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What should a Character know?

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Wed, 2012-04-04 18:20
#1
nerdnumber1 nerdnumber1's picture
What should a Character know?
There are a lot of things in Eclipse Phase player section (ie. everything besides the GM section) that is described as being unknown to the population at large, such as basalisk hacks and asyncs, but have things in the gear section specifically made with those things in minds, like faraday suits and psionic drugs. Just what can a reletively well-informed individual, who has traveled outside their hab a bit, reasonably know or conjecture? You don't spend the money to develop faraday suits without having a little more than annecdotal evidence of the existance of basilisk hacks.
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Wed, 2012-04-04 19:49
Jaberwo Jaberwo's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
I would love to know that as I have tried to read as little about the secret stuff as possible since I started playing. I never looked at the chapter on asyncs, skip pages as soon as I read 'gate' or 'factor' and never even touched the descriptions of Earth and the TQZ on Mars. So if you could only write about the things normal people know about (or perhaps low level sentinels who have only been told that there is a TITAN technology named Exsurgent Virus which is extreamly dangerous) and not about what they don't know, I'd be very grateful. :)
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Wed, 2012-04-04 20:39
nerdnumber1 nerdnumber1's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
Jaberwo wrote:
I would love to know that as I have tried to read as little about the secret stuff as possible since I started playing. I never looked at the chapter on asyncs, skip pages as soon as I read 'gate' or 'factor' and never even touched the descriptions of Earth and the TQZ on Mars. So if you could only write about the things normal people know about (or perhaps low level sentinels who have only been told that there is a TITAN technology named Exsurgent Virus which is extreamly dangerous) and not about what they don't know, I'd be very grateful. :)
The existance and basic function of the pandora gates are reletively common knowledge as there are factions that publically sell gate time or offer a lottery for would-be gatecrashers. That being said, plenty of the inner workings of the gate and some of what is found on the other side is kept secret (especially if it is profitable to do so). Still, the existance of mysterious devices of unknown origin that can fascilitate transportation to far-away stars is known). As for the Factors, while people might be fuzzy on the details the rulebook says first contact went something like this: "Three unknown ships of alien design simultaneously approached Mars, Luna, and Titan, meshing with local networks to announce their presence and peaceful intentions." This isn't something that could be really covered up. Also, the Factors do not exclusively deal with any single faction, so word gets around. There is actually a relious sect that believes that the Factors are messengers from God, iirc. So their existance is no secret, their motives, well, no one is REALLY sure. Earth and th TQZ are basically marked "here be dragons." There are definitely some semi-functioning TITAN thingys and those who go in are often never seen again. The Exsurgent virus is at least somewhat known and near-universally considered an invention of the TITANs. Remember, it hasn't been very long since the fall, plenty of people have memories of fleeing Earth when the **** hit the fan. There are at least stories about people becoming monsters and servants of the TITANs (though some may think that the stories are exagerated or invented, but there were enough survivors to have some serious horror stories floating around). Even without the full story, though, look at the scary nano-swarms, nano-toxins, chemicals, and drugs in the wargear section and remember humanity had that as a starting point. The TITANs were scary-smart, everyone knows that. If humans were that good at killing each other, just imagine what the TITANs came up with!
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Thu, 2012-04-05 04:25
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
I think one can throw in almost anything as "common knowledge" in the sense that there are people who talk about it - just like we have giant conspiracies, polar bears on the streets of Stockholm, the Bermuda triangle and people who think brain-computer interfaces have already been perfected. There is a lot of confusion, disinformation campaigns and rumours around (especially since it is hard to quickly fact-check remote parts of the solar system). A lot of the "special information" is lost in this noise: ideally characters who are not well informed about something should be a bit confused about the true state of the world. That said, players need to know roughly enough to be able to play the game and portray plausible levels of knowledge of their PCs. I solve this by pre-campaign talking with my players, asking them what they want to play and suggesting things. In my games psi is something I discourage, and my players are never sure whether it is something that exist in any particular campaign. I was rather negative to gates, but since my players insisted on a gatecrashing game I reluctantly agreed - and it has actually turned out well, and is now getting to be a canon element in my game (in fact, I will post the campaign "The Gate War" soonish - I think it will climax this weekend). Basilisk hacks are common belief, but the fact that they work and how is not widely known. Faraday suits are not problematic even if you don't know about basilisk hacks, since there are plenty of other nasty electronic threats out there.
