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Researching Blueprints in Outer System

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Fri, 2015-07-10 09:35

uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture

Researching Blueprints in Outer System

While I continue to prepare and run the non-Firewall, Saturn system game, I realize that I do not recall how long it takes to Research things like Open Source blueprints. What is the task action timeframe for research blueprints? How difficult should it be to sort through the chaff and find good, working blueprints? Anyone know if there is a straight out of the book answer or have developed their own system for researching these sorts of things. I am not too worried about the players being overpowering because Nanofabrication still sucks up a lot of time plus the assumption of skills to assemble the fabricated objects (I am going to assume that you can't just fully 3D print a Plasma Rifle with bleeding hot star stuff ready to immediately blast something) and rare materials. But things like blueprints made purposefully wrong or buggy, or just with minor technical defects seem like something that might be a risk.

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Exhuman, and Humanitarian.

Fri, 2015-07-10 10:21

DrewDavis

Post Scarcity and You

Signal to noise, as you pointed out, is the problem with outer system blueprints. If someone isn't ingrained in the culture around what they are researching how are they supposed to differentiate between bizarre and unnecessary programs like vi and perfect pearls like emacs? I thought there was a section on researching blueprints in Transhuman, but I can't find it now. Off hand I'd rule that the longer a character spends doing research, the more likely they are to find a blueprint that isn't buggy. Or dangerously buggy anyway. If they are grabbing blueprints on the fly then they should expect trouble. Let's keep it simple: standard research roll with a difficulty determined by cost of the blueprint, using moderate as the mean. So researching an expensive blueprint would be challenging at a -20. A low blueprint would be easy at a +10. The trick is fuzzy success. If their mof was within the difficulty modifier (meaning they would have succeeded on an unmodified test) then they found the blueprint they were looking for but it is dangerously buggy. The GM decides what dangerously buggy entails. Play fair though. If they report the bug they should receive some Rep. Or they can just burn favors with the Argonauts to get right to the good stuff. Probably the best idea if time is a factor. But even that good stuff should be utilitarian. It will get the job done (it may even be better than a commercial counterpart), but it just won't have the niceties that commercial products do. Inkscape vs. Adobe Illustrator is a great real world example. Inkscape is arguably the better product and open source, but it lacks Illustrators integration with other Adobe products. For a lot of designers that integration with creative suite makes Illustrator the preferable product, even if Inkscape is, on it's own, the better program. It's early and I'm only on my second cup of coffee so feel free throw food at me if this doesn't make sense.

Fri, 2015-07-10 10:59

uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture

Sounds reasonable for certain

Sounds reasonable for certain. Using Rep bypasses the risk because they ask someone for help, but asking for help entails Networking and favors owed situation, so I wanted to also allow them just to sort through the datasphere on their own with Research tests, including siccing their muses on the task. Vernor Vinge's "Rainbows End" details a setting where being a functional adult wasn't knowing things but knowing how to find information in the very cluttered and very dense, information saturation culture they had. So I figured that would be sort of how things are in the Outer System. Not a matter of finding the information, Space-Google will give them a million hits on "Plasma Rifles blueprints" but how many of those hits are good, accurate, and not malware made by pranksters or Inner System cyber-warfare types? Difficulty tests ranging from +20 trivial to -20 Expensive is reasonable, mostly I am just trying to judge timeframe. Like base time is an hour? or a day? From there they can extend the time by +50% base to get increasing bonuses in order to make it an easy test. They are on a soft deadline for preparing their exploration of derelict spaceship so what they can get in a hurry matters, but didn't want Networking to be the only way to acquire gear.

—

Exhuman, and Humanitarian.

