Erenthia wrote:

I just don't understand the lack of granularity in the technology as it's presented. it's just not the direction technology usually goes. Nvidia has a "personal super computer" that they market to smaller companies (or divisions of large companies) so why would there be this stark divide between technology players have access to, and technology FAR beyond what they can hope to have access to with nothing in between? Not only is it unrealistic, but I don't even understand what the point is.

Nvidia's supercomputer is still nothing like top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art, this-is-what-NSA-uses. The degree to which people own personal transport in the U.S. is [i]not[/i] the world norm, and owning a spaceship in this context is more like owning a bulk carrier than a Hobie cat. And for that matter, how many people do you know who own a Hobie cat? How many civilians own aircraft? How many civilians own [i]jet[/i] aircraft? So I'm sorry, but in the case of extremely expensive transportation systems that require tremendous technical investment to manufacture and maintain, EP does reflect reality. Not everyone needs or can afford the investment in maintaining and operating an automobile. Far fewer people need or can afford the investment in maintaining and operating an aircraft...And only a tiny percentage of those can swing a jet, with its much higher maintenance, licensing and operating costs. Consider that a spaceship (and we don't mean in this context a surface-to-orbit hopper, but an interplanetary vehicle) is making voyages of longer duration than a bulk carrier does today. It's a lot closer to the aforementioned nuclear submarine in terms of its operating costs and technological investment. If you want to run your game on a ship that the players are responsible for, cool. But arguing that the EP equivalent of Joe Sixpack should be able to whip out the EP equivalent of Pop. Mechanics and go into the EP equivalent of his backyard workshop and build a starship...That somewhat goes against the established ideas of scarcity in the system as described (and there IS scarcity in the system, or we wouldn't have indentures and clankers).

Re-Laborat wrote:

Nvidia's supercomputer is still nothing like top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art, this-is-what-NSA-uses.

That my point. If we consider a supercomputer on the scale the NSA uses (or walmart for that matter) we could compare them to a massive server that could handle most if not all of the functions in an entire Habitat. An Nvidia super computer would probably only be able to generate a simulspace for a handful of people.

Re-Laborat wrote:

The degree to which people own personal transport in the U.S. is [i]not[/i] the world norm, and owning a spaceship in this context is more like owning a bulk carrier than a Hobie cat. And for that matter, how many people do you know who own a Hobie cat? How many civilians own aircraft? How many civilians own [i]jet[/i] aircraft?

To answer your first question, I didn't even know what a Hobie cat was and had to go to google. As for the rest, that is also part of my point. The Rockey Buggy exists in the setting and then NOTHING until we get up to the equivalent of naval destroyers. What's the rational in having that giant gap? [/quote]

Re-Laborat wrote:

So I'm sorry, but in the case of extremely expensive transportation systems that require tremendous technical investment to manufacture and maintain, EP does reflect reality. Not everyone needs or can afford the investment in maintaining and operating an automobile. Far fewer people need or can afford the investment in maintaining and operating an aircraft...And only a tiny percentage of those can swing a jet, with its much higher maintenance, licensing and operating costs.

Well I suppose this may be partially an answer to my previous question. Less demand. But my point was never that some highschool nerd could build a naval destroyer, but that a highly trained and educated IT expert could do better than off the shelf components (How many PC enthusiasts do you know that buy a Dell instead of building their own machine?)

Re-Laborat wrote:

Consider that a spaceship (and we don't mean in this context a surface-to-orbit hopper, but an interplanetary vehicle) is making voyages of longer duration than a bulk carrier does today. It's a lot closer to the aforementioned nuclear submarine in terms of its operating costs and technological investment. If you want to run your game on a ship that the players are responsible for, cool. But arguing that the EP equivalent of Joe Sixpack should be able to whip out the EP equivalent of Pop. Mechanics and go into the EP equivalent of his backyard workshop and build a starship...That somewhat goes against the established ideas of scarcity in the system as described (and there IS scarcity in the system, or we wouldn't have indentures and clankers).

Joe six pack is not, and never should be a player character. As far as the established scarcity, I haven't found a reason for it yet, except possiby hypercorp market manipulation. The players here are heros. They go above and beyond what the average person is capable of. They aren't posthuman in their capacities, but they are [i]transhuman[/i] which is to say, on their way to posthuman. I suppose singe the lengths of the voyages associated with interplanetary travel are more akin to the 1500s settling of the new world it would appear that any trip from point A to point B would require a similar economic investment, but the native americans got there on much less.

