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Simulspace Acceleration and the Downtime Psi Sleight

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bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture
Simulspace Acceleration and the Downtime Psi Sleight
My inner munchkin has a question: Is it possible for an async to enter into an accelerated simulspace and then use the Downtime Psi Sleight in the simulspace, when their mind is being run at 60x speed, in order to heal mental stress at 60x speed?

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Lilith Lilith's picture
Doesn't spending time in
Doesn't spending time in accelerated space tend to make people go crazy anyway? I would think the loss of lucidity from that would probably make the gains from Downtime minimal at best, if not nullify them completely. Plus I'm not even sure you [i]can[/i] use Psi sleights in simulspace (gut instinct, or rather GM instinct, says no).
CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture
I want to say yes, just
I want to say yes, just because I think that 60x simulspace is silly and needs to be as broken as physically possible. The munchkin in me screams yes. But I think that if I was GM'ing it I would say no. Something something Simulmorph counts as an infolife, so can't use sleights. I would find a reason to not allow it.
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Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture
That sounds very reasonable,
That sounds very reasonable, CodeBreaker: a simulmorph *is* a different (non-biological) thing. That's the only way simspace acceleration even (sorta) works, right?
bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture
Except, when a biomorph
Except, when a biomorph enters a simulspace, it is not done by means of making an infomorph copy and running it in the simulspace. Instead, they put a headset on, and the biomorph's brain is accelerated up to that speed. This is one of the reasons why I agree that 60x simulspace speed for everyone is somewhat silly, and if I were to see abuse in my games, I'd put in a limit of how fast a biomorph's brain can be accelerated based on the quality of the hookup hardware and supporting infrastructure (headset can only get up to 15x, but a full vat-job where they do essentially yoink your ego out of your brain and run it as an infomorph can get up to 60x). Infomorph and synthmorphs, obviously, don't have that problem. However, that still doesn't answer my question. Let's just say we limit it to 2x speed. Since the biomorph's brain is having its perception of time messed with, so that every one second that observers experience has two seconds going by for the biomorph's ego. If that ego is an async, they have access to psi sleights that allow them to mess with their own internal brain chemistry and information processing. So, if an async tries to use Downtime--an internal-effecting psi sleight--while their mental signal processes are being sped up to 2x normal, would it take 4 hours to complete, or 2 hours? My internal vote is 2 hours--with the caveat that using Psi-Chi sleights when in a simulspace either adds a significant penalty to the psi activation roll (perhaps equal to the simulspace acceleration, so trying to do it at 30x speed gives you a -30 penalty to the roll), or increases the strain (perhaps adding a strain modifier of half of the simulspace acceleration, round down, meaning that using Psi-Chi sleights is only safe at low rates of acceleration; high speeds could literally make your brain cook itself).

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Deadite Deadite's picture
No. Page 222 (third printing)
No. Page 222 (third printing): "Note that infomorphs may never be targeted by psi sleights as [b]psi is not effective within the mesh or simulspace[/b]." (Emphasis mine.) And p263: "Asyncs cannot use their psi abilities in simulspace, though such abilities can be simulated." I'd suggest that a simulation of this power would not actually have any real effect, otherwise it would be a standard procedure for ego healing everywhere.
Capitalocracy Capitalocracy's picture
The book itself is somewhat
The book itself is somewhat contradictory on the subject, saying that excessive exposure to time-accelerated simulspace makes you crazy, but at the same time saying people work in time-accelerated simulspace environments on a daily basis to increase productivity. Although that might not be contradictory... I've had employers that would be perfectly happy with destroying your sanity if it meant a temporary increase in productivity. But Deadite makes a good point: no psi powers in simulspace. I could see time-slowed simulspace recreation as an acceptable form of speeding up normal stress recovery, however.
bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture
alright. That seems fairly
alright. That seems fairly straightforward. *shoves inner munchkin into chest* *locks chest shut* *chest bounces a few times, with little meeps* Thanks!

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Lilith Lilith's picture
Capitalocracy wrote:The book
Capitalocracy wrote:
The book itself is somewhat contradictory on the subject, saying that excessive exposure to time-accelerated simulspace makes you crazy, but at the same time saying people work in time-accelerated simulspace environments on a daily basis to increase productivity. Although that might not be contradictory... I've had employers that would be perfectly happy with destroying your sanity if it meant a temporary increase in productivity.
It's not necessarily a contradiction. I believe the specific circumstances are max speed accelerated simulspaces running for a long time, i.e. the Lost project. Bumping up to x2 speed for a few hours a day thus might not be quite as harmful in the longer term, especially with drugs (Comfurt, yum yum) and (hopefully) job-mandatory psych evals and treatment. That's how I'd handle it, anyway.
Ilmarinen Ilmarinen's picture
Lilith wrote:Doesn't spending
Lilith wrote:
Doesn't spending time in accelerated space tend to make people go crazy anyway?
I think that's mainly a problem when you don't get proper socialization and/or the rules of simulspace are very different from the normal rules of the transhuman world.
[------------/Nation States/-----------] [-----/Representative Democracy/-----] [--------/Regulated Capitalism/--------]
bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture
Ilmarinen wrote:Lilith wrote
Ilmarinen wrote:
Lilith wrote:
Doesn't spending time in accelerated space tend to make people go crazy anyway?
I think that's mainly a problem when you don't get proper socialization and/or the rules of simulspace are very different from the normal rules of the transhuman world.
Yep. Part of the problem with the Lost (insofar as I'm using my own childhood psychological development training onto a fictional group of children) is that, yes, they weren't properly socialized; according to the Lost detail document on pg 233 of core, there were 2,211 adults and 45 AGIs... and an untold number of kids (I'm guessing somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000, based on studies of optimum caregiver:child ratios, but the presence of muses to use as secondary aides could skew that to a higher number). So, that was it for their socialization: 2000-odd adults, and a bunch of age mates (worse, actually, because it sounds like the project was broken down into three smaller groups on separate locations, rendering the socialization pool even smaller). No older siblings or schoolmates to emulate in behavior--only a group of corporate nannies. And the time acceleration would make things worse for attempting to make socialization connections with anyone outside of the accelerated simulspace--if they would even be allowed to, due to the project's secrecy. Essentially, this was a giant, time-accelerated, high-pressure orphanage... that went boom. They even call it out in the doc, that
Quote:
Despite omnipresent observation and real-time adjustment of the simulspace and educational programming for optimal normality, somewhere along the way the project suffered a breakdown in quality assurance and parameter monitoring that resulted in a near total failure at empathy modeling.
To draw a metaphor, they tried to do with children what Biosphere II did with ecology--take a microcosm and separate it out from the larger ecological context.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin