So I was thinking about just how long various bits of gear characters carry about last on a single charge and wanted to know what others thought. Now I know in a city environment this isn't usually a big deal as you can generally find a place to plug in. But what happens when you are out in the wilds or the arctic or a really nasty bit of the Barrens where there is no place to plug and charge? Vehicles and drones have a standard power cycle of 6 hours unless you upgrade it but what about your commlink or smart gun? Medkits and their autodoc, area jammers and all sorts of gear need to be powered so it can certainly be a non-trivial issue in the right environment. Thoughts?

Portable solar charging station.

Also, given the general trend ... batteries may last MONTHS on a single charge by the 2070s. Some devices may not even use batteries, they may instead use teeny fuel cells, or even a microturbine generator (fuel getting low? break out the eye dropper).

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

No need for Micromanagement and/or Hartwurst

HougH!
Medicineman

also, in the current decade we have devices that can draw power wirelessly from overhead powerlines ...

add half a century and I bet PO-WiFi ™ would replace batteries

and battery efficiency has increased exponentially in past months ... again .. in time the developments may mean an iPhone that can go longer than half a day !!

probably....

They just need to find a way to upsize clock batteries

Okay okay, that's enough of that. Try and keep your science fiction at least SLIGHTLY realistic, would you kindly?

;D

Why are you... never mind.
Mach, you might want to cut back on the plasmids... Just saying.

I'd go with using the drone rules as a basis. 6 hours of operation... before needing a recharge.

Unless you're in the barrens constantly or the wilderness... I'd probably avoid most of this as extra book keeping and hassle and irrelevant to the game. I'd only worry about it again if you're going to be away from civilization for a reasonable length of time such as a week/month in the wilderness/barrens.


For most mobile devices I'd up that to something simple like a day between recharges. Allow options like extra battery or economy like are available for drones... to up that.

For stuff like commlinks... you might treat it more based on their physical matrix attributes... like say 30 hours - response - signal. For a stock DR3 standard average link that comes to 24 hours == 1 day. Explanation: faster chips need more power, and if you're putting out signal 8 power levels!! you're going to need some juice! Maybe more complication than is called for... but just trying to model reality a bit. Overall that doesn't give much variability though so I'm not a big fan of that particular math...

Maybe (Response + Signal)/6 == days... (3+3)/6 == 1 day... that works a lot better. Really cheap low power crap like disposable phones which don't run much would go for 2 or 3 days... while your tricked out 6/6 commlink would go for 12 hours... 24 if you tossed in an extra battery or economy device upgrade.


As far has how to recharge... suncell isn't all that hard to go with. Simply plugging into a vehicle/outlet for a few minutes... (look at how fast stun batons or flash paks charge). Gridguide I'll address below.

I take the view that stuff like cyberlimbs does something akin to 'potato power'... it uses the chemical energy in your blood to recharge itself constantly... so the limb actually gets power from your digestion and normal body energy cycle just as if it were a meat limb. But that's another option right there... the datajack is sort of like a USB port... fiber optic with a little bit of power to recharge/run small toys. That energy isn't free... it's simply reflected in your food budget instead of an electric bill.



I'd be careful with the inductive charging techniques... wireless power and all works to a degree.. but you can generally only pull very small amounts of energy out of the ether. Enough to run a digital watch or some other micropower system... not much more unless you're right under a power line. (and then power companies have come and sued successfully for stolen power, they're not in the business of selling unmetered power).

That said... grid guide is an excellent example of inductive power... they put the power lines under the street and electric cars inductively power themselves off them... the grid guide can meter how far you've gone and bill electricity accordingly based on knowing your auto's location and localized power draws. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to state that many low power accessories simply steal power off grid guide.

Cool. I was more looking at this from a lost in the wilderness sort of idea. Many of those sort of stories become, at least somewhat, about resource management. I would see this issue showing up with a team that needs to choose just what sort of encounter justifies using their smartlinks and tacnet and other toys they usually take for granted. Sort of another way to remove toys they rely on all the time without having to actually take them away, at least for one adventure.
I don't want to micro-manage this of course and like I said, it isn't an issue in cities for the most part. I had been reading David Weber's Prince Roger series and a big issue they had through out was keeping their high tech gear in working shape for the final encounter. This is what got me thinking about power and perhaps doing a much shorter adventure with those books as a source.

If you're not completely opposed to WAR allow the mage of the group to learn recharge. Problem solved.

Well, if they KNOW they're going to be away from a reliable power grid, and have any common sense whatsoever, then reasonably speaking they should know to bring along a solar charging unit or two. IRL, right now, they even have backpacks with solar panels built-in, specifically so your devices can charge while you walk or hike during the day.

The idea is an unplanned stay in the wilds rather than having time to prep for everything. I've done the solar cell back up before and if the mage thinks to pick up the recharge spell that would nicely solve everything. Lets say prep and the spell aren't an option.

And to think Nikolai Tesla was working on this about a century ago...