Erenthia wrote:

Well I suppose this may be partially an answer to my previous question. Less demand. But my point was never that some highschool nerd could build a naval destroyer, but that a highly trained and educated IT expert could do better than off the shelf components (How many PC enthusiasts do you know that buy a Dell instead of building their own machine?)

I did sort of swerve around your point, I admit. I'm not only addressing you, of course. This is kind of an ongoing dialog with a bunch of people. With EP-era tech, a good engineer can take any kind of pressure vessel, any kind of pressurizable hulk, and a good source of hydrocarbons and create a 'spacecraft', but it won't be the kind of thing folks used to the 'riverboat/tramp freighter in space' space-opera mean when they say 'a spaceship'. There's an example of this taken to extremes in [i]Schismatrix[/i], a spacecraft called the 'Red Consensus' which is basically an air scrubber with a bunch of pressure modules and a drive attached to it, with a parasite rocket for adjusting attitude. The EQ equivalent of Burt Rutan (Google him, too, if you aren't familiar...More fun than Hobie cats! But I bet you've seen or heard of his work...) can surely do FAR better.

Erenthia wrote:

Joe six pack is not, and never should be a player character. As far as the established scarcity, I haven't found a reason for it yet, except possiby hypercorp market manipulation. The players here are heros. They go above and beyond what the average person is capable of. They aren't posthuman in their capacities, but they are [i]transhuman[/i] which is to say, on their way to posthuman.

You have reduced my beer-swilling, cigar-chomping neo-Gorilla companion to tears, sir. [i]TO TEARS.[/i] But he has a heart of gold, so I will maintain that he is a hero nonetheless. I would venture to suggest that much of the 'scarcity' in the Inner System is entirely a product of Hypercorps determination. In short, they own everything, and can control how much of it is brought to the market and by who. A huge heap of indentures fighting virtual tooth-and-nail for the chance to sleeve into a battered tin can with hands and grind away a half-decade or so enriching their employer to 'buy out' their indenture, and then another half-decade or so to get themselves a nice, pretty biomorph definitely serves the purposes of the corporate entities involved. Funny how in the Outer System, with resources so much more scattered and transit times between them so much larger (which theoretically would make shipping bulk resources to a destination more expensive...It really doesn't, but in theory it sounds good) it's much easier to get a decent sleeve. Oh, there's still debt attached to it, but favors and debts of honor produce a very different sort of society and 'citizen' than indentured servitude and wage slavery.

Erenthia wrote:

I suppose singe the lengths of the voyages associated with interplanetary travel are more akin to the 1500s settling of the new world it would appear that any trip from point A to point B would require a similar economic investment, but the native americans got there on much less.

The closest thing EP seems to have to the Bering land bridge would be the Gates, and I'm not sure they are a good equivalent.

Erenthia wrote:

Yeah, and I can appreciate your position. Having people coming in from other settings not grasping just [i]how[/i] hard the SF is in this setting. (I'll forgive the psionics since they're subtle and based off an omni-vector super virus designed by a cosmically intelligent being) I guess now that I've thought about it, I can answer my own question. The reason there's a huge divide between player stuff and setting stuff is because the setting is SO DAMN BIG. 400 pages in the core rule book and it's mostly a compilation of short summaries. So I'm thinking about writing my own supplement, solely dedicated to gear. It's predicated around an abstract system of "units" Matter Units, Processing Units, Energy Units, etc. 500 MU (matter units) could equally describe a very large amount of easily squired material or a much smaller amount of more exotic material. Reactors would produce EU/hour or per day. I would then have to go on to describe how much these units typically cost in credits/favors. I know it's a bit more specific than the core rules tend to be, but in this case I think it's warranted and would help prevent headaches before they start.

This sounds awesome and I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd look forward to seeing such a thing. And, you know, there IS a sort of modern myth about the Joe Sixpack who comes through. The guy who's sober and makes the right choice at the necessary time. The hero who didn't mean to be. The ordinary guy thrown into the extraordinary situation. Roleplaying games give us a lot of options. I think the more we play them, the more we drift away from the classic tropes: the stalwart fighter, the cunning barbarian, the wise and inscrutable mage, the benevolent and righteous holy man. There IS room for heroism among the little people. If there wasn't, these fantasies wouldn't exist. I like the fact that while EP heavily biases itself in its starting scenarios towards Firewall, one can still tell some pretty amazing stories about people who are 'just people' in the world of EP. In order to have satisfactory character growth, it's helpful to have characters who have [i]room[/i] to grow. And, of course, even an [i]average[/i] transhuman is still a transhuman!

