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Early Martian Wheels and maybe more.

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Sat, 2015-04-18 09:52
#1
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
Early Martian Wheels and maybe more.
Since I got the Book of Armaments into a release state, I went back and added another manufacturer, with more modern vehicles, to this document. And since it was primarily Martian in nature, I went ahead and renamed it Martian Motors. Please, [url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TlVeDGs3wNuf6QycaQIREKdBUEQ8h0PNsLWD... the doc[/url]. It has [i]pictures[/i]. I would post the PDF, but unfortunately it's greater than 1mg in size. I oughta try and fix that, and maybe I will later.
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Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
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Sun, 2015-04-19 00:27
Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture
These seem pretty useful for
These seem pretty useful for expanding the number of vehicle statlines. I don't have a ton to say because the rules seem pretty functional. What do you plan on doing for the tank weapons? They seem fairly untouchable right now so I'm curious.
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Sun, 2015-04-19 02:35
SquireNed SquireNed's picture
Cost balancing?
I haven't really had a chance to use these, but I don't see anything horribly wrong with anything I'm looking at. There's certainly a lot of balance issues with putting armored vehicles in right now, but that's just because EP doesn't have good combat gear (and I will passively aggressively pimp AUGC here), especially when it comes to the sufficient dakka category. My only question comes with the costs for the vehicles; there's not a strong baseline in Eclipse Phase, and I know that I tend to err on the side of expensive rather than cheap, but I feel like you've got a problem with a lot of the vehicle modifications easily being as or more expensive than the vehicles they're getting strapped onto, and I'm not sure that it's because the modifications are too cheap. You might want to use stats similar to my assault cannon for some of the light armored vehicle weapons. The assault cannon is loosely based on a 30mm autocannon in terms of design specs: Assault Cannon DV: 3d10+16 AP: -20 Average DV: 32 Firing Modes: SS Ammo: 2
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Sun, 2015-04-19 03:35
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
Trappedinwikipedia wrote
Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
These seem pretty useful for expanding the number of vehicle statlines. I don't have a ton to say because the rules seem pretty functional. What do you plan on doing for the tank weapons? They seem fairly untouchable right now so I'm curious.
Probably something similar to SquireNed's proposed stats, actually. I'll probably expand it to allow for explosive-filled shells and such.
SquireNed wrote:
I haven't really had a chance to use these, but I don't see anything horribly wrong with anything I'm looking at. There's certainly a lot of balance issues with putting armored vehicles in right now, but that's just because EP doesn't have good combat gear (and I will passively aggressively pimp AUGC here), especially when it comes to the sufficient dakka category. My only question comes with the costs for the vehicles; there's not a strong baseline in Eclipse Phase, and I know that I tend to err on the side of expensive rather than cheap, but I feel like you've got a problem with a lot of the vehicle modifications easily being as or more expensive than the vehicles they're getting strapped onto, and I'm not sure that it's because the modifications are too cheap. You might want to use stats similar to my assault cannon for some of the light armored vehicle weapons. The assault cannon is loosely based on a 30mm autocannon in terms of design specs: Assault Cannon DV: 3d10+16 AP: -20 Average DV: 32 Firing Modes: SS Ammo: 2
Is that one called the "Panther," by any chance? The Shadowrun is strong in you, I suspect. I'll think about the prices, but I don't want these - or at least, the reasonably-acquirable ones - to be so far out of PCs' grasp that it's stupid.
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Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
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Sun, 2015-04-19 11:27
jKaiser jKaiser's picture
Regarding the prices, I
Regarding the prices, I imagine these'd be more on the "requisition, beg, borrow, or steal" list for most PCs, especially those who travel or egocast a lot. Maybe some kind of flexible procurement roll where it's not just a rep thing? EDIT: Having recently finished Red Mars, I was struck by the depiction of vehicles in that book, most of which were meant for going between settlements and a lot was put into describing just how much land there is to cover, so most of them were less cars and more mobile home rovers. So...got a sand crawler-as-done-by-Burning Man for the Great Escarpment nomads? Because in complete seriousness, keeping that and a fleet of your vehicles here operational could be a fun little version of a "protect your home town" style campaigns.
