One week from today on is a good deadline. And as Doc said, we gonna be post every other day. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

So are we still all chipping in 5 CP for a Desktop Cornucopia Machine? And if so, what Hardware skills (if any) are you guys considering taking? I've got Hardware: Electronics at a pretty high rating, as well as Programming with the Nanofabrication specialization.

You know you'll have a 30cm Cornucopia Machine and a 50 CM fabber on the main ship right?

Speaking of ships:

your Drop ship is the SLOTV (HO) from page349 and the table on page 348. It can look pretty much like you want it to but probably looks a bit like a mini version of the ship on page 349 because it is capable of atmospheric re-entry. It could land on Venus, Mars, Titan or even Earth and take off again.

This shuttle is old, it dates from before the fall and still uses (HO) Oxygen/Hydrogen rockets. But it's still serviceable. It has one universal docking hatch that is still compatible with most other stations and ships. Because the ship is capable of atmospheric re-entry one side of the ship is covered in heat shielding that makes pretty effective ablative energy armor. (armor rating 30/20 on the belly of the ship.) It has enough life support for 72 man hours in it's current High Velocity configuration. The Crew hasn't had it as long as they've had the main ship and have yet to make any major modifications. At this point you've only been able to make one modification.

Pick One:
- 40' Grapple arm.
- Vehicular Missile Launch Tubes (2)*
- Vehicular Laser, AP -, DV 4d10+20, Fireing mode SS, Ammo 5. **
- Low Velocity configuration. amenities and life support for up to 30 biomorphs for 3 days.
- Booster rockets. External mounts and controls for two extra boosters.
- Insert your idea here.

[edit]
* Vehicle missiles are gear I'm in the process of making up. For now you could chose any missile type from page 341, with 2xAP and 5xDV. Obviously some types of grenades and seekers won't work well in space; Thermobarics need an oxygen atmosphere, there's no medium to transfer the shockwave of a plasma bomb ect. In the case of this particular ship modification there's no way to reload from inside. (It's not a torpedo tube) So after you've used your two missiles you'll need to do a spacewalk to reload.
One idea you should be aware of pertaining to space weapons is the "Lancer Bomb". A Lancer Bomb is just a hunk of mass traveling at a high velocity relative to the target. Space ships travel really fraking fast, so if you just wan't to kill something all you really need to do is put something hard in front of it. It doesn't even need to be very large.


** Obviously this is a pretty wimpy weapon compaired to the DUR and Wound Threshold of most ships. However, there is no reactor to power a laser on a shuttle so it's limited by power storage. This weapon would best be used to target sensitive areas of a target. (communications, sensors, thruster nozzles) It would also work well for Point Defence. Targeting incomming ordinance the way a Phalanx system would.)

Oh. Last time we talked in IMs you said it was only 3cm. I guess it was a typo!

As for the SLOTV, is there any chance that we can have the capacity increased to 4 so everyone can hitch a ride? It'll suck having to leave someone behind every time we want to go anywhere. Also, how are we supposed to actually transport any cargo when we can barely fit inside ourselves without taking the low velocity modification (which would then leave us completely inept for raiding and incapable of catching up to any targets)? How defended are most cargo ships in your view of the setting? What are we to expect when raiding another ship, and how are we supposed to go about doing so? Is our main ship supposed to be the 'big guns' even though most of the photos make it look kind of on the extremely fragile side? I mean, we're supposed to be pirates, but right now I don't see how we can do any pirating!

Just trying to work my head around what we need and what you're expecting.

3cm would definitely be a typo. That must have been in chat. I'm doing the write-ups on the big ship right now. Yes in some respects it is pretty fragile. That's just kind of how space travel works because you've got to pay for fuel to push every gram of structure across the void. However it also has to be able to survive a micro meteor strike and the radiation of space too.

