So I was running this pre fall thing, and everyone was in the car. I turned the car into a bomb by having the batteries trigger a thermal runaway effect.
And everyone in the group, supremely didnt like the notion of cars without a physical control apparatus. One of the players vehemently declared that no regulatory agency would ever let that happen. (Even though there are driverless buses in Scandinavia and California was or allows for auto cars without any controlling apparatus.) They really didnt like the concept that they never drove before. I went as far to say that it was unlikely that their grandparents even drove.
They also didnt like 'drive by wire' either, though that wasnt much of argument as the driverless car thing.
One of the player, who was very new to the setting was having a hard time, seeing AR control from being jammed into the car itself. I wasnt really sure how to better explain that.
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Sanity Checking: Running a game and came into conflict...
Thu, 2016-09-01 18:09
#1
MrWigggles
Sanity Checking: Running a game and came into conflict...
Thu, 2016-09-01 19:17
#2
ORCACommander
well the AR thing is very
well the AR thing is very simple, its a virtual control console in your eyes. when jacking into the car on the other hand you are almost the car itself.
Thu, 2016-09-01 21:14
#3
DivineWrath
AR can be one of those things
AR can be one of those things that players can find hard to grasp and understand. Its like having a sensory organ that normal humans don't have. One can argue that is what it literally is. What is it like to be a bat? Having echolocation instead of good vision?
Depending on how new the players are, you might want to back down and let them have a steering wheel or something. For all you know, the players could be bioconservatives. Maybe they wouldn't buy a car that didn't have physical controls.
However, keep in mind that the fall was a marking point where humanity had to acknowledge they lost control and had to abandon Earth. Most humans didn't make it off. Most of those who did make it off did so as infomorphs. After 10 years, there still isn't enough infrastructure to bring them all back online.
Many attempts were made to try to regain control over technology and fight back, but they were often defeated. War machines that were AI piloted were redesigned to be human piloted, but they got hacked anyways. They became armed and moving coffins for the pilots who starved to death.
I suppose you could allow the players opportunities to fight back, but it should be made clear at some point that their efforts are futile. Any resistance they can mount is possible because the TITANs are more focused on attacks that will deal more damage in the long run. The TITANs are more focused on winning the war, not every battle.
Thu, 2016-09-01 21:58
#4
Trappedinwikipedia
I'd be fairly surprised if a
I'd be fairly surprised if a vehicle intended to be controlled by people didn't have a physical backup. A fully autonomous one would make sense, but not one controlled by people as much.
That said, an AR rig using a virtual set of controls with haptic feedback would be pretty easy to do with mesh inserts, and that would be fairly different from full jamming.
Fri, 2016-09-02 05:39
#5
MrWigggles
"That said, an AR rig using a
"That said, an AR rig using a virtual set of controls with haptic feedback would be pretty easy to do with mesh inserts, and that would be fairly different from full jamming."
When asked how he was driving, this is what I said. AR Controls with haptic feedback.
Fri, 2016-09-02 10:53
#6
ShadowDragon8685
I would point out that even
I would point out that even in Eclipse Phase, it's noted that most things which can be controlled more conveniently by AR, but which could be life-critical, [i]do[/i] usually have the manual controls to handle those niche and edge cases where the AR controls fail... Though, whether or not this was true in the year of the fall as in 10 AF is another matter.
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Fri, 2016-09-02 14:26
#7
UnitOmega
Trappedinwikipedia wrote:That
And, in fact, this is basically exactly how conventional teleoperation/remote control is described in the book, it's like a video game, but the controller isn't "real". If players have a hard time wrapping their heads around it, tell them it's like the new VR headsets, but the headset and controllers are built into their brain.
That said, I kind of agree with the players here, 10 years after the infopocalypse that was the Fall, there's no way a consumer-grade product doesn't have manual overrides. Even the Consortium has "security" as a key part of their platform - I would assume anything of certain quality and expense has to be able to operate "off-the-grid" in an emergency. Pre-Fall..., eh? Depends where you live. I would imagine most enclaves would have safety regulations, but those could involve "driving network takes over car". You could use this to foreshow how fucked people were by the Fall. Or, given how huge the Earth is, you might assume they have the same safety stipulations as Post-Fall, at least for some people. If the Resource Wars are a country over, you might still want to be able to drive your car even if some terrorists are bombing the traffic administration.