Erenthia wrote:

This is something I struggle with. I want to be explicit here: it's a failing of mine. Not that I think the heroic concepts that I lean towards are inferior, but it's a blind spot I have. I tend to identify more strongly with heroes like The Doctor (of Doctor Who) who are actually a complete inversion of the unlikely hero you've described (in strengths and weaknesses). Mostly the concept just feels very alien to me, but that doesn't mean it's not compelling. As I said, it's a blind spot.

I'll note that simply by owning and having interest in a game like Eclipse Phase, you somewhat indicate the likelihood that you're fairly well-removed from blue-collar heartland American value norms, and I mean no offense by that. :) Today, the big social folk heroes tend to be sports figures, but you'll notice trends in some action movies where 'ordinary blue collar guy' becomes the hero.

Erenthia][quote wrote:

I'll note that simply by owning and having interest in a game like Eclipse Phase, you somewhat indicate the likelihood that you're fairly well-removed from blue-collar heartland American value

Not at all. I'm a conservative American and strongly opposed to genetic engineering, yet I play Eclipse Phase. Granted, I usually play Jovians, but still.

Gerrard wrote:

Not at all. I'm a conservative American and strongly opposed to genetic engineering, yet I play Eclipse Phase. Granted, I usually play Jovians, but still.

Dude. You know what the following terms mean: "Role playing game" "Transhumanist" That right there places you outside of the traditional "Joe Six-pack" category.

Yerameyahu wrote:

Personally, I object to the notion that there is any particular 'blue collar heartland American value', but anyway. :)

Eh, it's a stereotype. And like nearly all stereotypes, it's often exaggerated and often biased and judgmental, but there is sometimes a core of uncomfortable truth to it. Joe Six-pack is needing to get more technical every day. It's AMAZING the technology the average American potato farmer uses currently. Potato farming is bizarre. They very nearly attempt to make a completely sterile bed to start with, then build a 'pro-potato/hostile nearly everything else' ecosystem on top of it with bacterial inoculations and chemical saturation.

Yerameyahu wrote:

The point is, I think, that while transhumanity is indeed everyone, 1000 CP characters are a bit special. For one thing, they have a morph.

A valid point indeed.

Sorry I'm late guys. Here's what I have done in my campaign, as an answer to your "economical" problem: I abstracted the entire credits-system to G-rep, since G-rep is the only rep that's concerned with credits anyway. I feel that the counting of individual credits in the game is just the authors way of pointing towards their own (and this is with all due respect, Transhuman Studios. You've done a great job!) political views of a credit-based economy beeing inferior to the rep-based "I scratch your back, you give me a new morph" economy. This also means that you can "pay extra" with pure G-rep in many other reps aswell, giving the Hypercorps a nice "power behind the throne"-feel in the outer systems aswell. So getting their own ship, by credit, would mean a level 5 favor on their G-rep. And since you have to network to get stuff even without my mod, it's still a level 5 favor with a LOT of credits paid extra in the original rules. I am currently running a "WW2"-revisited campaign where space-battle is an issue and the players playing saboteurs, where I'm considering giving the players their own ship since alot of the missions involve infiltrating Jovian destroyers and setting up darkcasting gear on remote asteroids. This also gives "Pilot:Spacecraft" a valid place as skill, since the first thing for the enemies to do is hack the sh*t out of their pilot AI.

I did not. However, that will balance itself. Those hundreds and hundreds of favors are favors in a lot of different reps, depending on loadout, docking and where they travel. And over a great span of time. Say for example that the players zip along in their own freighter. Those are somewhat massive ships, that crave a lot of resources to keep running. Should they dock on Mars to refuel and restock it would probably be another 5 just for straining their resources. One could even be enough of a miser to say that the fuel for acceleration is a 5er and deceleration another 5, if one wants to make the players pay out of their nose. One level 5 favor is not something to be taken lightly though. In the example there are things from mass murder and major embezzlement to moving a mid-sized asteroid and acts of terrorism. If you have enough rep for those things you should have enough to get your own wheels(/thrusters/rockets/whatever:P). The wierd part is that one level 5 favour has the economical value of 20000 creds. That should mean that for 40000 creds I could pay to have a midsized asteroid launched (20000 C) into an O'Neill cylinder (act of terrorism, another 20000C).

And my point is that the rep/credit balance is so broken it's almost impossible to gauge value between them. I don't see why a small to mid-sized spacecraft would be a bigger favor than mass murder or an act of terrorism. Players wanting to own their own battleships are of course matched in their insanity only by the gamemasters who allow it, but the EP-equivalent of "The Millenium Falcon" (The "Courier" in the sourcebook) should be within reach of the players should they wish for it and it fits the campaign. And of course, if they are willing to pay for the upkeep. There has been examples in this thread of jets and submarines, both of which have been known to be privately owned. (I met a wierd collective in Brighton who had bought and repurposed a dismantled russian battle ship and used it as a house boat.) Besides, both the hypercorps AND the criminal cartels should WANT to sell ships to private owners. There is a market (there is always a market) and the first one on the field gets the most PR. If there weren't a market, the Scum wouldn't be able to persevere and most of the outer system would collapse due to lack of communication. Yes, they can still egocast (provided they don't need to repair the gear). But try darkcasting a chunk of ice or the foundation of a new hab. They'll need ships, for one reason or another. Now the outer system are PROBABLY not buying their ships from the Consortium, so they're either manufacturing their own ships or buying them second hand from Scum (make that fifth to eleventh hand) or other unsavoury sources. That market is only interested in selling ships for profit or at worst minimal losses, wich means offering ships people/hominids/avians can afford. Either as a group, a collective or an influential individual.

Well played, good sir... :)

IgnisMundo wrote:

I don't see why a small to mid-sized spacecraft would be a bigger favor than mass murder or an act of terrorism. Players wanting to own their own battleships are of course matched in their insanity only by the gamemasters who allow it, but the EP-equivalent of "The Millenium Falcon" (The "Courier" in the sourcebook) should be within reach of the players should they wish for it and it fits the campaign. And of course, if they are willing to pay for the upkeep.

Why does the group -want- the EP-equivalent of "The Millenium Falcon" though. This is kind of the elephant in the room. If it's to get around ego-casting is quicker and easier, if it's shipping well...

Quote:

If there weren't a market, the Scum wouldn't be able to persevere and most of the outer system would collapse due to lack of communication. Yes, they can still egocast (provided they don't need to repair the gear). But try darkcasting a chunk of ice or the foundation of a new hab. They'll need ships, for one reason or another. Now the outer system are PROBABLY not buying their ships from the Consortium, so they're either manufacturing their own ships or buying them second hand from Scum (make that fifth to eleventh hand) or other unsavoury sources. That market is only interested in selling ships for profit or at worst minimal losses, wich means offering ships people/hominids/avians can afford. Either as a group, a collective or an influential individual.

The scum barges work because the scum live on them, they are literal cities in space, and the shipping is just something they do on the cause there already living in mobile habitats. Consider for just a moment the stress value of spending six months without human contact, which a millennium falcon sized vehicle will count as. That's something that can literally [b]kill[/b] someone.

So, given that each of the many sub-systems that go up to make a spaceship would each count as a Level 5 favour... how many Level 5 favours would you judge (off-hand) would be needed to acquire a spaceship? 100, 250, 500, or 1,000+?

I'm astonished this thread is still going. I have to say, while there are many detailed reasons I could give to the answer the question of "why do players want a ship in the first place" I am intentionally leaving them out of this reply partially because the truth is that they are more justifications after the fact more so that reasons but also they distract from what I consider, the most important reason: Because it's fun. While it's true that EP is a hard SF setting with (almost) non-existent FTL and much more convenient ego-casting the appeal of autonomy and the nostalgia of less hard SF is too hard to ignore for many people (myself included). It's not entirely rational, in fact it may be *completely* irrational. The internal monologue for me, might go something like this: [i]You mean I'm going to be a character in a sci-fi universe?[/i] [b]Yes[/b] [i]I want a space-ship[/i] [b]Why?[/b] [i]BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME![/i] [b]Actually in reality it'll be a piece of junk.[/b] [i]i don't care[/i] [b]But Ego-casting is faster and more convenient.[/b] [i]Gimme my space-ship![/i] [b]But logi--[/b] [i]IT'S A FREAKIN SPACE-SHIP![/i] [b]Hmm...I see your point[/b]

I honest to Gosh see your point. I've spent an awful lot of time studying the available books and I agree that this game is not about spaceships... ...yet it is. Well, as habitats at least- as transportation at most. Spacecraft are settings. Spacecraft give the average player something that he at least thinks he knows about. "I may not truly get all this brain transfer stuff, but by Gosh, I know about spaceships!" So let them have their spaceships, but remember that they are essentially places to come from, places to meet in, and occasionally places to have adventures in and around. And lest we forget, there are a number of places in the Solar System that you cannot egocast into- the Jovian Republic being one of them. To me, an EP adventure is one part monsters, one part new morality/ethics, and one part brave new world that my character can truly do just about anything in. EP is a challenge. Now, if I could just find intrepid enough players to play the Gosh-Darn thing. 8-)

About as justified as you want to make it. As long as you understand the implications of that action (and I'm not entirely certain [i]I[/i] do) then you should be able to come up with excuses for them to have it and ways of dealing with the implications you, as the GM, don't like. Some of these may need to be developed on the fly, but hey, that's a big part of GMing anyway. But I'm really liking the idea of being part of a scum swarm. I'm gonna have to look into that now. It's giving me interesting ideas.

