Remote controlling guns with mental actions?

Wed, 2014-07-30 14:16

#2

Erulastant Erulastant's picture

Quote:Guns in articulated

Quote:
Guns in articulated weapon mounts can be remote controlled with the Gunnery skill.

Cite? I'm not doubting you, I'd just want to be sure about this. If I were allowing these to be controlled via Gunnery, I wouldn't let a player use a different combat skill (like Kinetic weapons) to control them. But assuming that checks out, if this came up in my game, I would rule: Yes Probably not Probably I'd be more inclined to allow this with multitasking than mental speed though. (Although with the same gun twice, it'd be the reverse--More inclined to allow it with mental speed than with multitasking. But this goes to a problem discussed in another thread, I think (Also amusingly present in StarCraft) where taking drugs makes your gun fire bullets faster.)

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Wed, 2014-07-30 14:59

#3

Smokeskin

Erulastant wrote:Quote:Guns

Erulastant wrote:
Quote:
Guns in articulated weapon mounts can be remote controlled with the Gunnery skill.
Cite? I'm not doubting you, I'd just want to be sure about this. If I were allowing these to be controlled via Gunnery, I wouldn't let a player use a different combat skill (like Kinetic weapons) to control them.

That's how I read the new rules on remote control in Transhuman, page 220. You are right with not being able to use other skills, it says if you don't have Gunnery you default to INT.

Wed, 2014-07-30 21:15

#4

kindalas

I think as a GM and not

I think as a GM and not referring to the rules. I'd let the player benefit from the complimentary skill bonus based on the skill that the weapon would have used. I'd also allow it in games where me and the other players had agreed on certain levels of unfairness. So people who I have played with would probably expect it. But I wouldn't bring it into a con game. Of course my game style is a bit more explain it with science. So if it makes sense I go for it. For example morphs with a cyberbrain can use Eidolons and keep the higher of the bonuses in my games. Because why not.

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Thu, 2014-07-31 11:41

#5

Smokeskin

kindalas wrote:

kindalas wrote:
I'd also allow it in games where me and the other players had agreed on certain levels of unfairness.

Yeah. You can play it "early 21st century fair", and that may be most comfortable to some groups. Or you can go full EP and, say, use beta forks to operate an army of cheap gun drones. That's one of the reasons I'm not really bothered by the four-armed ambidextrous characters.

Thu, 2014-07-31 12:10

#6

Panoptic

There needs to be at least

There needs to be at least two mental actions for firing remotely. One to sense the target through a remote scope and one to actually fire the weapon. Otherwise you're either firing blind. Also, switching between two completely different perspectives in combat could be jarring or dangerously distracting.

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Thu, 2014-07-31 12:47

#7

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

What is the difference

What is the difference between gunnery and kinetic weapons or beam weapons skills? The point of my question is this; the way I understand the terms IRL, gunnery is firing a cannon or mortar by turning cranks and aiming with map coordinates or perhapse a gunsight and range finder in a turret. Kinetic weapons is firing a pistol by lining it up with your eye while looking at a target then pulling a trigger. Neither of those descriptions apply in EP. In EP if you fire a giant laser cannon from a space ship you should 'Jam' the cannon which would make it like shooting with your own body and eyes. In EP if you fire a pistol you're typically using a Smart Gun with a camera to shoot from cover or concealment. Calling something a "remote" turret or weapon mount on a morph that is being Jammed or is sleeved is IMO Silly Gamist BS. I believe the gamer logic runs thusly; "I added two shoulder mounted weapons to my steel morph. Although they work pretty much like my other arms, for some reason, I don't have full native somatic control or proprioception and must use the "gunnery" skill to fire them. This ofcourse means that I can use my mental actions to control parts of my body to acomplish physical tasks independently and can ignore concepts like proprioception, coordination, ambidexterity and such." Transhuman fails to unfuck the remote operation and shell jamming mechanics. How you apply the gunnery skill depends on what you think "gunnery" means. Personaly I don't think it applies to any piece of equipment that has been sleeved or is jammed. Letting an infomorph control a single limb of a cybershell independently via mental actions while jamming that cybershell is not realistic the way I understand character statistics relate to the hardware of the game.

