Looking to play...or GM... Options

[budoka05]

Alright chummers, let's give my character another look through! http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s=&a...st&p=847713

Oh, and be polite.

[CollateralDynamo]

Hey, Budoka! Yeah, those skills make more sense for an ex-military man. Your other one left me with the "I am a psycho with a knife" vibe, but those guys are always fun too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) .

There are probably other skills that you would have had to pick up, but when you get down to it, the military gives you so much training in basic that it won't translate perfectly into a build point system, so I think this is an admirable character. We'll be knifing buddies, it will be fun.

[Marwynn]

So he went AWOL after Crash 2.0... I'm guessing he picked up rudimentary training before then? Perhaps Automatics might be a better fit for you than Pistols. Assuming he went through basic, he was probably taught whatever assault rifle that military uses. Pistol 1, Automatics (Assault Rifle) 1 (3) would "fit" more, as a suggestion.

That also means you get to use alternative firing methods. Ideally if you can't sneak in, and I can't Imp Invis you closer or something, you're going to want to be flexible. And if it comes to a gunfight aboard a freighter you're looking at being out of range perhaps. Might make you a tad more flexible, and hey you may even get to like it. A good ol' Ingram Smartgun X will see you through, cheaply, and if you want a little more Stealth the P93 Praetor is fairly nice as well.

[Karoline]

Hmm, that's a good point about upgrading the ship's node. I figure between myself and the hacker we should be able to supply most of the defenses required, but buying a better firewall might be nice... Presumably as a vehicle the ship has a device rating of 3, and thus a 3/3/3/3 on system/firewall/response/signal (Though signal is boosted by the satcom).

Lets see, how about these additions:
10 more months of medium food 5000
month of full weather 1100
Firewall 6 3000
Corrected an error on the cost of the autosoft for the bikes which netted us an extra 2400
Upgraded both bikes to Yamaha Growlers 1000
Added the two stills back in (Got taken out of the list somehow) 400

This leaves us with roughly 1500.

As for why we keep the personal armor... much more for flavor than for any sort of DP type benefit. It means the tables and most of the furniture will be bolted down, it means the chairs will be the kind that stay in place no matter how much we get shaken around, it means everything will stay securly in place. It means the windows won't break, it means that the cabinet doors stay closed securely when we are being shaken around, same for the fridge and drawers. It basically means we have piece of mind that all of our stuff isn't going to be flung all over the ship every time we get hit with something.

Hmm, had a long rant here about getting extra stills to supply ourselves with water, but everything I can see seems to indicate that most large ships have built-in systems for cleaning sea water to make it drinkable and generally usable. I figure the stills still might be a good idea in case that ever breaks down, we can at least keep ourselves hydrated.

Edit: It took some prodigious data search skills, but I finally figured out that a 50' yacht tends to have about 10k liters worth of water storage ability. I figure a yacht four times as long should have at least eight times as much water on it (Since it is taller and wider as well as simply longer), which gives us 80k liters of water. It is a GM call as to if the ship can distill drinking water from sea water, or if we'll have to rely completely on refilling our tanks whenever we hit port.

As an interesting note, we use something like 200ish liters of water a week each when factoring in weekly cloth washing, drinking, toilet, hand washing, brushing teeth, 2 weekly 5 minute showers, and cooking/dishes. So with 10 of us that is 2k a week, so the ship would have enough water to last us... a rather impressive 40 weeks... I guess we can just rely on filling up on water when we are in port.

Edit2: The amount this would last us would of course go down while we have 'tourists' aboard, but I figure we'll never have them on board and then -not- hit a port again fairly quickly.

Edit3: Ah! I KNEW I was forgetting something. We only have 500 liters of fuel that come with the ship, which is only the original tank. We should buy the extra 500 liters to fill up the second tank.

Edit4: Diesel is currently set at 5 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) a liter, so I'm putting the last of the loan into filling up the second gas tank as much as possible. Should be roughly 300 liters, which will give us something like a 2500 mile cruising distance before we need to refuel.

[Marwynn]

I was going to suggest replacing one of the Beavers for a Lockheed Vulcan and a Nautical Mechanic Autosoft, but I don't think we have the money. It'd be nice to have a dedicated maintenance drone. I don't know if we can just swap in a Nautical Mechanic toolkit and autosoft or buy them separately so that'll raise the price.

Question: Are Beavers what we need? Construction bots? I'm guessing it's for general lifting purposes but that seems rather pricey. Maybe 2 Manservants and a Vulcan?

