How to make Solaris 7 fights interesting for non-pilot players

[bluedragon7]

most if not all of the technology is available in 3025

Certainly not, especially not just to everyone. 3025 was the time of LosTech and unless you are Comstar technology is not available, only randomly discovered but not understood. Exemptions like Justin prove the point, his Arm was an engineering masterpiece.

That's not to say heavy cybernetics are impossible but they are not plausible for just any affiliation. The mention in Mechwarrior 3rd reflects a completely different timeline where this kind of technology is significantly more common. If you look into the books for the 3025 timeline implants were rarer with the most commen of them just being better Peglegs.

[Lord greystroke]

I think your missing the cost element cash is king looking at the rules you should be able to do nearly anything it is cost and availability that changes so a man on the street is screwed in 3025 not a rich noble how rich very I would say 

[bluedragon7]

Maybe this needs to be separated into a different thread by the mods as it is turning into a new topic?

In 3067 rarity can be compensated by money relatively easy, but in 3025 this was not that easy, as availability of rare items was not managed by production but quite often by luck of finding it in a StarLeague cache as the secrets of its production have been lost in time.

If you just look at the rules now you entirely miss the point of the 3025 setting.

[Lord greystroke]

I see but the rules are how one gauges things as they are the rules  fluff is fine but it appears everyone thinks that the man on the street is the view one looks at because in 3025 its much bleaker to a rich man on a nice planet you don't even notice because you have it good money and power are the only thing that make a difference

your universe your way of doing business

[bluedragon7]

Yes, but the rules to describe the 3025 setting are different to the rules now, aren't they? ;) And in them implants are way rarer than in MW3 or AToW and Liao was not particularly known for it.

If you play in that era, it is helpful to point out the differences in the setting, otherwise you could just play in current time.

[Lord greystroke]

I think your getting hung up on the later quote used for flavour and fun if this person is using the dreadful ATOW rules with the companion  they show that it is easy enough to replicate the good old days of 3025 and it is the changing of availability and cost all of that I mentioned 

[bluedragon7]

No, I am hung up on the suggestion that Liao would be an ideal heritage for a cybered character in 3025.

While in 3060+ they might be a prime choice, in 3025 they are not.

[guardiandashi]

cost and availability are definitely issues in 3025 but frankly some are considering it bleaker than in some cases it was..

lostech was definitely a thing but I am going to say in some ways you could use the analogy example of fallout to get an idea of some of what happened.

in the star league things were in general pretty good massive advancements spread fairly far and wide yadda yadda.  then they had a war (several but details) and that civilization fell.
in 3025 they are living in the ruins of that civilization but in some cases are starting to actually recover.

one thing people had done what with people being people id they would go and get bits and pieces of what was left and tend to concentrate the "good stuff" to a few areas.  thus you get things like the davion core worlds... and the outback.

each house had somewhat different priorities and what they managed to recover and or salvage.

Laio has always been a population rich house and territory poor (because davion took over huge swathes of their territory early on and marik to a lesser extent did the same.

to some extent you could say (I know its not true exactly but....) that Laio is southeast asia mostly china and india they have a fair amount of "people tech" in the warrior novel Justin had forced Candice to eject and she got her shoulder chewed up by a canopy that didn't clear completely, se had already gotten MID (Myomer implantation Device) "repairs" when they actually talked. so the units were around but the problem was that while the equipment still worked.. in a lot of cases it was more or less "black box" tech IE they know if they use the device it does "something" but they often don't know exactly how or why it does or doesn't work, so they might do the equivalent of trying to use a device intended for repairs of "limb" muscles and attempt to use it for a repair of torso muscles and get "bad results"

[freakacid]

ahhhh, cappy=capella  O0

[bluedragon7]

that the Liao royal family has access to lostech does not make the whole house well equipped in regards to implant technology

MIDs work as black box type lostech, not requiring much knowledge to be used, but on the other hand no one understands how they work.

Real myomer implants require a much higher level of sophistication as they need to be grafted to the body and not many doctors outside of comstar and maybe Canopus know how.

They only start reappearing after the 4th succession war and then it is indeed Liao that starts the first experiments with elective implants, which are those that increase the strength of the user. In 3025 those have not been developed yet.

[Lysenko]

Certainly not, especially not just to everyone. 3025 was the time of LosTech and unless you are Comstar technology is not available, only randomly discovered but not understood. Exemptions like Justin prove the point, his Arm was an engineering masterpiece.