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Extropian
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Thu, 2012-04-05 11:38
nerdnumber1 nerdnumber1's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
Arenamontanus wrote:
I think one can throw in almost anything as "common knowledge" in the sense that there are people who talk about it - just like we have giant conspiracies, polar bears on the streets of Stockholm, the Bermuda triangle and people who think brain-computer interfaces have already been perfected. There is a lot of confusion, disinformation campaigns and rumours around (especially since it is hard to quickly fact-check remote parts of the solar system). A lot of the "special information" is lost in this noise: ideally characters who are not well informed about something should be a bit confused about the true state of the world. That said, players need to know roughly enough to be able to play the game and portray plausible levels of knowledge of their PCs. I solve this by pre-campaign talking with my players, asking them what they want to play and suggesting things. In my games psi is something I discourage, and my players are never sure whether it is something that exist in any particular campaign. I was rather negative to gates, but since my players insisted on a gatecrashing game I reluctantly agreed - and it has actually turned out well, and is now getting to be a canon element in my game (in fact, I will post the campaign "The Gate War" soonish - I think it will climax this weekend). Basilisk hacks are common belief, but the fact that they work and how is not widely known. Faraday suits are not problematic even if you don't know about basilisk hacks, since there are plenty of other nasty electronic threats out there.
I agree asyncs rate higher on the secret list than other things, but gates are pretty open knowledge. Heck, where did the neo-synergists come from? They have pamphlets and everything. As for Faraday suits, they do have specifically anti-basalisk hack features that hinder the wearer in certain ways: They use intentionally distorted, low-res cameras and poor quality microphones, restrict communication to distorted, crappy radios and tweet-sized text messages. They are intentionally hindering their own senses for the sole reason to protect themselves from basalisk hacks. This means that at the very least the suits designer and whoever ok'ed the design (and bought it without upgrading the camera to at least the equivilent of a Nintendo DSi) had reason to believe that there was a danger from simply perceiving certain sights and sounds. Maybe the true specs and reasons for them are successfully supressed in the more repressive areas, but it seems that the maker of the suit has a financial reason for people to know.
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Sat, 2012-04-07 09:24
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
I made a set of knowledge skills precisely to cover this kind of stuff. Essentially, I made a small list: - [Faction]: knowledge of the faction (you don't need to have a standing in there). Not only gives a measure of what you know, but would also qualify to provide a bonus to the Networking rolls with that faction. For example, Knowledge (firewall) 98 would mean that you know the Prometheans are AIs promoting the organization, while 60 would be akin to having read all the non-secret parts of the core book regarding the Fall, the inner structure of Firewall, and other stuff at the GM's discretion. - Gatecrashing: again, knowledge about everything related to that, from procedures to who is who in the gatecrashing community(refering to both workers in the Gates and gatecrashers). It would be also a good way for the GM to tell the players what gear do they need without being too obvious, avoiding the risk of a mission failure because stupid mistakes derived from not knowing the books. - [Corporation]: a deep knowledge about a corporation, be it a megacorp from the PC, or a microcorp from Titan. This goes from knowing the name and logo to their deepest secrets... - [Planet]: geography, society, inhabitants, politics... Where to find red, black and gray markets, who is in charge (really), where to go to get what... - [Morph]: from the name of the designer (or all of the team's) to the blueprint for a dozen variations, at least 20 is required to know the implant list of the morph, and with 40 I allow a roll to know the model (meaning a rough estimate on the implants it has). I think you can get the idea of this XD. Essentially, this can burn a lot of skill points from the player's reserve, and most of the mentioned fields require GM approval to be bought (or improved), but I feel like they give more interesting possibilities. And I can always give extra creation points for knowledge skills only, after all...
