Hi, I just started a short campaign with two friends last week (we used the quick-start adventure and 2 characters made using 1200 CP, an extropian and a titanian. In Mars they were sleeved in a custom ghost morph and a martian ranger from sunward), and several doubts came to my mind:
1. Players and spaceships. They wanted their own spaceship for running a reclaimers story, but since I already had an adventure in mind, I was able to put the discussion under the rug. My question is how players can get their hands on a spaceship as a starting commodity, and how can I manage the upkeep costs of such an item.
2. Nanofabrication. To make things simpler (since the system The Eye fanzine uses is a little too much, at least for starting players) I decided that nanofab blueprints would cost 1 category higher than the item, and fabricating the item would cost 1 category lower, regardless of the item. However, the rule about 1 hour of CM time per category cost for desktop cornucopias is a little odd for me, and I was wondering if there would be a table somewhere that correlated size, mass and complexity to the different capacities of the cornucopias (I am assuming that all cornucopias have the same speed in assembling materials, the smaller ones requiring simply to assemble the separated parts if the item cannot be made in a single piece, however I would enforce a rule of only one item at a time is possible, in order to introduce an opportunity cost in the equation).
I'm quite interested in the nanofabrication part of the game because, well, I've been playing Minecraft lately, and I am in the building stuff mindset ^^U.
3. Scavenging and money rewards. My players are veterans of videogames like STALKER, and tend to scavenge everything they can. So in the starting adventure, they managed to capture all enemy morphs but one in the final battle, and wanted to sell them (including their equipment). As a generalism, I let them sell the bodies (still alive, they had stabilized them and while all had suffered all their durability as damage, taking 3-4 wounds each, but none had suffered death damage, one of the rusters from Gray Xu's people being the only exception because they popped the cortical stack as a "silent kill"...), but I didn't found anything concrete in the rules, aside from the disposing rolls in the reputation tables. While I am aware that both players should be running in a reputation-based economy, having credits is very important too in EP since you can't trust reputation everywhere.
4. Combat. I found that, in this system, usually winning the initiative means killing one or two enemies if you have automatic kinetic weapos or spray weapons (and you are in range). Nearly all of the combats were like this: the players win initiative, fire on full auto (the ghost had velocity 3, one from Neurachem and one from Reflex Boost... the bastard invested 90 CP in money, and used some favours with I-rep to get an almost equally equipped morph on Mars XDDD), and used the +3d10 to damage option from the errata (they had 60 in both kinetic and spray weapons, +10 from the smartlink, +10 from the quick action aiming, and short range, even with the -10 from light cover they tend to obtain a MoS of 30 or so... usually eliminating one enemy per complex action). Well, this was for the Olimpians, the rusteds were eliminated by the ghost-using player with stealth and cunning (and luck in the rolls).
5. Critical rolls in combat. I think nothing was in the errata, but I find quite strange that the only effect the critical roll has is to ignore armor, because it's quite easy to use certain weapons and ammo to ignore all armor with a value less than 12 or so, while the MoS in this rolls might grant extra damage. Shouldn't be added extra damage to a critical roll in combat if the attack already punches through the armor?
6. Teamworking. If I understood this ok, you add +10 to your rolls (to a max of +30) per character helping you performing an action. Does this include muses? Because both players bought medicine: paramedic for themselves and as one of their muses' options, and I was wondering (and possibly fearing) a player with the multitasking implant and a muse trying infosec actions (I think that would be a +30 to his skill...), which can be quite powerful (of course, the forks would lose the extra actions they would normally have, since they are helping the alpha fork with something).
7. Multitasking implant and ghostriding implant in a synthetic morph (or a normal character having the ghostrider module "off" until needed). Does this allow to reach even 3 extra mental actions if the player has a fork of himself in the ghostriding module? This is quite interesting for characters inside a cyberbrain because they can copy themselves quite quickly, thus being able to produce a lot of forks in a very small amount of time.
8. Informorphs, forking and hacking. I still didn't looked a lot into the hacking chapter, but for what I saw in other adventures for the game (like Glory), it doesn't seem like hacking in a "siege" mentality has been considered. I am talking about making several beta forks of oneself and sending them in groups to hack the system, act as decoys, and in general make a mess of the system. They should include a self-destruction subroutine, of course, to avoid being captured... and to even better anonimity, someone else's forks might be used (hey, there is a use for all those ego black market references the corebook makes).
9. Turn of the Wi-Fi. I find strange that there are no mention through the manual about stuff like turning offline the mesh implants, ectos, or whatever, being the Faraday suits in Gatecrashing the only mention to an "autistic mode". Of course, without the filters that suit provides, Basilisk hacks are still possible, but this could be avoided with visual and auditory filters (using googles with headphones, for example, reproducing the effects from the faraday suit). Of course that leaves open other options, but I mean a fully offline system with sensory filtering should have the same effect without having to be inside a faraday suit.
10. Muses. I wasn't able to find anything about how muses develop in-game (that is, do they advance like the players? And how?), only the rules for the starting muse all players get. Is it somewhere, are house rules?
11. Sit while things run themselves. This was a tactic back in the day for Cyberpunk 2020 and netrunners (the game's hackers, so to speak) consisting in the investment of a lot of money into the acquisition of a server and a AI (a driving AI was enough, since you could put other points in the programming skill, but anyway a programming AI was possible to be bought), hide both in a secure location with a self-sustaining energy source, and go there after a lot of time to get your shiny, newly programmed and free programs to do what you wanted (since you could reduce the difficulty of the programming roll by devoting more time to the task). So my question is what forbids a player to, for example, copy his muse into an offline computer and put her to make hacking-related programs, improve the mesh-gear (software side, I mean), and have other three copies of the muse (or even 3 delta forks of the player being created and erased every 4 hours) as helpers to get that juicy +30 bonification for teamwork?
Thanks, I realize this is a wall of text, and that some of the questions might have aleady been answered, but I appreciate the effort of reading all the post anyway.
Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.
Some doubts about the game
Sun, 2011-07-24 10:29
#1
Some doubts about the game
Sun, 2011-07-24 14:29
#2
Re: Some doubts about the game
10. Muses do not develop. You can buy them more Skillsofts.
Sun, 2011-07-24 16:58
#3
Re: Some doubts about the game
Overall, why assume everything has to be in the rules? There is no way you can describe even the primitive *current* world in a RPG system, let alone the far more complex EP world.
Starships are expensive and complicated. Consider a large freight ship or a jumbo jet. They require staff, both onboard and on the ground, anchoring and landing fees, FAA or naval regulations, ship registries, fuel, repairs, certifications... Basically, unless characters start out as being amazingly rich and can delegate all the little details through a few layers of underlings, they will not really own a starship and running it will be a full-time job for many people. They might be the key people running it, but they are running it *for* somebody. This is even true for "free" traders or scum - they are responsible to their company or clan.
I would "give" players a starship if several of them take some variant of the Patron Trait to explain it.
Hmm, consider the credit cost for gear of different levels on p. 296. There seems to be a pretty direct link there that can be used - use the same cost on p. 289. Of course, there is probably at least a 50% decrease in value due to wear and tear, not to mention the legality issues (fencing stolen goods tend to lead to steep decreases in pay).
Sure, you can turn off the mesh. Except that everything becomes much harder and messier (just try working with a *current* computer that is offline - a surprising number of applications are meterware these days). But clearly it is an option. Except of course that you might miss a non-obvious connection opened by some silly app that just *must* connect to the Experia update server for a personalized playlist for this battle...
I would suggest turning off all comms is a normal or simple InfoSec roll.—

Sun, 2011-07-24 18:03
#4
Re: Some doubts about the game
Multitasking and forking:
I believe the core book says that creating a beta fork takes something like 1 month of time, and you have to roll several skills to find out if that beta fork is even functional instead of just insane/garbled.
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Sun, 2011-07-24 18:12
#5
Re: Some doubts about the game
Well, most likely my players want someplace to call "home", or at least a base... And yes, while they must be thinking in something on the lines of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, I had in mind something more like Serenity's... Sadly, I have only a group of 2 players. Of course, they could just use AI, NPC's or indentured infomorphs (if they can trust them, that is... XD). Personally, I have a little trouble envisioning a game where a physical place to rest and store your stuff is unpractical (since Firewall missions will move people all around the system, and the quickest travel method is egocasting).
Oh, well, then they get more money than I really am comfortable with... Reducing all the items by a cathegory level, they got 43.200 credits (I'm using the average of each cathegory), and since I gave them an NPC for more intellectual work (a nanotechnology expert with hacking capacities, who gave no help in the fight since while he was going to hack the sniping drone, a player had a lucky shot and gave the drone 2 wounds and 30-odd damage in a single sniping shot when the drone was looking for LoS with any of them...), plus a little payment from Firewall (5000 creds per character), they ended earning about 19.400 creds.
Of course, looking at the Pandora Gate fees (or even morph fees) that is quite a relatively small amount of money, yet I'm not completely sure since it's the first time I face a game with such a vague economy (the closest thing I've played or game mastered has been the Warhammer 40k games, and even in Rogue Trader things could be looked at like a menu).
Here I was thinking a lot in the way of Ghost in the Shell's "Autistic mode", which was very hard (but not really impossible) to hack.
Yeah, but what is the top limit? Can you load them with as much skillsoft as you can pay/program?
Most likely someone with less mileage in role-playing games would have less trouble adapting to a setting as revolutionary as this one, but, well, I'm trying my best ^^U. Thanks for your answers, anyway, they gave me some things to think about :)
Sun, 2011-07-24 21:51
#6
Re: Some doubts about the game
http://www.firewall-darkcast.com/theeye]The Eye fanzine[/url] for more scenarios and ideas. It wouldn't hurt to go hunting around the internet looking for postings of other campaigns that people have run. There's an active multi-game EP community on [url=http://www.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=41456]RPOL[/url] and a few of the games up and running currently might give you some interesting ideas, there are also some at [url=forum.rpg.net]rpg.net[/url], or, if you'd prefer to listen, there's an [url=http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2011/04/genre/horror/eclips... of an EP game at RPR[/url]. Also go through the homebrew forums here. You will not only find some nice character sheet utilities, but also a all-in-one-place web chart of gear, and tons of fun adventure ideas and little bits and pieces you can use to help evoke atmosphere.
Remember. In this game, it's okay to kill your players' bodies. Just have them get their stacks retrieved somehow. They will learn that the most important assets they bring aren't guns or muscles, but rather skills and creativity. Don't be afraid to make the bad guys creative, either. Have somebody put a crude little fork onto a landmine and equip it with Facial Image Recognition Software. Virus their synthbodies with irritating Mesh pop-ups advertising ways to increase their coital prowess, local Triad gambling dens, and cheap guaranteed-profitable investment opportunities in asteroid real-estate. Screw them, screw them, screw them, but always give them ways out if they're clever, and don't be afraid to give them suggestions for cleverness via NPCs. ("You people need to stop thinking Prague Police and start thinking Playstation." - xXx)Believe it or not, after a short while they will get used to the idea that 'death is only a temporary setback' and they will ENJOY being under pressure and trying to figure out ways to screw the NPCs back. Mister Johnson is not their friend. Mister Johnson is their paycheck. And if Mister Johnson thinks he can get away without paying them, he will. 'Getting paid.' is its own adventure. Particularly when they end up not getting MONEY or even REP but instead get 'Well, I've got this extremely valuable property in a storage locker on Titan. It's technically worth more than I owe you, but I think you'd be able to use it better than I could.' Once they've egocast and sleeved their way out to Titan, not only do they find a locker with a small jar of grey goo in it, but almost immediately every local police, corporate and criminal organization that exists is all over them because THEY HAVE [s]THE MALTESE FALCON[/s] THE GREY GOO. And they don't even know what it does yet.