I sometimes wonder about that. The Capellan aero-pilot in "The Sword and the Dagger" (2nd BT novel published)  has a bionic leg. I have no idea if an aerotech fighter has foot controls or not, but still.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

I sometimes wonder about that. The Capellan aero-pilot in "The Sword and the Dagger" (2nd BT novel published)  has a bionic leg. I have no idea if an aerotech fighter has foot controls or not, but still.

I remember novels having the ASF thrust tied to pedals.

My head canon however retains the foot pedals to yaw.  An ASF, like a conventional aircraft, can spin on 3 axes, and a joystick only allows control for 2 of them.  You need the pedals for yaw, just like in an airplane because the joystick can't provide that input if it's already providing pitch and roll.  My head canon puts a second joystick in the pilots other hand for up/down/left/right thrust, leaving a third input (throttle) for forward/back thrust.

Either way, yeah pilots need feet :)

[freakacid]

last two session

session 2.

a new player was introduced. a cyber cat girl (PC) which was able to break free from a pleasure circus. now on solaris to build up  a new life. She has some piloting, tech and medtech skills, but is planning to do something in media buizness. Managed to get the (more or less corrupt) customs officer (PC) interested in her, they went on a date.  She also managed to get into the club "Walhalla" and get some respected stable owner (NPC) interested in her. Later on she had a date with the customs guy (PC) of the date was him trying to impress her with a visit to the bridge of a landed spacecraft that he was inspecting. They ended up on the bridge and she started to push some buttons, but luckily (that would have been a mess, the crew of the ship would was quite upset) the system was properly secured so she did not manage to do anything....:).. they left...it seems that those two PC characters are going to be in a love relationship.

the arms dealer (PC), his bodyguard (PC) and the manager (former wolfs dragoon...on secret mission to establish a  wolfnet safehouse/Stable on Solaris) are still struggling with one of the triads ("Burning Knifes"). They try to solve their problems by starting a gang war with another triad ("eternal light") by stealing some fancy motorcycles (that are iconic for the other gang) and by this disguising as that gang... they managed to get some attention in the burning knifes area and lured a few of their thugs into "enemy territory"...it ended in a wild motorcycle chase with shooting .... They managed to kill two "burning knives" thugs in their disguise. On their way back home, one of the players was stopped by police, but was able to talk himself out by referring to their friend in the customs office... (who will have to deal with the bureaucratic repercussions and internal revision later on...)

on the next gaming day cyber cat and customs guy were not available. So we played in a smaller group. Arms dealer went to a well renowned stable and talked to an experienced tech, trying to sell his Artemis IV rockets. He got them interested, but they said they need the lostech-guidance system as well, then they would pay a better price. The players decided to do some research and find sources for lostech, their starting point was the Mech-Museum (pretending to be journalists) where two of them booked an extended tour and had a chat with the experienced tech working there. The museum has a deep vault where university students do lostech archeology and try to learn from some found parts. They even have an old Archer 2Rb, which is out of order because of missing endosteel parts which cannot be reproduced. They players were able to obtain some information about the artemis system and about the security system of the museum (however an heist would be suicidal, as the museum has heavy security).  They also found out that one of the up and coming arena Mechwarriors might have a modified Dervish with some lostech Artemis, but this is not confirmed yet.

There was another funny episode in the museum: before leaving the museum one of the players was lifted by the atlas mech guarding the entrance for some funny photograph ("selfie"). The other player encouraged the pilot (via radio) to make a practical joke and scare the PC a bit. As the giant hand was starting to close and pretending to squeeze the player (not seriously, just shocking the little human in it) the weapons dealer missed a willpower check (because of his paranoia) and cracyly jumped out of the hand onto the mech torso (he was lifted high above - and even missed the roll for the jump- but was saved by edge...18m fall would not have been nice). The pilot of the atlas(NPC) himself, was also shocked by what he had caused, as he only wanted to do a little scare and opened the cockpit to calm down the player (he rolled a 1-1 on a willpower check). The player in his paranoia then jumped into the now open cockpit of this mech (that is in the museum mainly for show reasons) and nearly beat the pilot to death... it him a while to calm down and finally both left the mech and the players managed to leave the museum due to a good performance ot the other PC who pretended that was all part of a show... (and the museum staff was feeling guilty themselves, as their joke went a little too far as well).
[this episode might not sound very realistc, but it was hilarious]. The bodyguard PC meanwhile was doing some research about the triads and all of them were meeting in a park in Kobe, but they found out that they obviously had attracted some attention. They were followed by a surveillance guy (NPC) of an unknown organization. Bodyguard guy spotted him and managed to sneak up onto this guy, beat him unconscious and tried to bring him to his place. However the agent (NPC) had some suicide poison hidden in his teeth and killed himself before beeing tortured or giving away secrets (actually: thats a hint to "higher powers" that get interested in knowing where the artemis munition is coming from...some parties might try to cover up the recent discovery of a star league cache).

sorry for my lazy writing. I hope it gives an understandable summary of how the game develops, and is a nice way to take some notes for me as GM. Later on I might polish the text a bit.

