.
I'm not an expert in insurance, but I'm pretty sure if you're blowing up your own ships and this is part of your official policy, the insurance company isn't going to want to cover you. That or they're gonna charge you an arm and leg because they know for sure your shit is going to get rendered irrecoverable.
>Third, a crew will not prevent this loss.
You can't lens craze a man in a vacsuit.
>>47966940
>Then why are you poking at my response about how "nobody wants to waste resources" except the guy blowing up ships to keep pirates from having them?
Because even if it is too heavy handed it would hurt the pirates way more than the shipping company and deters more attempts at piracy.
>I'm not an expert in insurance, but I'm pretty sure if you're blowing up your own ships and this is part of your official policy, the insurance company isn't going to want to cover you. That or they're gonna charge you an arm and leg because they know for sure your shit is going to get rendered irrecoverable.
If it's so recoverable then just let the pirates fucking have it and then recover it. Still no reason for a crew.
>You can't lens craze a man in a vacsuit.
Do you not realize that human eyes contain lenses?
Let's not even get into how hab assault is like, the shittiest thing to try and do, especially when the stakes are "get paid" vs "I get to live".
Plus the political field day all your inevitable enemies will have with, y'know, your complete lack of due process or ignorance of "basic human rights". Throw in a memejob about war crimes on some innocent "settlers" just minding their own business... It's just a huge hassle for what, you mafia some guys a couple times thinking that will actually deter them?
It has to be cheaper just to buy some fucking point defense weapons and be like "if you fly too close we'll fuck your shit". Fusion drives have power to spare.
>>47967015
>Do you not realize that human eyes contain lenses?
But dazzler/crazer/spotter only are noted to detect and work on camera lenses.
>Because even if it is too heavy handed it would hurt the pirates way more than the shipping company and deters more attempts at piracy.
It'll hurt one group of pirates once, then everybody learns to try with suicide forks. Or develop tactics to take out your self destruct system so they can potentially salvage at least some of the cargo.
Also, what happens when somebody enables your self destruct system while you're docked near a hab or station to unload?
>>47967019
>Let's not even get into how hab assault is like, the shittiest thing to try and do
Infiltrate hab. Select targets. Perform job. Go home.
>your inevitable enemies
Just pin it on Nine Lives.
>you mafia some guys a couple times thinking that will actually deter them?
Getting tortured and not getting paid for the job does tend to be a pretty good deterrent.
>It has to be cheaper just to buy some fucking point defense weapons and be like "if you fly too close we'll fuck your shit".
Okay. You don't need a crew for that.
>>47966790
Pylons aren't exactly going to break randomly and without notice. That's what the maintenance spimes which are already in pretty much every part of the space ship are for, and normal routine maintence as well. I bet you're one of those SHOT TRAP yelling internet engineers.
>I'll agree that it shouldn't be the first layer of defense, but why would this ruin you more than just stealing the stuff in the first place?
Because it's not opportunistic pirates trying to make a buck, its a concerted effort by a competitor to cheaply and with plausible deniability destroy the bulk of your ships. You'll run out of ships and credibility really fast when 90% of your ships get blown up defensively to stop pirates.
>>47967015
RAW, lens crazers don't work on biological eyes. That's silly though. And pulse lasers sure do.
..
In general the best defense against piracy for cheap bulk ships is going to be the difficulty of fencing the 100,000 tons of raw iron or whatever it is you're carrying is. Pirates would need to find some place that can actually buy that much stuff, and won't get kicked over by mercs in retaliation for doing so.
That doesn't leave a long list. For pirates, attacking ships which actually carry valuable cargo/information, or going for hostages on a passenger ship are more lucrative targets.
>>47967019
You're right, deterrant weapons are a good second line.
>>47967092
>But dazzler/crazer/spotter only are noted to detect and work on camera lenses.
So disable that safety feature then.
>It'll hurt one group of pirates once, then everybody learns to try with suicide forks.
You were just going on about how expensive spacecraft are. That's a much bigger deal to the pirates.
>Or develop tactics to take out your self destruct system so they can potentially salvage at least some of the cargo.
Yeah, that sounds way easier than knocking over the hauler full of helpless hibernoids.
>Also, what happens when somebody enables your self destruct system while you're docked near a hab or station to unload?
What happens when somebody enables your guns when you're docked near a hab or station to unload?
>>47967150
>Pylons aren't exactly going to break randomly and without notice.
