EMP, Are there EMP cannons in SR? Options

[John Campbell]

[Sandoval Smith]

That's what capacitors are for. I like to say that the things all have their own independant power supply, but that they constantly recharge and unless you are doing something with heavy drain constantly, cyberware running out of 'juice' should never be a problem.

[Fortune]

[BitBasher]

No, two different things. The Zapper Strip has contacts that stick up and brush the underside of a car shorting it out. The Zapper Missile is what he is referring to which is a ceramic missile with alternalte layers of conductive metal and insulation so when the missile hits it discgarges unholy amounts of electricity onto a drone or vehicle. It's in r3.

[Fortune]

Ah my mistake, but at least I pointed him in the right direction. ;)

[mattness pl]

[Thistledown]

yes

[Bodak]

[eidolon]

Good grief. Look, if you want EMP to affect everything in your game, make it affect everything in your game. Just be prepared to argue with any player that has been playing longer than a week.

[Cray74]

Wow, that's serious thread necromancy. 2004 stuff.

[Kagetenshi]

Though to be fair, at least this time it's someone who had participated in the thread originally and is returning to it almost immediately upon their return to Dumpshock in general.

~J

[Vaevictis]

[Voran]

System Failure covered EMPs a bit. As they were used in conjunction with regular nukes to crash the matrix/etc. But even still, the rules were for 25 base power EMPs, that lost power -1 per km air, -2 per km if ground popped. And these were 1-4 megaton suitcase bombs. The book did talk about 2064 cybergear being optical, for the game effects it gave a base 9 hardening for cyber, -2 if 2ndhand, plus another -2 for every 5 years out of date it was.

Damage ranged from nothing, minor dmg, moderate dmg affecting your DNI displays and input, zappage type effects for riggers, to burnout of the system (assuming 6+ successes on the opposed test).

As for 2070, SR4, I'd say go with zapper type weapons instead, for direct dmg to mechanical thingies like drones. Heh maybe assault cannons can be loaded with variant rounds that are essentially Pringles chips sized cans that act like taser darts or something.

EMP might be useful on a smaller scale for screwing up things like gridguide or maglev trains or the like.

[Kagetenshi]

"Megaton suitcase bomb"?

I suspect another round of brain-gouging is going to commence shortly.

~J

[Voran]

Reading further I see....ah...they farked with them using special magical techniques. Heh magically enhanced nuclear weapons. Fun.

[Westiex]

Not all of the nuclear weapons were suitcase based ... quite a few where in blimps.

This is disregarding, of course, the faultline nukes.

[Kagetenshi]

For reference, I just checked System Failure—they do indeed say that there were "briefcase nukes" of "1-4 megatons". This alone is a clear demonstration that the writers didn't bother to so much as look at a physics textbook. The W54, the smallest nuclear warhead developed by the United States, has a typical yield of 10-20 tons—you read that right, no prefix. In a marvel of engineering, they can get a hefty backpack-sized nuke with a yield of 1 kiloton. Yes, one. The practical limit for yield is six kilotons of explosion-equivalent per kilogram of material, keeping in mind that there's a lot of other structural and triggering mass, etc.—there's no way you're going to get vaguely close to a megaton in anything like a suitcase form factor, let alone a briefcase.

And that's before we get into the fact that these nukes had been magically tampered with in ways that, among other things, made their explosions less powerful.

~J

[eidolon]

OMGzoooRRRRRRZZNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Don't tell me there are tiny inconsequential things in the flavor text of the books that aren't perfect?

Fuck. I quit.

;)

[KarmaInferno]

[Bodak]

[ShadowDragon8685]

Or you could, you know, just admit that EMPs make for cool storytelling, and as long as you don't pop ones near the players too often, you can integrate them quite handily.

For example, a capicator grenade that generates a nasty EMP by combining a pringle-can sized capacitor with multiple rings of one-shot electromagnets that will flux in unholy ways when the capictor burns itself out through them. These would be the best way to deal with annoying drone (Even if the drone itself is shielded, it's radio just got fried. Unless the rigger has another drone which can transmit with a tightbeam laser/infraredand the drone that just got fried can read it, that drone is stuck in autonomous mode until it's caught and re-subscribed.

They would also be Very Handy for frying the holy crap out of computerized systems. And as for their effects on cyber?

Quick streamlined rules here:
Take the EMP's rating, at the level your Joe Cybersammie gets hit by. Impose a flat +1 TN penalty or -1 dice pool modifier for every net success the bomb generates on it's opposed test - ironically, Joe Cybersammie resists with Bod + Shielding (if any. Make him buy shielding for his whole set of cyber, which should only tack on a +1000 :nuyen: per shielding rating per item.)

If he fails, apply the penalty to all the roles he takes that involve cyber. If he had cybereyes and ears that got scrambled, describe it to him as if he got nailed with an EMP grenade in the Dystopia Source mod. "Your vision becomes all blurry and a garbled mess of yellow and black lines with streaks of significant color standing out in stark shapes. It's damn-near impossible to determine depth like this, let alone determining friend from foe. Your smartgunlink seems to be reporting your Predator is currently loaded with more ammunition than a Phalanx-VI CIWS cannon can carry, and according to your biomonitor, you're dead. The good news is that because your ears aren't cyber, you can still hear fine - and what you hear is the sound of assault rifles having rounds chambered. Wait, did I say that was the good news?

Of course, don't slag the players. Cyberware is inherantly designed to recover from all sorts of catastrophic problems - otherwise one jolt, and you'd be back in the shop. So have the cyberware recover at a rate of reducing the penalty by 1 for every whole combat round the player survives.