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Sat, 2012-04-07 11:07
Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
As a general rule, I imagine anything in the core book, outside the GM's section, could reasonably be in a player's knowledge base. Some stuff (like Psi, the Factors, etc.) would be unlikely to be common knowledge beyond rumor chatter, but other than that, it's more or less open season. Did have a funny moment, though, where a group of players I assumed had read the book a bit more hadn't read it as thoroughly as I expected. They knew the history of the setting, more or less, but they hadn't read about the Pandora Gates. I just sort of rolled with it and, for them, the Pandora Gates are basically top secret, instead of public knowledge as they are in the standard canon.
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[img]http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/982/exhumanbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/4473/scumbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/1396/gatecrasherbar.jpg[/img] [code][@-rep +1, f-rep +2][/code]
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Sat, 2012-04-07 15:14
Kroeghe Kroeghe's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
nerdnumber1 wrote:
As for Faraday suits, they do have specifically anti-basalisk hack features that hinder the wearer in certain ways: They use intentionally distorted, low-res cameras and poor quality microphones, restrict communication to distorted, crappy radios and tweet-sized text messages. They are intentionally hindering their own senses for the sole reason to protect themselves from basalisk hacks. This means that at the very least the suits designer and whoever ok'ed the design (and bought it without upgrading the camera to at least the equivilent of a Nintendo DSi) had reason to believe that there was a danger from simply perceiving certain sights and sounds. Maybe the true specs and reasons for them are successfully supressed in the more repressive areas, but it seems that the maker of the suit has a financial reason for people to know.
I imagine they are quite useful in areas with very strong electromagnetic field - like TITAN hab from Arenamontanus’ ‘Indigo latitude’, or alien from Peter Watts’ ‘Blindsight’. Or surface of the Sun.
Axel the Chimeric wrote:
As a general rule, I imagine anything in the core book, outside the GM's section, could reasonably be in a player's knowledge base. Some stuff (like Psi, the Factors, etc.) would be unlikely to be common knowledge beyond rumor chatter, but other than that, it's more or less open season.
There are pieces of info inside the core (and outside the GM section) that should never be considered common knowledge. Good example of this is the excerpt about Futura project
Spoiler: Highlight to view
from which you can infer that the whole project was not about breeding brave new generation, but about cloning Asynchs.
But then – during the Fall there were loads and loads of crazy stuff going on : mutants, exsurgents, psionics (or so the Core says) – and all those people in EP have cameras and mesh implants and I bet they did record at least some of the mess. What really bothers me is how much people actually know about worlds behind Pandora Gates? There is more than one perfectly habitable (edible wildlife!) worlds out there, while people live crammed inside tin-cans on a barren rock (or without any rock whatsoever). There must be some kind of censorship or otherwise half of the humanity would be like: “Screw this, I’m going to Bluewood” (Or what’s-its-name). (To be true – this is the aspect of the game-world that bothers me the most – even more than cheesy daphnia-like aliens or FTL-paradox inducing stargates. Or the friggin’ sun whales.)
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Sat, 2012-04-07 14:50
HypercorpElitist HypercorpElitist's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
Quote:
What really bothers me is how much people actually know about worlds behind Pandora Gates? There is more than one perfectly habitable (edible wildlife!) worlds out there, while people live crammed inside tin-cans on a barren rock (or without any rock whatsoever). There must be some kind of censorship or otherwise half of the humanity would be like: “Screw this, I’m going to Bluewood” (Or what’s-its-name). (To be true – this is the aspect of the game-world that bothers me the most – even more than cheesy daphnia-like aliens or FTL-paradox inducing stargates. Or the friggin’ sun whales.)
They don't all go through the gates to habitable planets because gate time is VERY EXPENSIVE or has a waiting list a few miles long. That's not to say some habitats don't censor any information they deem might cause instability, but the primary reason people aren't flocking to exoplanets is cost.
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Sat, 2012-04-07 15:16
Peregrine Peregrine's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
Also, they don't go because they're not always reliable. Sometimes people just don't wind up where they're supposed to be.
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Sat, 2012-04-07 15:30
Kroeghe Kroeghe's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
HypercorpElitist wrote:
They don't all go through the gates to habitable planets because gate time is VERY EXPENSIVE or has a waiting list a few miles long.
Well, that's interesting, isn't? I'm willing to accept that explanation, but it doesn’t really seem solid in a long run… I plan to re-read ‘Gatecrashing’ and ponder a little about it – and then post the results of this pondering in another thread – it seems too much off-topic here. (I'm all excited right now - my first Thread Idea...)
HypercorpElitist wrote:
That's not to say some habitats don't censor any information they deem might cause instability, but the primary reason people aren't flocking to exoplanets is cost.
That’s not really the type of censorship I had in mind. What I meant was: existence of which exoplanets is kept secret by the hypercorps or other private parties. An exoplanet only you know about is probably the biggest asset you can possibly possess in EP (except for the Gates, I guess). If I find a habitable planet I’d not announce it all over the mesh.
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Sat, 2012-04-07 16:12
Peregrine Peregrine's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
Depends on who you are though. If you don't have the resources to exploit that habitable planet, you can keep it to yourself, and only have the use of a few square miles, or you can announce it, and get the prestige and reputation from it that you can then trade on for getting stuff you can actually use.
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Sat, 2012-04-07 18:28
Tyrnis Tyrnis's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
Kroeghe wrote:
What really bothers me is how much people actually know about worlds behind Pandora Gates? There is more than one perfectly habitable (edible wildlife!) worlds out there, while people live crammed inside tin-cans on a barren rock (or without any rock whatsoever). There must be some kind of censorship or otherwise half of the humanity would be like: “Screw this, I’m going to Bluewood” (Or what’s-its-name). (To be true – this is the aspect of the game-world that bothers me the most – even more than cheesy daphnia-like aliens or FTL-paradox inducing stargates. Or the friggin’ sun whales.)
For much the same reason that people cluster into big cities despite pollution, traffic nightmares, crowds, and in many cases higher living costs as opposed to going out and living in the Amazon rainforest. It takes a certain kind of person to be willing to risk inconvenience on up to death in order to colonize a new world. Besides, why do they care about going outside when they can make inside look like anything they want to with AR?
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Sat, 2012-04-07 18:39
Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
HypercorpElitist wrote:
They don't all go through the gates to habitable planets because gate time is VERY EXPENSIVE or has a waiting list a few miles long. That's not to say some habitats don't censor any information they deem might cause instability, but the primary reason people aren't flocking to exoplanets is cost.
The cost is, like most costs in Eclipse Phase, largely invented. The price is only high because there's only a handful of gates, only some go to certain destinations, and there's a lot of people who want to go to a lot of places. If, however, you had a utilitarian standpoint to think of, you could set your gate address to the Echo system and start exporting refugees en masse, armed with cornucopia machines and large amounts of material, and get them started on building enormous colonies. Thing is, there just isn't the political will. The only place that'd offer that level of service would be Titan, and anyone who's there is already living in a happy little technosocialist state, so why would they want to flee anywhere? It's the PC that's got the hordes of refugees.
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[img]http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/982/exhumanbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/4473/scumbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/1396/gatecrasherbar.jpg[/img] [code][@-rep +1, f-rep +2][/code]
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Sun, 2012-04-08 16:25
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
It's quite simple: Pandora Gates == Stargate. But imagine that it is a device much less reliable, invented by the Bad Guys instead of by an extint precursor human race, and with "things" out there. Hunting. And that the gates are dialing 24/7, either to recall people (if the adress didn't vanishes!) or to send people. The hunting? Exhumans have crossed more than once. And there is a good chance you can run into TITAN stuff out there. Plus aliens.
