Augmentation Q&A, Ask the developers and the authors Options

[Daier Mune]

Genetech costs on pp.89-93 are the correct ones - they were a late change and we missed the charts at the back of the book.

domo arigato mister roboto

[apple]

When Sync, Augmentation p. 91, refers to Combat Tests, this means both Ranged and Unarmed AND on the attack and on the defense, right?

Yes.

What exactly is defined as an combat test?
1) Defense + full defense
3) Tests with ranged weapons
3) Unarmed and armed close combat

4) Spell casting?
5) Spell defense?
6) Hacker combat in AR
7) Hacker combat in VR
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) Vehicle combat if you are in the vehicle or controling a drone
9) Vehicle / drone combat if you are fighting against a vehicle/drone
10) Astral combat, attack and defense

1-3 should be clear, what about the rest?

SYL

[FrankTrollman]

What exactly is defined as an combat test?

The Combat Test is an opposed roll defined on pages 138-139 of the basic book.

1) Defense + full defense - Yes
3) Tests with ranged weapons - Yes
3) Unarmed and armed close combat - Yes

4) Spell casting? - Only Indirect Combat Spells, they are resolved as a combat test, others are resolved as a spell resistance test.
5) Spell defense? - No.
6) Hacker combat in AR - No.
7) Hacker combat in VR - No.
8> Vehicle combat if you are in the vehicle or controling a drone - Yes
9) Vehicle / drone combat if you are fighting against a vehicle/drone - Yes
10) Astral combat, attack and defense - Yes

-Frank

[apple]

Thank you.

SYL

[FrankTrollman]

No problem. While that item was written very precisely, it is nonetheless easy to get combat tests confused with combat skill tests - a category of tests which would include unarmed strikes, sniper rifle shots, and full defense pools including Dodge, but not Firebolts (a Magic skill test), full defenses including Gymnastics (a Physical skill test), or Drone attacks (a Vehicle skill test). I am sorry that those two categories have such confusingly similar names.

-Frank

[Rotbart van Dain...]

The Altskin 'upgrade' Shifter can change skin textures.

Does this mean that the Reprint 'upgrade' is a blatant rip-off?

[HentaiZonga]

I am not convinced that all secondhand ware should follow the Secondhand Ware rules. If your buddy dies, and his will says that you get his suprathyroid, and a skilled, well-equipped doctor cuts it out of his throat while his body is still warm and puts it into yours... should you really pay a higher Essence cost, than if you got a new one from Evo?

Think of it this way - that gland has been sitting in your buddy's throat, interacting with his immune system, for awhile now. It's probably FULL of non-type-O proteins picked up from various bits of his circulatory system that have over-grown inthe organ. Remember that the body is a very dynamic environment, and the new organ has to integrate with the host - part of the 'healing time' involves that body incorporating the organ into its own structure.

From a more mystical side, that organ now has the astral 'residue' of your buddy's aura. It's going to have a hard time shifting to match yours.

[HentaiZonga]

may be it spins independently inside your head?

... did you know the microwave was invented by people noticing that radar dishes tended to cook birds that flew by too close?

So unless it's mounted on top of your skull, when it sweeps back around to cover the 'back', it's going to be beaming some pretty intense wattage straight through your brain. Sizzle, pop, fizz.

[CanRay]

... did you know the microwave was invented by people noticing that radar dishes tended to cook birds that flew by too close?

So unless it's mounted on top of your skull, when it sweeps back around to cover the 'back', it's going to be beaming some pretty intense wattage straight through your brain. Sizzle, pop, fizz.

"Hey, check it out! If we put a Pre-Pack Insta-Meal on Tiggie's head, it COOKS!" "SWEET! Warm food for when the power goes out!"

[HentaiZonga]

"Hey, check it out! If we put a Pre-Pack Insta-Meal on Tiggie's head, it COOKS!" "SWEET! Warm food for when the power goes out!"

The More You Know™

[CanRay]

Hey, when your in the Barrens, you take any comfort you can get.

Usually in 40 oz. bottles. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[hobgoblin]

i thught the story was that someone left a bar of chocolate in front of a magnetron and found that it had melted...

[CanRay]

i thught the story was that someone left a bar of chocolate in front of a magnetron and found that it had melted...

Another is a melted chocolate bar in the pocket.

There's a number of stories for it.

Radar was originally developed to be a "Death Ray" against pilots, but didn't quite work out, IIRC.

[Eyeless Blond]

The later one I think makes more sense. Big-time radar dishes don't heat water, nor cook birds; it's not the right frequency. That is, in fact, why radar can penetrate objects and go for long distances without being dissipated by water droplets in the air; the frequencies in question are generally not absorbed or reflected in large amounts by non-metallic surfaces.

Microwaves, which are several orders of magnitude higher frequency, are absorbed by water molecules because they hit the energy levels for different rotational degrees of freedom. Radio wave photons just don't have the energy.

[hobgoblin]

there are weather radars tho that can read clouds...

