I'm okay with the DX hit, as she has very few skills that are based in DX and would rather have better armor with slightly lower odds of dodging than vice versa.
The space biosuit vacc suit can have the rainbow option for $400. This gives the ability to add a reflec surface to the armor. No doubling of armor needed. Morphwear lets it be reconfigfurable to look like clothing instead of armor, for diplomatic situations like the one we are in.
The interphase option would let Dr. Rix connect with someone';s sealed suit and help with healing.
If everyone (those not having wealth for military grade armor) had space biosuits with Multispectral Chameleon Surfaces (pg 99), Interphase, rainbor and morphwear options (pg 189)
This gives DR 15 against all attacks except corrosion, crushing, and toxic (Dr 3). Activating the reflec increases the DR vs lasers/burn to DR 35.
$18400, 9 lbs
A stealth exoskeleton adds a battlesuit skill requirement, but provides enough lifting strength to not worry about encumbrance from the suit. (pg 181)
Since these suits were given to you by EarthGov, I'll give you that they have the Rainbow option (for Reflec), and Multispectral Chameleon Surface (for Stealth), but not Interphase (takes 10 seconds to engage/disengage), nor Morphwear (Earthgov thought of these as *space* suits, not your primary armor - besides, when morphed, your DR is halved, and it takes 2 seconds to un-morph).
Since Dr. Rix does have to touch someone's skin in order to heal them, I would suggest that you keep your gloves or helmet off for her to be able to do that. If not, it will take several seconds for her to remove them to access your skin.
Exoskeletons were not provided by EarthGov (again, *space* suits!). If you're that worried about encumbrance, take away the Multispectral Chameleon Surface, which is 4 of the 9 lbs. of the suit.
Um, Aster, the Space Biosuit comes with a removable helmet that provides the same DR to the head, so why are you toting around a 7 lb. Space Combat Helmet?
I still paid extra for my own morphwear and interphase.
The morphwear does let me wear the armor into a fancy dinner and only need a couple seconds to reconfigure for combat.
really starting to dislike the liberal pansies in earth gov that sent a marginally trained crew off for a first contact mission and didn't think they'd need armor or decent weapons. :)
The standard biosuit helmet is "a transparent hood-helmet."
By using the combat helm instead (and 7 lb's is a little ridiculous, that's almost a gallon of milk on your head), I get hearing protection, small radio, and infrared visor. And, a lot more armor on the noggin.
So, I have a radio to contact the ship.
Quite frankly there's a lot missing or ignored in the suit section, but oh well.
I'm willing to drop the helmet's encumbrance to 3 lb.
Olivia, waiting to hear from you as to what your new armor is going to be, then we can get (re-)started again.
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Yikes... gotta get on that. I think she'll probably stay with the biosuit + reflec.
I'm heading off to GenCon tomorrow morning, where I'm going to be GMing a truckload of PFS tables. That'll pretty much keep me fully occupied for the next week, so I will not likely be able to check in again until next Tuesday or Wednesday.
Well, since Boomer's a pretty heavy-hitter in all this, I'm going to postpone re-starting combat until Rknop gets back.
In the meantime, I'll be posting your new weapon damages, and new DR's, based on Rknop's system.
And altho it's a week away, while I'm thinking about it I'd like to encourage Aster and Boomer to consider using Spraying Fire, with the house-rule that your Accuracy bonus is maintained for all shots fired in the same second.
I can spray fire with that allowance.
It's what kept me from doing it before. One sure kill vs a maybe and a doubtful.
Using rknop's system, any damage over 3d6 is replaced by 3d6+N, where N is a function of the weapon's original average damage. And armor divisors are replaced by armor *subtractions*.
So, Aster's Gauss rifle now does 3d6+7(-8), and Boomer's Laser Rifle now does 3d6+6(-5). Please use these values when rolling damage now.
Does anyone else have a weapon that does more than 3d6 damage?
How is DR changing?
Wouldn't it be just as easy to say that instead of 3d6+7(-8) it was 3d6+15?
Does that work against something with more armor? Like a battlesuit?
For instance, getting shot in the head I have a DR of 60. My gauss was 6d+2 (3). The average damage was 24.
Shooting my space combat helm would reduce the effective DR to 20. 4 points gets through my helmet to my skull.
But if they're rolling 3d6+7(-8), they get an average roll of 18.5 and my armor is reduced from 60 to 52?