The fucking engine could break, not the pylon
>>47967150
>Because it's not opportunistic pirates trying to make a buck, its a concerted effort by a competitor to cheaply and with plausible deniability destroy the bulk of your ships. You'll run out of ships and credibility really fast when 90% of your ships get blown up defensively to stop pirates.
Cool story. How is that worse than if the same people just steal yourself, which by the way would be more lucrative for them.
Also, you could stop if it's not working out well.
>A suave, smooth talking freebooter pilfers something valuable from a high speed antimatter courier
>Once resleeved, the pilot tracks the pirate to Jovian space, brutally murders him and recovers the package
>An immortal trillionaire approaches the pilot with a very interesting offer in exchange for the return of his property
>>47967155
>What happens when somebody enables your guns when you're docked near a hab or station to unload?
You poke small holes in things with lasers until port defense pokes you back?
Like, I realize we're in this phase where we just argue about everything, but you should stop and think before you just jump back at me. The amount of energy needed to blow up an entire ship is way more than the output of some omnidirectional laser balls at ship scale, and while it could easily be expensive and painful to have anybody just up and open fire in your direction that's a lot easier to knock off than "the whole ship blows up".
>>47967199
That can happen if you have one engine as well, and then you're double fucked because you can't even thrust off axis. To be clear, I'm talking about the odds of one (1) engine breaking, so don't say something about added complexity.
>>47967213
Most pirates don't have the reach and resources of a shipping company. If they did, they'd probably just go legit. You definitely could stop if it isn't work well, or use a security countermeasure that's less prone to being used against you. For the insurance against having cargoes lost through defensive action you can probably afford some on board security.
>>47967314
>That can happen if you have one engine as well, and then you're double fucked because you can't even thrust off axis. To be clear, I'm talking about the odds of one (1) engine breaking, so don't say something about added complexity.
If you have two engines, the odds of one breaking is twice as high. If one breaks, you're fucked. This isn't an airplane where you can correct for that with the rudder
So...I guess this ISNT the setting to run a simple Alien-like game then, cause ships are boring, empty hallways with no crews. Good to know I suppose.
>>47967552
Just put it on a hab you silly sausage
Anyway, ships with crews canonically exist, like that Titanian generation ship en route to another solar system
>>47967552
Pfft, hallways? What kind of backwards, primitive, luddite, ignorant savage are you? No, we do everything with tiny tubes so gel bots can just squeeze through the ship and rub out hyper-advanced nanos on everything to fix them. Letting AIs and nanos just run and rub on everything is the path forward, all future technology shall be based on AIs rubbing nanos on things! Soon we won't even need tubes, we'll just have tiny CMs built into all important components of the ship and the AI will just tell the ship to fix itself, we wont even need to move things.
What could possibly go wrong!
>>47967552
It would be a great one for that. It's just that some people in /epg/ are autistic about MAXIMUM UTILITY and infomorphs and AI for everything. >>47967560 is right, ships are canonically crewed, and basically due to distrust of AI/AGI/Infomorphs and security concerns.
>>47967603
>having bots
>having nanotechnolgy
>having ships
>not being the ETI
>not being capable of bombarding star systems with neutron stars
>not seeding hundreds of billions of solar systems with Bracewell probes
>not harvesting the raw power from an ancient quasar
>not having 6 trillion intellectual conversations at once within a computronium dyson shell 40 AU in diameter
>not having the ability to instantaneously project your gestalt ego across intergalactic distances within days
How does it feel to only perceive the baryonic universe, insect?
>>47964647
>False, but you're going to want that anyway for secure communication.
The book literally points out that egocasting technology combines "quantum farcasting" and "uploading". Using regular radio signals to transmit egos is asking for it.
>The comms array that you have anyway because farcasting isn't special
Negroid what are you talking about. Page 314 and pages 275-276 in the core rulebook talk about exactly how special farcasting is. Again, if you're a habitat or polity that's receiving and sending out egos via channels that doesn't have quantum cryptography, you deserve the inevitable backlash in every way.
>Not how quantum cryptography works
No, let me (or more specifically, the core rulebook) tell you how it works. They're considerably more expensive and require a good amount of effort to set up.
>"The two communication devices must be entangled together on a quantum level, in the same location, and then separated. So quantum key encrypted communications channels require some setup effort...since the implementation of quantum cryptographic protocols is an extraordinary expense, it's usually only adopted for major high-security communications links." (p. 254, core rulebook)
Your whole line of argument is how to be the most cost-efficient in terms of ship security, i.e. have no physical crew and rely on automated defense systems. How is having to set up time-consuming cryptography on your fleet of ships considered efficient at all?