For the most part you won't be using the shuttle to catch up to ships unless you can figure out a way get them just outside of port and get away. Typically I think you'll want to catch a target ship after it's made it's initial acceleration burn and it's in a coasting phase. It would be highly dangerous to mess with a ship that's accelerating blowing a wake of plasma 30 km long. (OTOH it's so crazy it just might work. ) But, tactically the safe bet in an actual interception would be to haul the shuttle out to a parallel orbit and strike when no help is available to rescue your target.

As to transferring cargo. You'll figure that out based on the tools you have. If the crew decides; it might be easiest to convert to a Low Velocity configuration. Or choose a Grapple arm. I'm not so worried about passenger capacity because at least two of you don't need life-support. I'm sure there's room in the cabin to gaffer tape an extra synth to something Just make sure the Colonel gets one of the acceleration couches. [I call Shotgun!] LOL

The situation with the defense of your cargo is fluid. You'll need to do some legwork to get a good idea of what you'll be facing once you've done the legwork to find a target. Obviously more valuable freight has a better chance of being defended. He3 shipments are noted as being heavily defended. Certainly some cargo is simply launched from surface mass drivers and left to go on it's way with no direct security but these shipments probably have so little value that they're not worth the time and fuel it would take to intercept.

There are a few common security tactics:
Fulltime onboard security, The ship, cargo, passengers travel with full time active security guards. In this case the ship is often weaponized too.
Sleeping security, The ship may have one or several Hybernoids that could be quickly awakened or Info-morphs that could quickly download into synthmorphs when a threat is detected.
Convoy deployment, Several ships might travel in close trajectory with one weaponized ship that also caries combat infomorphs that can be transfered from ship to ship.
Farcaster security, The ship may cary one or several morphs in stasis into which defenders can farcast when a threat is detected. Depending on the distances there might be significant time lag between the time a threat is detected and defenders can be deployed. (At least 15 minutes / 1 AU distance)
AI and automated defenses, The ship itself might have external and internal defensive capabilities controlled by an AI.
Surveilance: It's not hard to detect ships in space. Simple Lidar and IR telescopes probably watch each shipment at least part of the time. Each time a Plasma, Fusion, or A-mat Drive ships makes a burn to accelerate they leave a 'wake' of radiating exhaust particles kilometers long. From this wake it's a simple thing to calculate the profile and trajectory of the ship. Even while coasting waste heat from life support and other power consumption must be radiated into space so any ship has a big IR signature compared to the vacuum around it. For this reason good pirates choose orbits that hide them in other traffic. There are a sort of "Space Lanes" in which most traffic will be taking advantage of the cheapest orbits to any popular destination. Pirates also frequently pay to change the registration of their ships and spoof their own IFF signals. So, even though you can count on being watched by someone somewhere at all times, choosing a clever and innocent looking intercept trajectories to your target can help a lot.

Interesting.

Well, since you were asking for other modification ideas, one I was considering was a bit more daring. What if we upgraded the ship by plating some heavy physical armor to the front of the shuttle and reinforced the remaining structural supports. Following that, we add some hardcore passenger safety systems, a booster rocket or four with very limited range (and I do mean limited; a few seconds of burn time at best), and a self-sealing access port on the nose. Why? So that we can use the ship to literally ram into the side of a prospective vessel, then hop out and go to town all shock-and-awe like. It's also kind of multi-purpose, giving us an attack and boarding system all in one. If we're all prepared for zero-G and vacuum combat, that would definitely give us an advantage against manned crews.

A great tactic, then, would be to place ourselves in the trajectory of our target vessel, and then send out a fake (limited range) distress signal at an opportune moment. When they ideally slow down to investigate, we maneuver into the proper orientation, hit the booster rockets, and bam! During the initial moments of shock, Grinder and Fisty's characters could start with the main attacks while my character sits back and works on jamming their communications and/or overriding any automated systems. I'm not sure where Lady's character would fit in during an actual raid, but I'm sure she's got something up her tentacle-clad sleeves.

Anyway, just an idea. Trying to think outside the box a little.

