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Pod brains, why?

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Thu, 2015-05-28 19:03
trismegiste trismegiste's picture
The answer is somewhat
The answer is somewhat unclear: * ego bridges are vat device featuring nanobot (page 328) * they are needed for resleeving in all types of brain (page 269) * but an ego can evacuate a cyberbrain in a round without the help of any device (page 271) So for game balance concerns, I've decided an ego-bridge is mandatory for uploading (not downloading) into a cyberbrain. From my POV, it makes senses to adapt/translate informations from one body to another (change of sex, sensors, limbs count, hardware incompatibilty etc...) and for security reasons too. It's like a flashing an EPROM : you need a device to write to a cyberbrain. Infomorphs don't need ego-bridge because it's like virtual machines, hardware is emulated.
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Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced
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Thu, 2015-05-28 21:57
ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
<3 ego bridges. ran a bump in
<3 ego bridges. ran a bump in the night and some stray weapon fire hit one while active. I gave the NPC multiple personality disorder do to data corruption and duplication :P Personally i do not go with the nano vat approach. I picture them more as probing tubes that attach to the temples. Cyberbrains i think would require a hard connection instead because of bandwidth and security reasons.
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Thu, 2015-05-28 22:59
Lazarus Lazarus's picture
uwtartarus wrote:Quick
uwtartarus wrote:
Quick question: do you need an Ego Bridge to upload out of or into a Cyberbrain? I can't recall off hand.
You don't actually need an ego bridge in either case, in an absolute sense. An ego bridge is used to read and write to a biological brain. If your transfer only involves servers and cyberbrains (server to server, cyberbrain to cyberbrain, server to cyberbrain, or cyberbrain to server) then you don't need one at all. The particular transhuman mind is just electronic data and it can easily be copied or moved. As soon as a meat brain is involved then the ego bridge has to be used, either to read the meat brain, write to the meat brain, or both.
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My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.
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Fri, 2015-05-29 02:46
uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture
That is what I thought but
That is what I thought but for a second, I couldn't recall. It is a compact breadbox sized device that opens like a flower, insert head, nanoprobes upload, takes an hour for biomorphs, and half that for pods, just couldn't remember if it was ever necessary for Cyberbrains, for things like security issues.
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Exhuman, and Humanitarian.
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Fri, 2015-05-29 03:21
slickMundane slickMundane's picture
Cortical Stacks and ego bridge
Aren't ego bridges used to recover ego's from a cortical stack? Could a fork be stolen in this way? I was planning on having an early firewall mission be to use an ego bridge to forknap an ego recently returned from a gatecrashing mission while their cortical stack was with the gear upon return. Does pulling an ego out of a cortical stack erase the stack in the process or could it be left intact? Also, if an ego was forknapped in this manner, where would the ego be stored? USB stick? To further draw out the idea, what about egocasting a forknapped ego?
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Fri, 2015-05-29 09:38
ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
an ego bridge is a multi
an ego bridge is a multi function machine. the grape would placed in a specialized slot into the bridge and from there it would be down streamed either into a biological morph or sent to a synth or server cluster or cold storage. second question, why is his stack in his gear? these things are embed into the c1 vertebrae. nearly impossible to remove in the field without killing the person. and if a gatecrash is pulling out with casualties then i doubt the brought back personnel affects.
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Fri, 2015-05-29 11:08
Lazarus Lazarus's picture
slickMundane wrote:Aren't ego
slickMundane wrote:
Aren't ego bridges used to recover ego's from a cortical stack? Could a fork be stolen in this way? I was planning on having an early firewall mission be to use an ego bridge to forknap an ego recently returned from a gatecrashing mission while their cortical stack was with the gear upon return. Does pulling an ego out of a cortical stack erase the stack in the process or could it be left intact? Also, if an ego was forknapped in this manner, where would the ego be stored? USB stick? To further draw out the idea, what about egocasting a forknapped ego?
