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Time Acceleration

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Fri, 2011-08-12 01:54

Prime Mover Prime Mover's picture

Time Acceleration

Can a VR Time Acceleration be used too get around integration times with new morphs? This would require a detailed VR of the morph in question of course.

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"The difference between truth and fiction, people expect fiction to make sense."

Fri, 2011-08-12 03:00

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Time Acceleration

Prime Mover wrote:
Can a VR Time Acceleration be used too get around integration times with new morphs? This would require a detailed VR of the morph in question of course.

It better be a very good simulation, otherwise you will have to learn how to integrate the VR morph and then the real morph anyway. I think this won't be worthwhile for most morphs, but I can imagine that for learning how to actually work in a swarmanoid or something equally different from your normal body model extra training is a good idea. Maybe VR training could be used for a bonus to the integration roll?

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Fri, 2011-08-12 05:53

Masa

Re: Time Acceleration

I see this issue more like a service for premium users than a trick to avoid Integration malus. Perhaps some body banks offer a personalized simulation for that exact body. In which a medical team analyzes every cell, realises some test in the body and build a virtual representation of the morpho. Then they advertise "Buy/Rent one of our Premium bodies and get our No more Integration Sickness service!".

Fri, 2011-08-12 07:26

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Time Acceleration

I can imagine a lot of nice services for premium egocast and resleeving customers. A bit of psychotherapy to get you over the resleeving or continuity trauma? Printing of your favourite clothing and equipment? A brief neural screening to make sure you did not pick up anything nasty on the Carnival of the Goat when you were there for 'business'?

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Fri, 2011-08-12 18:51

Xagroth

Re: Time Acceleration

Frankly, I see that as something already included in the service. After looking at all the theory (and VR is theory, in the end), you need to work things like muscle memory, for example. After all, if you are an aikido master in the body recently used by a kapoeira master, you might have some problems in certain areas... but if you are a Gensei-Ryu schooled karate master and sleeve into the body a master in Shotokan Karate recently was in, you can expect a lot of weird behaviour because the same thing is executed in different ways from one style to another... I see the integration time as a need to "get used to the body" and "the body's drivers are being tuned to the ego", so there is a seamlessly fusion. Of course, with synthmorphs this shouldn't be an issue...

Sun, 2011-08-14 15:18

Dry Observer Dry Observer's picture

Re: Time Acceleration

I don't remember if there's any normal acclimation time for infomorphs, but if there were -- or if there were sufficiently exotic designs or computronium substrates that would require it -- I would definitely allow it. Probably not for any of the other morphs, even synthmorphs, since I think it's more a matter of dealing with how your body works "in the real world" and getting a feel for it. Still, with a really high quality simulation, I'd probably let players cut their initial acclimation time -- the first tenth or twentieth when they're really learning the absolute basics -- by whatever the multiplier happened to be. After that, though, you'd really want to be "in reality." Edit: Even reducing that early period would probably be limited to Synths, which should have more programs, subroutines, senses and simple movements which can be effectively simulated in virtual reality as you're "just getting the basics." After that, though, I'd probably require a real-world presence unless you were in a really ultra-advanced simulation -- TITAN or Promethean level.

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Sat, 2011-08-13 16:10

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: Time Acceleration

Xagroth wrote:
I see the integration time as a need to "get used to the body" and "the body's drivers are being tuned to the ego", so there is a seamlessly fusion. Of course, with synthmorphs this shouldn't be an issue...

Why wouldn't it be an issue? Your body image still doesn't match your current body. If anything, it is even more alien, which is why you get a -10 modifier when sleeving into a Synth. You have to get used to things like your gait being changed, being slightly taller or shorter, your nerves being more or less conductive. Little things like movement sensitivity getting screwed up, applying the same amount of mental 'oomph' to an action results in a slightly different result than it normally would.