The only problem is that we still suffer the same conundrum I mentioned earlier: We'll have no way to transport any sizable cargo. Which kind of limits our choices to either the low-velocity or grappling arm options, making all the others kind of moot. Unless we can get some of those EVA sleds or something, which isn't an outrageous option since each one has a cost of [Low], or 250 credits during chargen. Maybe we could strap a few together, use spindles to latch it to the shuttle, and tow it back to our main ship (which we'd need to hide somehow in order for the ruse to work).

So, that's my initial idea. What do the rest of you have?

ROFL.
p. 196.

This will do a minimum of (1d10+40)x2 damage to your shuttle that has a wound threshold of 80. Better bring a spare

If you are trying to destoy the other ship maybe you could burn in real fast, do a hard retro burn to come alongside their radiators where they can't shoot you. Space walk over to the other hull and cut your way in. Or if you had a grapple arm on your shuttle you could actuall connect to the other hull and lock in to thier airlock then hack it.

That would kind of be the point of the ram/forward armor/structural reinfrocement modification. You know, to protecti the shuttle from the ramming damage, but doing enough to punch through the enemy's hull. And, as mentioned, the goal isn't to destroy either ship. It's to hit them hard and fast with one big hit, then climb through the hole we just made and continue the assault while they're still reeling from the surprise attack.

Or basically what you just described, but with a shock-and-awe element.

As opposed to, you know, "Okay guys, how you doing in there? Just give us an hour or so to cut our way in while you mobilize your entire security force to the area we're cutting through. That way you can conveniently blow us to kingdom come as soon as we peek our pretty little heads into the hole we just spent an hour cutting. Oh, and, uh, please don't accelerate or anything. We gotta space walk back to our shuttle over there. Assuming we'd survive your attack, of course. Which we probably won't since we're just two combat guys with a scientist and a hacker and you get to spend all this time planning your ambush from the convenient ruckus we made with all the cutting and whatnot."

I guess we just have very different ideas of how pirates work. They tend to have very fast, very heavily weaponized ships in my mind, using hard, fast, and brutal tactics to overwhelm the target. Because in a fair fight, they're going to get their asses handed to them. Especially if they're a tiny little motley crew of four guys with outdated tech.

The only other idea I had would really only benefit my character which is why I was reluctant to mention it. I was thinking we could have some kind of limited range means of boosting our radio signal onboard the shuttle, (plus whatever kind of mechanic would be necessary to make this possible), in order to allow me to try and hack into their systems from afar. Even if just to access the ship's AI pilot and external security measures so that we could just mosey up undetected and start drilling into the hull/latching onto the airlock. That still leaves us without a means of transporting the cargo outside of the EVA sled towing thing I mentioned, and that's kind of lame in and of itself.

But yeah, other than those two ideas, I gots nuffin'. Anyone else have some ideas before we decide on the shuttle's modification?

Also, after finding out I made another mistake in my math, I ended up being able to afford only five skillsofts. At the moment, I have Fray, Free Fall (much to Pony's dismay!), Navigation, and Pilot: Spacecraft for sure. I haven't decided on my last one, but I'm debating between Freerunning and Kinesics to at least make helping out in social encounters via Teamwork Tests a little more sensible. Which ones are you guys picking up, if any?

<unlurk>

Not sure you need a special rule - unless you want to hack from very very far away.

Page 299 has info on radio and sensor ranges. It looks like your standard vehicle (cars and such) can communicate with one another at 250 km (without a lot of obstruction). I imagine a starship would fall into the "large" category, and that space would count as not having a lot of obstructions, so without any special rulings, I think you'd be able to communicate with other ships at 5,000 km (almost half the diameter of the earth). That should certainly help with hacking a ship that you're "chasing", approaching, or otherwise within interaction-range of.

Of course, their security would be within hacking range of your ship as well - and if you're within radio range, you're within sensor range (so they can potentially spot your ship). If you wanted a bigger radio range than sensor range, the other ship would need similarly large radio range in order for you to interact with it... so you might be SOL there.

I dunno, you can always use your small ship as a "disposable" relay!

