(4) More than Meets the Eye

Game Master mdt

A ragtag group of Cybertronian refugees from variant backgrounds find themselves stranded on a remote planet in an unremarkable solar system in the Sagitarius arm of the Milky Way galaxy, half a galaxy away from Cybertron.

The planet is inhabited by strange primitive bipedal creatures called 'humans', who superficially resemble half the races in the galaxy. The local aliens are obviously completely insane (they waste hydrocarbons on cheap plastic and burn it raw as fuel instead of converting it to energon and they are still playing with primitive destructive fusion devices, something even Megatron refused to resort to during a multi-million year war).

Tactics:

Combat in HERO system takes place on a hex map. Each hex is referred to as an 'inch' (classically, the hexes were 1 physical inch across). Each 'inch' is 2 meters in scale. Microbots and Scouts will take up 1 hex. Soldiers and Warriors will take up 7 hexes (6 in a circle plus the center).

Microbots : NEVER EVER GET CLOSE TO A SOLDIER OR WARRIOR! By close, I mean never get more than 8 inches from one. This is for two reasons, you are hard for them to hit, thanks to your DCV being so high, and range adds in range penalties for (most of) them. If you are close, you are making yourself easier to hit! The TV shows may have shown Ravage attacking Prime. In reality, that would have been oen dead Ravage. A single good hit from a Warrior will take you down unconscious, and may do serious damage to you. Distance is your friend! Additionally, you have the action economy on larger targets! Use it ruthlessly! Hold actions so you can react to larger deadlier enemies by dodging or diving for cover! DO NOT GET HIT!

Scouts : You have both the best of all worlds and the worst of all worlds. You can hit Microbots, Soldiers, and Warriors. However, you have low armor (compared to Warriors and Soldiers), so use your dex and action economy as ruthlessly as a Microbot. You can survive a hit from a Warrior, but you won't enjoy it! You can also be taken down by multiple mini-cons. For things bigger than you, pretend you're a Microbot. For Microbots, get in as fast and close as you can and hammer them hard!

Soldiers : You are armroed and armed, but you're slower and smaller targets are harder to hit. Plan carefully, and try to pot shot Microbots when they are at a disadvantage! Did the Microbot dive for cover to avoid being taken out by your buddie's explosive attack? Pound the scrap out of that Microbot while he's at half DCV! You can go toe to toe with Warriors, as long as you play it smart and use your action economy against them, just be prepared to bugger out if you get nailed hard. Remember, their are old Soldiers, there are brave Soldiers, but there are no old brave Soldiers!

Warrior : You are the epitomy of battle! You can take shots from Microbots all day long! Don't worry about that Microbot that's firing at you unless it's hitting you with something that makes it hard to fight (blinding you, penetrating armor, things like that). If you can't hit the sneaky little scrap-eater, then pick up something heavy (like one of the Microbots Soldier or Scout friends!) and throw it at them! Make them dive out of the way and let an ally make scrap out of them while they are down! Remember though, you can still die or be captured (which is worse!). Don't let your ego get bigger than your crank case! Know when to back out of an untenable situation!

Types of Points to gain in game:

In HERO, Experience Points and Character Points are the same thing. That is, you get as much effect for spending the experience you earn as you did for the character points you had at the start of the game. During the game, however, you'll receive two (or potentially three) different forms of Points, and you will have restrictions on how you can spend them.

Team Points : The team will receive points as a team, at various times as the game goes on. These points cannot be used to increase your characters. They can only be used on team things. Quite often these will be in the form of equipment. For example, if your group finds a weapons cache and inside that weapons cache is a mix of mundane cybertronian ammunition, then that isn't 'equipment', it's a resupply tool for those with charges on their weapons. On the other hand, if you find a 'Iacon S-Type Sniper Rifle' that has a value of 25 points, then that sniper rifle is a 25 character point 'team equipment'. Equipment may be restricted by class (that is, an S-Type sniper rifle is designed for a soldier class and a smaller bot trying to wield it will have massive issues getting it to work). You can use a team weapon that's within one size of you with at 1/2 OCV, or one that is 2 or more sizes off at 0 OCV. Team points may also come in the form of 'tech supply', which is a fancy way of saying raw parts and components. A tech supply can be used to build new team equipment or increase team assets (such as your space ship). For example, buying a computer and specifying it's in the ship would repair the ship's main computer, while adding points directly to the ship in order to give it a cloaking system is spending the points directly on the ship. There will be restrictions on what you can build, but I'll try to be fairly open on that (including things like land bridges or space bridges).

