Star Trek: Amity (Inactive)

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Nettlox tries to aid the Captain, although he does not like workingthat spontaneous and ad-hoc.
Darin+Engineering: 1d20 ⇒ 20
... which immediately shows as he messes up with a remote command chain!
Very fitting moment to roll a 20.
@GM: would Parent figure also apply if I am not the one "leading" the check?
Like in the present case, where I am only assisting?

My reading of the Talent Parent Figure is that you ignore the first Complication when working with a Team. It doesn't say anything about who is assisting. Parents can lead or parents can support, so that makes sense to me. It is a pretty powerful talent in that case, but this game isn't really about power gaming, so let's roll with it.

Servos in the drone whir as it says, "Entry not permitted. Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! Use of Deadly Force Authorized."

Sobek, phaser already drawn, fires at one of the drones with his phaser. Phaser attack: 2d20 ⇒ (1, 9) = 10 Control+Security Difficulty 2. 3 Successes. Spend Momentum generated by extra success to re-roll damge. Minor action to use Charge ability of phaser to make it Vicious (extra damage on 5 and 6).

Security+phaser damage: 7d6 ⇒ (6, 4, 5, 3, 4, 2, 2) = 26

Reroll: 3d6 ⇒ (4, 6, 1) = 11

Total of 11 damage to one drone. Drone has Resistance 1, so only 10 damage. That is enough to injure the drone and take it out of commission. There is one more drone.

Aythi smiles and says, "Talk and the Ushaan are equal ways to meet one's goals."

Ushaan Attack using one momentum, melee attack is Daring and Security 3d20 ⇒ (16, 5, 19) = 40 one success which is a success.
I think the droid gets a defense attempt

Melee Defense: 2d20 ⇒ (14, 12) = 260 Successes

So to do damage you roll 2d6 for the weapon+2d6 for your Security rating. The weapon is vicious 1 so you get an extra damage for each 5 or 6. You can use Momentum and/or add Threat for various effects.

Using 1 momentum and 1 threat 6d6 ⇒ (4, 1, 3, 5, 3, 5) = 21

I will also use Decisive Leadership to retain initiative.

Having failed at wrestling control of the simple drones before, Nettlox takes out his phaser and fires at the swirling target - hoping it will work better than the more sophisticated approach before...

Control+Security: 2d20 ⇒ (10, 7) = 17
2 Success, so a hit since it is Difficulty 2, right?
Damage Type-1 Phaser: 2d6 + 2d6 ⇒ (3, 3) + (4, 5) = 15

Tharhat does 4 Stress after the Drone's 1 Resistance.

Nettlox, phasers have a property called Charge. You can use a minor action to choose Area, Intense, Piercing 2, or Vicious 1. Since you didn't use a minor action, I'm going to choose Piercing 2, because that is most advantageous.

Nettlox's phaser beam goes wide, demonstrating why he is an engineer and not a security officer.

Drone Machine gun attack vs Nettlox.: 2d20 ⇒ (20, 15) = 35

The drone sprays old fashioned lead projectiles across the room, shattering screens and sending smoke and sparks flying.

Sobek takes a moment to calmly adjust his phaser settings. He fires at the primitive robot.

Sobek attack: 2d20 ⇒ (13, 9) = 22

Phaser Damage Vicious: 7d6 ⇒ (1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 2) = 19 7 stress

Sobek's attack hits the drone center mass and the hunk of metal disappears in a haze of energy.

"I believe that will neutralize the threat, Captain."

The Captain says, "Nice shot Mr. Sobek, the rest of you need to stay frostier."

The captain moves to a terminal that was not damaged by the careless firearm discharge by the robots and sees what kind of information she might be able to ply from them, Control + Science 2d20 ⇒ (18, 11) = 29

An intercom on the wall hums to life. A cold, layered voice speaks – as if dozens of people are saying the same words simultaneously, "Apologies. Our drones, they don’t always obey. They have a mind of their own, our creations. Please, come to the medical bay and we will treat any injuries. The voices separate and begin shouting over each other. The shouts turn to screams and cackling laughter."

A few minutes of working with the terminals manage to locate the security key that will let you operate the lift to access all levels.