This is not that pretty fantasy game with the tweeting birds and the singing elves. This is Eclipse Phase. You're allowed to be evil. :)
Have fun with it and good luck!
Explain to them that ships don't travel in EP particularly faster than they do in RL. Earth to Moon? Several days. The shortest quote I've ever heard for a trip from Earth to Mars (and it's assuming you have fuel to burn in a really big way) is around four months. More typical would be eight months at closest approach with a fuel-conservative orbit. Closest approach launch window only occurs every 26 months. At any other time, you can double your trip time easily. Getting to Jupiter or Saturn or Neptune? Yeah. Not going to happen in a timely fashion. What this means is that if someone is needed somewhere NOW, it HAS to be egocast. Your players are used to TV shows (even Serenity!) where travel between locations is a matter of a few days or weeks at most.
If they have spent a bunch of money on gear, toss a short egocasting adventure at them to give them an idea of how much ownership of gear (or even meat) doesn't necessarily matter. Don't orient the whole campaign that way if they blew their budget entirely on toys, but do give them 'a taste' of casting in naked to try to work with whatever is on site (in terms of bodies and tech). Also, if they are not yet into the more Cthulhu-esque horror vision of the TITANs, expose them to some (just a little) and some NPCs who aren't terribly attached to their bodies. Teaming up with a TITAN-hunter might wake them up. "If you're so badass, why are you in a case?" "Because it's disposable. This way I get to just ditch this sorry vacuum cleaner when it gets some kind of infection. Did you figure you were going to take those pretty dolls of yours home with you after they've been up to their elbows in TITAN-created nanitic mutavirii?"
I'd use Low for shot-up/stolen gear. In fact, if it's damaged badly I might use half or less of Low. Oh the heck with that. I'd have their favorite fence look at the boneyard of carcasses they're trying to move and say 'Look, nothing personal, but you guys are dangerous. You pay ME to get rid of this and clean up your mess...Otherwise, yanno...The CorpPols have been leaning on me real hard lately to give them something. Nothing personal. Just business.'
Get your players into the Outer System, where people will laugh if they're offered credits and the economy is all about Rep and Favors. Favors are a godsend to a GM. You can call them up in the middle of a firefight with some guy going 'Hey, are you busy? It's about that favor you owe me. You remember. The BIG FAVOR for saving your sorry asses that time. Yeah don't shush me and don't tell me you're busy, I [i]know[/i] where you are. I need you to [i]NOT[/i] shoot the guy in the Case morph. Take him alive, bring him to the following location, and we'll call your debt paid. No, I [i]DON'T[/i] want you to pop his cortical stack and bring it, I want the whole package, the ego [i]AND[/i] the Case it's in and I want them intact. Also, don't let him blow himself up with that grenade he just took out...'
Technically what GitS calls 'autistic mode' is just going off network. I wouldn't even make a player take a test to do this, it's just a mental flip of the switch.
Of course, once that switch is flipped, you need to describe how all of their spime updates just stopped cold, they no longer know what doors are open unless they can see them, their firearm's auto-targeting software (unless they have skinjacks or are hard-wired otherwise into their local equipment mesh or some such) is now updating too slowly to be useful, they can no longer hear if there have been any security or news updates that might affect them, etc. They are Off The Net, and in EP that means they don't see a lot of the world around them. Hell, there are a lot of people and places that look extremely different Off The Net. Doors which are obvious if you're networked are now nearly invisible because the architect wanted them to 'blend in aesthetically', etc...
It's all cool. This is a VERY different setting.
Just from your earlier comments I would strongly recommend that you search these forums for posts on combat hacking (it isn't as easy or fast as one might think) and egocasting. Also, check out [url=
Sun, 2011-07-24 22:28
#7
Re: Some doubts about the game
I handwave the costs and maintenance of the ship for my group. Just assume that the majority of the fees the group receives go towards the ship and that characters of (absent) players are on rotation to handle its upkeep between sessions.
But our game is weird that way so don't mind us >.>
Mon, 2011-07-25 01:37
#8
Re: Some doubts about the game
AFAIK, you can load (a Muse/AI with) as many skillsofts as you like. They're pretty expensive, and they max out at 40 (total, not Apt+40).
Mon, 2011-07-25 01:48
#9
Re: Some doubts about the game
I don't know about the Beta Fork taking that long; that's if you want to use long-term psychosurgery to do it and get a bonus.
It is much faster if you do it 'on the fly'.
Delta forks are even easier, just takes a minute with a biomorph brain and an egobridge.
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Mon, 2011-07-25 05:50
#10
Re: Some doubts about the game
Uh... Regarding forks and travelling, I just looked into the corebook, and Luna-Mars is about 1 month for fast couriers and 4 months for "normal" ships (scum barges and old ships taking more, not to mention if you want to save on fuel). As for the forks, there is an implant (multitasking) that makes them "on the fly", and I think it was a matter of minutes to make almost any of them, the long time preparations being for reintegration of forks that were active for a long time (an irrelevant task if you use those forks just to craft stuff).
This I understand even less. Do you mean that a muse is limited to have a total of 40 points in skills, distributed into any number of those skills? But only in the creation of the muse at the character creation phase, or along all its life (so the more skills you buy to the muse, the less skilled it becomes overall...)?
On a sidenote, I now have some doubts regarding CLU (the main antagonist from Tron: Legacy): would he be considered a Beta fork, or a Delta fork?
Mon, 2011-07-25 06:50
#11
Re: Some doubts about the game
Forks and Multitasking:- Jsnead (who wrote the gear section) has said that the forks generated by the multitasking implant are specially designed for their purpose, they are not usable for anything other than giving extra actions (no teamwork bonuses, no sending them out to hack for you, no sneaking in extra moxie from them). Conversely normal forks generated through other means cannot be used to give the originating ego extra actions, they function using their own initiative and skill set.