Functionally, yes, 3d6+15 is the same as 3d6+7(-8), but rknop was trying to keep the combat format the same (both in print, and in terms of game mechanics).
Your DR of 60 now becomes a "pDR" (knop's term) of 20. Being shot with your own Gauss rifle now does an average of 17.5 points, and brings your effective DR down to 12. So 5.5 points of damage gets thru. Pretty much the same as before.
Here's everyone's torso pDR vs. burning :
Aster : 17 (Bioplas + Rainbow/Reflec)
Boomer : 27 (Combat suit)
Olivia : 17 (Bioplas + Rainbow/Reflec)
Rix : 18 (Nanoweave + Bioplas + Rainbow/Reflec)
Terra : 17 (Bioplas + Rainbow/Reflec)
I dumped the bioplas due to the house rule on doubled penalty.
Hi, guys. To all my games: sorry I've been such a butt lately.
Basically, I was away from the internet for a while, but before and after that, I've been writing so much for work that PbP just felt like a chore. And I've come to realize that while I love my job, right now it's just not leaving me the time and creative energy I need forPbP, so, while I've sort of been sliding down that slope for a while, I figured I should actually tell all my games that I've gotta drop out.
Sorry to disappoint and potentially leave a bunch of people hanging at the end there, and I hope I was generally fun.
-Thunderbeard
April - sorry to hear you're leaving, hope everything works out well for you!
Aster - sorry, I meant Biosuit for you, Terra, and Olivia (but just BTW, the rules actually say you can't wear *any* armor under a Biosuit, so that was the real limiting factor). That's just how my memory works - I search for "bio-something", and take the first thing that it returns.
Rknop - please let me know when you're back, so we can pick up with combat again. Thanks!
So are we at a place where we can resume?
Waiting to hear back from rknop, to know he's available.
Saw the eclipse, which was around 85% covered. Was in the path of totality of an eclipse back in '79 in Washington state. Unfortunately, we found the one spot in the area that was under a high cloud just at totality, so didn't see the corona.
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How is DR changing?
Wouldn't it be just as easy to say that instead of 3d6+7(-8) it was 3d6+15?
The difference is, the armor subtractor will never do damage to a person. So, if you're unarmored, it's a 3d6+7 weapon (which still would suck badly). You would need to have at least a pDR of 8 before the weapon would be equivalent to a 3d6+15 with no armor subtractor.
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GM -- would it be possible for you to post the number and rough disposition of the ape-men attackers with each update? This will help us visualize what's going on, knowing who's still up, how far away they are (and thus what range penalty to apply), etc. I know we should be able to piece it together with everything that's happened, but at the pace of a PbP it's very helpful to have a quick summary in one post fairly regularly.
So if they can't see me, how are they knowing to dodge my shots?
As I said in a recent post in Gameplay, the rules say "if attacked by an invisible opponent - if the defender is aware he is being attacked, he may Dodge at -4." Bullets are flying all around him, so he knows he's under attack.
The dust was released in the high atmosphere, probably to increase dispersion. If it is too heavy it falls straight down and doesn't get "everywhere". As a light "dust" it would likely take a while to get blown low enough for samples on the ground. We could fly through a cloud of the stuff on the way up for a concentrated sample.
I'd personally prefer to get sealed up in the ship before testing the hypothesis that the dust won't affect us.
holy flying cows, it's already through the atmosphere?
How do they keep from contaminating themselves if it can be spread across the planet that fast?
If its already in our ship, that would also indicate its already in the ships that the ape-men left in. So unless they have a method to decon, they'd contaminate any planet they went to.
We're also now compromised and can't fly to any other planet without ensuring that it's not anywhere in our ship.
Which also pretty much means this just became a one way trip. No way would Aster let us go home. He'd blow the ship first.
He's also going to see about preparing a message with as much data as they can about the bio-agent and send that message home with a recommendation to quarantine the entire nebula.
I think our pilot went MIA.
I have low-performance spacecraft. I believe that should work for our main ship.
Ok, please don't panic. Either please dial down the literalness of the extrapolation of the situation (death-dust only works in large quantities, etc.), or I'll ret-con it. Your choice.
I think April can pilot the ship - I was going to have her roll if no one else did.
wild extrapolation is just so much fun.
It does help to know how much realism to plan for though.
If you scroll up, the player controlling April dropped out (8/17).
