Eclipse Phase: Through the Looking Glass [System] [Interest Check]

Started by Blythe, April 08, 2016, 11:48:34 AM

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Angie

Lyscaris will have no idea what Titanian politics are. Though I'm getting that she doesn't really have to care, but she'll be really confused if its brought up.

Hell, she's probably going to have a lot of questions about Chat Noir anyway.
Avatar is by Lemonfont. Will remove it if he asks me to.

Come check the Cyberpunk Images Thread!

ReijiTabibito

Blythe, just PMed you on this topic.

There are ways to get around the rep penalty for not being there - one good excuse is that you were doing work on behalf of the Titanian Commonwealth.  If you can successfully prove that, then no problems.

Of course, then that would mean you're working for them...

CarnivalOfTheGoat

Busy few days, and then I managed to do something terrible to my spreadsheet last night. I've recovered most of it and should have Světlana's character sheet ready for approval sometime in the next day.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#103
Thought some parts of a recent PM I sent might be useful to those who haven't done much reading on the environment of Oberon and Chat Noir...Or it may be old hat for people familiar with the EP setting:

Gates vary, I believe, and there's no reason one couldn't be in orbit (after all, Oberon is a moon, itself). Even if we're "at home," if we're operating out of Chat Noir, then "home" is Oberon...Uranus IV. That means it's not "as cold as" Pluto, but it's still "If your suit breaches you're dead meat almost instantaneously." Oberon has an escape velocity of .727 km/s, but just like with Earth, a much lower velocity than that will take you clear of the surface for a good, long while (compare Oberon's surface gravity of 0.0346m/s^2 to Earth's 9.8m/s^2 or Luna's 1.6m/s^2...A serious jump could leave you hanging above 'ground' for minutes or hours!). Driving around in a vehicle in a place where accidental fast acceleration over a bump could put you into a long ballistic trajectory and where all Earth's gases are in either liquid or solid form (Surface temp on the sunward side is a balmy 70K...Or -333F or -203C if you prefer...) is going to be very hazardous indeed.

It's also a question of societal values. The further out from Sol you go, the less likely it is that you'll have people who own things that they never/rarely use (or who don't own anything except themselves and what they carry). Mass is cost, and conspicuous consumption may worry the neighbors, particularly if they are stretched thin themselves. Shipping a car from point to point out in the deep black is insanely costly in terms of fuel mass, so if you have a car on Oberon, you'd probably have needed to convince/do lots of favors for, somebody(ies) who could fabricate and assemble it and who were willing to dump that much resource mass into something that might not be all that useful...A Gatecrasher Truck, on the other hand, makes perfect sense in a town whose existence is predicated on being a Gate access point, but it'd probably be fabbed-on-favor for an expedition rather than someone's personal ride-about-town. Probably much easier to talk someone into fabbing weaponry, because its utility in a frontier outpost responsible for Gate defense and where everyone has the community responsibility of protecting the community is pretty obvious. Definitely look up Gatecrashing 63-5.

Closer to Sol, you have a post-scarcity society with scarcity artificially imposed by the Hypercorps (thus the legal and technological limitations imposed on fabbers). Farther from Sol your society is still post-scarcity to a point, but anything 'big' is liable to be community-owned and usable by many. Generally speaking, your morph is your own, and your personal effects are your own, of course. But it's doubtful that you'd need a car inside of Chat Noir (described as "a small frontier town" with very anarchist leanings). Storage space is "free" if you want to park it outside of Chat Noir, but taking up (pressurized, heated) space might cause others to perceive it as "borrowable" since it's "taking up community space." Note the commentary on the "autonomist lifestyle" on Transhuman 105. It seems likely that the Love & Rage Collective takes a similar view to that espoused by the immigration broadcasters for Locus (another Autonomist community):

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide
“Welcome to Locus. You voluntarily assume the risk of organic damage or mental trauma by mooring here. You must bring or be capable of acquiring enough food, H20, oxygen, and shelter to survive for the duration of your stay in a harsh, asteroid-rich environment. Weapons of mass destruction are prohibited. Further guidelines for coexisting with your fellow entities are in the habitat survival guide. You and only you are responsible for yourself—learn to love it!”

Aaaaand now back I go to trying to reconstruct Světlana's spreadsheet...

