Ahh. Thanks. That was the only scene of the movie I saw and was for the most part confused.
And I'll have to go get The Sphere, I liked the book well enough (shame Hollywood ruined Timeline--that book was awesome and internally consistent, the movie? Pfft).

If you do watch the abyss make sure to get the directors cut which turns it into a 3 hour movie but ending is better in my opinion. It was one of the classics that I still enjoy watching that came out of the 80's

I figure it would work similarly to self-sealing bicycle tubes, a thin layer of sealant inside the wall, which bleeds out into a puncture and closes it.

I mean if you want to limit your players to "soft" ammo, no problem. But you don't have to do it.

Have an NPC tell them that they should and ask if anyone brings along normal or other ammo types anyway.

You know somebody will.

Then you can play off the result: everybody brings lethal ammo, then its not a big deal (habitat is more durable in this regard than was expected) or only one guy does, shoots out a window on accident, nearly gets everyone killed, then the rest of the players can slap him around a bit for being stupid. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

Yeah even if the bullet doesn't actually damage the hull there is always ricochet. Being inside a sardine can firing rounds can't be healthy for you.

I think what I am going to do is limit Hull damage to if someone critical glitches and glitches may result in someone on the team resisting the round just fired from ricochet.

Plus you never know what kinds of ultra-light (aka ultra-thin) space-aged materials they are using to build underwater habitats in 2072. Could be they have great structural properties, but are easily punctured... maybe... in theory...

It's not liquid oxygen - which requires either temperatures or pressures that are completely lethal for any air-breather. It's a liquid wich can dissolve enough oxygen to the lungs - IRL animal experiments of the sort have been performed with adequate results.

the idea is that a non-compressible fluid makes it easier to balance the pressure inside the body and outside of it. It also prevents the absorption of gazes from the breathing mix into the blood (nitrogen narcosis, the bends, all those funny problems).

Note : if the atmosphere inside the station is kept at the same pressure as the water outside, you won't have the implosion/catastrophic failure issues that you would have with a lesser pressure. The submarine in Abyss imploded beause it was at station-depth pressure and went down way beyond that. Firing holes in the hull remains a bad idea, but it's not an instant disaster.

the thing I am trying to do is break them out of their typical element. I'm just wanting them to not be able to rely on their traditional shut em up and collect the loot style.

Hmmm, or maybe have the Johnson tell the players "no problem, the habitat is build to last and seal small cracks will even be healed automatically". After the first fight the players find out that the repair system is obviously offline and have to bring it back online, in a short time frame and with no good way to fight off [whatever is in there] until the system is restarted (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif) ²

At 500 meters a hole in the hull will be like a laser beam, particularly in anything at 1 atmosphere. The water will have enough pressure behind it to cut like a knife, even through things you wouldn't expect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_jet_cutter


Oh, and high pressure air is very dense. It transmits shockwaves and sound better that 1 atmosphere air.

Is there a reason you want it to be a saturated diving environment? I don't know if its stated in canon, but I would assume that by 2070 any semi-permanent habitat would be pressure controlled inside, so its all kind of moot so long as A.) you don't make any holes (as kzt has pointed out) and B.) you don't intend to venture outside the habitat. Otherwise you can just assume the pressure inside the habitat is ~1 atm and discourage them from doing really dumb stuff (like tossing grenades around every corner or launching LAW rockets down hallways or whatever).

don't you know? Shadowrunners can't swim!!

This is the biggest reason to have the place suffer catastrophic failures from bullets (even if it isn't the kind that just kills people). If it was just as safe as firing a gun inside a building then...why did you go underwater?



And such a jet would easily tear itself a bigger hole, making for a flooding issue, rather than a laser beam of death. In either case, its near impossible to repair.

The reason you use a saturation environment is because the people inside need to be regularly (like every day) going out to work directly in the water. Given SR4 drones I don't see how a saturation environment could be a cost effective solution for anything other then possibly research. And a picture of an abandoned saturation habitat is what you see when you look up "insanely dangerous places to explore" in 2060. Without constant maintenance it's going to go to hell.

BTW, decompression from a saturation dive takes about an hour per meter, and descent is typically limited to 2.5 meters per minute. So it will take over 3 hours to get to the habitat and on the order of a month to leave if they are there long. Hope they are being paid by someone who doesn't decide to cut their cost be opening a valve on the deco chamber.

Saturation diving means the station would be at 50 atmospheres, no water cutter of doom (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

You know a really amusing scenario comes to mind. You've been worrying about the players behaving sensibly and not puncturing the hull. A fun little trick in these sorts of situations is to take them on at their own game by giving them enemies that are even less responsible than they are...


The enemy might be drones that aren't bothered by water, shedim that have nothing to lose or psychos that don't care or wont listen. The trick is to get in their first before the PCs raise the issue. Then they have to respond to your irresponsibility.

Also, you don't have to make the whole thing a straight choice between no harm or insta-death. With liberal use of sealable bulkheads throughout the station, they can accidentally block off useful routes, lines of retreat or - my favourite - "You fool! You've flooded the weapons storage! Now we can't get all the good stuff the GM put there for us."

Anyway, this sounds really good. Any chance of you posting back here with an account of how it went?

K.

I almost posted that scenario myself, but figured it was best left implied than stated. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

You're like my mother.

The facility is a research facility testing background counts on dual natured critters. The facility is located on a strong Domain (+5) and has been sculpted in several areas. Recently EVO found some bacterial samples on mars and transferred them to the facility for genetic decoding. The Facility is owned by PensoDyne one of Evo's genetic research subsidiaries. PensoDyne lost contact with the facility 24 hours before the run starts. After 48 hours pensodyne assumes that the facility has become overrun by a infectious substance and detonates the facility to prevent any contaminant leak as well as cover up any information that may lead back to them. One of the researchers hires the runners to investigate and extract his wife (or her body).

From Johnsoning for Dummies, 2065 Edition: "Never hire runners to retrieve someone or their body. Dead bodies are easier to transport and so this is an incitement for the less moral shadowrunner to kill the intended rescuee. Note "less moral shadowrunner" is all of them."

Sounds like a good plot, btw.

At least one of us is. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

Well technically she is aswell, so that's two of you. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

I was just thinking how she plays Trivial Pursuit. Any time she doesn't get an answer, she waits for it to be read out and then says: "Oh, I was going to say that". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I was meaning "us" as in "you" and "I."



My mother was the only one in my family who could win that game.

Mostly owing to the fact that 90% (or more) of the questions related to events before I was born. So she might have had an unfair advantage.

Hmmm. I would be prepared to pay your runners a serious chunk of change. You're asking them to go into a highly isolated and inherently dangerous environment, which happens to be even more dangerous because of a pathobiological catastrophe with little intel as to what is actually going on...

Cha-ching!