Experience Points : These can be spent on your character, or donated toward Team Points (that is, you can boost your character, or you can donate them toward the team point total). Everyone has already donated 10 points each toward the Team Points (thus giving you your spaceship).

Free Points : These are very special points, they are directly added to your character, but only in a specific way (That is, if you receive free points, they'll completely and totally encompass one power, and increase your alt forms point totals as well (that is, the total cost of adding the power includes the points to increase your alt modes as well). However, unlike character and team points, Free Points can be lost as easily as they were gained! For an example of the difference, if your character has a blaster pistol with the OAF limitation, that blaster can be stolen by an enemy or destroyed or lost. However, the character does not lose the points permanently, he can have a new blaster pistol made, or spend those points on something else. Items/Powers received as Free Points on the other hand, if they are lost or stolen or destroyed, then you lose those free points, permanently. Examples of this would be something like the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, or a Phase Shifter, relics that cannot be replaced.

Altering your Class:

It is theoretically possible to alter your class. To do so, you'd need two things. A spark extractor and a new Protoform of the class you want to become. Then, you'd have to have your spark extracted and placed into the new protoform. Needless to say, this is a traumatic, and dangerous, process. You certainly wouldn't want anyone you didn't trust to extract your spark and put it in a new protoform! Spark extractor's are very rare, and dangerous, items which can be used as a weapon to kill Cybertonians! You'd almost certainly need to find one, not build it. But if you're unhappy with your current class, let me know, and I can arrange for it to happen (but remember, a spark extractor would be a Free Point object, and you'll have to protect it going forward!).

Power Scale:

In order to avoid having stupid amounts of dice and armor ratings, I've decided to go with a Power Scale system. In this system, an object or character's attack rating is based on their Power Scale. Some other stats are also affected by this. For example, Lift Capacity, Energon Rating, and Endurance Cost. All classifications have a level modifier of 5 for every level they are away from the target's scale (or away from character scale, if it's Lift Capacity, Energon Rating, or Endurance Cost). That modifier is positive (a multiplier) if they are of a higher scale than their target, or a divisor if they are a lower scale than their target. For example, a Microbot's 3d6 Killing Attack does 3d6x5 against a Primitive Earth Vehicle, but does only 3d6/5 to a Cybertronian Starship, and 3d6/25 to a capital ship! Additionally, a Ship Class object with 50 str has a lift capacity equal to a character with 250 str (it also does 10d6x5 damage if it rams the character!). The Energon rating of a Dreadnaught (capital scale) is 25x higher than the Energon rating for a Warrior (meaning it takes 25x points from a Warrior's Energon Reserve to resupply 1 point to a capital ship, or it takes 1 point from a capital ship to give the same Warrior +25 Energon. The classifications are as follows (in order from Lowest to Highest):

Primitive Scale : Primitive scale refers to non-Cybertronian technology levels as seen on the majority of Earth. However, it should be noted that even Primitive weapons can damage Cybertronians if they aren't careful, and Humans have access to weapons that are Cybertronian in scale (Such as large scale munitions like Hellfire Missiles, TOW Missiles, Anti-Tank Rounds, and other anti-armor weapons). They also have access to Ship Scale weapons (like Tomahawk Missiles for example), and even Capital Weapons (such as Nuclear warheads). So caution should still be taken around them. Primitive Vehicles have an exception to the divisor rule for Lift Capacity, which is unchanged (that is, a primitive vehicle can lift the same amount based on it's strength as a Cybertronian can). On the bright side, Earth technology barely draws any energy at all compared to Cybertronian tech!

Character Scale : Character scale refers to the standard for characters in the game. That is, Cybertonians. This is the scale of individual characters (microbots to Warriors) in the campaign.

Ship Scale : Ship scale refers to the power of non-capital ships. That is, small freighters, shuttles, scout ships, yachts, and fighters. These are in terms of Cybertronians, not humans. So a Cybertronian Yacht (like the Deltorus), is a ship scale craft. Note, it is not at all uncommon to mount character scale (or even primitive scale) weapons on a ship scale object for 'crowd control' or security. A ship scale object may take a -1 limitation on any attacks for each level they are below it (-1 for character scale, or -2 for primitive scale), doing so reduces the endurance cost for firing the weapon to 1/5th (or 1/25th for primitive scale) it's normal cost (minimum of 1 point per action, however, the ship scale object can if they wish 'pool' all smaller scale weapons fired in the turn before dividing the endurance costs). Some of the larger Combiners are considered ship scale entities, although most are still character scale.

