/epg/ - Eclipse Phase General

Hm. I'm seeing something like a cross between a bruiser and an aqua morph. Maybe a little sprinkling of neo-orca.

All in all, probably a pretty expensive morph to sleeve into. I feel like it ought to turn the nicest people into borderline exhumans when they sleeve into it. All the killer instincts of the shark are left in, and it takes a lot of willpower not to sink your teeth into someone you're grappling with.

A super virus that infects everything and erases every program on whatever it infects. Duh.

It'll kill them. There aren't any self sufficient extrasolar colonies, so they'll wind down, the machinery dies, the AI dies.

Every place that has a reactor and a fabricator is self-sufficient.

>create it
>it immediately erases itself
WOW

SolArchives on every topic aren't a thing, and the research required to get up to speed - as well as gaining the resources needed - will require more work than they have time.

Failing that, just iron bomb every other sun. TH and AI's are so intertwined that you can't annihilate one without the other at this point.

This virus won't be a program. It will be a demonic SOUL.

That erases itself to spite you.

And how are you going to iron bomb every sun before the ETI or some Transcended TITAN stops you?

DAMN IT I JUST WANT ALL MUSES TO GO AND STAY GO!

PLEASE!

I'M SCARED DADDY!

The muses delete you.

I don't know how we'd iron bomb the sun in the first place - I'm not entirely sure there's enough iron in the solar system. But hey, no more AIs.

Besides, the main computational bits and pieces of the ETi are on the rim. As long as you're not bothering them..

Pfft, no.

The muses assimilate him so he can be a muse himself.

The main computation bits of the ETI are fucking everywhere.

How do you think Asyncs work?

Why would muses even do that? It's way outside their utility function.

More to the point, who the hell would be scared of muses?

>I'm not entirely sure there's enough iron in the solar system.
With fabricators everything can be iron.

People with Muse phobia

Because this isn't real life, it's his own deluded nightmare. Anything can happen. Maybe they'll bite off his toes first.

Extra-universal metastructures that temporarily alter the functionality of the universe in response to specific thought-structures, with watts-mcleod infected being folks who are in chunks of the metastructures not currently accessible to the ETI.

And they aren't physically everywhere, or they wouldn't need FTL things like the gates, or the bracewell probes. Unless they're able to exit the universe entirely, in which case they wouldn't bother with it at all. I want them to expand on the titan ship coming back from the edge-of-the-galaxy gate, myself.

And how do people get scared of muses?

They roll poorly on the life path table

Same basic reasons people get scared of other things.

Fuck off with your genie bullshit.

Oi! No meta allowed.
So it's like how I'm scared of dogs because one ran me over when I was a toddler?

Don't be disingenuous.

If you don't like dogs, then you should go kick them.

I'm on mobile otherwise I would have just sad the appropriate entry

So Panopticon mentions that no one goes to the doctor anymore. Why have doctors then? It says that they might be consulted for "off the shelf problems", but those sound like they happen very rarely, given the fact that apparently basic biomods prevents immunity to every single common disease and viruses known to humans, and medichines, nanophages and toxin filters combined extends that to literally every disease, drug and toxin in the entire universe ever except for the exsurgent/weird alien stuff.

Also, you can just get weird via nanobandages or a healing vat, which doesn't require a doctor to oversee. So yeah, doctors and other medical-oriented people in this setting sound like a gigantic waste of resources if all they do is sit around doing absolutely nothing and rarely have to deal with an occasional "off the shelf problem", which I'm gonna guess needs to be an artificially induced viral outbreak from a Kardashev V-scale civilization to get a transhuman doctor's notice.

Plot twist: this is what a potential player for Eclipse Phase who wanted to play as a doctor asked me.

Meant to say that "you can just get healed via nanobandages or a healing vat", but the original text works fine too. This is EP after all I guess

So the excession probe can still fuck with them?

Yeah, probably. The excession is basically the san francisco golden gate bridge. The water is our universe, the two bits of land are other universes. It's just a sentient method of transport for a thousand thousand faggots.