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Thu, 2014-07-31 14:15

#8

Smokeskin

OneTrikPony wrote:

OneTrikPony wrote:
Calling something a "remote" turret or weapon mount on a morph that is being Jammed or is sleeved is IMO Silly Gamist BS. I believe the gamer logic runs thusly; "I added two shoulder mounted weapons to my steel morph. Although they work pretty much like my other arms, for some reason, I don't have full native somatic control or proprioception and must use the "gunnery" skill to fire them. This ofcourse means that I can use my mental actions to control parts of my body to acomplish physical tasks independently and can ignore concepts like proprioception, coordination, ambidexterity and such." Transhuman fails to unfuck the remote operation and shell jamming mechanics. How you apply the gunnery skill depends on what you think "gunnery" means. Personaly I don't think it applies to any piece of equipment that has been sleeved or is jammed. Letting an infomorph control a single limb of a cybershell independently via mental actions while jamming that cybershell is not realistic the way I understand character statistics relate to the hardware of the game.

I generally agree with what you say, both in RAW, RAI and common sense. But what is an articulated mount? If you look at page 207 of Transhuman, it lists what auxillary egos (ie. not the main controlling ego) in flexbots can and can't do. They can't do any of the stuff that requires morph control, like control limbs or fire handheld weapons. What they can do sounds like mental actions - but this has articulated weapon mounts listed. So articulated weapon mounts are maybe more of a gun turret, like the cannon on a tank or the machine cannon on an Apache gunship, that can be operated independently? This would imply that you could only fire them with Gunnery though. Even if we don't allow that, what about using other remote guns with mental actions, or direct remote control of shells in general? Could someone with multitasking bring 2 extra synthmorphs and then directly control them too with the extra mental actions and using Pilot: Anthroform and Gunnery?

Thu, 2014-07-31 14:20

#9

Smokeskin

Panoptic wrote:

Panoptic wrote:
Also, switching between two completely different perspectives in combat could be jarring or dangerously distracting.

From a common sense perspective, I agree. It wouldn't be a problem for multitasking implant since there's actually 2 different forks handling the different tasks. The rules doesn't recognize this as an issue in general though. The jamming rules in Transhuman for example explicitly list that if you're jamming a shall with less Speed than your ego, you can use your extra actions controlling another shell.

Thu, 2014-07-31 14:56

#10

Surly

kindalas wrote:For example

kindalas wrote:
For example morphs with a cyberbrain can use Eidolons and keep the higher of the bonuses in my games. Because why not.

Well, because that gives synths with eidolons a huge advantage over other morph choices, by giving them a Speed bonus that they can transfer between morphs. If they just keep the ability to run various kinds of nifty software that non-infomorphs normally can't run and keep said software in their head forever, still powerful but not as big a deal.

Panoptic wrote:
There needs to be at least two mental actions for firing remotely. One to sense the target through a remote scope and one to actually fire the weapon. Otherwise you're either firing blind. Also, switching between two completely different perspectives in combat could be jarring or dangerously distracting.

Nah, even Detailed Perception is only a quick action. Just because you have more eyes to see through doesn't mean you need more actions to see with. I'd definitely levy distraction penalties, though.

OneTrikPony wrote:
How you apply the gunnery skill depends on what you think "gunnery" means. Personaly I don't think it applies to any piece of equipment that has been sleeved or is jammed. Letting an infomorph control a single limb of a cybershell independently via mental actions while jamming that cybershell is not realistic the way I understand character statistics relate to the hardware of the game.

That's how I've seen it run, yeah. You can choose either to jam one shell at a time and use your normal combat and movement skills while doing so, or remote-control one or more shells at a time using Gunnery and Pilot. (Or you can jam one shell while remote-controlling others - the point is, you can't jam multiple shells at a time). I think this makes sense both from an in-character and from a game-balance perspective. You can inhabit a body and use your normal skills, but if you want to run a bunch of different bodies from a distance at once you're going to need to [i]pilot[/i] them rather than directly [i]act[/i] through them.

Thu, 2014-07-31 15:01

#11

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Smokeskin wrote:Does this

Smokeskin wrote:
Does this count as a mental action, so with the multitasking or mental speed implant you could fire two guns per action phase?