Axel the Chimeric wrote:
Thing is, there just isn't the political will. The only place that'd offer that level of service would be Titan, and anyone who's there is already living in a happy little technosocialist state, so why would they want to flee anywhere? It's the PC that's got the hordes of refugees.
Even Titan's gate is overworked, simple because they need to expand, and study of the gate's workings require its time. And they can "sell" Gate Time to get financial support. No matter the little corner you are living in, after the Fall humanity is a lot 4x (Xplore, Xpand, Xploit... and Xterminate), if not by inclination, by influence of the Prometheans (logic 101: never keep all eggs in the same basket).
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Thu, 2012-04-12 20:59
nerdnumber1 nerdnumber1's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
Kroeghe wrote:
nerdnumber1 wrote:
As for Faraday suits, they do have specifically anti-basalisk hack features that hinder the wearer in certain ways: They use intentionally distorted, low-res cameras and poor quality microphones, restrict communication to distorted, crappy radios and tweet-sized text messages. They are intentionally hindering their own senses for the sole reason to protect themselves from basalisk hacks. This means that at the very least the suits designer and whoever ok'ed the design (and bought it without upgrading the camera to at least the equivilent of a Nintendo DSi) had reason to believe that there was a danger from simply perceiving certain sights and sounds. Maybe the true specs and reasons for them are successfully supressed in the more repressive areas, but it seems that the maker of the suit has a financial reason for people to know.
I imagine they are quite useful in areas with very strong electromagnetic field - like TITAN hab from Arenamontanus’ ‘Indigo latitude’, or alien from Peter Watts’ ‘Blindsight’. Or surface of the Sun.
I'm not saying that there aren't other reasons you'd want the Faraday cage function. There is still the matter of hobbling your senses to protect yourself from basilisk hacks. With quality cameras and microphones so cheap and common, the intentionally low quality sensors seen in the Faraday suits would be baffling to anyone who hasn't heard of basilisk hacks.
Kroeghe wrote:
Axel the Chimeric wrote:
As a general rule, I imagine anything in the core book, outside the GM's section, could reasonably be in a player's knowledge base. Some stuff (like Psi, the Factors, etc.) would be unlikely to be common knowledge beyond rumor chatter, but other than that, it's more or less open season.
There are pieces of info inside the core (and outside the GM section) that should never be considered common knowledge. Good example of this is the excerpt about Futura project
Spoiler: Highlight to view
from which you can infer that the whole project was not about breeding brave new generation, but about cloning Asynchs.
But then – during the Fall there were loads and loads of crazy stuff going on : mutants, exsurgents, psionics (or so the Core says) – and all those people in EP have cameras and mesh implants and I bet they did record at least some of the mess. What really bothers me is how much people actually know about worlds behind Pandora Gates? There is more than one perfectly habitable (edible wildlife!) worlds out there, while people live crammed inside tin-cans on a barren rock (or without any rock whatsoever). There must be some kind of censorship or otherwise half of the humanity would be like: “Screw this, I’m going to Bluewood” (Or what’s-its-name). (To be true – this is the aspect of the game-world that bothers me the most – even more than cheesy daphnia-like aliens or FTL-paradox inducing stargates. Or the friggin’ sun whales.)
Exoplanets are a new fronteer: You have no or limited civilization, you have to get a trip through (pay lots of money or get lucky on a lottery), and there is unimaginable dangers like the TITANs. Many transhumans have an issue getting by without good mesh access. Furthermore, any would be colony would be at the complete mercy of the faction controling the gate for contact with the rest of transhumanity and resupplying (even in a corp-controled hab you can generally leave to another hab without a 100,000+credit charge for the trip).