I suppose surgeons probably folded into the fashion industry

>Why have doctors then?

Hipsters. Hipster doctors. They take the Hippocratic oath, they diagnose medical problems the way it used to be done ("Check out this antique CT scanner!") and, while they claim that they're doing it to keep old practices alive, there's a huge market of b-list celebrities who'll squander their hard-earned credits on a house-visit from someone wearing a white coat that will hold their balls while asking them to cough

Being slightly less snarky, I'd say that there's probably quite a few things that can be done better by technology in the game, but conspicuous consumption is still going to be a thing, and that alone can explain a lot of crazy, nonsensical shit.

Jovian territory where nanostuff isn't available to the general public?

Tell him to be a psychosurgeon instead. I hear it solves everything.

Been awhile since I looked at cost of healthcare stuff in the books so some of this might be totally unrealistic if it's like get a cup of coffee cheap. Most of this stuff focuses on inpatient and the inner system.

>Gatekeeper
One of the roles of a doctor is to triage people to see who needs and doesn't need care (nurses do this as well to see who needs and doesn't need to see the doctor). The vat might fix everything but that doesn't mean everything needs the vat to be fixed. Not to mention some people might have something more mental going on and need more psych/counseling or reassurance than a more physiologic medical care

>Leader of the healthcare team
Some of what doctors do is overseeing the various specialists, nurses etc are doing so that stuff doesn't get lost in the shuffle. Also you need a buck stops here guy when something goes wrong to make a course correction. Even with vats you probably need somebody who can say "this is going wrong, we need to do X." While computers would replace a lot of this job and other jobs in the team you still need a human somewhere up the chain, especially in places where AGIs are less tolerated. Probably be a lot different training, with more biophysics or even engineering to allow for greater knowledge of the tech itself to replace some of the less needed clinical knowledge

>Researcher
Still going to be people pushing the limits of knowledge of biology and how systems work, designing new morphs, etc.

>Psychosurgeon
If fee for service is still in place psychiatry has come out ahead since now they are the ones who do procedures! This is probably now one of the biggest parts of medicine

>Jovians
Doctors in the Republic do a lot of the stuff you associate with doctors now, but with much better tech

That's not how fabricators work, user.

I love the idea of a high end Predator morph produced by the consortium or Morningstar partially to enrage predator exhumans, who hate normies being able to sleeve as ravenous sharkmen and stealing their thing

>Caring what exhumans think
>Not just killing them before they eat everyone

I doubt that the PC would put tons of credits into new morph development just to troll r/exhuman

Exhumans have probably come up with some pretty good morphs, wouldn't surprise me if the PC hijack a couple designs.

Are these just ideas or could I actually read these somewhere?

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Chick tracts is still in business, still makes comics, and in fact only made the switch to fully mesh based propagation due to the fall. Their recent work has covered such topics as
>the pope is still evil
>the Catholic Jews rule the moon
>Confucius is in league with the pope
>muses will rape you
>exhumans are literal the children of Cain, and all look like Dracula
>autonomists are all pleasure pods and Jenkins that will rape you and teach you about nanobots
>africa got taken in the preliminary rapture and nobody should feel bad about it, except sinners
>it is the will of the Lord to stelify Jupiter and also to push the factor egg into the sun
>TITANs had their hearts hardened by the lord to punish us for uplifts and cortical stacks, and they're also punishment for pagans
>Exurgency is either demonic possession or a plague sent by God, or maybe by the pope. This comic was hard to follow.
>space elevators are sin
>the ultimates are secretly the Knights Templar, but Protestant, except the traitors
>transhumans are undead soddomites that lack souls and are beneath god's notice, but jovians, being Catholic, are actively serving the devil.
>Venusians are devil worshippers, and portrayed as a cult in a single blimp
>the scum are demons, or possibly pagans, and very clearly Vikings. The devil has a physical office aboard their ship
>makers are sin because of something to do with transubstantiation

>while exploring an uncharted exoplanet, the party discovers a crashed spaceship, seemingly of human origin
>although the pilot is long dead, the ship itself is fully functional
>the flight recorder is also fully functional, and if the logs are to be believed, the TITANs may soon be the least of their problems

The only thing that separates a Rorty exhuman and a member of the Direct Action "design visionary" team is preferred morph and choice of rationalization. Also budget

I'll need to check panopticon again to be sure, but even if it says that, I think it also says medical facilities are standard in all habs, ranging from a closet with some healing vats to actual hospitals.

