/epg/ - Eclipse Phase General

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this seems fitting for martian architecture, any examples of jovian or autonomist?

Jovian

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Typical Jovian small business

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So I've been roped into GMing Eclipse Phase for a bunch of newbies to the setting/system. How should I prepare for their first session (other than spending most of the time on character creation)? Should I just give them the "welcome to Firewall" speech and get down to business or should I gradually introduce Firewall to them over the course of a short introductory campaign?

It's not actually that hard to explain Firewall to people. If they have a little tabletop knowledge you can just tell them they work for Delta Green. Other analogies such as the SCP Foundation, EXALT or Global Frequency are also acceptable.

>Comparing Firewall to [ANGRY STATIC NOISES]

What's wrong with comparing Firewall to anything?

Both are posthuman terrorist groups that fight government agencies using stolen alien technology

what would some good argonaut projects to base a game around be? I assume TITAN artefacts and Xenoarchaeology, and stuff like weird signals from the long array, and cutting edge technological development, etc, but I'm unsure where to take the more esoteric and theoretical angles they could be working. So really, I'm asking for prospects of future physics.

Using QE comms/Pandora Gates to make FTL hyper computers. 0-point energy mining. Copying Factor Tech (Inertialess Drives). Transdimensional First Contact. ETI/Async relic study. Simulated reality studies.

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Those rings look awfully fragile for a military spacecraft.

Pure fusion suitcase nukes and bathtub antimatter

Get them used to the background setting a bit and then suddenly throw them headlong into Firewall. They should be as scared and confused as their characters would be.

>Pure fusion
You mean like a star?

Like a fusion bomb that doesn't use a fission bomb as a detonator. Theoretically a lot smaller, because you don't need a critical mass of fissile material.

Windowed O'Neill Cylinders are inefficient. If you want window lighting, tori are the way to go. Once windows become inadequate, axial lighting a cylinder is optimal.

>Theoretically a lot smaller

You're kidding, right? Unless you're counting antimatter-initiated fusion weapons as pure fusion I don't think you're going to find a more energy-dense initiator than a fission device.

Don't tori have the same ratio of window to not-window as segmented cylinders?

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Realistically, a spaceship is a giant pressurized fuel tank carrying energy equivalent to several hundred atomic bombs. Fragile isn't something you can get away from.

I always assumedthat, given the general tech level, EP warships would be rickety as fuck. Basically just the biggest weapon system you can slap on a drive on, with minimum crew quarters, mostly being automated. The Jovian ships would obviously have more crew.

You could try *not* having the rings that would prevent rapid turning and high acceleration

For a torus, the inward half is windowed, which is upward with respect to artificial gravity. Therefore, no lebensraum is used up by windows, unlike with a windowed cylinder, where half of the theoretical lebensraum is window

To make 1 square meter of living space in an O'Neill cylinder I need to make 1 square meter of ground and 1 square meter of window (ignoring the end caps). In a torus I need to make a bit more because it has more wall per unit of ground.

This isn't Earth. You don't need to buy space. It's a question of using materials and labor efficiently (the options are otherwise equivalent).

*assuming the options are otherwise equivalent

You're in space.

There's you, the place you're going and ten thousand miles of vacuum in between.

What are you turning for?

Combat maneuvers. A constant trajectory is a death sentence in space warfare.

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I can't really think of a better method to use than AIF if you want a 10 kt hand grenade. EP probably uses weird stable nuclear isomers for their fission initiated bombs, so they're already pretty small.

Well, EP materials science is pretty awesome, so their ships could look like fragile fluted glass and still be super durable by modern standards.

Stop being so autistic. Rings like that are a popular depiction of a Alcubierre drive.

>weird stable nuclear isomers
What.

>Rings like that are a popular depiction of a Alcubierre drive.
No they aren't. Alcubierre drive rings would need to be much further apart on a vessel of that length. Also, you can clearly that the hubs are set up for these to be counter-rotating habitation rings.

Something like
178m2 Hf or 180m1 Ta both are really long lasting super energy dense isotopes, and if you poke them with x-rays they release all their energy at once.

1 gram of 178m2 Hf can be induced to release the energy of about 700 pounds of TNT. That's a lot less than uranium 235 (1.33 GJ per gram, vs 83 GJ per gram), but there's no critical mass needed, and the reaction is much more complete.