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

ChaoticSky

That said, its worth pointing out two things;

1) There are morphs that are perfectly capable of surviving Oberon's surface, and i dont mean Synths either. Biomorphs with the proper augs (such as Cryonic temperature tolerance) will find the open vacuum of the surface to be a touch chilly, but nothing a stout coat wont take care of. And in broader terms EP is acquainted well enough with living in space that there isnt alot of inherent risk to the moon's environment unless you do something fantastically stupid. Such common tech as gas-jet packs or augs nullify the risk of spending hours contemplating your life choices while you wait to land.

2) Chat Noir (and the Love and Rage Coalition that manages it), is a major Autonomous Alliance base, its no Brinker colony drifting in the void, and the sheer amount of value inherent in the Fissure Gate drives a extremely robust local economy, quite literally built around servicing the Gate and facilitating gate ops. It wont be too hard to get our hands on anything we need for missions within reason, since anything we could want has likely been requested before and there will be locals with the blueprints and fabbers to provide it to those with suitable rep scores. We know for a fact that there are colonization ops running through Fissure, which require staggering amount of material, so they must either have sources on hand or some way to get them in a hurry (conventionally pushing a cargo of that size out to Uranus from the inner system would be ludicrous, and no single Autonomous entity other than Titan could gather such materials themselves all in one shot. So logically the infrastructure must be inherent in Chat Noir its self or dispersed across the AA.)

I mean, its not the Ritz, but as far as the fringe of the system goes, we are going to a major facility, not some place where they might be counting the breaths you take to make sure you arnt straining their life support systems. There will be entertainment, services, parties, and plenty of ways to get drunk/high/in trouble/etc.


CarnivalOfTheGoat

#105
1) Especially vac-sealing. ;) I was really more pointing out in relation to the buggy idea that any wheeled surface-vehicle moving at more than the slowest crawl would be liable to go sailing off over the horizon the moment it hit the tiniest bump, not that the place was uninhabitable (although even a Titanian would want vacuum-mods). It's a microgravity environment, not even lunar gravity. Going for a walk you probably would want to be anchored if you didn't have thrusters.

2) Agreed. I was just noting that on an autonomist base, if you leave something sitting around and someone decides they need it, good neighborliness suggests that they'll put it back in as-found condition when they're done...whenever that is! I wasn't suggesting there'd be a need to pay for parking or breathing. Just that anything sitting around easily reachable indoors might potentially be "borrowed."

Again, Gatecrashing 63-5 provides an excellent rundown on the situation...Including that Gatecrashers are, themselves, expected to be autonomous and able to supply their own resources.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

FarFetched

*claws her way to the surface*

Oooh, more eclipse phase~! I'm currently running a character in a FATE version of this game on another thread, and I have to say the lore is amazing. I had a second character idea for this game that I never got to bring up in the other, but I'm still trying to remember the concept. Either way, color me interested.

ReijiTabibito

Speaking of vacuum sealing, there is a question.  I'm going over the armor setup for my character - you need a whole-body setup to resist vacuum, right?  A Vacsuit by itself isn't enough, you need a helmet to go with it, and Light Body Armor doesn't provide a full seal...

EDIT: I swear to God, I hate the fact that critical means rolling doubles.  It means that if you want to maximize your skills, you end up having a whole bunch of weird-ass numbers all over your character sheet.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#108
Quote from: FarFetched on April 20, 2016, 05:34:07 AM
*claws her way to the surface*

Oooh, more eclipse phase~! I'm currently running a character in a FATE version of this game on another thread, and I have to say the lore is amazing. I had a second character idea for this game that I never got to bring up in the other, but I'm still trying to remember the concept. Either way, color me interested.

Hey there! Welcome.

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on April 20, 2016, 03:20:19 PM
Speaking of vacuum sealing, there is a question.  I'm going over the armor setup for my character - you need a whole-body setup to resist vacuum, right?  A Vacsuit by itself isn't enough, you need a helmet to go with it, and Light Body Armor doesn't provide a full seal...