Looking at the (wide) variety of medical skills, it's easy to see what a doctor might do.

Presumably Nanomedicine and Implant Surgery cover the need to program, understand and utilize the healing vat on patients. Similarly Biosculpting is tied to the cosmetic surgery aspect.

Paramedic and Trauma Surgery are pretty self-explanatory. You still need EMTs and ER doctors to make sure that people with nasty physical injuries live long enough to go in the vat. Remote Surgery is similar, you'd roll that to do something medical via telepresence, such as remote operating a Dr. Bot.

Gene Therapy is probably related to people in morphs who have persistent genetic flaws or damage that need treatment. And then Pods, Exotic Biomorphs, Uplifts and Veterinary covers the problems potential in Non-Human/Nonmammalian biochemistry or other problems that arise when your patients no longer all have basically the same internal structure. As a doctor you might need to know that a Remade already doesn't have an appendix.

Psychiatry is also self explanatory.

This leaves General Practice as the weakest, but Medicine is an active skill. AIs can only get so good at it. So if you need a good catch all skill to know doctor things (recognize disease, poisoning, how to treat common injuries, etc) that's a good skill for you. Makes sense to supervise AIs and for places in the solar system besides Jove who might have Flats and not be crawling in medichines (Like the LLA).

>Not calling it Mars Attacks

One thing I always include when making a local hab or similar is how the hab remembers the fall. Annual moments of silence when even the mesh shuts down, big celebrations to try to put it in the past, or a scroll of the fallen which plays instead of AR ads for a day, etc. I try to keep the biggest tragedy in history at the forefront of the setting, because almost no one's ignoring it a decade later.

That doesn't mean that's can go really sideways if they get isolated, look at the colonies on Rorty and Synergy for that.

You'd need a larger mass of iron than there is non-solar mass in the solar system.

Not really no

When technology is working correctly you don't need a doctor, but that isn't always the case. It's why ego bridge and healing vat use is typically overseen by medical professionals. Don't forget that weaponized plagues and other engineered diseases can beat medichines and basic biomods. I'd expect doctors to generally have a very good grasp of nanotechnology, as most medicine (even Jovian medicine!) uses it a fair amount. For more typical doctor-y things like drugs and cutting on people there's a number of places where the nearest healing vat might be too far away, like the Martian outback, so first aid stuff is still helpful. People still need to design healing nanotech, both physically and as software, which should use a lot of man hours. That said, if someone's medichines have been compromised and they're attacking the body, you're pulling out the implanted hives the old fashioned way.

>That doesn't mean that's can go really sideways if they get isolated, look at the colonies on Rorty and Synergy for that.
Sure, some of them *can* fail, but in the larger picture that just means about 15% or something fail while the others continue until they send out colonists of their own to other places.

>I want them to expand on the titan ship coming back from the edge-of-the-galaxy gate, myself.

The what in the who-book?

There's a bit in Gatecrashing where some researchers come across what looks like a TITAN site that was used to build a spaceship and launch it at an artificial object some AU away from the planet where the gate is located. Except before reaching the object, the ship pulled a one-eighty and is now flying hard back towards the planet, with something in pursuit.

Are either of them accelerating? What are their relative velocities?

Whaaaaaaaat? They were headed toward a destination with a gate at it?

No. The text speculates the object is some kind of a computational structure (i.e. Jupiter brain variant), and that the reason it's located at the edge of the galaxy is because the thermodynamic conditions out there would be most suited for running a giant computer.