</unlurk>

Yeah, that's why I added the "plus whatever kind of mechanic would be necessary to make this possible" clause. Maybe some kind of nanoware swarm stealth delivery system (???) with a net result similar to a Skinlink, thus allowing the remote hacking. I really have no idea. But it was the only other idea I had, so I figured I'd throw it out there anyway.

Pony doesn't like any of my ideas anyway. But I won't let his disdain stop my from voicing my ideas! I'm a rebel, baby!

I guess the other thing I was getting at (in a roundabout sort of way) is that since radio ranges are the same as sensor ranges... if another ship is outside of your usual hacking range, it is also outside of your sensor range... meaning you probably don't know it is there, in the first place, so you're probably not planning to hack it.

If you guys have some sort of relay (say, a remote nanoswarm) out there that might detect a ship that is far enough away that you can't detect it yourself, you could just use it as a relay (since you can detect it, and it can detect the ship)... but the enemy ship could also detect/hack your swarm (or whatever you have to bridge the gap). I think that no matter how you cut it, if you can detect them, they can detect you (or something of yours) and if you can hack them, they can hack you (or something of yours). It might be more useful to have some sort of ship-cloaking feature, which might allow you to hack another ship from within sensor range, before its sensors pick you guys up.

Like a Chameleon Cloak for the ship? They do mention that it works against infrared and similar tech, but I don't see how they'd be able to hide it from LIDAR or other similar sensors. An interesting idea regardless.

I just realized you said STEALTH nanoswarm... in which case, yeah, that'll basically work like what I suggested - although the swarm would have to be very large (on par with a spaceship) to get the radio-range necessary for two-way communication with your ship.

I guess my suggestion might be to ask for the same stealth mechanism, but to put it on either your shuttle or your main ship, instead. That might be useful for other reasons too (like sneaking past some sort of space blockade, or evading the space-police, or something).

In covert technologies they have an "invisibility cloak" that works on all visual sensors (but doesn't work against radar or x-rays)... but, ya know, something like that. I am pretty sure NOWADAYS we have radar-defeating technologies (on stealth aircraft, for example). If it amounts to a bonus to your pilot's infiltration skill, or a penalty to the enemy pilot's perception check, it might let you guys get close before being noticed.. eitehr close enough to hack, or close enough to start boarding, or firing, or whatever.

You could also look at getting an [Expensive] neutrino Transceiver (able to produce signals at a range of 100 astronomical units). If the other ship had one (not a bad bet, if they want to stay in contact with their HQ during the flight), or you had a second one, and a way to get it close to the other ship, it would allow hacking from anywhere in the solar system.

Those are pretty big, though. You might be able to get by with some Quantum Entangled Communications (page 315) which would allow you to do it from just about anywhere (even from outside the solar system), are man-portable (so probably easier to get from your ship to the target ship). They are cheaper, too, but become more expensive over time (since you have to refresh your Qubit Reservoirs.

Edit: NM the second idea, the book says "high bandwidth" communication isn't possible with QE Comms, which probably includes hacking, and anything other than the voice/text communication that it gives times for.

You guys lost me like three pages back. O.o I vote that we have a ship. That does stuff. Narf.

Sorry this is going to be a wall of text in reply to several comments above.

1. About spaceship collisions:
Imagine an airplane. Imagine what happens if one airplane hits another airplane fast enough to make a hole. Now imagine how much weight and fuel and bigger engines it would take to build one airplane that can colide with another airplane and survive with minimal damage.

Aerospace vehicles that run into other aerospace vehicles with intent to cause damage are called missiles.

You're certainly capable and able to persue this modification for your shuttle in game. People will laugh at you, but it's not imposible. However it is not a modification I'm willing to give you for free.

2. Signal range QE coms, and Hacking from Afar.
I'm a little dubious about the listed signal and sensor ranges listed on p. 299.
I think that the listed ranges only apply to full AR or VR communications.
Radio or laser signals go on for ever in space so I'm not exactly sure why they're puting a 5000km cap on signals. I supsect that only applies on a planet or moon.