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Sun, 2015-04-19 15:30
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
Not every group is a default
Not every group is a default egocasting Firewall group, and for those that are settled on Mars, scraping up the cash to own a big fuck-off Red Faction type Martian pickup truck should not be remotely out of the realm of possibility.
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Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
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Sun, 2015-04-19 15:48
jKaiser jKaiser's picture
I agree. Apologies if I
I agree. Apologies if I worded that badly. That said, I worry a bit about assigning a flat cost to the thing and setting that as the goal for the players wholesale. In my experience, if players save up a significant amount of cash, best laid plans tend to go up in smoke along with whatever's on the business end of their new toy. More seriously and in-universe, a band of PC maker, sufi, or Movement nomads likely are more keen on finding other ways to get their needs met than through currency or rep, since both leave a paper trail. But I don't know enough about terrestrial vehicles to suggest a breakdown for parts-by-rarity/difficult-to-fabricate. Though...damn, that could be a really fun game, having to venture out, scavenging parts here, stealing valuables for trade there, hearing about a junked version of your mobile home that some crasher spotted in the TQZ and debating risk/reward. But then, I love smaller scale stories. As for thoughts on other vehicles, a mobile greenhouse would be a useful option.
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Sun, 2015-04-19 16:09
UnitOmega UnitOmega's picture
Quote:As for thoughts on
Quote:
As for thoughts on other vehicles, a mobile greenhouse would be a useful option.
Yoink.
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H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/
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Sun, 2015-04-19 16:47
templariomaster templariomaster's picture
Hmmmn... why don't centralize
Hmmmn... why don't centralize contributions in one single post? When I start a game I always ask my players what kind of weapon they want, and then I create 3 weapons of the type they asked to choose, and during the game I keep creating more(and not only weapons but also gadgets or even morphs). After years I have accumulated an armory of weapons with their own background(mostly pistols, people don't seem to like machine guns or rifles for some reason)and I lost the count of how many weapons I did long ago... the only problem is that they're un spanish so I would need months to translate all I wrote, but it would be much more easy to centralize all of this in one post.
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Sun, 2015-04-19 17:04
SquireNed SquireNed's picture
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
Is that one called the "Panther," by any chance? The Shadowrun is strong in you, I suspect. I'll think about the prices, but I don't want these - or at least, the reasonably-acquirable ones - to be so far out of PCs' grasp that it's stupid.
Huh? Shadowrun? What's Shadowrun? Fine, yeah, it's largely inspired by Shadowrun, at least in concept, though I steer somewhat clear of ripping their concepts directly, since, for the most part, tabletop game weapons tend to take their liberties with things like magazine size (the Assault Cannon has a measly 2 ammo because it fires rounds that weigh over a kilogram each, which I fluffed as being ~40x200mm); a Panther with a 22 round magazine would be so prohibitively heavy that a loaded magazine could punch through the floor. Early 2-pounder guns and autocannon gun pods for *vehicles* tended to have twelve to fifteen round belts, and no transhuman wants to lug some of those around. Templariomaster, I think the main reason we don't have central posts is because everyone's interested in different things. For instance, AUGC adds new combat rules that not everyone wants to have to deal with, and includes lots of ways to do tweaks and mods. Basically, there's no homebrew standard (to my knowledge), and as such we don't have a lot of centralization going on.
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Sun, 2015-04-19 17:22
UnitOmega UnitOmega's picture
I agree with SN's thoughts.
