manu

The technical remote would be way more easier to store and maintain when you're not actively using them - and you won't have the hassle to wire a new batch of wasps every few moth (or weeks ? i don't know for how long they're living)

If you want to pack a huge variety of exotic loads, i think that a drum-style magazine would be more practical than a multiple cylinders design (less things to go wrong)

Just have each round fitted with a microchip to tell the gun what it is, slect the type and let the gun bring the right ammo to bear.

For increased ammo sotrage, you can even have concentric rows of ammo in the drum, but that requires either one barrel per row or a transfer system of some sort to get the round in line with the barrel.

Quote (Adventus @ Oct. 17 2003,01:17)

I like the gun from Minority Report.  shooting people with pure force and sending them flying. How far away is this weapon? The technology to build something similar already exists.  A scientist invented Hypersound. Think of it as a sonic laser beam that hits with kinetic energy.  Once sound gets over 30,000 kilocycles it becomes coherent and can be used as a weapon.  I read about it in Popular Science a few months ago.

From the way it behaved, i'd rather say a carefully modulated and directed shockwave - the thing seemed to be short-ranged wide a wide dispersal, which is definitevly not a laser-like behavior.

You should also have a backward kinetic effect of some sort for recoil compensation - laws of mechanics tells us that if you're not braced, sending the other guy flying away will send you flying the opposite way.

Considering the general 'crowdedness' of the design (vomit gaz tank, smoke generator, loudpseaker, radio emitter and power pack), I think ti should be seriously bigger than a smoke greande, unless it has a very short duration. I'd rate it at about 3 times the weight of a smoke grenade (about 50% biger in each dimension to have three times the internal volume)

I don't hink so - the nauseator affects the guts far more than the brain. And a borg's brain is way better protected than in a regular human.

So there will probably be very little effect.

I agree with Hans, heavy hard armor can probably afford some protction, but you'd better have given some thought ot the design. Regular milspec stuff might not be that effective, the design being eyed more toward shockwaves. A riot trooper's armor will porbably be more effective in that case.

Ear protection will do you no good vs a nauseator : what it do is to set harmonic vibration among the internal organs (in a cruder style : shaking your guts from the inside). Since it don't uses the ears for it's effect, plugging them will do you bout as much good as closing your eyes to protect yourself from an incoming car.

Even a fully selaed armor will do little good, as it will whake with the sound and transmit some of the effect. Only an ACPA-style selaed, hard and heavy armor will protect. Off course, a 'borg will feel nothing, but if the PCs did enough to deserve such a level of attention, they should watch for AV gunships rather than nauseators.

I woill not dispute that some individual can and will have long live, almost no matter what their income is. But in average, the richer you are, the longer longer you live. Even in middle age, where the life expectancy was in the 30-40 years, some seoples managed to live to 80+. A few peoples who skip the odds are not a surprise in nation-wide statistics.

What I mean is that the more money you have, the better your odds for living a long time are. That's not a certitude, that's significantly biased odds.

Just to take another example : stats in France gives white collars (who tend toward the richest ones) a 5 to 10 year life expectancy advantage over the blue collars. That's partly caused by education and an ability to avoid unehalthy habits, but some definitevely comes from an ability to afford better medical care. I would not hasard the proposal that blue collar types have inferior genetic material.

No need for genetics to get widely spread lifespans - the average european or north-american woman already has twice the expected lifespan of her somalian counterpart.

CP's medtech, with nanotech surgery and wonder drugs can probably aford any millionaire to live about to the maximum of human lifespan, in the 100-120 yo range, maybe a bit longer for those with good base genetics. But this also means that you can get that old, even with a careless lifestyle 'cholesterol-choked arterias, just scrub with with nanosurgeon. Oh and shoot some foetal extract nuerons in to replace those lost to recreationnal drugs and brain-bossters. Weak muscles, built new muscle fibers and injected tailored steroïds. And just pump out that fat'.