This is a Space Opera! Don't worry about nit-picky little details like realism... :)
By "I was going to have her roll", I meant *I* was going to roll. I did speak for her recently in Gameplay...
I'll happily go star wars style realism if you will at least forewarn us when you are going to get realistic?
For example, I won't spend ten minutes checking for traps every 10' down the hallway if you let us know when we get someplace that does have trap doors in the floor. (Or at least allow/make a passive roll instead of stating we didn't declare looking for traps.)
I'll be glad to warn you that a place is rumored/known to be trapped in advance.
:)
That was a d&d reference.
You know, the GM that never has traps then decides that there are traps all over this dungeon and doesn't allow passive rolls because none of the players explicitly stated they were looking for traps? Which then ends up with the players making a 10 minute check of every five foot square in annoyance.
Almost as bad as the infamous soap check.
I don't know the soap check; what is that one?
Anyway, I'm thinking we should get a 10-foot pole....
I got it. I've been there. :(
But, me too - what's the soap check?
I've been assuming that we are in exposition mode, getting the PCs to the point in the adventure when we are given specifics to deal with in such detail that we can go into normal roleplaying mode. I expect that point is about to arrive once we are on the ground and dealing with the people, flora, fauna, and environmental hazards, requiring diligent attention to detail.
Kind of like the point in a table-top game where the GM pulls out a map.
Soap check hearkens back to old d&d where the player had to specifically state "I'm checking for traps" at every single door, lock, latch, 5' square, etc. Each check would take 10 minutes, IIRC.
Then there was the infamous rope check. Every time a player used a rope they had to make a check against the skill rope use. Which was not a universally liked skill.
It was something of a trope that a character had to make a soap check to clean themselves up after a dungeon crawl before heading back to town. And that a fair number would have insufficient skill and fail.
Soap check thus suggests that a GM may be going overboard in requiring skill checks for trivial matters.
For example, in a table top game a couple weeks ago, my starfinder operative character, forgot to mention that he was stealthing through a cloud of smoke to see what was on the other side. The GM decided that since a common sense action (rogue sneaking) wasn't specifically stated, then it didn't happen.
Funny how GM's never state that since the warrior didn't state they drew their sword before swinging it that they hit someone with an air sword.
So just as we don't make soap checks and don't detail trips to the water closet, we shouldn't have to always state that the rogue is sneaking, the warrior unsheathed their sword, etc.
As for realism, I'm willing to overlook small issues of realism but balk when expected to overlook major violations of known laws of physics or just plain common sense.
Examples: I love Star Trek and overlook a lot of stuff, like how they never worry about inertia when the ship makes various sub-light speed maneuvers but then when they get hit by a weapon, everyone gets thrown sideways. But in the 1st episode of The Next Generation, at the end when they needed Wesley to make the first of his many acts that saves the Enterprise from destruction, they say that a piece of a star is heading right for the ship. A piece of the star? as in solid piece? Then he saves the ship by reversing the polarity of a tractor beam, something which apparently had never occurred to any engineer when designing the tractor beam or at any time for years after using the thing. No one every said, "Hmmm. You know, it would be nice if we could use the same physics that allows us to create a pulling force to instead make a pushing force. How about if we switch polarities of ...."
Another example, from the second Star Trek movie (new cast), the ship's impulse drive and artificial gravity system fails near earth, so gravity starts to pull the ship toward the earth's atmosphere. At that point, everyone in the ship should go into weightless mode, but instead, people begin falling across the decks. There's also pivotal moment in the movie Gravity when Newton's laws take a hike while someone in a weightless environment continues to experience a force after they should have had their movement relative to the space station stopped. Or Superman hauling a ship across a section of frozen water by walking as he pulls the ship, ignoring that there's not enough force of friction for him to haul a motor boat, let alone a cargo ship. Even Superman would have to fly to work up the force needed to pull the ship, or else he was just faking the whole thing of walking for the photo op.
An example that doesn't bother me is something like the Doctor Who episode, "The Rings of Akatan" where we have cities on astroids with normal gravity and no domes holding in the atmosphere. A character gets drawn from one asteroid to another with some kind of magical tractor beam and the heroes go after her on a kind of space scooter, with no space suits or anything. But it moves the action from point A to point B and all these things could be explained by some kind of force field, so who cares?
I also know from being a GM of a home brew game that sometimes one overlooks something and has to ask the players to overlook it to avoid a major short circuit of the already planned out adventure.