>>47967552
>Implying there'd be hallways with no crew.
>>47968052
Check out Panopticon, it has a very different take on egocasting. Radios and laser links are common, but farcasting (which is basically a crypto protocol) is also very common Either way, setting up a farcaster with a ship isn't all that hard, as getting it in the same place as a transmitter is easier than with a hab. It's probably worth doing if you want to egocast people on or off the ship, or send important data securely, whether or not you have a crew.
Overall I think that whether or not a ship is crewed, will depend on where it is is going to matter.
An ore bus taking processed mass driver shots from Mercury orbit to venus probably doesn't need a crew. It's basically a tug pushing/towing blocks of metal in largely empty space, and there isn't really anywhere for pirates to take it if it were captured. I can see it generally using an ALI for every day piloting, with an off site control center giving it updates if anything happens. Sort of like a modern space probe.
Now in places where you need to navigate rep economies, there aren't any real space lanes, and some major polities don't accept the personhood of ALI/infomorphs/AGI a crew starts looking a lot better, and that covers a pretty good chunk of the outer system. Life support and crew quarters will be a pretty small part of the mass budget for a ship, so the extra cost is worth it so you don't get messed with by Jovian authorities.
Probably the biggest problem with an infomorph crew is that you can't use humans very well, because most people don't handle being an infomorph very well long term, and AGI aren't people a lot of places. Just having a crew so you can deal with unforeseen circumstances, and navigate the astropolitical fuck fest that is a large part of the system is probably worth an extra 20 tons on the ship.
We know a lot of ships are crewed, which probably points to ALI being more limited than these threads often assume.
>>47968418
I think it's mostly people overestimating the capabilities of an AI.
Or under estimating the cost. I think Vehicle AIs are like, [High], and that gets you basically just a 40 in the appropriate pilot and a decent knowledge of the vehicle systems.
Now, for every day tasks and in small vehicles which tend to have positive handling, they would have massive bonuses which translates to "doing a pretty good job". Vehicles with poor handling in any kind of challenging situation means that 40% stops looking to hot. Plus with no defaulting, if say, you want to be pragmatic and throw some point defense weapons on your ship, you either need to buy another [High] cost AI or a couple of generally [High] cost aftermarket mods. And ALI have Lucidity tracks too, how would an basic pilot ALI handle a ransom demand like >>47965300 suggests? It's programmed to fly things, not negotiate with terrorists.
Personally, extrapolating from the mechanics I think AI have a huge, ubiquitous place in the setting, but not a universal one. They're in a lot of things, but the roles they're suited for tend to be very specific depending on what the AI does.
>>47968418
>so you don't get messed with by Jovian authorities.
>Be 16 year old Jovian on his citizenship tour
>Just finished basic training and exoskeleton course for the Space Force Marines
>Didn't go into other specialist training because you're not some nerd cyberzombie, just want to shoot soulless monsters
>First mission out on a patrol boat, ready to interdict those who won't pay their gravity tax
>Catch an independant bulk carrier coming out of the main belt, registered to that cuck commieland of the Commonwealth
>Sergeant picks me to talk the ship through the interdiction process because I speak French and we don't rely on no "AI auto-translate"
>Open up hailing
>Tiny paperclip avatar appears and says "bonjour, vous semblez être en essayant d'interdire ce navire. Voulez-vous un peu d'aide avec ça?"
>Tell the Sergeant to nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure
With all this talk about space freighters and cargo and stuff, a question comes to mind. What circumstances, if any, would justify a guy stuck in a cryo-frozen box from the Fall until the present day, and which ship would even think of carrying it?
>>47968990
>What circumstances, if any, would justify a guy stuck in a cryo-frozen box from the Fall until the present day
Downgrade it from a whole guy to just a severed head or brain, either frozen or vitrified.
>which ship would even think of carrying it?
Anything from earth is potentially valuable, even a cryocan with the labels worn away. A reclaimer vessel setting out from one of the orbitals with a load of trinkets scavenged from the ruins of earth.
>>47968418
>Life support and crew quarters will be a pretty small part of the mass budget for a ship, so the extra cost is worth it so you don't get messed with by Jovian authorities.
Although it'd probably be even cheaper to have a little office somewhere nice in the Republic, staffed by one or two people, to fill out whatever paperwork is required, pay tolls, drum up business, do a bit of marketing and PR stuff, etc. The other major players in the outer system are likely to be rather more accepting of an ALI having personhood.