Capital Scale : Capital Scale refers to the power of Capital Ships main weapons. These are ships like the Autobot Ark, or the Decepticon Dreadnaught. Capital ships rarely bother trying to shoot anything below a ship scale due to the power requirements and difficulty hitting such small creatures, at least with their main weapons. However it is not at all uncommon to mount ship scale (or even character scale) weapons on a capital scale object for point defense or security. A capital scale object may take a -1 limitation on any attacks for each level they are below it (-1 for ship scale, or -2 for character scale, in the higly unlikely event they wanted primitive scale, that would be a -3), doing so reduces the endurance cost for firing the weapon to 1/5th (or 1/25th for character scale) it's normal cost (minimum of 1 point per action, however, the capital scale object can if they wish 'pool' all smaller scale weapons fired in the turn before dividing the endurance costs). Titans are considered capital scale.

Measurements:

As you can no doubt guess, Transformers has used a mixture of really strange earth terminology for alien distances and completely made up and undefined terms. None of them are consistent. They have used Mechanometer and Megamile. We will not be using any of them! Note, these are mostly just for fun, as once the players on Earth, they can just use Earth measurements in character, subsystems can auto-convert for them.

Distance
Tet : The basic unit of distance measure for Cybertron. A Tet is 1.33489 kilometers.
Nal : Prefix, indicating Ten (1 Naltet is 10 tets)
Ral : Prefix, indicating Hundred (1 Raltet is 100 tets)
Kal : Prefix, indicating Thousand (1 Kaltet is 1,000 tets)
Ess : Prefix, indicating Ten Thousand (1 Esstet is 10,000 tets)
Gil : Prefix, indicating Hundred Thousand (1 Giltet is 100,000 tets)
Dec : Prefix, indicating Million (1 Dectet is 1,000,000 tets).
Kik : Prefix, Indicating Ten Million (1 Kiktet is 10,000,000 tets).
Sal : Prefix, indicating Hundred Million (1 Saltet is 100,000,000 tets).
Nin : Prefix, indicating Billion (1 Nintet is 1,000,000,000 tets).

If the prefixes are instead suffixes, then they indicate a distance less than a Tet. A single Tetral is a 1,000th of a Tet. A single Tetnin is 1 billionth of a Tet.

Volume
Kol : The basic unit of measure for volume for Cybertron. A Kol is 10.83782 liters. The same prefix/suffix meanings for Distance apply to volume. An Esskol is 10,000 kols. A Koless is one 10,000th of a kol.

Time
Cycle : The basic unit of measure for time for Cybertron. A Cycle is one Cybertronian day. The same prefix/suffix meanings for Distance apply to time. One Cycleral is a hundreth of a day. Cybertron takes exactly Kalcycle to orbit it's star, or 1,000 days in the Cybertronian year. One Cycle is approximately 0.967 earth days.

Voltage
Gon : The basic unit of measure for voltage for Cybertron. A Gon is 2.83731 Joules. The same prefix/suffix meanings for Distance apply to energy. A Gilgon is 100,000 gons. A Goldec is 1 millionth of a Gon. Cybertronians don't have different names for joules/second (watts), they just use gons/cyclegil for the rough equivalent of watts. Needless to say, humans don't want to get hit by a 1 decgon/cyclegil charge.

Decepticons:

Combaticons : Refers to any Decepticon whose primary purpose before joining the war was as a fighter, be it in a security roll, a planetary defense force role, a gladiatorial roll, or other combat oriented profession such as bounty hunter for example. Examples : Starscream, Megatron.

Constructicons : Refers to any Decepticon whose primary purpose before joining the war was as a construction/demolition unit.

Decepticons : An umbrella term that applies to all Cybertronians who are part of the Decepticon Alliance, or who identify as such. Various factions within the Decepticons leads to much infighting.