[WearzManySkins]

CORRECTION!!!!!
RADARS do kill birds!!! Look at some the DEWS Line Phased Array sites, a bird even flying in front of that array dies before the halfway across point. Even grass/weeds does not grow in front of these monsters, ok not for very long. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)
There was the "Sea Gull Cooker" installed at Great Lakes, one time was activated in in Full Power mode and the Limiting Switch bypassed, lets says the area around the base lit up. After that is was removed. To kill birds in flight takes a RADAR with a power in the MegaWatts range. DEWS sites are in the even bigger range of Megawatts if not Terawatts.

Frequency does not matter any Radio Frequency Device can cause RF Burns/injuries. FYI Most modern day RADAR are in the Microwave part of the RF spectrum.

RADAR was issued/built/used in WWII by both sides for detecting incoming aircraft. Death ray is a myth.

RADAR power amplifiers ie Magnetrons, Klystrons, and Traveling Wave Tubes aka Twats are used to amplify the power of RADAR.

Anything with a high water content is affected by RADAR ie Eyeballs and Testicles, those are the two areas that respond first to whole body radio frequency radiations. I had a tech who was temporarily sterilized by our RADAR, it had installation waveguides leaking RF. I got out the room every time the RADAR was fired up, he did not.

Frequency of RADAR is determined by the range needed, low frequency longer range less resolution, high frequency lower range greater resolution. Yes the is a power limit for radiation propagation irregardless of frequency too.

Water molecules are absorbed by RADAR, WRONG. Weather RADARS detect clouds ie water vapor, none of the Military RADARs I used or was familiar with, clouds/water vapor did not phase/affect them.

As for non metallic objects/things not affecting RADAR (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) Google RADAR Ducts, and look up "Skip" in CB terms.

Radio/RADAR photons have the energy given/imparted to them by their emitting source.

WMS
former USN Surface Missile FireControlman (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Muspellsheimr]

The dish's can and do kill & melt objects. This is because, as a parabola, everything hitting the dish is reflected through a single focal point, creating intense radiation at that location. Anything passing through will be fried.

My old science teacher once hung a plastic bag in the school's satalite dish. The result was some quickly melted plastic, & several minutes of the entire school's video system being fucked up. This was also the guy that got the principle to sign an order for a welding torch and power saw without realizing it until they showed up. Awesome guy.

[Morphius]

Aside from weakening it through the background count, how can a cyberzombie effectively breach a ward? Astral Combat + Willpower? Or do they get to use their physical stats against dual-natured wards?

[apple]

Another question:

Do limbic nanites dices can be used for astral assensing? Assensing is an intuition skill test and at least the description of the nanites doesn´t seem to be forbid it. They rewire parts of the brain without essence cost, so the changes should be "natural". Natural enough for assensing?

SYL

[SCARed]

another question concerning cyberlimbs:

i have a troll sammy with quite high BOD and STR. and even with limbs customization there is (at chargen) now way his cyberarm can match the rest of his body. and even afterwards the availability would be quite insane. are cyberlimsb for trolls just not working?

i fumbled a little bit around with numbers and even if the troll had just the average atts for his metatype, the limb have an av. of 12 (by customizing it to the trolls atts). without any "gadgets" like enhancements, spurs, commlinks or stuff.

[PlatonicPimp]

Yup, it's hard for a troll to find good cyberlimbs.

[Mordinvan]

Cyberzombies in spaaaaaace...

I'm just curious about cyberzombies? why make an immortal creature but give it the flaw of a progressively more difficult sanity test each year it is around?
Eventually the number of -bp's of mental disorders is going to exceeded the characters yearly karma generation ability, and they'll just 'decay' at that point as their attributes fail and they have every -ve flaw in the book?

[hobgoblin]

because its a gm's cybermonster.

[FrankTrollman]

When the technology was first discovered, they didn't even live that long. Cancer and apoptosis killed them right quick. But with medical advances, they can survive those problems, showing us that they have additional problems later on. Aztechnology is presumably working on those difficulties as we speak and if we manage to get some cyberzombies out there being kind of sane a few years down the line we'll probably find new problems and so on.

That's how medical science works. The longer you make people live, the more new problems you encounter. When people died at 30, no one knew what Parkinson's Disease or Alzheimer's even was.

-Frank

[Mordinvan]

When the technology was first discovered, they didn't even live that long. Cancer and apoptosis killed them right quick. But with medical advances, they can survive those problems, showing us that they have additional problems later on. Aztechnology is presumably working on those difficulties as we speak and if we manage to get some cyberzombies out there being kind of sane a few years down the line we'll probably find new problems and so on.

That's how medical science works. The longer you make people live, the more new problems you encounter. When people died at 30, no one knew what Parkinson's Disease or Alzheimer's even was.

-Frank

I understand the medical reasoning for it. To be honest it makes a lot of sense unlike some of the things which occur in SR. I was just currious if it was to discourage players from taking one, and encourage it to be an NPC only type of thing.
But this makes me wonder what happens if you have a -6 essence cyberzombie who gets their implants removed and undergoes the essence restorative treatments to go back to a full 6 essence?
Is that even possible?