I'd argue yes; you're issuing direct commands via direct remote control. The gun can only fire once presumably (speed of 1). However, YOU can make additional mental actions. So ... >Could you fire the same gun twice per action phase? Yes. >Could a synthmorph with two articulated weapon mounts fire its handheld weapon with its normal action and the its weapon mounts with mental actions, in the same phase? It seems a little odd to have a gun that's hooked up to your morph, but isn't really 'part of your morph' like that, but I suppose, yes. It's not hard to justify, if you think about it. When I fire a normal gun, I need to consider my whole body and the operation of the firearm. That's a heavy processing load, and it can't go any faster than my brain or my body, whichever is slower. However, using a mounted weapon, the weapon has its on-board AI which manages the firearm and the physical components. Meanwhile, I just need to aim and fire. This is why my rate of fire is much higher while playing Doom compared to the shooting range. As a GM, I'd realistically say that transitioning from one environ or device to the other should take, at minimum, an action to mentally readjust. But yeah, seems legit. Reinforced by Transhuman: "If the teleoperator’s Speed is higher, they may use their extra Speed actions as normal with their own morph or to directly control a different shell, but they cannot directly control the same shell with those extra actions." "Characters with augmentations or other bonuses that provide extra mental actions each Action Phase (such as multi-tasking or mental speed) may directly control more than one shell at once with different instructions."

Fri, 2014-08-01 08:44

#12

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Quote: However, using a

Quote:
However, using a mounted weapon, the weapon has its on-board AI which manages the firearm and the physical components. Meanwhile, I just need to aim and fire. This is why my rate of fire is much higher while playing Doom compared to the shooting range.

This seems contradictory to me. If the person's mind is aiming and fireing the weapon what is the AI doing? If the AI is "managing" the "physical components" of the weapon and mount what is the PC doing? In the simulation that is EP stats from only one controling inteligence can be used to aim and fire a weapon. Even with teamwork only one set of stats are used. You can use your speed stat to comand an AI to shoot your weapon. You can't give that AI your complex action and your skill ranks to use while it does it. I agree that direct remote control of a device is probly a lot like playing a video game--with a virtual keyboard. Lets extend the analogy to playing doom while running an Action Pistol Shooting course.

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Fri, 2014-08-01 09:48

#13

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

to be more clear about mu posts above.

The reason I'm unhappy with Transhuman and the morph/shell/mental actions clusterfuck in general is because the game doesn't take the technology of the setting to its logical conclusion. (IN MY OPINION; LORSA :D ) I would have no problem making gunnery and mental actions the default method of conducting ranged combat--IF the COO and SOM stats didn't exist. I'd even believe that was correct if the rule was that machines and the syntheticaly sleeved don't require physical stats. Because lets's face it; making a shell or synthmorph work will require about a billion lines of dedicated control language code in subsystems in addition to pasteing an ego into a brain emulator. So why shouldn't my mind sit on its virtual couch 'playing doom' while the software of my body does the combat? It would probably be more efficient and effective that way. (any one seen the new Robocop film?) Why should we bother with Kinetics skills and Beam weapon skills and Spray weapons skills and Seeker weapons skills when Gunnery will cover them all; just like Doom, I shouldn't need a skill for each gun just a basic familiarity of the tactics for their use. All weapons are smart so, I should be able to inform the systems of my intent and let the software of my body and weapon do the math. COO, SOM, SPEED for physical actions are either redundant in machines or not. The way the mechanics for infomorphs, mental actions, jamming, remote control, gunnery, (and espescially) cyber brains, Hopelessly muddle that question leaves it up to the fiat of the GM.

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Fri, 2014-08-01 14:54

#14

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

OneTrikPony wrote:If the

OneTrikPony wrote:
If the person's mind is aiming and fireing the weapon what is the AI doing?

Adjusting angle and attitude, maintaining pneumatics for recoil compensation, everything a normal shooter does to 'maintain a steady grip'. The shooting ego meanwhile is selecting the target, accounting for windage, soft and hard cover, and directing the AI on how to adjust the angle and attitude. I agree with you though that the current differentiation between the skills is a little goofy. I would have preferred if either gunnery is dealing with indirect fire, or kinetic/beam weapons is handling physical combat, and gunnery is every other case where I'm not holding a gun in my meaty hands.

