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Nerbert
The prices for Dikote are listed as 1,000 per 100 square centimeters. So I charged one player $2,500 to dikote a katana, and $50,000 to dikote an armor vest with plates. Does this seem like a lot? Not enough? Are there any good rules of thumb for how much surface area needs to be covered by the material?
Herald of Verjigorm
That's withing the range. Someone around here can probably point you to a "how much surface area am I" site to confirm or criticize your armor cost. I have seen katana dikote from 200 cm^2 to maybe 600 cm^2. Usually in the 3-4 range.

There is no official list of surface area for common items that I know of. A somewhat educated guess is a good enough start for most purposes.
Arethusa
Way too much for the vest and less than half of what you should charge for the katana. Canon charges 5,000¥ for dikoting a katana. I've gone through and roughly calculated the surface area, and it weighs in generally between the 6,000-7,000¥ range, depending on the sword.

The vest should not have cost that much. Hell, you should really only require dikoting of the plates.

[edit]

Should note that that canon cost for dikoting a katana is one I've never seen but did see cited on these boards. Can't verify it within my knowledge of 3rd edition, either. Personally, I'd suggest just sticking to 6,500¥ and letting that be the end of that.
Nerbert
My justification for the katana was that the blade was a foot and a half to two feet long long and that it was about three centimeters wide. so I said, ~50 cm * 3 = 250 cm^2. you know, now that I write it down like that, its obvious that I only had him dikote one side of it, duh.

As for the armor, thats where I really wasn't sure. It doesn't give any indication of how the vests are made or what its made out of. I almost nixed dikoting the armor because I thought kevlar was some kind of plastic or polycarbonate, and I didn't know if that would qualify as a metal or ceramic or what.
Number 6
QUOTE (Nerbert)
My justification for the katana was that the blade was a foot and a half to two feet long long and that it was about three centimeters wide. so I said, ~50 cm * 3 = 250 cm^2. you know, now that I write it down like that, its obvious that I only had him dikote one side of it, duh.

Well really you only need to Dikote the edge and the front few centimeters. That's more in character anyway, the softer back half keeps the blade strong yet flexible.


wink.gif
Arethusa
And the dikoting process would completely obliterate the temper and make it useless, not to mention that the coating of diamond would have to be awakened and possessing of a deep and eternal anger, fueling that +1 damage level. Really, just pay the cash and try not to think about it too much. You can't get in character with something that makes so little sense.
Omega Skip
Has anybody ever come up with reasonable numbers for dikoting costs that are not dependent on area, but rather on reach or ballistic / impact ratings? I wonder why the geniuses who thought the stuff up in the first place didn't think of an easier way to calculate the cost. Meh.
Zazen
QUOTE
And the dikoting process would completely obliterate the temper and make it useless, not to mention that the coating of diamond would have to be awakened and possessing of a deep and eternal anger, fueling that +1 damage level.


I hate to bring this up yet again, but dikote is not modern-day diamond coating. It's an amazing magnificent compound of the future that does fantastic incredible things. It doesn't ruin tempers on katanas and it makes an ordinary kitchen knife more than twice as good at cutting through flesh, steel, and reinforced concrete.


Also, this site has been floating around here for a while: Body Surface Area Calculator It's nice for calculating how much ruthenium polymer someone needs, but you might be able to use that as a baseline for a vest. Personally, I think 50k for that vest sounds about right. That's half a square meter, which sounds good for a persons torso.
Thistledown
Something to bear in mind that players seam to forget: Dikote is an INDUSTRIAL PROCESS! It is used on girders and other large objects to make them stronger. Using it on a blade is a secondary function that takes only a tiny sliver of its market share. My former GM and I agree that there should be an extra charge for dealing with anything smaller than a claymore, just because its so dinky compared to what the furnace is made for.

I like this link you gave for surface area though.
Arethusa
Zazen, mystical future process or not, the books specifically state that it uses a plasma furnace and that anything being shoved inside would need to be able to handle such heats for the periods of time necessary to coat it. Is it diamond? Yes, it says it is. Does it act like real life diamond would? Jesus fuck, no. But that doesn't change the fact that it would, as canon specifically describes it, obliterate the temper on a katana. Only way around that is to not think to hard and enjoy your (Str+1)S.
Cochise
~thinks: Where's Cray, when you need him? biggrin.gif~

Pressure (or better the lack of) is a very important element, when determining the required temperature for creating "plasma" => At least in theory it should be possible to create carbon plasma at temperatures that wouldn't harm the temper of a sword / katana ...
Arethusa
In reality, you can diamond coat things without the need for a plasma furnace whatsoever. As I recall, it was some sort of electrical bonding technique, and has been used on pairs of glasses with polymer lenses. I'm just saying that as SR describes it, you shouldn't be able to, so close your eyes and don't think about it to hard.
Zazen
QUOTE (Arethusa)
But that doesn't change the fact that it would, as canon specifically describes it, obliterate the temper on a katana. Only way around that is to not think to hard and enjoy your (Str+1)S.