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Fri, 2012-04-13 06:06
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
nerdnumber1 wrote:
Exoplanets are a new fronteer: You have no or limited civilization, you have to get a trip through (pay lots of money or get lucky on a lottery), and there is unimaginable dangers like the TITANs. Many transhumans have an issue getting by without good mesh access. Furthermore, any would be colony would be at the complete mercy of the faction controling the gate for contact with the rest of transhumanity and resupplying (even in a corp-controled hab you can generally leave to another hab without a 100,000+credit charge for the trip).
I doubt its just 100.000 creds, because it would be really easy to get about 100 people to buy the gate time to get out, each one pooling 1000 creds (and some critical stuff, like CMs, some supplies, and stuff like that). The real drowner would be the associated costs of starting a colony even with EP-level tech: first, you need a planet, meaning you need to pay for the colonization rights to whoever found the place (and that is one of the reasons because Gatecrashing is so profitable). Second, the chances of finding an earthlike planet are minimal, meaning you will need some specialized morphs (better than living like in a space station on the surface of a planet... were that the case, asteroids would be better choices, meaning the surveys would be of whole solar systems instead of just planets), and those are the most expensive piece of equipment in EP (even if you go with some synthmorphs). Not to mention the blueprints library, unless you are a rimward dweller... Also, add the cost of making a blue box, and the safeguards that make it as hard as possible to steal and duplicate by aliens/exhumans! The final nail in the coffin is to pay for periodic gate time to call home and confirm everything is OK and there is no need to resleeve the poor colonist's backups, which also means the mole (assume ALL colonization efforts have at least one corporate mole in them...) can report back what the colonists are not saying (like "there is a very rich rare materials deposit there", or "alien ruins here", or "the colonist are truly a singularity seeking cult and are going to turn the whole planet into computronium to produce a Seed AI"). Personally, I bet there is a timeframe for all Pandora gates in the Solar System when they are off and just waiting for incoming calls, and considering how unstable is the whole net, all the gates would be on wait the same 4 hour period (because you can send a compressed stream of data, see examples on Stargate Atlantis), and usually the people controlling the gates shares the data sent by non-corporate/secret colonies (as for the secret ones, I bet they are called during an 1 hour period prior to the 4 hour period of waiting).
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Fri, 2012-04-13 14:54
nerdnumber1 nerdnumber1's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
Xagroth wrote:
nerdnumber1 wrote:
Exoplanets are a new fronteer: You have no or limited civilization, you have to get a trip through (pay lots of money or get lucky on a lottery), and there is unimaginable dangers like the TITANs. Many transhumans have an issue getting by without good mesh access. Furthermore, any would be colony would be at the complete mercy of the faction controling the gate for contact with the rest of transhumanity and resupplying (even in a corp-controled hab you can generally leave to another hab without a 100,000+credit charge for the trip).
I doubt its just 100.000 creds, because it would be really easy to get about 100 people to buy the gate time to get out, each one pooling 1000 creds (and some critical stuff, like CMs, some supplies, and stuff like that). The real drowner would be the associated costs of starting a colony even with EP-level tech: first, you need a planet, meaning you need to pay for the colonization rights to whoever found the place (and that is one of the reasons because Gatecrashing is so profitable). Second, the chances of finding an earthlike planet are minimal, meaning you will need some specialized morphs (better than living like in a space station on the surface of a planet... were that the case, asteroids would be better choices, meaning the surveys would be of whole solar systems instead of just planets), and those are the most expensive piece of equipment in EP (even if you go with some synthmorphs). Not to mention the blueprints library, unless you are a rimward dweller... Also, add the cost of making a blue box, and the safeguards that make it as hard as possible to steal and duplicate by aliens/exhumans! The final nail in the coffin is to pay for periodic gate time to call home and confirm everything is OK and there is no need to resleeve the poor colonist's backups, which also means the mole (assume ALL colonization efforts have at least one corporate mole in them...) can report back what the colonists are not saying (like "there is a very rich rare materials deposit there", or "alien ruins here", or "the colonist are truly a singularity seeking cult and are going to turn the whole planet into computronium to produce a Seed AI"). Personally, I bet there is a timeframe for all Pandora gates in the Solar System when they are off and just waiting for incoming calls, and considering how unstable is the whole net, all the gates would be on wait the same 4 hour period (because you can send a compressed stream of data, see examples on Stargate Atlantis), and usually the people controlling the gates shares the data sent by non-corporate/secret colonies (as for the secret ones, I bet they are called during an 1 hour period prior to the 4 hour period of waiting).