As Orca said, you're probably not fully understanding what a cortical stack is as it sounds like you think they would just be sitting around, but beyond that you are basically correct. I don't recall reading anything that says that a cortical stack can only be read once (and it wouldn't make much sense if they were designed that way since they can be written to many times). A forknapping is really just an involuntary (on the part of the ego) copy of an ego, so you could forknap someone from their cortical stack. For this reason cortical stacks are probably wiped after they've been used to restore a person (don't want to leave that copy around like that) but again, I can't see any reason to believe the wiping of the stack is automatic since there's no real point to that (someone could just run the copy to another form of storage and then just copy the data back to the now wiped cortical stack if that was how they worked). You could also forknap someone with an ego bridge by placing them in the bridge against their will (such as after drugging them). You could burn a copy of an ego after it's been ego cast (either at the transmitting or receiving). If you could get access to someone's backup you could make a copy of their ego. All of these are forms of forknapping. Once you've forknapped someone you've got a digital copy of their ego and you can treat it like any other piece of digital data. I don't know if there are USB storage devices in the EP universe (it kind of seems like there aren't because ectos have so much storage) but you can store an ego in a device no larger than a grape (since that's the size of a cortical stack). You can store it in a ghost rider module. You could egocast it. According to transhuman it is possible for an informorph to reside in an ecto (although it severely limits the infomorph) so you could put an ego into an ecto. You could even, conceivably, make a hard copy of an ego and print it out on paper (although that would probably take an awful lot of paper even if you were to use advanced storage techniques similar to QRCodes and the like). It should be noted that at this point the ego is like a computer program. It is not automatically running just because it's been digitized. You could store a non-running version on an ecto. If you cast the forknapped ego elsewhere it can't just automatically attempt to escape. In a few cases it is quite possible that the ego can be stored but it isn't capable of being run because of issues of computing power and throughput (cortical stacks work this way).
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My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.
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Sat, 2015-05-30 02:22
jKaiser jKaiser's picture
Quote:It should be noted that
Quote:
It should be noted that at this point the ego is like a computer program. It is not automatically running just because it's been digitized. You could store a non-running version on an ecto. If you cast the forknapped ego elsewhere it can't just automatically attempt to escape. In a few cases it is quite possible that the ego can be stored but it isn't capable of being run because of issues of computing power and throughput (cortical stacks work this way).
This, exactly. I think this is what the books refer to as dead storage. Though I do wonder if it's not preferential to install an old stack into a new biomorph or pod with nanomedical assistance. Seems to me that would help a bit with continuity concerns, not to mention...well, something's got to be done with wiped stacks, and they have to be implanted eventually.
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Sat, 2015-05-30 09:40
ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
Yep Dead Storage is the state
Yep Dead Storage is the state in which you only exist as a file on a hard drive that no one is executing. Problem with cortical stack transplants is that stacks do not perform write operations on the brain. thus once the stack is activated it is going to take a snap shot of what ever is currently in there.
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Fri, 2015-06-12 03:50
slickMundane slickMundane's picture
Cortical stacks
My idea was that the body was in some way destroyed in an industrial accident of some sort. The gatecrashers are on an extended mining operation setup and something went wrong. So the stack was recovered but the morph was toasted. Possibly the stack is still embedded in the morph. When the group returns through the gate, the stack is, for a short time, left in quarantine storage with the majority of the teams other effects as they go through their debriefing. This gives my sentinels a narrow window in which to infiltrate the facility, use an ego bridge to copy the stack, and get out again before they are detected. Copying from the stack to an ecto or some other storage device should be nearly instantaneous right? My group is entirely new to EP and I wanted to start with some simple tasks that would run us through the rules while building towards a bigger series of firewall missions. The ego being forknapped is being taken for questioning prior to firewall recruitment, which i plan to use to help my players remember and flesh out their own recruitment procedures. So, to return to the topic, copying an ego from a stack to a storage device of some sort with an ego bridge should be a quick and simple operation, right?
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