The Captain alarmed says, "Are you ok? It seems there is some sort of disharmony amongst your people."

She then turns to her group using Federatio handsignals to inform them to keep their guard up.

She then says out loud "Shall we go to the Medbay as bade or not?"

It is pretty cool to use the word "bade." I cannot remember the last time I did.

@GM: just for my rule understanding: how did I miss?
I though that ranged attack was a Difficulty 2 check, so with 2 Successes I should have hit, right?
And as for the minor action, I though switching between tricorder and phaser would cost me a minor action.
"Thank you Sobek, I should train more on smaller targets, I guess..."
As the voices come up, Nettlox starts throbbing his facial crevice, obviously deep in though.
He wanders over to another terminal and starts typing away swiftly, muttering under his breath:
"Give me a moment to test a theory, Captain..."
Insight+Engineering=16: 2d20 ⇒ (5, 19) = 24

I think the GM probably should have written "absorbed." Your rolls were good enough to hit the 2 successes mark but your damage rolls were two threes, a four and a five. 3s and 4s do not do any damage and a 5 usually does one damage and the robot had one resistance, so it did not do any damage.

Captain sees what her engineer is doing and sees if she can use her direct, by using her Control + Command 1d20 ⇒ 14

She says, "I see what you are trying to do, check out that subfolder over there, look at that right there. Interesting, adjust the settings on the turbo nodes and we can maybe get some more juice."

That makes sense on the Minor Action. As for the hit/miss issue: your Task attempt was successful. I was flavoring the fact that you did one damage and it has 1 resistance as you missing. Maybe it would have made more sense to say it hit, but that didn't feel legit to me based on the technology gap between your phaser and Johnny 5 here. I try to always keep actual rules text in ooc blue and also to capitalize any word that I am using in a specific rules sense. In character text is just flavor description.

The screen flickers and goes black. The interface is gone, but then light flickers on the screen and simple blue letters appear.

wearemonstersyoumustdestroyuspleasesecretelevatorweaponslocker. MEDBAYISATRAP

Tharhat scratches her chin with a sly smile and says, "Shall we spring the proverbial trap or shall we go to the weapons locker first?"

Fair enough...

Weapons locker being a thing here in the security room.

Tharhat says, "Well, the weapons locker elevator is right here so we can take that or we can hot foot it. Misters Sobek, Barstow and Nettlox what do you think? Dr. What is you opinion?"

Alright, I am all for fluff posts, just wanted to know whether soemthing was going on rule wise I should be aware of :-D
As the text appears, Nettlox lets out a high tchirping whistle sound.
"Ah, that's not good...
Captain...
I'd rather not walk into a trap if I can help it.
Whoever authored that message seems in serious distress and in need of help.
I vote to take the elevator - for what it's worth.
Please note that my tactical abilities are far from secure, Captain."

"Forewarned is for-armed, Cap. Let's gear up."

She says, "Just call me Captain or Skip for skipper... Let's take this elevator but keep your heads on a swivel because we cannot trust this either."

She then moves to the weapons's locker.

K'Rist looks up from behind the console where she ducked when the shooting started. "I didn't notice anything unusual about the med bay when I was there, Captain, but it is entirely possible that the situation has changed."

The captain says, "The seed vault has its own med bay that predates the medbay that was installed by our Starfleet Scientists. Ok, great the quicker, we figure out what really happened here the quicker we get back to the safety of the Amity."

You are increasingly convinced that this was some sort of nuclear redoubt, and here there are locked cages stocked with weapons that aren't too different from those used on Earth in the mid 21st century. Small explosives propel projectiles from a rifled barrel. Primitive, but effective for causing massive tissue damage. Inspecting the weapons locker, you find that the cage conceals an even more old fashioned lift. A cage that sinks into the floor without safeguards.

You maneuver yourselves into the cage. Sobek holds his much more sophisticated energy weapon, ready to attack any threats. The hidden lift lurches as you sink through the floor and into a hidden level.

