Hi all, in our last game session I perceived a small issue with VR time acceleration (VRTA), it devaluates time. Several times, some players or NPC engaged in hours of activity paying only a few minutes in Real Time.
I like the idea of time acceleration, but perhaps it needs some kind of control or limitation, perhaps increasing the hardware requisites for VRTA. If you have a server hosting a VR, it can run at 1x time. If you add a 2nd server, you can use x2 VRTA and so on up to a max of 60 servers for x60 time acceleration.
Could it be useful? Or is just a money sink for players?
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VR Time acceleration limits
Wed, 2011-09-07 04:53
#1
Masa
VR Time acceleration limits
Wed, 2011-09-07 06:01
#2
Arenamontanus
Re: VR Time acceleration limits
What is wrong with that?
Good telecommunications devalues space.
I think there should be a bit more nuance in simspace acceleration, so paying more for faster thinking makes complete sense. Not sure a server would just speed things up like that, though. If an ecto can run an upload at normal speed, a server that can run several uploads would likely multiply speed several times. Adding extra servers would likely speed things up. But there are also upper limits due to limited mental parallelism and communications lag; beyond a few servers the benefits would peter out. Then you would have to go for faster (and illegal) hardware: http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/Overclockers.pdf
There is of course the whole issue of whether you can speed up interfaced biomorphs in the first place (you cannot make biobrains process 60x sensory input and output); my house rule is that you must actually upload into the system to enjoy full acceleration. Most users put their bodies in a temporary coma state and send in a fork from the stack that is then merged back when they disengage.
I also like everything that acts as a temptation for making dangerous mainframes. It is such an advantage to buy extra servers, so why not? Our competitors must not solve the problem before us, so let's speed up even more. Oops, some malware unfolded into a seed AGI...
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Wed, 2011-09-07 09:44
#3
Covariant
Re: VR Time acceleration limits
That's sort of the point. It also dramatically increases the value of winning initiative. If the person who goes first drops into x60, or tells their computer resources to do so if they are in a morph, they get 60 actions before 2nd pass happens. This can be used to fully analyze the tacnet, launch infosec attacks, or whatever evil thing they can think of. If you really want to keep your players from abusing it though, just ask them to calculate the Fourier transform of their sped up actions to map them back to realtime. Most people balk at adding that level of math to their game.
Wed, 2011-09-07 10:46
#4
Arenamontanus
Re: VR Time acceleration limits
We have solved orbits on whiteboards, done searches in genetics databases, quarrelled over quaternary geology, but I must admit that even my best players balk at Fourier transforms. At least during combat. :-)
Generally, I think the acceleration of infolife is an important part of the setting. It is just that it should not overpower everything. So I do not give 60 actions to infomorphs in fighting (they have a nice SPD already and can fork anyway). I do not assume characters can speed up engineering projects to a few minutes (the time mentioned in the core book is *with* speed-ups and AI support).
But I do think it might be interesting to have a system for different speeds. Maybe something like this, based on the system "power"/price of the system that runs you:
Trivial: x0.1
Low: x1
Moderate: x10
High: x60
Expensive: x100 (perhaps; beyond this things really level out unless you have ultra-illegal hot cores)
This is based on the idea that an ecto or ghostrider can run an ego; cyberbrains could in principle be built to run them faster than realtime but have limitations due to the tight connection to the body, so most commercial ones do no. The simspace accelerations mentioned in the book are due to running on the distributed mesh nodes around a person, likely involving renting some server capacity.
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Wed, 2011-09-07 11:43
#5
Covariant
Re: VR Time acceleration limits
I've assumed that a simspace takes more room and processing power than an ecto/ghostrider/cyberbrain can run, at least not without melting the cpu in the attempt (maybe a SOM/LUC roll or something?). I really like the idea of an infomorph player trying to spool up in combat on Extropia and having to spend half of that time negotiating for and buying time on the local mesh space.
"Look, this is sort of a life-or-death situation. I need a higher priority on the thread queue for devices 0x99E4 through 0xAA00!"
"Look yerself, everyone has a life-or-death situation, or their little children will starve to death, or their grandmother will destabilize. This is business, and my price point isn't budging. Plus the other guy paid twice as much as your cheap ass is offering."
Wed, 2011-09-07 19:06
#6
Unity
Re: VR Time acceleration limits
Arenamontanus: I assume that by 'can't speed up engineering projects' you mean the actual construction phase, not the design phase.
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Thu, 2011-09-08 05:04
#7
Arenamontanus
Re: VR Time acceleration limits
No, I mean the design phase. Because why would *anybody* do it the slow way?
Consider the usual time to engineer something today (a phone, a graphics program) - we are talking months to years for professional projects involving many engineers. For banging something together in a workshop, a typical time is still a week unless it is something very simple. In EP, there is forking, simspace acceleration, helper AI and rapid prototyping (but also more complex technology). That is why most in-game engineering can be done in a day by single people. We are already talking about a technological productivity that is very far ahead of our current levels.
Speed this up another order of magnitude and you need to explain why people are not setting off singularities left and right.
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Thu, 2011-09-08 13:26
#8
Unity
Re: VR Time acceleration limits
That's the sort of thing you figure the books would make explicitly clear ...
But then, I might be getting overly optimistic again.
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Thu, 2011-09-08 14:22
#9
JMobius
Re: VR Time acceleration limits
I had a player who would create blueprints for advanced items in a matter of hours, using time acceleration. This got kind of problematic, so I ended up discussing it on here somewhere.
The conclusion that we came to was that the blueprint design time [i]includes[/i] simulspace acceleration where applicable, as under normal circumstances there's no reason not to use it. This also explains why the blueprint design timeframe on more sophisticated items is so ludicrously low.
Sat, 2011-09-10 15:51
#10
Masa
Re: VR Time acceleration limits
After a long time meditating about this topic under a waterfall and in communion with mother nature, an idea came to me. VR Aceleration is not an issue at all.
Lets supose that the human brain can think at 60x in an accelerated server, perhaps it need some class of nutritive supplement, but we can do it. A guy enters the accelerated server, and after 10 minutes (10 hours for him), he exits the server. And he is tired, really tired after 10 hours of hard mental work. He will need to rest, think in other things and sleep before he can do it again.
VR Acceleration gives you a burst in fast thinking. But only improves slightly the gross increase in effective "thinking time".
And of course, VR Acceleration has some annoying side effects. Imagine that you´re playing WoW (War of Wizards) with your friends, are in front of a boss and a guy needs a fast break. And he comes back, 3 game hours later.
Fri, 2011-09-16 22:22
#11
Quincey Forder
Re: VR Time acceleration limits
If you guys want a great example of VR time, with hacking setup and all, I recommend you the Irish movie GHOST MACHINE
even got some kind of basilisk hack
small cast but freakingly cool
[img]http://www.cinemotions.com/data/films/0881/71/1/h200/affiche-Ghost-Machi...
most people didn't like it, but for us, it's a very neat source of inspiration
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