I even would say there's some mechanical backing to this idea, Remote Control offers a -10 penalty to actions of the vehicle no matter where you are, but jamming your car to operate it while you're sitting in it is a bit silly, so we should assume there are manual controls with no remote penalty in the vehicle.
Also, given how much Pilot: Groundcraft abounds in backgrounds/character packages (If you are from Earth or Mars), I think it's fair to say that driving a car isn't an alien concept. Obviously they were somewhere where cars exist, so familiarity with the basics wouldn't be alarming. That said, if they didn't put points in Pilot: Groundcraft or have a REF of 30+ to default to, it's not like anybody has their license or anything. If players don't have the skills for a given situation, they can't be mad at you for calling for a logical Test.
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Fri, 2016-09-02 16:07
#8
Noble Pigeon
This reminds me of the
This reminds me of the eternal debate in these circles about the exact makeup of crews onboard ships. I always hear about how ships are mostly staffed by infomorphs or are entirely automated with no physical crew at all, but aren't those MASSIVE security risks? Savvy pirates or terrorists can get past the automated defenses, usurp control of the ship, steal its contents, and leave. Or turn it into a gigantic bomb.
Like, do people not look at Zbrny and think "wow, let's NOT be lazy and have our mining operations be 100% automated, also because entire convoys of AI ships were subverted by the TITANs during the Fall"? I don't think you need to be a Jovian to really come to that conclusion.
I don't even get the point of the Spaceship Positive Quality if the crew's just going to be informorphs or in robot bodies all the time. I get that cuts costs and space and transhumans want everything to be hyper-efficient and optimized via liberal applications of technology, but I'd think that automated ships or ships staffed only by infomorphs would be uncommon, not the norm. If pirates keep hijacking your ships, and transhumanity just went through an apocalyptic event where super AIs easily took over your automated mining operations, I don't think the solution would be "well let's make it even MORE automated!".
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Fri, 2016-09-02 17:01
#9
Trappedinwikipedia
Noble Pigeon wrote:Savvy
I mean, savvy pirates or terrorists could also get past the manned defenses, usurp control of the ship and etc. There'd be more shooting and somewhat less unauthorized computer use but you could.
X-Risks does mention that Zbrny is possibly a Theia project, though I think there's a difference between a well secured infomorph ship, and an automated set of networked ships like Zbrny.
That said, I think the advantages of an purely AI crew are overstated. If your ship is carrying a million tons of iron or whatever, and is using 100,000 tons of Hydrogen remass to move it, plus the mass of the engines and ship superstructure, a 100 crew module isn't much of a loss. Sort of like the loss in gas mileage from bringing along a thermos of coffee. Small short range (like a shuttle from surface to ship) ships might be fully automated (and just not communicate much when on route for security), but bigger ones probably aren't.
I'd expect a double crew to be the most secure. You'd have to bypass both a infomorph and physical crew to bypass the ship, and as before, the efficiency losses are small.
Fri, 2016-09-02 17:44
#10
UnitOmega
Yeah, most people I see
Yeah, most people I see arguing for "Ships don't even need crews at all, think of all the DeltaV you can save!" are like, extremist interpretation of the setting, they demand maximum efficiency, transhumans without triple PhDs and no expert job skills will be replaced by infinite ALI networks, thus all indentures are sucking dicks... or something like that.
Canonically, every spaceship has a "passenger" number, and only one of them I think is explicitly noted as this being an infomorph number (the Fighter). So we can skip all that and say Spaceships can carry people. Now, they probably don't need to carry a lot of people, but being pure informorph has some concerns. Infomorphs don't have hands, and remote operation of drones and other such devices means there's lag penalties, and plus you have to worry about wireless jamming or somebody cutting the internal fiberoptics lines. Lens Crazers will wreck anything with a camera lense, and while Dazzlers will also affect biomorphs, crewmen with decent helmets or anti-glare implants will be fine - not something you can cram into normal camera devices though. If a crew of half a dozen belt freebooters with some dazzlers, a couple things of scrapper's gel and some jammer rounds can take over your ship, you have done it wrong.
Now, I mean, I've heard some people talk about expensive retaliatory security contracts, or to just to blow up a ship at the first sign of a security breach but to me this is just asking for competitors to use corporate terrorism to bankrupt you. And desperate criminals are a crafty bunch, "necessity is the mother" and all that. You're much better off with non-static, adaptive responses.
