OneTrikPony wrote:

I'd like to begin my comments by saying; AAAAAAAAGH! OMGOMG!OMG!!! THANK YOU! OMGICAN'TBREATHE! OMG IF someone doesn't run a homebrew Transformers/EP crossover for me RIGHT FRIKEN now I am just Going to DIE! i m so happee! (I get to be the Stunticons) I also feel that I must say; [Points finger at Kindalas] Bwwaaaahaaaahaaahahaha! Put *that* in your sheet and smokeit :D Now that I have that out of my system... There's much to love here and a couple of problems. I'm waiting to post my comments to the questions thread because I'm hoping one of the other critics here can walk me through the implications of Boosted Speed combined with Mental Speed, combined with Jamming and a +10 Coo Bonus. I'm seeing an effectively unlimited number of ranged attacks per turn. Is anyone else getting that? Also I'm a little pissed about the Brain Cylinder Implant. I heartily applaud this sideways support for biomorphs in the setting but that +20 on integration should apply to all biomorphs. This gear just made it easier to sleeve from a splicer to a synth with a wet brain than it would be to switch to an exalt. That makes no sense. Well I'm off to build characters again, singin ma song; (Transformers--More than Meets the EYE--AutoBots wage thier BATTLE to DesTroy the Evil FORCES of--the DECEPtacons)

I have a plan already.

Size description or volume is all wrong. 300 litres is the size of a small cow, not a large dog. I expect volume. Then you have a utility cluster listed as .1 metres to a side, which would make it 1 litre, but listed as 100 litres. Aside from the wonky volume listings, do you really want them with a density of only 0.1 kg/litre or so? That's a REALLY low density. You list them as not being buoyant, which they'd be in water even under 10g. Or is it because they are filled with empty space between internal components and not watertight?

I suggest a merge of the Brain Cylinder and the Brain Box (from the New Morphs chapter). They are basically the same thing with different rules and costs. As for high vs. medium costs: Seeing as this is THE classic cyborg shell, I would say it's a kinda old technology in Eclipse Phase. The predecessor of just resleeving into a new body would have been transplanting your original brain. Therefore, I would tend to the cheaper option. On the other hand, a cyberbrain is a moderately priced item and seeing how it can be mass produced while a biological brain must be grown it makes sense for the biological version to be more expensive. How about this - putting your old biological brain from another morph into the box can be done for moderate costs while purchasing the box with a new brain inside will be more expensive (i.e. high).

I have one response: Throw it all out. Well, not all of it. Some of this is very good. I just happen to object to the principle/paradigm behind the flexbot rules. I don't think these rules indicate what being a flexbot is all about. (And some of the rules are simply bad, and should be thrown out even if you disagree with my flexbot-paradigm.) So I guess I don't have one response. I have a long and complicated, multifaceted response that is heavily dependent on what the authors actually want to do with their supplement. My main issue is that when I first read the description of the Flexbot, I thought of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reconfiguring_modular_robot]this[/url], such as [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SpaceMolecubes.JPG]this one[/url] and especially [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:4leg2Cat.jpg]this one[/url]. And, while the art for [i]Eclipse Phase[/i] can, at times, be misleading (the description of the Reaper says "disc", while the art is of a sphere...) the Flexbot in [i]Sunward[/i] seemed to imply to me I was on the right track. And then we get to Shape Adjusting. And Shape Adjusting is [i]weird[/i]. Because with shape adjusting, I can give any robot that has it any mechanical mobility system, meaning I can give the Liquid Steel a helicopter rotor. Of course, no GM would allow me to do that, but you generally don't want the rules to say "and the GM has to arbiter what we mean". I didn't imagine that the Flexbot literally changed the shape of its structure to give itself hovercraft capabilities, or spontaneously spawned legs to walk on; I imagine that each flexbot module had a built-in hovercraft, and a built-in wheels, and when combined with other modules, could use a module as a leg; see the art in [i]Sunward[/i] for an example; the Flexbot is using its modules to walk on. I didn't imagine that the flexbot could grow rotors, or extra arms, or disguise itself as a Steel. So letting Shape Adjustment do all these things, with the specific intent of giving it to a flexbot, doesn't really mesh with my idea of what a flexbot [i]is[/i], and it doesn't really evoke what it seems to have been inspired by. It doesn't even encourage in-game use of the actual flexbot main feature, which is to change the configuration of your body around for fun effects; you no longer change your flexbot to have legs, you just grow them from any random module. So there's a disconnect there, between what the shape-adjusting flexbot is presented as, and what I feel it should be - or any shape-adjusting synthmorph, for that matter; the Liquid Steel, I feel, shouldn't be able to spontaneously grow wheels, and the Reaper shouldn't be able to suddenly sport yet another set of tentacles. ---- The [b]Wizard[/b] has +10 COG. Seriously. [i]Stop that[/i]. Here's a list of morphs non-biological morphs that should be allowed to have +10 COG: the Savant. The Savant gets to have +10 COG because it's purpose, in-setting, is to be the only synthmorph that lets you get +10 COG. It's an advanced project, and since the kind of hardware that lets you boost Aptitudes, especially COG, is verifiably not commonplace (the Savant and Menton being noteworthy for that very fact, for one, the fact that all synthmorphs don't have +5 to all Aptitudes, for another), and not simple. Furthermore, there's the issue of the rather nasty power-escalation inherent in making +10 become the new "norm" for morph Aptitude bonuses. Likewise, both the Fighter and the Rogue have +10 COO. Now, +10 to COO isn't necessarily a sin, since its pretty unexplored territory (the only worthwhile morph to have it is the Ghost), but if flexbots are to receive this kind of thing, only one type of core should receive it; flexbots aren't, as far as I can tell, supposed to have COO bonuses as their "thing" (uplifts have INT as their "thing", for example - though I can't tell why...), so they shouldn't be the go-to morph class when looking for COO bonuses. ---- [list] [*]There's no way to build the Flexbot using the Modules provided. The Yeoman is, seemingly, the default Flexbot, but it's only one Module; I need five other Modules to make a Flexbot, yet there's no "basic Cluster" I can buy, and buying five more Yeomen will, for one, cost me more CP than a Flexbot does, and more importantly, give my morph a DUR of 150. [*]Utility clusters may only possess the Inchworm mobility system unless they're swarms. The Bouba UC has the Snake mobility cluster, and is hence an illegal build. [*]Ditchdigger is given no indication of what it does, except for its name. If the name is indicative, I'd like to note that nanomachines are perhaps the single least effective way to dig a hole; it would be digging a hole by lifting away grains of sand one by one. [*]What, exactly, makes having a Grimoire so useful in performing Interfacing tests? [*]Lockpick is supposed to be excellent for use with the Rogue... but doesn't have Chameleon Skin, making the Rogue's Chameleon Skin rather useless if the two are used together. [*]Similarly, the Longbow's Reflex Booster is rather superfluous when the Fighter doesn't have any bonus speed. [/list] ---- The DUR ratings, in general, are rather high. If a flexbot is supposed to have a DUR equal to the sum of its Modules, then the corebook Flexbot probably has one 5 DUR module and five 4 DUR modules, or 1x10 DUR+5x3 DUR, or something similar. As written, if I want to build a six-Module Flexbot, it is literally impossible to get it below 60 DUR - the realm of the [i]Reaper[/i], and something with which the simplest, cheapest flexbot simply shouldn't even approach thinking about contending with.

