wilphe

I don't think the ESA could be considered a Bond villain...

Probably every over-developed pest hole in the universe with a computer store nearby considers itself "The Other Silicon Valley".

Not that I'm dissing Austin, I've never been there.

Another criteria might be:

         "Has the locale you dwell in ever been targeted for destruction by a Bond villian?"

           If yes, you live in "Another Silicon Valley".

           if no, you live in South Dakota.

HOB 83. Lists one as 15 eb. Unmounted its a knife (1d6).

Mounted its 3d6 and still halves soft armour. It can also act as a survival knife or wire cutters (when mounted).

Also: "Fits on front of rifle".

         Thanks for telling us that, I was planning on putting it on the end I hold. Also it won't fit on a CG13 or M31A1, you'd need a cutsom one.

Was that group the most Munchkin bunch of people ever captured on Film?

Bought up by Militech is the most likely fate.

You are as dead on as makes no difference.

I would also be the first person to...

          ENGAGE MUNCHKIN POWER!

                                             Electrotherm it.

                                                    Drool.

          MUNCHKIN POWER DEPLETED!

Sorry, where was I?

Will have to see about getting myself a replica Brown Bess IRL.

I knew a guy who always went to great efforts to say he was cleaning/maintaining his guns - this was the guy who had a pair of Mustang "Mark II's".

I hail from what is referred to as the "Other Silicon Valley". The only people who refer to it as such are over-hyping local government and journalists who don't actually have to live there. Its a lot catchier than "The over-developed heap of s#*t west from London". The area owes its importance (such as it is) to the fact that the River, Railway and main roads (A4 - M4) all run parrell East-West.

    The "silicon" tag comes from the fact that far too many high tech firms hang around here; Vodafone HQ is just down the road in Newbury; Sage, Micro$oft, etc all have offices around here. As a result you get charged £150,000 to buy a rabbit hutch.

    I was born and raised in Reading, there are worse places to live. Swindon to the West and Slough to the East both exist to make people from Reading appreciate it a hell of a lot more. Swindon is famous for having a "magic roundabout" - its a big roundabout consisting of lots of little ones. Slough is famous for being a S~~~thole and an anagram of "Oh Slug". John Betjamin (sp) wrote a poem that begins "Come Friendly Bombs and fall on Slough".

     Currently in live North of the River in Caversham, I can therefore delude myself that I actually live in Oxfordshire (not true, Berkshire annexxed the area).

      Basically Reading has no soul. In been between making money people get pissed and throw up in the street. If I want fun I go into the Chilterns or the Downs and get away from the place.

How fast can you type with a cyberhand?

No risk of RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome...

As a general principle you are of course right, I don't think anybody would try to say otherwise. I am however curious as to why you would stick a mark up on such an innocous piece of tech, unless you are trying to establish a principle of NEVER charging list price after the campaign has begun for anything no matter how harmless/common. If you regard it as the thin end of a very long wedge, "He wants a TV this session, next week it'll be a cyberdeck and after that a railgun." then that is fair enough.

        As a gut feeling it just seems a bit, umm, much. It adds to your work load as you've got to remember this for consistency.  It's aggravated your player (although anyone who would get upset over 20eb...). And for what? 20 eb extra is not enough to keep them poor, unless they are so poor that 100eb on a TV is extravagent.

I believe 180-200 has been proposed as the optimum size for a self-sustaining colony ship. Someone, I think it was some NASA guys, ran a simulation. The idea was to ensure availibilty of a at least three potential partners per individual within a reasonable age range and no more closely related than second cousins. At this size the simulation remained stable within these parameters for a huge number of generations.

       180-200 is also believed to be the upper limit for the number of people an inidividual can "know" in any detail. The empirical evidence to back this up comes in the fact that it a size constraint found among organizations such as pre-industrial villages, hunter/gatherer tribes and infantry companies.

      Admittedly this was for a generation ship and not a cold sleep one, but it might turn out to be important if you get there and it isn't what you expect and the psycological implications still stand...

On a similar subject...

       if anybody doesn't have Chrome 4, you might want to see this:

           N-A-C "Freezeban" Bioconstruct   650eb

No-Ahme Caldwell introduces the perfect bioware for cold weather work or travelling space in cyrosleep. The Freezeban gland is implanted in the chest cavity where it maintains your body with a constant supply of metaglycogen, a chemical compound that prevents water in the tissues from forming ice crystals in below freezing temperatures.

Game notes:

The effect is immunity to frostbite, and +1 on any Wilderness Survival/Endurance skill rolls in weather under 10C. Subject also gains a +3 bonus on any cyrosleep suspension and reanimation rolls. MA. HC=1

My copy of Deep Space has been MIA for four years and my copy of Near Orbit is in transit between Colorado and Caversham FYI.

Before anyone else mentions them, the entry for ExecUcleaN in CB1 only mentions repairing armour. It doesn't say how they clean it.

or is it dryclean only?

As far as I know, this question is never mentioned.

Can you iron your armoured shirt? Important if you are a corp, dare you turn up to that important meeting in a creased SP12 shirt?

Do your PCs only buy one set of armour and never think about washing it?