Drones : Decepticons, late in the war, began using 'Drones'. Drones were artificially created Cybertronians with a hard-wired neural network, a minimal artificial spark, and a mass produced body. Drones come in two flavors, flyers and rollers. Their lack of a spark limits their amount of energon uptake, their intelligence, their creativity, and their ability to withstand or deal damage. Drones are notoriously bad shots, stupid guards, and easy to kill. However, they come in large numbers, making up for their other weaknesses.

Insecticons : Primitive but effective scavengers, one of the few remaining semi-feral types of Cybertronians left on the planet from ancient days. They are large, destructive, and of limited intelligence. Insecticons prefer to live in hives, and are capable of reproduction via splitting their spark, one of the main reasons they are still existent. Most are loyal to Megatron, but there are those who are loyal to only themselves. There are no known occurances of an Insecticon becoming an Autobot. Examples : Hardshell, Kickback.

Predacons : Very primitive but extremely powerful Cybertronians from early in the pre-history of Cybertron. They are extinct, other than a handful of artificially created 'clones'. Cloned Predacons have an artificial spark, similar to Drones. Most Predacon clones have been altered to have higher intelligence and the ability to tranform to a robot form. The term is, in modern times, primarily used to refer to Decepticons who have a techno-organic alt mode. Modern Predacons have a normal spark. Examples : Black Arachnia.

Seekers : Refers to a classification of Cybertronian which was common before the war. Seekers were ariel units primarily tasked with scouting and strike missions. Seekers make up the bulk of the Decepticon Soldier ranks. Examples : Starscream, Thundercracker.

Autobots:

Arialbots : Most Autobots are ground effect vehicles, who have no ability to fly. Those small number of autobots who can fly and have a flying vehicle for their alt mode are usually referred to as Arialbots.

Autobots : An umbrella term that applies to all Cybertronians who are part of the Autobot Alliance, or who identify as such.

Dinobots : Dinobots refers to Cybertronian organisms built on Earth that were based on the fossiles of Earth dinosaurs. They are large, powerful, and not very bright. Some, unflatteringly, refer to them as the Insecticons of the Autobot alliance. (Note, they have not yet been created in game, and may never be).

Primes : The Primes can refer either to the mythological founders of the Cybertronian world and species, or to the leaders of the Cybertron from ancient times. When referring to a living Cybertronian, the Primes refer to the succession of Cybertronians who have carried the Matrix of Leadership within their spark chamber. Upon death, the Matrix seeks a new host who is worthy of it. Since the war, it has become known as the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, as no Decepticon has ever been deemed worthy. The current holder of the title Prime is Optimus Prime.

Wreckers : Refers to a special forces group who were very effective during the height of the war on Cybertron. The unit has since been decommissioned, although individual Wreckers often team up and 'do some wrecking' if they get the opportunity. The Wreckers had a reputation for not working well with others or listening to authority, although they did have a very long list of successful anti-Decepticon missions.

Unaligned:

Junkions : Junkions are Cybertronian colonists whose planet was stranded when the space bridge they built to communicate with Cybertron failed shortly after construction. The resulting pulse wave disrupted their entire colony, and knocked all of their space based facilities out of the sky. Even worse, the space bridge was locked into an open configuration for several million years, with multiple openings throughout the galaxy, but the openings were one way only, only leading to Junkion. Other civilizations began to use the space bridges to dispose of dangerous trash, or unwanted aliens. Junkion became a galactic dumping ground. The Junkions adapted to the toxic atmosphere and became perhaps the penultimate scavengers. Junkions are able to heal wounds by replacing parts of their bodies with junk parts from other biomechanical species. Most Cybertronians consider them little better than cannibals.

Energon:

Energon :

Energon is the substance that all Cybertronian beings and tech utilizes to power itself. It's processed state is a glowing blue liquid that consists of a combination of cyrstalline and liquid structures that can hold emmense power. There are various types of Energon...

Natural Energon : Natural energon can only be found on Cybertron. In it's natural state, it's highly unstable and generally found in a cyrstalline form. The cyrstals are blue or pink. They can be worked by specially tuned energy tools, but are dangerously unstable.

Processed Energon : Processed energon is a blue or pink liquid that has been refined from raw natural energon. This is the default liquid that Cybertronian systems work best on. Processed Energon is significantly easier on Cybertronian systems than any other form of energon, and each cube of Processed Energon contains 100 points of Endurance for a Cybertronian Character.