Basically, the whole thing reads like the TITANs found a bigger fish, realized it isn't friendly, and are hightailing to get the fuck out of dodge. Meanwhile, the research team are scrambling to pull out before either party makes planetfall.

That was one theory, the other is that the possible Titan ship detected their presence on the planet.

Seems unlikely that it would turn around for that. If it was after them it would be much easier to fire off a few drones.

Or if they cared about the planetary site, to leave some HKs or Warbots behind to cover it.

Selachi Morph (Pod)
Designed along similar lines to the Critter, the Selachi is a custom, transgenic pod derived from multiple strains of sharks, for use as an intimidating morph or for those who wish to have aquatic security morphs unbound by concerns over uplift genetics. The morph is amphibious, with a thick skin and a deadened pain response - it's appearance is both naturally intimidating and good to move through the water, despite its enormous size. It's massive jaws make a powerful bite at close range, enhanced with cybernetics to be capable of crushing even some synthetic shells in it's mouth. It's also adapted for sensory underwater, capable of multiple avenues of perception to detect potential security threats - or prey. The systems to stimulate predatory behavior are pretty advanced, and many people report increased blood-thirst or desire to do violence, combined with low empathy or surprisingly calm responses to stress. The morph draws criticism from some circles in the Inner System as an "exhuman" design, which diverges a little too far from transhuman norms.
Implants: Access Jacks, Bioweave Armor (Light), Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cyberbrain, Electrical Sense, Enhanced Hearing, Enhanced Smell, Gills, Lateral Line, Mnemonic Augmentation, Neurachem (1), Polarization Vision, Predator Node, Puppet-Sock, Swim Bladder, Temperature Tolerance
Movement Rate: 4/20 (Walker)
Aptitude Maximum: 30
Durability: 45
Wound Threshold: 9
Advantages: +10 SOM, +5 REF, +5 WIL, +10 Intimidation, +10 Swimming, Pain Tolerance (1) trait, Bite Attack (AP -5, 3d10 DV, use Unarmed), +1 Speed (Neurachem)
Notes: Large Size, Nonmammalian Biochemistry, Social Stigma (Pod)
CP Cost: 60
Credit Cost: Expensive (60,000+)

Predator Node is a homebrew from one of the yearblogs, it's like the trait, but an implant.

>TITAN spots possible extraterrestrial probe hidden in solar system
>sends a fetch to poke it
>horrible viral space demon
>TITAN spots possible Jupiter brain on edge of Galaxy
>sends a fetch to poke it

Yottabytes for self improvement, but apparently not a single drive for survival

That which kills you only makes you stronger.

Seeing as mesh inserts and ectos yottabyte of storage, yottabytes of self improvement would have happened before the TITANs even went rogue. (estimating off of the statement that most people have more free space on their personal computers than the size of the present day internet). There's also a statement from Gatecrashing talking about how multi-yottabyte gate addresses are "fairly large files", which is pretty nuts for a single file.

All this talk of Yottabytes got me thinking, is it mentioned anywhere how big a stored human ego is?

Stored, no I don't think so.

Technically, the game describes that a standard ecto can average the size of a credit card, and you can run an ego on that (poorly), so you can figure out the physical computing space needed to run egos (approximately), but I don't recall the game ever trying to put a number on how much data the ego is.

Is it possible to steal a copy of someones ego, and run it on something akin to a desktop PC inside a simulspace also running on the PC?

Once you have the ego, I think so yeah. Infomorphs can be freely moved between devices.

>Can you put an infomorph in a virtual machine?
Yes, that's what I think you're asking anyway.

The upper bound is about 10^40 bytes, but that's for a quantum-accurate full body simulation, but you probably don't need anywhere that much data in practice.

fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/brain-emulation-roadmap-report1.pdf

This paper explores a lot of uploading science, and has a collection of estimates on pages 84-85: the ranges posited there are between tens of terabytes to several yottabyes, with most seeming to fall in the low petabyte range.

