How many nanoswarms can you stack?
To my reading, the rules seem to imply that nanoswarms [i]do not[/i] stack. The rules say:
“Swarms are treated as a whole. The standard swarm size is enough to cover a 10 × 10 × 10 meter cube, and this is the standard “unit” of swarm released by a canister or hive. Swarms may be larger, but they are treated as individual swarm units. Each swarm has a Durability of 50 and is immune to wounds.” (Core, 4th printing, p.329)
My reading of “Swarms may be larger, but they are treated as individual swarm units.” is that the intention is that multiple swarms cover a larger area, but cannot be used in the same area to create denser swarms e.g. stacking dissembler swarms on one target to inflict 2 x 1d5 damage per action turn.
This limits the effectiveness of e.g. seeker pistols firing 2 splash rounds at once semi-automatically because the second round is just widening the area of effect.
On the other hand, there seems to be no ‘real world’ reason why you couldn’t simply have a denser nanoswarm in one place, and perhaps I am misinterpreting the rules and they are simply saying “no matter how many swarms are in one area, treat them separately for durability and damage purposes”.
p.s. Incidentally, a splash round paints a 20x20x20m area with a nanoswarm, whereas a single nanoswarm occupies a 10x10x10m area. So either you can load 4 nanoswarms into a splash round, or the swarm is only 25% effective (being spread over a 4 times bigger area). How would you guys rule this?
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How many nanoswarms can you stack?
Sun, 2014-08-24 06:24
#1
Karmarainbow
How many nanoswarms can you stack?
Sun, 2014-08-24 10:38
#2
Alan Wiggs
Practical concerns
This is one of those questions with a "rules headache" solution and a "physics-laced-with-handwavium" solution.
if nanoswarms are allowed to stack/dissapate, and you're dumping several of them into one area, you start seeing serious bookkeeping issues. "This area has double-strength dissassemblers, this area triple-strength, and this with 25% effectiveness from one being spread across a 20x20x20 volume..."
I'd say that most of the time you're not doing strict recordskeeping when it comes to the exact volume of the combat zone, so calculating by just "more swarms = more discrete units" is the easiest way to go. That said, when you're talking groups of invisibly small machines, it doesn't make a lot of sense that you can't make the swarm denser. So, what would the mechanics of nanoswarms suggest?
A nanoswarm is an emergent entity - not just a pile of individuals like grains of sand. Nanites work together to accomplish their goals, and that requires particular programming parameters. I'd imagine those parameters require a particular distance from one another, moving in particular patterns, etc. Just dumping more into a smaller area isn't necessarily going to have a directly scaling effect. Were i adjucating this, I'd say each successive nanoswarm has a 50% diminished effect, up to a stack of 3. So 3 stacked swarms would be 1.75 times effective as one, and any further swarms would be wasted. Again, this reduces the rules headache, prevents too much munchkining, and still gives some utility to the idea. Maybe the synergy could be increased with a successful Programming test, at the expense of a limited lifetime? Or something? Eyeballing it here.
For swarms without numeric effects, the only real benefit would be soaking up more damage, as the swarm has more resilience against things like fire. EMP would likely be just as effective though - more "surface area" isn't going to harden them against EM, so each swarm takes full damage.
Disclaimer: not playtested, inexperienced GM, open to interpretation. But that's my take.
Sun, 2014-08-24 10:39
#3
Alan Wiggs
TL;DR
That post got out of hand. tl;dr: Stacking has diminishing returns and should have a hard cap because reasons.
Sun, 2014-08-24 13:59
#4
ShadowDragon8685
I just allow stacking. If you
I just allow stacking. If you're really worried about coming under hostile nano-attack, for instance, you might want to install double or triply-redundant Guardian nanoswarms in yourself and your kit, so they'll hopefully murderize the shit out of incoming swarms before the incoming swarm does much damage to you.
Get [i]enough[/i] Guardians in yourself and you can walk basically unscathed through even a TITAN nanoswarm... But you'll need an absolutely insane number of swarms, enough to want to reliably deal 100+ damage/turn, so your spine is basically going to be made out of guardian nanoswarm hives or something.
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Mon, 2014-08-25 00:22
#5
Darn_the_Vargr
This is what you Want
Hey Lorsa. I was catching up and looking for info for my own group and found this. Sadly no one's really responded to your question, but Alan's pretty much answered it, methinks. This lines up with my own close read of the material. The answer to rules problems isnt "Oh just let my players do whatever," but it's looking at it critically and with a brain. His stand out statement is the passage about them being emergent entities and the swarms' behavior conflicting with others.
I'm a bit exhausted from the work week, but overall, I would endorse his idea about reduced effectiveness. At most, I'd say," Oh well increasing the swarm size would be effective against more mass. But their general purpose and ability would be the same." So, maybe think about proportion and not density in your own ruleset.
The golden rule is to have fun. If there's a player that's causing you to think about this, just sit down and talk. Honestly if the transhuman had a really interesting idea my response would be yes, or a let's tweak-this-yes. If you've GMd for a while you probably have already dealt with these situations.
Fortunately I've gotten the less crunchy more stranger things. Like players not wanting to resleeve/wanting to be werewolves/wanting to be uplifting cats. I've given constructive affirmatives to them all :3
Cheerios!
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Tue, 2014-08-26 15:22
#6
Karmarainbow
Thanks for your comments.
Thanks for your comments.
Alan - thanks for the idea about diminishing returns, which I hadn't thought of.
Darn - thanks. Actually it's not a player so much as me working out what I can do to them... Though it would be good to have a sensible explanation for why nanoswarms can't stack if that's the way i run with it.
Wed, 2014-08-27 06:34
#7
ThatWhichNeverWas
Karmarainbow wrote:Though it
I can do that!
The standard swarm size is large enough to "cover" a 10m cube... and cover it completely. So enough to saturate a 600m^2 area. Wikipedia says the average surface area of a human male is about 2m^2, females slightly less.
So we say that the swarm as a default is dense enough to saturate the surface of the object being attacked (if it can fit in that area); more swarms don't do more damage because there's simply no free area left to attack.
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Wed, 2014-08-27 16:12
#8
Karmarainbow
Thanks ThatWNW But if
Thanks ThatWNW But if everyone in the area was completely covered in nanites without a mm to spare, wouldn't they cease to be invisible? If they covered your eyes completely you wouldn't be able to see?
Wed, 2014-08-27 17:58
#9
ORCACommander
depends on the nanite's
depends on the nanite's optical properties but most things a molecule thick are transparent
Thu, 2014-08-28 09:47
#10
ThatWhichNeverWas
Having disassemblers on your eyes may effect vision I suppose...
Pretty much what ORCACommander said; even the larger nanobots aren't going to be bigger than a skin cell. So they're as visible - and disrupt vision - about as much as the layer of dust coating your skin and eyes right now. Worst case, you get a slight tint effect, as the individual bots are too small to see with the naked eye.
This page is useful for understanding just how stupidly small these these things would be.
Microbots are a different matter, but they're visible in any case, so it isn't an issue.
Being swarmed by injector microbots? Utterly horrifying.
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In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few.
But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?
Thu, 2014-08-28 16:13
#11
Karmarainbow
Got it, thanks all
Got it, thanks all
Sun, 2014-08-31 22:27
#12
Darn_the_Vargr
That's a rather...interesting
That's a rather...interesting way to visualize nanobots. Definitely food for thought. The 600m^2 vs 2m^2 is such a disparate contrast!
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