An enormous server towers in the center of the room. Patterns of lights blink across its polished black surface. In front of it, you see the missing outpost personnel, dead and strapped into surgical chairs. Their skulls have been opened and implanted with electrode arrays – all feeding into the server. Multi-armed surgical robots attached to each chair lie dormant. A humanoid robot doctor –synthetic skin covering only the front of its metallic cranium – examines the bodies. One of its arms hangs useless at its side. The robot ignores your presence. A web of cables fans out behind the server, connecting the tower to row upon row of human-sized pods – more than 100 in all.

The Captain aghast at the gruesome scene in front of her says, "This is Captain Tharhat of the USS Amity, I demand to know what is going on here. What are you doing with our personnel? If you disconnect them from your machine we could end this encounter amicably."

Diplomacy using 1 momentum either Diplomacy or Persuasion, Either Presence or Control + Command 3d20 ⇒ (2, 11, 3) = 16 5 successes

This art is pretty good. Worth sharing. The Starfleet personnel in the art are in environment suits and you guys are wearing parkas, of course.

The robot doctor responds, "Your personnell were insufficient to house our minds, and so they became deceased. You will upload database to your ship, or we will launch an attack on you."

The Captain says, "Why does your database need to be uploaded to our ship. You have your own planet here?"

Nettlox leans over to the Captain to whisper in her ear:
"Captain, I think I understand what is going on.
The computer system was likely programmed with a prime directive to do anything to conserve the cultural, historical and technical information contained in its database by the original creators.
When it ran out of computation power or ... I don't know maybe the energy supply went dark, it started to use humanoid brains to increase its capacity.
I would recommend to let it upload its database to the ship - after ensuring our computer systems will not be infected.
Not only will that appease the computer, it will also be a true treasure for any archeologists - access to an entire database of an almost extinct alien species."

The Captain smiles and says, "Dr. Robot, permit me to communicate with my vessel."

As long as the robot acquiesces to her request, she flips open her communicator and says, "Mr. Xin, we have an alien database that would like us to upload it onto our ship. Would we be able to do so without it contaminating our ship or not? I think if you check 46 Alpha, it should help from here on out."

She then starts speaking in code as she cited Regulation 46A(from WOK) so as not to be monitored by the computer.

Mr. Xin

"If we need to prepare our computer first, I can return to the ship to assist Mr. Xin."
He turns to the robot.
"Would you mind me reviewing the database before we start with the upload.
It would help me prepare our systems accordingly.
We don't want the process to fail because our memory banks are incompatible or we don't have enough space in our memory cores, right?"
Insight+Command?: 2d20 ⇒ (1, 3) = 4
Ohh, with diplomacy Focus that should be 4 successes!

GM, as a quick side question, could we just beam the computer to a portion of the ship where it could not do any harm or maybe onto one of our warp capable shuttles or something. I think kind of that uploading the database is against the prime directive because this computer has shown signs of sentience and exposing it to 24 Century technology, would be breaking the Prime Directive

Oh, ehem, yeah, let's not do that if we can help it *lol*
Good call, Captain.
But maybe we can *only* copy the database and not the AI?
If I can convince the bot that I will prepare the upload, maybe I can exclude the AI stuff from the data or something along that line of thinking...

If this were any other setting, I would have had us beamed up right away and have fire bombed the place, especially how they murdered Starfleet personnel.

Yeah, us out, armed photon torpedo in.
In one transporter exchange.
Or you know ... Exterminatus the entire planet just to be sure there aren't other installations like this one hidden elsewhere...
(I kinda play 40k in my other game, so I know exactly what you mean)

GM, as a quick side question, could we just beam the computer to a portion of the ship where it could not do any harm or maybe onto one of our warp capable shuttles or something. I think kind of that uploading the database is against the prime directive because this computer has shown signs of sentience and exposing it to 24 Century technology, would be breaking the Prime Directive

Remember that the sensors didn't penetrate into the silo, so transporters are blocked.

"If we need to prepare our computer first, I can return to the ship to assist Mr. Xin."

He turns to the robot.
"Would you mind me reviewing the database before we start with the upload.
It would help me prepare our systems accordingly.
We don't want the process to fail because our memory banks are incompatible or we don't have enough space in our memory cores, right?"
[dice=Insight+Command?]2d20
Ohh, with diplomacy Focus that should be 4 successes!