I'm not sure if it's really explained anywhere in the books, so if I've got this wrong, then I stand corrected, but I'd assume that you'd have to notify the Jovian authorities (presumably the navy?) that you're going to be moving stuff around and using their gravity well, and that said navy is unlikely to be shooting stuff down that is clearly marked, registered with whatever authorities are needed and arriving on a clearly defined and agreed upon schedule just because it's unmanned.
>>47969429
The Jovians would regard an unmanned ship as a security breach waiting to happen, and a ship full of 'illegal' AI templates is very likely to suffer an unfortunate accident or even be outright destroyed for reasons ranging from "Smuggling illegal AI criminals according to this evidence" to "Suspicious navigational behavior led us to suspect it had been suborned by terrorists, we just saved thousands of souls." They may or may not actually believe it, but either way that ship is still fragged.
The Jovians have a bit of a rep for that sort of thing, but they have big guns, do it to corps and anarchists more or less equally, and own the biggest slingshot in the system, so play nice when near Jovian space, pay the tolls, submit to the 'cargo inspections' where a squad of space marines armed with shoulder mounted seekers and rail machine guns board your ship to carry out the inspection, and you'll be fine. It's a mix of paranoia and gunboat diplomacy with all the grace and tact of a sledgehammer, plus they don't really think they're killing anyone. And in a way, they're right. Your backup insurance is paid up, right?
>>47969550
That seems really, really, really unlikely. Even as somebody who thinks that the Jovians make good comic-book Saturday morning villains in a game about transhumanism, the idea that they'd shoot down everything unmanned "just because" seems bloody stupid.
>Unregistered ships picked up by Jovian sensors are pinged and asked to file a customs form and pay up.
That's mentioned in Rimward, so presumably there is some system in place for registering your ships, and they're clearly not operating on a "shoot first and ask questions later" policy all the time if they're pinging people and asking them to fill out forms.
>>47969609
They're not shooting everything all the time, anon. Just often enough to make a point, or when there's a legit case to be made for security concerns or wanted criminals.
>>47969618
But I still do not think that an unmanned, unarmed ship that is following a known trajectory on an agreed upon schedule, registered to a legitimate business with a presence within the Republic is going to get blown up simply because it's not manned.
If they are in the habit of blowing shit up simply to make a point, a manned crew isn't going to save you. If you're smuggling wanted criminals, that's rather different - you're probably going to be a smuggler who hasn't filed a flight path, a time, a cargo manifest and however much money is required to pay the tolls. There's a big difference between "shooting down a ship that shouldn't be there with no paperwork" and "shooting down a ship that has been granted permission to make use of our facilities".
>>47968418
>Check out Panopticon, it has a very different take on egocasting. Radios and laser links are common, but farcasting (which is basically a crypto protocol) is also very common Either way, setting up a farcaster with a ship isn't all that hard, as getting it in the same place as a transmitter is easier than with a hab. It's probably worth doing if you want to egocast people on or off the ship, or send important data securely, whether or not you have a crew.
Fucking hell Eclipse Phase why can't you be consistent with this shit.
>>47965956
Not that guy:
Pirates are, by nature of their career, typically going to have access to fewer resources, so it will pinch them far worse
>>47967560
Yeah, lots of ships have crews. Probably any ship that does things away from habs (as opposed to just carrying stuff) will have a crew
>>47968052
>The book literally points out that egocasting technology combines "quantum farcasting" and "uploading". Using regular radio signals to transmit egos is asking for it.
You can switch from one synthetic to another via mesh insert in one minute. The limiting factor here is the range of the communications system. You're wrong.
>How is having to set up time-consuming cryptography on your fleet of ships considered efficient at all?
Because it's not time consuming and you don't want people to listen in on important corporate communications.
>>47968545
>Vehicles with poor handling in any kind of challenging situation means that 40% stops looking to hot.
Bitch there are airplanes that can't be flown without computer assistance and flying spacecraft is actually really simple once there's a flight plan in place.
>>47970250
Because they realized they got it stupid the first time
>>47971237
Aren't airplanes in that category typically fighter jets and the like?
>>47971263
Does it matter? Specialized control software also outperforms humans in driving 18 wheelers
>>47971263
It's actually true of a lot of commercial jets these days, though not for the same reasons. In most cases, the computer is cheaper and more reliable than a direct control link.