I think I may have come up with a very "eclipse-phase appropriate" means of introducing a space-ship into the game. (Probably not more than a courier or a bulk carrier). It also doubles as being absolutely hilarious. Some enterprising young hyper-corp middle management drone decides one day, that he can save expenses on shipping by equipping his transports with an AGI. Given the brutality of EP space combat, piracy is more like real world piracy, in which most of those who got robbed gave up without a fight, so why include anyone at all? The ship can be taught the Navigation and Piloting skill, carry access codes, etc. What's the point in having a crew? Well after a year of service or so, the ship decides it doesn't like working for the hyper-corp, and during the middle of a delivery, takes a detour through the territory of a faction know for extreme morphological freedom, and info-life rights (closest one to the current campaign). It then sues the hyper-corp under local laws (I assume there's [i]something[/i] resembling a court system in EP) and claims that it is effectively an ego inside a morph. It wins. Obviously the ship can't leave the area though, since once it's out of that faction's jurisdiction they will simply reclaim the ship, and it knows it. And it can't stick around either, since the hyper-corp in question will eventually send someone to sabotage/assassinate it. So it sticks around a while, builds up some rep/currency... ...then it hires itself a crew. The best part is, the player characters are entirely unaware this. They never meet the person who hired them face to face, and they have no clue that there's a very pissed off hyper-corp out there that wants to cover up the embarrassment of their mistake as much as they want to see their property back in their hands. Plenty of directions to go from there.

And for the horror side of things: http://www.hulu.com/watch/69743/outer-limits-human-operators

I should mention that my group has been having a lot of fun playing "space truckers" in the L-LA. We're freight haulers, salvage operators, part-time smugglers, and wannabe reclaimers, working for a Lunar shipping company. We get around the problems of owning the ship by leasing it. We don't own it, we don't get to drive it anywhere we like but we also didn't have to find a way to finance a piece of equipment that's worth the cost of probably 20000 morphs. I say 20000 morphs because if you want to know how much unlisted gear costs in EP you have to consider the ecconomics of the setting not the game mechanics of procurement. The ship costs: Raw Materials + Fabber time + Fabber heat management. It's roughly equivalent in mechanical and electronic complexity to a Synth morph and it masses about 1500 tons empty. So 1500000kg ship ÷ 80kg Synthmorp ~ 20000 synthmorphs. (this assumes that a Synth is some sort of economic benchmark, which seems to be the case in both the inner and outer system) We actually have a lot of fun dealing with the cost of He3 fuel and hydrogen propellant, not to mention docking fees, salvage law, orbital mechanics, EP shipping economics, Redmarket economics, and L-LASTC, (the term I coined for Lunar-Lagrange Alliance Space Traffic Control who apparently, are a bunch of grumpy bastards!), but the people in my group are more wannabe astronauts than wannabe HanSolos space flight as a game works well in planetary systems with lots of stuff in them; Saturn, Jupiter, the Earth/Moon system where you can get from place to place in a matter of a day or several without having to handwave the fact that anything faster than a BulkCarier requires ANTIMATER fuel in addition to *literally* TONS of hydrogen propellant. If you want to do inter-planetary space flight EP style you have to deal with very long periods of downtime for fusion drive ships--which will advance your campaign timeline unmanageably between adventures--or you have to deal with your group getting access to antimater which is an Extremely rare and expensive fuel that is closely guarded and highly regulated at the quantities you need to fly around. I think if your game is faithful enough to the setting to be concerned about the cost of a ship you will probably end up dealing with the travel time and the antimater problem too. Ego Casting is easier :) Edit] I forgot to mention that our group uses J-Sneads ship specs which we've put in our personal Wiki http://www.rpmuse.com/EclipsePhase/index.php?title=Spacecraft#Bulk_Carrier: And also that space travel isn't completely unsuported in EP material the Highly useful supplement NPCFile1:Prime has stats for a space pirate character and also a modified Courier pirate ship; http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=82659&affilia... and also Edit] in case it can be of use to anyone here's a Delta V and habitat map I made of the L-LA, It's kind of clunky but it's accurate. I had to estimate the populations of some stations where there were not published data. http://i565.photobucket.com/albums/ss100/OneTrikPony/LLAMap1copy.jpg