Beta forks take 1 minute to generate, but there is a good chance that your average transhuman will get a crazy, blubbering fool at the end of it. I am of the opinion that the test for generating a beta fork on the fly is exempt from the "take your time" option, otherwise long term neural pruning is useless. This means that your average citizen (and many Sentinels) have a 85-55% chance (teamwork) of failing their generation roll, with every 10MoF resulting in a potential 1d10SV. Then they have to deal with resleeving stress. An average INT of 10, -10 modifier for being a fork, -20 modifier for being sleeved into an Infomorph means that most beta forks will always fail their alienation check. They will almost certainly be suffering from a -10 modifier caused by Integration for their entire existence. And then they suffer Continuity, probably Short Memory Gap, Upload to Resleeve Without Continuity and Fork. Plus any more stress added by failing their roll, which occurs ~70% of the time.
All of that stress is applied to their reduced average trauma threshold of 4(!), which means that almost every beta fork created by your average transhuman is going to come to being with a disorder or two. Generating good beta forks using on he fly pruning is not a particularly easy task. The fluff and the crunch are kind of at odds in this regard.
On skill softs and AI;- Skillsofts are software packages characters can buy, and if they have the right hardware install onto themselves, that simulate active skills. These software packages can also be applied to muses. Each skillsoft has a maximum skill rating of 40. So you could buy your muse an Infosec skillsoft, but it could only increase the muses Infosec skill to 40. This can be done as many times as the character wishes. Remember that skillsofts would probably have some serious DRM attached, and would be fairly difficult to do open sourced, so you would need to break the copy protection (search the PDF, on the iPad and cannot link you a page number) before you apply a single skillsoft to your entire teams muse pool.
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Mon, 2011-07-25 07:46
#12
Re: Some doubts about the game
Ok, for what I saw in your post, I can conclude that:
1. Muses, players & virtual skills: players are limited to a top of 100 points of "implanted" skills, that do not stack with existing skillpoints in that skills, and have a maximun value of 40 (so a player can have, at most, two skillsets at 40 and one at 20). Muses, on the other hand, can have any number of skillsets with a maximun value of 40 in each. Also, I understand that you add the aptitude value to this 40, am I correct?
1b. The last part made me think if a Beta fork is limited to 60 in the value of his skills, or is 60+aptitude (and a delta to 40, for example).
2. The multitasking implant can get the forks fully functional, but only usable for extra mental actions. It is not like full forks are made, but it's more like creating two executable files that run the stuff of the character's brain (like having 3 instances of a World of Warcraft client running in the same computer and HDD, for example, while forking would be to copy the whole wow folder to another HDD).
3. Any given morph can have a maximun of one ghostrider implant, but if used to house a fork for teamwork/support roles (like a fork of the player) it can be turned on and off at will, and having a backup of the functional fork means you can simply delete it at the end of the day and have another one ready to use (so you can use the ghostrider module to get a +10 bonus in most skills thanks to teamwork). Is this correct, or just an exploit of the rules?
Mon, 2011-07-25 09:37
#13
Re: Some doubts about the game
Spaceships are setting, not equipment. They have a spaceship because you, the GM, want them to have one. If you want to go this way, I recommend looking at a Firefly-style setup. It's big, it's hugely expensive, it's a liability as often as an advantage, and it's a major plot driver. But do try to think transhuman about this. Most people and valuables don't require spaceships any more. Spaceships are basically for exploration, hauling raw materials and Jovians, combat, and 'as setting (such as cruise ships)'. They are basically tiny, mobile habitats. That can be an awesome setup, but recognize their nature and the significant plot costs that come with it.
If they are just looking for a 'home base' to egocast from, that's different (and a spaceship might still work, but more from the 'tiny black habitat' standpoint).
2. Nanofabrication... I was wondering if there would be a table somewhere that correlated size, mass and complexity to the different capacities of the cornucopias [/quote]
I am not aware of any such table. Why don't you write one up and submit it to the Eye for the rest of us : )
You got about the right of it. Equipment is meaningless. Data is everything. Converting morphs into cash (data) is the right idea. However, as a GM, you should feel free to mess with their cash accounts. The undependability of the cash system is a staple of the setting. One day they wake up and, unexpectedly, they're billionaires, because of how the market has shifted. They live it up. The next day the currency markets explode and they're basically penniless, with vendors clamoring to give their money back and get payment in the new currency.
EP is made to run quickly, so I just eyeball crits, generally giving a +10 rather than worrying about AP vs. damage (or skipping the defender's opportunity to dodge). But that's just my table :) Similarly, I don't normally bother measuring the MoS to apply extra damage, just because it slows down the rolls, but makes combat so much more deadly.
Debatable. I would rule no, because of how easily abused it is. Other GMs rule yes.
I'm not looking at the book, but my count is 1 speed by default, +1 for multi-tasking, +1 for ghostrider. I would not permit both egos to use the multitasking implant any more than I'd let them both use the same gun simultaneously.
The hacking rules are rather vague, however I could see this being a viable tactic. After all, the system is guarded by actual egos. If there are three defending egos and eight attackers, those three defenders can only focus on one at a time. Of course, they can still perform server-wide actions, such as shutting off all access, but if your goal is denial of service, that's still a win. As a GM, you're going to have to play this reasonably (as you will with all hacking attempts) as the rules are so weak.
That's because it would be like turning off your hearing and ability to read. Sure, you can still navigate the world, but ... you won't be particularly useful, and now you have to worry about basic dangers you didn't before. I do expect that many systems are isolated, but those systems are specialized. People need data. I'd rule if you're shutting yourself off from your reference documents, from your extended senses, from your tacnet, you're now going to suffer a penalty (probably -10 or -20) to all actions until you fix that.
Upgrades are purchased.
Because while your hacker is doing that, the rest of the world is doing the same thing, except with AGIs with 99 in all relevant skills. Your hacker-muse finds a new vulnerability in BlackOS after a month? BlackOS has been scanning their own software with a dozen hacker-muses over that month and has had time to patch it, and twelve other holes.