The future has a better knowledge of physics as well, so there are probably better metastable nuclear isomers. Nuclear batteries are probably nuclear isomer based as well. (There's no way a small RTG can output 1 kw)

How would the metastable isomers be isolated?

nuclearweaponarchive.org/News/DoSuitcaseNukesExist.html

You basically need Hafnium and a decent sized cyclotron. 179 hafnium is best, but you don't actually need to enrich it, you just get a better yield.

The hafnium bomb is speculative physics on par with the Alcubierre drive.

Is the cyclotron supposed to turn Hf-178 into Hf-178m2 without turning Hf-178m2 into Hf-178?

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That image is really turning me on for some reason.

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This reminds me that I need a name for a boutique, avant-garde biomorph corp, preferably not another portmanteau containing the word "skin".

SkinnySkinSkin.

In all seriousness, you might play on the word "form", somehow, since that's what the original source of "morph" means in Greek.

I want to be super pretentious and say "Form Follows Function", possibly in some snooty language like French or Italian.

I guess that's what I get for using two French loan-words to describe it.

Meatlocker

That sounds like a chastity belt line.

portmanteau is also a french loan word.

What would the corresponding women's chastity belt line be called?

also meatlocker

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How should an AGI make themself more acceptable to people who are prejudiced against them?

By being a prostitute.

Dogsbody

What's the context here?

>What's the context here?

Here at Blagging It - your one-stop shop for custom morphs suitable for passing amongst the criminal underground - we take great pride in our customisation options. Our so-called competitors opt for "grown on" scars and defects in their biomorphs and pods, which are certainly cheaper, but lack the authenticity that our clients crave. In this promotional image, you can see our revolutionary process in work; generating hyper-realistic scars, amputated digits and dislocated joints by sleeving the most crazy, fucked-up indentured egos we've got into the morphs to hand-carve battle damage into the morph. These egos have been tutored, seen their loved ones die repeatedly, forced to watch the most degrading, mind-bending pornography this side of Saturn and more - all so you can get the look you need. Whether it's turning heads at your next social event or infiltrating criminal cartels, Blagging It has you covered.

That seems unlikely, since it says Fall Event

Plus I doubt that microcephalic morph is intended for high-end clientelle

Image search turned this up. Can anyone post a larger version of this page?

Oyster shell.

>Image search turned this up. Can anyone post a larger version of this page?

Just go and look at the page in the Transhuman PDF if you want to look at the table! They're freely available!

which book is it from?

He literally just said it and it's in the filename.

Sorry, I thought it was the core book but I didn't find it in there. I don't actually play Eclipse Phase, I was just interested in the picture.

Is he infected or exsurgent?

>Is he infected or exsurgent?
With one notable arguable exception, infection leads to exsurgency. That might not be what's going on here though. He might just have lost a bit too much lucidity, which would be nothing some R&R combined with intensive psychosurgery wouldn't fix. Those fingers will grow back.

I''m curious now. Can you give me the cliff notes on exsurgency?

If you're interested in actually playing I recommend not reading about it. Otherwise:
eclipse-phase.wikispaces.com/The Exsurgent Virus

In the non-spoiler category, here are the rules for mental health. Ending up on the wrong end of this is what might have happened to him that isn't infection.

Oops
eclipse-phase.wikispaces.com/Mental Health

>I was just interested in the picture.

Well, basically, there's little context to the picture. It's a chap. He appears on the page underneath a table in the Transhuman book. He's not, like, an established NPC or anything, as far as I know.

The context is when I pull art assets from EP books and save them, I try to give them a title which seems relevant. Sometimes this is easy because its obviously associated with whatever else is on the page, other times we have to play a little bit looser (I'd say "Fall Event" was one of them).

And then there are some times when I just do not know.

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>the most degrading, mind-bending pornography this side of Saturn
good thing you didn't go past saturn with the porn regimen, stuff gets real freaky in the rim

I assume what's happening here is that the Scum have come into possession of Rob Liefeld's frozen head, and decided it would be funny to defrost him and make him design a biomorph.

I like you.

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Outer Rim pornography costs extra. Much, much extra.

Thank goodness you can't see the feet.

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Who says the corp isn't based beyond Saturn?

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Elysium, on mars, definitely.

Or perhaps Nova York in the Extropian Strong hold.