This will buy enough time to the highers up (many of them solidified their position in the 90's) are in the 50 to 70 yo range, so they're not in a hurry and can safely wait for the tech to mature for a few decades before jumping in. Soulkiller and such software are promizing the ability to download and upload human minds, which will afford true immortality for those who can afford it (and do you think thet care for those who can't ?)

In CP, the gap will no longer be between nations, but between rich and poors (that's what globalisation is about, equaling the factors among the world, the poors will tend to align on the same worldwide standard, bringing in thirld world lifestyle, including life expectancy, to first world's un and low-qualified workers)

Genemods are a bit too new and lack of a solid time evaluation to be widely spread among the richs, thogh genechecking and fixing is porbably already in use. Genetic improvements are too fresh out of the lab to be widely admitted.

Star wars can also be a nice choice for a demo : there's no magic if you don't pur Jedis in, the setting is fairly known to non-RPGers, and there's a definite 'do-gooder' moral trend in it thta won't hurt.

If we're thinking to the same stuff, don't get that eager about it - all it allows is to move a pointer on keyborad written on a monitor. This allows the guy to ocmpose words. That's only a first step.

The best way to deal with a jammed polymer-one-shot is a trashcan (and another POS in your pocket)....

I don't think the range of their practice will enable them to reach a +10 - they deal with emergency rooms situations, not stuff like cancder prescrption, surgery or whatver.

They way the system si designed, all theis falls under 'medtech', and a +10 SA means that the character as at least a pasing knowledge of it. Of course that's not very realistic, but Cyberpunk is not 'wounds & tumors' so it's not much of a problem.

I'd rather use inductions loops, shadowrun-style. Otherwise gettign the pins right in front of the gun's plugs would be a real pain, required custom grips to be sure everythings get aligned.

Well, that double-balls clips is a guaranteed hit among the 'brass-balled macho' audience. Now you get a real man's gun for all to see  

Note about use of RPG-7

There was an afhgani (or Somali ?) AA-specific declination of the RPG-7 :

Take a RPG-7 and weld an angled pipe (usually a rainpipe's bottom angled piece) at the back exhaust - that way, the blast is channeled perpendicular to the firing line, enabling you to fire high without the backblast spreading on the ground and frying your legs.... High technology in action.  

Using an RPG-7 from a window : some actually did it in Lebanon : the trick was to choose a reasonably large roomd and have everyone wear wet blankeds (i suppose that a wet rag ove the nose and mouth won't hurt either, breathing the fumes isn't likely to feel good)

Add to this the various declinations of the warhead, and you get a cost/efficiency ratio that's hard to beat (sure it ain't that good, but it's dirt cheap)

Last note about the stats : the reilability is likely to vary widely depending of the amo you're firing (using a 5-yo East block genuine or a 20-yo pakistani knockoff are two very different things...)

To monk : the problem I see is not having a sensor element that can accept wavelegth from low IR to high UV.

It is to get a sensor that can tell the electronics behind 'on pxel 'x', I get this amount of photons (light) from frequency a to b, that from b to c,....' in a reliable way, for a whole bunch of wavelength bands and a very very high resolution (for zooming)

If you can get such a sensor, ok the system works fine, but as Stephane stated, the amount of detectors and the frequency discrimination of each element makes the problem really though to solve.

The tech will also spill into each and every optical acquisition systems once reaching industrial stage (you want the largest return on your investment don't you ?)

Physical torture (i mean in the sense of cutting/crushing/burning body parts and such) is not the most effective information extraction tool. Sleep deprivation is one of the most effective way to break someone's will, as it royaly messes the way the brain functions, making it far more sensitive to outside influences (maybe because they get difficult to sort out from internal ones).

Basically, the physical aspect of things has other purposes beyond getting the info :

* let the torturer and/or his leader(s) to indulge a sadistic streak

* provide outsiders with an intimidating example - a shattered wreck of a body speaks out loud 'look at what happen if you cross uss' - even if the guy is dead

Also, applied to the common crowd, it works faster than sleep deprivation and such

That one seems a bit odd too me, since it will rquire for each individual CCD element to be able to sort out the fresuencies coming out, while still being small enough to get a high-res picture.