Some misunderstanding here, apparently. A helmet or shield is an "armor accessory" in EP: an addon to normal armor which allows you to add more armor points. A light helmet is open, while a full helmet latches on and provides an environmental seal with 12 hours of air supply that will protect you against gases...It's not a vacsuit. Hasn't got the pressure/insulative/temp regulating properties. No amount of adding helmets will make your armor into a vacsuit any more than a modern riot cop or a soldier in MOPP gear has a vacsuit. It's just armor with a heavier helmet/bonus gas protection...Although I suppose you could use it as SCUBA for purposes of diving into a non-toxic liquid. A vacsuit, on the other hand, is a sealed system with pressure and temperature protection that doesn't require the purchase of anything else.

Upgraded Smart Vac Clothing with armor characteristics is probably the most "convenient" choice for a vacsuit for most of EP, but for Gatecrashing you will probably want something heavier, like a Standard Vacsuit, both for the additional armor and for the Maker and additional sensors, or go completely nuts and bring a Hardsuit.

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on April 20, 2016, 03:20:19 PMEDIT: I swear to God, I hate the fact that critical means rolling doubles.  It means that if you want to maximize your skills, you end up having a whole bunch of weird-ass numbers all over your character sheet.

Eh. Doesn't affect me any more than having oddball numbers in D&D/PF when min-maxing. It's just the nature of the system. After a while it becomes almost second nature.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

ReijiTabibito

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on April 20, 2016, 04:30:16 PM
Some misunderstanding here, apparently. A helmet or shield is an "armor accessory" in EP: an addon to normal armor which allows you to add more armor points. A light helmet is open, while a full helmet latches on and provides an environmental seal with 12 hours of air supply that will protect you against gases...It's not a vacsuit. Hasn't got the pressure/insulative/temp regulating properties. No amount of adding helmets will make your armor into a vacsuit any more than a modern riot cop or a soldier in MOPP gear has a vacsuit. It's just armor with a heavier helmet/bonus gas protection...Although I suppose you could use it as SCUBA for purposes of diving into a non-toxic liquid. A vacsuit, on the other hand, is a sealed system with pressure and temperature protection that doesn't require the purchase of anything else.

Right, yeah, it mentions that only full helmets provide an environmental seal.  Though, it mentions that Heavy Body Armor also provides a seal...so, in theory it's possible to pair up a Full Helmet and Heavy Body Armor to get a full seal, but at the lack of the stuff a Vacsuit comes with.

As an art question, a vacsuit is that thing the unfortunate guy escaping from the space station is wearing, right?

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on April 20, 2016, 04:30:16 PM
Upgraded Smart Vac Clothing with armor characteristics is probably the most "convenient" choice for a vacsuit for most of EP, but for Gatecrashing you will probably want something heavier, like a Standard Vacsuit, both for the additional armor and for the Maker and additional sensors, or go completely nuts and bring a Hardsuit.

The problem is a Vacsuit tends to have a lesser AR compared to some of the other options - and if you're a Synth, you can just get the various armor shells added onto your frame.

I would prefer a Crasher Suit, but at a cost of Expensive...

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on April 20, 2016, 04:30:16 PM
Eh. Doesn't affect me any more than having oddball numbers in D&D/PF when min-maxing. It's just the nature of the system. After a while it becomes almost second nature.

Yeah, but in 3.5/PF, there aren't criticals for skills - and where there are, it's 1 or 20.

Maybe it's just me being OCD and wanting everything to start out with nice numbers that end in 5 or 0.

ChaoticSky

Do *not* bring a Hardsuit, its basically a modern space suit+100 years or so, its like bubble-boy with encased limbs flailing around. XD

If your looking for the best, then the ideal suit would be (shock) the Crasher Suit (as in Gate Crashing, not the Crash Suit, which is for taking a swan dive from orbit). Its a Standard Smart Vac Suit with additional armour, the hands are reinforced for beating the shit out of that one idiot who keeps yelling "Marco!' on a unknown exoplanet, and a few other things.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on April 20, 2016, 04:52:55 PM
Right, yeah, it mentions that only full helmets provide an environmental seal.  Though, it mentions that Heavy Body Armor also provides a seal...so, in theory it's possible to pair up a Full Helmet and Heavy Body Armor to get a full seal, but at the lack of the stuff a Vacsuit comes with.

Except you don't have the pressure-adjustment smart materials mentioned under the entry on vacsuits. Nothing is stopping you from wearing body armor over a smart or light vacsuit if it's tailored appropriately.