Which is why Trapped is also probably right, and a mixed crew element gives you the most adaptation, because if all you have is a crew of a dozen guys (probably all in the same place) in physical bodies, some sneaky pirates might just seal all your doors in freezer foam and break off a couple of cargo containers and split before you can do anything. But if you have multiple avenues that's more complexity the other side has to take into account and expend resources on.
[i]Hopefully[/i] this sort of question is something the developers might clear up in a later date. Perhaps in some kind of sourcebook related to [i]criminal activity[/i] or [i]space combat[/i]. [b]Hint hint[/b].
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Fri, 2016-09-02 19:45
#11
MrWigggles
UnitOmega wrote:
The given conflict was in pre fall West Coast, USA. As for pre gens with pilot: ground craft. They had the duration of the Fall, and ten years hence to learn how to drive. That doesnt mean they knew how to before the Fall.
I would argue that most places, large enough to need vehicles to get around have some sorta manual drive, because of the post Fall preparedness. Except maybe the Titanium Commonwealth?
Fri, 2016-09-02 20:15
#12
UnitOmega
Well, Re-Instantiated and
Well, Re-Instantiated and Fall Evacuee packages, and even Martian colonist packages tend to come with Pilot: Groundcraft in them. If you're rolling Life Path, this is all the stuff which almost always comes before the Fall. And unless they, like, moved to a place where there's a lot of vehicles to drive, it doesn't seem likely that every character from that background has that ability learned post-fall.
In the ol' 1000 CP system, it should be pointed out that Fall Evacuee, Lunar Colonist, Martian and Re-Instantiated backgrounds all give +10 Pilot: Groundcraft (for comparison, an Original Space Colonist can pick a +10 Pilot: Spacecraft), and is completely seperate from Factional choices which can give Pilot skill bonuses. The game seems to be assuming if you're from Earth, Luna or Mars you would obtain a working knowledge of Groundcraft in your life, which is enough for an Average Transhuman to have a driver's license (see p. 174 Core. 20+ in a Skill rating is enough for "Basic operator’s proficiency (driver’s license, gun permit, high school diploma)" and the Transhuman aptitude average is 11-15.).
But, like I said, if the particular PCs do not have Groundcraft written on their sheet yet, then they don't have that expertise. And if they aren't in a morph tuned for REF, they won't be defaulting to the same skill level. You don't put the points, you can't expect to be familiar.
Manual in the US is an issue. We have a history of conservative elements blocking tech advancements or calling for restriction, and certainly a bit of a precedent for warnings on everything (Caution: Hot Coffee). But we also have a push for governmental intervention. Why do you need to drive when the computer hooked up to traffic department in your Enclave can do it for you, safer than you can? On the other, other hand, the USA is a huge place, logistically guaranteeing that every road system is embedded with sufficient networking to coordinate every car driving would be a huge pain in the ass - and would be troublesome in the areas most likely to still require cars to get around. That basically boils down how you want to portray the future-past of the Pre-Fall.
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Fri, 2016-09-02 20:43
#13
MrWigggles
Well, you wouldnt need to
Well, you wouldnt need to make sure there is hardpoints of infrastructure, thats part of the advantage mesh network. Every car, is its own hotspot, and it just grows stronger the more objects there are. For me, EP, is very much a future, 'internet of things'. Each object, adding to the Mesh.
Sat, 2016-09-03 02:14
#14
jKaiser
Compartmentalization never
Compartmentalization never goes out of style. The more systems in play in a given piece of equipment -- and for that matter, the more damage it can do if it goes haywire -- the more "primitive" it will be in terms of backup. There's a reason extremely high-tech aircraft and spacecraft today have such insanely complicated control panels -- if one element is compromised, you don't want a cascade effect.
Eclipse Phase being the rather cynical cyberpunk setting it is, of course, you could argue that plenty of drone barges and routine infrastructure is entirely automated, and exploit the obvious flaws in that for all its worth. But this is a society that's only ten years out from a technological extinction event. Anything that's AR controlled that could potentially cause more than it's cost in damage is likely going to have some kind of physical killswitch at the very least, if not a full control scheme.