I agree with the above comments about the base flexbot from the main rulebook - it should definitely be possible to build this using the new rules! In fact, I think it would be very nice to have a few example flexbot morphs presented (i.e. a set of modules that go together to comprise a flexbot morph). The base flexbot morph should be one of these. This would be very helpful for anyone who wants to have a flexbot morph, but doesn't want to engage so much with the added complexity of the rules for them. One possible simplifcation/abstraction (thinking about the issue of DUR): if flexbots are going to be comprised of 'core' and 'cluster' modules anyway, why not rule that DUR is determined solely by the 'core' module, and have the 'cluster' modules just add functionality? Perhaps each Core can only run a max of 2-3 (or whatever) Cluster modules. This would then allow a simple table for the physical size of the resulting flexbot. For example: 1 Core => about the size of a dog (hence counts as a small target) 2 cores => roughly person-sized 3 cores => large size trait (+10 to be hit) etc. Question: Should Cluster modules really have a full cyberbrain? Or should they be more limited than that? What about ruling that they're more limited than that, so they can be controlled remotely/jammed/given instructions, but not sleeved into?

OneTrikPony wrote:

While these rules would be great for a homebrew cartoon crossover I really can't see what any of this has to do with EP. It would be useless in my actual game because this, like much of the proposed material for transhuman, ignores the game and invalidates the core book while doing nothing to support the setting as described in the core. Frankly I'm surprised that this draft got public in a form that makes the core flexbot impossible. That's What you were supposed to be fixing.

I don't see it that way at all. I think there are some issues with much of what has been presented, but nothing more than what's expected from a draft. There are some inconsistencies, a few silly things, some broken mechanics, some stuff seems too powerful, that sort of stuff. It's fixable. But nothing that makes it seem like a cartoon crossover, or invalidates the core book once reasonable fixes are in. What parts are you thinking about? On the basic flexbot being impossible: Maybe it is an oversight, but I've been developing a strategic computer game, and in the end of the project there is A LOT of finetuning you need to do to make everything fit together. At the point where you start doing that, you're past the point where you want to introduce any other changes. You can introduce changes early in the production cycle, and if you want in on that, you're just going to have to deal with some rough edges too. It might even be something as simple as the Yeoman cost just being incorrectly listed as 5 when it should be 25...

i was thinking about something similar to the DUR issue in regards to swarmanoids, especially the concerns over the new smart swarm being too powerful. My thoughts in that case were that you could the listed DUR as a pool and then use the average of a single unit and an amount of the total "risked" for a construct with the minimum DUR being that of a single unit. So a 30 DUR smart swarm of 5 DUR microbots could come together into a maximum 17 DUR object. This would reflect a larger object yet still made of essentially fragile pieces. Unfortunately all my other ideas for scaling this up are proving "inelegant" example: averaging the sum of smaller modules with the core . Back to the drawing board for me!

nick012000 wrote:

Uh, guys? The Flexbot in the Eclipse Phase Corebook is just a single Module. More specifically, it's basically the Engineer Core, minus the T-Ray Emitter and the Aptitude bonuses.

The rules are, at best, extremely unclear whether the Flexbot in the core book is one Module or a combination of six Modules to form a "core frame". Going by the picture in [i]Sunward[/i] and the fact that to buy a six-module basic flexbot would then require 150 CP, I remain doubtful.