Charted Space Capital Warships are under gunned.
- Thread starter tytalan
- Start date
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
I would need to go back and look at the specific rules to figure pricing, but I would say yes. Prototype at TL14 and Early Prototype at TL13. Or Beta at TL14 and Alpha at TL13.
Edit: The prototype rules are specifically referencing hardware, but I see no reason they shouldn’t be applicable to software as well. Prototype would be 5x the cost and Early Prototype would be 10x.
They would be subject to reliability issues at Early Prototype and quirks at both as well.
An unreliable CI could be very entertaining. Just sayin’.
The quirks are angled at hardware. There needs to be one for software, but I can see how the quirks listed could be tweaked to hold true for software. Here is my initial take and I welcome further suggestions. There really needs to be more variety (2D rolls) but I’ll whip up a 1D table for software.
1. Unreliable after prolonged use: After any skill check resulting in 2, or a result of 2 or less on 2D after every 24 hours of use, the software hangs and must be restarted. If it has already been restarted, apply DM-1 to task checks and halve any time interval between periodic failure checks until the software is reinstalled, taking 1D hours to remove, reinstall, and reconfigure.
2. Software is slow. Double the time for operation and skill checks using it.
3 Especially expensive: Double the software’s cost.
4. Especially difficult to operate or configure: Skill checks suffer an additional DM-1.
5. Software hallucinates. DM-2 to results because they seem plausible but are in fact made up. It is a Difficult task (10+) to detect the data isn’t reality based.
6. Software unstable: After one year, the software becomes permanently unreliable. If already unreliable, subtract a further DM-1 to task checks and halve any time interval between failures until it is removed, reinstalled, and reconfigured, which takes 1D hours.
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MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
Correct, so it has nothing to do with the PHYSICS of Jump but with law and or custom.
It applies to both modifiers, but the Jump plot one is very much the lesser one, since it's just feeding into the Engineering roll to actually jump.
Which CAN be performed by a computer or a robot.
And gets back to an idea I had in another thread earlier in the year that the Charted Space limitation might not be anything inherent, but (especially in the 3I) due to legal requirements to curb machine astrogators.
"No Sir and or Madam. There is no software available for that task that we are LEGALLY allowed to sell you."
"Make sure that new design of crew bot brains has the limiter. We don't want a repeat of last year's batch that could do Astrogation... The Department ripped us a new one over that, and we lost Jenkins, Kraugh and Shulldii."
It's not crystal clear, but you can choose either. "Charted Space" can refer to the political and historical setting, but can also refer to the physical universe of that setting. And although I'd generally use "Charted Space" for the former and "Charted Space Universe" for the latter, usage is rarely that tight.
And, while RHB does list Astrogation skill, it's worth remembering that RBH is not actually a Charted Space or 3I sourcebook. Like High Guard, it's a general one and parts of it may only apply in settings the Referee has a use for.
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MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
Not really. Because charted space is a specif defined, limited region of that setting. It is specifically NOT the entire universe of that setting. It would be like saying the Solomani sphere
Personally I'd use the the table unchanged as much as possible.
For 1. the second section covers if the equipment already has the unreliable trait (such as an Early Prototype) and you roll it a second time. It is not about using the equipment after it has already triggered the unreliability condition. In theory you could get this result 3 times for an Early Prototype and it would make periodic failure checks every 6 hours and would have a DM-2 on any task checks.
Cooldown in this case could be clearing the databases. As there is no "cost" or timeframe associated with the repair mentioned in the original table it needn't be an expensive or especially time consuming process, but it will almost certainly be inconvenient if it failed while you were making a skill check rather than it just glitched again on standby.
We had a computer system on the aircraft that just drifted out of true over a time and started dumping RADAR tracks. It required a half hour restart after a few hours of operation. We never fixed it and the crew just had to remember to turn it off and on again after transit and before they started on the mission proper.
For 2. Double the bandwidth.
For 5. It can still have some weird field effect that makes the ship easier to detect on sensors. Or the DM-2 is also appropriate as the other choice.
For 6. I think it reads fine as is. There is no recovery path other than the default Repair, you cannot recover the reliability. This is the same as 1 but with 1 year grace period.
That ensures maximum read across with minimal finagling.
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