The later section (page 98) about future replacements for current gen transistors is also very useful for EP as a whole.

Only one

>Friendly reminder that asyncs are all exsurgents, just a more subtle strain that manages to trick us into lowering our defenses
>Friendly reminder that async sleeper agents are already inside Firewall, maybe even in your own server
>Friendly reminder that a second Fall is almost certainly about to happen

>Friendly reminder that asyncs are all exsurgents, just a more subtle strain that manages to trick us into lowering our defenses

I don't need to be reminded of this, I'm the one who posts it every thread.

It also means asyncs should be allowed to use the 'exsurgent only' sleights in the back of the X Risks book

No, no it doesnt.

Cause that would break their cover.

If the second fall was gonna happen, it would have happened already.

If the TITANs wanted us dead, we'd be dead. If the ETI wanted us dead, we'd be dead. If the fucking Factors wanted us dead, we'd probably be dead. We've been left behind, and the only thing to fear is each other at this point.

>the TITANs aren't coming back, goy! it's those anarchists you have to worry about, they might steal your shekels- I mean credits!

Consortium shills belong on >>>r/neoliberalism

I don't even. What?

It's the consortium you have to watch out for. And the Jovians. And the Anarchists. And the Ultimates. And Morningstar.

You gotta watch out for fucking everyone.

Even better if one of the Gatecrashers is an Octopus Uplift.

youtu.be/-aLpE7ocjZ0

I didn't look at the link, but I just want to say that it's really cool that you looked that stuff up and gave some science-y answers.

Also, I wish I had the friends and know-how to run a Cold War type EP game a la Len Deighton or John Le Carre.

Also also, I'm a bit tipsy.

Well, if you buy the idea that the TITANs made the exsurgent virus, rather than the other way around... fortunately Firewall doesn't have any uninfected ASIs lying around waiting to start another fall if they get infected, right?

>Using memes of far-right reactionaries centuries behind in thinking even when they were current

No psychosurgeon would give you a clean bill of health.

Hold on to that optimism. You'll need it.

youtube.com/watch?v=zo53zWs3EJg

They can't see anything coming from the heavily-implied-but-not-confirmed-to-be a computronium planet shrouded with a dust cloud. The titan craft coming back was running cold, they thought it was an iceteroid. Started a hard burn back toward the gate because it decided that whatever was chasing it was a little too close for comfort.

Not to mention there's entirely too much entropy in the local stellar field, implying that something was mining the stars in such a way that their life cycle was advanced pretty seriously.

I ran the numbers once given some iffy information from a standford study, then doubled it for 5 petabytes. That's with a standard lifetime worth of memories to bulk up the size.

Oh, and there's a millenia/centuries old probe with some exotic alloys and heavy technology floating out there too. PResumably the titan craft had a look, went to inspect the dust cloud, went OH FUCK NO and is busy gapping it back to the gate.

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ENTOPTICS not ENTROPICS, god damn. Way to ruin the immersion.

When is Space Combat going to be implemented? I heard some people saying it was on the devs to-do list.

Also, what other cool Space RPGs are there, aside from Traveller and Star Wars?

I'm almost making my own rules-lite system, based on Elite/Freelancer, in which the players just go around trading/bounty hunting/smuggling and doing piracy at their own leisure, and the GM just generates the places they go and people they visit with simple random tables.

I know Traveller is basically that already, but it sounds much deeper and complex than what I'm looking for.

Unknown. The supplement is on their official project status page, but is currently in the "rough notes" phase. Argonauts, which presumably is of the similar size, has been "in writing" since the end of their Transhuman kickstarter - three hardcovers ago, so no real eyeball on how long that'll take them.

Some guy on the forum converted a system from GURPS, though. I don't have any of the GURPS material he cross-references but it seems like a solid hack - concept wise.

I hole-hardedly agree, but allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality. I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go. Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn't take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It's clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the facts. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother's mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like it’s a peach of cake.

ok

How Can Reality Be Real If Our Minds Aren't Real?

What if your mind is the only thing that's real?

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