[freakacid]

My players might get some information about a lost jumpship with a dropship that might be drifting in space in a neighbouring star system after a missjump (and might contain some goodies)...

if they decide and manage to hire a suitable ship/crew ("Han Solo" style) and find a jumpship that is willing to bring them to the temporary pirate jump point of a neighbouring system...

are there any special rules for K-F jumping (we played Warhammer40K / Rouge Trader before, there the Warp was a big deal...people going cracy etc.)...

What would be a reasonable cost for a short endeavor like this (1 or two jumps, maybe two weeks, a small dropship+crew... mostly civil...they are not engaged in a fight [yet]?)...? I found some information about 3-5% of the price of a ship as baseline?

thank you!

[guardiandashi]

if there is a jumpship headed in the right general direction, its usually ~50,000 cbills per dropship per jump. so 2 jumps ~100,000 cbills each way.

typically it would be the dropship you would be leasing for a % of its value for the run. the jumpship I would typically charge the cost per jump, although if you want to be a touch mean... require them to pay the cost of all potential transport capability per jump.

so if the jumpship can only haul 1 dropper 50k/jump
if it can haul 3 150k/jump
etc.

[freakacid]

just some short conclusion of the last session.

Customs Officer (McGregor) found a dead guy on his couch in the morning [he was only connected via skype]. That guy was planted by the other players there, because they were not sure, if they could trust McGregor, and if the surveillance guy was maybe under his command. He did the right thing and called the otehr players.. actually they were in front of his house and observing how he was reacting.

Then they asked our computer/medical skilled cybercat girl (Syria Lagrange) to find out some details on the body. She was not able to get information, but had a friend she found on the way to solaris, a guy who runs a "dirty clinic" and is a collector of technology [and is very suspicous and conspiracy theory driven]. They carried the body there and asked him to do a scan of the body...
[later on that guy found out that there was a little self dissolving "GPS sensor" was inside the body, giving some hints towars ROM/ Comstar]. Paranoia Level went over 9000.

While this took place, the weapons dealer (dai-li) was informed that his contact who had delivered the artemis lrms was one jump away and would arrive on solaris soon. They went to to the spaceport to get in contact... however, arriving there, they saw news about a tragic missjump of an incoming jumpship. The jumpship arrived [with some damage], but the docking collar seemed to have not docked properly and one dropship was missing.... guess which one, and who was on it. They managed to get in contact with one of the crew from the jumpship, who is willing to give the jump coordinates where the ship was coming from - in exchange for the promise to save the dropship crew (his friends)...and he is promising lostech onboard...[if something is still salvageable after the misjump]

hope my players are torn between greed and paranoia now ;)---

next session will be about space...they are already hiring a crew...the paranoid doctor [temporary player] has some conections...

[freakacid]

puuhhh,

a little fallen behind with updates:

basically -
players hired a dropship and a jumpship. Managed to find the destroyed dropship drifting in space.
cargo still intact. Two other dropships approaching (1 day and 3 days away), first one "snords irregulars", wanting their part of the cargo. Second unidentified (will be comguard secret unit).

next session:
Boarding the ship, finding some survivors and many dead bodies in the ship. Searching every room, reconstructing what happened and finally finding a surviving traitor onboard hiding in a mech cockpit. Managed to open that, before he was able to power up the mech and kill everyone in the cargo bay...salvaging what was there... the whole thing under time pressure... gave the internal dynamics a nice boost.

My team managed to salvage 5 mechs and some cargo... however they have more trouble bringing it to Solaris as threatened by two other dropships. After intense discussions they managed to team up with another ship (in my game: a Snord irregulars unit) who also want their part--- my wolfnet agent however managed to do something like a hidden "batchall" with them - that will finally lead to a (trial of posession) like fight on solaris. The other players do not understand what is going on, and the clans were not mentioned, but some pathetic talk about honor and the true warrior (....) and so on was there for some good fun.

[the hidden clan style of acting of my wolfnet agent and the snords unit in 3025 might be a stretch of canon, but it is my game]