As far as groundcars go, though, spoofing traffic control systems is a part of the canon on Mars at least. Most manufacturers are going to do at least a token effort to ensure that they aren't the cause of a massive pileup and millions in collective lost revenue just because they decided not to include a purely mechanical steering wheel. To say nothing of anything capable of orbital speeds. If it can wreck an entire habitat by not slowing down, it's going to have some kind of failsafes and backup control systems.
Tue, 2016-09-06 08:51
#15
ThatWhichNeverWas
GTA: Valles-New Shanghai. Comming Soon!
Physical controls are definitely going to be a thing in personal vehicles, just in case you get a problem with your wifi signal. That said, they're going to be electronic - the steering wheel isn't actually going to be attached to the wheels in any way to prevent problematic interactions with computerized systems.
Likewise, driving skills are a thing because most of the actual driving is going to be outside of cities in the wilderness. Self-driving systems aren't great when offroading.
I don't get why having an infomorph crew would be any more vunerable to infiltration than one with a physical crew. As long as you're not running purely AIs, then I don't see the difference.
That said, most of the time there's not to much advantage in running a pure Infomorph crew either. Where they shine is in combat craft, where hostile environments, physcial shocks and high-g maneuvers cease to be an issue, along with the high speed thinking innate to all infomorphs.
Oh, and I describe AR as "Standard Sci Fi holograms that only you can see".
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Tue, 2016-09-06 17:00
#16
UnitOmega
I don't think they're
I don't think they're necessarily "more" vulnerable, just that they present their own issues which boil down to "informorphs don't have hands" and a prospective boarding party does. Since there has to be some element of physical access on a spaceship because it is a giant physical object and an infomorph crewman has no hands of its own, there will be ways a boarder could exploit this situation which they can't exploit with physical crewmen. Which, of course, would also on their own have potential exploits.
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Tue, 2016-09-06 18:10
#17
ShadowDragon8685
Infomorph crewmen do have
Infomorph crewmen [i]do[/i] have hands, though: the manipulators of small drones, which they can remotely command, jam, or outright sleeve into.
Also, that boarding party of hand-privledged Bouncers is going to have an awful hard time of things trying to board a ship where the corridors are all sized for Scurriers/Spares and similarly tiny utility morphs. Especially when the all-info/synth crew can always do Unkind Things to said boarding party by virtue of firing the engines and engaging in the kind of maneuvers that are typically inadvisable on a crewed vessel.
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Tue, 2016-09-06 19:12
#18
UnitOmega
No, the infomorphs still don
No, the infomorphs still don't have hands.
Yes, those bots have hands. But the Infomorphs ability to use those hands will be significantly hampered by Jammer rounds, EMP grenades, Dazzlers, Lens Crazers - all manner of things. Then you're out of hands. Plus, that means you're on the mesh, which puts an Infomorph at a lot more risk than some hotshot hackers with just Mesh Inserts.
I should also note, that as per Transhuman, the standard drone used for maintenance and repair, the Automech, is not Small sized. Since it's size trait is not noted anywhere, in fact, we must come to the conclusion it fits into the same size category as most Transhumans, Medium. So, maintenance spaces would probably require sufficient space to allow a Transhuman to fit, especially when you consider, y'know, the vast majority of the transhuman population are in medium sized morphs of a synth or bio variety, so the standard to assume what your potential maintenance workers will look like will trend toward that category. Might not be a great fit, but technically I think making your maintenance paths as big as you like actually helps because you have less mass to move.
Which brings us to our second point, there is no way a Bulk Carrier (the only ship this concept really works for) has enough DeltaV to burn in crazy high-g maneuvers all the time to throw off pirates. That's all additional mass in fuel you need to stock, which means less cargo you can take, that does actually undermine the efficiency of the system. You might try and argue that because you're purely infomorph you have that space to save, but that's still pretty peanuts compared to most fuel storage and cargo space. There's also a question, "can you actually generate enough acceleration to cause serious harm to a biomorph?", which I'm not sure you can. Quick search says you need to experience about 5gs of force to pass out, the Fusion rocket used by modern Standard Transports (which are roughly similar frame to the Bulk Transport, it says itself) generates 0.05 gs in Thrust. But I'm not a rocket scientist, so I'd love if someone who understands that better than me to fact check. I would, however, have accepted "the Infomorphs can just smash them in the bulkhead doors", that's a problem that's hard to solve without wasting man hours with a plasma cutter on.
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Wed, 2016-09-07 15:02
#19
Trappedinwikipedia
ShadowDragon8685 wrote
Jamming and DRC are fairly easy to handle with DDOS attacks, jamming, or EMP. Generally you can't sleeve into drones (no cyberbrain), but there is the trick where you run your infomorph on the drone's hardware and "jam" it from inside. If any are left, small utility drones aren't very threatening.
For a few minutes before their smart acids grant them new corridors to access the servers and seize the ship. Failing nanotech, old fashioned scrappers gel and thermite can accomplish similar things. You'll probably do some damage to the ship doing that, but whatever you're getting out of seizing it should be worth enough that spinning up the local nanofabs to repair the critical stuff won't hurt your margins all that much.
Ah yes, the brutal, messy and absolutely lethal "accelerate at .05 gravities" trick. A transport ship isn't going to be doing anything terribly dangerous to people onboard with its engines.
All in all we don't have a very complete picture of what piracy or similar is like. Maybe this is all kind of pointless because if the boarders can use their shipboard weapons to disable the ship, boarding is a formality. Maybe SOP is closing and using dazzlers to disable sensors while cold-gas launched RADAR stealth boarding pods close the gap, making boarding actions a strong deciding factor. We know that piracy happens and little else right now.
Wed, 2016-09-07 15:51
#20
MrWigggles
So what I am seeing here, is
So what I am seeing here, is that we need to play this out. Have 3 different cargo hualers. A mix crew, an infomorph only and a morph only haulers, and then play out who one is more susceptible to pirates.
Wed, 2016-09-07 22:11
#21
MrWigggles
So the game is dissolved. The
So the game is dissolved. The sessions were more arguments over displeasure, without any compromise. Today disagreement was over money.
Its a merc company, working out of Extropia. They work for shares from the client. Their totaly monthly expenses, were 11333 credits a month. Thats legal bills, fuel, misc ship stuffs, and the monthly cost for the egos & morphs.
It was established they were a new merc company, without any reputation, and this was their second or third job. It was originally 6k credits, but they talked it up to 8500 credits. A 30 percent increase.
75% of their monthly cost covered by this one job. That was going to take 2 days to do. I made it clear that they could get other jobs. I was eye balling 3, but I wasnt disallowing them to hustle to work more, nor was I denying them windfalls during the job.
I know there a thread about how much the daily incidentals cost, though I wasnt really concern with that, I was concentrating on more of a macro level with expenses.
With the lifestyle costs, gear costs and earning per week given by transhuman, each character pulling 1417 credits for two days work, seems to me to be a lot of money for such a short period of time. I figured they would make 24-26k in their first month, leaving them with about 10k of 'profit' for the group. 10k, seems like a lot of money ICly.
I made it clear as they gained reputation, they would get more money. The jobs would get more interesting. I made it clear they could, and would get more work in a month.
One of the players felt very strongly this was implausible. To where it seem unfair that I was offering them more then one job a month. They were very much convinced that they would be constantly in hospitals and couldnt do it.
Shadowrun was brought in as authority, to either this game as a whole, but defiantly something my game should be subservient to and use their pay out scheme for this.
The group wanted to start out at least 20,000 credits, which to means they wanted to be around 30 to 40 thousand after upping it up through successful negotiations.
And ICly, at that point, why wouldnt the client just go to Direct Action or the Ultimates at those prices? I dont really see why an unknown, merc company would be pulling that much money from the get go.
Is 8500 credits just ICly a tiny amount of money?
Wed, 2016-09-07 22:42
#22
UnitOmega
Well, it depends on your job,
Well, it depends on your job, but that is just a [High] payout.
That's not enough for an new body, or at least not a decent one if yours is destroyed beyond repair. That's not going to buy you replacements for high quality weapons which could be lost in the operation. In terms of what we know of of expenses in the game, that's not enough to have to pay for Egocasting time, not enough for an interplanetary flight, not enough for a new car (though I think for a cycle), and maybe enough for a week's worth of drugs or a down payment on a nice new apartment.