Fri, 2014-08-01 15:38

#15

Surly

OneTrikPony wrote:I would

OneTrikPony wrote:
I would have no problem making gunnery and mental actions the default method of conducting ranged combat--IF the COO and SOM stats didn't exist. I'd even believe that was correct if the rule was that machines and the syntheticaly sleeved don't require physical stats. Because lets's face it; making a shell or synthmorph work will require about a billion lines of dedicated control language code in subsystems in addition to pasteing an ego into a brain emulator.

I imagine the number of people who'd feel horribly uncomfortable and alienated if they did everything by remote-control exceeds the number who could happily live without autonomic reflexes. Also, the lack of bodily sensation.

Quote:
So why shouldn't my mind sit on its virtual couch 'playing doom' while the software of my body does the combat? It would probably be more efficient and effective that way.

You totally can, and that'd be an interesting character. Maybe a long-time basement-dwelling gamer who kept getting passed over for indentures, until someone figured out that he could actually make an effective mercenary. Wirehead Eidolon, max out Gunnery and Pilot (anthropomorph), take Personal Connection (morph bank) to buy a ton of Basic Pods for respawns, maybe Profession: Squad Tactics with a Self specialty.

Fri, 2014-08-01 16:29

#16

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

well differentiation between

well differentiation between beam weapons and kinetic weapons makes sense because they both follow different physics for putting ordinance on target. with kinetics you need to worry about ballistic droop, gravity, temperature, wind direction and speed. with a beam weapon you only have to worry about atmospheric distortion, focal range and how well you can track a moving a target which all around makes them easier to use

Fri, 2014-08-01 17:24

#17

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Quote: I imagine the number

Quote:
I imagine the number of people who'd feel horribly uncomfortable and alienated if they did everything by remote-control exceeds the number who could happily live without autonomic reflexes. Also, the lack of bodily sensation.

who said anything about lack of body sensation? AFAICS thats the only function of a cyber brain or brain emulator and it needn't have anything to do with your body. For that mater it needn't have anything to do with precise or accurate representation of the physical world. It's been argued, effectively, that a mind in a cyber brain or infomorph (which wiuld be a cyber brain emulation software independent of dedicated hardware), couldn't function with out a fully simulated sensorium. The fact that dedicated hardware is unnecessary, the mind is an emulation and all senses are simulations from an arbitrary number and type of mechanical sensor means that the mind can experience anything it likes regardless of what the body is doing. You can experience your whole existence as a player in your fave level of doom or as elmer fud hunting bugs bunny. It doesn't matter because lower level software is doing the actual heavy lifting that relates to the real world actions of the shell or morph. So, why not throw COO and ALL physical skills out of the game? Its silly to think that there are people who train in 25 different skills when they could spend the same amount of time perfecting 2 skills and use them to accomplish the same tasks, (Multi tasking 12 at a time actually!) with only a negligible effect on efficiency. (-10 modifier for direct remote control) Having a whole bunch of skills for weapons and physical stats seems very ineffecient when you can just put a weapon mount or several on your morph. OR... We might benefit from considering the view that the COO & SOM stats, and individual weapon and physical skills are important; that they represent all of the software necessary for a cyber brain or brain emulator to drive a morph or shell. If you use the rules in Transhuman you should parse them carefully and throw out those that violate the core rather than enhancing it.

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Fri, 2014-08-01 17:59

#18

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

ORCACommander wrote:well

ORCACommander wrote:
well differentiation between beam weapons and kinetic weapons makes sense because they both follow different physics for putting ordinance on target. with kinetics you need to worry about ballistic droop, gravity, temperature, wind direction and speed. with a beam weapon you only have to worry about atmospheric distortion, focal range and how well you can track a moving a target which all around makes them easier to use

depends on what you mean by easy to use. If you have your kinetic weapon benched or in an automated turret you can get apps for your smart phone that will di all the calcs for you. If you're shooting off hand, your smartphone will still do all the calcs but you need to coordinate your body and the weapon to do what your balistic computer tells you. A beam weapon is potentially much more complex. For instance; you may have the ability to adjust the frequency of your beam as well as the length/durration/width of your pulse train, as well as your focal width at the target surface; all dependent on the composition of your target, atmospheric conditions, and the effect you want to have; (the amount of penetration vs. the width of the wound channel etc.) In any case, when you are fireing a ranged weapon attached to your body you need coordination and familiarity with the specs and performance of that particular weapon and its interface with the firing device. All of this can be done with software. Should that software be represented by a COO stat and weapon skill, or a REF stat and gunnery skill? Depends on what you want the game to be. But it doesn't make sense to have it both ways.