>>47971237
Well, some of this is mechanics/fluff disconnect. A person with 40 in a skill is supposed to be pretty good, like a professional certification good. And the bonus for doing an everyday task is like +60 - so an AI can do that like, 99 times out of 100 and that 100 is going to be a very freak failure. And a Bulk Carrier actually has a null Handling modifier (though, for reference, a space-based Fighter has like +30).
But practically, there are also going to be situations which come up, probably related to transhumans fucking, around which will occasionally mean the AI is not making routine tests. While the AI is very good, the hard cap on skills means in the event the chips come down there's still a decent chance of failure on their part.
>>47972702
> transhumans fucking, around
Nice comma, me.
>>47969609
Good luck filling out a form with a ship that's literally illiterate. Vehicle ALIs don't have language skills.
>>47969680
The problem isn't the Jovians shooting a ship because its unmanned, the problem is getting permission to use unmanned TITAN infection vectors inside the Jovian gravity well. The Jovians just don't use ALI outside of some extremely limited roles with direct human oversight. Getting permission to go outside Jovian law isn't trivial.
As for the rest of the outer system, you don't really want to navigate that without a rep score and networking skill, and an AI with that isn't an ALI.
>>47974154
Well, every AI gets like, a Native Language at 80. But they only get the one.
>>47973468
>Having a human pilot
Absolutely disgusting.
>>47974486
>Letting TITANs take over your pilots
Absolutely Disgusting
>>47974745
>I'm too fucking stupid to put my ALI on closed networks!
This is one of the few reasons why I'm thankful we don't live in 10 AF.
>>47974725
But new Doomguy is a total frankenfreak. Did you actually play the fucking game?
>>47974792
>implying closed networks matter to TITANs
Next thing you'll say you want to reclaim Earth with synthmorphs because the air is smelly.
>>47961834
Those chemical supplements, carbon, and water do not give energy, let alone enough for a full-sized biomorph.
>powered by a nuclear battery pack pretty cheap
A while ago I did the calculations for how much gadolinium the personal power generator would need. At 100% efficiency, it was 20kg, and with some further research, it seems that a radioisotope generator could ideally work at a maximum of 40%, so it would need 50kg. This is just for 2500kcal, and now it's carrying an extra 50kg.
>>47974871
I wasn't talking about the personal power plant, when you get the Cybernetic Hand Laser it comes with a battery supply that goes in your torso. I believe it's noted as nuclear (i/e radiothermal), because otherwise you'd need surgery every 50 shots to reload.
The hand laser cost is [Low], the LTLS cost is [Expensive].
>>47974818
>taking metaphorical things literally
It's clearly depicting the Jovian Republic battling the inhuman anarchist creatures that keep bombing their cities for "muh degenerate anarchist society"Yes I played the fucking game you fucking fuck fucker.
>>47974939
Inductive charging would be easier.
>>47975813
>horizontal decks
Disgusting.
>>47976311
WHALE PUSSY
H
A
L
E
P
U
S
S
Y
>>47976311
>>47976344
Orca aren't whales you speciesist
>tfw you'll never get to play a game where you're members of an unpopular Structuralist server full of old farts from Bletchley Park, Jormungandr, MIND, the Titanian Commonwealth, and the Jovian Republic
why go on living
>>47976969
Yeah old man. Why live? Just kill yourself now for the good of Transhumanity.
Now watch me as I lifeblog myself cloud-dive like all the COOL transhumans.
>>47976862
Uplifting Killer Whales were a mistake.
>>47978455
Not as bad as uplifting octopi or AIs.
>>47978455
>>47978524
Uplifting Australians was the biggest mistake.
>>47978524
>The Hidden concern knows where you live biped >-5 g-rep
>>47974992
>muh 5th column
stay buttmad hombre
So, we talked (argued) about spacecraft systems and the like. While a Spaceship supplement is now in development, and really the game involves much less hassle if you just wave through any serious spacecraft segments (using them as a setting more than anything else) I think it's interesting to talk about.
How would you handle systems/mods for ships? There's a fan-made supplement new on the forums which plugs in a lot of ideas from GURPS into the EP rules which is decent (it's only a doc though, so I can't share it directly here and I don't know if just converting it would save the tables).
Do you think spacecraft and large vehicles should have their own list of components and modded parts, or could you stick with the standard list of Mods/Enhancements and just have them scaled accordingly? What components would you like to see detailed or think there would be?
Does anyone actually run EP
I've tried to get it off the ground several times with my local group but it always dies; I want to play it something fierce, something really bad, man.