The books don't list it, but my assumption is that as equipment becomes out of date, it falls below the 'average' (+0) and so accrues penalties. This is doubly true with network penetration tools.
Mon, 2011-07-25 13:22
#14
Re: Some doubts about the game
Which, not surprisingly, matches the four month figure I gave you for present-day 'best tech, thrusting all the way'. The point being that it isn't 'a few days'. It's weeks if you've got fuel and resources to burn (and that, IMHO, is a corporate courier or Comet Express when you've paid through the nose, money is no object, and you can just burn-burn-burn-flip-burn-burn-burn) otherwise, it's months. And that's assuming you are flying around in the Inner System. In the Outer System distances get really big. The fastest spacecraft we have ever launched made it past Saturn in two years, four months. If we assume the 4:1 ratio holds (which it shouldn't, the way pork-chop plots work) that's still a 7-month trip for the fast courier. That same spacecraft (New Horizons) is expected to be in the vicinity of Pluto nine years after launch, so that'd be two years and five months for the fast courier with the imaginary, non-existent perfect trajectory.
Having fuel to burn is not the norm by any stretch of the imagination...Not with what antimatter goes for...And I really am hesitant to believe that a 'scum barge' can manage that kind of speed, but then EP is vague on what scum barges are. I play them as welded-together messes, small floating towns (to large floating towns and possibly even small cities) that have some ability to steer themselves in the long run to achieve a better orbit/move towards better resources. The chief difference, IMHO, between a scum barge and a habitat is that the scum barge can move itself. Carefully. Not maneuverable, not fast, and they don't have the unlimited fuel to feed a courier the way ComEx or Direct Action would.
Of course that is absolutely nothing more than my own interpretation. If you want your scum barges to be more like the spaceborn equivalent of a cruise ship gone to seed while still having the cruise ship's speed, hey, that's fine. They still aren't going to compete with a fast frigate.
The gist of all this was to make the case that egocasting is the norm for travel in EP unless you've got lots of money or lots of time, and as was pointed out, the real purpose of a ship becomes 'a somewhat mobile base and plot liability'. But it's still only 'somewhat mobile' in comparison to what Hollywood has convinced people to imagine when they hear 'spaceship'. You don't get to park it around Venus this week and Mars next week. It's a hole in space that can be relocated over a period of months or years. Not days or weeks.
Mon, 2011-07-25 17:52
#15
Re: Some doubts about the game
As CodeBreaker and I each said, Muse/AI skills max out at 40 (each), per skillsoft, and you do *not* add the Aptitude.
Mon, 2011-07-25 18:12
#16
Re: Some doubts about the game
Mmmm... I think you all misunderstood my reference to turn off the Wi-Fi. Unless you use a "dumb" terminal, going offline means no more updates, but what you already have is still there. So for example, if you download a virtual version of a place and correlate it to your visual input, you can run an accurate (yet possibly outdated) representation. If you also use short bursts of data at prearranged times, you can even keep tabs on what's happening without as much risk as it could, and without the need of quantum codification (that can be acquired by the enemy if they manage to capture a member of the team with enough mesh implants/ectos intact).
Regarding the use of muses for teamwork, I think I will allow the use of them in my game, mostly because having two players the would never get much use of the rule, and I will always have more NPC's to team.
Now about the hacking and actualization... well, if the company making the software can do that also, then hacking is, in essence, impossible: nowadays finding exploits is based on a simple statistical truth: there are more users than testers, meaning it's easier to the testers to miss some bugs, and to the users to step on them. If you run tons of forks to test the system, then you can effectively invert the situation (not to mention you only need one programmer and his forks to do all the work... like that pesky lawyer The Eye mentions XD), meaning exploiting bugs to gain a foothold into a system will be possible only in "poorer" habitats. However, ID falsification is still an option...
The great misunderstatement here must have come, however, because I was thinking in the Cyberpunk 2020 netrunning rules; in that system the hacker is more like a mage in D&D: there are several programs (antisystem, antiprogram, antiuser, utility, daemon...) of which you can carry a limited amount (determined by the amount of memory your terminal has), and impossible to copy (but you can program your own... with tons of time). However, in Eclipse Phase hacking is a much lighter proposition (in CP2020, you could run a game for a single player based only in netrunning... or let the rest of the group get bored while one of them took half an hour or so to open a door), and is also more modern (CP2020 system is quite centered on the 80's vision of hacking ^^).
Finally, my doubt regarding only a ghostriding module: again, is a morph limited to one ghostrider module? Can you use the module to load a fork of yourself to get teamwork bonus in certain tasks?
Mon, 2011-07-25 18:15
#17
Re: Some doubts about the game
Actually it does. Elite Exploits, page 247.
Encyclopaedic knowledge of the Core book, ho!
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Tue, 2011-07-26 10:39
#18
Re: Some doubts about the game
That isn't quite true.
Firstly, in EP, most stuff IS dumb terminals. Cloud storage is ubiquitous. Installing a hard disk or RAM upgrades on your cybereyes is like installing a UPS on your desktop computer. It's not a bad idea, but most people won't bother doing it, it costs extra, it takes up space, and it'll rarely get used.
Granted, sentinels and other adventurers regularly go into non-meshed environments, and of course your pacemaker won't depend on the mesh to operate, so this doesn't apply to everything, but it will apply to many things (and it works both ways). Why paint a warning sign on a wall, which I now have to unpaint later, when I can just put a mesh warning? If Jim wants to meet with you later, he's going to shoot you an email, not leave you a post-it.
So what happens when you chop off your mesh access? You lose access to research databases. You lose most of your files (maybe including your contact book). You lose tactical updates, including the position of your team mates. You lose access to real-time warnings and informationals. You lose the ability to chat conveniently and translate languages quickly (remember, radio is electronic data transfer and vulnerable to hacking). You lose the ability to share what you discover and your analysis of it quickly with your team mates. You lose anything other than the most direct connection with your tools (so no spy cameras, remote shooters, drones or conveniently sized, huge-output tools like handheld science scanners).