       (Mental image of PCs sitting on Launderette in just thier undies and guns a la Levi's ad)

You can probably get away with just one set of armour, IF you do not wear it next to your skin, otherwise you will pong.

Just some random thoughts.

Couple of questions:

1) Is what we are paying for our own personal stuff? Or does it in part represent a budget for buying equipment which is specific to our own personal mission and would not reasonably be aboard otherwise?

2) Are we allowed to assume that stuff like rope, spacesuits, clean underwear & other mundane supplies are already aboard without our having to state that we are buying them?

3) Is there some sort of cargo hold where anything bulky and almost certainly unecessary in space but very likely to be needed when landed (Tents, binoculars, etc) can be stashed. Something like an unpressurized area only accessible by EVA for example.

I had a solo character called Han.

I'm not proud of that though.

Derived from one of my middle names:

Will,

Wilf,

Wilphe (Pronounced Wilf but looks cooler)

I expect I will add more superflous silent letters at some point, I am thinking of adding a J:

     Wiljphe

             that way I start to look Slavic.

They are definatley mad. It is clearly described as a "Squad heavy weapon" and "light machine gun". Possible reasons they may think this:

        1) The H&K weapons in the corebook are all SMGs

        2) There is a typo in my copy of Chrome I which gives its type as "LMG". There is no such weapon type in FNFF and Blackhands corrects its type to "HVY". They might be misreading it as "SMG".

        3) Compared to their other weapons a G6 IS an SMG.

Mine is version 2.01. Copyright 1990, 1991, 1993.

On page 5 Mike Pondsmith says:

     "Ahem! It's NOT a third edition. In this reprint, we've taken extra time to fix all the corrections and typos [], plus squared away a few of the problems and inconsistencies. [] these rules are the same [] since the 2020 edition [] was printed."

Don't know if that helps.

Looking at my corebook (v2.01), the medical rules are on pages 114-121. The sidebar on page 116 says:

          First Aid                            .5 pts/day

          MedTech                           1pt

          MedTech + Speed Heal        2pt

          MedTech + Nanotech          2pt

          MedTech+SpeedHeal+Nano   3pt

Simple neh?

     However in the maintext (116-117).

  "First Aid involves cleaning & dressing the wounds, administering medication, setting broken limbs and putting on splints."

  "Medical Tech []. This gives him the ability to perform surgery, prescribe drugs and know the proper treatment of injuries. He can replace damaged organs with vatgrown pieces, graft on new limbs, or install cyberware."

   This would suggest that effective use of MedTech, while not needing a hospital per se, does need a lot of equipment and machines that go ping. Unless it is a very well furnished C-Zone squat or your Ripperdoc is carrying a LOT of equipment around with them all they should really be able to do is First Aid.

   My 2ps worth.

BTW: Is it me or is ETE the Marmite of CP2020?

Ah, I like that. However there are a couple of factors we need to take into account.

       1) Efficency of the weapon in converting power to damage, which is unlikely to be uniform across all these types.

       2) For a lot of powered weapons it is not so much the damage they are carried for, but their special effects.

        Ordinary firearms come in at about 30% efficient, I doubt if ETE would improve much on that at all (the bullet ends up faster, but there will be much more waste heat).

     Does anybody carry a microwaver for the damage? You carry it because it seriously f@@@s with cyberware, in a widish beam. (Side note: Would it not also ignore armour?) I have no idea how much energy we should allow for this, but if someone wants to stick their Plam-Pilot or cell phone in an 850 W oven and time how long it takes for it to not work anymore then we'll get some working figures.

       Volt pistol. This thing discharges a "lightning bolt". Ok not an actual lightning bolt, but the energies involved in a full one are immense and people survive them. This would suggest they are very bad at damaging people and perhaps the volt pistol is making very inefficent use of energy. Likely it is a very brief pulse, electric chairs are better at killing, but use less current over a longer period. Or maybe the "lightning bolt" thing is just incredible overhype and I'm talking nonsense.

     Laser cannon. Yeah I agree, its rubbish. Its futuristic, but its rubbish. I seem to recall reading in a GURPS book that lasers are rubbish in atmosphere, perhaps that accounts for it.

  I agree there is a gap here, but I do not think it is as big or as consist as it first looks. So make ETE batteries larger, less capacious and/or more expensive, and the gap looks a bit narrower.

NO. You want horses. Ever seen the film of the Miners' Strike or Poll Tax riots?

Subsversive non-cp suggestion:

           If you are going to be using cards anyway, you might as well play Castle Falkenstein.

Hack, slay and maim the Heretic.

I can actually see Corps being major contributers to churches. It should stop them saying nasty things about you. More importantly, if you provide welfare through taxation then it is an entitilment and you don't have any choice over who gets it or thier behaviour.

        If you do it through the church, it's charity and you are capable of (maybe) limiting who gets it to people who are "good". I can't think of many religions that have never been abused to justify the status quo. Because you are limiting it you don't have to pay as much  and you get good PR.

        "Araska, who art in Nihon,

         Give us this day our daily kibble.

         And deliver us from Millitech,

         For you have the biggest guns,

         PA suits and Black Ice,

         For ever and ever, amen."

   Yes that's blasphemous, but I couldn't reisist.