Thoughts on blindsense, Enviroseals, Vlaaka, and smelloscopes.


General Discussion


How does blindsense scent react with a vacuum and environmental seals?

Environmental seals aren't something you just throw on when you get tossed into space or smell the whiff of gas. They're on the job personal protective equipment for adventurers. If you expect to be hit in the head with a dropped hammer, you wear a hardhat. If you expect to be breathing in dust you put on a mask. If you're exploring the galaxy and expect to be chucked into a vacuum, exposed to space spores, radiation, mind control pollen, and mind controlling radioactive space spore pollen, you put the environmental seals on after morning coffee and keep them there.

Physics wise, I keep hearing people say that scent is like sound, it can't exist in a vacuum. This is a bit of argument from two different definitions. While no, by definition a vacuum is empty so doesn't have anything to smell, it's not like a soundwave where it needs a functional atmosphere to propogate. The .01 parts per million you'd need to smell rapsberry keytones for example, could be all around you and not make an atmosphere but they're still there and detectable. Its not a physicists perfect vacuum, but that wouldn't make any difference to someone stuck in it or trying to flap their wings in it.

As far as tech goes, if Vision based humans have a way of taking a solid, sturdy substance that can keep air in, and dangerous levels of radiation out, but still let enough light through so they can see (ie, glass, and or force fields) and stick it on a space suit then Vlaaka should have some sort of Magictech goretex that lets through enough scent to function. (It would explain why we keep getting room descriptions of scents in ships with no atmo when you know 99 percent of the party will have their seals on...)

Or maybe there's a sensor that recreates the scents around you...[url=https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/oscillator/four-great-scents-from-outer-space/]Four great scents from outerspace [/ur]


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The reason you can't really smell in a vacuum is that you can't breathe in to get the bits you smell to your smell receptors.

A sensor that recreates scents might be believable however.

Sczarni

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In the early days of Starfinder, people were asking some pretty basic questions about how armor restricts things like bite attacks. I believe the consensus at the time was, "Don't overthink it, it just works".

I'd apply the same logic to scent through environmental seals. Maybe you've configured your suit for your personal needs to give you smell-emetry. Our modern muggle knowledge is clearly not up to understanding how.


Garretmander wrote:

The reason you can't really smell in a vacuum is that you can't breathe in to get the bits you smell to your smell receptors.

That seems fixable with a one way valve?


BigNorseWolf wrote:
Garretmander wrote:

The reason you can't really smell in a vacuum is that you can't breathe in to get the bits you smell to your smell receptors.

That seems fixable with a one way valve?

I don't think suction works that way? I don't actually know How it works in a vacuum. I just think that wouldn't have a lot of range without the air carrying the particles you smell? Maybe it does.

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Got curious about what the actual smell of space was and if zero Gravity effect it
smells in space..

For the overthinker in me on biting attacks, I love the image of a space goblin frantically trying to bite your face off through its glass sphere helmet. Although the bit attack might be completely ineffective I'd apply an equal amount of blunt damage for the effort.


Garretmander wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Garretmander wrote:

The reason you can't really smell in a vacuum is that you can't breathe in to get the bits you smell to your smell receptors.

That seems fixable with a one way valve?
I don't think suction works that way? I don't actually know How it works in a vacuum. I just think that wouldn't have a lot of range without the air carrying the particles you smell? Maybe it does.

If the valve can only move in, the air is trying to move out , when you sniff in... presumably the suit is at one atmosphere, carry the 2...

How much do you suck?

Without TOO Much effort they're breathing in 1/3rd of an atmosphere , so you'd havea hard time sucking into space while the atmosphere is trying to puch out...

So sucking an entire atmosphere of pressure seems off the menu

Ahah, but what you COULD do is have some sort of spinning air tight ball that went into space and came back and then you smell the ball which has been in space...

Or I'm sure there's a 2 valve set up that would work.

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

So if sucking in space is an issue, to smell a creature native to space that wanted to smell might have its Olfactory receptors external on something like a tentacle or antenna that it can wave around to detect the smell.

Smell is an odd sense it has a source, that then gets spread over an area in air currents, over time. A dog sniffing to find someone finds where the target currently is, by first finding where they had been. So is smelling a four-dimensional sense?.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

I truly do understand that to follow the rules as intended, scent should work through environmental protections, but personally this is just a sticking point I can't get past.

In high school, one classroom suddenly acquired a rank stench. It was obvious that something, probably a squirrel or something, had died in the wall. As a class, we stuck it out for a few days before one student volunteered the comment, "If you can smell something, you're breathing it in." The class switched to a new room the next day.

If you can smell your surroundings, your environmental protections are not shielding you from the atmosphere.


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John Mangrum wrote:

If you can smell your surroundings, your environmental protections are not shielding you from the atmosphere.

Well, this is where the magictech comes in. Life bubble and neutralize poison both know what your species is, and whats poison to you, and what amount of it is poisonous to you (otherwise.. everything is poisonous)

So it should be possible to set the field to let in x amount of Y chemical where x is enough to let you know its there but not so high that it makes you physically sick. So that poor squirrel was full of putrescine and cadaverine (no I'm not making those up, sometimes scientists are really lazy/exactly what it says on the tin about naming..) at 1 concentration those can kill you, at concentration 2 it makes you throw up, at concentration 3 its really unpleasant, and at concentration 4 you go sniff.. sniff.. whats that? BLECH... It doesn't have to be all in or all out.


Sure, the CRB setting chapter probably has a footnote saying all armor comes with a chemalyzer (see unannounced book).

Second Seekers (Jadnura)

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Nefreet wrote:
In the early days of Starfinder, people were asking some pretty basic questions about how armor restricts things like bite attacks. I believe the consensus at the time was, "Don't overthink it, it just works".

I think this is it, right here. Unless there's some item or effect explicitly stating otherwise, just let all senses work through armour seals, imo.

Some armours are described as being completely sealed and opaque, but we still understand that they don't block vision; for example the Enforcer series, which leaves "most of the wearer’s head safely sheltered behind the breastplate and sensory input handled through projected video and audio feeds." If required for verisimilitude, It's not a stretch to imagine, I dunno, smell-o-scopes on the outside of an armour that sample the local atmosphere, and then recreate a synthetic version that is functionally similar, but inert and safe, inside the armour for the wearer? So your armour could be smelling, say, chlorine gas outside, but inside you're smelling I Can't Beleive It's Not Chlorine Gas™! Or, heck, this being Starfinder, maybe it's fancy technomagic: the armour smells the outside for you, and then directly stimulates the wearer's brain (or brain analogue!) to re-create the sensations of those smells without directly experiencing them :D

Vacuum environments are trickier, though. CRB explicitly tells us "sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum" and while that only mentions sound, from that I think we can infer that 'vacuums in Starfinder function as they do in real life," i.e. scent and vibration based senses probably wouldn't work, either (although I guess you could argue that vibration senses could still work if you were on or touching something: like if you're on the outside of a starship hull, and so are The Bad Things, you could maybe detect them via 'tremorsense?') I'd leave it's up to GMs to adjudicate, but most senses that require a medium to travel through, probably wouldn't work in vacuums. What that means for more esoteric senses like "thought" or "life" though, is up for debate.


Kishmo wrote:
from that I think we can infer that 'vacuums in Starfinder function as they do in real life," i.e. scent and vibration based senses probably wouldn't work, either

I keep seeing this idea and don't know where it comes from.

Sound is the propogation of waves, that is air is being compressed at intervals. if there's not enough air, there's no propagated wave, so no sound. Sound can't exist without a separate medium, it doesn't have an existence except in said medium.

Scent is, as the dead squirrel example says, something you're breathing in. Its x number of particles per million, and that CAN exist in a vacuum. The cadaverine molecules can disperse from the dead squirrel with zero help from the nitrogen and oxygen.


Not without some force projecting or pulling them. They aren’t self propelled molecules just zooming outward in a uniform spread.


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Starfinder Superscriber

I already had this existential crisis with Dead Suns, Envoys, Sonic weapons, and the fact that sound does not transmit through space.

The answer, as always, is magic.

Dataphiles

To me, without a medium, some things won't work.