A. All interplanetary ships have a Neutrino Communicator, p. 314 (there may be some exceptions with really old or self built Brinker ships.)

B. While your Neutrino Communicator is capable of Quantum Farcasting. Who would you talk to? In most cases you probably won't be able to achieve quantum entanglement with your target. (If you have questions about entanglement I'm semi qualified to answer them I once co-authored a story about it.)

C. Normal radio works just fine. IRL we talk to probes on Mars from earth. The ony thing that limits radio range (that I'm willing to consider in game) is a horizon. Radio doesn't work over the horizon very well.

D. There is significant lag at large distances with radio coms. Luna is about 400,000 km from Earth. At that distance there is about a 4 second coms lag. That means it takes light (or a radio wave) 2 seconds to get there and 2 more seconds to return. The coms lag from earth to Mars is about 28 minutes IIRC.

So, is hacking posible at really long distances? No. Not because you couldn't seed a virus or something like that but because after about 5000km the communication lag is to long to support real time AR interaction.

There are other options however. For example; the main ship could stand off while it sends a probe carying a Fork of a hacker into AR coms range. It's your job as players to surprise me with novel ideas that I'm too dumb to predict and completely ruin my scenario and side track all of my planning and hard work. That's what role gaming is all about. (Another idea: perhaps in a future adventure you could find a way to sneak entangled Q-bits into the system of a target. I bet they'd be pretty damned surprised.)

3. My distain.
My distain bows to your rebelitudion then goes to whimper quietly in the corner. Keep the ideas comming.

4. Black Hat's relays.
Relays don't work well to overcome communications lag due to the speed of light. It just adds system lagtime in the hardware to the lagtime of the wave. Can't go faster than the speed of light.

5. Cloaking Feature.
Will be available as an option on your main ship but not the silly startreck magic crap. I'll have it posted by tomorow. Promise.
It would help if everyone would read Page about Stealth
5.b. Almost exactly like a chamelion cloak but better, except that it's really really heavy and is going to drive up your fuel costs. See I don't hate all your ideas. And Kudo's on the Lidar caveat. That's an issue you'll have to find a way around. You'll see more when I post the main ship tomorow.

6. So what are you guys (and lady ) naming the ships???????

7. I might be getting too technical.
The thing that excites me about EP is that it's got SCIENCE! no fucking copout miracle magic bullshit, which is the main reason I don't play SR. However, I realize that I might be getting too wraped up in the technical stuff and if that makes the game UNfun you have to tell me. Quantum Entanglement, Obital Mechanics, Genetic modification, Nanoware, Digitized consiousness... good hard Futuretech and all of its implications is what I'm interested in exploring here. Wrap all the futuretech in a compeling, occaisionally violent, adventure and I'm in heaven. That's what i'd like to do; see how you guys respond to the setting elements when they're wraped into a compelling adventure. But I can let my science fetish get in the way. And if that happens I'll have to trust you to tell me.

Dr. Funk, I'm hearing what you're saying about "Arrr! We be Pirates fer Crissake!" It's not my intention to tease you with a pirate adventure then rip the rug out from under you by trying to play '2001 a Space Odessy'. Pirates it is. Swashbuckling will happen. But it will be Space pirates with Space swashbuckling. Will that work?









Jamming radar 262

Yeah man, I'm starting to see where you're coming from. Thanks!

The transmission of a fork was an idea I was considering, actually. Get out of my head. I've just been trying to puzzle my way around just how to go around creating one and how autonomous it can be. Every time I see something hopeful, the idea gets dashed away courtesy of the "you gotta use an egocaster, doofus" clause. Which seems really odd to me; they have a cheaper implant that can instantly create two alpha forks (namely the Multi-Tasking implant, which my character will be rocking). But the text for that implant is kind of confusing, too. I can't tell if it actually creates a fork or if it just calls them that for the sake of convenience; the automatic merging after four hours seems to suggest that it's not a genuine fork. Also, it seems like you need an egocaster in order to transfer one anywhere, even if it's just in your own head (including into a Ghostrider Module; another implant I'll have). And even if I could transmit one of them via a radio signal, how would it be able to do anything at the destination? It would need a cyberbrain, Ghostrider Module, or a biomorph to house it, no?