I'd say y'all are about 30 yards away, which is a -7 to ranged attacks (FWIW, I think the ranged penalties are absurd in GURPS).
Absurd which way?
I think they're actually pretty reasonable. It's hard to hit things at range. They can be off set with Aim; with an Acc of 12 (for a laser rifle), that means that you can hit a range of 200yd at full skill after one second of aiming. If your skill is high enough (plus things like targeting software), you still stand a reasonable chance of hitting a target a kilometer away.
(A longbow has Acc 3, which means that it's only out to 7 yards where you don't have any penalty if you aim. That's a little harsh, but, again, with a skill of 16, you still have a 3/4 chance of hitting out to 150yd, which is pretty good.)
Compared to many other games, they are absurb.
But read a few after action reports on how many rounds get expended in an engagement and at what ranges.
Here's some interesting reading on this:
http://www.forcescience.org/articles/naiveshooter.pdf
Page 5 has a table, of nine shots fired at 3-15 feet, expert marksmen hit 88% of the time, at 18-45 feet this dropped to 38%. At 60-75 feet they hit 14% of the time.
We have an engagement window of 90 feet, and most of our characters are not expert level.
Page 5 of this report also has some interesting numbers on hit ratios of engagements. The previous report is in a training situation.
http://www.theppsc.org/Staff_Views/Aveni/OIS.pdf
http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/MCO%203574.2K.pdf
And here's a dry read on marine range qualifications, time per shot, required hits, etc. The last couple of pages have ranges, time per shot, number of shots.
Page 66 gives some more interesting points. 200 yards, 25 minutes to fire 5 shots.
For basic qualifications:
In order to qualify, you fire a total of 50 rounds, worth up to 5 points each (depending on where you hit the target). The maximum possible points you can earn on this course is 250. To pass the course, you must earn at least 190 points, which will qualify you to wear the Marine Corps marksmanship badge. To become a sharpshooter, you must earn at least 210 points. In order to win status as an Expert, you must receive a score of at least 220 points.
Just means if we're going to be in a lot of gun battles, we need to spend CP in gun skills, and build/buy/steal the best equipment we can.
Well, and Aim :)
High skill will offset some of the range penalty, and will also allow use of Deceptive Attack to reduce defenses.
Of course, if we go by the rules of the cinema, if you are the hero, your enemies have -18 to hit, even when spraying full auto at short range, while the hero gets +15 even when shooting a pistol at a target at long range with no time to aim. :)
Damage rules are also different for heroes and enemies of the hero. One shot usually takes out any enemy, while heroes can take multiple shots and still keep going.
I don't mind realistic rules as long as it doesn't bog down the flow of the game. And of course, when I have a character who is not shooting back, pile on the penalties when the enemies are shooting!
Is this another one of those space opera things?
I figure our spaceship is probably 3 or 4 stories tall, especially when landed and supported on landing legs.
Anyway, whenever I can roll damage...
BTW, do you have a deck plan for our ship?
If so, can you put a link into the campaign tab for quick reference?
Yes, I did say that there were several floors to the ship, so you can see over the huts. Sorry, I can't keep track of *everything*.
No, I don't have a deck plan for the ship.
No worries, we're all here to have fun.
If you don't have a particular preference, I can probably make or locate some suitable deck plans.
If this is mostly barren rock, I can make a map with hex grids that we can use. If this is going to be a battle that we will have to fight for more than a round, I think we should have a map with movable tokens to avoid having to ask questions about how far away one character is from another.
Also, ZenFox, I sent you a PM.
I'd kinda hope we weren't the totally hopeles type noobs that moved completely away from the safety of the landing legs before knowing of the lack of friendliness.
Which would also beg the question of, if this is a relatively devoid plain of nothing with no cover, why did we park hundreds of feet without cover from a presumed pirate ship?
Next time we park right on top of the damn thing.
My fellow players, please feel free to slap me upside the head if I am so lacking in basic tactics in the future.
Well, at several hundred feet away, you could hardly detect their hostile intentions until you got closer.
And, *I* parked you several hundred feet away, rather than wait for someone to specify, just to keep the game moving. It's hard to balance waiting for players to respond (if ever) with game details ("how far away do you want to land from the village?") vs. moving the game forward, so I just picked a distance.
If you want to make deck plans, feel free!
Rix - sorry, I dropped the part about your offer to make a hex map. If you want to, please go ahead.
I'll get something together tonight.