Andthe whole stuff would be crammed into the small space of an eyeball, which makes it a truly impressive system.

And also means that you can very easily get a 'bigger, cheaper' version to use into anything from gogles to riffles sights to vehicular sights - considering the costs, any military vehcule or ACPA should be fitted with that kind of sensor,

Well, a child is likely to grow old enough to join only in the most sedates Rafen Shivs packs. Considering a kid as a ressource for the future and not a useless burden requires far more forethought and social ability than the usual Raffen has.

These groups tends also to have very few women among them, which decreases the number of kids and further drops the odds that they might be viewed as a ressource.

A 10-12 yo streekid, already hardened by streeet survival and about to join a gang will be way cheaper than bothering to rear a kid ofr 10 years, feeding and teaching him. Sure the streetkids requires more breaking and needs to be teached the basics of outdors survival, but there are more than enough candidates to make up for natural selection.

Well, I thought a bit and came up with some things :

Origins : most packs stem from either nomad packs that turned real wrong or from gang who got such a nasty rep that they had to take the road or get killed

Recruiting : picking up crazies and nasty guys when skirting the town (send in the sanest members to scoop the cream of the crop in the nasty bars.), another likely option can be to raid prisons. The fred inmates either adapt or die.

A truly nasty option could be picking up streetkids, to instruct them in the way of the african soldier-kids.

Any character that was processed through the judiciary system will definitevely have a SIN - either is 'native one', or a criminal ID SIN if he was a Zero to begin with. This profile is likely to include finger, retina and DAN prints, maybe even a vocal print. Of course such a SIN will be more of a pain than a blessing ,since it will tag you as 'former convinct'.

Well, in our games, precious few torture was used - and most of the the time it was killing some reall y nasty guy the nasty way he deserved rather than extracting information.

We were usually setting the guy in secluded place, and after a little beating (often not, as most did not came willingly and already had to be trashed a bit), and the deal was to get into their head that at least one of the PCs was a raving looney able to spill his guts out and feed them to him, with the others playing the 'god cop' part.

That was plain and simple inimidation, rather than torture, and it worked fine since we rarely met real pros (well, and the pros weren't usually available for interoggation once taken care of)

As far as resisting toture go, well, the only effective way o overcome prolonged torture is to tell nothing for some time, then feed the interrogators as many half-truth and plausible misleads as you can get, to let them unable to tell the truth from the junk when you can no longer hold it.

note about interrogation : the finest torture/interrogation tool of Cyberpunk is definitively the neural processor - that littel fella can get all kind of stuff into and from your head. If it can feed in chip memories, odds are it cann pull out 'meat' memories. I read someplace of rules for 'brainhacking', which is exactley what the name implies : cracking yourbrain open through your neural processor, to extract info, tamper with you mind. This opened an immense field for nasty tricks.

the weapons suit seems quite odd, there are several redudant systems that jack up the weight/price/complexity without improving the lethality of the design

why two auto grenade launcher ?

The 12.7 gatling and 25mm autocannon pack seems strange : the grenade launchers can cery well take care of the infantry and such, and the 12.7 gatling won't do as good as the autocanon as far as range/penetration go. And the missiles take care of the heavy stuff

I would rather design the thing that way :

- put only one AGL, with switchable magazines

- forget the .50 gatling

- upgrade the autocanon to a 30mm gatling

- if there's some room, pack a 7.62 gatling or similar to mow down pedestrians without expending expensive grenades

You need an X-ray source to activate the material, which would severly hamper any man-portable use.

But this could be a fine energy source for a one shot, 'explosive powered' gamma ray laser.

Using it for a multiple shot would be trickier, but could proably be done.

High doses of gamma ray won't do more good to electronics than to people, making it usefull against a wide range of targets - but the main inrastructures (roads, walls, pipes, electric wiring) will stay intact. Throw in some istope-binding nanos and you can recover the place pretty quiclky. Definitively interesting for a corporation.