Narf! <brain explodes trying to figure it all out>

Anyway, as for LIDAR/RADAR, wouldn't an invisibility cloak-type device work okay against LIDAR? It's the RADAR portion that would be more difficult... but even today, we have stealth tech that can get around that. The only thing I see being difficult to hide is the propulsion system, since this is our main ship we're talking about. Unless we're waiting in ambush, they should be able to detect us coming courtesy of our exhausts, no?

Ship Name: I think it might be best to wait until we settle on what kind of ships and what modifications they have before we name 'em. Who knows, maybe the modifications will help inspire us. I know Grinder, Lady Door, and myself have all offered up some general ideas, too. We'll just need to take a vote somewhere down the line. Maybe once the Silent One (aka Fisty) decides to pipe up.

Hey, I like SCIENCE as much as the next robotic tentacle girl... but, I'm starting to go into tech overload here. Trying to keep up with ya'll is ... challenging. So, Doc, OTP: Ease up on the "Quantum Digitized Orbital Nanoware" and have pity on us. Pleeeeeease. That is all.

I shan't. It's all part of our duty to keep you womenfolk down.

Hey Doc, wanna know what it's like to get bitch-slapped with a titanium mesh tentacle?

Sure. You can show me after you make me a sammich.

Yeah, I wasn't really suggesting a relay would overcome lag - just overcome the limitation of radio ranges. As soon as you said those were effectively infinite in space (barring lag) the relay became unnecessary (except, as you suggested, to carry a fork).



I was also going to suggest that someone pick up an ego bridge (to make forks)... but from the looks of it, you're all robots! So, that's probably unnecessary, as well.

Careful, those tentacles might be able to reach you from the kitchen!

It's okay. Revenge is a dish best served with a side of death tentacles. *narrows eyes dangerously*

Sounds good! But I'm only eating it if you were barefoot and pregnant when you cooked it up.

Dude, you're done now.

Nevermind.

How's everybody doing with chargen?

I'm pretty good. Just stuck on my psi sleights until I hear back from Pony, whom I'm guessing has been abducted by lesbian Nazi hookers who then proceeded to force him into a weight loss program at his local gym.

I'm in the middle of finishing the stats and will not have much equipment to add. How's the rest doing?

Ummm... terrible. I have the concept, but the crunch part is just beyond me at the moment. Alysha's apparently got a grip on it though so i'm going to have her help me with the character build.

What's up with OTP? He hasn't posted in this thread for a while now. And seeing that everyone posted at your Dark Suns-thread, but not here, doesn't raise my expectations for this game. It has a slow start alreay, what leaves me doubtful about it at all....

Hey, I've been active here, buddy! Don't lob me in with the "everyone" crowd. <looks ready to cry> I'm just at an impasse until we hear from Pony again. I'm guessing something came up in the real world for him; I know he was actively putting information together on our main ship the last time we spoke sometime last week.

No need to cry You and me know that you're not in the "everyone" crowd.

Not trying to distract. I just can't seem to get a good grip on this game is all. Seems like there's always something else going on that keeps me from having the time to sit and read and build a character. Damn work. *Pheesh*

Curse you, other stuff! *shakes fists*

Stop that! I'm a person too!

Well, if you need any help, I'm sure we're all okay with helping out.

I'm actually going to be home during the evening this week, as I'm on a training schedule, so I plan on working it all out then. And yeah , I'll probably need some help.

<pokes Pony's seemingly dead corpse>

Sad, am I.

Does this mean you're beating a dead horse?! (God, I crack me up...)

I'm so glad someone gets my set-ups.

Glad I could be there for you.

<pokes at the thread> <sad panda>