I agree with SN's thoughts. Homebrew is a very specific thing to the wants and needs of the homebrew-ist. From AUGC, I personally like several of the weapon stats and mods, but feel that stuff like the maneuvers and weapon qualities are a little more complex than fits my group's normal play-style. It's good quality, but more than I personally want or need. I have similar thoughts about this material SD wrote. It's good stuff, but at the same time, I'm like "damn, this is too much fluff. I spend 4 hours checking my verisimilitude and figuring out shit like future architecture and fashion trends, there's no way my players would ever see or care about a lot of this stuff unless I ran an exceptionally Mars focused situation". It definitely got me thinking into things, though, and I added the vehicle enhancements to my own homebrew master list (and would use the Dual-Barrel or Dual-Linked weapons if I could think of a good way to keep it balanced but also interesting), but some of the degree of specificity in the extant vehicle builds is more than I need. It did give me my own ideas for some slightly more genericized utility or combat type vehicles though, which I may or may not post (probably in my own thread, adding yet another to the graveyards of threads which are popular for like, two weeks then nobody ever looks at again)
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H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/
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Sun, 2015-04-19 19:25
jKaiser jKaiser's picture
That sadly seems to be a
That sadly seems to be a trend on this forum. I have a feeling half of us would happily sleeve into hyperbrights, which I've always imagined having super ADHD. One thing I might suggest is figure out the essential stats for a whole class of similar vehicles. d20 Modern and World of Darkness (and more, I'm sure) went this route with weapons and vehicles (IIRC the Arms and Armor guide gave stats for things like "compact car, Sedan, Pickup Truck, SUV, Large truck, and a few examples that fit in each category), and to a point EP does with its weapons. Figure out what the broadest categories you can make for these vehicles (rover, buggy, sandcrawler, etc.) and customized it ad hoc from there. That way you can also modify them easily to fit other locales. Anything built for Mars-standard would probably be useful in Gatecrashing on similar worlds. A Mercury-variant needs just a sentence's worth of modification to work, too. And, frankly, .38g motocross is something that we need more of.
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Sun, 2015-04-19 23:38
jasonbrisbane jasonbrisbane's picture
jkaiser, you crack me up...
jkaiser, you crack me up... Disney Ip.... har har har....... I too like the idea of more Mars vehicles. I like the idea of: - mobile homes for ruster morphs (or splicer with temp tolerance and oxygen reserves..) - primarily for the people roaming the surface... - motorbike types - for city travelling - trucks - such as that mentioned above. Id think that two or three of each category with different features: Budget version, middle of the line common version and top of the range version; each with options for modifying speed, handling, armor, extra cabs, oxygen reserves, etc that can then be applied as "vehicular extras" that the sales person will try to sell you.... (In order to make each vehicle just that bit different) (and yes, the mods can be applied in the negative to make vehicles cheaper... (common motorbike that handles worse than the budget model - but hey at least its cheap!
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Regards, Jason Brisbane
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Mon, 2015-04-20 07:37
ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture
Yup, those sure are vehicles!
UnitOmega wrote:
I agree with SN's thoughts. Homebrew is a very specific thing to the wants and needs of the homebrew-ist. From AUGC, I personally like several of the weapon stats and mods, but feel that stuff like the maneuvers and weapon qualities are a little more complex than fits my group's normal play-style. It's good quality, but more than I personally want or need. I have similar thoughts about this material SD wrote. It's good stuff, but at the same time, I'm like "damn, this is too much fluff. I spend 4 hours checking my verisimilitude and figuring out shit like future architecture and fashion trends, there's no way my players would ever see or care about a lot of this stuff unless I ran an exceptionally Mars focused situation".
This. The AUGC is neat, but it really doesn't fit my personal tastes or gaming style. Likewise the vehicles above - they're nice and functional, but that just means there's nothing really to say about them, except where they don't gel with my own headcannon - which again isn't something that promotes actual discussion.
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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?
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Tue, 2015-04-21 23:40
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
If anyone's wondering where
If anyone's wondering where any progress on this is... It's stalled. Feature creep led to me launching a document just to contain the rules for heavy weapons, in the name of deduplicating them out of the vehicles document. That morphed into a document containing [i]all[/i] of my weapons rules (and, through feature creep, a few bits of nanotech and a robot.) On the plus side, I now have a comprehensive system for cannon shells!