I'm curious, is this something special about katanas or do you think this should apply to all swords?
The White Dwarf
Im glad everyone here at DS has great working knowledge of such common topics as diamond coating processes, plamsa furnaces, katana forging... and knows the industries well enough to easily predict how they will function 60 years from now after a world wide computer crash and magic. Oh wait, they dont. Thats right its sci-fi, and works fine as a game rule because of that "fi" part. Thanks drive thru.
Dweller on the Threshold
Shh. You'll rile up the natives with talk like that, regardless of its rationality.
Caine Hazen
I'm gonna dikote my rollsroyce prarie cat now then....
Arethusa
QUOTE (Zazen)
I'm curious, is this something special about katanas or do you think this should apply to all swords?

I think it should apply to nearly everything made of metal. Not everything is precision tempered, and very, very few things are precision tempered to the extreme of Japanese weapons like katana, but it's still a significant element in the functionality of Western longswords, suits of armor, whatever. Even high end knives would not fare well with the tempering destroyed.

QUOTE (The White Dwarf)
Im glad everyone here at DS has great working knowledge of such common topics as diamond coating processes, plamsa furnaces, katana forging... and knows the industries well enough to easily predict how they will function 60 years from now after a world wide computer crash and magic. Oh wait, they dont. Thats right its sci-fi, and works fine as a game rule because of that "fi" part. Thanks drive thru.

Right. Because fiction must, by definition, not be believable for any save the ignorant. That's eminently rational.
Zazen
QUOTE (Arethusa)
I think it should apply to nearly everything made of metal. Not everything is precision tempered, and very, very few things are precision tempered to teh extreme of Japanese weapons like katana, but it's still a significant element in the functionality of Western longswords, suits of armor, whatever. Even high end knives would not fare well with the tempering destroyed.

Well, just so you know, swords are specifically mentioned as things that can be dikoted. So saying that "as SR describes it, you shouldn't be able to" isn't quite fair. They've obviously found some solution to that problem, since swords seem to hold up just fine nyahnyah.gif
Panzergeist
Dikoted cyberskull!
BishopMcQ
Nerbert--If it is easier for you to think about these things in inches, call it 4" x 4." For people, I generally play it fast and loose--height times shoulder width divided by 8 (h*w/cool.gif and that is how many batches of Dikote you're buying. Make sure your Troll doesn't try to say that his shoulder are only 18" wide and just run with it...

Arethusa--I don't think White Dwarf was stating that one must be ignorant to believe the fiction that is created by the rules system, simply that a reasonable suspension of disbelief is necessary. If you are familiar enough with metallurgy to understand the need for temper then by all means, home rule it. Others of us unfortunately have to accept whatever the book says, due to lack of knowledge.
A Clockwork Lime
Arethusa: You don't like many of the rules. We get it. You're working on your own system. We get that, too. But every time a rules question comes up, you don't have to come flying into the thread to foam at the mouth about how much you despise them. I'm not the most subtle or passive poster around and I may see the game differently than the majority of people here, but Christ, even I don't whine about the rules as much and as consistently as you do.

That said, within the context of the game world, there's nothing unbelievable about the Dikote process. It's benefits are astounding, and its primary purpose metagame-wise is obviously a "fix" for the game to make melee weapons more deadly just like the FirePower Ammo of old, but it's not unbelievable. It may not be what we have in the real world, or anything we'll ever have in the real world, but in the Sixth World it's a tried and true process.

One doesn't have to be ignorant of reality in order to accept something that's believable within a fictional world. One just doesn't have to have a stick shoved firmly up their ass.
Eyeless Blond
QUOTE (Panzergeist)
Dikoted cyberskull!

