I'm finally getting down to the end of the Brainscan adventure which I've been GMing for about for a few months now. Anyway, I have part of the team up on the roof of the Arcology for their part of the final battle (inspired by a post I saw by Demonseed Elite a while back).

I wanted to map out the roof on my battlemat and break out the miniatures to make things really strategic. So my big question right now is: How big is the Arc's roof?

According to New Seattle, the Arc is over 10 blocks wide on a side and almost 1000 meters tall. With those two pieces of information, plus the angle of the Arc's sides, we should be able to do a little trig to figure it out right?

To get a better idea of how big 10 blocks in Seattle is, I went to MapQuest and mapped from "1 S Jackson St." in Seattle, WA to "1001 S Jackson St." (which, IIRC, is where the Arc sits anyway, so I thought it'd be a good indicator). According to MapQuest that's a .75 mile distance, which converts out to about 1200 meters (close enough for government work anyway).

So we know 1200 meters on a side and 960 meters tall (320 floors X 3 meters each which is almost 1000 like New Seattle says), but does anyone know the angle of the walls? Is it mentioned anywhere?

Thanks.

Angle's not mentioned anywhere I've seen, however there's a picture in New Seattle at page 15. Looks a bit steeper than 45 degrees. Maybe 60 degrees or so. There might be a better shot in Renraku Arcology: Shutdown but I don't have that one . . .

60 looks about right.
There's a good shot on page 11 of RA:S.

If it were 60 degrees (like I thought at first too), and the other numbers were right, the roof would be almost 91.5 meters on a side.
960/tan(60)~=554.25. Doubled that gets to 1108.5 meters lost in each direction due to angling. 8,372.25 square meters in total. I haven't decided if that sounds big enough or not.

...it's a pyramid. Declare this is no roof. Have them fight it out on one of the helipads instead.

Except that there is a roof, as is clearly evident by the picture on RA:S, p. 11. It's nice a big and flat. But lined with street lamps.

And a hangar of some description, it looks like...

I think it's just the elevator lift housing, or whatever that part of a building is called.

Well, if its about 100 meters on a side, it basically means they have a football field on their roof, for getting an idea of the size. Thats certainly big, but it does seem small compared to something 3/4ths of a mile wide at the base.

Then again, 1200 meters a side and 1000 meters tall, is almost a cube. Any angling back on the walls at all would cut huge chunks outta the roof, as well as the interior. Its unlikley Renraku would want to lose out on all this potential space considering the investment in land and materials and such. As a result it might be safer to assume something like a 75 degree angle. Theres cars that can almost traverse a 60 degree one, and I dont think Renraku wouldve wanted people driving up their building.

Geometery was long ago in a galaxy far away, can someone punch it with 75 degrees and see if thats a bit more logical?

At a 75 degree angle, you lose only 268 m climbing 1000 m, so you have a rooftop playground about 464 m on a side.

Hm. That large you might have something cool like a park taking up part of/most of the space. That'd be kinda neat actually; Deus wouldn't have given a damn about it, so the thing would be starting to grow over and stuff. Rumble in the jungle, on the roof of the largest building ever created.

The illustration looks like the roof is about a quarter of the base

RangerJoe, that'd be right if the Arc was 1000 meters on a side at its base, but with my estimation of a 1200 meter base, that leaves 664 meters on a side for the roof if the angle is 75 degrees.

Either way you look at it, that makes the roof close to half of what of what the base is on a side. That seems a bit large. 91.5m seems way too small. Of course I'm just guestimating by the drawing. Hmmm...how canon is artwork, anyway?

If we assume a 65 degree angle... 960/tan(65)~=448 meters. That leaves us with about 305 meters for the roof, making the side 1/4 of the side at the base. That could work.

Thanks for your help, everyone.

Since it's for executives only, I'd say a park would make sense (or at least be feasible) for PART of the roof. But you'd better believe there'd be some major anti-aircraft, anti-missile and anti-personnel defenses hidden up there in that jungle.

Also keep in mind, that's probably the single largest landing pad on the arcology. I don't know if the designers would use that space for corporate entertainment, or for airship docking. With LTA technology so popular, and vector-thrust craft wandering everywhere (plus good old fixed wing), having a parking-lot sized landing pad isn't such a bad idea, and it gives clearer LOS for the defenses.

And Deus DEFINITELY would have buffed up the defenses. After all, the military could just drop stones from above otherwise. I'd expect there are some mighty big, mighty expensive guns up there, and aircraft ready to scramble at a moments notice.

Naturally, but half a kilometer on a side is plenty of room for all of that--lots of anti-air defenses, a decent-sized landing strip, and a nice quiet private corporate park for the execs to play around in, and that would have just been left to its own devices as Deus secured what he could use on the roof and left the rest.

Plus it'd be cinematic and somewhat surreal to fight your way through floor after floor of technological monstrosities, only to end up dodging through trees and dense underbrush in the final scene.

Just to toss a small kink in, remember by the description the building doesn't start tapering at ground level, it starts to taper a lil ways above the mall levels.

Well, if we ignore the first 4 floors (12-ish meters) and stay with the 60 degree incline, it results in a 547 meter loss from each wall. This leaves a 106 meter per side rooftop.

Now that you have an idea of what it could be I sagest that you don’t bother with the maths and make it the size you feal best suites your game. How big do you want it to be?? Anything from 100 to 700 meters a side is believable

Regarding the defences, under renraku I would expect most of the defences to be moderately hidden. I would include a landing aria for rotorcraft VTA and blimps but not anything that needs much of a runway, and a park.

Edward

A landing aria? Hmm an opera like a reverse flight of the valkyries for when helicopters land. Constantly played in trideo at landing platforms. I like it...