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Sun, 2011-08-14 08:59

Xagroth

Re: Time Acceleration

CodeBreaker wrote:
Xagroth wrote:
I see the integration time as a need to "get used to the body" and "the body's drivers are being tuned to the ego", so there is a seamlessly fusion. Of course, with synthmorphs this shouldn't be an issue...
Why wouldn't it be an issue? Your body image still doesn't match your current body. If anything, it is even more alien, which is why you get a -10 modifier when sleeving into a Synth. You have to get used to things like your gait being changed, being slightly taller or shorter, your nerves being more or less conductive. Little things like movement sensitivity getting screwed up, applying the same amount of mental 'oomph' to an action results in a slightly different result than it normally would.

My bad, I tend to think a lot more than I end up writing >< My idea is that, for example, once you have sleeved in a steel morph, you can get accustomed to all, because theoretically all morphs of the same type use the exact same blueprints and are built exactly the same (biomorphs "grow").

Sun, 2011-08-14 15:07

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: Time Acceleration

Oh right, yeah. The game does attempt to model that though. You get a +10 modifier if you have been sleeved into that morph class before, and a +30 modifier if you have been sleeved extensively in the exact morph. Its important to note that there is probably not a single 'type' of each Synthmorph. Each will be branded by the company that made them, and even with nanofab and standardization, there will be some variance between each brand. So while you might be extremely familiar (+30) with a Cognobot brand Case morph, you have no experience (+0) with the SonyTech variant.

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Sun, 2011-08-14 20:55

#10

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

Re: Time Acceleration

No. Game balance. It's simply an axiom of the design that accelerated time in VR can't be used to cheat certain limitations on PC capabilities. Integrating to a new morph is one such limitation. You can play with these limitations in your game, of course, but our responsibility as designers was to give you guys a system that wasn't easily broken. And if you skim some of the ideas people have come up with for abuse of body hopping on these forums, you'll see that giving PCs too easy a time with Alienation and Integration is generally not a good plan. When I'm running the game, I'll often bend these rules for story reasons. For example, if I'm throwing PCs into a scenario that requires they resleeve, and they have no choice in the matter, I'll throw them a gimme on acclimating to their mission morphs. If they initiate some crazy plan involving resleeving, though, they always pay full price. :)

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Mon, 2011-08-15 04:11

#11

Xagroth

Re: Time Acceleration

jackgraham wrote:
No. Game balance. When I'm running the game, I'll often bend these rules for story reasons. For example, if I'm throwing PCs into a scenario that requires they resleeve, and they have no choice in the matter, I'll throw them a gimme on acclimating to their mission morphs. If they initiate some crazy plan involving resleeving, though, they always pay full price. :)

Not to mention that the penalties can have a good impact in the history. Are the players taking their time to best use their morphs, or do they rush inmediately to the mission point? Do they have the time? Do they know it? Do they want to take the risk? If that is not relevant, you can always say that they spent two or three days in R&R and getting used to the bodies.

Mon, 2011-08-15 13:41

#12

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: Time Acceleration

Arenamontanus wrote:
I can imagine a lot of nice services for premium egocast and resleeving customers. A bit of psychotherapy to get you over the resleeving or continuity trauma? Printing of your favourite clothing and equipment? A brief neural screening to make sure you did not pick up anything nasty on the Carnival of the Goat when you were there for 'business'?

This has actually come up in a game of mine, and it's something I've enjoyed toying with. In a Gatecrashing campaign, one of the characters is the son of one of the system's oligarchs (who is a loving, albeit often neglectful, parent, whose entire directive to her son's life was along the lines of "Go be awesome... Or something.") and another is their lover. The wealthy son has never had a problem paying out on Mommy and Daddy's credit line to buy their lover a new morph. Of all the services offered, the most useful ones were having new tailored clothing and weaponry made for the morph you bought, as well as providing "adjustment facilities". These include all the features necessary to allow you to test out your new morph to its capacities and to get used to how it moves and feels. This includes things like large mirrors to let you get used to how you look, obstacle courses to help you move, and stranger things if your new body has any particularly unusual augmentations (such as climbing walls for grip pads, or... Other facilities if, say, you just sleeved into a Pleasure Pod). Of course, my personal favourite was having an employee in a lab coat shoot the scaled Remade with a pistol to let him test the strength of his scales. Nothing like describing a bookish man putting on a lab coat, carefully placing on a pair of gloves, and then picking up a pistol and shooting the player in the gut.

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