Fri, 2015-07-10 15:48

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

It shouldn't take very long I

It shouldn't take very long I think. Per the mesh search rules starting on page 249 of the core rules, simple searches can be handled purely by a Muse, and detailed searches generally take one minute. I'd expect open source blueprints for common things to be findable without much effort. Less common goods, generally the sort of things which many people won't have (lots of technical gear, scientific stuff, weapons a lot of places) would probably require a detailed search. Finding something while having fairly exotic requirements, such as firearms which work at cryonic or very high temperatures could take a lot longer, especially if those environments are far away from the searcher. I'd say that without exotic requirements, or very rare gear, a timeframe of 1 to 10 minutes would be pretty good.

Fri, 2015-07-10 16:53

boomzilla

I'm a player in uwtartarus's

I'm a player in uwtartarus's game. The concern is that, if it only takes a few minutes, on average, to get a working blueprint, won't PCs tend to just [url=http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/x-all-the-y]download *ALL* the blueprints[/url]? Which perhaps could be a thing (this is a game about a radical transhuman future, after all), but, again, game balance. DrewDavis, yeah, I definitely agree: I basically pointed out the very same points to my GM in PM :D Anyway. As for time frame, I just thought up an idea: *cursory searches, you can get a working blueprint, time frame one minute or do a *thorough search, time frame one hour. Provide relevant bonus from complimentary skills with thorough search. With cursory search, you find a seemingly great item that has the potential to catastrophically fail. (Not sure how to determine this, mechanically, but it could be anything from "fails catastrophically on a critical failure" to "GM rolls in secret when it is nanofabbed to see if there is a hidden bug"). Catastrophic failure varies in how catastrophic it is. It kinda sucks when your knife blade falls off the hilt mid-knife-fight; however, just drop it, and continue to fight empty-handed. It *really* *really* sucks when e.g. your plasma gun or frag grenade suffers a catastrophic failure.

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[img]http://eclipsephase.com/sites/all/modules/ep-prod/profile_bars/images/ec... [img]http://www.thomasboxall.com/img/argo_userbar.jpg[/img]

Sun, 2015-07-12 01:11

Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture

I don't think there's going

I don't think there's going to be a lot of Mesh servers out there that have blueprints of nearly unlimited selection, even in the outer system. Plus I'm sure if you just start downloading a whole bunch of blueprints [i]someone[/i] is going to notice. While autonomists tend to have laughable security measures, there's bound to be something in place to notice [i]that[/i] kind of traffic. And if the locals don't find out about it, then some group like Firewall or Ozma just might. Sure, YOU might be a sentinel doing all the downloading, but depending on just what you're getting you're bound to raise eyebrows in Firewall and you can count on being watched. And Ozma? Well that's a whole 'nother can of dire worms. Plus going out of your way to just download all the blueprints you can find could be a very bad thing. Some could have malware or other junk in it, others are probably honey pots (ie traps) for people to download for certain groups, and others simply have shitty programming. For a "radical transhuman future" I never really got the impression that Eclipse Phase was a true post-scarcity economy, even in the outer system. An honest to god, 100% certified blueprint that you didn't personally program could be one of the things that is indeed scarce.

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"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address

Sun, 2015-07-12 04:05

boomzilla

BTW, I *do* realize that in

BTW, I *do* realize that in the Outer System, even on autonomist habs with no blueprint restrictions, that the nanofabbers are part of the panopticon: that is, everybody on the entire station notices when you start to build the plasmaburt grenades... I think part of the issue was one of our PCs had their own nanofabricator on their ship (they bought the ship owner positive trait). I hope I'm not coming off as munchkiny, BTW: I totally agree with EP's canonical stance that it's "players *with* GM" not "players vs GM". Thinking about blueprints, I bet the canonical items in the book are a tiny fraction of the total items in a world like Eclipse Phase. That is, there is a lot more time and effort put into making open source blueprints for stuff like consumer goods (clothes, domestic bots, whatever) and all the widgets and gizmos you need to maintain a hab (coolant pumps or CO2 filters or whatever). I am thinking about this analogously to my own life. That is, if nerd boomzilla, pretty typical person, totally not a secret agent or anything, had a 3d printer, what blueprints would he be downloading? Dice for my game. Some new clothes. A new garbage disposal to replace the one that no longer works. Stuff like that. Myself, and most regular people, don't have a lot of demand for, say, assault rifles (despite stereotypes of us Americans) or grenades or lock picks or fiber optic cameras or whatever. So, in this real-world analogy, there is more demand for, and thus more work done for, garbage disposal blueprints than frag grenade blueprints. So, anyway:

Quote:
I don't think there's going to be a lot of Mesh servers out there that have blueprints of nearly unlimited selection

^^^ you're probably right, at least for "exciting" goods like plasma guns or COTools.

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[img]http://eclipsephase.com/sites/all/modules/ep-prod/profile_bars/images/ec... [img]http://www.thomasboxall.com/img/argo_userbar.jpg[/img]

Sun, 2015-07-12 09:05

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

the big caveat though is in

the big caveat though is in setting raw the Argonaut faction produces freely available blueprints for almost everything and it would be sore spot on their reputation if they did not label which ones worked or not.

Sun, 2015-07-12 10:15

Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture

ORCACommander wrote:the big

ORCACommander wrote:
the big caveat though is in setting raw the Argonaut faction produces freely available blueprints for almost everything and it would be sore spot on their reputation if they did not label which ones worked or not.

Except I'm pretty sure you're still going to need to have decent rep to get any good blueprints from them too. While I'm sure a lot of the blueprints they offer are harmless, benefical everyday use goods or things that benefit scientific research, I sincerely doubt that even the "technoprogressive" group is dumb enough to have high-quality, certified weapons blueprints (or anything else that could conceivably be used as a weapon) available for download. Otherwise there would be nothing stopping, say, space pirates from downloading all these dangerous blueprints from argonaut servers, fabbing up the equipment, and then using it for nefarious ends. At least that's how I'd run it. Otherwise, munchkin PCs or not, you're going to be tempted as a player to go "why in gods name do we have to go through all this bullshit of searching for good blueprints when we can just get everything we need from the argonauts?"

boomzilla wrote:
I hope I'm not coming off as munchkiny, BTW: I totally agree with EP's canonical stance that it's "players *with* GM" not "players vs GM".

Nah, you're not. I'd be asking myself the same questions as a player.

—

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address

Sun, 2015-07-12 16:54

#10

boomzilla

molotov cocktails

Hmm. There are these lines from "Rimward" 156, 157:

Quote:
you may be put off by the fact that there are people wandering around with weapons hanging from their hips or that the corner fabber’s menu lists “Molotov” under its directory of cocktail choices

Quote:
You might be able to print up some plastic explosives at that corner nanofab, but the entire local community will be alerted to the fact that you are doing so.

Thinking about this some more, it seems sensible to keep blueprints of things like rifles or attack drones handy: space pirates are coming? Fab up your own weapons. Again, the bottleneck seems to be not so much on blueprints, but on the actual nanofabrication. I suppose that begs the question, "How common are universal nanofabricators?"

Quote:
Otherwise, munchkin PCs or not, you're going to be tempted as a player to go "why in gods name do we have to go through all this bullshit of searching for good blueprints when we can just get everything we need from the argonauts?"

Yeah. It's a challenge. If this were a Firewall campaign, uwtartarus could do stuff like send us to Mars, or to anywhere we didn't have our own fabricator. I'm still trying to think up an answer to my question about downloading all the blueprints that satisfies myself. Thank you, everyone, for your input thus far.

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[img]http://eclipsephase.com/sites/all/modules/ep-prod/profile_bars/images/ec... [img]http://www.thomasboxall.com/img/argo_userbar.jpg[/img]

Sun, 2015-07-12 20:59

#11

Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture

boomzilla wrote:Hmm. There

boomzilla wrote:
Hmm. There are these lines from "Rimward" 156, 157:
Quote:
you may be put off by the fact that there are people wandering around with weapons hanging from their hips or that the corner fabber’s menu lists “Molotov” under its directory of cocktail choices

Quote:
You might be able to print up some plastic explosives at that corner nanofab, but the entire local community will be alerted to the fact that you are doing so.