LOL! Even funnier would be if a guy tried to Dikote a synthetic cyberskull, and walk around everywhere with a shiny head. smile.gif

Arethusa: please stop using my name and my posts to fuel your inane ranting. Twice now in as many days you've used my posts (the harmless joke in that firearms thread, and now the bit I found on the internet about the US army dikoting plastics) in your posts, and I'm worried that soon people will begin to think that I agree with you. I don't. I do think that some parts of the Shadowrun system deserve to be mocked; but then, I think *everything* should be mocked a little. This relentless, purposeless attack of yours crosses the thick, bold line from insult comedy to just plain insult, and I don't want to be associated with it in any way.
Solstice
QUOTE (The White Dwarf)
Im glad everyone here at DS has great working knowledge of such common topics as diamond coating processes, plamsa furnaces, katana forging... and knows the industries well enough to easily predict how they will function 60 years from now after a world wide computer crash and magic. Oh wait, they dont. Thats right its sci-fi, and works fine as a game rule because of that "fi" part. Thanks drive thru.

LOL that ruled!
Arethusa
QUOTE (McQuillan)
I don't think White Dwarf was stating that one must be ignorant to believe the fiction that is created by the rules system, simply that a reasonable suspension of disbelief is necessary. If you are familiar enough with metallurgy to understand the need for temper then by all means, home rule it. Others of us unfortunately have to accept whatever the book says, due to lack of knowledge.

Actually, I think his point was really that no one may dare attack Shadowrun's fiction because, being that it is fiction, it can be whatever the writers desire, and as players, we must buy into it. And this is, unfortunately, deeply flawed. I'm not unfamiliar with willing suspension of disbelief, but I also don't like the fact that much of SR canon is so unbelievable as to be vaguely insulting, and certainly crosses a line that takes me from being a willing participant to being forced to believe no matter how hard that task may be. The burden of constructing a believable (and, hell, fairly often, even playable) system should absolutely not fall on the players. This is really the greatest issue I take with SR's designers.

As a side note, while the body surface area calculator is useful if you really want to micromanage (and, hell, I'll admit I dug that thing out of Google a year ago for a character), playing fast and loose with the numbers is generally better anyway because you need to factor in amounts of ruthenium for pouches, freedom of movement, equipment, etc.

QUOTE (A Clockwork Lime)
even I don't whine about the rules as much and as consistently as you do.

And I have just as much right to voice my opinion of SR's canon as the droves of people here who, as I understand it, quite like canon. And I will say this: my sense of humor's pretty dry and doesn't translate to text well for people who don't know me personally. Generally, I don't really care enough to clarify, but if I must lest Dumpshock rise up, much of the distaste for canon that I generally voice is overstated in good fun. That's not to say it isn't sincere— only that it's not always serious.

Regardless, your point about it being believable in a fictional world is duly noted and duly wrong. As this fictional world has never been stated to function under different physical laws, it's assumable that, magic aside, it's pretty much what we have today. The writers definitely had a responsibility to maintain a level of believability, however fantastic they wanted to make the world, and they outright failed with a lot of things, Dikote included. If something fictional is only believable because the author has forcibly told you it must be, he has likely failed.

QUOTE (Eyeless Blond)
please stop using my name and my posts to fuel your inane ranting. Twice now in as many days you've used my posts (the harmless joke in that firearms thread, and now the bit I found on the internet about the US army dikoting plastics) in your posts, and I'm worried that soon people will begin to think that I agree with you. I don't. I do think that some parts of the Shadowrun system deserve to be mocked; but then, I think *everything* should be mocked a little. This relentless, purposeless attack of yours crosses the thick, bold line from insult comedy to just plain insult, and I don't want to be associated with it in any way.

Please, do point out where I libeled your good name, using you to launch my clearly baseless attacks on Shadowrun. I used a piece of information freely available to everyone, which I wholly doubt almost anyone remembers you introduced to these boards (hell, I didn't), and I backed up one of your jokes as I agreed— and, this being the internet, I must have been dead serious and looking for a fight because I didn't use the requisite 5-10 smileys.

Never have I relied on your support for my views, and I doubt I ever will be. If you agree with me on some things, go ahead. If you disagree on others— and, if I recall correctly from the last Canon Revision thread, you do— do that too. It's your opinion, and you're free to voice it. So am I.

Really, I wonder if my relentless, purposeless attack crosses the thick, bold line of insult comedy into plain insult simply because I don't use enough smileys for everyone here to feel at ease.
A Clockwork Lime
ohplease.gif
Kanada Ten
QUOTE
Really, I wonder if my relentless, purposeless attack crosses the thick, bold line of insult comedy into plain insult simply because I don't use enough smileys for everyone here to feel at ease.

The way you phrase things often implies everyone has no choice but to see it your way. That will often prejudice people against you, especially when we're all so opinionated and play vastly different games. Not that I should really be saying anything, but I'd rather you stuck around so we can extract all the intelligence from your massively powerful mind. And this is where a smiley would go.
John Campbell
QUOTE (Nerbert)
My justification for the katana was that the blade was a foot and a half to two feet long long and that it was about three centimeters wide. so I said, ~50 cm * 3 = 250 cm^2. you know, now that I write it down like that, its obvious that I only had him dikote one side of it, duh.