Actually ... not so much. He wanted to broadcast that power wirelessly, through the air, over distances of MILES. Not one of his better ideas - and hey, even supergeniouses like him, can have a brain-failure now and then.

Hey, gotta start somewhere. First it's meters, then then dozens of meters, and soon we'll be well into kilometers. Just look at computer storage space now. Thirty years ago 5GB was huge, now it's nothing. Then battery life for a cell phone was maybe a day, now my own (and old model) lasts a week between having to be charged.

If in shadowrun you can use your own body's bioelectric field to network your PAN, why not have it be able to power or augment the power supply of small devices?

No, it won't be "well into kilometers". The laws of physics preclude it. Push that much power into the atmosphere, and do you know what the result is?

Lightning. Lots of lightning. Lightning all over the place.

i wouldn't say it was a bad idea. frankly, it's a great idea.

he just neglected to look as closely at the math involved as he should have, and may have just possibly missed by an order of magnitude or two.

but hey, the idea wasn't a bad one. it's just those pesky physics getting in the way.

(and in any event, who's to say it couldn't eventually become possible? i know i've seen research on making a device that wirelessly electrocutes people at a few hundred feet by charging a pathway through the air... although, they always claim that it's gonna be "real soon now", and that was quite a while ago, so i imagine they've hit a few technical snags )

Thermal difference, kinetic energy and static electricity are all ways to recharge devices in SR, right? I don't see why devices that have all three should ever run out of juice, unless you leave them in a controlled set of circumstances with the aim of draining the battery.

I think in game terms, it's not something you have to worry about unless you're in the desert or middle of the ocean or something with out any sources of power what so ever. Batteries are growing bigger and bigger, tech is shrinking smaller and smaller. The Comlinks and such probably do have some sort of limiting factor but it's going to be large enough to the point where you don't worry about it. Charging for an hour once a week or once a month type of thing. So unless you're in an "Unusual circumstance" and purposefully are denied any sort of power source to recharge it, I don't think it'll come into play. Even in the middle of the desert or Amazon or something you're likely to have a vehicle or something where you could plug in and recharge.

I personally have two Ipads, a cell phone, an Ipod, and a laptop. I don't think I've ever, in my life, had any of the above drain all the way to 00.0%. My laptop got down to 7%.. maybe 5% once when I was on it playing wow for hours in bed, and it was simple to just plug in the cord. I carry chargers with me in my EDC bag or Tactical go bag too, and a small power strip (( Makes BUNCHES of friends at airports.)) Car, or anyplace with power and I'm good to go.

Yes shadowruns are likely to take you into less savory places, but places with absolutely no power or no way to recharge? You gotta think those are going to be few and far between. You gotta think even in the middle of the desert or something you're not going to be a weeks walk from your 'base' or 'vehicle'. Nor in the jungle. If you ARE going to be on foot, more than a week from a vehicle or base of operations, you know such and you bring a recharge or full battery.

You're more likely to find locations with out wifi to hook up to than with out any power sources.

Charge off of body heat.

Has the rigger got a vehicle? If so as long as it has fuel I'd guess their smaller devices can get a recharge.

It's not so much that it's a bad idea, but more along the lines that we can choose to have wireless electricity, or wireless everything else. Radio, TV, phones, internet, etc. To have enough electricity going around in the air, it needs to fill enormous amounts of the spectrum. Also, pouring tons of energy into the atmosphere is quite wasteful and possibly dangerous.

Not just possibly. Definitely.

On a related note, read the old Heinlein story "Waldo". The idea of radiant power is kind of central to the story. It's also the source of the name "waldo" for remote manipulators.

Also the origin of Waldos, period.

But Dr. Reyes told you not to do that, Mr. Simons.

Anyway I like the idea of taking away their tech-toys. Becoming totally disconnected from the grid would probably be a terrifying/evolutionary experience for people that most likely grew up without any conception of being unable to access the Matrix. Good RP to be had.

I've gone into the woods, caming with no tech.

It --was-- horrible. Not anything that I'd willingly do again. I'm definatly a child of the technological age. I know HOW to do it. I can live and even prosper with no power, no phone, no computers... it's just not fun at all and I dislike it.

I like my AC (( Most of all)) and my multiple computers and such. With out them I get surly (( especially the AC)) and grumpy.

I'd imagine it'd be even worse for those people in 2074. I've said more than once, once the tech gets here I'd sign up for a headjack, cyber eyes, etc. Now in 2074 they're kinda skipping past headjacks but still. I'm down. Shadowrun would be an awesome place for me. (( and I doubt I'd even be a shadowrunner.))

It could be fine so long as you discuss the game idea with the players beforehand and ALL of them are completely okay with it. If EVEN ONE is the slightest bit uninterested, drop the idea down the well. A good way to tell is if one of the players responds to the idea with a shrug saying "Uh...I guess it could be okay..."



Right there with ya, and I also doubt that I'd be a 'runner. I'd probably sign up for a nice, safe and cushy corp cubicle position that'd give me skillwires to do what I needed to do.