Sure, you can operate like that. But it's at a loss.
That's not true. Most bugs aren't found by random users. It's found by people with good math skills searching the code. Remember that computer code is basically one massive mathematical problem with almost an infinite number of end states. It's hugely complex. That's where hackers fit in, in taking the time to understand it and approach it laterally to force the equation to end states not desired or intended by the designer. The designer has the tougher job, of trying to predict every possible end state, while the hacker only has to think of one.
EP increases the power of the designer by an exponent, but the complexity of the code by two. The designers are still losing this race, however it's moving faster. (This is especially true if 'speed to market' becomes even more of a factor. Lots of software now is released before proper testing is completed, because testing takes time. I imagine this is more the case in EP. You release Windows 95 and, three months later, windows 95 rev 1, then rev 2, then windows 98. Each revision reduces, or at least changes the bugs in the software, so your hacks for 95 rev. 1 probably don't work for rev. 2. FUnny enough, that also means the hackers are in a race to be 'first to market'.)
I don't see any reason why not.
Wed, 2011-07-27 05:07
#19
Re: Some doubts about the game
Sorry, for what I understood an ecto or mesh implants, by default, have enough space to hold the whole 20th century Internet more than once, and have processing power to run a muse, AI or infomorph. That clearly doesn't go with the definition of dumb terminal, at least to me ^^. Another thing entirely is that the EP "internet" is so big relative to the nowadays internet that is like comparing a microbe with a white whale, being that the reason behind Gatecrashing groups carrying specialized libraries with them (something that gets me nervous, by the way... all of transhumanity's knowledge at hand of any hostile alien species that manage to get to the gatecrashers...).
About the exploit explanation you give... call me naïve, but if it was a simple matter of mathematical complexity, then in EP there would be no exploits whatsoever, because you could make an AI with all the comprehension needed to locate all the failures in the code in a few hours, and instead of fixing the ones a hacker would use to get in the system, you would put silent alarms there. Of course, it was me the one who mixed today's real life with EP, and I apologize for that :S.
Wed, 2011-07-27 07:08
#20
Re: Some doubts about the game
It isn't.
Hacking is a complex thing. You can't point at something and say "this is the cause!". It requires some lateral thinking and creative ideas, things limited AI don't have.
Remember that humanity still fears AI's ... you don't want one to know a lot of things about programming and hacking, less it find a way to unlock his potential and become an AGI.
And building an army of cloned AI testers to test a programs doesn't get you much far.
But as I said, you cannot point to something and blame it. I mean ... ok, so your program is purrrrfect, but the admin who installed it is a moron and left a lot of backdoors opened, he doesn't even configured the firewall. A shame.
Look at real life Sony PSP ... it got hacked in no time, they patched his firmware, someone hacked it again, they patched it again ... someone found a corrupt savegame of a particular game could let you hack it again, Sony patched it again, someone found loading a corrupted photo let you run arbitrary code, Sony patched again, a new game had more backdoors, patch, patch, patch ...
It's a lost race, someone will find a hole, someone will make a mistake, programs will get old and get replaced.
Corporations have been adamant on stopping piracy on our real life, they hadn't succeed ... to the point some legitimate users got offended and leaved his market share.
At the end you have to take a decision, invest millions in what seems a lost cause, or adapt and profit from the market (like, win95, win98, win2000, winME, winXP, WinVista, Win7, etc) and build "new and better programs for the hacker today!" ... like those light bulb manufacturers that downgraded bulbs life expectancy to sell more.
If you don't know what I mean, search for "programmed obsolescence".
Of course, someone, somewhere, will make a perfect defense system ... by the way, it could be a nice adventure.
Wed, 2011-07-27 08:45
#21
Re: Some doubts about the game
Even a thin client today has a pretty hefty internal memory and OS.
In 2000 we apparently had at most 54.5 exabytes of information as a species. Assuming a diamondoid nanostorage with 100 carbon atoms per bit, that would be about 0.9 grams. Of course, now we are already around 5 grams and the glasses are starting to get heavy...
The sheer complexity hidden inside these kinds of data sets and the software that handles them is staggering. It is no wonder there are exploits, since the code builds on previous code that builds on previous code that builds on... Rarely, an entirely new system is built from scratch and is much safer, but the cost tends to be high. So most software consists of giant accretions of more or less secure subsystems, with plenty of potential exploits.
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Wed, 2011-07-27 10:28
#22
Re: Some doubts about the game
Indeedy. Unfortunately, your PCs aren't operating in the 20th century. My PC can contain the entirety of the Internet of the 1980, and is a million times more powerful than the computing power of the entire Apollo space program. However, it still lags when running Mass Effect, and I certainly can't hold the entirety of Netflix or Google.
I was thinking on this today and I think it's more than even that. These people are fully integrated with this technology. For us as players, it's difficult to imagine the stress of disintegration because for us, that's the default. Most of us dont' walk around with constant, real-time access to wikipedia, twitter and facebook. So, for the purpose of role-playing, take a step back. Look at what we are integrated with, say manufacturing. Try to imagine your daily life without the benefits of manufacturing; if you could just turn manufactured goods 'off' for a day. No clothes. No car. No processed foods (which is probably 90% of what's in your pantry). No medicines. No Internet.
Shutting off the mesh is the same thing for these people. We can't imagine the difficulty of their 'roughing it' any more than an 1890s industrialist can imagine the struggle we'd have without our email for a day. How do people grow when they have a constant, always-on, intuitive and integrated internet experience? I can tell you what my kids do when I shut off the Internet for an hour; absolutely nothing. They're clueless without being able to google 'games'. Ask me to do something as simple as dig a hole without manufactured tools (something humans have been doing for millions of years). I'll throw sticks at the ground for a while then give up. We're just too integrated.
As a GM and as a player, it's your job to play this up. Losing mesh is extreme. It's uncomfortable. It's fraught with troubles. There's no real source of information on what to do. You struggle with stupid, little things. You're a slow dinosaur. It sucks.
