Enceladus would be a good bet if you wanted to stay in system (or even Earth... if you dared). There is not much written about Enceladus in Rimward and what is written makes it out as a anachro-capitalist genehackers wet dream. The lack of exploration is directly stated, and random bioengineering could make for some Earth-like life around habs, and maybe something stranger in the depths. Perhaps there is a single body of water that spans the planet, but no ego has found it yet. I haven't done much in the way of aquatic habitats. High pressure environments like oceans offer different issues for airlocks (page 166 of Panopticon). The dramatic pressure change from 1 bar to under an ocean can be quite deadly. Habs would need stronger structural support for the same pressure reasons. Any hull breach would be a big deal, maybe moreso than in vacuum in some respects. You'd want a mix of aquatic rooms and air rooms, so the neo-dolphins can breath and the more land inclined have places to live. Instead of conveyors or lines to pull people around, non-aquatic morphs would probably have exoskeletons or suits with a special stream-like design and preset swimming motions for efficient movement.

Undocking wrote:

Any hull breach would be a big deal, maybe moreso than in vacuum in some respects.

Vacuum breaches aren't that bad. The worst part is that vacuum in your lungs sucks oxygen out of your blood so you pass out within 10-12 seconds when the deoxygenated blood hits your brain. High pressure water breaches are violent at a whole other level. I'm running an adventue on Europa at 1,200 atmospheres and did some numbers on it - it is brutal. Water jets in at Mach 1. A 1 by 1 meter breach will pump in 350 cubic meters per second! If that water has to go through a 2 by 3 meter corridor the wall of water will rush down it faster than a Formula 1 car at top speed and it will hit you much harder than hitting water at free fall terminal velocity on Earth. Even if your suit is good enough to handle the pressure, the impact from water will squash anything.

what is the PSI on a hydro cutter? if you get a really small hull breach and it comes out at mach 1 could that not go through multiple bulkheads?

GreyBrother wrote:

Thinking about europa bears another question to me. So, there are habs encased in ice. Alright. Ice needs a maximum of 0°C to freeze, i think this bears true for Europa too? So... we have a habitat encased in ice, a habitat running with 27°C temperature to be comfy for people without Cold Tolerance. To paraphrase "How did you solve the heating problem?" doesn't the ice melt after a while and lay open the anchors or however the hab is fixed in an icicle? The architecturial finepoints elude me.

They are situated inside the surface ice, they are not floating ice encased habs. The ice will melt if the hab heats the ice to the melting point and delivers enough energy for the phase transition. However, as the hab heats the ice around it heats up, it loses heat faster and faster to the surrounding ice and we must assume that this process is sufficient for the ice never to melt. If it was a problem, they could have thermal conductors in the ice (which I guess could also be used to have ice structures below the sea surface).

One of my players (Frivolous Vector, thanks man) dug out the stuff below from all the books. The only thing I'll add to it is that breathing trimix humans can handle 30-50 atmospheres, and that synthmorphs can handle fairly quick pressure changes. EP 2nd Core p144 "Synthmorphs are built to withstand a wide range of environments, from dusty mars to the oceans of Europa, to the vacuum of space. They are unaffected by an but the most extreme temperatures and atmospheric pressures. Treat as Temp Tolerance* & Vacuum Sealing" Vacuum sealing itself does not give any declared max atm registered. It only registers a temperature tolerance limit (-75 to 100C p307). Temp Tolerance gives you -30C and 60C (p306) which is somewhat redundant, considering Vacuum Sealing is already better p200 Extreme Pressure "... the atmospheric pressures of Jupiter, Saturn and Venus quickly become crushingly deadly anywhere beyond the upper levels. Only Synthmorphs and vehicles with special pressure adaptations can hope to survive such depths." Also note, on the next page it says that movement rates are 1/4th the normal with a -20 to physical actions. p334 Hardsuit "Unlike other vacsuits, they are solid and can resist both vacuum and up to 100atm of external pressure. Characters wearing hardsuits can safely explore the upper atmosphere of a gas giant." Sunward p160-1 on Venus "Light vacsuits will protect a biomorph to an altitude of 45km, standard vacsuits to 40 km, and a hardsuit to 35km" (from the surface) "Unmodified Synthmorphs, bots and vehicles can safely descend to 35-40km, below which they too succumb to heat and pressure... Atmospheric pressure [on the surface] is over 90 times that of Earth's... Only Syntmorphs, vehicles and bots equipped with extreme pressure adaptation (p167) & Extreme Heat Shielding (p166) may survive in these environs." p167 Extreme Pressure Adaptation "[Robotic] morphs with this mod... [can] withstand pressure up to 100 atm" Rimward p185 "Biomorphs with high pressure adaptation can survive in the upper ocean levels, down to a depth of 500 atm. Synthmorphs with the adaptation can sustain regular operation down to 2,500 atm." "To proper transition, the biomorph must be slowly acclimated to increasing pressure levels... taking about 1 day." temperatures "around -20C [at the top]... around 10C [near geothermal vents]... biomorphs operating in these deep water environments require temperature tolerance (improved Cold) on p166 Sunward." [I would assume that Cryonic Temp Tol also works, as found in this book] Gatecrashing p151 Aquanaut Biomorph "They can safely descend to about 200m (roughly 6atm) without suffering narcotic effects or other diving problems." So we can assume that, because the morph is designed for this, an unaugmented biomorph can cap out at 6 with a high fatality chance. Hydrostatic Pressure Adaptation allows biomorphs to survive 500atm, and synthmorphs to survive up to 2500atm. So, with the information above, we know that standard Synthmorphs crap out at around 100 atm, as do hardsuits (by the same merit we can assume that combat exoskeletons go squish a little after that, because they are made of diamond but not quite enough sheer unadulterated hatred). Biomorphs that are not specifically designed for life in high pressure die somewhere before 6. Oh right, the only interfering variable is that Venus entry specifically says "heat and pressure get them", so the Synth-hardsuit equivalency may be a little blurry one way or the other.

GreyBrother wrote:

After rereading the nice writeup about the pressure hazard rules and looking at the pressure values of Europa presented in the books... There can't possibly be a biomorph who could survive in the upper oceans (or any oceanlevel) of Europa, yet the books state that this happens.

Gravity. At 100km deep on Earth, it is about ~9920 atm. On Europa, by EP's equivalency, ~2500atm=~100km. Instead of the base atm of 1, use 300 atm at surface level. So, multiply depth by 0.22 to account for the deviancy between 9920 atm and 2200 atm (9921*0.22=2180). Therefore, at surface level the atm is ~0.22, but every 10 meters increases by ~0.22 atm—which for a moon with 0.13% Earth gravity is a pretty big deal. That way, even at the deepest depths, it will be around what EP puts out (300+2180=2480). Woo. I did this in about ten minutes, and it is definitely not the most elegant.

Awesome! Looking forward to it!

I would be interested in the German version! :D I am also interested in exchanging some material from my various groups if you would be as well. Laziness has prevented me from translating and sharing my materials so far, but if there are some German speaking people here on the forums I would be happy to upload my stuff somewhere, especially if others would do so, too.