There is a recent scientific discovery that IMO is extremely relevant to the discussion at hand: Graphine Supercapacitors.

Content-free video is free of content.

The tech looks interesting, though.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it.

There is an XKCD for everything.
Seems everyone thinks that your gear should never run out of juice then. I thought it could be an interesting complication with getting lost in the wilderness, much as it is used as a device in movies. The whole no cell phone reception or the battery is dead thing. Perhaps even a tactical decision where you need to decide whether using that gear at a certain point is worth it against the possible need to use it later.
One thing I will point out about people saying their cell phone/laptop/etc IRL never gets depleted is that these devices are usually not run constantly (cell is on standby usually), unlike a shadowrunner's commlink with its AR feeds, cyberware monitoring, etc. that is always on and active.

There's fluff about batteries running on muscle contraction, body heat and other omnipresent elements...
Even then your functionality in the middle of nowhere would be kind of limited...
In a dead matrix zone your AR aids have no databases to access and even if they did the area might not be mapped at all or whatever freak of nature you ran into will be likely to bear your name.
Also you need to consider poor working conditions and various hazards that might kill your gear.

Smart guns also use AR and commlinks and are useful no matter where you are if you need to shoot something. TacNets fall into this category as well.



I'd rather not resort to destroying the player's 20,000¥+ commlinks for the sake of a story about being lost in the wilds. Having it run out of power is an easier solution and less likely to piss off the players.
Anyway, I find it somewhat weird that my shock glove or stun baton has limited charges or my gauss rifle requires battery packs to work and a standard drone only runs for 6 hours but my commlink and such will run forever off whatever power source it runs off. I'll give a pass on the cyberware and say it works from bio power and stores juice while you sleep or whatever.
Why not power shock gloves with whatever runs the commlink (or your cyberware if you really want to get technical) or let it charge however a commlink charges. Personally I think things like your commlink just get a chance to be recharged when you aren't shadowrunning. They have just as finite a power supply as the other stuff I've listed but we never get into that level of bookkeeping on the average run nor does the average run take place away from ready power sources. However, in the case of this particular adventure I feel it can and should be a detail to look at.

I'm so sorry, I seem to have forgotten to pay my Omniscience Bill. So this is the first I've ever heard of that development.

Forgive me for my unworthiness.

/facepalm

Safehouses has a commlink about to run out of power, and asks to be recharged.

I'd put money on this being a reference to an obscure scene in Deus Ex.

But my youtube-fu isn't turning up a clip of the conversation, so I'd have to reinstall the game to check... and then I'd have to play it all the way through again, of course.

~Umi

Gee Umidori, sounds like that would be rough. I'd hate think of you being forced to play a video game.
CanRay, if only you had included how long it had been since it was last charged I'd at least have some fluff to go by. Come on now, get back in there and re-write that portion for my gratification.

Fortunately, it doesn't specify how that happens - which leaves us free to rub our feet on the carpet to build up static, shake it, put it under an armpit for body warmth, leave it in the sun, etc ...

As a note, isn't the penalties for going into the wild harsh enough without all your gear caving in on you?
I mean with the unhealable stun damage and all...

Have you seen The Grey? Something along those line is what I was thinking of. Once you get home it makes you thankful to only have to deal with gangers and the cops and pollution.

Really, the best answer to the question is "It doesn't matter". If you're worrying about how long the charge on a comm-link or vehicle or anything lasts, then you are micro-managing too much. Take a step back and let fun enter back into the game.

Small generators powered by movement of the device. Problem solved with minimal handwaving (the tech already exists in watches).

And small solar cells. My own watch is solar powered, six individual cells circling around the face, with a NiCad rechargeable battery.

part of the problem is, it seems the GM WANTS the commlinks to die for a plot device, so I think the GM is just looking for rules regarding to instead of just declaring Fiat.

Oh, but there's so much more fun ways to do things.

*Gangers drive by with a stolen HERF Gun* "HEY! WAGESLAVES!!!" *HERF!!!* "GOOD LUCK TELECOMMUTING!!!" "Oh those sons of slitches! MUNGO, THEY KILLED YOUR HACKER 'LINK AND HAVE ICE CREAM!" "Mungo catch dem!!!" "Do you think he can catch them on foot?" "He caught the Good Humor Ork a week ago. I didn't know those ice cream trucks could go so fast, either."

That sounds like your average day in any random corner of Mega City One...

~Umi

And ten minutes later ... Mungo the Troll becomes Mungo the EMP-Troll. Talk about a new way to "hack" cameras ...!!

New? You point the gun at them and pull the trigger. What difference does it make if the gun shoots energy instead of lead?

~Umi

Do you seriously not put your cameras behind armor-glass domes and such ...?

Whereas, if the camera is wireless, it's completely naked to a HERF gun. (The antenna, I mean.)

Seriously Ray, give Mungo a full on short story already, I mean you got a complete metaplot growing around him already!