Quality wise the equipment is a good (maybe. Metals are still a hard thing to find in the outer system), but open source equipment tends to be utilitarian in nature. This is something you can play up if you feel like inner system characters are getting the shaft. An open source hammer is just that: a hammer. The hammer from the inner system is made from a fancy new meta-material that transfers less force from the blow back into your hand, making it more comfortable to use. Will both get the job done? Absolutely. Will characters from different parts of the system argue for hours about which item is superior? Absolutely.

They don't need different stats. It would mostly just be for RP purposes whether they have a shitty hammer or a nice one. It's like the difference between the character dressing in rags or in a finely tailored suit. Same stats (no armor), but wildly different RP-wise. However, as I said, you have to consider times where you may not wish to use a CM to make things. If time is of the essence, or you need something for which a blueprint does not exist. Another thing to consider is feedstock: Most of the cost of an item comes from the materials, so at best you get a small savings by fabricating it. If you can even get all the required materials in the first place. Equivalent exchange and all that, can't throw in crops and get handguns.

templariomaster wrote:

So If you want basic stuff, go to Locus. If you have money go to extropia and get advanced stuff. If you demonstrate to the ultimates that you're worth it, then you can go for their special designs at leve 5 of U-rep. If you advance in the military rankings of the jovian republic then you can access to their secret designs, as it would happen in the planetary consortium. In fact, this is kind of a constant for all factions.

It's more: If you want something that just works, go open source. If you want something that works, has neat bells and whistles, and you can make people with less money then you feel inferior with, go proprietary.

It's not just a matter of going to some open-source station and getting all the blueprints they need and heading off to the Jovian Republic to happily fab every piece of equipment they want. Restrictions will be placed on the available fabbers/cornucopia machines themselves in other areas. Clippy comes up and says, "It looks like you're trying to fab a plasma rifle! I've contacted the police! You're welcome!" Restrictions could be placed on what blueprints you bring in... you could be required to submit to a check on what kinds of files you're bringing in when you farcast. This could also keep you from bringing in hacks and viruses. And if you come in physically on a ship (a pretty big burden in its own right), it may be illegal to bring unrestricted fabbers with you and customs can do searches. So if your characters can get around all that, AND get the necessary materials, let them fab their plasma rifle. Don't get caught with it.

Linux. Windows. That's all I have to say.

Alkahest wrote:

Linux. Windows. That's all I have to say.

Yep. One is a closed-source, rent seeking, money-maker designed to lock you into a single upgrade path with crappy support, massive security holes, a one-size-fits-most mentality that doesn't care about those whose needs aren't met, and a monopolistic disregard for customer service, but has a schnazzy GUI that eats up processing power. The other is a trusted, well known, well-designed OS with hundreds of customized and specialized iterations for every concieveable need that is considered secure enough and stable enough to be trusted by the people that know computers to be the option of choice for managing the backbones of the Internet, but isn't as pretty out of the box. Yep. I have to say, Alkahest, you made a really good argument for Open Source there. :)

One thing to remember is that [i]any[/i] nanofabrication design which comes out of the PC, LLA or Morningstar Alliance is going to have been cracked and released for free within a month, tops. And it will be clearly labeled "Skinthetic Chrome(tm) brand cybereyes model 2143 rev.1 January 10" or something to that effect. That's not a Research test, that's a quick Google.

uwtartarus wrote:

I thought the Research skill *was* a [Space-]Google search, that's why Muses do it for you at 40.

I think that's a symptom of RPGs wanting to make the players roll for everything, which is not, to my way of mind, nessessary. You don't need to roll research to make a Space-Google. That's what [i]computers[/i] are for. They either work or they don't, especially as search technology gets more and more advanced. How long has it been since you had to dig down to the second page of Google search results? The third? Fifth? Tenth? I'm willing to bet it's been so long you only remember it as something you used to have to do a long time ago. EP will have another 130 [i]years[/i] to perfect that, and that's not even counting on your Muse, with intimate personal knowledge of how you think, customizing your search parameters to account for your own foibles, quirks and desires, [i]and then[/i] probably actively filtering the results to get the ones you need the most. You know when you need to roll Research? When you're trying to find information that isn't readily available and clearly marked on the Mesh: Searching through a mountain of old hard data storage that was never uploaded, trying to find something which has been obfuscated, doing old-fashioned legwork by contacting people to get them to reveal to you the seeeecrets in their gray matter or cyberbrains which have not been put on the mesh. Collating data from several different resources to form a customized information pattern that suits exactly what you need to know, such as tracking someone's steps through the city of Elysium by their mesh pings from a week ago.