>>47974871
>If you used the shittiest radioisotope imaginable it doesn't work
2500 kcal/day works out to 121 watts, which you can do with about 4 kg of Pu238
>>47976862
They are, actually
>>47981358
In fact, the ASRG can do that with 1 kg of Pu238
>>47981310
Post a roll20 link
>>47981310
Funny enough, I'm running EP. I can't invite anyone though, since it's an ERP game.
>>47982167
I'll be honest, I'm a pervert who'd take what he could get, but i understand being leery about inviting strangers from the internet into erps.
>>47982167
But EP is only one letter away from ERP.
>>47981358
Why the fuck would the devs mention gadolinium anyway, then? Are they just dumb?
>>47982379
Yeah, it tends not to work well when what one finds abhorrent, the other finds arousing. EP in general works very well for me due to the abundance of psychosurgery and mind-altering exsurgent shenanigans.
Plus it's an established group, so there's that to deal with.Also I don't want to shit up a thread with lewd. Sorry if I am.
>>47982752
>Also I don't want to shit up a thread with lewd. Sorry if I am.
You're joking, right? Where the fuck do you think we are?
>>47982827
I know EP is lewd as fuck, but this is also /tg/ who get their panties in a twist over anything lewd one day and then openly masturbates the other.
/tg/ is bipolar as its userbase swings on and offline. It used to be lewder though, with a nice relationship with /d/.
>>47982970
You're aware of the prostitute meme on /epg/ right?
>>47982970
We're host to our own memeplex
>>47983018
I don't visit that often, so no.
>>47976311
how does one become a whale gynecologist anyway?
>>47968740
lol, msword
>>47984125
I have both seen and said the joke that the factory default Muse is just Clippy.
so how does eclipse phase stack up against something really esoteric like the Sons of Ether faction from White Wolfs Mage: The Ascension?
Cause as is, eclipse phase as described basically sounds like the alternate reality in which the Void Engineers are living.
Will holding bromide help me travel faster through the aether? Or will the powers that be keep a lid on transuranic elements ensuring that we will never discover FTL travel?
Basically what I'm asking is, "Who's your publicist?"
>>47984216
You mean besides gates?
>>47984239
Leave the Virtual Adepts out of this.
>>47984216
>>47984257
Words are coming out of your mouth, and on their own, I understand them, but the way you string them together is incomprehensible to me.
>>47984257
Considering how ingrained tech is with the setting, they can't be left out.
Also, if meathab is a thing, then you probably could have more esoteric-looking spacecraft as long as it holds up to scans.
>>47983872 see >>47969110
>>47984286
thats deliberate.
its moonspeak, meant to illicit a response, intuited, but not really understood.
Its like listening to a language you don't quite understand but have some familiarity with.
>>47983872
Basically the meme is that the best job for an indenture is to be a prostitute since it doesn't normally have hazards like losing your entire body to a workplace accident or the like.
So what happens to the EP timeline if the apocolypse never comes to pass? Is all progress stymied? Do we regress slowly back into the dark ages?
>>47984572
Are you talking about the Fall? If so, hell no, progress is not stymied considering there will be a lot more Prometheans around.
>>47984571
its sexually traumatizing.
My neighborhood has a lot of "massage parlors". I generally don't go there anymore because it amounts to human trafficking.
>>47984593
Weren't the promethians only created in response to the emergance of the TITAN AI?
>>47984617
You mean pre-exsurgent TITAN or post-exsurgent TITAN because I'm pretty sure neither are true unless if I missed something. Do you have a source?
>>47984595
There is a difference between a college dropout charging 300 bucks an hour who gets to fuck Charlie Sheen and an immigrant who can't speak english, doesn't have a visa and is indebted to whoever smuggled them into the country.
>>47984571
>>47984595
It isn't that prostitution the 'best job' it's that it's the only job. Dumb AI has removed the need for unskilled labor in every sector, except the ones where the customer demands a real human ego.
>>47984641
nah, just seems likely all things considered. Could just as easily be wrong.
>>47984617
No, if anything Promethean AIs are older because they typically did not ever bootstrap to ASI levels of intelligence but were carefully cultivated to be very intelligent over time by research projects and think tanks.
>>47984648
I mean, besides all the indentures canonically doing vacwork and terraforming jobs and all that other stuff.
But really, that's the PCs own fault. If ALIs were open sourced and freely forkable you could probably go back to pre-Fall levels of AI-driven Pod workforce. That would never go badly.