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Sat, 2014-08-02 08:44

#19

Lorsa

OneTrikPony wrote:The reason

OneTrikPony wrote:
The reason I'm unhappy with Transhuman and the morph/shell/mental actions clusterfuck in general is because the game doesn't take the technology of the setting to its logical conclusion. (IN MY OPINION; LORSA :D )

*laughs* I agree with you! The rules are most likely written to be working for game balance or the like and not necessarily with technological issues in mind. Much of EP seem to struggle with this clustferfuck to be honest; how to include cool technology but still be a somewhat balanced game to play.

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Wed, 2014-08-06 05:15

#20

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

I disagree with your definition of Gunnery.

I'd say that firing a mounted weapon via gunnery isn't a purely mental action, as the weapon still needs to be physically aimed. Yes, the mount does the moving, but I see that the same as saying that firing a rifle is a purely mental action, and your arm does the aiming. You could install an AI, and give it targeting orders as a purely mental action, but you wouldn't be rolling anything - the AI would make an attack with it's own skill roll when it's initiative comes up. Alternatively I'd say that you can "sacrifice" one of your mental actions to do concordant jamming, in which case you're essentially inhabiting two morphs at once, and you have to divide your actions as normal, limited by individual speeds. For example, Firewall Agent Babylon Vonderall must defend a gateway from 9-Lives grunts whilst her teammates attempt to deactivate the Quantum-Decoherence bomb inside. She's alone (speed 2, multitasking implant), but has at her disposal an advanced anti-personel turret armed with a machine gun (speed 3), a scrounged casemorph with an inbuilt SMG (speed 1) and her trusty particle rifle. As the turret has an inbuilt targeting AI, and a higher speed than her, she decides to use her multitasking implant to give it orders, and starts jamming the case with her other mental action. In the first phase of combat two grunts show up, so she uses her mental action to order the turret to attack one of them, and opens up on the other with both the SMG and her rifle, taking the usual penalties for using two weapons at once. Then the turret takes it's turn, firing at it's target, and on thier turns the mooks take cover whilst returning fire to no effect. It's worth noting that the turret is using the Kinetic Weapons skill to attack, not Gunnery. On round 2, Babylon can no longer use the case as it's not fast enough, and so uses her rifle and her single free mental action to aim and headshot her target, dropping it. Again, the turret opens up, but misses. Finally the mook shoots a burst at the case, but Babylon is still connected and uses her fray to dodge the shot. Then comes round three, and babylon can no longer act. The turret, however, can - and with a full auto burst shreds the second mook where he stands. And then her teammate botches his demolitions roll and sets of the bomb, filling the hab with plasma fire. Oh well, time to restore from backup :P

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Wed, 2014-08-06 23:26

#21

puke

OneTrikPony wrote:The reason

OneTrikPony wrote:
The reason I'm unhappy with Transhuman and the morph/shell/mental actions clusterfuck in general is because the game doesn't take the technology of the setting to its logical conclusion.