"Our quantum computer is highly advanced, though you appear to have technology that is also highly advanced. We will permit you to examine our systems. We must escape this prison that we created for ourselves."

The Captain says to the computer,"Of course it is. Why did you create a prison for yourselves?"

She then turns to Nettlox and says, "Mr. Nettlox, let's see what we can do."

And turns back to the Robot and waits patiently for a response.

"We had no other means to survive. The planet was freezing, we had the technology to escape our planet, but not to reach beyond our solar system. No where to go. And so we saved ourselves here. This place of destruction was turned into a place of preservation. First for our organic treasures, and then for ourselves."

Studying the quantum computer is a Reason + Science Task with a Difficulty of 3. Another Player can assist using Control + Engineering.

She then says, "Why is it so imperative that you need to leave your own planet? You have a home that is generally protected and if you don't murder the next group of Starfleet scientist, you shall be able to interact with them and grow your learning."

She says this as she assists going to a terminal 1d20 ⇒ 3

She continues, "The Earthlings have a saying, 'You get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.' You do not ask us for help, you try to force us to help you. That is just bad Juju."

Reason + Science (14): 2d20 ⇒ (3, 1) = 4

What's that, like four successes?

I think just 3. The 1 counts as 2, but the 3 doesn't count as 2 because none of your focuses apply.

"We wish to walk again, to breathe, to feel the light of the sun on our flesh, the bite of a cold wind. Forcing was unsuccessful, but we will try again."

K'Rist finds that while these people were clearly not as advanced in many ways as Federation technology, they achieved something amazing with this computer. While transporters are able to capture the quantum data necessary to transport living matter and, more pertinently, mental patterns, no Federation computer has stored the level of detail that is stored here in the mental patterns here.

The computer appears to have been trying to download the machine consciousness of its patterns into the archaeologists. The downloads were not successful because the computer could not disaggregate individuals from its data.

Momentum could get you more questions.

I would burn one momentum on The real question is can we upload this computer and its information up to the Amity without it infecting our ship and then we can bring it to the nearest Starbase and let the Admiralty figure out what it wants to do with it.

Anyone else have any other questions, also, should we upload this computer to our ship anyways? I have to say I am leaning against doing it.

I would burn one momentum on The real question is can we upload this computer and its information up to the Amity without it infecting our ship and then we can bring it to the nearest Starbase and let the Admiralty figure out what it wants to do with it.

For 0 Momentum, I'll tell you that the short answer to that question is no. And the long answer is maybe, but that would be more of a scientific discovery sort of project.

Ok, momentum question,how long can the computer remain "alive" on this planet? Is it imperative that we get it off the planet or not?

Things slowly go back to normal on my end.
Nettlox is rubbing his chin in a thoughtful gesture while checking over the computer system.
Insight+Engineering 15: 2d20 ⇒ (14, 14) = 28
"This will not be straight forward, Captain.
The system is both highly advanced, very complex and also deeply integrated in the power system of this installation.
We will have to come up with a thorough concept for the transfer and storage of the system."
He turns to the direction of the medi robot in a way of addressing the KI.
"Do you have an estimate of how long your computational and energetic reservoirs can keep you operational?
We will need a bit time to prepare our computer systems."

I really should have taken the computer focus - lol.
It was a long internal debate between transporter and computer and I decided to take transporters instead.

Have we been able to communicate with the AMity since we have entered the Seed Vault? I tried talking to Xin but he did not respond, I am not sure if it is because we could not get through or the player did not see the post.

She looks at Nettlox and says, "That is exactly as I figured it. If we cannot protect our girl you know what to do." with a wink
The Away team,

The Chief Engineer nods and continues to brush his chin, while muttering under his breath in a manor that starts to feel familiar.
"Quantum-based computer architecture...
Neurological patterns influenced by humanoid brain structure...
Multi-Consciousness uploads...
Mhhh...
Doctor, maybe we should think of this problems in a less mechanical way and more in a biological way?
Maybe we could use the transporter systems to target and store the quantum-neurologic structure of the system in the pattern buffer?
It is designed to store neurlogical patterns after all.
We would have to figure out a way to target the KI in one swoop ...
and also a way to stabilize the buffers for the entire travel back to the star base to not loose it of course..."