Synthetic Energon : Synthetic energon is a green liquid that is synthesized out of raw materials combined with a power source. While the raw materials are extremely common (silica, hydrogen, and carbon), the energy requirements to synthesize it are high. Synthetic energon is not as energy dense as natural. A single syenthetic Energon Cube contains 50 points of Endurance for a Cybertronian Character. To synthesize one cube of synethetic energon requires almost a 1000 kilowatt hours of energy. To put this in perspective, this is approximately how much power the average US household uses in a month. A single 250 watt solar panel (17.6 sq ft) can produce about 1 KWh per day, meaning that single solar panel could produce a single cube of Synthetic Energon every 3+ years.

Dark Energon : Dark Energon, also known as 'Unicron's Blood' or 'Death Energon' is a naturally occuring crystal, similar to Natural Energon. The Dark Crystals are wholly incompatible with Cybertronian machines and physiology, and poisonus to Cybertronian Life. It is rumored that Dark Energon can restore a sort of 'unlife' to dead cybertronian tech, somewhat akin to the idea of an earth Zombie. Occuring naturally as dark purple and black crystals, it is as unstable as Natural Energon. If someone were foolish enough to process it, the processed version would be a dark purple or black fluid that glowed in the UV spectrum. Dark Energon is only known to exist on planets other than Cybertron.

Rarified Energon : There are rumors of rarified versions of Energon, red purportedly provides improved speed performance, gold purportedly can cause alterations to the spark and result in body re-alignment, while it is rumored that orange energon can boost strength. These substances, if they existed, are likely no longer existant as the only source would be Cybertron, which no longer has naturally occuring Energon. However, it is possible that Energon Stashes from early in the war may have some of these rarified energon substances, if they are more than myth.

CNA:

CNA is Cyber-Nucleic Acid. This is roughly analogous to DNA in Humans. However, it's not really an acid, nor is it entirely genetic as human DNA is. Cybertronians do not call it CNA in their native language, that is simply the Earth equivalent after translation. CNA is a long chain string built up at the molecular level.

Human DNA consists of two strands that are called polynucleotides since they are composed of simpler monomer units called nucleotides. Each nucleotide is composed of one of four nitrogen-containing nucleobases (cytosine [C], guanine [G], adenine [A] or thymine [T]), a sugar called deoxyribose, and a phosphate group. The nucleotides are joined to one another in a chain by covalent bonds between the sugar of one nucleotide and the phosphate of the next, resulting in an alternating sugar-phosphate backbone. The nitrogenous bases of the two separate polynucleotide strands are bound together, according to base pairing rules (A with T and C with G), with hydrogen bonds to make double-stranded DNA.

CNA consists of two strands as well, which are called polycyberties, composed of simpler units called cybertides. Each cybertide is composed of one of thirty silica-containing cyberbases, an hydrogen-aluminium linking structure, and an iron-silica amalgum. The hydrogen-aluminium linking structures link two cybertides, like rungs in a ladder, while the iron-silica amalgum links cybertide pairs to the next pair in line, forming a ladder structure. Unlike human DNA, the CNA doesn't form into a helix, it remains flat when active, and coils into a compact structure somewhat like a rolled up rug when inactive.

CNA, being microscopic machine life (nanolife) inhabits any location where Cybertonians spend time. Thus the longer a bot lives, the longer he spreads his CNA around the environment. That CNA spreads and impermiates all matter around at the microscopic level. If any of that matter is then included in a protoform, that CNA becomes active when a spark enters the protoform. Thus over time, the more successful a bot's CNA is (the longer they live) the more likely that CNA is to influence spark/protoform pairing.

When a spark enters a protoform, it merges with the CNA present in the form, and after recombination, expresses a new CNA structure that takes over the entire protoform. Over time, successful CNA structures result in 'families' or 'clans' of Cybertronians (for example, Decepticon Seekers are a specific clan of Cybertonians who share extremely similar structure and features and abilities). By the same token, CNA that dies out rapidly falls out of the 'gene pool'.

When creating a clone, a cyberform is sterilized of all CNA other than the CNA to be introduced, and then a new spark (or a portion of a donated spark) is introduced to the now single-CNA protoform, resulting in a clone of the original doner CNA. If the protoform is not properly sterilized, and utmost care taken, the clone will receive some modicum of change from stray CNA that will result in recombination. This may or may not be noticeable.