I have this conversation with people sometimes. In the future, there will be no good reason for humans to aim weapons and pull triggers. We have webcams on our home entertainment systems that can track the movement of your iris, I'm pretty sure that inside 50 years, aiming and shooting is going to be a job for exactly thee kinds of folks: Robots, hobbyists, and poor people. Shit, lets call it inside 20 years so I have a better chance of living long enough to be wrong. In the Sci Fi future of jamming and simulspace and AI and accelerated simulations, this effect is compounded. There is no reason to do anything but sit in your simulspace and designate targets while your dedicated AI or pruned fork does the heavy work of moving and shooting. The whole thing would boil down to some hodge-podge of electronics warfare, tactics, legal-jutsu, and finance. Did you buy more or better drones? Are you using them correctly? Do you dominate the local infosphere? Do you have a license for this mayhem? It would all be some abstracted minigame that has nothing at all to do with the kind of personal violence and small unit tactics that make the typical RPG fare. The other side of this conversation that I sometimes have, is that this does not sound like very much fun and no one really wants to play this game but me. Everyone else wants to play Michael Mann in Space, which I can't really fault anyone for wanting to do. So you make up reasons to tone it down. Technophobia, Minovsky particles, legal restrictions, honor duels with Krys knives, whatever. But the bottom line is that it's all excuses. Excuses, because everyone really wanted to play mid 20th century warfare IN SPACE and not really explore the logical extension of what this technology would mean.

Wed, 2014-08-06 23:34

#22

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

logical extension it mat be

logical extension it mat be but perhaps the majority of people are not adept at doing it. essentially you are turning it into an real time tactics game with higher stakes than any star craft or dota 2 tourny

Thu, 2014-08-07 04:29

#23

Smokeskin

puke wrote:OneTrikPony wrote

puke wrote:
OneTrikPony wrote:
The reason I'm unhappy with Transhuman and the morph/shell/mental actions clusterfuck in general is because the game doesn't take the technology of the setting to its logical conclusion.
I have this conversation with people sometimes. In the future, there will be no good reason for humans to aim weapons and pull triggers. We have webcams on our home entertainment systems that can track the movement of your iris, I'm pretty sure that inside 50 years, aiming and shooting is going to be a job for exactly thee kinds of folks: Robots, hobbyists, and poor people. Shit, lets call it inside 20 years so I have a better chance of living long enough to be wrong. In the Sci Fi future of jamming and simulspace and AI and accelerated simulations, this effect is compounded. There is no reason to do anything but sit in your simulspace and designate targets while your dedicated AI or pruned fork does the heavy work of moving and shooting. The whole thing would boil down to some hodge-podge of electronics warfare, tactics, legal-jutsu, and finance. Did you buy more or better drones? Are you using them correctly? Do you dominate the local infosphere? Do you have a license for this mayhem? It would all be some abstracted minigame that has nothing at all to do with the kind of personal violence and small unit tactics that make the typical RPG fare. The other side of this conversation that I sometimes have, is that this does not sound like very much fun and no one really wants to play this game but me. Everyone else wants to play Michael Mann in Space, which I can't really fault anyone for wanting to do. So you make up reasons to tone it down. Technophobia, Minovsky particles, legal restrictions, honor duels with Krys knives, whatever. But the bottom line is that it's all excuses. Excuses, because everyone really wanted to play mid 20th century warfare IN SPACE and not really explore the logical extension of what this technology would mean.

I'm not saying you're wrong - but in EP, you can do all the things you mention. You can have gun drone armies and whatnot. However, AIs have a skill cap of 40, and their speed is limited, and especially getting their hardware to run at high Speed is costly. We can discuss the realism of this, but the setting depends on it, and keeping it "human-centered" is probably necessary for it to remain fun as you point out. I think their justification for it - a widespread fear of seed AIs and powerful organizations actively hunting down anyone who tries to build such AI - works ok for me. It's not a huge willingly suspension of disbelief they're asking us to make.

Thu, 2014-08-07 06:02

#24

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

Combat Drone Swarms: The most covert option.

Yeah, that's not so much an RPG as it is Warhammer 40,000. Fun, but a different kind of game. Oh the other hand, that is arguably what's happening... you're just not the commander, you're one of the grunts on the field getting orders from your proxy. You could argue that remote-controling drones makes sense, but in that case all the enemy needs to do is start jamming and your army is suddenly nothing more than metal rusting in the sunshine - consider the example I gave above; all that it would have taken to "kill" the case would have been if the bad guy set thier gear jam local radio transmitions. To avoid that, you need to start putting in autonomous decision making capabilities... and then you're just back to "troops on the ground". Sure, you can use AIs, AGIs or pruned forks, but they're by definition less capable as a sentient ego... because if they weren't, they would be sitting in the simulspace, and you would be on the ground. Sound familiar?

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