Also, although synthmorphs are more common, there is a difference between damaging a synthmorph (unless you total it, parts can be replaced, pain can be suppressed, and it's much less traumatic than a traditional biomorph being damaged) and a biomorph (you can regrow parts, but it takes days, and any significant damage runs the risk of morph death). It stands to reason that there's separate rules regarding these things: assault is assault, regardless of who it's to, but unless there are aggravating circumstances the reparations/fine is likely dependent on the victim (as at least part of it would go to facilitating any repair/healing/resleeving required).

UnitOmega wrote:

Murder is still a serious crime, but is probably seen as more an economic in a lot of places. Damaging or denying a person of their physical body by use of force. But it's not really the same as intending to deprive a person of their life permanently. Depending on where you are that's still probably a very serious crime, especially in say Titan, which has a morph pop problem and sees having a morph as a basic human right. Of course, confining people to indefinite cold storage, while indefinitely removing an individual with the inclination to harm others, doesn't do a whole lot on the "restorative" justice front. But that's what mandatory psychosurgery, Extropian battle lawyers and penal morph rentals are for.

Keep in mind that it's unlikely that murder is economic only. We see absurd (and not-so-absurd) civil and criminal suits involving non-damage right now over the grounds of psychological harm. It's entirely reasonable to extrapolate that even once resleeving is a fact of (clinically immortal) life, the loss of a morph, and especially the circumstances of murder, will still be met with major criminal charges. Manslaughter might see a reduction in severity, but intentionally destroying a morph (especially if the cortical stack, but not original backup, is destroyed) is likely grounds for high-level felony charges, even if you know for a fact that the individual in question has a recent backup. Psychosurgery is a likely criminal punishment, but it's possible to see ego deletion or exile as punishments for a lot of these crimes, depending on jurisdiction, as well as cold storage (or VR imprisonment).

I feel obliged to point out that murdering someone is [i]really really hard[/i] if they have medichines. Medichines give you essentially Shlock Mercenary levels of protection from physical harm, up to and including decapitation. If you get all your durability shot off, but have medichines, you just get put into medical stasis, and hopefully wake up in a healing tank. And medichines are insanely cheap given what they do (and how they safeguard a whole morph), so Titan should be sticking them in every Sven, Gydda and Harold. Basically, you want to kill someone with medichines, you have to scramble their eggs. Otherwise you're just sending them to take a long stay in a healing tank.

Actually, unless you hit somebody in an immediately vital area, my understanding is if you can get medical attention, you will probably live through most gunshots. EP doesn't have great critical injury/chunky salsa rules but if your GM is nice he or she might say a double tap to the unarmored cranium of a Splicer does it for them. Otherwise you have to do a lot of gross physical damage to cause a systemic failure. Especially since I think Basic Biomods eliminates most shock responses and the like. Not to mention part of this "death should still be serious" is predicated on how a "normal" person would react to a resleeve roll. I suppose this hurts my original argument in that Shadowdragon is right, with proper medical facilities/utilities actually killing someone is really hard at least per RAW and requires action-movie level violence, but at the same time thoroughness of medical technology probably means while "killing" somebody is more rare and less permanent (Healing vat can bring you back from a severed head) I will stand that intent probably counts a lot more than actions in the legal case. Especially since with brainscans and psychosurgery proving [i]mens rea[/i] is probably easier. YMMV, of course. One can run the setting how they like.

ORCACommander wrote:

I have a detective here from the organic damage division here to speak with you :P

[img]http://i.imgur.com/smq9cv1.gif[/img] ----- ShadowDragon is pretty close to what I meant actually – not that Murder is acceptable but that killing someone without meaning to is actually quite hard. If you shoot someone IRL and they don't immediately keel over, then they suffer from damage to their internal tissues and loss of blood, which may eventually lead to death. These are both highly engineerable traits and the description of Basic Biomods covers both, or at least can be understood as such – tissues regenerate and hemoraging can be dealt with through the manipulation of blood vessels and/or application of coagulants – a morph with Biomods will never go into shock or bleed out without massive damage being inflicted. Beyond that, even if the morph “dies” as long as the head is intact then they can be resuscitated up to 3 days after the fact without any resleeving penalties or “automatic” stress Put it together and being shot “casually” doesn't necessarily entail any long-term consequences. It just hurts. In my head, shooting someone “casually” has the same ethical/moral consequences as kicking someone really hard in the Nads.