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Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
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Fri, 2015-04-24 17:23
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
I've made some more progress.
I've made some more progress. Please, check the OP.
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Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
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Sun, 2015-04-26 00:09
jKaiser jKaiser's picture
Well, you made me waste more
Well, you made me waste more time than I really should've smashing so many of these things with a hammer and other fun toys today. Any thoughts on statting up the walkers? And man, EP has made me so bothered that Red Faction's Mars is so scarcely terraformed, and yet people walk around without breathers or heatsuits. But whatever.
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Sun, 2015-04-26 08:20
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
jKaiser wrote:Well, you made
jKaiser wrote:
Well, you made me waste more time than I really should've smashing so many of these things with a hammer and other fun toys today.
I will not apologize for making you spend some time as Space Asshole. :)
Quote:
Any thoughts on statting up the walkers?
Well, the light walker is basically a Daitya you pilot instead of sleeve into, with jump jets. The heavy and combat walkers, however... They would take some deliberation. I'm also wondering if I should go and do a complete vehicle overhaul, with facings and stuff. Hrm...
Quote:
And man, EP has made me so bothered that Red Faction's Mars is so scarcely terraformed, and yet people walk around without breathers or heatsuits. But whatever.
Well, they do seem to be walking around wearing some very heavy stuff. I think the terraforming process in Red Faction's Mars is very accelerated, for Reasons, such that even flats can walk around if they're bundled up. Or you could say that everybody and his dog on Red Faction's Earth has been enhanced to Splicer levels at minimum, and because of the worsening environmental conditions, they frequently have mods like enhanced respiration and improved cold tolerance that make them able to jet around like Rusters.
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Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
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Sun, 2015-04-26 10:53
jKaiser jKaiser's picture
I dunno how accurate
I dunno how accurate everything in the book is, but Red Mars described exactly how nasty it is being on Mars unprotected. Frostbite, depressurization bruises, both, and the dust (or as the characters there indignantly insist, "fines" because mere dust is too gentle a term for the hated stuff) gets into fucking everything. Dustlung would be a huge thing for almost any biomorph, I imagine...which does explain another reason Rusters would have so many health problems, to say nothing of other biomorphs and cases. Admittedly, I'm not much good with vehicles, but I am putting thought into what kind of armor .38g allows for, other than "more and then more." Ablative/reactive armor, tungsten plating...even all that, a big enough railgun is going to turn it into a weak suggestion. Hell, gun they built the A-10 Warthog around makes swiss cheese out of modern tanks as it is. But for more -- heh -- Guerilla actions, terraforming gear could do a nasty number on almost any vehicle. .38g also means, of course, the greatest weapon ever devised will have plenty of even larger offspring. And by god do I want to have a campaign where one of those things gets utilized.
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Sun, 2015-04-26 11:57
Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture
.38 G armor combined with EP
.38 G armor combined with EP materials science will be insane. Graphene armor is 10 times better than steel minimum, while being less than 1/1000 the weight. That means it won't be hard to make a tank which can bounce 16" shells. Of course, that's not the only thing to tank could have armor made of, future ceramics made with molecular precision will probably make Chobham look like ancient RHA. Add in active defenses, whatever advances in reactive armor occur in the next 100+ years, stealth systems, and more and combat vehicles get really stupendously tough. They'll also probably be very fast. Think mini-bolo but really sneaky. They might get larger, to mount more and more powerful weapons, or stay the same size or shrink in order to shrink the amount of armor they need to carry and get extra tough. Advances in computing, potential smart materials, and superior future armor probably mean that EP tanks (really pre-fall tanks, as there probably aren't a whole lot left) can endure a 10 kiloton detonation at ~300 meters or so, perhaps even less without loss of combat capability.
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