[Penta]

Ladies and Gentlemen....In response to a request for info from CD, I'm going to put down pretty much what you know about your free fixer contact, Kevin Roberts:

This Irish-looking human male is like something out of a trid. Lean, cool, and unfailingly polite in bearing, this gentlemanly sort has been in the shadows for about 2-3 years; you've known him for about a year. He's distinctly mid-range in terms of the work he deals with; no obvious "higher loyalties". He specializes in work involving maritime activity - within that, though, all sorts of jobs cross his desk, from the (very rare) wetwork to data steals to extractions.

Acquisition and fencing, though, is where he really stands out: He has contacts that seem able to get anything, and sell anything, from weaponry to vehicles to identities to real estate, even SINs and licenses, something that might be explained by his extensive contacts in DC and Atlanta.

[Penta]

So far as water goes:

I'm going to rule that you need to head to port for potable water, usable for washing, drinking, cooking, etc etc etc. Especially in such massive quantities.

Water prices are currently 0.2Y per liter. Yes, that may be expensive. In the real world, Miami and basically all of South Florida is starved for water, something I don't see getting better.

[Karoline]

I was going to suggest replacing one of the Beavers for a Lockheed Vulcan and a Nautical Mechanic Autosoft, but I don't think we have the money. It'd be nice to have a dedicated maintenance drone. I don't know if we can just swap in a Nautical Mechanic toolkit and autosoft or buy them separately so that'll raise the price.

Question: Are Beavers what we need? Construction bots? I'm guessing it's for general lifting purposes but that seems rather pricey. Maybe 2 Manservants and a Vulcan?

I think it said that you could swap in a different autosoft and toolkit, with the presumption being that they have other standard models.

As for the Beavers, I figured they'd be able to do seriously heavy lifting (Like cargo crates) but we still might have trouble getting anything that large from one ship to the other. Manservants are only slightly stronger than the average metahuman for lifting I believe. Happy to hear if anyone else has a thought along these lines. I'll look over manservant and beaver and the other drones and see if I can't figure out how we would get anything big from one ship to another.

Oh, idea. A big old metal boarding plank?

[Karoline]

So far as water goes:

I'm going to rule that you need to head to port for potable water, usable for washing, drinking, cooking, etc etc etc. Especially in such massive quantities.

Water prices are currently 0.2Y per liter. Yes, that may be expensive. In the real world, Miami and basically all of South Florida is starved for water, something I don't see getting better.

Hmm, with the high (Read not free) price of water, it wouldn't take long for a small farm of solar stills to pay for itself. Well.. okay, like 30 weeks or something, but still, that might be a good long term investment.

Edit: Do we start with full tanks of water? (The water storage is compartmentalized into 1 tank per 1k liters)

[Penta]

Yes, you get full tanks of water.

[CollateralDynamo]

A quick thought on transferring things from boat to boat, we still have 6 sets of climbing gear, i'm sure we could rig up some sort of hoist with all those materials and that weird thing on the back of our yacht...if that is structurally sturdy....just a thought.

[Karoline]

A quick thought on transferring things from boat to boat, we still have 6 sets of climbing gear, i'm sure we could rig up some sort of hoist with all those materials and that weird thing on the back of our yacht...if that is structurally sturdy....just a thought.

Oh, right, I forgot, we totally have a winch, which we should be able to use as an impromptu crane.

I'm fairly certain I dropped the climbing gear... Hmm, wow, I didn't... I should. The harnesses that come in climbing gear wouldn't be of much use in moving something like a shipping crate (even a smallish one), but some extra strength rope might. Could rig up a rope harness around the crate and attach it to the winch, and use it to tow it on board. This doesn't work so well if the boat we're stealing from is higher in the water than ours, but it should be something at least.