That's rather short for a katana, too... more of a wakazashi, really. Katana blades are generally more like 3', plus there'd be several inches of tang. Call it a meter even (that's probably still a bit short, but close enough). Figure in both sides, add a centimeter or so to the width to account for the thickness of the blade and so on, and you get around 700cm².
Cray74
QUOTE (Nerbert @ May 15 2004, 06:22 AM)
The prices for Dikote are listed as 1,000 per 100 square centimeters.  So I charged one player $2,500 to dikote a katana, and $50,000 to dikote an armor vest with plates.  Does this seem like a lot?  Not enough?  Are there any good rules of thumb for how much surface area needs to be covered by the material?

I'm happy with 1000 nuyen per square meter, my original misinterpretation of the 1000 nuyen per 100cm^2 in Shadowtech.

QUOTE
As for the armor, thats where I really wasn't sure. It doesn't give any indication of how the vests are made or what its made out of. I almost nixed dikoting the armor because I thought kevlar was some kind of plastic or polycarbonate, and I didn't know if that would qualify as a metal or ceramic or what.

Kevlar is a plastic. However, I allow the plates in "vest with plates" to be dikoted. The ballistic plates could well be metal or ceramic.

QUOTE
Pressure (or better the lack of) is a very important element, when determining the required temperature for creating "plasma" => At least in theory it should be possible to create carbon plasma at temperatures that wouldn't harm the temper of a sword / katana ...

...actually, I expect dikoting would wreck the temper of a lot of metals, and cause warping in many metal objects. But I try not to think about that part too much and figure, "If it won't evaporate at dikoting temperatures, it can be dikoted." I like dikoting, so I don't inhibit it's use with too much logic (even if I have fun talking about the logic).
TinkerGnome
Personally, I'd just just change the flavor text on Dikote to be something more sensible. Any kind of tough, low friction coating would fit with the game effects and costs. You could limit it to metals and ceramics (basicly what Dikote is applied to anyway) because of bonding considerations and be done with the issue (and get rid of the high temperature process).
Arethusa
QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
The way you phrase things often implies everyone has no choice but to see it your way. That will often prejudice people against you, especially when we're all so opinionated and play vastly different games. Not that I should really be saying anything, but I'd rather you stuck around so we can extract all the intelligence from your massively powerful mind. And this is where a smiley would go.

I'll admit that a lot of what I say casually and without watching my language (nothing to do with swearing) can come off a lot more serious than I intend (and I guess the biggest problem is that while I'm aware of that, it seems I mistakenly assumed no one would really take any of this too seriously). Be that as it may, there are times when I do come on intentionally strongly and don't feel that there's much room for disagreement, and I won't hesitate to say so.

QUOTE (John Campbell)
That's rather short for a katana, too... more of a wakazashi, really. Katana blades are generally more like 3', plus there'd be several inches of tang. Call it a meter even (that's probably still a bit short, but close enough). Figure in both sides, add a centimeter or so to the width to account for the thickness of the blade and so on, and you get around 700cm².

His figures are a bit short and wakizashi-esque, but your figures are also a bit long. 28-30" blades tend to be about average, the longer ones supposedly generally being favored by statistically larger Western practitioners. There's also the nakago (tang) to factor in, which can be quite long, as some swords can have tsuka (grips) as long as 16". My figure of ~7,500¥ covers the average.

Click for more precise numbers.
John Campbell
QUOTE (Arethusa)
His figures are a bit short and wakizashi-esque, but your figures are also a bit long.  28-30" blades tend to be about average, the longer ones supposedly generally being favored by statistically larger Western practitioners.  There's also the nakago (tang) to factor in, which can be quite long, as some swords can have tsuka (grips) as long as 16".  My figure of ~7,500¥ covers the average.

Click for more precise numbers.

You must have a very interesting definition of "a bit long". If you'll look closely, you might notice that the figures I was actually working with were shorter than the ones you were using (1m ~= 39.3", vs. your 41.5" (if I'm interpreting your numbers correctly)), and I correspondingly came up with a slightly (less than 5%) smaller total area.
Arethusa
You specified 3 feet for the blade, plus more for the nakago. A 36" blade would be fairly unusual for a katana. That's what I was referring to. Really, I went through the trouble of precisely calculating it, but much rougher methods have come up with suitably close results that it's not really necessary and more academic than anything else.
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