That's also just in like, personal budget terms. You said yourself, this only covers 75% of their operating costs in one job. So basically, they're not actually making any profit on it, this is just going to maybe pay most of their monthly bills. Nobody is actually getting paid their salary or their contract cost or anything out of it. Let alone like, a bonus or hazard pay. If there's genuine chance somebody will be trying to shoot at them or something? Yeah, that's lowballing them. Even if the company is paying for all their equipment, they company can't necessarily afford to pay to replace damaged stuff, unless that's all covered under insurance, which means that insurance will only cost them more the next month, etc.
It should be noted that under "making income" in Transhuman, you don't "do" anything as a player to earn money. You just say you're spending a week working, which is best modeled under downtime, and it takes no account for your skill level or anything. You just do various scut work under your Reputation network to get paid according what your standing in the community is. In security terms, its doing stuff basically like being a mall cop where the actual risk to your person is low, and the equipment you need is limited. If this is a job players are presumably actually playing, that's a much more complex situation which involves possible risk, potential of failure and so on, so yeah, 8500 total might be too small IC for an actual PMC job.
Now, as for why they don't hire somebody big, well, the short version is, why is this contract not already with someone big to start? Why is it available at all for small companies? I mean, while I don't think Ultimates come cheap (They don't desire money for its own sake, but have a lot of Pride - paying for Ultimates is bound to be, costly but usually worth it if you really need something done). But why don't Gorgon or Direct Action have this contract bought out from the start? That's something as a GM you need to answer. Is the company deliberately going lowest bidder? Do they know they're low-balling but this is all they can afford? Is it a thing being financed through a mutualist bank who despise big hypercorps so they want a smaller outfit? If this is the set-up you're handing the players (rather than say, showing them three contracts at the start and they pick the job to develop) that's all on you to give them the circumstances for the job, which contribute to the pay day. If its something the PCs are actively developing, then they need to work on what their business plan is and what their marketing is like - why should you hire them and not Medusan Shield?
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Thu, 2016-09-08 02:58
#23
Trappedinwikipedia
I'm not exceptionally
I'm not exceptionally familiar with mercenary economics, but glancing around some it seems like most of it is longer term stuff working to guard something. So 8500 credits for two days work seems reasonable, but I don't think you're going to be buying a two day contract. Something more like keeping the company guarding X person, facility, or process, or just keeping the company on standby retainer for say, 6 months seems like a better contract to draw up.
Assuming that you're charging 4250 credits per day of service, that 6 month contract has a 775,625 credit payout over the course of that time. (129,271 credits a month, and 117,931 after expenses) Puts the company well into the black for pay, bonuses, investing, or just sitting on some liquid assets until the next contract comes along. It just seems like bad business sense to rely on low-paying contracts which are less than a week long. That's the kind of thing a criminal gang might do, but not a fledgling hypercorp trying to create value for shareholders.
The credit seems vaguely similar to the dollar in terms of purchasing power (though probably more valuable), so 11k credits in monthly expenses seems super, super low, even if it doesn't include payroll. I guess the fact that most things are (largely) self maintaining in EP might really lower those costs, which means hypercorps could have some really low overhead. It's interesting to think about. I think that both the payouts and costs are too low though.
I found G4S's financials easiest to find, but they're going to be really different from a small and new company. They have about a 6.5% profit margin, which could serve as a guide for costs vs revenue. G4S is more of a security company than a true PMC though.
Doing a bit more research, it looks like Executive Outcomes, another pretty large company made a year long contract with the Angolan government in 1993 which was 20 million to buy supplies for the contract, and another 20 million to EO directly. Looks like contracts might often include gear expenses as part of the negotiated payout. Payouts on the order of millions per month aren't rare, and are sometimes payed out with resource concessions like mining rights. There's other contracts with 3,000-10,000$ payouts per fighter. It varies a fair amount (this is from Mercenaries: An African Security Dilemma)
This is kind of rambling, but I found the topic of mercenary economics kind of interesting, and have been looking at doing a similarly corporate EP campaign at some point.
Thu, 2016-09-08 03:05
#24
DivineWrath
Hmm...
Hmm...
It sounds like you might have a problem with the group. Has this group played well together before? Is there anything different than last time? It sounds like that they're having difficulty with suspension of disbelief and are prone to bicker over the rules.
I'm not trying to pit you against your group. I'm saying it might be worth your time to figure out what is going wrong. Maybe ask each of them alone of what they think went right and what went wrong. Talking to them alone should hopefully avoid you sounding like you are accusing them of being the problem in front of the rest.