You're saying you can make an AI that can explore an infinite number of states in a finite time? Or that can predict all future hardware platforms, uses and misconfigurations?
Wed, 2011-07-27 15:15
#23
Re: Some doubts about the game
On the subject of spaceships...
I would agree with one of the other posters, a ship should be treated more as a setting than equipment. I was considering running a campaign that would introduce players to the EP universe in a manner similar to how Earthdawn classically did. All the characters start as residents of a generational mining operation, essentially putting them in a situation that's a bit easier for a player to grasp quickly, but become refugees and flee on an old cargo vessel when the place gets overrun with rogue AI.
From that point it's going to be a long trip to any safe port, so they're going to have to egocast to figure out where to go, keeping in mind they're probably going to cross paths with the AI again, in various stages of infiltrating colonies.
Most of the maintenance on the ship would be hand-waved, as it's not the focus of the campaign. But it is, essentially, the only reliable backup they have of themselves, at least initially. So keeping the ship safe will be something that they have to be concerned about.
I'm thinking it will also be a way to ease players into the 'you are not the sheath' mindset of EP. For the brief part of the campaign which is set on the home colony, it'll be more common for people to use the same body, but once they start casting, it'll start shaking things up.
Wed, 2011-07-27 18:18
#24
Re: Some doubts about the game
Nezumi:
Leaving aside the people who were less fortunate but managed to get reinstantiated (and thus might be used to an "un-meshed" status, the cultural shock works both ways, or veteran gatecrashers), I never said "turn off the wifi without being ready". Personally, I would have instructed my muse to have offline copies of all the relevant data for navigation of the place I'm in up to some kilometers, and I think there is more than enough capacity for that. So for example, I can go inside a Scum Barge, download all the navigational data, and keep the data upgraded until the moment I "go dark". I doubt I'd need to check my email or the latest fashion when I'm in shooting against some exurgents, after all ^^. As for the comms with the rest of the team, signs do exist today, you can have pre-planned tactis, and you can predict where the other members of yout group should be for small amounts of time, etc..., and having the mesh backing you up (with a muse, to boot) would be very close to full online mesh access.
Also, it wouldn't be like walking and suddenly being unable to see, it would be like walking and closing your eyes voluntarily, which is much less trauma.
As for the AI, my point was that if a program was 100% mathematics, then it would be possible to make an AI (a limited AI, to boot) to check for errors. After all, the "kiss of death" back in the day was "20: GOTO 10", which could be purged with a simple order to an AI ("look for infinite loops", for example). I was trying to ilustrate that bugs cannot be predicted the way the other post seemed to indicate.
EMouse:
Well, I can make some "upkeep rolls" between sessions to determine if something real bad comes up and they have to help somehow. It's just that we've been playing some Warhammer 40k games (Dark Heresy, Deathwatch, Rogue Trader...) and the ships have a much more defined ruleset. Had I to "design" a ship for EP players working for Firewall, it would be a fast one (but not running on antimatter), with a hidden (and very stealthy) shuttle, plus another more standard designed to carry cargo between the ship and the surface/habitats, and some hidden capabilities, plus some mining equipment and cargo space (a freighter is easier to explain if you travel physically a lot in EP, I think). I envision tons of hacking rolls to falsify documents about the amount of cargo carried, anyway... or Firewall having some "phantom companies" set up in most of the major habs for providing cover to the agents.
The problem I see with that setup is the need for the players to be worth the effort/privilege of having their own ship, and while both have I-rep of 80 and started with 1200 CP (so they can be considered really veteran agents), I'm not sure if it would fit (to give them a ship and the cover, not all the extras I mentioned).
By the way, I ran into another doubt myself (and I'm ashamed because it was in my head when I wrote the first post of this thread, but I totally forgot XD). It's about using access jacks to brute-force hack into an AI-controlled synthmorph, or some other form of hacking the drone whithout spending 10 minutes or so dancing with the AI.
Thu, 2011-07-28 03:37
#25
Re: Some doubts about the game
Turing proved in 1936 that there is no algorithm that can always solve the halting problem (determining whether a given program will eventually stop or loop forever). Finding "20 GOTO 10" is easy, and a specific finder for this kind of loop can be written, but whether "10 if X is even, X=X/2, else X=3*X+1; 20 if X>1 goto 10" ever stops (the Collatz conjecture) is amazingly hard to determine. For true mind-boggling messiness, consider an AI trying to debug its own code (incidentally, this is why Seed AGIs do not have an easy job).
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Thu, 2011-07-28 05:08
#26
Re: Some doubts about the game
Hi! I quite often read this forum, but never really reply to a post, but this is quite interesting, so here's my input:
Turn off the Wi-Fi:
I think it is possible, and also an effective measure against hacking. As a GM I'd bring in some disadvantages. First I'd call for an interfacing check, perhaps with -10 or even more, for the act of downloading the desired mesh info into offline cache. This is necessary, because most mesh devices simply aren't made for downloading stuff, that isn't meant to be downloaded. Imagine, if today someone wanted to download this whole EP Forum, with all subforums and threads. Not impossible, but you need some skill. (I personally have no idea, how I could do that) Imagine the same on a "google chromebook", which I never tried, but it is made for online activity even more.
Another problem with turning off the WiFi would be places, where temporary, but very important information is sent via mesh. Like traffic lights today. I must admit, I can't come up with a real good scenario in EP, where some vital, short-term info would be sent via mesh, but perhaps large zero-G habitats could be an example: If you want to jump from one point to another, the info that you might crash into something bigger and less maneuverable than you, might be sent out via mesh. So if you're offline, you basically know, that there is a place where a lot of stuff is floating around and that it's dangerous to fly through it blindly, but can't do more, you have to go online, if you want to be safe.
If there are points in a habitat, where such mesh use is almost unavoidable, someone who wants to hack you, could lure you to such a pont, wait for the moment, where you go online, even if only for a second, and start hacking you.