Edit: Some errors cropped up in my numbers when I was going through them. Not sure if they were my mistakes or an error from the numbers I took from the board, but they've been fixed. I suddenly find us 8955 over budget. I'm going to take out the extra month of medium food (Dropping us to 1 month medium and 1 month low), which brings us down to 3955 over budget. Next item to go was a beaver, dropping us to only 1 (Strongest guy gets to hold the other end of the cargo container (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) )

So, we're back in budget, and we'll have 45 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) to hand back to our friend Mr. Roberts. We're so generous. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Here is the loadout as I currently have it:

[ Spoiler ]

Purchases with the 500,000 Loan:

Classique III 225000
Additional Fuel Tank 1000
Aeronautics Shop 5000
Autosoft: Clearsight (3) 1500
Autosoft: Maneuver (3) 1500
Concealed Armour (20) 20000
Chameleon Coating 24000
Complete Skinlink 5000
Drone Rack (Small) 1000
ECM (6) 6000
Fuzzy Logic 2500
Improved Economy 4375
Improved Sensor Array 1000
Interior Cameras 2400
Lock-on Countermeasures 5000
Personal Armour (10) 5000
Pilot 3 3000
Rigger Adaptation 2500
Satellite Communication 500
Signature Masking (6) 12000
Smuggling Compartment(Sh) 6000
Winch (Std) 600
Total: 334875

Running Gear:
Autopicker Rtg 6 1200
Catalyst Stick x 4 480
Climbing Gear x 6 1200
Directional Jammer Rating 7 1400
Grappel Gun x 4 2000
Keycard Copier Rtg 6 1800
Light Sticks x 50 250
Med Station Rating 6 420
Mini-Welder x 3 750
Monofilament Chaisaw x 3 900
Rapelling Gloves x 10 700
Stealth Rope (400 meters) 340
Solar Still x 2 400
Tag Eraser x 5 750
White Noise Generator Rtg 6 300
Wire Clippers x 5 125
Total: 11815

Drones:
CrashCart 4000
Manservant 2500
Beaver 4000
Total: 10500


IDs and Permits:
Fake SIN Rating 4 x 10 40000
Fake Permits Rating 4 x 10 4000
- permit to own modified yacht
- permit for concealed armor
- permit for chameleon
- permit for fuzzy logic
- permit for interior cameras
- permit for lock-on countermeasures
- permit for personal armor
- permit to shoot footage
- permit to own "realistic replicas"
- permit to carry passengers
Total: 44000

Dakka:
Ingram White Knight x2 10800
- With tripods
- 2 belts of ex ex each
M79B1 LAW x 5 3750
- with external smartlink 2000
Foam Explosives (10) x 5 5000
5 Timer Detonators 175
5 Radio Detonators 200
2 Smart Firing Platforms 4000
Total: 25925

Other Vehicles:
Yamaha Growler x2 11000
- Autosoft: Maneuver (3) 600


Zodiac Boat 30000
- Autosoft: Covert Ops (3) 1500
- Ducted Waterjet 2000
- Manual Override (DrivexWire) 500
- Pilot 3 3000
- Smoke Projector 700
- Searchlight 1200

Total: 50500

Supplies:
Month of medium quality food x 10 5000
Month of low quality food x 10 2000
Fuel (l) x 500 free
Fuel (l) x
Water (l) x 80,000 free
Total: 7000

Cover related gear:
“Fake” Colt Manhunter x 10 3000
- Clip of Paint Capsule Rounds x 20 960
“Fake” AK-97 x 10 5000
- Clip of Paint Capsule Rounds x 20 2280
Total: 11240

Other:
Month of full weather reports x 1 1100
Firewall 6 3000

Aggregated: 499955

On a sad note we only have one tank of fuel, which limits us to 1600ish miles of cruising distance. I'm strongly considering taking out the climbing gear to give us an extra half tank of fuel. While the climbing gear would be useful for getting people up the stealth rope more safely, it would also make the process notably slower. I'll leave it to group vote on if we should sacrifice the climbing gear for fuel. I'd also like a group vote on if people think the beaver will be handy or not. Other than that, this will be the final loadout. We can buy more stuff for the ship as we go and find we need it.

[Karoline]

Since equipment for the ship is (nearly) finished, I'd like to move on to handling group finances. Now, I know there is some debate about what/if should come out of group pay before it is split, but I'm going to offer the following suggestion.

Any money made from any sort of theft, run, or whatever else makes us money will be handled in the following way: 1/4th goes to paying off the loan, 1/4th goes to a ship fund (Managed by whoever is in charge of the equipment, which is currently me). The remaining half is split evenly among the (surviving) crew members.

So, the first quarter and the last half should be fairly obvious (I hope), the big question then is what is the ship fund? Basically this is a fund that will be used to pay for repairs to the ship, replacement of (ship) equipment that is used, supplies, and legwork expenses. It will also cover mission specific items (A suicide drone or explosives for example). If the fund ever runs dry with pending expenses, the current mission division will first take up to half of the personal split, and then up to the entire loan split, and if still required, will take whatever else is needed from the personal split. If the ship fund goes bankrupt... well we're going to need to find a loan that we can take out against the ship, and that could be huge trouble since we already have one on the ship.

