Yes. But that puts you squarely in GM-fiat territory, which can be uncomfortable and argument-causing. :) RAW, they just reduce radio ranges by 90%. (And thereby wreck swarms, of course.) Oh, and Prophet? You're gonna want to use index/search. :D

Yes, if only we had a gear quality mechanic we could draw on and and use to gauge how well a particular piece of kit functions. But alas, such a thing most definitely does not exist on page 296/297 of the Core rulebook. *cough* :D

Yerameyahu wrote:

That doesn't have much to do with EMP, though. I assumed nezumi meant 'Reliability in the face of EMP'. :)

I was actually meaning that you change the gears quality modifier based on how much it is affected by the EMP. Gear quality is, after all, a dynamic mechanic. What is top of the line (+30) this month might be old and unreliable the next (-10)

Yerameyahu wrote:

That seems fair, except again for the fact that by RAW it doesn't happen.

Oh, I know. But if you wanted to introduce a mechanic to show how much a particular piece of equipment has been affected by an EMP blast, I think that Gear Quality is the existing mechanic that should be co-opted.

CodeBreaker wrote:

Yes, if only we had a gear quality mechanic we could draw on and and use to gauge how well a particular piece of kit functions. But alas, such a thing most definitely does not exist on page 296/297 of the Core rulebook. *cough* :D

Hey, I'm busy writing for Eclipse Phase. You think I have time to READ it too?? Seriously though, I was thinking more of 'catastrophic failure' type stuff, although I guess the existing rules work fine.

Re-Laborat wrote:

Actually, combing this forum for all the things the rules are NOT clear about and making a list would probably do a lot of people a lot of good in the sense that it creates a set of things one might want to establish rulings on early.

Plus, at least half of such rule questions must have been answered by either myself or Yera, and we are awesome, so win/win! :D

It is reasonable to assume that technology built for space, solar flares, and the insane magnetic field of Jupiter is not going to be affected by a run of the mill EMP weapon.

Just to ruin some popular Hollywood assumptions about EMP: EMP has three specific stages of pulse (E1-3) which each do damage to electronics by entirely different mechanisms: E1: Produced by electron sleeting due to gamma radiation from the nuclear detonation ionizing the upper atmosphere. This effect will NOT occur in vacuum. Depending on the shielding of a ship near a nuclear detonation in space, there might be a 'wave' of this radiation that propagated through the atmosphere inside the ship, however. If the ship is shielded against hard gamma, this should not be a factor. E2: Direct interaction of gamma radiation and artificial neutron flux with electronics. This is significantly weaker and sparser in terms of energy density. So much so that papers written about it have suggested that it wouldn't be significantly dangerous except that (in an atmosphere!) E1 has already burned out most of the protective systems and fuses. This part of the pulse effect WILL occur in a vacuum as it is generated by the weapon itself rather than the weapon's interaction with surrounding gas. E3: A magnetic wave impulse generated by the E2 impulse 'pushing' the Earth's weaker magnetic field away, and then that magnetic field 'snapping back' as the impulse fades. Think of this like the effect of a depth charge in water or the condensation wavefront from extremely high-rate-of-burn explosives. This would also not occur in space. That said, intrasolar space is, itself, an amazingly hostile environment to electronics and materials. Any nanoswarms meant to survive in vacuum and solar wind will need to be 'macro' nanites. I'm not sure how large they'd need to be, but any mechanisms that are built on a molecular scale will be highly sensitive to solar wind, and would be utterly destroyed by the surge caused by even a small flare. I imagine that a 'swarmanoid' would need to rely on optical laser communication between its elements in space. That might already be in the RAW, I don't have my book with me. Not a shabby layman's guide to EMP can be found in the obvious place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse

Arenamontanus wrote:

I'm rather partial to explosively pumped flux compression generators, but with EP-level nanotech I think one can do some pretty awesome capacitor banks producing microwave pulses. But, as Wikipedia points out, the range of such a non-nuclear devices is going to be much smaller.

You can still do explosive pumping using the capacitor banks, I believe I recall reading somewhere that if you dump enough electricity through a significantly shaped chunk of osmium (well, anything else that'll vaporize explosively, I imagine) you can get quite the blast. If your batteries are higher energy density than chemical explosives, that might be the way to go. Thoughts on the nanite-thing? And...Wait...You don't give your players nukes? ;)

I fully back the notion of ruling in favour of what is awesome. That said, I've taken the EMP grenades as my guideline in my game and ruled that most such robots would be shielded against an EMP grenade. Just a couple weeks ago, one of my players tried out an EMP grenade on a Fractal, to no avail. As to if an EMP grenade would harm a TITAN war machine, I'd say it depends on the war machine. If this is the kind of robot that the TITANs pumped out as fast as possible to kill as many people as possible, I'd be inclined to let the robots be not shielded against EMP. However, if it's something where the TITAN in question was building a quality war machine, like an assault robot or a tank of some sort, and they weren't particularly strapped for time and resources, I'd think that the TITAN device would be thoroughly shielded against an EMP strike.

Mmmm... I personally would believe that "EMP grenade" is a slang name for a whole range of one-use equipment designed to block wireless transmissions in a brute force approach, and that's why it affects swarms and other stuff more reliant on waves than in cabling (so I'd say that the TITANS were a little too smart for their own good in that regard). Also, fractals are not combat machines, but builders, being that the reason behind them being affected by the grenades. As for the effect of this on characters, I would lower the cost of any given piece of equipment (including pods and synthmorphs) that are not shielded against radiation; well, all but cases, cases would require an extra low cost "item" to be shielded against such stuff (if a case is not shielded, then it loses 10-(som/10) turns rebooting). While this is a little more an advantage to PC's, it can also be used by a devious and munchkin GM sending suicide forks against the players on a budget ^^. In general, EMP grenades are weapons against swarms of small enemies, not against bigger stuff. And of course, there should be a big version of the device, of a size variable from human to car-like (dependent on the range), that can sustain the interference for a long time (unless you switch to narrative time, like in a siege, it should last the whole fight without need for cooling/recharging), doing the same effects the EMP grenade, but in a wider range (adjustable from 20m to 5 km for the smaller generators, up to 20 km for the bigger ones) continously. The effect would be, of course, giving an advantage to a defender that relies on shielded cables installed in an static position. So for example this idea would be putting a "fortress" with several of these generators in key locations, and have shielded cables installed all around, with all the defenders being able to use physicall jacks to connect their mesh to the system (thus not needing wireless support, sacrificing a little mobility and a quick action to jack into a new cable if they need to move away from their position). The cable would have a self-retracting mechanism, some sort of disguise cover that can be removed by a laser tag in the character's jack, and a uniquely shaped I/O to further difficult invader's hacking (not to mention physical fuses between positions). I think this could be used by the Ultimates most secure fortifications, since it looks like a lot of effort for little gain.