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Post by cleggster on Jan 2, 2013 17:57:38 GMT -5
Good to know. I will have to go over more of the Errata soon. Initiative still seems a little..odd to me. But what the hell.
And actually you had heavy cover when you were behind the bar. That's why you had some penalties to shooting. Also, for a first time combat, simple one shots make sense. We will get more tactical later. I will make a point of rereading combat before next week.
Everyone enjoy the week off.
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Post by cleggster on Jan 8, 2013 15:04:16 GMT -5
So we should be back this week. Ready for some travel?
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Post by blantyr on Jan 9, 2013 0:44:15 GMT -5
And actually you had heavy cover when you were behind the bar. That's why you had some penalties to shooting. Also, for a first time combat, simple one shots make sense. We will get more tactical later. I will make a point of rereading combat before next week. Hmm. I'm used to Hero System, which works the other way around. If you are using cover, one can usually 'brace' one's weapon. Leaning one's arm or weapon against something solid supposedly lets one steady one's aim. The notion that taking cover hurt's one's aim will take a bit of getting used to. Ah, well. Every system has its oddities. Ready to travel? We'll see...
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Post by cleggster on Jan 9, 2013 16:37:39 GMT -5
Ok, so for everyone's edification. Initiative is Intuition + Reflexes DIVIDED by 5. Rounded up. Apparently my copy of the book was printed after the release of the GM screen. So mark your characters appropriately.
And yes, ballistic pistols are hell on wheels. In exchange for not being anything as cool as an energy weapon, they get lot 'o options.
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Post by blantyr on Jan 11, 2013 11:18:37 GMT -5
Last night's run made me want to go home and research Lagrange points. How far away are they from the planets that create them? How big are they? How close do you have to be to the center point to remain in the area? Five Lagrange Points Answers. L4 and L5 are 60 degrees ahead and behind the planet. Thus, our travel in last night's run was 120 degrees along the orbit of Jupiter. This is an impressive distance. Note, L3, L4 and L5 are equidistant from one another, 180, 60 and 240 degrees ahead of Jupiter. As I understand it, one can 'orbit' the various Lagrange points. One doesn't have to sit exactly at one magic point. In fact, even if one does manage to sit in the perfect spot, another planet swinging by would nudge one off the perfect spot. Lagrange orbits aren't stable. It's sort of like walking a tightrope. It's easy to fall off, but if you make tiny little thruster burns, it's easy enough to stay in the neighborhood of a Lagrange. Looking at the diagram above, the orbits around L1, L2 and L3 are fairly small. If one is going to use only tiny little burns to maintain position, one tries to stay relatively close to the L point. This isn't to say there can't be hundreds of stations in slightly different orbits. Space is big. "Relatively close" can still mean quite a distance. But L4 and L5 can have huge orbits. If I'm reading the above diagram right, you might be a fifth of a solar orbit away from an L4 or L5 and still be orbiting the L point. Of course, most stations won't want to be that far away. I suspect a big reason for joining a L point community is being able to easily fly over to the main station for fuel and groceries. Few would choose the huge orbits. There was a note that one shouldn't think of orbits around L points as being orbits around the L points. L points have no mass. L points do not pull things towards them. If we are 'orbiting' the Jupiter L4 point, it is more accurate to say we are orbiting the sun rather than the L4 point. It's just that the duration of L4's orbit around the sun is more or less the same duration as Jupiter's orbit around the sun. One ends up 'flying in formation', but the formations can be pretty big.
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Post by cleggster on Jan 17, 2013 15:02:37 GMT -5
I know that I have not updated the calender in a bit. I have been rather busy, oops. But we do plan on playing today (Jan 17). Only hiccup is Stephen does not know when he will make it. He has another job going on today and he does not know when he will be free. So he might be late or, worse case, cancel. Just a heads up for everybody.
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Post by blantyr on Jan 25, 2013 8:43:03 GMT -5
The scene where we moved from the stealth ship to the Flower was good comic relief, but I'd like to talk a bit about complementary skills.
Fawn has Art / Dance and Interest / Intramural Athletics. Both involve zero g performances. These were intended to justify that she can move well, including in microgravity environments. Might I use one of them as appropriate to complement Freerunning and Free Fall? Her Free Fall skill is 55, which supposedly makes her a skilled professional. I really didn't anticipate her having that much trouble crossing 50 feet of space. Granted, the dice didn't like her last night, but I wanted and intended for her to be graceful and competent in microgravity. I thought I had spent the points for this.
She also has Professional / First Responder. I dithered on how to describe her job back where she comes from. The modern term might be 'fireman'. In the future, fire might not be the dominant emergency. She would also deal with asteroid hits, collisions, crashes, sabotage, explosions, life support failure, bursting pipes and whatever else messes up a habitat. She would also investigate how it happened above after the fact, and be able to make recommendations for preventing similar incidents from happening again.
I would like to think First Responder would complement Hardware rolls made to deal with emergency situations. Putting a quick and dirty patch on the hole in the airlock or cutting power to part of a habitat would be the sort of thing she'd have to do in an emergency.
I'll note in passing some of her skill specialties. Investigation / Disaster - Sabotage. Research / Habitat Structure. Scrounging - Damage Control, (acquire the parts needed for a repair). Infosec - Brute Force. (Open this door NOW!) Academics / Disaster History. These are intended to cover bases to say she is good at putting things back together that have fallen apart.
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Post by cleggster on Jan 31, 2013 12:05:21 GMT -5
Allright. So the bad news for you Phaser's and Spacemonkeys. Your esteemed showrunner has a cold. One bad enough that he can't speak properly. So, the game for tonight is postponed. Besides, you wouldn't want to catch this. Might make you want to resleeve right way. So hopefully we will finish this adventure next time.
Talk to ya'll later.
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Post by adriangunn on Feb 6, 2013 15:19:46 GMT -5
Is Eclipse Phase on for tomorrow? If so, any chance you can work me in yet, or do you need to finish up the current mission?
Adrian
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Post by blantyr on Feb 13, 2013 16:10:48 GMT -5
Professor Ming
We located both the stealth ship Taura used to infiltrate the titan tech containing ship and the titan tech containing ship. The latter is thoroughly infected. Out intent was to search the for Taura's cortical stack, but so much exugent infection is present that even had we located the stack, I would not recommend anything but erasure.
We engaged in a firefight with several badly infected individuals. One of these was large and no longer humanoid. The rest were humanoid if one uses the term loosely, and no longer trans humanoid enough to meaningfully communicate. We did not 'win' the conflict. We survived long enough to retreat out of the infected ship. In addition to the sort of damage one might expect in conflict, I at least have suffered mental damage that seems to involve bio brain, cyber brain and ego alike. I acquired no memories enough worth keeping to continue operating in a degraded mental mode. The morph I currently occupy was intended as expendable. I shall quite likely restore from backup to an undamaged morph.
We could possibly acquire more ammunition, more fighters, recharge the plasma rifle, return to the Flower, and 'win' a continued conflict. I would not recommend this. I would instead recommend finding a warship whose crew needs target practice, or a tug that might place the Flower on a one way trip to the sun. Perhaps both.
In the process of pursuing Taura, we did recover a small ship that we intend to return to its owner. It is possible that the ship's return might be thought a favor enough to recoup expenses and losses.
Awaiting further guidance.
Mercedes
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Post by blantyr on Feb 13, 2013 16:41:41 GMT -5
During the last few runs, I encountered a few unusual rulings from the perspective of a character intended as a first responder engineer.
Some things seem entirely reasonable. Very few ships will be rigged to self destruct. I could see once in a very great while a military ship so secret as to be so rigged. I could see criminals ready to destroy evidence. I agree most to all commercial ship systems would be designed to operate safely. One couldn't make the blow up at all easily, if at all. (Well, one could mix fuel and oxidizer then applies sparks, but the hardware wouldn't be designed to do so.)
The only such ruling I would argue with is evacuating air from a habitat compartment. If there is a fire, that's the natural way to extinguish it. One has to evacuate chambers occasionally for maintenance. There is a modifier for Habitat Systems Hacking for over riding safety cut offs at -30. This would definitely apply. I'd be troubled if the game is being played that it is never possible to over ride a safety cut off. I created a character that is really into cyber security, while the game philosophy seems to be clipping her wings more than expected.
I was also surprised by how the airlocks worked. I can see them as separate systems. If so, I'd have expected that if a pencil sharpener would typically be run by an AI, an airlock might also have an AI. I'd give it facial recognition, retina recognition, infosec, and research. It might be tasked to know who is a trusted member of the crew, what trusted members of the crew are already on board, and notify the bridge / captain / security chief if an attempt at irregular entry is made. Of course, since AIs have limited skill levels, bypassing the above precautions seems possible to a true pro.
At any rate, as Mercedes does security and engineering, that's how she would set things up. Are the Flower and the raided agricultural station back near Locus typical? It is fairly easy to break into ships or stations without raising an alert? This is a two way street. I expect we'll be interested in breaking in about as often as we'll be trying to stop break ins. The approach of throwing away the game mechanics and game environment design philosophy in favor of hard dumb interlocks is just surprising.
Bob
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Post by cleggster on Feb 13, 2013 17:53:01 GMT -5
POWER! Blessed, blessed power. I will be cranking the heat for the next few days just to feel again. Game will be on for Thursday, but might run short due to the store closing at 7:00 again. But we will see. As for air, I don't see spaceships having systems designed to evacuating the precious atmosphere under any circumstances. If three is a fire, a dire situation in space, close the airlocks and the fire will go out shortly. Better to use extinguishers before that's necessary. And I should point out, spaceships with self-destruct mechanisms have always been a pet-peave with me. These things are designed to be safe. Only Starships from Trek really get away with that. Personally, If I took command, the first thing I would do would disable all sef destruct protocalls. If I needed, I wold just do down to engineering and blow up the core by hand. Those things go up easy. To easy.......
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Post by adriangunn on Feb 14, 2013 12:26:30 GMT -5
I'm going to try and be there, but I may be a little late (hopefully you guys aren't closing early!) - I have to bring an applicant to Boston and back and God knows what traffic will be like!
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Post by cleggster on Feb 14, 2013 21:46:13 GMT -5
Guess you didn't make it. But next Thu will be the time for new players to join in. Everyone else is back in what we might call civilization.
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Post by blantyr on Feb 14, 2013 21:51:22 GMT -5
Tricky rules question. If one has a trauma, revulsion of biological functions and not wanting to be touched, does one get modifiers to the recovery roll if one is sleeved in a pleasure pod?
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