Please note that this format means that ammo, drones, foci, summoning materials, and all those sorts of things will come out of your own personal cut. If we find that someone is using a larger amount of resources than others, but is being more effective than others because of it, we may vote on either giving them a larger cut from the personal share, or having those expenses considered as ship expenses and taken out of the ship fund. What defines as being more effective is basically for group consideration. For example, if someone uses a bunch of grenades to take out half an enemy ship's crew, it is group vote on if that should be considered good use of somewhat expensive resources, simply excessive use of resources (in which case they don't get compensated) or just SOP (Standard Operating Procedure)

Hopefully this can satisfy both those people who want to just split the whole take down the middle, and those that want all expenses to be covered by the group. If the group would prefer, we can adjust it so that ammo, drones, foci, summoning materials, etc are included in group funds, but I personally think it is easier to just split the money and have everyone take care of it themselves than having everyone requisition the fund to replace ammo and such. Everyone is likely to be spending about the same amount anyway, so it is largely a wash.

Oh, and almost forgot, if you wish, you can put in a requisition for compensation for high value losses (Drone destroyed, gun lost in the ocean, lots of spirit favors used, etc). The group will decide if the expense should fall on the users head (Used the drone recklessly, dropped the gun himself, used favors friviously) or be reimbursed by the ship fund (Drone saved someone's life, had to drop it to catch the guy jumping from the other boat, got great value out of the favors).

Hope that sounds good to everyone. Also, we can adjust the percentages if people would like. Perhaps going 1/2 loan, 1/4 ship, 1/4 people to get the loan paid off quicker, or going 1/4 loan, 1/2 ship, 1/4 people to make sure the ship has plenty of cash on hand should something serious happen.

[Karoline]

Well, that turned out longer than I expected. Here is the quick version:

Cash from missions = 1/4 loan payment, 1/4 ship fund, 1/2 personal pay.
Ship fund = repairs, ship equipment replacement, new ship equipment, legwork, requisition.
Requisition = Group votes to pay for certain individual expenses.

[Marwynn]

Oh I just noticed something. We're paying an awful lot for Smartgun equipped LAWs. They're one-shot weapons. Are we sure it's worth it? They're meant to be disposable.

Also, to attack with a Missile's sensors we actually roll Heavy Weapon + Sensor. Smartguns don't factor in I think. Up to GM's ruling but it doesn't look that way to me, so that's 2000 right there.

The wording, however, can be taken to mean that you can choose NOT to use the Sensor package aboard a missile. So it'd be resolved normally.

[Penta]

Oh I just noticed something. We're paying an awful lot for Smartgun equipped LAWs. They're one-shot weapons. Are we sure it's worth it? They're meant to be disposable.

Also, to attack with a Missile's sensors we actually roll Heavy Weapon + Sensor. Smartguns don't factor in I think. Up to GM's ruling but it doesn't look that way to me, so that's 2000 right there.

The wording, however, can be taken to mean that you can choose NOT to use the Sensor package aboard a missile. So it'd be resolved normally.

...Not having had experience with heavy weapons, I'm going to defer to anyone that might have! Do LAWs -have- sensors, even, or is it just Mk I eyeball (or Mk II if they're cybered)?

[Karoline]

LAWs don't have sensors because they don't fire missiles, they fire rockets. Rockets are unguided and so don't require any sort of sensor stuff to mess with. Just a good old Agi + HW + Smartgun.

The smartguns are external, and thus can be easily removed from the LAW after it has been fired and slapped onto the replacement one we buy. We could possibly get by with fewer smartguns, but it is nice that someone could line up all five LAWs and fire them one after the other if it is really needed without having to worry about swapping out the smartguns. It also allows multiple people to have a LAW with smartgun at once.

[Marwynn]

Ahhh! My bad!

They use the Anti Vehicle ROCKET not missile!

So we fire them normally I guess. The question still is though, are the smartlinks worth it? (EDIT: Okay, good points. That's what I get for using 'missile' and 'rocket' interchangeably)

SR4A lists an AV Rocket as 1000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) and the LAW is only 750... quite a bargain.

[Karoline]

SR4A lists an AV Rocket as 1000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) and the LAW is only 750... quite a bargain.