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:

Given that I have friends and housemates who will ask me to google something for them, because their google-fu is so bad they couldn't find it. I suspect that there [b]is[/b] a research skill, and that there will be people with poor scores in it. Although I would make most stuff of trivial difficulty, so you only fail on a fumble.

There is a research skill, you just don't need it to space-google something. If they can screw up a Google, what they have is not a poor research skill (they might be aces at research in a physical library,) but the Incompetent negative trait applied to Interfacing. Fortunately, they (will, in EP,) have a muse who does [i]not[/i] have Incompetent: Interfacing.

Aldrich wrote:

I actually agree. With my first example I was shooting for a blueprint that was so obscure that it wasn't available on most of the mesh. I don't like extra rolls and was only putting it forward as an additional source of time control for a GM who's trying to control fabrication on a time-limited basis. Thinking about my second proposal some more: if you're playing a game that focuses heavily on blueprints and DRM, it might make sense to call for research to select an above-average *propriety* blueprint, given the prevalence of false positive reviews, deceptive marketing, fanboi zeal, etc. that there is to sift through. Not something I'd include in an average game though. And I'm probably biased right now, I've been working on systems for detecting opinion/review spam recently irl.

I would point out that, with your suggestion of a production run which is specifically flawed, but so widely known to be specifically flawed and so specifically flawed as to conform to a specification (just not the right one,) that people have will likely have engineered a part on the off-spec to fit that specific part. Also, any mesh enquiries about parts for that engine will likely pop up, in [size=30][color=#FF0000]GIGANTIC RED LETTERS[/color][/size] that there are widely known problems with that particular part, and that anyone doing anything should verify exactly what they're dealing with manually. That's not nearly as strange as you'd think. I have a friend who owns a VW Passat that was made at the very tail end of the model year production run, when they were gearing down so they could retool the planet to build the new model year. To get the last few hundred cars together, they didn't always have all of the exact parts they needed, so they bodged them together, upgrading on some bits if necessary, and using whatever came to hand otherwise. For instance, his door panel has the switch for heated mirrors... But he hasn't got heated mirrors. And any time he goes in to the dealership to get a part, it pops up on their screen in big red letters that everything about the vehicle is suspected to be off-spec, and to manually verify all part numbers. Anyway, if you're looking for an above-average blueprint, or a proprietary blueprint whose hacked copies have yet to hit the mainstream in the system, a research roll is probably called for, because you can, as you suggested, expect chaff; you can probably also expect fake hacked blueprints distributed by the owners in question designed to frag your nanofabber (and probably infest your mesh inserts with propaganda and viruses,) or at least build a device which is designed to fail spectacularly. If you're on Mars or Luna or a PC/LLA habitat and trying to acquire pretty much anything open-source, let alone hacked, then you also have to deal with the censorship firewalls. The way I handle that is to assume that unless you've done something in the past which has brought you to the notice of sapient entities, you can expect a dumb AI to roll an opposed Infosec on you. So if you just take the extra time to keep things on the down-low (IE, impose a -40 penalty on its roll,) you're fine.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

That's not nearly as strange as you'd think. I have a friend who owns a VW Passat that was made at the very tail end of the model year production run, when they were gearing down so they could retool the PLANET to build the new model year. To get the last few hundred cars together, they didn't always have all of the exact parts they needed, so they bodged them together, upgrading on some bits if necessary, and using whatever came to hand otherwise. For instance, his door panel has the switch for heated mirrors... But he hasn't got heated mirrors. And any time he goes in to the dealership to get a part, it pops up on their screen in big red letters that everything about the vehicle is suspected to be off-spec, and to manually verify all part numbers.

…I like what the typo implies, which is terrifying.

