• pg 22 and 23 The table lists Reactive as +3/+3 while the description text lists it as +5/+5
• pg 22 Was Hyperdense Exoskeleton intended to be 10/12 armor or +10/+12 armor? The former seems to better reflect EP1, and would avoid stacking this with any heavy armor build. Of course GM fiat can deal with this as layered armor as well.
• pg 25 Jamming specifies that the drone's Vigor pool is used instead of the operator's. The Wirehead infomorph (Making Characters: pg 24) has a Vigor pool. This can still be useful if they use the Ongoing use of the Vigor pool to boost skills before jamming, since the bonus applies for 24 hours, but I'm not sure if this was the intent.
• pg 30 Under Improve Aptitudes, the increased cost for skills over 60 seems to have stuck around in this section. It's significantly worse, since boosting the associated skill by 1 from the aptitude requires the expenditure of 1 RP (which would buy 5 skill points instead of 1 now). This section also refers to a skill cap of 99 (rather than the 98 in the Making Characters pamphlet).
• pg 31 The Lose a Negative Ego Trait section is duplicated
• pg 32 Paranoia grants a +20 bonus to WIL Checks against Persuade, but Making Characters pg 15 says Persuade is opposed by SAV. The subsequent Provoke penalty does appropriately apply to WIL checks.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:

The shredder description says they struggle with armor and they don't have AP, this is a change from 1e.

TheGrue wrote:

The shredder description says nothing of the kind.

Quote:

Shredder: A heavier version of the shard pistol, the shredder fires a larger cloud of lethal flechettes, enough to shred a portion of the target into a fine mist.

The Shard Gun says this (emphasis mine):

Quote:

Shard Pistol: This weapon fires a stream of of diamondoid shards at high velocities with each shot. A blast of these micro-flechettes is very traumatic to flesh, but their armor-piercing capabilities are offset by their low mass. Shard pistols are ideal for close-quarters habitats, as the shards tend to shatter rather than ricochet. Shard ammunition is sometimes coated with drugs or toxins for extra efficiency.

[snip]

UnitOmega wrote:

They're not nanoscopic, and my understanding is that their ballistic properties aren't great. Due to low mass, they will not necessarily impart the force to a target to do a lot of damage to armor - especially considering how common carbon weave and fullerenes is supposed to be in EP's armor tech. But vs your soft, squishy body they can just slap through everything and cause lots of small damage to tissues, cause blood loss, etc. It's basically the principle of biter ammo. Hard, solid shot punches through armor designed to spread out and deflect force. Softer shot expands and drags through target to cause more harm.

Grim G wrote:

The way you're describing them is the complete opposite of 1st ed; good at getting through armor but poor kinetic energy distribution.

Quote:

Weapons (not ammo) listed as armor-piercing already incorporate the DV modifier.

UnitOmega wrote:

I mean, Sniper Rifle stopping power is pretty good. It does 2d10+10 [i]after[/i] the reduction.

UnitOmega wrote:

And I think Railguns do the same? This I will say could use some clarification.

UnitOmega wrote:

It says the DV stays "as above", but with x2 Reload rate, x1.5 range and AP added. It lists the quality directly, and it's inherent to the railgun weapon, so I would assume this means they are an overall improvement over using AP ammo in your firearm, but now you have the battery limitation and cannot use speciality ammo.

UnitOmega wrote:

I mean that the -1d10 damage is already accounted for. You don't roll a d10 and subtract, you reduce the DV by a d10, and ONLY if you add AP with ammo. The DV for a weapon which intrinsically has the quality (which the Sniper Rifle does) does not deviate, it's already accounted for - this is why I quoted that section. So theoretically a Sniper Rifle does 3d10+10 DV, but that is reduced to it's written number of 2d10+10. So it has AP and still managed to out-pace other firearms. I mean by Railguns doing the same I think they don't reduce their DV because they say to treat damage "as above" yet with the Armor-Piercing quality. This would again mean that effectively they do +1d10 DV but this is pre adjusted for you. This is why I say it could use clarification - it's a little ambiguously parsed right now.

ubik2 wrote:

For a decent model of penetration, the square root of the diameter is important as well (e.g. a projectile of the same mass with 4x the diameter will only have half the penetration). I'll use this as the simple model: (mass/diameter)^0.5 * velocity^1.5 If the shard pistol fires a needle with the same length as an M-16 bullet, but 1/10th the diameter, at Mach 7, the overall penetration is similar to the M-16 bullet. In atmosphere, this will falloff quickly. I'm assuming some sort of smart shards too, in atmosphere, to replicate the stabilizing effect of a rifled bullet. For our railgun with twice the muzzle velocity of our firearm, and a 4mm projectile with the same length, but smaller diameter to have the same momentum, we end up with around 6 times the penetration. This also gets you 2x the reload, since your bullets are half as massive. This is the area where you want to have the Armor Piercing trait, to indicate that armor is significantly less effective. The vast majority of that energy does not go into a soft target, as most of it is wasted on overpenetration, so the amount of damage that actually applies to an unarmored target is essentially the same as the firearm version (I'm just asserting this part, rather than basing it on a model of overpenetration). Regarding the rapier/estoc conversation, the penetration of the estoc in a thrust is not normally sufficient to get through plate. That's modeled by combining it with a called shot to a vulnerable area, which gets you armor piercing. It's possible you would use both versions of armor piercing there (one from the weapon, and one from the called shot) to completely eliminate the role of armor (this is very unrealistic if you're using it with EP2 combat armor). A pick style weapon will penetrate plate armor, and does not need the called shot to do so, but that's a result of the additional velocity you have available for the swinging motion (perhaps modeled as a higher DV). The piston spear would make this velocity available in a thrusting weapon. I do like the fact that the Armor Piercing trait represents a trade-off for the piercing. Related to that, I would imagine that while most autonomist habitats are fine with shard pistols / shredders / firearms, they might have a hard time with railguns or armor piercing ammunition. These projectiles are likely to keep going all the way out to space, and someone has to patch those holes. I would prefer it if the books removed the -1d10 portion from the Armor Piercing trait description, and added it to the appropriate ammunition instead. It makes it clearer when you're picking out ammunition that you've made a trade-off, and eliminates some rules confusion. For the RAP, I'd suggest a simple -2 modifier (since this is the average result of a +1d6 together with -1d10). Finally, despite my use of equations, I don't think EP2 should turn into GURPS.

Playtest wrote:

IMPROVE APTITUDES Raise aptitudes at the cost of 1 RP per aptitude point. Aptitudes may not be raised above 30. Raising the value of an aptitude also raises the value of all linked skills by an equivalent amount. If this raises any linked skills over 60, an additional 1 RP must be spent per linked skill over 60 (with the exception of the character’s native language skill and skills capped at 99).