Gates generally cost 100,000 for a one time connection (500,000+ if it is the first time dialing a gate) plus 50,000 per minute the gate is held open plus or minus ~10% based on which sol-gate you are buying from (p147 of Gatecrashing). Since the size of the whole in the gate's cage varies between human and vehicle size, that minutely cost could really jump up if you have a large group and/or enough equipment for a colony. But you're right, the initial gate travel is a minor cost compared to making a colony from the ground up and the recuring cost of gate connection check-ins. Actually, not every colony will necessarily have a blue-box (some corps won't even let them through their gate), so they will be at the mercy of regular check-ins, with perhaps an emergency QE communicator to call someone in sol to dial their gate for a pick-up (the qubits will have to be replenished periodically, but you will want to call home sometimes and it doesn't take long to ask for a connection or send a pre-determined code for a request). I think there are some surveys of the surounding star-system, but it is really hard to make an interplanatary craft on the other side of the gate (just getting all the materials through and preparing a launch area would be a pain in the @$$). Furthermore, rockets aren't very subtle and tend to draw the attention of any hostile life in the neighborhood with a telescope. Lastly, why leave the ground when a jump through the gate gets you to another planet? I think the gate-crashers might use passive sensors to look at other planets or moons nearby, but the theory is that whoever placed the gates put them on the most interesting or useful worlds in the area for the most part.
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Sat, 2012-04-14 16:40
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
nerdnumber1 wrote:
I think there are some surveys of the surounding star-system, but it is really hard to make an interplanatary craft on the other side of the gate (just getting all the materials through and preparing a launch area would be a pain in the @$$). Furthermore, rockets aren't very subtle and tend to draw the attention of any hostile life in the neighborhood with a telescope. Lastly, why leave the ground when a jump through the gate gets you to another planet? I think the gate-crashers might use passive sensors to look at other planets or moons nearby, but the theory is that whoever placed the gates put them on the most interesting or useful worlds in the area for the most part.
Yeah, well, even if you tell me 10.000 creds per member, I'd say its cheap. Add three or four CM anda bunch of hard to find materials, plus some survival gear per member, and at 15.000 creds per member is still cheaper than a Morph per member. So, wild idea: Only half of the colonists have physical bodies (or even a quarter of them!) with the others in storage/cheap synthmorphs to wait for the CMs to make some copies of themselves, and then some synthmorphs while the adapted biomorphs are grown. As for the spacecraft, you can easily make one once there given enough time and CM, and the obvious motive for that is to get near the sun and start producing AntiMatter, and to the close asteroids to mine for materials. Why? To expand, of course. So this is the question: Why expand? I'd say that the Titanians would be willing to answer that question, the exhumans are more than eager to leave to start hunting out there, and the autonomists might feel the need for more breathing room. The Jovians might find easier to locate a good enough earthlike exoplanet and move there, far from the transhumanity, and the hypercorps might want to expand their markets... which involves creating more customers, by sleeving them! I think that might be the factions interested, in order of short to long term need/plan of expansion.