Thu, 2016-09-08 08:38
#25
ThatWhichNeverWas
You might want to look at Red Markets for inspiration.
Arguing that bots are vunerable to things designed to coounter bots is a bit of a Null argument – biomorphs are equally vunerable to shock effects and, you know, [i]bullets[/i].
Either way, if the infomorphs on board have access to bots, synths, waldos or whatever then we're not really talking about a purely infomorph crew anymore – the ship [i]has[/i] a defacto crew.
On the other hand, if it doesn't then there's no reason for there to be any morph accessable areas at all – forget spares and scurriers, think swarminoids with Fixer/Engineer hives.
It makes more sense to use attitude control to start the ship spinning, ideally along 2 axis. It makes docking functionally impossible and boarders have an increasingly harder time doing anything.
But again, the primary benefit of a pure infomorph crew is they're immune to effects which would be harmful to any morphs on board, so if the ship can't generate those effects there's no point in having one.
Hypercorp structure is all about subcontracting. It wouldn't be a jump to say that Gorgon or DA is handling the bureaucracy and the PC group won the contract.
Making a game as financially focused as this one is problematic, because EP's economic system (the game, not in-universe) isn't very robust, whereas shadowruns is fairly solid.
...And it's probably worth asking them if they simply rather be playing Shadowrun.
Although it's counterintuitive, for this kind of game I'd remove the hands-on finance from the equation – the Company has been granted a contract from [Insert Agent Hypercorp Here] for N months which will cover their expenses and maintain their lifestyle, in exchange for generalized Off-Screen services like maintaining security systems, minor bodyguard duties or information gathering. Things like the 2-day contract would be additional extras – the entire payment would be a bonus.
This makes the game about the players desire for advancement rather than them having to weigh the pros and cons of actually playing the game – financial tension can be introduced later through the Contract Giver's increasingly stringent and/or ethically questionable demands.
Definitely do this. I may simply be that they're expecting a different type of game than you want to run.
—
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?
Thu, 2016-09-08 15:10
#26
ORCACommander
Ya EP is not a shopping game.
Ya EP is not a shopping game. As a player I feel little need to acquire extra wealth or rep after character creation. Shadowrun on the other hand is infamous for creating in universe shopping catalogues as official game supplements
So in the meta sense are Credits actually worth anything?
Thu, 2016-09-08 15:57
#27
MrWigggles
UnitOmega wrote:Well, it
Its enough for a month of moderate lifestyle. As for drugs, that really depends how much of a you take and how much what you like. Though I think I'll disagree that first job, of an unknown company shouldnt really be affording many amenities. With ego casting being expensive, and with ship travel being expensive, then well most jobs in Sol are inadequate.
Their a service industries thats works by contract. They either need to do multiple short terms contracts in session or try and get a longer term one. With nother short term job, they would be in the black. Its a start up. The first quarter, you gotta be scrappy.
They have to start somewhere. Even without the larger hyper corp security/military firms there are definitely other established small, micro corp PMCs. I wasnt saying they couldnt get more money, they just have to get established first.
Yea. The costs, were things that were kinda of bull shitted, and I asked for feedback but didnt get any.
It was 10k a quarter for legal services to maintain their Corps recognition in Extropia, and to keep the ship recognized as their property and expectation of privacy. 500 for ship things. Feedstock for the maker, feedstock for the CNC machine, mesh subscriptions, water. Things like that. 500 to rent a guarantee docking spot for the ship. (Kinda like how folks pay rent for parking spaces in New York.) 2000 in fuel. (This was abstracted, I didnt really want to figure out reaction mass expenditure per trip to see how much reaction mass they had.)
I then also had each character subscribed to a legal contract with the same law firm, to recognize their legal personhood on Extropia, and list of rights they subscribe to. 1000 credits a month.
Sally, Sally, and Sally LLP was a microcorp law firm on Extropia to.
What kind of other bills would you take on? The other thing I was really considering was being Bonded and having to pay into that. Or would you have just upped everything by one more zero? Cause like, if you take the lifestyle as just the average, and have Extropia be the San Francisco or Austin of the Solar System, thats 70 percent more.
It is!
After every session, I did the whole questions, suggestions, and stuff. And got shat on for multiple hour afterward. When one of the players decided to go hack banks, and then decided that banks only had two firewalls to bypass, that just killed it for me. If they really wanted to hack banks, a la Uplink, I'd be fine with that. But the conceptional difference to even try to to treat that as a legitmate action would have just been nother fight. Cause that player decided that hacking was uber magical.