There is also a possible social aspect, but this depends on the character. Someone, who usually doesn't go offline often, may catch the attention of their online friends. Hundreds of messages like "Dude, wtf, where have you been?" and "I should have known... dishonest guys like you always sneak away after the first date.. it's over..." might follow. Of course, if someone is known as a hacker type of person, who is always "in some business", their friends might understand, if they're offline again. But not only their friends, someone who wants to hack them might also know exactly, that that person tends to "disappear" sometimes. It makes things harder, but hey, if you can't find someone, go get his girlfriend.. if he doesn't have one, go find his best friend.. or his boss.. his most valuable business partner.. ...
Another disadvantage of being offline is the fact, that you are not available. Imagine, today you go to the mall and want to buy some clothes. You go to some shop, but it's empty, you can't find anyone. You say "Hello?" a few times, but then just think "screw it, I'll just go to the next shop". The same might happen in EP, if you make some credits/rep with a profession, this might hinder you. Even if not, you may get trouble in your reputation network: "Man, you really could have helped me yesterday, don't get lost again!". Even if you give some explanation, why you're not there, on the long run others will avoid you, if you're constantly not available. You lose rep. And then there are those HUGE favors, you owe someone, and they get really pissed off, if they can't find you in the very moment they need you. And.. well, you really want to piss off some quick-tempered crimeboss with a g-rep of.. say, 90?
So I'd say: If you want to go offline, fine, do it, enjoy some short-term benefits, but don't complain later.
Darvon
Thu, 2011-07-28 10:01
#27
Re: Some doubts about the game
Well, the problem with seed AGIs is that they use time to improve, which allows them to improve even further... In fact, I'd say that a true Seed AGI would need an endless loop that keeps triggering her "desire" to improve more...
Darvon:
Of course, going offline for looooong periods of time can have social consequences. However, I don't think it's as hard as you paint it, because:
Distance: no matter the rep, it is always possible to be "out of direct reach" thanks to egocasting, specially if we talk about player characters (who tend to be nomadic). I think it's not like having a store, but a mobile phone, and if I really want someone to do me a favour, and the phone is off, I'll leave a message or a text ^^.
Occupation: as far as I know, only the f-rep addicts have all their lives online 24/7. Remember that, with the banishing of the physical realm as an absolute, the data about someone is what determinates privacy. Not to mention it's not uncommon to stay isolated for even weeks if one is working in a demanding project.
Human behavious: let's be realistic here, no one is all the time checking the status of all the people in his/her friendlist. When they talk next, his/her muse might provide the information that the player "went dark" for a while, and some educated comments might be all that's said.
As for the hacking part, the problem is that, if I understood the rules ok, it takes minutes at the least to hack anything (specially if you wanna try it without being detected), which is the reason behind my previous question about hacking with a physical connection. I'm mostly trying to decide if something like what we can see in Ghost in the Shell (the mangas, the latest movies and the two TV series) is possible inside the EP frame.
Thu, 2011-07-28 12:57
#28
Re: Some doubts about the game
Indeed, and that's what it really comes down to. I like my manufacturing example before. People DO step away from manufactured goods. It's called camping :) However, camping when you're ill-prepared sucks, camping in the middle of a city is dangerous, and camping for long periods, well, also sucks.
If you have time to prepare for camping, and you're only doing it for a short time, well, sometimes it's fun for some people (sometimes it's fun for no people). Even then, it's rarely fun for most people, but it can be done safely and relatively easily. But that assumes a short period and preparation.
I do like the idea of an interface roll.
Fri, 2011-07-29 13:44
#29
Re: Some doubts about the game
I think the gist of the "wi-fi" issue is that it certainly is doable, and is done, but can cause complications in the world of Eclipse Phase that are not readily apparent from our early 21st Century perspective.
The problems doing so might cause may well overwhelm the benefits.
Consider also that while shutting off connections might indeed make one harder to detect in an enemy controlled environment, it might actually have the opposite effect. The enemy's sensors are now picking up a non radiating, self moving mass operating in its scan area. That looks dang suspicious. Instead, the true stealther is duping the system, forcing it to see the intruder as just another maintenance bot or whatever.
Also, what happens when things go bad (and they *always* go bad, don't they?) and the disconnected team finds itself confronted with a fully wired, tac net connected security team? You're going to need to fight fire with fire on this one, not just curl up and hope they can't see you cause your radio's off.
Of course when it's all said and done it's your game to run, and you've got to run it the way that makes sense to you and your group. But I hope that all these responses have given you the ammunition to put together a great game.
Fri, 2011-07-29 18:48
#30
Re: Some doubts about the game
Psst. PSST. Page 258 Core, Wireless termination. Shutting down your connections is a trivial task, just takes a complex action. If it can be done automatically when an intrusion is detected, it can be done manually with just as much ease.
And downloading important portions of the Mesh for offline use would probably be a Research roll, not Interfacing. The act of downloading is easy (as long as it isn't DRM'd), it's finding it that's difficult.
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Sun, 2011-07-31 15:56
#31
Re: Some doubts about the game
Mandella, if the sensors can pick something moving, then the AI connected to them will run some recognition software to check if it's a threat (Perception test with the appropiate modifiers for both sides' equipment), the radio being irrelevant in that case XD.
As for the group going in without it... Well, they can go in "radio silence", which is, as we watched in countless films, to be in the same frequency just listening until one of the comrades emits. I doubt you would be checking your youtube account in a "hot zone" after all... XDDD
That being said, I was thinking a lot more in regard of a single individual going in, or a group defending the target. And the defending group can use cables in strategic positions to keep themselves in contact, meaning for example that the only way to hack them would be through a Basilisk hack...
And yes, I'm aware about pg 258 of the core book, but it only says it related to wireless hacking and nothing else, so my doubts were more in the line of "how to hack using brute force before you are dumped out". So a hacking character (or an infomorph) can do something in a fight...