Psudoscience and fantastic technology

[Esoomian]

Recently Vong and I had a discussion about the nature of Tiny's cybernetic, we discussed it and I did a little research (OK I read a few Wookieepedia pages and Gry's equipment book) but I thought the results were interesting enough to share. It stemmed from my thoughts that I could use The Hammer to attack active Thud bugs without the taking damage (if the roll was successful).

I'd been using/picturing The Hammer as though it created a bubble of repulsion around it, basically a solid force field that could be used as a club. I reasoned that the repulsors created a field of anti-gravity strong enough that it would be equivalent to being a solid object, thus it could be used to do damage and parry things. I also thought it could be used to 'levitate' objects over The Hammer if Tiny was deft enough to balance the object on the invisible anti-gravity field.

I'm going to attempt to summarize Vong's viewpoint here, although I'll probably end up with what I understand of Vong's viewpoint so if I get it wrong please correct it. I actually think the discussion was quite worthwhile.

Vong had been imagining The Hammer in far more scientific terms. As gravity has less effect the further away it is from it's source he imagined The Hammer to divert things rather than physically assault them with a wall of anti-gravity. The closer something got to The Hammer itself, the more strongly it'd feel the force of gravity and the more it'd be diverted/repelled. Hence a thud bug may well still make contact with Tiny or The Hammer even with a successful attack roll from Tiny. He explained as being akin to a cushion or two like poles of a magnet being pushed towards each other. There is force there but it's not until something gets really close before it becomes significant.

This argument makes far more scientific sense however I didn't see how it could really explain how the cybernetic would be described this way: "This brutal weapon is the mark of a being who has no concern for the law or morality." by Airen Cracken and I had difficulty imagining a cushion being used as a weapon at all.

Wookieepedia had the following to say:
The Repulse-Hand was a weaponized prosthetic created by Control Zone. Unlike many prosthetics, the repulse-hand was not covered with the synthskin that normally gave prosthetics the appearance of a real appendage, nor was it designed with a sensory interface that would allow the user to feel through the hand as though it were real. Presentability was not a concern to the bearers of this brutish weapon.

Within the tempor-alloy hand where miniature repulsor generators. This made the hand a brutal weapon in close combat, and allowed it to be used to parry weapons without suffering damage. In the event that the repulse-hand was struck by a weapon, the bearer would find himself thankful for the lack of a sensory interface. Worse still for a being that was touched by the hand while activated, as the multitude of repulsor generators would tear deep gashes in an opponents flesh, and even break bone.

This made me think that rather than the field being a uniform thing (akin to a fist wrapped in a force push) it was a constantly changing sea of gravitational rips eddies and storms and the different rates of repulsion and the interactions between warring forces creates almost a movable wave of damage and repulsion. I could definately see how this would be viewed as a brutal weapon and how it would be able to attack and parry things without taking damage.

It may not make quite as much sense in a scientific way but it makes sense with the nature of the device and it meant that while The Hammer shouldn't take damage from attacking active thud bugs it would potentially shred the thud bug it targets and high velocity fragments may then damage Tiny (and possibly anyone nearby). This also meant that a resilient item (such as an ampistaff) could be parried without any additional danger using The Hammer.

I've included the rules for The Hammer below what do other people think? Perhaps I'm the only one interested in psudo-science and fantasitc technology but I I'd like to hear other opinions.

Model: Control Zone Repulse-Hand
Type: Offense cyber prosthetic
Skill: Repulse-hand
Cost: 300 credits per pip (minimum cost 1,500)
Cyber Points: 2
Game Notes: Repulsehand adds 1D to repulse-hand damage.
User gains repulsehand skill at 0D. Must buy repulse-hand skill to equal or greater than Strength. Skill and damage are set at time of purchase and may not be improved at a later date. Skill replaces brawling and brawling parry and may be used for melee parry. For example, if a character wants to buy a repulse-hand at 4D+2, it will cost 4,200 credits.

Source: Cracken’s Rebel Field Guide (page 41)
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[Ankhanu]

[Hellcat]

This is one reason I appreciate the fact that Gry whenever possible has tried to always include the source he got the stats from and the page you can find it on. Sometimes there's something in the description that can give a broader understanding of the item than the stats alone. And to add to the Wikipedia article, here's the description and Craken's addendum on the repulsor hand. From page 41 of Cracken's Rebel Fieldguide:

[Ankhanu]

[Hellcat]

But is that an air compressor or something else such as a compressed air plasma cutter?
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[Ankhanu]

I'm sure you could get it simply from compressed air. The difficulty really comes in nozzle design, making something that will create a focused stream that doesn't split and spread for a distance (might only have to be a couple mm or less). Keeping a gas stream coherent is pretty difficult, it has a tendency to expand rapidly, especially from a compressed source. If you can get velocity without compression...
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[vong]

works better as a water saw.

but looks like 2 opinions on the jet type theory. this would fit the descriptions of ripping as well, just because if you turn the jet on close it would rip flesh. i like the description like that

basically it would have a proximity sensor with a timed focused blast of repulsor pushing things away at the last second.

how does that sound to you eso?
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[Hellcat]

Ok, so could we then say that theoretically we've come up with something from the real world that could potentially deal damage in a way similar to the repulsor hand though it doesn't repel.
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[Ankhanu]

Don't think so... nothing in the real world works on that sort of principle. The real world examples are all using matter, not forces. I suppose a real world similar example would be electromagnets rather than gravitational forces... of course they only work on ferrous metals If multiple extremely strong small electromagnets were used and pulsed in the right circumstances I suppose a similar effect could be accomplished.