Thu, 2016-09-08 16:26
#28
UnitOmega
ORCACommander wrote:Ya EP is
If you feel little desire for cash or rep after creation, excluding playing in a particular type of game which is focused less on physical risk or something like that suggests to me one of three things.
A) You've built a character specifically who does not have much resource requirement. Infomorph computer types are the most common, but theoretically others could be built in this style. You only need a small amount of software or a couple key blueprints to just make the core items you need, let the rest ride on skills - rely on other PCs to pick up the slack you can't cover. Or, as an alternative to riding on skills, you just started with an obscene amount of money your overhead stays small you never need more.
B) Your GM is being very generous (and I would say too generous) with organizational (probably Firewall) resources, providing you vehicles, bodies and guns of a high quality for basically nothing.
C) Your group isn't running favors by the RAW. RAW, high-level favors have a very long recharge time, and if you want to call on that level again before it refreshes, you're burning Rep, no ifs, ands or buts. Similarly, if you aren't networking with someone in a New Economy, RAW you can be expected to pay cash for favors as well.
Speaking as having been running an EP game for a while (which is now on hiatus), as a GM, I have no problem with players building up a lot of cash or rep. I don't require it, but I allow my players to do so because that is their own motivation. From experience, a player might easily want to keep a solid nest egg of cash in their back pocket (even upwards of 100k+) because, well, shit happens is the short answer. You never know when you might need to bribe somebody. You might need to buy new guns or gear to adapt to a new situation. You could have to cover resleeving costs if you die or egocast suddenly, and don't want to take that generic Ruster Firewall will give you, or you want to stack in some useful implants to make you better at your job. You could unexpectedly need to cover the cost of a vehicle, or a new safehouse.
Now, I'll admit, I have players who are plan-oriented, and sometimes tech-focused. They like to prep for a situation and acquire tools accordingly. But even if you're a more "indy ploy" group, that doesn't change that there are some hefty operational costs. EP may not have a very robust economy (issues noted by myself and other people with Lifestyle/Income) but it does have one, and I think it does consider very practical costs to operate in the setting.
EDIT:
On the broad subject of PC economics and costs, I'd recommend looking into Caleb Stokes' new game, Red Markets. He's done some work for EP before, and it's basically an "economic horror" game, and has a very detailed mechanism for calculating the pay and profit of small groups of PCs doing highly hazardous work. The KS is done now, and I think the associate beta period closed, but the rules are probably floating out there somewhere, and RPPR and others have recordings of the game to listen to. And, quite frankly, a group of 4-6 PCs would not and probably should not operate on exactly the same scale as conventional industry. I mean, these guys are highly skilled professionals with their own rep scores, bringing their own individual equipment and skills - possibly to what is highly dangerous work. I'm pretty sure every negotiation in Red Markets starts at enough to pay the upkeep cost of each individual PC (equipment and dependants), but nothing extra to account for operating costs (getting injured, going crazy) or character advancement (all options of which require money) unless you press for it. Now, it's also on a per-job and not "per-quarter" basis, but something to think about when handling situations where you're involving player characters.
—
H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog
http://ephrep.blogspot.com/
Thu, 2016-09-08 16:56
#29
MrWigggles
Yea. Red Markets influence
Yea. Red Markets influence what I was doing. I very nearly wanted to use the negotiation tracker. But I was having enough trouble the RAW I didnt really feel comfortable include this hack into it. Instead what I did was, have the negotiation be broken into about 3 opposed social checks, for hazard pay, upkeep, and mark up. The PC did have the opportunity to do some leg work before the meeting, though I do very much enjoy the in media rez of the scams in Red Markets. Really involves all the players actively.
Fri, 2016-11-04 22:21
#30
MrWigggles
So I joined one of the living
So I joined one of the living world campaigns going about. I ran game for it. This dungeon crawl thats been in my head for bit. And that was quite refreshing. There folks laughing, no fighting. They didnt have an issue with the setting of the game. They laughed, able to solve problems. It was fantastic. And now all I want for next session is for them to take a dip in a boiling lake of HE3. But I am /really/ sure that would kill them. So I'll just subtle for liquid water.