Yeah, I noticed that and at first thought it was some kind of an error, but then I realized that a rocket launcher with rockets has several advantages over a LAW. First you can do extensive modification to a launcher, including things like airburst links (Which we could include with the LAWs, but getting five of everything gets expensive) and all those fun mods from arsenal. The rocket launchers also tend to provide the ability to launch several rockets without having to lug around a separate launcher for each one.

So yeah, LAWs are a great bargain, but they have their disadvantages. (Also they only fire AV rockets, which sometimes aren't as useful as the other kinds, depending on the situation)

[milk ducks]

Lookin' good.

-milk.

[MusicMan]

I vote we drop the climbing gear for extra fuel... and I'm sure everyone saw that coming.

I know we have at least two characters with a decent armorer skill, we can most certainly change out the smartgun systems on the LAW. Theoretically, we might be able to reload them if we can find the parts.


On that note, Penta... is it possible for us to reload our own bullets (that is, keep the casings and put the poweder and shot back into it by hand)? It's actually quite common for many shooters to do so (hell, I've done it several times), and the military operates its ranges on reloads. I also know that some marksmen use custom-tuned rounds (which is something I could see my char getting into). I haven't seen anything about reloads in the RAW...



@Budoka:
I like the edits, thank you.

[Penta]

Guns in the 2070s are, by RAW, caseless, hence reloads are impossible.

[MusicMan]

Guns in the 2070s are, by RAW, caseless, hence reloads are impossible.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) I missed that... Wow... that's... wow...

I need to go read up on this... the whole point of having magazine-fed weapons is built on the idea of a cartridge. Caseless ammo (or, at least, all the caseless ammo I've seen and heard of) has to be loaded directly into the barrel and you reload either via muzzle-loading or by changing out the barrels directly. Unless I'm disagreeing with them on what "case-less ammunition" is...

[Penta]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) I missed that... Wow... that's... wow...

I need to go read up on this... the whole point of having magazine-fed weapons is built on the idea of a cartridge. Caseless ammo (or, at least, all the caseless ammo I've seen and heard of) has to be loaded directly into the barrel and you reload either via muzzle-loading or by changing out the barrels directly. Unless I'm disagreeing with them on what "case-less ammunition" is...

Think of the old G3 assault rifle, I think that's what they were basing it off of.

[Whizbang]

Think I remembered everything

[ Spoiler ]

Name: Melissa Farrens
Alias: Melisandre the Red
Archetype: Hacker/Rigger
Age: 21 Sex: F

Description: long curly red hair, tied back with a scarf, green eyes, a sprinkling of freckles on pale skin, dresses in archaic, pirate style clothing

Bod: 2
Agi: 2
Rea: 5
Str: 2
Cha: 3
Int: 3
Logic: 5
Will: 4

Edge: 3
Init 8 (9)
Init Passes 1 (4)

Qualities:
Black Market Pipeline (Weapons)
Juryrigger
Intuitive Hacking
Technical School Education
Water Sprite

Distinctive Style (1)
Vendetta
Vindictive
Incompetent (blades)

Skills:
Cracking (group) 4
Electronics (group) 3
Mechanics (group) 3
Gunnery 4
Pilot Ground Craft 3
Pilot Water Craft 4
Swimming 2
Pistols 2

English N
French 4
Spanish 4

Matrix Hangouts 4
Navigation (smugglers) 4
Procedure (matrix security) 4
Pirate Trids 4

Contacts:
Christian Farrens - Mechanic, uncle 4/2
Bennie - father's contact 2/3
Lewis - Matrix friend 1/2

Cyber/Bio
Control Rig
Datajack
Sleep Regulator
Cerebral Booster 3
Math SPU
Reaction Enhancer 3
Sim Module
Hot Sim Module

Gear:
Rapier 3P
Ares Predator 5P
Armored Vest 6/4
20 stick n shock
40 EX rounds
AR Gloves
Satellite link
printer
Mechanics Kit
Electronics kit
Contact Lenses 3 (low light, image link, thermographic)
MCT Fly-Spy

Lifestyle: Low 1 month

Commlink: Fairlight Caliban
Response: 6 Signal 6
OS: Novatech Navi
Firewall 6 System 6
Simsense Accelerator

Programs (all at 6)
Armor
Attack
Biofeedback Filter
Black Hammer
Blackout
Data Bomb
Decrypt
Defuse
Exploit
Medic
Sniffer
Spoof
Stealth
Track
ECCM
Analyze
Browse
Command
Edit
Encrypt
Reality Filter
Scan