>>47984692
The return of AI pods in large numbers would mean zero reason to employ indentures, and everyone currently stuck in dead storage, in a case or as an infomorph would stay there. Similarly, anyone campaigning for the end of indentured prostitution is likewise campaigning for the millions of Fall casualties to stay dead, absent any value to bringing them back.
>>47984782
(Also, y'know the mass subversion of AI Pods during the Fall was kind of a clusterfuck)
>>47984812
The mass subversion of biomorphs during the Fall was also a clusterfuck. Or are we pretending the exsurgent virus can't infect meat bodies?
Anything with more computation density than a rat brain is spreading your legs for ETI sausage. Dehumanize yourself and face to bloodshed.
Basically the gist is: Prostitutes are cherished and you should enjoy being one. Remember to stretch your everything.
>>47984840
Right, but a biomorph has to make physical contact with an infection vector, and sometimes you can get lucky. A TITAN can just dial in to the puppet sock and issue an order to kill all the humans and put it at the top of the queue.
>>47984885
>Right, but a biomorph has to make physical contact with an infection vector
That's what basilisk hacks are for anon. Even zeroing yourself won't block out every possible input.
>>47984891
Yes, but that is why space god gave us faraday suits and analog tools.
>>47984891
Those take upwards of 10 minutes of prolonged, unbroken contact.
>>47984891
tv in every window, a server in every city.
>>47984842
I would, but I don't like being told to go home when I haven't got one.
>>47984944
Home is where someone is sticking a sexual organ/appendage/object in you.
>>47984970
the Busstop behind Wendies is my home?
>>47984988
Only as long as putting Tab A, B, and C into Slot C is active.
>>47984988
yep. right next to the garbage where you belong
>>47985044
Neo-prude please go.
>>47985110
>Next to a wendies
HEY! People are trying to eat over here!
>>47985147
Well now you get a meal and a show. Frankly, you should be paying the prostitute(s).
>>47985164
stop putting sex toys in my kids happy meal!
>>47985181
If they're old enough to use the mesh, they're old enough to understand sexual interaction.
>>47985181
>Having children
Did you open the wrong site by mistake? >>>r/luddism is that way
>>47985209
>luddist
I'm not sure you know what that word means...
>>47985225
I'm not sure you realize what year it is
The future is no place for kids ;^)
>>47985300
into the processor vats with ye lad! Those monkey burgers aren't going to make themselves!
>>47985317
But they do
Why do you think we paid billions of dollars for the self assembling ground-macaque gene? So we could let some indenture get her oily little manipulators all over it?
>>47985357
No no, hes not making them, hes being made INTO them
>>47980179
Most ships are going to have a lot of flexibility thanks to on board nanofabs, so that list should include fab time and mass, as well as build/installation times. I don't think that scaling up most of the ones for people makes sense.
Having ships work kind of like habs in various adventures would be a start. Have a map of how the mesh, and various command and control systems work, with their mass values and figure out what you can put on the ship from there. Makes it easier to do stuff on them, rather than just having the players quasi be spaceships when the time comes.
How much detail modules need varies with what you want to do with the ships. Simply running games on board ships is different than a game where the party is the command crew (or perhaps even the whole crew, what with how much automation EP has). I don't think EP lends itself very well to Traveller style tramp freighter play, but I could be wrong.
Rules for weapons and life support seem like a good place to start. Personally I'd be more interested in what the atmosphere on board a ship would be than the nitty gritty of how they work, but that's because I don't want to run a space ship focused game any time soon. I do have some ideas for how space ship fights should work, but I think the GURPS stuff is serviceable, so I'm not in a hurry to formalize them.
>>47981310
I do, but so far only offline. I'm not looking to start a new game right now.
>>47984558
Lord WW games are pretentious.
>>47985568
>Lord WW games are pretentious.
has nothing to do with White Wolf. Its just a hippie thing.
>it's a prostitute thread
>>47985984
It isn't like you wouldn't want to be one is it?
>>47985984
This is a shitty future. A future where most of humanity is dead and the rest is raping each other to death is not a future anyone should want.
How do we retcon in a new, better future?
>>47986384
Make it consensual.
>>47986424
Forced consent is still rape.
>>47985984
>>47962509
>a tokamak (aka probably deuterium-tritium) reactor right in the middle of the crew section
Nigga what the fuck are you doing
>>47986764
Eating some noodles, don't fuck when i eat noodles, go to fuck in the theater room
>>47986764
I wouldn't worry.Tokamaks don't work anyway.
>>47986443
Forced consent is an oxymoron. Do you perhaps mean coerced consent?