Sonic in vacuum
Scent in vacuum (I'd let a scent sense work at maybe 5-10ft regardless of its normal distance, because you could collide with things producing smells)
Vibration sense in a vacuum
Burning in vacuum

If your character does not have a visual sense, you have made a choice. The setting is under no obligation to assume that said character lives life just like everyone else.

For example, if you choose to play a khizar. At their base, they cannot sense anything more than 30ft away from themselves. There is a decent argument that if a ghost is not making any noise, a khizar could not even detect its presence. Visual identification based recall knowledges are likely auto fails to a khizar because they've never actually seen said symbol or whatever.

Choosing to play such characters is a choice. I find it ridiculous when I hear complaints about such chosen hindrances being hindrances.

Second Seekers (Jadnura)

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

Oh dear, is it "khizars shouldn't be able to see" time again? Do we need to re-tread this ground?

If you really think that species are less interesting, or characters are less compelling, if they can grow beyond their biological/physiological capabilities, why are you even playing Starfinder. Transhumanism (or whatever you call it when humans are just one of many species) and changing your biology & physiology are core parts of the setting. Biohackers, and soon Evolutionists, are base classes, and there are literally hundreds of augmentations that, by definition, let one body go above and beyond what it can normally do.

It's like saying we should ban any item/spell/feat/whatever that lets you fly, since that makes Strix, Dragonkin, Barathu, etc., less interesting and "you made a choice to play a ground-bound species." Or ban telepathy because shirren, lashunta, etc. Or ban blindsense because shirren, khizar, etc. And so on.


Transhumanoidism? Its the humanoid resources department, because there wasn't anyone else to complain to when the name wasn't inclusive enough and they didn't want to change the initials. :)

Dataphiles

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To remind you, I did say khizar "at their base". A species can certainly utilize techno magic whatever to add or change how they interact with the universe. That said, hand waving said addition or change is what I find disappointing.

I use khizar as an example because I play one in society. The lack of sense distance added to the experience. It was interesting. That is why I find it disappointing when others hand waive such things, because I think they are missing out and diminishing their own experience.


Starfinder Superscriber

There's a cost to minutiae and being simulationist. I had this conversation last night with someone. My specific words were "Look, it's an hour and thirty minutes until midnight, do you want to spend those 90 minutes discussing how you procure an enercycle in order to explore hexes or do you want to spend those 90 minutes going new and exotic places?".

Survivalism as a theme is definitely something that can be explored in Starfinder, but it's fair to say that it wasn't the main thrust of the core experience and it shows. I asked Owen KC Stephens himself about that and he even said that getting into sonic weapons and communication in vacuum was so fiddly that they never even bothered bringing it up during the core development.

Expressing exasperation that certain games don't share the themes you enjoy is a bit like me complaining that there aren't enough FPS sections in a 4X game.

And prefacing your post with "...as a society player..." is weird since if you tried to ban sonic weapons in vacuum at a Society game you would be flat out wrong.


Leon Aquilla wrote:


And prefacing your post with "...as a society player..." is weird since if you tried to ban sonic weapons in vacuum at a Society game you would be flat out wrong.

There was one scenario that specifically called that out as a problem (the spaceship you were going to explore had no atmosphere) and did say sonic weapons wouldn't work in a vacuum. I couldn't find any other rules reference for it though


Leon Aquilla wrote:

My specific words were "Look, it's an hour and thirty minutes until midnight, do you want to spend those 90 minutes discussing how you procure an enercycle in order to explore hexes or do you want to spend those 90 minutes going new and exotic places?".

You 3d print the 5 metal parts you need and make the frame from space bamboo. Like on earth where you don't have much manufacturing some places...

Dataphiles

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I can see an argument that such things are minutiae. However, there seems a difference between how do you construct a enercycle and how do you give a species a sense it didn't previously have?

Also it feels significant to me that removing a downside of a species detracts from it being interestingly different than others. For example, why play a ghoran when I could play a khizar that I can just hand wave its sight and verbal speech problem? What is the difference between a hand waved khizar and a human?

I accept that some people don't want to play in a dynamic setting. They don't care about details. I've even specifically experienced someone telling me that they don't want discrimination in their setting. I accept it but I surely don't understand it. If there is no significance between options, then why bother with options?


