As far as I understand, of the two "Martian" morphs, only the Alpiner is technically suited to survive all terrains on Mars. And even then, they might need a warm jacket in the poles at night, during the winter. Temperature Tolerance (Improved Cold) goes as low as -80 C. Low Pressure Tolerance doesn't specify exactly how low a pressure it protects you from, but it gives you up to five minutes in hard vacuum before you really start hurting. The Alpiner doesn't even bother trying to handle respiration on its own, it uses Respirocytes and the Oxygen Reserve to basically internalize an air breather. This is at the cost, also, of the Fast Metabolism. For comparison, the Ruster's enhanced respiration allows breathing in atmospheres between .2 ATM and 5 ATM of pressure. This still requires an appropriate concentration of oxygen, to my understanding, just it means your tolerance is much wider. They also have regular temperature tolerance, which is -30 to 60 C. In Sunward, it says flat out, there's not enough O2 for conventional biomorphs to breathe, though the Enhanced Respiration will settle that (Though personally, I say that in the highlands, the Low Pressure still gets you without some gear and maybe an airmask). That's why most people live in domes, and the Ruster is kind of a shill for the "redneck" populace working the lines in the hinterlands who don't need air masks or tin cans to survive. The Breather backpack unit isn't pressurized, but it does produce a reserve of up to 8 hours of air, but it "recycles" it, so I assume that means it takes in CO2 to store O2 (normally this is solar powered, but it has up to 24 hours of battery life). That being said, I like some of the ideas put forward with the quicksands or the acidic waters (I could easily see that last one coming into play for nano-ecologists or others trying to build stable rust-cultured organisms and messing with their delicate balance). I'd actually say Isolation is only a problem in the Zone, where communication out is jammed, and communication inside has to be brought with you, and will probably be picked up on, unless you're deliberately trying. Mars has plenty of satellite coverage which can translate to mesh coverage pretty easy, not counting that because it's so large, major roadways, air ways and train-lines probably have mesh nodes to connect the various city-states. I'd only be a concern if you deliberately went out into the middle of nowhere for some reason, and didn't pack your radio boosters when your buggy runs into some quicksand or is buried in a landslide. Mars has a decent amount of small settlements, either terraforming stations, agridomes or nomadic groups, but if you go offroading I could see the terrain breaking up radio enough to make direct calls a problem.

ORCACommander wrote:

Low pressure tolerance/adaptation is probably left purposefully vague so players and GM's could customize it. ah thought so. Might want to express things here in psi, bars/atm and celsius as apart from aeron ara.... man with the highest post count has little practical experience dealing with kelvin and the pascal scale. I only recognized the latter from dealing with Kilopascals way back in high school and have no idea what the h meant

There are unit translators. Just google it. One hazard that I would go with would be the classic dust storms. You would get abrasion damage and it could mess with gear.

Leetsepeak wrote:

I don't think they have Satellites over Mars that connect everything everywhere to the Mesh. Not because it's impossible or beyond the means of Mars or the PC (It seems like it'd be easily done) but because that sort of thing is generally understood to be a bad idea after how it made the situation worse on Earth with the Exsurgent Virus. I'm pretty sure that's why you don't see a sort of universal, unified Mesh throughout the system, it's localized to prevent mass contamination.

The Mesh is (almost) entirely PtP. There's no need for a satellite when you can route your signal through anything within 20 kilometers (for Mesh Inserts in the open). The only places that don't have this are places where people aren't, like the TQZ or an uncolonized exoplanet, and the Jovian Republic, where they are insanely paranoid about info-sec. Otherwise, the main (as far as I can tell) reason that there isn't a "unified Mesh" is due to lightspeed lag. You just can't get information from, say, Venus to Mars in less than the time it takes light to travel between them unless you are using a hellishly expensive QC device.