What are the stances on prostitution and what is prostitution like in uplift habs?
>>47989951
No prostitutes on majority bonobo habs, but a bonobo might decide that she doesn't mind getting paid for something she would be doing anyway. You'll find group rates on habs with lots of dolphins. I can't recall any bird species thay has sex as a recreational activity. Octopuses certainly don't.
IRL, in sexually open ancom societies, one common currency is sexual favors, with the most attractive people being the "richest". While attractiveness isn't much of an issue with basic biomods, the person with the title of Best at Blowjobs is probably going to be relatively wealthy, but perhaps not as much as the Dong Designer Doyen.
Elsewhere, it's the same as now to varying degrees, but without any gender-based nonsense.
>>47976862
I'll be happy to discuss your pronouns after I finish with the catheter, but for now could you please just hold still?
>>47989951
I feel like generally recreational sex is much more the norm in AF10 so I don't see why there'd be much demand for pro-sexers
>>47991217
They're willing to do stuff someone wouldn't do unless they're getting paid. As long as the customer can pay, it doesn't matter if they have no social grace or have weird mannerisms. A prostitute will put up with listening to your problems and can be held in confidence, as their reputation hinges on their tight lips.
>>47962509
So we're Sword of the Stars now, i see.
Remember: the only good robot is a destroyed robot.
>>47993114
Still light years better compared to the deck plan coming with the mission...
>>47992547
This is really bad.
>>47992547
I love how the assault rifle has nowhere a magazine could actually go. Also an ejection port that doesn't actually line up with the barrel.
>>47994154
Well, that bottom thing might come off that could be a helical mag and the tiny smudge above it is the barrel.
(It's still really bad tho)
>>47994154
Also, apparently, no bolt.
Is it necessary to have an ego bridge if you want to upload an ego from a cortical to a cyberbrain or a simulspace running on a server?
>>47995366
No, an ego bridge is for a brain, a cortical stack needs a different and smaller type of reader which doesn't have its own name.
http://eclipsephase.com/x-risks-cover-and-electronic-release-date
HAPPENING LEVELS ARE NOW
X-RISKS DROPS THIS WEDNESDAY
LOOK AT THIS COVER
>>47957274
Note to self, the EP PDFs link now has Zone Stalkers, MRG, MYE and Firewall so we can trim those links from the pasta.
>>47995555
This is great, I hope the Factor info is good.
>>47995555
>Traps for high-tech dungeon crawls.
>>47995929
>He's never designed a TITAN mad-science base filled with deathtraps
Man, I hope they called Caleb Stokes in for some of that, he had some real devious challenges in Know Evil.
>"Deathtrap is singular, and therefore incorrect."
>>47995982
More to imply the sexual sort of trap, but I guess that works too.
>>47995929
DESU, something like an expanded Blood Spire from Diamond Dogs would probably be super cool in eclipse phase.
>>47996019
Well, Ny’knikiin are still a thing.
>>47996121
That's, weirdly magical realmy
>>47996658
But also deeply unsettling.
Is it normal that you get players that are okay with things like elves and dwarves and dragons, but object--on religious grounds, no less--to Eclipse Phase?
Almost every one of my players don't feel comfortable with Eclipse Phase, the majority on them on nebulous religious grounds. I've not been able to get a straight answer out of them.
Before I moved and my old group disbanded, I had the same issue.
I know that EP is a hard system to grok, but....
(venting, a little)
>>47998001
I don't know why. I don't see how it would be anymore blasphemous than playing wizards. On the other hand, Eclipse Phase does sort of smugly state that religion just dies out. (except Islam the most progressive, loving, and adaptive faith)
>>47998001
Do you mean religious as in they 'religiously refuse' to play, or as in it's literally against their religion?
Judaism is a religion about rules lawyering (see: the entire Talmud) and even if you can find something in the Torah that explicitly refutes transhumanism, I guarantee there's a Rabbi who can find a way around it
The central tenet of Christianity is that Jesus Christ was literally the son of god, there's nothing in Eclipse Phase that can explicitly refute that
Similarly the central tenet of Islam, there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet, is also something that can't be proven or disproven
The devs' views on Hinduism and Buddhism are wrong and kind of retarded, but regardless they aren't totally incompatible with posthumanism
>>47998204
The closest I've gotten to a straight answer is, "You can't digitize the soul!"
Just cranky, because I like EP.
>>47998271
They're all various version of Christian (the closest thing to a title for me and my wife--the only one who doesn't object--is agnostic).