But yeah, I think we've used enough analogies to raise suspension of disbelief into a working game model
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[Esoomian]

This is exactly the conversation I hoped would be started

I'm very fond of Ank's idea of the timed pulse. It makes sense with the fact the the Repulse-Hand skill is static and cannot be improved with the expenditure of character points.

The skill in this case represents the power and spread of the repulsorlifts. Obviously the more repulsorlifts you have and the higher their output the more likely you are to achieve a better result. This much I'd already figured out in my own head.

I hadn't considered a timed pulse, the impact has nothing at all to do with the strength of the character it's all about the sudden burst of repulsion as Ank explains far more eloquently than I. However this works in with the inability to upskill. The hand's sensors determine when to activate the pulse and which pattern/spread to fire the repulsors in. Tiny can probably manually activate the hand (and likely has to arm it so it doesn't go off resting in his lap) but he'll never be able to match the onboard CPU in terms of proficiency so no matter how well he can learn position his arm to intercept blows he'll never upskill.

I did imagine the spread of repulsors would be able to deal with backhanding type attacks and punches as well as palm thrusts however.
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[Hellcat]

Ok, what about cyber points? I understand how they work, but before this thread was started we were discussing somewhat their issuance. Esoomian had said that putting two cyber points into the repulsor hand made sense since it was weaponized, but I'd countered that the neuro-shock hand only had one cyber point and yet it was also a weapon. Their the only cybernetics in Cracken's Rebel Field Guide that are more strictly speaking weapons, though there are others that could be used in combat to give an edge to their owners.

Here's all the ones from Cracken's Rebel Field Guide (thanks again to Gry for his Weapons Stats and Equipment Stats pdfs)

[Esoomian]

[Hellcat]

Low internal consistency may be the case cause the description on the Vessel Courier System seems to suggest to me the person that becomes a vessel gets kinda a jump drive installed in their head to carry the info in. They can't access the data to read it. Yet it's 2 cyber points if you have it installed.

By contrast, if you're already a cyborg you can install a knowledge cartridge and incur 0 cyber points while being able to instantly gain skills at 3D, 5D, or 6D in either Knowledge or Technical. Now let's say you decide you want to become a master tactician or your in the heat of battle and somehow get lucky to find a knowledge cartridge that offers 6D in tactics and you've only got 2D in Knowledge. As a cyborg with the AJ^6 you're already getting a bonus of 1D to any Knowledge or Technical skill. Now you're adding a cartridge that instantly gives you 6D in tactics, forget having to learn it at +1 pip above your Knowledge attribute, your a tactical genius in a round or two. Now you and your team has a advantage in the battle since you're more likely to figure out tactics that could help your team win (though they may not). Or maybe you get a knowledge cartridge with 6D in demolitions. Now you're got the ability to disarm explosives more succesfully or set them up for a specific effect in combat (like what we discussed with the avalanche and such).

There not exactly combat skills themselves but they can be used in combat to potentially turn things your way. Yet no cyber points are incured merely because they give the cyborg character access to knowledge they might not normally have. Though the good thing is that they replace the users own skills, meaning you could have 4D in explosives and accidentally plug in a Explosives 3D knowledge cartridge, suddenly becoming less capable. But the point is how fair is it that a cyborg can master skills in these two areas that quickly and not gain another cyber point in doing so?

Most folks have to spend potentially precious CPs to gain and upgrade Knowledge and Tactics skills and we don't always know when we'll get 'em back. A cyborg could either get lucky to stumble upon a cache of the knowledge cartridges (though they probably won't know right away what's on it or how much it will advance that skill by) or they can sell stuff and buy them if they know where to look. If they sell on the invisible market they might be able to get more for certain objects than they otherwise could. It could still take a whole adventure just to get enough credits to purchase a 6D knowledge cartridge and find a place to purchase it, but compared to the amount of time it would take to go from 3D to 6D in a particular skill it could be worth it.

Advancing that quickly doesn't seem fair without a cyber point being earned.
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[Ankhanu]

Cracken's is a 1st ed. book, let's not forget... there probably wasn't any real rhyme or reason in how cyber points were assigned Trying to figure out what that rhyme or reason is is ultimately going to end in frustration. The only thing we can do is leave them as they are, or rewrite the entries to conform to some arbitrary code of our devise.

If this is the case, that we want to re-write the cyber point values of various cybernetics and devise a system for the differing levels of value, I suggest we quite quickly move this discussion out of this game forum and into the greater Rancor Pit community (like we did with the Combined Force Power, Concentration mechanics, Yuuzhan Vong vs. Lightsaber Combat). Chances are a more robust and acceptable system will develop that way.

[Esoomian]