I didn't catch those quotes, mostly because I could only read a few paragraphs of the Autonomist Alliance section of the Rimward book before deciding the entire section wasn't worth reading. But semantics.

—

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address

Sun, 2015-07-12 22:33

#12

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

indeed the agunuats are not

indeed the agunuats are not balanced in regards to blueprint access as written but i would have them being strangely hypocritical, on one hand they create schematics and blue prints for public download and distribution but their best and most cutting edge stuff they do not like to share with others. Also if i remember the core book correctly it either stated or inferred that corporate licensed blueprints from sunward are technically better. personally i rule most of the given gear and and some of the augs as being derived from aurgonaut prints and that the OS augonaut blue prints provide the balanced base line while weapon customization homebrew would provide for the others

Sun, 2015-07-12 22:55

#13

UnitOmega

Well, technically speaking,

Well, technically speaking, the highest quality equipment should offer bonuses. You're not going to get that from open sourced, widely distributed tech - that will probably be more representative of baseline technology which is well tested and not necessarily based on being the "latest thing"; for that you'll need to buy from a corp manufacturer or go straight to groups who either do day-one exploits and cracks or a collective who makes such things - the type of stuff which would be calling in a favor. I would say the thing to remember here is that the credit cost level (which is Item+1) does still factor into getting stuff in the gift economy. That cost level determines the level of favor, which applies modifiers to the roll and set how quickly you can expect both delivery on the favor, and that favor to refresh before burning rep. You rack up a high-dollar value order of blueprints you're gonna start shedding rep fast. I'd say Research to hunt for open sourced Argonaut blueprints for most tech is okay, but it won't be anything special and I'd agree the Argonauts have no need to propagate how to build a better Plasma Rifle - at least not to your average citizen. Remember, most Anarchist habs are panoptic and transparent. One guy builds a blueprint for a Molotov cocktail (which I think is overkill due to their improvised nature, but w/e) and it'll sit in the public fabricators forever. That doesn't mean people don't ask questions when you decide you

—

H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/

Tue, 2015-07-14 08:58

#14

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

Open-Source =/= Without Cost.

uwtartarus wrote:
They are on a soft deadline for preparing their exploration of derelict spaceship so what they can get in a hurry matters, but didn't want Networking to be the only way to acquire gear.

I mentioned this on another thread, but I always charge Rep for "normal" blueprints. This isn't just because of favors and such, but also for the simple fact that getting a blueprint is... odd. If you're on an anarchist station you shouldn't need blueprints, because you can just get one printed. Buying a BP means that you get the ability to mass-produce that item, obstensably even if the community doesn't want you to. You can get a BP for a sniper rifle no problem, but you'll take a hit to your rep because you appear less trustworthy. This doesn't mean that the price is fixed though, but getting it cheaper means accepting drawbacks appropriate to the campaign. The most basic is getting one that's less good, either through poor design, Software incompatibilities or obsolete/substandard device software – essentially a penalty to skill rolls. More interesting ones are those which come with inbuilt negative traits. For example, a "normal" ecto BP costs 5 rep, but you can get one for free as long as you don't mind it looking[s] like a dil[/s] distinctively anarchist, imposing a penalty to social skills in the PC. Combat gear is never free though, even if you get the plasma rifle covered with pink fur (Identifiable Quirk) which plays Manowar whenever it's armed (-30 to Infiltration).

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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?

Tue, 2015-07-14 11:25

#15

uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture

I need a table of bizarro

I need a table of bizarro mods or secondary characteristics for these anarchist blueprints, like the bright yellow and pink guns in Chappie, or that pink-fur plasma rifle that plays music you mention! That would be an entertaining table!

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Exhuman, and Humanitarian.