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Sun, 2012-04-15 02:18
nerdnumber1 nerdnumber1's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
Xagroth wrote:
nerdnumber1 wrote:
I think there are some surveys of the surounding star-system, but it is really hard to make an interplanatary craft on the other side of the gate (just getting all the materials through and preparing a launch area would be a pain in the @$$). Furthermore, rockets aren't very subtle and tend to draw the attention of any hostile life in the neighborhood with a telescope. Lastly, why leave the ground when a jump through the gate gets you to another planet? I think the gate-crashers might use passive sensors to look at other planets or moons nearby, but the theory is that whoever placed the gates put them on the most interesting or useful worlds in the area for the most part.
Yeah, well, even if you tell me 10.000 creds per member, I'd say its cheap. Add three or four CM anda bunch of hard to find materials, plus some survival gear per member, and at 15.000 creds per member is still cheaper than a Morph per member. So, wild idea: Only half of the colonists have physical bodies (or even a quarter of them!) with the others in storage/cheap synthmorphs to wait for the CMs to make some copies of themselves, and then some synthmorphs while the adapted biomorphs are grown. As for the spacecraft, you can easily make one once there given enough time and CM, and the obvious motive for that is to get near the sun and start producing AntiMatter, and to the close asteroids to mine for materials. Why? To expand, of course. So this is the question: Why expand? I'd say that the Titanians would be willing to answer that question, the exhumans are more than eager to leave to start hunting out there, and the autonomists might feel the need for more breathing room. The Jovians might find easier to locate a good enough earthlike exoplanet and move there, far from the transhumanity, and the hypercorps might want to expand their markets... which involves creating more customers, by sleeving them! I think that might be the factions interested, in order of short to long term need/plan of expansion.
The thing is, they are operating the gates at full capacity, scheduling every available minute when they can. The fact that the Factors warn against two things, seed AIs and gate use, the widespread belief that the gates are possibly constructions of the TITANs, and the evident dangers make humanity somewhat cautious. Every habitable exo-planet is considered for colonization. The costs and risks are a factor that slows things down (moving countless lightyears to an unknown world with the risk that the fickle gate system will strand you on a hell-hole filled with flesh-eatting monsters takes a certain type of person... but there are a few such people available). The anti-matter plan is a little risky though. It takes a lot of very large equipment to make antimater (think Large Hadron Colider), so if you are making it there, then you're setting down roots (and few corps are willing to let a large ammount of anti-mater near their precious gates). I'm not saying you can't make space-craft on exo-planets, I'm just saying that it is a heavy investment that will likely only be done if there was clear value in it (they still have an entire planet to investigate (and the planet with the gate has at least one sign of alien civilization, so someone or something thought it was an important destination plus it is easier to check a new destination from the gate than making a ship and launch site from scratch on another world.
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Mon, 2012-04-16 08:15
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Re: What should a Character know?
Number1, I'm happy you mention the "do I want to colonize?" issue. I was talking only about the economic parts, and some projections into the future. As you said, however, few people (compared to the total population) considers it as a viable option. But there must be people wanting to, and of course there are the exploration teams sent by the gates "owners", not to mention freelancing teams that go to explore and sell the rights to a sponsor. However, right now there are less people "living" in AF10 than there were in Earth in the year 2000. That means that there are more resources than consumers, and a great amount of frozen egos to boot, with the Planetary Consortium keeping a scarcity situation with purely artificial means. Given enough time, expansion will be a more than desirable option, an option that gains attractiveness with some modifications like how different is somebody from the rest of society (thus my hypothesis of the Jovians being the faction that will "move out" first, as a whole. This would imply that a lot of agents doing gatecrashing are in their payroll, trying to find a planet where humanity can stay away from the "contaminated" transhumanity). As for the hypercorps using exoplanets, it was (again) a distant future option. Expansion using the gates is cheaper than a war (at least, when you are among the ones waging the war, and not supplying stuff to the beligerants!). But of course, that won't discard black ops/invetigation/I+D being done in the space around an exoplanet, away from the eyes of people that might filter some data to Firewall...
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