It is clearly stated somewhere in the Transhuman book that the PC are most likely to be hired on by Firewall as investigators, not an erasure squad. Their primary goal is to find possible threats to the continued existence of Transhumanity, keep a low profile, and if possible then actually deal with the problem; in that order (or something like that if I recall correctly). As such, their skill set should favor investigation and survival more than being a death machine (dead agents can't tell Firewall what they have learned). Keeping a low profile will likely need hacking and social engineering skills (which helps Firewall avoid trouble). Some combat skills will be favored as fights are likely to occur. It should also be noted that Firewall picks people based upon their skills. They often beam people around and its not uncommon that a team has to deal with a lack of gear, hence the need for skills. Feel free to tell the players that Firewall are the ones who pick who get to join; everyone else has their minds erased. Think the "Men In Black" movie. Early in the movie, they had a bunch of people being tested to figure out who would be agent K's new partner. While most of them had combat ability, the person who would become agent J was perceptive, solved problems, and was discreet.

I would think the requirements for where points can be spent on skills in character creation would mean even combat-wombats have non-fighting skills too... 300CP in knowledge skills minimum.

I agree with Lorsa. The type of character players create sais a lot about the kind of game they want. You should talk to them about this. If you would enjoy running a more combative game you could run a firewall erasure squad game. Or make them freelance mercenaries. They may be interested in a less combat oriented game than they had been thinking of and be willing to redesign their characters, or even start again from scratch. If after a discussion neither you nor your players is going to enjoy a game that has moved from the initial visions then you should not have a game. Trying to force players to play investigatory roles when they are not interested is a good recipe for aggravation all round the table. @ nizkateth 300 CP in knowledge skills doesn’t create an well rounded character. Networking and social skills are active skills. And there are some knowledge skills that actually reinforce the combat archetype. Interests: weapons, profession: mercenary, academics: military history. Also in SR it was not uncommon to put in some useless knowlage skills to round out a characters background (my current SR character has 2 skill points in children’s entertainment, because he has kids). While occasionally such skills come in usefull they lack the broad utility of say profession: forensics

So.. 1.80% of the time their missions are in Habs where their weapons are limited to melee or pistols. So much for ranged skills 2.80% of the time their in microgravity and getting shot with kinetics or being effected by explosives launches them around like pinballs. 3. They may be hawesome but the people they run into are just as well armed (uasually better armed) totally out number them, are nearly as well skilled and use good tactics and the mesh. They learned quickly if their going to pull guns they better only do that with a lot of planning and distraction. The result? First few sessions they were failing a lot, but still cramming points into combat skills thinking with better skills they could do the impossible... They were wrong. Now their spending all cp into investigative or research skills... IE. it worked.

Thinking about OP's problem and my own experience with EP games, I'd say they should consider themselves lucky. All their players picked a similar field of competence! When the group is comprised of different and narrow specialist, things become much, much worse - usually the game runs for only one character at the time, with the rest acting as extras, if at all. E.g. only the combat character matters in combat, only the hacker matters during hacking, only the corporate executive matters during negotiations, only the scummy prospector matters when it comes to geology, digging and hardware... And one recent game literally disintegrated because the GM tried to challenge and punish the specialists in their own field, making the rest of the group even more irrelevant. Now there are people that love the EP setting, and that I'd love to play it with, but that would never touch the rules, ever again. All because the GM ran with the common wisdom of having diverse characters and made the very bad call of trying to challenge the specialists, instead of letting them shine.

they had crap loads of fun, they were expecting the same ole D&D scenerios where one character can take on an army, not the case here, they actually had to use planning, investigation, deception, and lots of forethought before attacking. that and I'm hella awesome ;-)

It's just not made for two highly skilled people both in synths, both with internal and external armor, really high fray skill to fight it out.... It takes forever.... And the scenario you mention above, one guy controlling what... 50+ dragonflies you'd be rolling one round for an hour. Just not worth it...

savanah wrote:

Right now, the death machine ended in the junkyard and is cursing himself for not having hardware skills to repair itself.

Why would he need those? Any death-machine worthy of the name is going to regenerate DUR and repair wounds independently of the ego sleeved in it. Not to mention that, just like anything else, if robots break, they do not fix themselves - they go to the doctor/repairman. All the situations you list don't sound like they're going to "teach" your players about making investigation-oriented characters. They sound like old-school dungeon-crawling mishaps, where the GM engineers situations to kill you. Especially the robot and "shouldn't trust anyone" parts seem to teach "next time, be better killers, because you can't trust anyone and have to be completely self-sufficient". Seems counter-productive.