Energy Damage
The following types of damage are energy damage. Other, rare forms of energy damage exist, and such weapons specify whether they target EAC in their descriptions.
[...]
Sonic (So): Damage dealt by loud noise or damaging frequencies.
(Page 169)

Sonic Weapons
Sonic weapons emit sonar waves at frequencies that are designed to injure or incapacitate enemies. Many of them are termed “low-frequency devices” (LFDs) and “high-frequency devices” (HFDs) based on the frequencies at which they operate and damage foes.
(Page 186)

Vacuum
Sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum.
(Page 394)

------------
Huh.

Guess I've been playing sonic weapons wrong all along.


Walk softly on low gravity asteroids and carry a big laser.


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It's not the biggest leap from sound doesn't work in a vaccum to sonic weapons don't work in a vacuum but still not sure its a leap the game wants you to make.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Not going to pay to read the full article but the title of it suggests that sound might be able to leap across a vacume.
can sound leap.


Can any/all cryo weapons work without an atmosphere, the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate.

Dataphiles

Depends on how it works.


Xenocrat wrote:
Can any/all cryo weapons work without an atmosphere, the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate.

Sure.

"Cryo Weapons
Cryo weapons generate blasts of supercooled gas that can damage or incapacitate a target. The gas is kept within a charged cryochamber attached to the weapon. While primitive models simply sprayed these freezing chemicals like a flamethrower, modern models use a containment beam to deliver deadly frozen particles to targets at impressive ranges. Most cryo weapons automatically replenish their reservoirs of reactive chemicals by drawing and processing various gases from the atmosphere, needing only batteries to maintain their ammunition supply."

Sczarni

"...by drawing and processing various gases from the atmosphere..." was the point, I think.

Second Seekers (Jadnura)

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

Technically, if you've got environmental armour seals / Life Bubble up, you've got enough atmosphere to keep yourself going, right? Probably that's enough to also exchange gases with your ice carbine?

Specifics aside - this is all just RPG navel-gazing, right? No one's actually going to say "sonic and cryo weapons no longer work in space" at their games...right?


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My own way to justify/handle sonic and cryo weapons: both of them work fine in a vacuum, because neither of them actually rely on ambient atmosphere. Sonic weapons, despite the name, don't "actually" use a beam of sound, but a beam of gravitons that induce vibration in the target. Likewise, cryo weapons don't "actually" spray supercold matter, but emit an entropic field that drains heat from the target via exotic thermodynamic effects.

Basically, I throw technobabble at the problem, and a weapon being subject to realistic physical limits is only a thing when I intend for a weapon to be old/cheap/primitive/etc.

Dataphiles

So, do lasers affect invisible targets?


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Nefreet wrote:
"...by drawing and processing various gases from the atmosphere..." was the point, I think.

That would mean at worst you couldn't reload the gun without atmo


"Dr." Cupi wrote:
So, do lasers affect invisible targets?

CRB page 184 under the Laser weapon section

Invisible creatures don’t take damage from lasers, as the beams pass through them harmlessly.

So no, laser weapons don't hit invisible targets


It seems like lasers got hit with the physics hammer but none of the other weapons had such problems or benefits spelled out

Dataphiles

Wesrolter wrote:
"Dr." Cupi wrote:
So, do lasers affect invisible targets?

CRB page 184 under the Laser weapon section

Invisible creatures don’t take damage from lasers, as the beams pass through them harmlessly.

So no, laser weapons don't hit invisible targets

And that isn't minutiae equivalent to sound in space?


Difference is Lasers state they don't work on invisible enemies in the book where as Sonic/Cryo and all the others don't state any weakness to being used in a vacuum.Lasers do have some other benefits to balance it a bit


Wesrolter wrote:
Difference is Lasers state they don't work on invisible enemies in the book where as Sonic/Cryo and all the others don't state any weakness to being used in a vacuum.Lasers do have some other benefits to balance it a bit

Which some people will say that the absence means that there's no rule against a sonic weapon in space and some people will say that lasers go through all this means physics is alive and well (although how well people exrapolate physics varies a lot...)