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on April 20, 2016, 04:52:55 PMAs an art question, a vacsuit is that thing the unfortunate guy escaping from the space station is wearing, right?

Or it could be a synth? There are lots of things in the art which are more likely to be vacsuits, particularly in GC.

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on April 20, 2016, 04:52:55 PMThe problem is a Vacsuit tends to have a lesser AR compared to some of the other options - and if you're a Synth, you can just get the various armor shells added onto your frame.

I would prefer a Crasher Suit, but at a cost of Expensive...

Or go for a Hardsuit with Faraday options.

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on April 20, 2016, 04:52:55 PMYeah, but in 3.5/PF, there aren't criticals for skills - and where there are, it's 1 or 20.

Maybe it's just me being OCD and wanting everything to start out with nice numbers that end in 5 or 0.

You and your crazy decimal obsession. (Secretly wishes all of the numbers were more evenly allocated in base-8.)

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

ChaoticSky

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on April 20, 2016, 05:19:05 PM(Secretly wishes all of the numbers were more evenly allocated in base-8.)
base 16 is where the cool kids are. vivalahexa!

ReijiTabibito

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on April 20, 2016, 05:19:05 PM
Except you don't have the pressure-adjustment smart materials mentioned under the entry on vacsuits. Nothing is stopping you from wearing body armor over a smart or light vacsuit if it's tailored appropriately.

Is that possible?  I always took it that you couldn't stack armor unless it was with Smart Skin or Second Skin - besides, wouldn't that complicate some mods?  Like the Chameleon Coating.

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on April 20, 2016, 05:19:05 PM
You and your crazy decimal obsession. (Secretly wishes all of the numbers were more evenly allocated in base-8.)

The good news is that after the initial setup, I have no problems with weird numbers.  Just when I'm getting it set up.  And base 8?  I thought my compulsions were odd...

Angie

Ummm...I know I should probably learn this from reading the main book, but...would any of you kind Egos like to educate a poor young Infolife on why we need vacsuits in the first place?
Avatar is by Lemonfont. Will remove it if he asks me to.

Come check the Cyberpunk Images Thread!

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#115
For starters, we're going to an environment with a Halon atmosphere which has been known to forcibly decompress itself to blow explorers not just "into deep space" but "into deep space on the event horizon of a black hole."

A vac suit won't save you from the eater-of-all-energies, but it'll at least mean you won't die horribly in a Halon atmosphere.

And that brings up another point. Blythe, you said that our first destination was Penrose. As the primary information in GC is notes from a semi-public symposium which is lobbying to shut down travel to Penrose, I would presume that information is readily available to the team?

Because if that's the case, people should probably consider their loadouts carefully. We'll be operating out of an autonomous colony, so you'll probably be able to trade/finagle different equipment after the first trip. No reason not to prepare specifically for where you're going...

Except that sometimes gates don't send you where you're supposed to go. There's at least one account in GC of a posthuman who expected to go through a gate into a breathable environment and ended up in hard vacuum, barely surviving to make it back through the gate to home.

And I imagine that answers the question about vacsuits. At least for biomorphs.

But even in normal EP terms, if we weren't gatecrashing, most transhumans have vacsuits because they exist in breachable environments. Particularly in the outsystem. It's nice to be able to crank a helmet and gloves on (or, if you have smarter material as part of your suit, to just activate it to grow your helmet and gloves) and be able to survive when there's a major blowout due to accident, natural disaster, or hostile action. Additionally high-end vacsuits have various other facilities (Specs, AR, Makers) which can be useful to have around.

Or you can just go with a synth-morph and fear (almost) no environment. And worry about being hacked or running into superacids or bacteria which find synthetic materials tasty.

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on April 20, 2016, 05:25:56 PM
Is that possible?  I always took it that you couldn't stack armor unless it was with Smart Skin or Second Skin - besides, wouldn't that complicate some mods?  Like the Chameleon Coating.

I was referring to stacking on mods such as additional ablative patches, CC, etc.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

Blythe

Hey, all, I'm sorry to do this, but I'm honestly overwhelmed trying to get this all set up. RL's being a pain right now, and I just won't be able to manage the micro-levels of setting detail for this game.

When RL is a bit better for me, I'll consider attempting to run this again, possibly in a few months.

Many apologies.