Not so long ago I was trying to make an EP game about a bunch of mercenaries trying to ruin a day of a Jovian diplomat. Diplomat was an official representative and all that stuff and was supposed to make some high stakes deals so she was travelling by spaceship (Jovian plus prestige). While planning that game I tried to lay some guidelines for spaceships and combat to see what players can do and what Jovians can do to protect their assets. Let's start with drives: Chemical: Cheap, almost primitive, great acceleration (4G is not a problem). Eats mass like the Horseman of Apocalypse. You probably won't see even a single such drive on anarchists stations or any other isolated habitat without a ton of resources. Ion: Cheap, easy to make, effective, low acceleration. Probably the most used design in small craft, because you can use almost anything as fuel even if with lower effectiveness than gases like argon. Fusion: Much harder to make than previous drive, low acceleration, incredible dV compared even to Ion drive. You literally need no more than 15-20% of ship mass in fuel to get anywhere in Solar system, bar Pluton, within a reasonable time. Fuel either cheap or expensive depending on where you live. Jovians, Titanians and Corporates don't have any problem with fuel. This drive is used on 99% of interplanetary ships. Antimatter: Volatile, hard to make, prohibitive cost in mass on drive system and in infrastructure needed to support it with fuel. Depending on design it can give either absolutely insane amounts of dV or acceleration comparable to that of chemical drives but at the cost of a constant risk of ship transforming into a ball of plasma. This drive is used only in courier ships and similar highly specialized vessels that need great dV and still need some reasonable amount of acceleration. It is not used on most spaceships intended for use in combat due to high maintenance cost, volatility of fuel and economical ineffectiveness. Fusion is good enough and costs a fraction to create and maintain. Antimatter is better saved for other uses. Weapons: Kinetic: Good old slugs. Can be either guided or unguided and their effective range is highly dependant on that fact. Unguided kinetic weapons unless fired from some insane megastructures capable of accelerating them to near light-speed won't have a range greater than 50 km. Because you probably won't be able to get more than 20 km/s out of a gauss gun. More reasonably is closer to 5-7 km/s. Though unguided projectiles have advantage of having their core being made out of some radar transparent material which will put a strain on enemy ship sensors while they will be trying to find targets for their Point-Defense. Guided kinetic weapons attack range depends solely on their design and cost. Cheap variants probably won't be able to attack anything beyond around 2 light-seconds because they need a guidance from the launcher-ship systems. On the other end of the spectrum is fully autonomous systems with kamikaze AI capable of acting as a minefield or seeker-swarm. Though they are not that cost-efficient due to being able to use only chemical drives with their low dV. All kinetic weapons also can bear canister payloads for less armour penetration and more coverage while also making it harder for PD to destroy or redirect 100% of their payload. It also should be noted that while kinetic weapons have miniscule ranges by space measures their damage is really good. Unless you are using fusion/nuclear/antimatter they are the best in mass-damage category and by a really good margin. Even a small drone or fighter with gauss guns can ruin a dreadnoughts day if he slips through PD. It should be noted that most kinetic weapons probably work in connected clusters where parts of a salvo bear electronic countermeasures and similar stuff. Especially missiles which cost much more than simple gauss slugs. Lasers: Light-speed rules all. Though they have a problem with cooling and needing big comparatively fragile mirrors for long-range attacks. Go to for PD. There is not much to say about them. You point them at target and push the button. They are good for what they are but as a main weapon they probably will use most of the space on the ship not leaving much for everything else. Especially after their supporting radiators, cooling systems and similar stuff is installed. Another problem is that some advanced materials have good resistance against laser attacks and may make a good cut in their effectiveness against targets with such armour. But being able to hit targets at 1-2 light-seconds by a beam of coherent light is totally worth it. So there probably will be some dedicated laser designs with single large mirror as main calibre. Particle: Or proton accelerators. In many senses they are similar to lasers but have less range due to particles within the beam being charged the same and thus losing coherency faster. May have some nasty effects on electronics on hits due to their charged nature. Very unpleasant for everyone involved especially computer systems. It is unlikely that they will be used in PD due to the form-factor of particle accelerators. Theoretically powerful magnetic fields can slightly redirect incoming particles thus either negating attacks or transforming them into glancing hits. Though it will take a dedicated ship to create fields of such power. Antiparticle: Antiproton beams. They don't have any difference from normal particle weapons except for the fact that they use antimatter and thus deal a little over double damage of a normal proton beam. All other effects like nasty electrical charge and radiation is still here and will ruin days of anyone who will get in their path. This use of antimatter is much more cost-effective than using it in drives. Containers are much smaller and don't take a significant portion of a ship mass. Fission/Fusion/Antimatter: Missiles with WMD payload. When you absolutely need someone to be gone from this Universe. They are not that effective against spaceships due to comparatively low effective blast radius (well, where is almost no real blast just light and other radiation). Other problem is that size of their payload makes them better targets for PD of enemy ships. Alternatively instead of a normal blast they can give one or a couple of gamma laser bursts. Such device would be even bigger and more complex than a normal missile but in turn capable of delivering a good percent of energy contained in its payload at light-speed. Though its precision is questionable. Ship designs: Drone/Fighter: Chemical drive, kinetic weapons, maybe one cluster of small PD lasers. Launched from catapults for additional speed. Can dodge and actually good at this. Need a carrier. Most will be destroyed by PD but even one such craft making it to enemy lines for kinetic attack will be worth it. Carriers are just boxes with launch-catapults, fusion drives and PD. Spinal mount laser ship: Big mirror at the front and cooling systems running through all length of the ship plus PD. Fusion drive and a couple of solid chemical busters in centre of mass or around it for 3-5 dodges. Can attack at 1-2 light-seconds but probably vulnerable to drone/fighter attacks due to most of the mass being devoted for the main gun. Balanced: Proton beams (Jovians and Titanians probably use antiparticles on most designs), PD, kinetic missiles, a few WMDs. Fusion drive and solid busters for dodges. Good for patrolling and escorts. Can probably deal with most problems that don't involve some rival navy (Coprs, Jovian, Titanian). Monitor: A hunk of armour loaded with reactors and capable of generating magnetic fields of insane power. Has a passable PD but only gauss guns for weapons. Fusion drive with lower fraction of ship mass being devoted for fuel than on other ships. His work is getting blown to pieces. He can take a tremendous amount of punishment comparatively to other ships and his design with minimal number of critical systems exposed means that even almost dead he can still ruin days of many people if he gets close enough. Monitor doesn't have long range capabilities but ignoring it means letting gauss guns get close to you. Due to design putting protection over everything Monitor systems are hard to access and his maintenance is a nightmare. Additionally his crew is cut to a minimum and rarely consists of more than 10 sapient members even though monitors can rival dreadnoughts in mass. Missile boat: Missiles, missiles everywhere. PD, WMD. Fusion drive, solid busters. Instead of using weapons that are not subject to PD this type of ship tries to just overwhelm enemy systems with sheer number of shots. Well, that and ECM measures in each salvo. In most cases they start their attacks after enemies already got a couple of hits from lasers and probably lost some PD systems.