Lorsa: I'd expect, in EP, that the mesh inserts would be installed and grow with the child, but they wouldn't turn on all at once, and most mesh inserts would have a "growing system" in place to self-activate as the youngster grows. After all, you probably want your kid to grow up used to the intangible stuff in his field of view, right?

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:

According to the RAW, space-google is exactly what research is. Sure, simple stuff probably won't need a roll; the skill comes into play when you have to actively extrapolate from the data provided, or include data from darknets, or using acronyms and slang to conceal illicit information, or filter out disinformation and so on.

That is pretty much what I just said, isn't it?

Quote:

When's the last time I had to go to page 2? 10 days ago, when I last used google scholar to search academic papers.

Oooooh. You were looking for very obscure information using a specialized tool and you had to go as far as page [i]two?![/i]You must have been searching for secrets buried as deep as Jimmy Hoffa.[/sarcasm] You sort of made my own case here. Page 2 to get what you need is [i]not[/i] an awful lot of difficulty. I'm willing to bet your muse would have been able to trim down the entries to the point where the ones you finally needed were the very first ones on the top.

Quote:

In any case, I'd like to +1 the importance of Hardware and Knowledge skills when it comes to blueprints. It's all very well using your +100 to research to get a blueprint for an assault rifle, print one off, and take it into battle... only to find it sticks out a small flag with "Bang!" on it when you pull the trigger, or dynamically alters the ammunition so you're hosing your enemies down with "Hither" splash-rounds. Or just plain explodes, for that matter.

There's a very easy way to handle that. You don't need any Hardware skill at all. Tell your muse to filter out any entries which were posted by anyone with an @-Rep or r-Rep of less than 40. Tell it to filter out any entries which were posted by anyone whose verifiable history doesn't date back at least eight years and doesn't carry rep scores on at least three listings. Tell it to filter out any entries from people whose rep took a dive shortly after its posting, tell it to filter out any entries with large numbers of negative reviews, and tell it to filter out anyone whose c-Rep is above 20, and, above all, tell it to filter out any entries from anyone who has complaints against them for releasing sabotaged/junk blueprints. There you go. You can now be pretty damn sure your rifle is going to shoot bullets the way you meant it to. In a campaign where the players make large use of researched blueprints, I'd be tempted use something like this: "When a player uses research to find a blueprint for a ranged weapon, roll once on each of the following tables. If the blueprint is pirated, roll twice on each table and use the higher values. If the blueprint is open source, add 2 to your rolls. For each 10 MoS the player achieves on his roll, add 1 to the first roll or subtract 1 from the second roll. A successful Hardware: Armourer check will allow them to discover the alterations to the blueprint.

Quote:

--Weapon Blueprint Table This gun is so sweet... 1, 2, 3: Standard Model 4, 5: Increase all ranges by 10% 6, 7: +2 DV 8, 9 -2 AP 10, 11: Either -2 AP, +2 DV or 10% increase to all ranges, which can be swapped with a complex action 12: -2 AP, +2 DV and 10% increase to all ranges … or it would be, if it wasn't for... 1, 2, 3: Standard Model 4, 5: Decrease all ranges by 10% 6, 7: -2 DV 8, 9 +2 AP 10, 11: -2 AP, +2 DV and 10% increase to all ranges 12: Boobytraped: Upon firing the weapon automatically backfires, performing an attack with skill 60 against the wielder and destroying itself in the process."

That's nice, except the models which were 12s on the "sweet" table and 1-3 on the "if not for" table would all quickly shoot to the top by virtue of being bumped for being [i]fucking awesome[/i], whilst those which had anything above a 3 on the "not for" table would be [i]panned[/i], especially anything above a 5. 12s would have toxic rep and ego hunters out looking for the corporate jackass responsible for putting a trapped weapon on the mesh so as to melt his stack. And your muse will be able to filter for that shit, perfectly. So you can basically count on everybody and their mum having a gun with -2 AP, +2 DV, and 10% longer range than usual. (Also, I think you meant +2 AP, -2 DV, and 10% decrease for 10 and 11 on the "if not for" table, because as-written, that's another bonus equal to 12 on the "sweet" table. So a weapon which was 12-sweet and 10-11-not-for table would be -4 AP, +4 DV and 20% range.)