Personally I think the "can't use laser weapons on invisible enemies" comes up less than can't use *wide range of weapons* due to not having atmosphere.

That said...I think we either need to remove the physic restriction from laser or add physics restrictions to all weapons.

Standard powder based weapons not working optimally in vacuum due to reduced available oxygen for combustion. *To be pedantic most modern fire arms have an oxidizer in their propellent*.

But other weapons could also be stated to not be functionality due to the need for atmosphere.

Which maybe could be overcome by hooking you gun up to your space suit. With the draw back of if it's disarmed the connection to your suit is broken and it can't fire/reload/whatever until it's connected.

That's at least an interesting drawback without making it unusable.

I think generally I would prefer the game to came up with reasons why these things that rely on atmosphere would continue to function, rather than diminish options players want to use. But that they have some drawback in certain situations.

Maybe without tech your scent wouldn't normally work, but your space suit it designed to sample and work with your scent. Maybe it reduces the range, or makes it into an imprecise scent. Perhaps there's a suit upgrade that adds magic (and cost) so that your scent can work normally.


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BigNorseWolf wrote:
It seems like lasers got hit with the physics hammer but none of the other weapons had such problems or benefits spelled out

Lasers have a bunch of special rules. Ineffective against invisibility, go through force fields without being stopped, also some items (dye grenades, that shadow magic sphere, a crystal armor upgrade in AA4, etc.) that make lasers more/less effective.

Dataphiles

Claxon wrote:
I think generally I would prefer the game to came up with reasons why these things that rely on atmosphere would continue to function, rather than diminish options players want to use. But that they have some drawback in certain situations.

I think this is a common root for many people. And, I am not at all bothered by some weapons being ineffective or useless in some circumstances. As I said previously, such aspects help make the setting dynamic and interesting. Why should all weapon types work in every situation (except against creature immunities)?


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They just need a low level fusion, like the trailblazer for projectile weapons, to overcome vacuum related problems. Don't want the fusion? Carry a laser or projectile weapon (or maybe acid/shock).


Xenocrat wrote:
They just need a low level fusion, like the trailblazer for projectile weapons, to overcome vacuum related problems. Don't want the fusion? Carry a laser or projectile weapon (or maybe acid/shock).

I like it Xenocrat.

For the sake of "sane" physics we apply limitations to those weapons, but also give them a relatively cheap way to overcome it.


Honestly, I'm dubious of the "invisibility makes you immune to lasers" rule, since there are numerous SFX for invisibility, and most of them don't involve being actually transparent.

Second Seekers (Jadnura)

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Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

...huh, so, Society-specific precedent for Sonic weapons in a vacuum?

Spoilers for SFS 4-07 Haven for Scourged Machines:
Most of this scenario takes place inside a space station that has no atmosphere, and a sidebar states, "the space station’s interior has no atmosphere, exposing the PCs to a vacuum (Starfinder Core Rulebook 394) ... Sonic weapons do not function in the vacuum, and the duration of the burning condition is reduced to 1 round regardless of source. Vacuum-specific abilities, such as a sarcesian’s void flyer ability, function within the station."

I know Society rules don't necessarily = general rules, but it's an interesting data point, for sonic weapons, burning condition, etc., in a vacuum.

...eh, I'm still going to rule that, in general, all weapons work in a vacuum (outside of specific situations like above) 'cause it's just a whole can of worms otherwise. I just don't want to get into "well ack-chu-ally, this Cryo weapon uses crystals from the Plane of Shadows, so it doesn't care about your atmospheric gases" every time people are outside of a ship, lol.


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What about sonic stabby weapons? There's a definite substance there for them to virbrate, someone's kidney


Oh, I definitely wouldn't want to make individualized exceptions, either. When I suggest a "sonic weapons use grav waves" house rule, its based on the idea that this is the *default*. "Doesn't work in vacuum" would be a weakness, instead.

Huh, maybe you could have a new weapon trait, though I can't think of a good name. Basically, the default is that all weapons act as Blasters Pew Pew, and don't care about realistic physical laws. A weapon with the 'Restrictive' trait *does*, and is subject to various limits at GM's discretion. The tradeoff being, a weapon with this trait is cheaper and/or lower level than otherwise.

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